Friday cannot come any sooner. I feel as if I have already done enough with my hours and now I want to allow the week some time off. Thursday and Friday, can you please disappear? Don’t bring me more work, more traffic and less sleep. Why don’t you join Saturday and Sunday and give me a a nice, long weekend to look forward to?

My day started at 5:30 a.m. yesterday and ended at 10:30 p.m. By the time I got home, I more or less collapsed in my bed. I was so tired. I was the kind of restless tired. The kind of tired when you can feel your eyeballs in their sockets, where if you stay up just a bit longer, the loopy, crazy, insane behavior might start and you wont be able to stop it.

As per usual, Los Angeles traffic was relentless. It still boggles my mind on how people can come to this city and survive its strange behavior and customs. If the Iranian Revolution hadn’t taken place and I had lived my life in Tehran, was forced to wear a head scarf and then one day my parents decided to take a trip to Los Angeles, I think I would have lost my mind. How does one come here from Minnesota and manage to drive to and from work and home on a gridlocked 405 freeway. I am from here and I barely survive it. I’ve learned to tune it out a bit I guess and I am sure that this is what most people do, newcomers and locals alike and that’s how we all survive together, but I can imagine how shocking the idea of spending that long of a time in your car before you get to work can seem.

After work, I had to run over across town to see a press screening of “Ghost Town,” the new film starring Ricky Gervais, or as I like to perpetually call him David Brent. No matter how good you think it is, the American version of the The Office has absolutely NOTHING on the U.K. Office. David Brent rules the world and me and you just live in it. Stapler in jelly, redundancies, Keith, Sergio Georgini, can it get any better than this? I think not.

But I digress. The movie was quite funny, just your typical comedy, with a few twists and turns, but nothing absolutely spectacular, except for Ricky Gervais’ shark tooth. I couldn’t help but think about David Brent throughout the whole film, albeit a grouchy, loner David Brent. I hate when I go to press screenings, and they’ve combined the press with a gazillion other normal movie-goers who just happened to get invited to an early screening. I can’t stand it. It takes away from the professionalism of it all. I guess it’s a good way to judge how the film is perceived by others as you watch it, but I still get annoyed.

Earlier this year, when I attended the press screening for “The Wackness” at Sony Studios, it was so…professional. I hate to use that word again, but it’s the way it felt. I was going where normal people didn’t get to go, to a private movie studio lot, where I was handed an identification card to put on my car and had to maneuver my way through the buildings, check in with the publicist from the public relations firm, and sit in the theater, with other journalists. It was so fulfilling. I felt like a real writer, with other writers, in a special place just for us, so that we can watch this film, and either love it or hate it. I don’t mean to romanticize the whole thing, but I love being a member of the press.

I love it. It’s what I live for. The power we have just overwhelms me at times. Granted, it’s not something many would think of as ‘power’ but it is influence nonetheless.

After the screening, I got on the road with a bladder so full that if I had some how made a sharp turn, I would have burst. As you can imagine, I went straight for the toilet when I arrived home. And then after that, I went straight to my bed, and the lines of vision between the real world and sleep world became blurry and I eventually and quickly dozed off.

I dreamt about writing and typewriters and Jack Kerouac and Anderson Cooper and the New York Times. I saw myself talking to the homeless of Los Angeles, trying to tell their stories. I thought about my byline appearing in a national magazine. My visits to the Educational Testing Service website the day before to find out more about the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) danced around in my head and made me just as nervous thinking about exams and scores and no.2 pencils as I had been in high school.

