emlocke

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  • Don’t Need a Kaboodle In New Zealand

    I got my Student Visa in the mail today! A big sticker with a shiny foil seal on a brand new page of my passport, next to the immigration stamps from Chile. I can’t believe that, one year ago, I was planning for my Outward Bound trip. Back then I chuckled because two pairs of long underwear, a few layers of fleece and my headlamp filled up very little of my rolling duffle bag. This week I’ve started interjecting phrases like, “Wow, I’m never going to fit everything” into every day conversation and searching for extra expandable panels in my suitcases.

    I’m allowed to check two pieces of luggage and carry-on one bag and one ‘personal item.’ Will they mind if my personal item is a regulation-Santa-Claus-sized pack over my shoulder or a camp trunk? Whatever happened to the “You Bring It You Carry It” Girl Scout camping trip mantra? “You can bring as many stuffed animals and Kaboodle Kits full of glitter lip gloss as you think you require, but if you can’t drag your loot to the A-frame on your own, I don’t want to hear a word of it!” If I’m ambitious enough for an extra rolling suitcase I think I deserve the right to try!

    I’m prepared to go without a Kaboodle’s worth of lip gloss, or any glittered cosmetic, for that matter. But what stuffed friend will I take with me?

    Quote of the day: ” All I need’s a fast machine, I’m gonna make it all right” – Sheryl Crow

  • Secretly Uggin’

    Emily: Can I tell you a secret?
    Chels: You secretly want these?
    Emily: How did you know?

    The drooling and the ogling must have given it away. We were standing in Closeout Chambers trying to predict what awkward run-in with a former RHS classmate could possible come next when I picked up a pair of soft, suede, sherpa boots. That’s right, against my better trend-moral-judgement, and in public, I was making eyes at a pair of Uggs.

    Uggs are the color of buttery raw cookie dough and the texture of…well, no synonym could do justice to the equally buttery suede. And for the love of my space heater, they are toasty warm. And if there’s any region where girls need warm shoes, it’s New England. On the other hand, New England is also the number one region where ice melt and road grit kicked up by snow plow caravans heed not the tender surface of plush sheepskin. Perhaps Uggs are both the hot trend and the footwear fashion paradox of Winter ’04-’05.

    I hear that the trend is over anyway. I don’t think anyone saw me butterfly kiss the boots on the way out.

    Quote of the day: “There’s another chance, a someday soon” – Amanda Marshall

  • Talk About Breakfast in Bed

    I am humiliated that I have stooped to this level to post something, but I will go through with it because the results of this quiz are so very, very true.

    Your Sexual Lucky Charm: Pink Hearts

    You’re a true romantic who prefers sweet whispers to whips and chains
    Foreplay for you boils down to “I love you” and a bottle of red
    You won’t give it up for anyone, just the prince or princess of your dreams.
    What’s Your Sexual Lucky Charm?

  • Merry Christmas from the Boy in My Life

    It was a very New Zealand Christmas in my house. I’m talking outlet converter (with my laptop and my curling iron in mind), Lonely Planet guide to the islands, travel journal, and new hikers are in my future, because EMS‘s AdvenTURE calendar is offering 15% of “anything that goes on your feet” on Tuesday.

    And, if anyone is still looking for a gift for me, all I really want is one more person to complete an offer toward my free iPod. I’ll can purchase my own ink, or some for you, through the My Inks offer if you’ll just order it! And you thought this was going to be a post pure in Christmas spirit…

    Quote of the day: “Fall on your knees, hear the angel voices. O night divine! O night, O night divine!”

  • Verde o Blanca, Feliz Navidad

    Mom and Dad are at church, my brother is having dinner at his girlfriend’s house, and Maggie and I are at home watching John Goodman discuss Monsters Inc. on Inside the Actor’s Studio and eating frozen pizza in bed. Well, I’m eating the frozen pizza and she is snoring in my face. And the pizza isn’t frozen right now, I put it in the oven for fifteen minutes at 400 degrees, but I’m sure you discerned that. I’m sure you’ve also discerned that, due to 40 degree weather, all the snow melted, and because I am not at my boyfriend’s house, I am on the grumpy end of the Christmas-spirit spectrum.

    On the good tidings end, a) I got a Christmas card from the Cass’ today! They sent one of those family photo slides of Brian, Danielle and Larry, all looking festively adorable. b) I also got the self-addressed stamped envelope containing my final Children’s Lit paper, Reading for Healing: September 11th Literature for Children. I got an A! c) Comcast Cable in Ridgefield gets ABC Family now, so I can watch Gilmore Girls reruns every day over break. d) I saw Jess at J.Crew and she complimented my eye make-up. e) Maggie may be snoring, but she is keeping me warm.

    It was due to these small gifts that I mustered a merry away message: feliz navidad! To which one of my very favorite non-Christmas celebrators responded:

    rachcl85: con suelo ano y felicidad!!!! i wanna wish you a merry christmas, i wanna wish you a a merry christmas, i wanna wish you a merry christmas from the bottom of my heart!

    Even without the snow, that inspired me to spin Maybe This Christmas, with special emphasis on ‘Rudolph’ by Jack Johnson.

    Quote of the day: “Now’s the time that we need to share, so find yourself, we’re on our way back home, going home” – Supertramp

  • Fall Back Into the Gap

    Three years and three hundred and sixty four days after my first first day at the Ridgefield Gap, I was back in action this afternoon. At least I didn’t have to start on Christmas Eve, like my very first day in retail in high school. And nobody turned an armful of clothes inside out and ordered me into the fitting room to clean them up (is there a Gap Inc. hazing policy?). I got a few dirty looks when the manager asked me to change displays, a coveted honor, but almost everyone was friendly and one co-worker even hugged me on my way out. I am trying to get a sense of all the social dynamics, the grudges, the cliques, etc. I am a veteran of what was totally in the hottest clique. We aspired to Gap ads.

