Nope, these are just pictures from our day at the beach. The weather was so great, just enough of a breeze to lull you into thinking that it wasn’t hot and you weren’t getting burned to a crisp. Okay, well I’m not too burnt but I will definitely be sporting the lobster chic skin until my redness turns to tan (I hope). Anyway, enjoy the pictures of (e:Mike)…I know you are all jealous that I got to beach it with someone so hot!

I was working on a fundraiser for an organization that I routinely support and I decided to look them up online. I came upon this link which I’m posting. It’s a report by Elliot Spitzer about professional fundraising for 2001-2002 and it has lists and lists of statistics about the percentages of donations that actually go to charity. It’s pretty amazing and a site worth bookmarking. Enjoy…or be horrified.

I used to love the show Made on MTV. For those of you who have not seen it, it’s basically a reality show that takes kids (usually in high school) and gives them a chance to get made into anything they want. They get a coach who is an expert in whatever they want and in three months they work toward a major goal. In the end there is a final test or event that proves how well they have been “made”. In the first season there were some really interested kids with fantastic goals. One football player wanted to become an opera singer, a prissy girl wanted to be a BMX biker, etc. I loved trying to think of things I would be Made into if I could be on the show (of course I would never ever want to be on tv). It was such a departure from all the other reality tv shows that exploited people and showed how greedy and cunning humans are. This show highlighted the capacity for people to have dreams; it showed how hard work can help you achieve something more important than money or peer acceptance. But now Made is so disappointing. The new kids seem to basically want to be made popular. Each week it’s like one wants to be the prom queen, another wants to be class president, etc. I used to love Made because I felt like it showed people (especially vulnerable high school kids) that they could do something completely unexpected and really be good at it. Now it just feeds into all the stereotypes about what kids should want. I used to give the kids so much credit because they were reaching outside of the norms of their peer group, but now they are just getting professional help to run a student council campaign. Sure, some kids still have neat goals, but it’s become much more diluted. I miss the old days of Made, when kids were really putting themselves out there and achieving more than they ever thought they

Sometimes I think I might be a little too afraid of ending up alone. I’ve already started to worry about not getting married or having children and I’m only 22. Recently I realized that it’s probably because of my mother’s circle of friends. My mom has 6 best friends that she stays in close contact with from college. Out of those friends, three have never been married or had any children and three have been married once and had two children. Basically that’s like a 50/50 shot at either having a family or being totally alone. My mom is the one who straddles both groups. She did marry and have one (perfect) child but then got divorced almost immediately, thus living most of her adult life without a husband. Although I can see from all of my mom’s friends that being married and having kids does not ensure happiness (at least one married woman is very discontent with her marriage and kids), I know the women who didn’t have kids now wish they had. Furthermore, they have told me that they wish they weren’t as picky with the men that they dated because now they realize that having someone can be nice even if they aren’t perfect. Now, I’m not saying all my standards are dropped because I am just terrified of not getting married (not yet anyway) but I feel like looking at them can be a cautionary tale. I know some women can be perfectly happy if they are childless and unmarried, but I know that I want to at least have children. I was born wanting to be a mom. To make matters worse, I know I could never be as happy as these single women because they are all extremely close with their siblings and their sibling’s children. I will never have any nieces or nephews if I don’t get married since I am an only child, so I can’t really rely n family to keep me company. Although I’m sure that my mom’s friends aren’t the best sample of how women end up, I think that growing up see so many single, childless women has made me scared. Thank goodness there are so many more ways to have a child without a man now. I wonder if my mom’s friends would have had children if they could have used sperm banks? Then again I think most of them kept thinking they were going to get married and the time just drifted away. Anyway, I need to shake off this fear for a least a couple more years since there is no way I am getting married any time soon.

So moving in to my apartment was about as chaotic as I imagined it would be. My mom drove a truck through the streets of Boston and Cambridge (and various other MA locations because we got lost) and at one point ended up stuck perpendicular to the sidewalk while trying to do a three point turn. But in the end it was all ok because the apartment looked great to me. I have a very nice sized bedroom with my own teeny bathroom and my roommate has a smallish room but she gets the big bathroom. We also have AC, an elevator (we're on the 7th floor!), a fireplace, and a little patio. It's so sad that I think the apartment is such a steal since our total rent for this little place in Cambridge could prob buy a whole house in Buffalo. Oh well, it's not forever.

Leaving Boston I thought the whole trip had gone well and I was relieved. I tend to get panic attacks and therefore did not even visit Harvard for fear that once I got to Buffalo I would be too afraid to go back for school in Sept. Anyway, on the car ride home the shit hit the fan. My roommate, Lauren, is a girl I don't know too well. She's the girlfriend of one of my best guy friends at school and I was relieved to have someone to live with. However, now I'm not totally sure that she's sane. She is abnormally attached to her parents, who definitely have some screws loose. Anyway, here's what happened:

Although the people who are subletting the apt. to us offered to get a cleaning person to come in after they moved, Lauren's mother insisted that her's come and clean the apartment for 6 hours before we moved in. She badgered the people until they left a check to cover her cleaning women (I thought the whole thing was ridiculous...I can clean, and I don't need to get paid!). Anyway, when Lauren's mom Nancy arrived at the apartment with the cleaning lady she insisted it was far too dirty for us to live in (mind you, I had already moved my stuff in the day before). She said the pipes smelled and the bathroom walls were crumbling. So here I am sitting in the car driving home from Boston and I receive a call from my new roommate saying that we can't live in the apt I just moved into. I was completely dumbfounded...she and her mother were the ones who picked it out! My mother and I were just there the day before and it was fine...nothing wrong with it at all. So I told her she needed to wait until she got there and that her mother was exaggerating. Meanwhile my mom and flipping out and calling her mother names while I'm on the phone. Lauren proceeded to call me 4 more times before I got to Buffalo. Finally I thought it was all settled (after I explained to her that she had signed a lease and could not rightfully break it for no good reason) and she seemed okay with everything. Then the next morning I wake up to a very nasty email from the landlords calling Lauren's mom rude and inconsiderate. Apparently her mom had called them directly and told them they were dirty and had left the apartment unlivable! I immediately called Lauren and told her I didn't want her mom to speak to the landlords for us and I emailed them and told them I thought apt was fine and apologized for the things that were said to them. Unfortunately Lauren's dad is as crazy as her mom and when he heard about the email they sent he shot back at them with a nasty email of his own. He said things ranging from "your cleanliness is different from my wife's, and possibly all other humans" to "the reason you found my wife's comments insulting was because of your english aptitude, which is clearly very low" (they are Asian). Feel so embarrassed and annoyed to be caught in the middle of this. I feel terrible about what is happening but clearly nothing I do is stopping anything. I can only write so many emails apologizing for things I did not say. Hopefully when this is all done with they will be cordial to us. I don't know that I would be if I were treated like that. Oh well, I guess this is what i get for living with someone I don't really know. Yet, I think she's a nice girl...her parents are just crazy.