april 2002 4.25.02 moving. i have done it lots before. what i am doing right now is very different from any of these past transient experiences. i am packing and moving and staying and storing all at the same time. while i fill boxes, i have to think about what's going to fit in my suitcase. while i empty dresser drawers, i realize half the stuff i am storing, i don't even want anyway. then i realize that those few items i selected to bring with me have grown into a mountain. certain things can be creatively hidden within my apartment which is comforting. are you confused yet? i leave for crete on sunday, but i leave my apartment tomorrow to spend the last few days in the states with my family and to go to my high school best friend's wedding. my dad is still in hospital, it's almost been a full week. he might get out by the weekend, which would be nice -- so that i wouldn't have to hug him goodbye in the hospital. i left him my lonely planet guide to crete and he's been reading it, which makes me feel good. at least he'll know a thing or two about where i'm going. speaking of which, i will be setting up another place that i can update you with my stellar adventures. stay tuned. thanks.... 4.22.02 lots of things have changed since i last wrote on here. i graduated from cooking school on friday night, which was bittersweet. nice to be with my friends, but a little sad to know that we won't be together so much anymore. the hardest part about the night was the fact that my parents were supposed to come, but couldn't because my dad ended up in the hospital. i feel weird writing so specifically about my personal life, but the truth is, it's a really big deal. my dad has been in the hospital for several days now and they really don't know what's wrong. he passed out and stopped breathing and thank god my mom was home because she resuscitated him. they are doing lots of tests now to see if what happened was a heart attack. there are lots of questions to be answered. i am also leaving the country on sunday for 3 months which leaves me feeling extremely conflicted. i don't want to turn my back on my family, but they really want me to go. their support means everything. i am hoping for the best with this whole situation. thus far, it has brought my family much closer together. i only hope that we really can take advantage of having a second chance. 4.17.02 that time is here again, you know the time. when it starts to get really hot, when you get your first taste of summer and break out your flip flops and put your screens in the windows. it's been months since you have felt this way, you're surprised yet you can't wait for more. for me, this time of year brings back so many memories from different years. bare feet peeking out of the sheets, fresh tulips, the tiny backyard with the big green chairs, school projects, new friends, old friends. there is one cd that always goes with this time of year for me, The Sea and Cake, their first album. it gets me every time. it takes me back to this year and to that, it causes me to reflect, smile, laugh. i am glad i got this taste of summer before i leave. 4.14.02 today was so fun! it was so sunny and warm like an early summer day. i walked around brooklyn all day with a friend and we even sat in prospect park for a while. tonight, me and my friends cooked a big spontaneous dinner. we made roasted corn chowder with a red/jalapeno pepper-sundried tomato soffrito, marinated fried tempeh strips, sautéed escarole, brown rice, and roasted fennel. delicioso if i do say so myself. i'm still full! guess what! i leave in 2 weeks... did i mention that 10 times already? 2 weeks from tonight i will be sitting on a plane. it's 11:09 pm right now... which means that i would have been on the plane for about 5 hours. which means i would probably be flying over london about now! hey christine!! now it's 11:11 -- make a wish! 4.14.02 last night i woke up from a dream where a bundle of balloons was slowly deflating in my hands. it was the perfect metaphor for how i felt. i also dreamed that i got arrested for stealing a friend's belongings from a diner. must have been what i ate last night. philisophical rant of the day: i have mentioned that i feel like i can't worry for everyone, and that a lot of people in my life have been really down lately. i might have also felt that they try to suck the energy away from me -- which isn't true at all, because that would mean that i wasn't really hanging on to my own energy. last night i hung out with a friend who was kind of sad and what ended up happening was that i started feeling really sad myself. it was like i reached in a grabbed a piece of their sadness and stirred it in with some of my own feelings that were laying dormant. i walked around alone with a heavy heart as the rain started to pour down, perfectly somehow. in a way, my dreams make crystal clear sense. i felt like a deflating balloon last night, and i ended up stealing something when all i was really trying to do was help out a friend. with that said, i am awoken by the sun and today is a brand new day. the rain has washed everything away. i have lots to do before i leave. 