1. I threw my sister a baby shower, 2. I turned 24, 3. I went to Puerto Rico, 4. 2008 Happened, 5. My sister had her kid, 6. I made Lemon Bars tonight but they kinda sucked

Sorry all, but much like Britney Spears, I needed a mental vacation.

P.S. I don’t know why it’s taking me so long to finish Obama’s book, but it’s probably the same reason why it’s taking me so long to figure out who to vote for or to learn much more about history.

I think it has something to do with impatient women in SUVs.

The boyfriend and I spent Memorial Day Weekend in Ft. Lauderdale at the Napoli Belmar Resort, a small, quaint beachside hotel with affordable nightly rates and a great location but unfortunately extremely uncomfortable beds. We spent our time feasting like kings, appreciating one of the few truly gorgeous beaches in Florida and enjoying various bars and clubs. On our third day, we decided to rent 50cc scooters and headed towards a dock north of Ft. Lauderdale. We chatted at a stop sign while waiting, according to the laws of the road, for the two cars ahead of us to move forward on their turn. Apparently, we weren’t moving fast enough for the woman in the SUV following us who startled us with an unnecessary honk because clearly she must have had an important appointment with, I don’t know, the beach.

I like to think of myself as a relatively mild-mannered, reasonable person. But, perhaps it was the locale or maybe it was the ocean air that prompted me to turn around and belt out the longest, loudest most obscene list of insults I could come up with.

“You want to fucking honk at us?” I shouted, “See, now we’re going to wait.”

I glanced at an imaginary watch on my wrist, “And we’re gonna wait. I can sit here all fucking day.”

“Feel free to go around us. Go AHEAD!” I gestured wildly around me.

In retrospect, I can see how this would be hilarious. Imagine, if you will, a 5 foot girl on a scooter wearing a helmet one size too big screaming obscenities and gesticulating like a loony. Hell, I’d laugh at me.

Here is my first post after nearly 4 months. Things happened and I will breeze through the events that have brought me back to the computer and blogging again. Try not to fall asleep:

As you may have guessed, I survived my fall semester. But just barely. You see, after taking my finals I promptly fell into a bullshit induced coma. I had to relearn everything: how to walk, talk, eat and how to use wordpress. But, I learned a valuable lesson: never to take college so seriously. After all, there’s still grad school to muddle through.

My grades were predictable, even the one and only glaring D that smeared my perfect A/B average. Editing Essentials. The course that promised to make me a better writer but only made me loathe the english language. After weeks of complaining about postmodernism, it would be a god damn comma splice that would do me in. I recieved my final grade through a brief typed letter from my professor. She basically congratulated me on my subtle improvement (a 62% to a 72%, hooray!) but blamed me for my near failing grade. Her letter was unapologetic, unsympathetic and profoundly unhelpful. Kinda like college.

Christmas came but it has not went in my household. Our fake Christmas tree is still strategically propped in between the living room and the family room so that I have to walk around and through the kitchen to watch Grey’s Anatomy (which, by the way, had the lousiest and most yawn-inspiring season premiere). Whenever I remind my mother that the tree is still standing, she counters matter-of-factly “Yes, it is.” I can’t discern whether this is a ploy of hers to get the rest of the family so exasperated that they’ll take it down for her or whether we’re simply too lazy to disassemble it.

Every year, I always attempt to spend New Year’s eve at a friend’s party, breaking the scared tradition of spending it with the family. Unfortunately, my mother’s inescapable guilt trip is simply too strong to withstand and I cave in whenever she throws her hands up in exaggerated frustration whining, “I can’t believe you won’t spend New Year’s with the family.” So, I spent the wee hours of January 1st with my family singing “Genie in a bottle” on a karaoke machine at my sister’s party. Don’t get me wrong, the singing part was my idea.

My boyfriend and I spent the first weekend of the new year in New York City. I bought a few replica treaures in Chinatown: a ten dollar corduroy hat (which my boyfriend dispised and which partly inspired me to buy it), a six dollar “jade” Buddha that were later swiped from under my table after I carelessly left them unattended at Cafe del Mar, a corner bar in the West Village. By Monday night, when we checked into the deceivingly classy Wolcott Hotel, I was sick with a terrible cold. Our window “view” opened out to a roof in the narrow shaft that was created by other surrounding buildings. The radiator hammered and sputtered on the hour every hour. More banging explosions inspired me to call the front desk to find out what the noise was all about. The clerk informed me that construction workers were repairing the roof and that ma’am they didn’t expect people to still be sleeping at 10am. Sure enough, a look out the window confirmed that there were three construction workers spraying our window with soddering sparks and hey, if I really wanted to I could have climbed out out, braless and in pajamas, to give them a hand.

All in all, an authentic New York experience. Photos of the trip are on flickr which you can browse through at your leisure.

This brings me to the current state of Shibooya. Thankfully, it is no longer pink but wrapped in a brand new, albeit unoriginal layout. You’ll find that I haven’t gotten around to fixing some of the bizarre bullets and links that plague the site. Consider this a Britney comeback only a little less trashier and vagina-y.