Today, I got up the nerve to register for the test. I will face my doom in a month’s time. Needless to say, I am frightened. Very frightened. Standardized tests don’t sit well with me, but then again, who do they sit well with? This is the first step I must take to continue my education. A first, very scary step. A step that will lead me to a Master of Arts in Journalism or English. It’s now or never. I am ready to take the plunge. I am not, however, ready to take a rigid test that has no bearing on my skills as a writer, reporter, editor or decision maker at all. That’s the harsh reality of it, I hope it isn’t taken too much into consideration by my prospective institutions of higher learning. On the other hand, there are a couple of Universities I’m looking into at the moment in London. Fortunately, these schools do not require silly tests like the GRE. Thank God for the British. There are many decisions to be made in the coming months, many late nights, many stressful situations, many doubts and hopes and fears and dreams all rolled into one, about education, life and love. I’m ready to face it. I’m quite ready. Being a journalist, making a difference somehow, someway in someone’s life means more to me now, than it ever did before. I’m hungry for it and I don’t think I will ever get full.

Rose Bowl Flea Market, Pasadena, April 2007, by Keeg

I’m a firm believer in quality versus quantity, in most aspects of life. The one area where this isn’t stressed enough is fashion and style. There was a period in recent years when I though the newly vamped and redesigned Forever 21 was the end all be all of clothing. I could walk in, get three shirts, five pairs of earrings, a bag and a dress for $50. Could it get any better than this? I thought. Little did I know, it could. In about six months time, all of those items either broke, came apart or disappeared into trend hell. That’s when I realized that the cheap and disposable route to fashion was a dead end.

I was never into Forever 21, to be honest. When classmates in high school would rant and rave about it, I would call it “Polyester Emporium.” I remember taking shopping trips to United Colors of Benetton and Nordstrom with my mom. When I was a toddler in Tehran, she would dress me in the best that European fashion had to offer. I had never even stepped foot in a Walmart until a couple of years ago.

My mom taught me a valuable lesson when it came to clothing: when shopping, quality always overrules quantity. You have to think of clothing as an investment, not something you can wear for a couple months and then throw away. Of course, disposable basics are always permitted, but when it comes to big things (wool coat, boots, dress shirts), the best thing to dispose of are idealogies that allow you to grab items feverishly until you can’t walk anymore just because everything is $20 or under.

I made a decision a couple months ago that as long as I could, I would buy myself one quality item a month – this would stop me from overspending in stores like Forever 21 or H&M and also leave me with pieces in my closet that can be worn again and again for years to come.

So every month, I’ve been sneaking out of the office and using one day’s lunch time to enhance my closet. My location: Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. My targets: J.Crew, occasionally Banana Republic and the heavenly paradise that is Anthropologie.

While J.Crew has been a long time favorite and on the top of my list for many years, Anthropologie has been slowly looking to take its place for quite a while. Putting the luxurious, one-of-a-kind clothing and accessories aside for a second, when I walk into an Anthropologie store, all of my troubles just melt away. It’s as if, I’ve walked into my dream living quarters. The marketing geniuses of anthropologie rummaged through my brain while I slept and intercepted my dreams and then came back and created the inner workings of their stores. I’m convinced that this is what took place.

Part of the reason I probably feel that way, is that Anthropologie is not only selling clothes, its selling a lifestyle. A lifestyle that I am gobbling up like there’s no tomorrow. Established in 1992, Anthropologie has managed to bring in 50 percent of Urban Outfitters, Inc., their parent companie’s revenue, without the use of advertising. And I like that.

It just goes to show you that there is quality in their product. It’s the same with dog food. You can either go buy some Iams from the supermarket, or you can do your research, and find kibble from healthy and organic companies like Innova or California Natural.

I ventured over to Anthropologie on Monday and thought about never leaving. The smell of the candles, the colors of the clothes, the light shining through the second floor on dark brown parquet, the calm atmosphere, the not-so-many people, the way the sales people just leave you alone to shop and breathe, I cannot find one bad thing to say about this store. Except the prices, but those aren’t necessarily bad, they just come with the territory.