    My craziest customer was a guy who came in looking for the Gap Blue scent to go along with his “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” theme, which sounded so creative that I hated telling him that Blue has been retired since I worked at Gap the last time. He ended up settling on a crayola blue sweater, but not before freaking out because he couldn’t put his finger on the vocalists on a particular Muzak track (Sheryl Crow and “Rick…Nick…” “Mick?” “Mick Jagger! Yes! That would have driven me crazy!”).

    Frantic shoppers came in all afternoon looking for the perfect outfit for Christmas Eve Eve dinners and parties. I love feeling like I’m getting the whole town ready for their big social events. You dress them up, calm their nerves, tell them how great they look and send them out on the town like a proud mom on prom night. One woman asked me flat out to rate her butt in a pair of jeans. Another fretted over velvet pants and then told me that her ex was going to be at the party and she wanted to look, “you know, incredibly hot.” She bought the velvet pants.

    Quote of the day: “Oh, princess, you make the party, with your hands in your pockets and your innocent eyes, and all those things running around in your head” – Matt Nathanson

  • First Snow


    Out my window
    Posted by Hello

    Yesterday at lunch, Joe told me to put on some real shoes, or my “piggies” would fall off. I said, “it’s not like it’s snowing yet, it’s still flip-flop season.” Last night I had to slip home from the libary through an inch of ice and powder. No traction!

    Quote of the day: “She couldn’t help thinkin’that there was a little more to life somewhere else. After all it was a great big world, with lots of places to run to” – Petty and the Heartbreakers

  • The Lost Weekend

    Usually, when the finals season approaches, I accept the fact that the weekend before exams start will be worthless. I will spend three days in academic seclusion, studying, reading, anotating, outlining, writing, editing, counting words and pages, and I will accept that if that’s what I’ve got to do to get all the work over with, that’s what I’m going to do. I call it The Lost Weekend. Well, tomorrow is the last day of classes, exams start on Friday, I have three papers to write before I can go home, and I definitely lost something this weekend: my ambition, my mind, my will to live.

    On Friday, I looked for books for my children’s lit paper and realized that if I wanted to write about September 11th books, I would have to drive all over Western Mass if I wanted to write about September 11th because the books are so new that they are very sparsely scattered. But since public libraries do not hold college student hours, the search was put on hold for the M&C’s jam and to watch 13 Going on 30 with Holly, Lindsay and the triplets.

    On Saturday, I got up at 9:30 (that’s right) for a library road trip spanning Monson, Amherst and Northampton. I told Holly the night before to throw something at me if I didn’t hear my alarm and force me to get up, so I heard my alarm and sat up just as she was winding up to heave her pillow in my direction. So she says, “Oh! Sorry!” just as she releases it and I see it coming and think, “Here it comes,” in my head right before it hits me in the face. By the time I got back to school with all my books, it was time to take a nap and a shower and get ready to all go see Ocean’s Twelve with Jeremy. Why can’t I write a paper about George Clooney? With visual aids? After, we stopped at 391 where a really cute guy kept looking at me and approaching as if to sit down and talk to me. But he must have been running a fake out operative because at the last possible second he winked at me and left! (Jeremy later revealed that he had been giving him the “not a chance” look to scare him off. Thanks.)

    By Sunday, I was pathetic; a shadow of my former self represented only by the form of my body under the blankets. The girls got up at 10 to go have breakfast, and when Holly got back she put on her pajamas and got back in bed, which only influenced me to stay where I was while we tried to brainstorm new procrastination activities. At 2, Jeremy came over to fix my computer (pop ups…they’re popping up…) and Holly and I really were about to start our papers when we realized that we hadn’t watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets yet, so obviously we had to get back in bed and do that. Basically, this weekend was all about almost doing work and succumbing to acute laziness instead. Now I have a stack of children’s books on my desk, three more classes today and tomorrow, and I’m looking ahead to The Lost Reading Days.

    Quote of the day: “Belief makes things real, makes things feel, feel alright. Belief makes things true, things like you, you and I” – Gavin DeGraw

  • Police Report

    Holly and I have penned false public safety log entries every time we’ve been in grave danger this week. And better believe it, one of these strange police reports is also true.

    November 29th – 2:33 PM
    Student found dead in Mead Hall, trapped while trying to break in through a propped window, which collapsed. Autopsy revealed that OneCard was not in her posession.

    December 1st – 11:52 PM
    Officers received a report that a car drove over the Skinner Green and nearly struck a student. Officers have identified the owner of the vehicle. Case referred to the Dean’s Office.

    December 6th – 4:59 PM
    Student hit by car while crossing the street in an attempt to hand her paper in before the deadline. She leapt in front of a moving car when she realized that she had only one minute left. She lost her life and one letter grade. It was noted that her paper was not stapled in the upper left hand corner.

    Quote of the day: “Now I’m here…I’ll drink to the madness that makes me this way.” – Kasey Chambers

  • Klutz-Girl to the Rescue

    I passed my First Responder exam! I also leaned my elbow down to far over on a flip-top desk, tipping it up and smacking myself in the face, but I am now certified to perform CPR on adults, children and infants and administer oxygen!

    Holly is looking at another all-nighter on the floor with her laptop and Chaucer notes. I am in bed, but I don’t think I can sleep with research and writing and finals looming in my conscience. And pancakes at hot breakfast. Solidarity!

    Quote of the day: “Nothing to do, nowhere to go, I wanna be sedated” – The Ramones