2 weeks from today! i am so excited. i only have one more day of school! my final is over! i did really well. i was pretty concerned, it can be complicated to have to cook so many things in such a short amount of time, but everything came together in the end. it always does. 4.11.02 dear friends: i am currently going through a massive chocolate Silk and cereal phase. no, i do not eat them together. for those of you not in the know, silk is a refrigerated soy beverage. since i can't find the chocolate almond milk i have so desperately been seeking, i have resigned myself to silk. in other news, yes, i am in indeed in cooking school and eating cereal for dinner every night. tonight my friend from school and i went to see a preview screening of a movie called The Guru. i don't know much about it except that it comes from the producers of Bridget Jones' Diary and Four Weddings and a Funeral (which means, okay by me!). unfortunately, we didn't actually get in to the movie based on predetermined demographic composition or something like that. we were given free passes to see any other movie in lieu of this disappointment. Van Wilder here we come! yes i saw the movie, but it was FREE so it's ok. it was actually pretty funny even though i hate tara reid (she looks sooooo skanky!). during the movie, it was really nagging me who van wilder resembles. i mean, he's a hot man and i kept looking at him thinking he reminded me of someone and bam! after the movie i realized that he looks like none other than my friend jeremy from philadelphia. hope your reading this j, so you can go drool all over this guy. 4.10.02 did i mention that we painted the living room this weekend? it looks really awesome. it's sort of like an aqua-blue-green-toothpaste kind of color that makes you feel as though you are in a swimming pool, but better. we got our inspiration from trading spaces a few weeks ago. come by and check it out! better hurry, i leave in *gasp* just over 2 weeks. i can't believe it. where did the time go? do i know what i am getting myself into? i am pretty excited actually, well, obviously. this is a good time to do something like this, because once school ends, it probably would have been hard to figure out what to do right away. it's been an interesting couple of months, that's for sure. to my benefit, i have this incredible new community of people to turn to. we have spent countless hours together, growing together, learning together, and in just a few days they will no longer be a part of my daily life. how sad. but i will soon have a new community of people in my daily life as well as vacationers who will come for 2 week stays. i expect to meet some very random people. thanks to everyone who has been stopping in lately. clearly, when i update it more people drop in more. i appreciate all of your hits and random emails. i think i really am going to miss this thing this summer! but look out for when i come back, there is going to be all sort of crazy shit going on. vagabond is going to blow up, especially since our london diary diva will be schlepping around india and yours truly will be flipping tempeh burgers in crete. we will have much to share with you. i hope that everyone is having a good week. send me some email! :) 4.7.02 maybe it's just my imagination, but i have been feeling really connected to people lately. i call someone and they tell me that they were just thinking of me. i think of someone and i run into them. i tell someone that i feel drawn to them and they feel the same way. it's kind of weird. i have also been reading a little bit about intuition. what is intuition really? is it something that we are afraid of? fear is an interesting concept. i was talking with a friend from school about yoga. she's been doing it much longer than me and i told her how i am not ready to do certain poses and she explained how fear gets in the way of actually making the attempt. it can be really controlling. i feel like much of my life has been about fear, about realizing it and crushing it. since september 11th, i have definitely dealt with new and different feelings of fear. but even those begin to fade eventually. back to the topic of intuition, are we afraid to trust ourselves? intuition can be an excellent guiding force if you are open to it. i used to wonder where it came from, if it was from the head, heart, or gut. i had a good friend in san francisco who would participate in this debate with me. we swore that we were going to make massive art installations to express our ideas. well that never happened, but it's still an interesting concept. why am i thinking about this? probably because i am reading more about it, but my experiences lately have really just been blowing my mind. i have been open to people's energies, feeling out who they are, sensing their relationship to themselves, to me, to the world. i have also been trying to understand why i am who i am, and how i got here. some people have told me that i have changed considerably since coming to new york city. it's not even about new york, it's about opening my mind and my world. if you have been following along, i think i need to work on keeping my heart open. in time.... 4.6.02 word on the street is that i do indeed have a subletter again. great news! i was starting to get wicked nervous. now i just have to remember to pay