when a year treats you like this

how can you resist the temptation to punch it in the face? seriously, 2011 - you sucked balls and blew goats, and i can't wait to put you behind me.

(image courtesy of a friend's tumblr)

rolling in the mashups

these have been stuck in my head all week, so i decided to share them with y'all. you're welcome. :-)

adele vs. the eurythmics:

adele vs. jamiroquai:

all december everything

it really is the most wonderful time of the year. yeah, i'm biased b/c my birthday's in 16 days, but so what? december's my favorite month, my birthday's my favorite holiday, christmas is another favorite holiday even though i don't really make a bfd about it...it's a celebration, bitches!

although i don't foresee being able to do it as live as i'd like to for my 35th (well, not right now, anyway), i'm still planning on having fun. actually, the fun started a couple of weeks ago, when i had a day of free food and free laundry and made a little bit of money helping out a friend. last week's fun? hanging with bff and her mom. i'm taking myself to see "the muppets" as soon as i'm done posting this entry, so that'll be this week's contribution. i've won 2 twitter contests in the past week, so i'm counting those prizes (a cookbook and a pair of jeans) as birthday presents.

remember at the beginning of november when i identified 2 goals that i wanted to achieve? well, that didn't happen. not for lack of trying, though - i applied for 119 jobs and contacted who knows how many agencies re: housing referrals. i actually called a few more places today, only to be told that their waiting lists are at least 6 months long. obviously i don't have that kind of time. you can go to my other site to read more about that.

y'know what i want for my birthday, besides the obvious job offer and stable housing? room service. seriously. i want to stay in a hotel for my b-day weekend. this urge wouldn't be as strong if i actually had a place to sleep lined up for that weekend (december 16-18), but as it turns out, those are the only days in december where i'm not catsitting or crashing somewhere. (wanna offer up your couch/futon/air mattress/spare bedroom? let's talk.)

i think i'm forgetting something, but of course i can't pinpoint what that is right now. bah.

happy december! :-)

gobble gobble (for real this time!)

happy thanksgiving! or, for those of you who don't celebrate this holiday, happy thursday! :-)

i won't bore y'all with a list of who/what i'm thankful for this year, primarily b/c said list would be way too long to type out right now. i woke up this morning and started thinking about a quarterly list of thankfulness, and even that's kind of insane. so, here are a few of the people and things i'm thankful for, in no particular order:

--the amazing folks who helped me move out of casa de eulalia

--friends who've offered up their couches/futons/air mattresses so i have somewhere to crash

--bff, for so many things. it's not her birthday, but i could definitely write another post about our friendship and how grateful i am for her.

--everyone who's donated , either online or offline. i've been blown away by y'all's generosity.

--the friends who, while casa de eulalia still had a physical presence, were more than ok with coming over to hang out on the cheap.

--anyone and everyone who's subsidized food and/or drinking outings in the past few months. thanks for making sure i don't starve to death and for keeping my alcohol tolerance at a steady level.

i feel like i'm forgetting someone or something, so i should probably stop here. this was meant to be a partial list, anyway.

enjoy your day! :-)

supply vs. demand: the food pantry edition

(o hai! as you can see, i do indeed have internet access while at bff's this week, albeit on a limited basis. i'm enjoying it while i can - which means you get to read a new post. woo!)

anyway...i was just reading this article about food pantries in the area and how they're unable to meet the growing demand of folks who need assistance. i've tried to support local food/clothing pantries whenever i can, even during my recent turmoil. and here i am being thankful once again, this time for not (yet) having to visit a food pantry for basic supplies. yeah, i don't have a kitchen to call my own right now, but i can still buy food, so, yay. ok, technically yayboo, but you get my drift.

here's what i'd like from y'all. find a food pantry in your area and make a donation. food, clothing, money - whatever you're able to give. i know that sounds a bit weird, given my usual plea for donations these days, but i also know that there are people out there who aren't as relatively lucky/blessed/etc. as i am right now, and that's not something i want to lose sight of.

kthxbai.

gobble gobble in advance

i'll be hanging out with bff for a week starting tomorrow afternoon. woo! my 'net access might be a bit limited, though, so don't be surprised or alarmed if i don't post updates here or on my other site in a timely fashion. same goes for responding to emails and posting/responding to tweets.

that said, i'll wish y'all a happy thanksgiving now. contrary to what some folks may believe, i have all sorts of things to be thankful for this year. i'll spare you the details, but i am truly happy/thankful/grateful for everyone and everything positive in my life.

i reserve the right to edit or delete this post if i am indeed able to haz somewhat regular access to teh interwebz, though. just sayin'.

louis vs. rick

do you have a cat? do you know someone who has a cat? do you like silly internet humor?

behold, your new favorite thing: the story of a man who taught his cat to use instant messaging.

it's as silly and hilarious as it sounds. of course, we all know my sense of humor is slightly warped, so you might not find it as funny as i did. apologies in advance if you feel your time was wasted.

i love chicago.

this shouldn't be a newsflash to anyone, but i really do love it here. i was leaving a staged reading at the goodman tonight and in the few blocks it took me to walk to the bus stop, i fell in love with chicago all over again. seriously. i damn near wanted to hug the city. yes, i know that's impossible, but that's how i felt.

