Vermont Speaks

Stealing from Shannon's blog ideas here is a look at a few notable signs we saw in Montpelier, VT.


And my personal favorite....

Apparently even Vermonter's dogs are independent.

Onward and Upward

Vermont

This weekend we went to Vermont to visit Ryan's cousin and her husband, Amy and Pete. Pete's mom and dad were there for a little while and his brother Paul stayed with us the whole weekend. Amy is a "homesteader woman" so the most of the bread we ate and all of the jams and jellies were homemade. The rest of the food was from their co-op. Pete works for Magic Hat brewery so all kinds of beer were readily available. They also had wine that his father had made and grapa that a friend of theirs had made.

We had a weekend of amazing food, lots of talks and cold temperatures. Their house is heated by a stove that burns about one bag of wood pellets a day. The bedrooms actually have holes cut in the floor so that the heat will come up to the second floor. On the cold nights that made it bearable but not particularly toasty. They live in Montpelier, VT which is a very small artsy town. You would never think of it as the capital. Burlington and Stowe are pretty nearby and they are both much bigger than Montpelier.

We had some snow on our last night in VT. The five of us walked down to the Mexican food restaurant for $2.50 margaritas which were actually not bad. The city looked beautiful all covered in powdery whiteness.

All in all not a bad way to spend a weekend. When we got back to NYC it actually felt warm! Also on the way back we saw the actor that plays Christopher on Gilmore Girls so that was super exciting! (at least for me) Above I have posted some pictures.

Onward and Upward.

New York University

Today we went to New York University area to get a book from the library. After riding the subway down to West 4th Street, we wandered around the area looking at the different kinds of stores and signs. That area of NYC is very beautiful and a little funky. It's been pretty cold here so all of the students and tourists were very bundled up. Even people's dogs were wearing down jackets.

Yesterday I ran into a friend of mine from Texas on 34th street. I was shopping for hats and walking down the street looking at everyone's hats. She was wearing a really cute pink one with ears. I noticed the hat and then noticed that I knew the girl underneath. She just got back from Africa and has a job as an elf at Macy's for the Christmas Season. She has been reading David Sedaris' Santaland book as pre-job prep. I'm very excited to go visit her at Santaland.

Onward and Upward.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

Jobs.

Sometimes I have one.

Sometimes I want one.

Right now I'm in the second category.

I arrived in NYC and was very worried I would not find work. Four days later I had a job with NYMF which led to a job with Lark Playwrighting and with Racoco Dance. Then I interviewed and received jobs with Ardea Arts and with NYTE. Then Sunday came and I was suddenly unemployed again.

I have applications out. I've applied to Columbia to be an SM, and I had an interview with Cirque on Tuesday. I have an interview on Friday with TheatreworksUSA as an SM. I also can call my temp agency or get fingerprinted by the NYDOE for subbing work or call the temp agency and start temping. I also have an entire word document of jobs I've found in the past week and want to apply for.

So hope is not lost.

Job searching is exhausting.

Maybe I just need some chocolate.

onward and upward, i hope.

Politics in NYC

Election Night. A night in which part of the US population is thrilled and hopeful, part of the US population is depressed and angry and part of the US population is not even paying attention.

In NYC it looked like only one part of the population is living here.

This was the most energetic election night I remember in a long time. I remember the Bush election when I went to sleep before the results were all back just because I was hoping for a miracle. I remember the last election when I knew beforehand that it was a lost cause and the group of us spent the evening flipping back and forth between channels on the TV and drinking heavily. Both elections were spent either in my own apartment or the apartment of a close friend with a private group of individuals.

This year we went another way. We went out to dinner and then to Times Square.

Times Square was amazing. There were people all over the street and covering the sidewalks. All of the huge screens were broadcasting election coverage and CNN was handing out free coffee and hot chocolate and popcorn. Obama shirts and stickers and banners were everywhere. I heard a ton of different languages, tourists were everywhere. It is impossible to describe.

I know I will get in trouble for the following comment but; I don't believe that Obama is the savior of the USA. I'm actually afraid that because it is unrealistic to believe that he can fix the problems we are currently facing, he will be remembered as a failure instead of the leader I think he could be. I think that there are some big problems. I feel that perhaps the current leader didn't always choose the correct path in his decisions. However, I don't trust that all of the issues can be solved by one administration, or frankly any administration.

However the love and excitement permeating the crowd on Election Night was exciting and refreshing.

Up by our apartment the party went on outside until 3:30am. The kids from the university came down the hill to Harlem and the kids from Harlem came up the street. People were hanging out of cabs screaming, people who have never met before acted like fast friends, posters and buttons and stickers were everywhere. The excitement was palpable.

No matter what the outcome.

Onward and Upward

Ice Skating at Bryant Park

One day Ryan and I went down to the Public Library (the one with the lions) to check out a book he needed for a class. While we were there, we wandered around the Grand Central area and stumbled upon a really cheap DVD resale store, some awesome street dancers, and an ice skating rink right in the middle of Bryant Park.

If you watch Project Runway then you know that this is where Fashion Week is held. If you watched the Election on national TV this is where NBC did their broadcasting from and where the ice skaters ran out and colored in the states after the votes were in.

This is also where, before Halloween was even over, the city of New York set up a free ice skating rink paid for by Citibank.

We haven't gone yet but we watched a few people skate.

Onward and Upward.

Is Ivy League Really Better?

I am proud of where I attended college. When I applied to Trinity University you had to have extra-curricular's, you had to have good grades and you had to have an SAT score of about 1270. I thought that meant you were pretty smart. Having attending a private high school in Wilmington, DE most of my classmates went on to Brown, Smith or Bucknell and I figured that since I was one of the smarter kids at my school, my choosing to go to Trinity meant that it was just as good as any of the East Coast names.

After college I traveled to Australia to visit my High School best friend. All of her roommates attended big name East Coast schools, she herself was enrolled at Smith. The entire time I was there they made me feel as if I had gone to a lower class school just because it didn't have a big name and hundreds of years of history. They insinuated that my choice of college meant that I wasn't as smart as they were and that I wouldn't have as many opportunities as they would have. The trip was fun but the visiting side was disaster- I left feeling like less of a person- all because of the so- called caliber of my school.

I later went on to get a Masters degree from Trinity and although my old best friend went to law school at Syracuse, I know enough TU students who have gone on to graduate programs at same level or higher level schools to realize that perhaps your undergrad is more what you make it than the public opinion makes of it.

However this feeling of levels of education still persists. Ryan is attending Columbia University for his Masters degree. Does that mean he is smarter than me or just that he chose a different kind of program? Since it is an Ivy League school does that mean that the student body as a whole is smarter or better than the student body at Trinity or just different, or just from a different location? I would assume that the population of both schools would be heavily swayed toward their respective general geographic location. I wander through campus listening to conversations and wonder if I should be feeling inferior to the students I am passing or if we just both found schools that fit ourselves, our financial situation and our emotional situation at the time of application.

Then I stumble across comments like this one written in the elevator of our graduate level housing building.

And I feel brilliant.

Seriously? You are getting a Masters Degree or Phd from Columbia and you misspelled a word on a fourth grade spelling test?

Nice. You teacher should beladedly give you an F on that one.

Onward and Upward.