my taxes to new york state before the 15th and of course, get my life in order before i leave the states for 3 months. oy! so the dinner last night was totally amazing! it was our final project for school. we planned the and costed the entire menu. it was really delicious and we got tremendous feedback. it had been a while since i worked on a dinner and i forgot how intense they can be. we served about 80+ people. the meal had 4 courses, so once we were finished plating a really complicated dish, we had to hurry and clean up and move onto the next course. our menu consisted of: herbed crackers with garlic tahini dip; creamy asparagus soup with frizzled leeks; arugula, endive and frisse salad with roasted red and golden beets and blood oranges in a tarragon vinaigrette; chickpea crepes with roasted spring vegetables (carrots, haricot vert green beans, cremini and shitake mushrooms, zucchini, and baby artichokes) on a roasted red pepper sauce served with sautéed broccoli rabe; and for dessert a phyllo flower with lemon mousse, rose almond ice cream and strawberry coulis. so how do i know all of this? because i printed the menus myself! is your mouth watering yet?? i just watched the movie ghost world and i thought it was really awesome. it was so colorful. i also watched riding in cars with boys which i thought was pretty crappy. this has been a total movie week. i went to see kissing jessica stein this week also. which reminds me, i owe money for that ticket. i need to add it to my tab. my friends are so nice, we went out last night to celebrate our dinner and when they left they gave me cab fare. i have a sneaking suspicion that my vodka tonics were a little heavy on the vodka. just a hunch ;) note to self: drink less. wow, i sound like bridget jones. i just wanted to say that i am going to start writing more of what's really going on in my life on here. i leave a lot of stuff out. you may as well enjoy it now because i won't be updating it for several months once the month of may hits. here is a reminder, i am a 25 year old girl living in new york. deal with it! 4.5.02 dear friends and family, don't be offended by my last entry. granted, maybe it was a bit more abrasive or down than most of my entries, but i can't sugar coat everything all the time. i did get some interesting responses, some people who thought i was talking about them, someone who thought i was seriously depressed (i'm not!) and someone who totally GOT what i was trying to say. with that said, i am going to post her response right here! hey rozzie- just read your stellargirl entry. it made me think because something that I am really struggling with right now is how much i should keep my heart open- or how much I should allow myself to fall into cynicism and bitterness (which is fun and easy but dangerous for the soul). i feel like my whole life people have been telling me that I am a, too sensitive b, too idealistic c, just plain naive d, too young to understand the way things REALLY are. After the events of the last couple months i feel like yelling out really loudly so all those fucking people that have been telling me i was too innocent my whole life can hear: GUESSSS WHAT YOU FUCKERS- YOU GOT ME!!!!!! i am no longer the happy go lucky child that I was! Nope- you suffer a heartbreak and the damn wool is gone from your eyes and you see suffering and pain and sheer idiocracy all around you. problem is- i miss me. i miss the idealism. i miss the innocence. I think it was a wonderful, brilliant way to be? is there a middle ground? do you strive anyway in the face of- this is as good as it gets! or do you start drinking alot of scotch like dorothy Parker and write fabulously cutting stories and die alone? I DON"T KNOW- I don't. I do not know what the answer is to this. I reckon it is somewhere in between- like most things in life- fight to get some of that idealism back but keep it real at the same time? I don't know- I reckon just keep waking up every morning, smile at a couple sad bastards on the street so you feel like you have done your part in the good vibes department and have a scotch on the rocks by three... Loads of lovin' Quis come to think of it, maybe that wasn't what i meant. the point is, it means whatever the hell you want it to mean, whether it pisses you off, forces you to get off your butt and do something, or make you wonder how your dear old pal roz is.. i think what i really mean is that i can't worry for you. i got enough to worry about on my own, what with a summer of sandy greek beaches ahead of me. all i am saying, is live life, be joyful, believe that you are completely capable of happiness. now i must run to do my final dinner for school! it's going to be delicious! april 2004 march 2004 february 2004 january 2004 december 2003 november 2003 october 2003 september 2003 summer 2003 may 2003 april 2003 march 2003 february 2003 january 2003 december 2002 november 2002 october 2002 september 2002 august 2002 summer 2002 april 2002 feb / march 2002 january 2002 december 2001 november 2001 sept / oct 2001 july / aug 2001 june 2001 may 2001 april 2001 march 2001 february 2001 january 2001 december 2000 november 2000 october 2000 september 2000 summer 2000 copyright © 2000-2005 - www.stellargirl.com