therefore, it is your job to remind me of how much i love chicago when it's the middle of winter and i'm bitching about the never-ending cold and/or thundersnow. kthx. :P

this is so very true sometimes

(via sjb)

midweek update

i just typed out the title and realized that this is periously close to a mid-month update. yikes.

applied for 34 jobs so far this week. made a couple of calls about potential referrals for housing; nothing solid as of yet, but i am now in possession of a multi-page list of agencies that could maybe possibly be of assistance. paid my cell phone bill and my life insurance bill. almost finished my quota of state-mandated volunteer hours. made dinner for the friends i'm currently staying with. saw some of y'all this past weekend. will probably see a few (if not more) of y'all within the next week or so. yay friendship and all that.

can i tell you guys something that you probably already know? i miss having my own apartment. this is not a new revelation, obviously, but it really hit me earlier today. it's not that i'm not grateful for the friends who are letting me sleep on their couch (and the other friends who've pretty much guaranteed my housing situation for the rest of november), b/c i am. really. honestly. i can't say enough about how thankful i am about that.

but i really miss having my own apartment. i had a really intense dream last night and for a brief moment when i woke up this morning, i wanted to call one of the people involved in said dream and invite them over to hang out. but i didn't. i couldn't. i can't. and that makes me...well, a bit sad. i really want to have a place of my own (or even a stable roommate situation) by the time my birthday rolls around. i honestly don't know how long i can keep living out of 3 bags (four, if you count my stash of library books) and bouncing around from couch to couch.

i'm sorry. i don't mean to complain about things, b/c i know shit could be a lot worse than it is. but i'd also be a big fat liar if i pretended that i don't get bitchsmacked by the reality of it all every now and then. b/c i do, and today happened to be one of those days. (also, i just finished watching last night's episode of "parenthood" and my emotions are all over the gotdamn place.)

so, yeah. that's what's been going on with me so far this week. how the hell are y'all?

so simple, and yet...

i've identified 2 goals for november:

1) get a job; and

2) find a place to live.

obviously the first goal has been on my list for quite some time now. the 2nd one is a more recent addition, but that doesn't make it any less urgent.

these sound fairly straightforward, right? if you've been reading this blog (or my other blog) for any amount of time, though, then you know that finding a job isn't as easy as i'd like it to be. as for finding a place to live...well, let's just say that whole process will go a lot smoother once i have something that resembles an income.

but i'm working on it. i've applied for 6 jobs so far this month (yes, i know the month just started yesterday), there's a couple of potential freelance gigs on the horizon, and the contact i mentioned in my post last thursday will hopefully be able to put me in touch with someone who knows someone who might be hiring, so we'll see.

as for housing...right now i'm just happy for the fact that i pretty much have this month covered w/r/t places to sleep. i have some potential agency referrals that i'll be following up on within the next week or so; fingers crossed that something feasible comes out of that process.

here's to a (hopefully) productive november!

can i just tread water now?

so that job i'd told some of y'all about? the one i really, really wanted? the one that would be perfect for me in at least 3 different ways? the one i had 2 rounds of interviews for (three, if you count my initial phone screen)?

yeah, i just received word from their hr rep that they decided to go with another candidate. sigh.

i'm not so much sad as i am disappointed. did i mention that i really wanted this job? b/c i did. still do, if i'm going to be honest, and yeah, i know wanting a job that technically is no longer open might be weird, but life's like that sometimes.

but i applied for 9 jobs last night, and i had a meeting this morning with a colleague of a friend who might be able to connect me with some folks who might be hiring, so all isn't completely lost. and in case you missed the update on my other blog, i now have somewhere to stay until november 10th, so yay for that.

i feel like i'm forgetting something else that i was gonna share with y'all...i'll edit later if i remember what that something is.

happy thursday. :-)

poetry mashup

i'm not quite sure why these poems were stuck in my head late last night, or why i started transposing lines from them as if i wanted to create the aforementioned mashup, but here they are:

We Wear the Mask
BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

Harlem
BY LANGSTON HUGHES
What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

i'd offer some sort of analysis, but i'm currently operating on ~5 hours of sleep and my brain isn't quite up for it at the moment. happy friday.

addressing the address situation

it should come as no surprise that, even in the midst of the insanity that is my life these days, i'm still actively looking for jobs. i remembered last week to pull my address and home phone from my resume and other job-search documents, and i still need to log into all of my various online application sites and change my info.

i noticed something during last week's job search, though: a fair number of sites require an address as part of their application process. for some of them, i was able to type "address available upon request" in the address field and made up a zip code of 60600. that doesn't work for all of them, though, so i went ahead and used my current address, my rationale being that it was technically my address at the time of my application, so all should be ok. besides, it's not as if most places send out old-fashioned rejection letters anymore, so as long as my other contact information (cell phone and email) are ok, i should be set.

