So, xfirefly9x nudged me the other day and I realized how much I've been neglecting LJ. It really kind of saddens me to think about, but since I've been so busy (see below), LJ has been sketchy and full of spam, and I sadly haven't written fanfic in a while (been concentrating a lot on finishing original stuff, but it has gone slowly). But I have a few moments right now where I'm procrastinating, so here's a brief update.

I graduated from college. Yep, really. Like three weeks ago. Finally done at the ripe old age of 20. But I've been so busy because I was, yeah, trying to graduate with honors while also working 40 (+) hours a week at the student newspaper.

I got a job and am moving in a week. It's at a paper in central Florida, so luckily it's close, but it's still sadly four hours from home, which is an adjustment for me. I'm moving in with a cousin to start off, until I get on my feet.

Complicating the moving matters, I'm buying a car because my truck can't handle commuting. But it sucks because I effing hate cars and I love my baby and refuse to sell her. It also fricking sucks because I was going to buy an SS Camaro -- i.e. a very nice muscle/sports car -- but four of them that I was considering have been sold before I can buy them and I've taken that to mean I'm not meant to have one. SO instead I'm going to end up with a 4-cylinder turd car (with less than half the horsepower) that I'm really going to hate but have to live with. SO. Yes. Pissed.

My "love" life still is the same. Dating...not for me. I'm now a college graduate who has only ever been on one date. I'd been flirting with a guy at the newspaper who was like six years older than me, but I knew it was not a good situation even though I entertained the notion a few times. Probably luckily for me he kind of dropped the flirting as he got to know me more and I'll probably never see him again since graduation.

I'm still writing, but original stuff and very slowly. I haven't even read much fanfiction. :( I actually failed NaNoWriMo this November for the first time ever. I was so disappointed. But it just didn't happen. Right now, I'm working on my NaNo stuff (two intertwining bilingual novelettes, one in English and Spanish, the other in English and Hindi) and what I meant to be a short story about Anglo-Indian relationships in 1900s Bombay.

I've been Bollywood blogging. Let me know if you're interested in a link.

And I think that covers everything. I'm going to try to keep up with things around here, but we'll see how that goes...

OK, so as part of its weird spazzy glitchyness, LJ has decided not to load any of my previous posts! So I can't respond to comments even if I want to. >:/

BUT anyway...

I bought a salwar kameez! ... and a sari!

Yep. Finally bit the bullet and just did it. I'm only here in New York with this opportunity once, I might as well do it. I spent more than I hoped to and ended up with a dressier salwar kameez than what I was looking for, but it's SO PRETTY. I still also have to have it tailored.



( And sari pictures + my sister's sari pictures below the cut. )

I was asked by someone at work today if I knew what I wanted to do long term, if I wanted to end up back in Florida.

My answer was yes. I've always figured that I wanted to go back home, but being up here has really proven to me that I belong in northeast Florida. Apart from the generic, almost silly things I miss, life is just different back home. The pace of life day in and day out is completely different. I can do the living here thing, but I don't belong.

I've gotten strange looks when I answer that I want to end up back home, I guess because most people from a small town just want to get out.

But for me... How do you leave a place your family has been for six and seven generations? How do you pull up roots that run 150 to 200 years deep? I don't think it's possible. Everyone in my close family that has left has come back.

It sounds cliched, but I think where I'm from is a deep part of me. I think it's seriously been engrained into who I am. I'm talking about going abroad, and I still think I may because the thought excites me... But I know I can't do it long term. I don't think it's humanly possible.

Sooooooo it's no secret that I'm currently head-over-heels in love with all things Indian. It's gone past the movies to include cricket and food and language and books (although honestly, I've always been fascinated with literature about India in the context of my literary studies).

Guess what? It extends to clothes too.

I've been absolutely dying to try out Indian clothes for some time, especially since I went out to the Little India area here in New York and walked past the stores that had their saris and lehengas and so on up in their windows.

Well, next weekend my sister is coming up to stay with me, and we've decided to bite the bullet and go into the shops.

I'm honestly PETRIFIED that they're going to look at us strange and not just when we buy them but when we wear them too. I can imagine Indians and Pakistanis and Bangledeshis looking at me wearing a sari or salwar kameez (I'll visually explain these terms in a minute) and thinking, "What IS this white girl doing?!" I already get stared at when I walk into the grocery stores and video stores. I appreciate Indian culture. A lot. I don't want to be judged as that weird white girl who thinks she can claim it as her own.

But I posed the question of a white girl wearing a sari or salwar kameez to a quite good friend (I told him tonight that he's my "bro" lol) I've recently made on Twitter who is an Indian man living in California, and he told me, "Not weird, except that just be careful about where (what kind of event) & with whom. No, not at all weird. Heck, I'd say it's hot. ;)"

SOOOOOOO... Hopefully it's all good. He hasn't completely calmed my fears, but we'll see! I'm in New York, where you can get away with wearing anything (literally ANYTHING) and it's now or never (or waiting until I actually GO to India) when buying a sari since this is where they're available and fairly cheap.

