What a Year

I'm sitting on an Amtrak train en route to Washington DC to celebrate the new decade in our nation's capitol with some wonderful Villanova friends, and it is suddenly occurring to me that today is the last day of 2009.. which, when I think about it, was a really eventful year of my life.

What happened in 09?
I made a movie
I graduated college
I played a big part in my final VSMT show
I lived in LA
I had some identity crises
I studied at Stella Adler, Mike Lemon, & Kathy Wickline
I made a daring career choice
I lived at the beach
I spent a whole lot of time in New York City
I committed to my girlfriend
I came out to my extended family
I lost 15 pounds
I rented a car
I started a blog
I went on a cruise
I discovered an interest in international cinema
I read books and listened to audiobooks
I started cooking meals
I cleaned out my room and all my boxes
I ate interesting foods at nice restaurants
I went to a lot of parties
I skiied, cycled, jogged, did pilates and yoga
I ran 2 miles without stopping for the first time in my life
I saw Nova make it to the Final Four (and even cared about it)
I saw gay rights get rejected from too many places, but accepted into a few
I saw a black president come into office - something I really never thought would happen so early on in my life
I made a ton of new friends from many different groups
I realized which friends will probably stick with me for life
I rode cars, buses, trains, planes, and ships
I interned for a famous person, a big company, and a small company
I lived in 3 different apartments and 2 different houses in 4 different states

2009 was a huge, life-changing year for me, if I really think about it. I don't think I could really sum it up as the "Year of ____", as many try to... well, maybe a year of -- as most years are -- growing up.



- Posted from my iPhone

Multitasking at its Best; or, Something I'd Like to See Invented

I may be a huge weirdo, but I read books in the shower.  Yes, they get wet.  But they do dry back out afterwards, albeit with some ripply looking pages.  Small sacrifice.  I also often read in the hot tub, as well as whenever I get around to taking a bath, both of which tend to get books a bit damp as well, though not as much as the shower.  I have found this task a bit easier while showering in Europe - Italy, and France, in places where you use a handheld showerhead and turn it off whenever you’re between rinsings to save H2O (Europeans as a whole are much more environmentally conscious than we wasteful Americans).  

Why do I want to read while showering, you may ask.  Well, my own modern American upbringing has so bombarded me with media from all directions at all times that I can’t seem to bear not to multitask most of the time, and I find myself rather bored doing just one activity at once.  My sophomore year roommate once took a picture of me brushing my teeth with one leg up on the sink to stretch it and a large textbook sitting on my leg, with a highlighter in my other hand.  Somehow I’ve been trained to see any single task as strangely unproductive, and, well, boring.  As Harriet the Spy’s Ole Golly told me recently in an audiobook I was listening to while driving, you might as well play checkers while you watch TV, because both are boring to do alone but provide enough entertainment when done together.  

So after wondering just how to keep my books relatively dry during a particularly wet-booked shower just now, I decided to search the internet to see if anyone had actually come up with any sort of invention yet that allows you to read in the shower.  Here’s what I found: 

• Durabooks, a company that makes waterproof books with pages made out of a nontoxic, synthetic glue-paper material.  I highly approve of this, but they seem to have only six titles available: a few short story collections, as well as two erotic story compilations (they know where our minds are in the shower).  A good idea (and I might purchase one at some point), but not exactly what I’m looking for.  I want to be able to take whatever book I’m currently in the middle of reading right into the shower with me.  
• Another interesting find: waterproof notebooks.  These could definitely be useful at some point, I should think.  

If any of you are budding inventors out there, invent me some sort of casing or covering I can place on top of my book that can be easily put on or removed that keeps the water from getting to it and somehow allows you to still turn the pages.  Or just put one of those waterproof TV screens in my shower for me.