I left with Frenchy-looking perfume that smelled delicious and some grey cotton linen pants that fit me so perfectly, you would not believe. As I’m sure any woman knows, shopping for pants and jeans is a full day marathon that is likely to end in disappointment, tears and possibly ice cream. So imagine my excitement as these wonderful pants, that were on sale might I add, fit me as if they belonged to my body. Do you know how amazing it is to go shopping for pants and look at yourself in the mirror, all alone in your dressing room, with clothes scattered everywhere, under the most horribly unflattering lights ever and realize that you actually like how you look? It is a revelation beyond compare. An amazing moment, where all of society’s rules and regulations about body and image are thrown out the window and what remains is an incredible feeling of self-satisfaction. Thank you, Anthropologie. See you soon.

Photo via Anthropologie

With the current disaster of a Metrolink train derailment that took place on Friday afternoon here in Los Angeles ( Chatworth, to be more specific) looming in my head, the events that currently have me in a sour mood are insignificant really, but they’re still affecting me more than I’d like them to, so here I am. 2:40 a.m. in the morning, writing.

On Friday afternoon, someone who shall rename nameless said a couple things to me at work that upset me enough that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them. Mainly that I “don’t go outside my house.”

In a normal situation, this type of comment (whose history regarding this incident is a bit of an enigma and too long to go into) would have rolled off my shoulders, never to be thought of again. When it comes to what I do or don’t do in my social life, I don’t care what anyone thinks. I haven’t ever since I have had a legitimate social life. Because, frankly, not only is it no one’s business, but I enjoy myself and the company I keep no matter what I’m doing.

But I suppose this wasn’t a normal situation, because it was in front of other work colleagues and was said in a very ill-meaning manner. I kinda went blank when I heard it and only responded with a long delayed “ok.”

I debated saying something, but at the moment, I was too choked up and pissed off to even speak. Plus, I was in no mood to get into an argument on a Friday. So I brushed it off, like the civil person that I am.

I honestly feel no desire at all to justify my private life to anyone, especially someone at work. My idea of a good time is a far cry from what anyone my age would typically consider the ‘cool’ or ‘in’ thing to be doing and I like it better that way. I don’t spend my weekends getting drunk at clubs or bars, in fact, I find this type of behavior quite repulsive. I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs, I’d rather spend time with Henry any day over socializing with people on superficial levels. And while I do love to spend my free time knitting, painting, sewing, traveling and watching Bollywood films, I do much more outside of work, than most people that I work with.

I don’t stop working when I get home. If I’m not editing and writing posts for the ezine that I work for, I’m out attending movie screenings and covering other events. If I’m not writing in this blog, I’m developing and getting ready to launch a website I’m currently working on. If I’m not getting ready for the gardening show I co-host, I’m busy being a news junkie and scoping out freelance writing opportunities. And when I’m not doing that, I’m busy planning trips with my boyfriend to any given corner of the world. So you see, I do a lot. I don’t sit at home, twiddling my thumbs, thank you very much. I’m not out galavanting the streets either, getting home at 3 a.m. and puking in my bed.

And I don’t know about you, but home is the best place to be as far as I’m concerned. I have everything I need here. At least I have a home that I feel comfortable in and not one where I’m forced to pay rent or live with a room mate I don’t like.

Sitting at home or not, I like who I am and I’ve realized that I don’t have to explain myself at all. To anyone. It takes a sad and superficial person to insult someone with the idea that another person’s social life doesn’t mirror yours (so high school, don’t you think?) Which is exactly why I didn’t answer back. So immature and sooo high school, like totally.

Photo by akk rus

405 – Pit of Hell. This is what I do in traffic. Take photos.

My boyfriend doesn’t understand traffic. Why should he? He’s from London, where mass transit is the norm and readily available to any Londoner at will. In London, there are buses at every stop, taxis at every corner and a metro with comfortable seating. What more can you ask for? Unlike Los Angeles, London is not a particularly spread out city. You can probably travel across it in less than an hour. L.A on the other hand is a vast land of freeway, suburb and city. I’ve said this before, but I don’t understand how anyone can travel to this city for vacation. How do you figure out where to go? And most importantly, how do you manage to get there? You can drive here, but what if you’re coming from Sweden? You can rent a car, but how would you even figure out our convoluted freeway system? 10 east, 5 south, 405 north, como what? I’ve lived in this city practically all my life and even I can’t figure it out completely (although if I needed to, I could find my way home using surface streets – this is what driving across town does to you)

This morning I thought I’d try something new by waking up extremely early to try and beat traffic. I got on the freeway at 6:50 a.m. In a normal city, this would mean that there would be a NORMAL amount of cars on the road. In Los Angeles, it means getting to work at 8:10 a.m.

No matter what I do, it doesn’t go away. It exists to make my life hell, even before I get to my cube. Tomorrow, I might try 6:30 a.m., although seeing as to it’s a Friday, I don’t know if it will be an accurate experiment.

The Los Angeles freeway system was my lady all Summer long. Now that school has started, it is a complete mess on the concrete jungle. This won’t ease up, I’m suspecting, until after Christmas. How lovely!

It was a bit difficult waking up this morning. Even Henry didn’t want to budge. He stayed in bed until even after I came back to my room after a shower. However, once he saw me put pants on, he went wild, gnawing at my feet, hopping arond like a miniature gazelle. That’s his cue, he knows that when the pants come on, we exist the room, make our way to the kitchen, where he’ll sniff around and either run to the living room to bark at INVISIBLENESS outside or trot to my parents’ bedroom to steal some socks for his morning breakfast. I can just foresee how hard the coming months will be to wake up – even harder than it is now that the days are getting shorter, and it’s pretty dark when I get home. Ugh.

A couple of weeks ago, I packed up my bag, shut my computer off and made my way down to the third floor of the parking structure to retrieve my car and go home. I thought about the horrible mess of traffic awaiting me on the freeway, but nevertheless tried to put on a brave face. It will all be over soon, I told myself. Oh but was I wrong. Was I ever wrong.

I came down and to my horror, found that someone had parked behind me, essentially and completely blocking me in. At first I was calm. No problem I thought, I will just go upstairs, tell the receptionist and she can have this sorted out for me, since my spot is assigned. But when I got upstairs, she had left. It was the end of the day, after all. My next choice was to go and see the parking attendant downstairs.

I approached her politely and told her someone had parked behind my car, in a space that was assigned to me, therefore, rendering me unable to move my car. She looked at me for a couple seconds, with a blank stare. I don’t think she took me seriously at first. SOMEONE HAS PARKED BEHIND ME AND I CAN’T GET OUT, I repeated. She finally got the gist of what was being said and summoned her manager down to help me. I waited almost 10 minutes on the island between cars coming in and going out of the structure. When the manager came, he didn’t take me seriously either, until I lead him down the labyrinth of a parking structure we have to show him, that yes, in fact, I could not get out, unless he wanted me to plow through the car behind mine, which in retrospect wouldn’t have been a bad idea. WHO parks behind a car, seriously?

He concluded my only option was to have him call the tow company. Fine, I thought. Not my problem. That will teach whoever it was that completely delayed my going home a lesson. Go fetch your car from a tow lot, oh and you’ll have to pay around $200 to get it out. Good luck. Once my mom mistakenly parked in a McDonald’s lot in an attempt to retrieve my sister from a class she attended at a community college. When she came back, a McDonald’s employee had called the tow truck company. Her car was missing. I imagine a car missing feels like someone’s raped you. Your world completely collapses. She made her way to the tow lot and ended up paying $200 for absolutely nothing. She was definitely NOT lovin’ it.

As the manager was writing down the license number, a couple people from work emerged from the elevator and saw what was going on. “I know you parked behind you,” one of them told me.

I felt relieved and angry at the same time.

“How do you know?” I said.

“Because he did it to me last week and I walked around for an hour until I figured out who it was.”

Oh my God. The owner of the vehicle (after being called and told that he was a total douche for parking behind me and  totally and utterly ruining my day) finally came down, half-smiled, barely said “sorry” and moved his car.

