We do St. Patrick's Day right

I meant to post this yesterday, but I was too busy playing hookie in the morning and then ignoring my boss' emails at the office all afternoon. It's hard work.

My family's favorite holiday has always been St. Patrick's Day. We're very Irish, for one, corned beef and cabbage is delish, for two, but mostly we enjoy it because it's the one holiday where the family can get together and 'celebrate' without any of that superficial/commercialized pressure to get gifts or have the right decorations or force polite chatter with the half of the family you only ever see at those functions. St. Patrick's Day is usually me, my mom, my sister, my grandparents, and maybe an aunt and uncle. We boil up some meat, spike the coffee, and just have a great dinner together.

Since I'm never able to make it home for the holiday anymore, my mom - who still sends me care packages at least once a month - sends me the paraphernalia one needs to celebrate properly. And I don't mean ugly beads and cover for kegs and eggs at Lulu's.



That loaf in the front is my great grandmother's Irish soda bread, which happens to be the only thing I can bake from scratch. And, wait, what's that in the back there?



Yeah it is. How can you not love a mother who sends you whiskey in the mail?

You know your life has lost all perspective when you have the following conversation over IM:

Me: My friend got a message when she signed on to gmail today, "Your administrator has disabled Google Chat," so she sent me an email in total dispair. I would literally cry if they did that here.

Quinn: Yeah, like life isn't shitty enough.

Me: I hear that.

I've got your job search update right here

In early January I applied for some communications job with a big Unnamed Non-Profit. I received no response, no rejection, no nothing - which is par for the course with all my job applications. Until yesterday. I checked the mail to find an envelope from Unnamed Non-Profit and figured 'rejection,' right? Otherwise they would have called me. It was even better:

"Dear Heather,

Now more than ever we need your help to keep hope alive. Please, for the price of a cup of coffee a day you can save thousands, nay, millions of lives, if you will just open your heart. And your checkbook."

They put me on their fucking junk mail list.

The best part? This isn't even nearly the first time this has happened.

While we're on the topic of delicious things that should be celebrated...

$1.88 at Giant:



Hell yes we bought two!

Don't we get a day off for this?

My friend David informed me that today is World Pi Day!

I think we all know how to celebrate:













Then finish up the day with some satisfying long division. Enjoy!

What is this topsy-turvy world?

Go back with me. Way back. By my carbon-dating techniques, I'm going to say around a month and a half. Yes, we're talking ALL the way back, friends, to late January. It'll be alright, just bring some water rations and don't taunt the wild animals roaming about madly.

Look, there's Late January Me, sitting around the house bored out of my mind. My friends are traveling in London, Florida, California, or in the library studying for the February bar. Every last one of them. I'm unemployed every other week and - oh look - I'm climbing up the walls, literally. There are scratches all over them.

So I decide to Do Something. It had to be something I could do by myself, obviously, and something cheap or free, lest I be forced to sell a kidney for rent. As an avid DCist and DC Art News reader, I decided to take their weekly agenda advice and start going to some shows. I mean, I like art, right? I'm kind of a photographer myself - not exactly an artist, but I like to think it gives me a little bit of an increased perspective on the subject. Okay, maybe not, but why not give myself a little culture. For free! Plus, I live on U Street, it's not like I have to trek very far to find a gallery.

So I go to one. And of course I blog about it! If I'm going to blog about bugs in my oatmeal (I still get google hits all the time for that post) then, yes, I'm going to write about the art show I went to. Then I see another and another. All of which are linked to by this guy, who noticed me because I'd linked to him on this site a number of times.

Then, things start to get weird. Really Weird. As a result of my increased readership from those links, I get an email from this guy, who invites me to happy hour and promptly pimps me out as an "art writer" to every single one of these people who gets within ten feet of me. Time passes. An entire two weeks, if my calendar is winded properly. Suddenly I'm one of those people! I get press passes! I sit four chairs away from the WaPo art critic, who's review on the same show makes me SO MAD I'm spitting about it for hours. I'm an angry art critic! Is this the same girl who spent a summer assembling telescopes at Perkins Observatory in hopes of one day becoming the next Mission Control Commander for NASA? Is it the one who moved to DC out of a desire work her way up the ugly political ladder and be the liberal Peggy Noonan? How about the one who agonized through three years of law school just to become a glorified secretary?

Oh folks. We haven't hit the peak of sureality quite yet.

Someone has rationalized today that I'm one of the two "most widely read Washington-based online art writers on the planet."

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a lotto ticket to purchase.

***

(Update)

Just a quick addendum. I wrote this rather flippantly, mostly due to plain old flabbergastiness on the whole subject -- in fact, it gave me flashbacks to that terrifying heat-flush I got every time I was singled out in Property class and asked, "Ms. Mylastname." One hundred faces turn to watch me squirm. "Why did the defendant's lose their right to the easement in Archaic v. AncientCase?" But in fairness to the artists I write about, I wanted to add that I take my reviews quite seriously. And who knew, but I actually have a degree in writing and have been published in a couple (far, far off the radar) magazines, and maybe more importantly, I have the patience to sit and think critically about something, so I'm not a totally unqualified hack. Not totally. I will, however, let Lenny explain to my editor that I haven't turned in a review in four months because I'm sitting paralyzed under the spotlight in front of my laptop.

Time to execute

It occured to me earlier today that exactly one year ago I was here:













Sigh.

I've been thinking about traveling a lot lately. When my Boston friends visited last weekend, I spent some time travel-talking with one of them. She's a globetrotter and the perfect person to go to if you're deciding to make a trip. She'll inspire you so much you'll practically interrupt her to grab your toothbrush and run to the nearest tarmac.

So I've made a tentative plan. I have always wanted to take some significant time off and visit someplace that needs that kind of attention. Since I'm making enough money at the moment to really pay down my credit card debt, I'm going to focus on that for the next six months. My hope is to get rid of it all, though that might be somewhat unrealistic given my rent and my loan payments. At the same time, I'm going to put what I can in savings. Then, around September, I'm going to quit temping and take a month off -- and travel to India. I'll probably go by myself, though I'll consider a partner if it's the right person.

Then, when I come back from my fantastically adventerous and soul-searching trip, I'll finally make the transition to finding a "real" job. I know I should do that sooner, but the reality is that I'm going to take a huge pay cut when I finally jump the temp ship - as much as 50%, so the thought of paying off my debts before that happens is too much to pass up. And did you hear that part about India??

That's the plan. And it also might involved some hard core camera purchases, because, well, you know me.