this got me thinking, though. how does this process work for people who are, for lack of a better term at the moment, more housing-insecure than i am? how does, say, a woman temporarily staying at a shelter as safe haven from domestic violence apply for a job? or anyone else who's homeless? it's entirely possible that i'm over thinking this and that these groups of people are able to use some sort of alternate address when this issue arises. it's just something that occurred to me - maybe the universe decided i needed yet another "attitude of gratitude" reminder. i don't know. if i come up with anything else on this, i'll be sure to share.

recipe review: lamb and chickpea chili

my "recipe roundups" will be going on hiatus until my living situation is a bit more stable. that said, i wanted to give a quick review of the one recipe i've tried out since my last roundup:

lamb and chickpea chili

substitutions/additions - i used all ground turkey instead of 1/2 lamb and 1/2 turkey, b/c i had a pound of ground turkey in the freezer that i needed to use before the move anyway. i used chili powder instead of harissa b/c no way am i going to voluntarily spend money on something super-spicy. oddly enough, though, i also added a dash of crushed red pepper toward the end of cooking.

you know how chili tastes better the longer it sits? it's true for this recipe as well. it was decent the first night, but by day 3? omg amazing. the texture's a bit weird b/c, well, there's chickpeas involved and none of the chili i normally consume has chickpeas in it, but don't let that stop you from trying it. unless you have texture issues, in which case feel free to ignore this recipe's existence. for those of you with a higher tolerance for spicy food (which, i assume, is everyone else on the planet b/c we all know i'm a wimp w/r/t spicy food) - i'd love it if you tried this with the harissa (or maybe more chili powder/cayenne) and told me how it turned out.

bon appetit!

oh, vh1, you've done it again

pop-up video + chapter 1 of "trapped in the closet" = comedy. now if we can get vh1 to give the pop-up video treatment to all 22 chapters...

R. Kelly - Pop Up Video - Trapped in the Closet Chapter 1 (Pop Up Video) - Free Music Videos

my dear miss brooks

if you've ever heard me talk about my undying love for gwendolyn brooks, then you know that i was way too excited when i saw this photo on sjb's tumblr. of course i had to share it with y'all, b/c that's just the kind of girl i am. :-)

paying it forward?

i was walking home from dominick's earlier and a woman approached me to ask if she could bother me for a moment. i had a few minutes to spare, so i stopped to listen. you've heard a version of the spiel before, i'm sure: single mom, didn't want to go into a store and steal something b/c she knew god wouldn't approve, just looking for some help so she can feed her kids, etc.

i almost always say no when people ask me for money, if for no other reason than my cashflow hasn't been very positive lately. if someone asks me for food, though, i'll offer to go to the store with them so they can buy a few things. most folks turn the offer down, but this woman didn't. off we went to aldi.

she was so grateful and couldn't figure out why i'd stopped. i couldn't pinpoint it immediately, either, but after i paid for her groceries, gave her the hug she asked for, and started walking home, i figured some of it out:

1) the woman reminds me of an older version of my friend tiff. seriously. similar facial structure, similar sounding voices...it was a bit uncanny.

2) i found $20 while walking home last night. i bought an instant lottery ticket while i was at dominick's and won $2 (technically $1, since i paid $1 for the ticket), so i suppose i was feeling a bit generous.

3) the universe and i have been having a bit of fun lately w/r/t me being open to new experiences/changes/etc.

as i'm writing this, reasons 1 and 3 are really sticking out for me. obviously, the fact that i'm, relatively speaking, down on my luck at the moment (read all about that here if you haven't already), also might've weighed into my decision. i don't regret it, though.

i can't stop laughing at this

vh1's "pop-up video" is back (woo!), and one of the 1st videos to get the pop-up treatment on this season is lauryn hill's "ex-factor." if you follow me on twitter, then you probably know that i tend to refer to lauryn as #mshillifyourecrazy. (what? we all know i'm bitchy like that!)

but anyway...the level of pop-up snark for this video has left me damn near in tears. i've laughed so hard that my stomach hurts. therefore, i decided that such comedic genius (imo, anyway - y'all might think it's utter bullshit and that's totally ok) had to be shared. here you go:

Lauryn Hill - Pop Up Video - Ex-Factor (Pop Up Video) - Free Music Videos

september: a recap of sorts

91 job applications. 4 interviews. 1 eviction notice and 2 court dates (update on that here). zero job offers. countless hours of college and pro football viewed. copious amounts of booze and chocolate consumed. ok, so that last one is pretty much a monthly occurrence, but you get my point. i'd tell you how many books i read, but since i track them by quarter and not by month, i can't give you an exact figure.

suffice it to say that there were quite a few times when i wanted to punch september in the face. yes, i know it's a month and not an animate object. i also know that 2011 is a year and not an animate object, and yet i want to beat the everloving shit out of 2011 on new year's eve. it hasn't been an easy year, let me tell you, and september definitely was not a pleasant month.

it wasn't all epic fail, though. i got to hang out and/or reconnect with some of y'all, which is always nice. i met some new people at my volunteer gig (i swear i will do a post about this on my other site before the end of october). overall, things could be a lot worse, etc., etc. although i don't really want or need to find out just how much worse things could get, mind you.

and now i will leave you with 2 of the songs that have been stuck in my head all weekend: