Things Take Longer in Real Life

...as opposed to college life.

1. Things change less quickly:
So in college, you are in classes for one semester. So every semester you feel like your life changes a little bit, because your routine changes and the things you think about are changing. Maybe it's just me, but in real life, because you are doing something and you don't really see an END (like the end of the semester 3 months from now) you look at your manager who is 45 and balding and they never MEANT to stay in retail to be a store manager for a whopping $30,000 a year and yet here they are, and just look at that in 20 years that could be me. Even the balding part.

2. How can I decide if I like you if I never see you?
I've been going on lots of random dates, both internet and non-internet based, and it is really fun to meet new people and drink beers, but seriously: HOW do people have the patience for dating in real life? In college, you meet someone, see them every other day in class, go on a date, see them again a day and a half later, hang out 3 more times by the end of the week, are an item within 3 weeks, and in love by spring break. Seriously. Because you are guaranteed to be seeing them ALL THE TIME, and you are also really horny and want to have sex a lot. In real life, people are serious and have shit to do that doesn't necessarily include doing you. So how does this work? You hang out with them once, then see them again two weeks later, and then again two weeks after that and you continue this pattern until 2 months after you start dating you finally go over to their house and realize they have some weird doll fetish? Or you see them without a shirt and they have huge man-boobs? Or they just say something totally lame and you realize that you in fact, do NOT like them? WTF? How am I ever going to date people I don't know if it takes so long to get to know them?

3. Things take longer to get to when you're not within a 1-mile radius of everything:
Maybe this is just Oberlin, but I think a lot of college campuses are pretty compact, if not so small as Oberlin. And maybe this is also because New York is such a big city, but other cities are also big. Given that, I think the whole, "I'll give you a call and we can meet up," thing isn't as effective in the real world. I don't want to wait around for you to call me so I can spend an hour on the train to get to wherever you are. Because no matter what, everywhere in New York seems to take me about an hour. At least if it's in Manhattan. Brooklyn, 1/2 hour. At least. I cannot wake up 15 minutes before having to be somewhere and be on time. It takes some adjusting.

My question, then, is that if things take longer in real life, but time moves FASTER in real life (like I cannot believe I've been in New York for more than a month), is time actually moving at the same pace?

Update: Job, Dates, Isabel Gillies

1. Job- I got one. It is fairly menial and not what I want to be doing forever, but it is work, it is close by, and I am happy to have it. Also it involves coffee, which I am a fan of. I feel pretty good that in this economy it only took two weeks to find something. So I'll do that for a bit and then see what else I can make happen...

2. Dates- Online dating (that is free) is now my new favorite thing. I have been on a few dates and hope to go on more. It is fun to meet new people and even more fun to have some kind of screening process before you agree to hang out with them, unlike if you meet someone while drunk at a bar. And maybe I will meet someone really cool! Also it is a quite useful procrastination tool.

3. Isabel Gillies- Happens Every Day is out, and I've read it. I think it is probably safe to say that it isn't going to win any Pulitzers, but it was all that I hoped for all the same. She is having an author event in a week, and I am planning to go with other people from Oberlin. But not to have a throwdown... more for the spectacle and culmination of my infatuation with this strain of gossip. Yeeeeah.

I Am Totally From the Midwest

I've been in New York for a little more than two weeks. And it isn't like I've never been here before... two winter terms, countless spring/ fall breaks, and visits to my grandparents' house when I was little. But now that I'm here with no expected departure time, that I'm trying to live here, I am feeling more and more that I do not have an effective New Yorker disguise, that in fact, everyone knows that I am not from around here.

- I smile at people, say thank you, and tell them to have a nice day when I leave the store/ counter/ apartment/ whatever. This causes people to either look at me like I am weird, or causes dudes to look at me up and down, wondering if I am coming onto them. Maybe I'm just flattering myself, but I don't think so.

- I see people doing/ wearing the weirdest things, like perhaps they are in a movie and find myself staring because New York makes me feel like perhaps I am also in a movie. I stare at the jogging lady smoking a cigarette. At the woman dressed like she should be working at Vogue who is actually surrounded by dogs and is a dog walker. At the guy walking across the street against the light who shouts at the car that honks at him, "Hey, watch it! I'm walking here!" (no joke.)

- Even though I am surrounded by delicious foodstuffs everywhere I go, and have ample public transportation to get anywhere I'd like to go, I still find myself hungry at night and secretly wistful and missing my mom's car and the Taco Bell drive-thru.

Maybe this is my way of manifesting homesickness. I guess I'll give it time. But I actually like some of my midwestern-ness and hope that a bit of it sticks.

Taco Night & Katherine Hepburn

Last night I made tacos for my grandmother. As of course the most crucial part of making tacos is the seasoning of the taco meat, I left that up to the expert: old el paso. I got hard and soft shells, because Grandmother said that she liked hard shells but didn't like that they broke all over when you bit into them, so she usually ate soft shells. I filled her in on the secret of the double-decker taco: melty cheese (or beans) on the soft shell used as glue to wrap around the hard shell.

BAM! You get the crunch and the soft so the thing doesn't fall apart. Plus you get melted cheese which is always a plus. We had lots of fixins: lettuce, salsa, guac, sour cream, chopped tomatos and onion, and more cheese. The double-decker tacos were a huge hit, and overall my cooking was a big success. YES!

After dinner we watched Pat and Mike which is the first Spencer Tracy- Katherine Hepburn movie. I like Katherine Hepburn, but she talks funny. "Oh I'm so pleased to see you dahling, reaahlly I am." Why does she talk like that? Did people used to talk like that in the old days? Do people in Connecticut still talk like that? I've been to Connecticut and they largely don't seem to talk like that. Maybe they do at the yacht club... Anyway I liked the movie, and want to see more Tracy-Hepburn movies in the future.

Being Grown Up Isn't Half as Fun as Growing Up

Yeah, that's from an Ataris song. I said it. What?

I talked to Becky on the phone this week and we talked about her baby, her son is 9 months old. So if I had been pregnant when he was born I'd have a baby now. Then I had dinner with Anna for the first time since I've been in New York, and she told me she's saving up to buy a house. A freakin' house of her very own to live in. And I went over to Ben and Allie's new pad to hang out this weekend, cause they moved in together recently. Just the two of them. No roommate.

Everything is getting a little serious. It isn't like playing house after college... its been too long for that at this point. My friends are moving in with boyfriends, and have real jobs with benefits and retirement plans. I feel like my year of life being on hold was really good for me, but that I'm now somehow behind. Like they're all turning into grownups without me.

Then I stay out drinking with them til 4 in the morning and everyone's too hungover the next day to do anything even by 6:00 in the evening, and I realize its all a ruse. And that we are not yet turning into grownups. Adults, maybe. But not grownups.

The Jig is Up

I have been fairly shamelessly spreading this little tidbit of Oberlin gossip ever since I saw that this book was in the March Glamour as a 'must-read' of the month. Glamour's little teaser said:

'Gillies had the perfect life with the man of her dreams — until she watched him fall in love with another woman in their small college town.'

I never took a class with the professor she was married to, but I knew who he was... how couldn't you? He's so dreamy. Anyhoo, I've been interested in reading the book, looked at a preview on google books, reading some reviews, and everyone always refers to him as 'her ex-husband,' or 'her former husband.' She changed all the names in the book, though if you went to Oberlin, you know who people are, especially if you were in the English department. Cause that shit was scandalous. And the school isn't that big.

So why is the AP being such a hater and outing the guy? Come on, AP. I thought you guys were classy. Not like me, the gossip monger.

Snowed-in but in New York

I got in after an epic 13 hour train ride on Thursday. Since then, I've been reconnecting with friends, exploring the neighborhood a little bit more, just getting re-oriented. Monday was supposed to be getting down to business time, errand running, nesting, dipping my big toe in the NYC job pool. When I trucked home last night it was already rather blizzardly, so when I woke up this morning and looked out the window only to see it was still coming down just as hard as ever, I decided that errand running could wait. Instead I'm going to attempt to hook up the DVD player... that's still productive in my book.