Now let me say this. Never in a million years would I ever, EVER, park behind a car that a) I did not know who it belonged to and b) was in a assigned spot. In a assigned spot! I do not understand the methodology of people in this world. Did he not think for a second that whoever he was blocking in would at one point want to leave work to oh I don’t know, go home? Doesn’t that sound crazy! Going home from work! How preposterous! And the worst part of the whole thing is that he didn’t even really think he did anything wrong. I would be apologize profusely. I bet he’ll be voting for McCain. If someone believes they can have control over my uterus, controlling when or how I can leave a parking space to leave my place of employment and go home does not sound far fetched.

Today was a terrible day for traffic. I know that sounds redundant, but to give you an idea of how bad it was, I left my house at 7:40 a.m. and got to Santa Monica at 9:10 a.m. I doubt it will ease up before January, as school is in session and the holidays are coming up. One thing is for sure, if I can get Halloween off, I am. Last year, it took be three hours to get home. Three hours. THREE HOURS. I could have been in Mexico in that amount of time. Coming back home tonight was slightly better, if you consider an hour and 10 minute drive for 34 miles better. After doing this for almost a year, I would consider that a good day.

The heat is easing up. I was slightly “cold” while I drove this morning, a miracle in Los Angeles. I thought about how deeply I’m contemplating moving to Europe if I come upon news that John McCain has become  President, how annoying I find the names “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” how much nicer the 405 would be without any cars on it and how badly I want a cup of tea and a blanket right at this moment.

It still ceases to amaze me why traffic exists. I’ve read the science behind it, yet I still don’t understand it. The roads don’t change. They don’t get smaller or bigger, so unless there is a major accident backing up cars, I don’t understand why people just can’t accelerate and drive. Don’t they want to be home soon? I don’t buy the excuse of too many cars being on the road because as I said, the roads always stay the same. The days are getting shorter and I am not looking forward to being stuck in traffic in the dark.

I made it home, as I do every day. All the stress of driving, the stupidity of Los Angeles drivers, all the unnecessary stops and gos, they all melt away when I get to my doorstep and a 6lb Maltese named Henry greets me like he hasn’t seen me in 10 years.

Yesterday, I had to go to the doctor for the most evil of all procedures ever created: the pap smear. Just writing it makes me shiver. Ugh. Before I left this morning, in addition to mentally preparing myself about the fact that I have my feet in stirrups (hello world!), I took with me one of those alcohol/moisturizing wipes and my Burts Bees baby powder to freshen up before entering the room of doom. There was no way I was opening my legs up mid afternoon to a stranger, M.D. without making sure I smelled of roses and rainbows.

When I got there, I had my temperature and blood pressure routinely taken, which turned out to be high on the first try. Needless to say, I was nervous. I’ve only had one previous pap smear before this one and let me tell you, after it was finished, even HOURS after, I felt like I had been riding on a horse all day long. I was told to strip and get myself into those flimsy hospital gowns with backs that never close properly. By the time the doctor decided to show up, I had already been waiting for about 5 minutes, which gave me time to think. Again, let me reiterate that thinking is dangerous. It gives you time to dream up all kinds of scenarios, and believe me, that’s the last thing you want to be doing when you’re about to have an instrument inserted up you.

I smiled and laughed nervously when she finally walked in.

“Why are you laughing?” she asked.

Oh dear God. It’s going downhill (literally) from here. Why would she ask me such a question? Can she not tell I am already shitting bricks?

“No reason,” I blurted out. “Just smiling.”

“Oh, ok. It’s just that I’ve never seen anyone so happy about having a pap smear,” she retorted.

Is this bitch for real? I thought. Do you think I’m happy about having a pap smear?! What kind of sick person would be happy about that?! Hi, nice to meet you, I like to routinely go to the doctor and request a cervical cancer test. No openings today? Be back tomorrow. Good day.