Anyway, explanation of various clothings and what I'm thinking about under the cut!

( Indian clothing picspam! )

So, I've been wanting to do a post for a while now and I keep stopping just short or running out of time.

So work/internship is good. I've moved from the U.S. news to World news desk, so changes. The people at World are a lot more focused on keeping me busy, which sometimes means just giving me busywork. And sometimes they give me too much right at the wrong time, so I won't get to leave for lunch or something like that and end up glued to my desk. And that's the other thing about work. I love the work, but being glued to a desk all day, every day is about to drive me insane.

I also miss a lot of small things from home. Tea and barbecue and Southern FOOD and my truck and Southern idioms and trees and even dirt--there's just concrete and asphalt and trash in New York. I miss dear old Dixie. :(

And of course I miss my family and friends.

Oh, I remember now what I really wanted to post about. My roommates.

I ended up in an apartment-style dorm with three girls from Berkley, all business majors who know one another. Now, they're fairly nice enough for the most part. But guess what, they're all also sorority girls who enjoy sleeping around and drinking obnoxiously. Oh, and they're all uber rich and SO SNOBBY sometimes.

My roommate actually had the nerve to complain the other day about how she should have planned differently and graduated in December and gone abroad for the next semester instead of studying abroad and then graduating -- because it would have saved her parents enough money that she could just ask for $10,000 to go abroad. Mind you, this is her second time studying abroad and that Berkley tuition she's complaining about will be $45,000.

YES. $45,000 for a year! Mine doesn't even cost $4,000 for a year! My parents would sooner DIE than pay $45,000 a year for my tuition, much less just hand me $10,000 to go abroad after school. If I go abroad after school, it'll be on my own money or because I've gotten a job abroad. (And on that front, I think I may apply for an editing job in Sydney!)

This particular roommate (my actual room roommate), though, is also kind of a bitch. She complains about people and makes fun of them all the time. And it gets SO annoying to me. Honestly, my three whiny younger brothers are less annoying people.

*sigh* And I think that is all for now. I'm feeling a little under the weather and will probably sleep soon.

So, really just a drive-by post... I'm in New York, internship started two weeks ago... It's a fascinating workplace, but they don't let me do a whole lot, so I'm there sometimes for like 10 hours a day, doing nothing for the first four or five and then here-and-there work until the last two. I've taken the time mostly to work on my Bollywood and journalism (new) blogs a little while at work...

I've explored a little bit in New York, but not a whole lot. I went out of Manhattan for the first time today, to Brooklyn. Some of the exploring is good, but I honestly don't much care for New York. It's really not that cool. It's dirty and run-down (the roads and sidewalks are terrible!) and everything is squished.

Mostly I'm working long days, brain-dead vegging afterward and trying not to think too much about this place and home. So... That's my life.

Maybe I'll update again sometime later. Have to sleep now... Going to Mass with a (Catholic, obviously) friend tomorrow out of curiosity.

I'm in Philly now for training for my summer internship. I was so sad to leave today. :( Cried in the airport and on the plane several times.

I have a quiz tomorrow on state capitals, states, land features and lakes of the U.S. I am currently procrastinating and not studying it.

La dee da dee da...

So, this is a totally random post, but I was sitting in class bored and thinking about something I read earlier and if I plan to travel abroad in the future.

So the term abroad for Americans is Yanks/Yankees, yes? So an American accent is a Yankee accent.

Don't know if those of you who aren't Americans know this, but to Americans, the term "Yankee" means something else. In the U.S., a Yankee is a Northerner/New Englander (northeast), dire opposite (often despicably so) of us redneck Southerners. Around here, the word "Yankee" is nearly always accompanied by the word damn, as in, "Them damn Yankees never know how to drive."

The antagonism and meaning of the word goes back to our "Civil War"/The War Between the States, when the Southerners fought the Northern "Yankees" for the independence of the Confederate States.

If anyone ever called me a Yankee, I would be horribly offended, and I have the exact opposite of a Yankee accent. I am a Johnny Reb, thank you very much. (Even though that's a mostly obsolete term... refers to the soldiers on the Southern side of the war.)

Mmm, yeah, so basically, long story short... Don't call me a Yankee. ;)

On the off note, I'm more or less done with classes for the summer. There would be a huge sigh of relief if I didn't still have an exam and a paper left and if my GPA wasn't going to suffer this semester. :(

Probably 11 hours of work. lol. That's always fun.

Disregarding work... probably writing. I've spent eight hours at a time writing before, and it nearly killed me.