I told her I was actually a bit nervous and she calmed down. She told me she’d be quick, so I wouldn’t have to be uncomfortable for long. Oh really? I thought. Thanks so much for trying to be quick, because I’m sure all your other patients love it when you prolong this procedure.

To make a long story short, I left the doctor’s office feeling like I had been horse riding all day long. And now my doctor thinks I like getting pap smears.

I’m 23-years-old. When I was younger, I never thought I’d live the day to see 18. I don’t know why a 12-year-old would think morbid thoughts about dying before her 18th birthday, but here I am, a whole five years passed 18.

I’m not sure how I feel about being 23. Twenty three is an age of decisions. When you’re 20, 21 or even 22, you’re either still in college, moping around in a temporary job or trying to find a job. When you’re 23, you’ve probably landed your first job with people who took a chance on you and hired you, much to your amazement. You’re going forward, taking every day as it comes, when suddenly, one day you wake up in a cold sweat and realize, this is the first day of the beginning of my downwards spiral to getting older. You have nightmares about loans and owning homes, crying babies and how you prey that you wont faint if they throw up chunks of formula all over the place. You think about saving money and spending money and think it’s unfair that you can’t do both.

The room starts spinning as you begin thinking about your parents, and how they’re more involved in your life than they should be. Babies, marriage, job security, mortgage, car loan (hopefully not in that order.) Then you wake up, get dressed, go and sit through more than an hour’s worth of traffic that is horrible because a) not only does it stress you out even BEFORE you’ve reached work b) it gives you time to think. Thinking is dangerous. You think too much and all of a sudden, you made a full circle back to preying that when the time comes, you know what to do with your life.

Well, the time is here. What are you going to do? More specifically, what am I going to do? The answer, in short, is I know and I don’t. I know in theory what I’d like to do, but when it comes to applying it to life, I fall flat at times. You see, I’m 23-years-old, and I’d love nothing more than to be completely happy with myself. How can I imagine having a slew of other responsibilities when I can’t even be completely happy with myself?

This is last time in my life, where the only thing I have to care about is me. I live at home, I don’t pay rent, I don’t have to cook or clean or take care of anyone besides Henry. My only responsibility more or less consists of going to work. That seems fine, but there’s so much more I want. My boyfriend lives in London. Yes, long distance relationship. It might be hard to believe, but we’ve been together for about six years. People might say long distance relationships don’t work. I say, if you give a damn and care about it enough, it works.

We are both excited about starting our lives together, but we haven’t quite figured out how just yet. Decisions. I still want to go to graduate school, but haven’t decided where. He wants to establish roots somewhere, but hasn’t decided where. My family is in Los Angeles, his in London. We’re both anxious and nervous about completely leaving them. Decisions. I want to be able to work for a national publication and work on a novel. He wants to pour his creativity into a screenplay and  illustrating. We’d both love to work from home, travel the world and own a farm, preferably with an alpaca named Tina.  So, where do we go from here?

Do I apply to graduate school, get into debt, take almost 2 years off to get a M.A. after my name so that I can be that much closer of having my dream job of writing/editing for the New York Times? Does he come to Los Angeles, or I go to London? Do we both go to New York or San Francisco or some other metropolitan city? Decisions.

23 is a year of decisions. We are both ready. Ready to start our new lives and I love him more than ever. It’s the “starting” that’s the hardest part. I know when the time comes, things will work out ok, even with a few bumps along the way, but being thrown into this grey world after years of the black and white that is school and family life and adolescence and college, trying to make your own decisions about your life, without a parent, a teacher or society telling you what to do is so damn hard.

So tomorrow, I will wake up from my dreams of owning my own home and being married with dogs (not babies), and try to dress appropriately for the surface of the sun that is Los Angeles and the inside of the office which is Siberia and look at myself in the mirror and examine my face and wish this hormonal acne bullshit would just GO AWAY. Then I’ll get into my car and drive across town (crawl is more like it) while listening to NPR, not only to fulfill my addiction of being a news junkie, but to remind myself that there are people out there in this world who don’t even have fresh water or a place to live, and you’re sitting in your car in Los Angeles, thinking about decisions? And you’ve got A.C? And a job? But I tell you, these decisions are hard to make.

I am still trying to decide the direction writepudding will take. In many ways, I don’t want it to take a particular direction, because I feel that’s the beauty of what I have here: an open space on the internet to write about whatever I please, with no particular rhyme or reason. But where life and blogs are concerned, it’s not a good idea to be scatter brained. That’s hard for me to do at times, because my interests are so vast. I love to knit and bake and consume news. I love fashion and bollywood and gardening. I love to travel and photography and anything vintage. It’s so hard to pin down one thing to write about, because to be honest, I don’t think my opinion on any of the above that I mentioned significantly contributes to anything. There are thousands of sites (or at least hundreds) about knitting and baking and people’s opinions on the news. Every market is saturated. Even writing about where I live ( L.A) has not only been covered, but it gets old fast, mostly because everyone knows or thinks they know enough about this place. Now, if I was coming to you from a small town in Alaska or British Columbia, it would be interesting. Alas, this is not the case.  I have had this blog for a bit over 2 years, as I mentioned earlier, and I really never took a specific direction and because of that, my writing kinda got lost in the world wide web. I’m going to probably a take a more personal approach in the coming days and weeks. I’m still not sure what I’m going to be writing about, but it doesn’t matter, because in the process of it all, I will find out. I don’t really think I’m old enough to really have a say in “life,” but I’m going to try. And so, the experiment begins.

About three times a week, the people who live on the hill directly behind our house decide to throw a party, for no reason at all mind you. This is something new. It’s been going on for a few months and whoever they are ( typical college students, rowdy 20-somethings, who knows) they are doing a number on my last nerve. They’re loud. Very loud. Loud for no reason at all. So loud, that the thought of calling authorities has crept into my thought process a few times – something I find horribly annoying. It’s bad enough I have to hear the ruckus they create, but Oh God, do they have HORRID taste in music. If they’re not bumping up the reggaeton, I’m forced to listen to hair bands of the 90s. It’s just bad on multiple levels.

It’s very odd that they have taken up residence in this neighborhood, as the nearest college is about 15 minutes away and I see no logic for hardy partying college students to be living more than 5 minutes (if that) away from a respective campus. Whatever they’re doing, whoever they’re listening to, I just want to launch water balloons at them. I don’t understand the appeal at all.

I don’t understand why someone would choose to attend a party on a Thursday night, get drunk, be loud, disturb the neighbors, etc. I know, I KNOW. I sound like I’m 60-years-old. Frankly, I don’t care. I guess that sort of behavior just isn’t and has never been on my list of priorities.

When I was in college, a friend of mine dragged me (literally) to a fraternity party. It was perhaps the worst night of my life. The frat house was on a hill that we drove up to. There was a line to get in, a $20 cover charge and police helicopters broke up the entire thing before we even had a chance to get in. I was not amused. I drove home that night, thinking, “Remind me again, what’s so interesting about these alcohol-filled shallow social interactions?” I just don’t understand it.

Maybe I do. I get it. It’s the time of their lives to act whichever way they want without any consequence. People are craving to make new connections, to have fun, to let loose with the help of a Corona. Yea, I get it. I just never felt the need to engage in that type of behavior.

It’s so hard for me to explain that to other people, because I either come off sounding pretentious or prude. It’s hard to explain to everyone in your age group that you don’t particularly like to drink all that much or party or socially interact with people on superficial levels all the time. I would much rather enjoy a glass of Sangria with my boyfriend or have drinks with my parents than drink myself into oblivion with beer. Sorry, not interested.

Anyway, I’ve gone on too long probably. I must try to get some rest before I go mental listening to the party train from a distance.