Finding happiness as a kid who amounted to not very much

Being happy, I'm convinced, is reliant on having little to no expectations. We all love pleasant surprises. Buying something and realizing it's on secret sale, getting through all the intersections on green lights and to where you were headed 5 minutes earlier, free events with free food. The best part about life isn't having your expectations fulfilled nicely according to plan. It's to not have any expectations and have every goddamn little thing go miles above and beyond anything you could have hoped to happen. Even if all my hopes and dreams come true, it'd only be things going according to plan. You know. No fun.

Who wants to live a life where all you could ever hope for is all you ever get?

Grow up and blow away

Sometimes when I look back on my life I feel like I don't grow up the way people are supposed to. I feel like I spend an extraordinary amount of time staying exactly the same, and then all at once, all of the life lessons come spilling out on me and it's overwhelming and I hate it and I'm completely ill-prepared to deal with any of it. Something like that is happening now, and that combined with my impending graduation has turned me into some kind of whiney, weepy pile of mush. I'm incapable of having any fun because I spend all of my time worrying and when I'm not worrying I'm just flat out sad. I've spent 17 years perfecting the art of being a good student and all of a sudden I have to deal with things like "relationships" and "morals" and "fiscal responsibility" and I'm realizing that I never had to do any of that before while I was safe inside the world of academics. My job since I was 6 was to pretend to be smarter than I really am, take tests and write papers that use words like "therefore" and "consequently". I'm a college graduate with the social skills of a 13 year old. I'm selfish and heartless and impulsive, and I'm ashamed because I thought I'd be so much better than this by now.

Curry (in a Hurry)

Last week I found a tub of mussaman curry paste in my freezer and decided I'd try and make my favorite dish, called mussaman curry.

I learned two things:

1. Cooking curry is hard.
2. Sometimes your food boils out of the pot and splashes everywhere.
   

Regardless, my non-asian friends really liked it, but they haven't had the curry I've had (AKA the best)

6 Pack

Every year, my new years resolution is to get a 6-pack. Yesterday, my friends and I hiked Camelback Mountain and I was reminded why I never had one to begin with. Hiking is hard!

Despite how happy I look, I am actually very, very angry at being dragged all the way up a mountain

According to a google search, it's a 3.5 mile hike, which is hard enough for me without all of climbing, jumping, and "booty scooting" I had to do just to keep up. And by keep up, I mean, catch up after everyone else was already way ahead and enjoying the view waiting for me to get there. In hindsight it was really fun, but about halfway up the mountain I was about ready to kill someone. The problem with that was, they were all too far ahead for me to reach. Once the soreness wears off (surprisingly my legs are doing OK; it's my back and shoulders that are dead!) and the emotional scarring fades, I want to go try it again. I probably won't bring friends though, so I can go as slow as I want and no one can judge :)

Valentine's day, It's kind of gay.

I love when buying something with merchandise credit and not going over the limit.

I love when throwing some randie foods together and it ends up tasting delicious.

I love when I make my friends dress up for a made up holiday and they go along with it.

I love making bows to wrap presents with.

I love cutting my own hair and having it come out shitty just so I can fix it and make it look ok.

I love singing along to a song but getting the words wrong, then deciding I like my version better.

I love making eye contact with someone and smiling because the professor had a "that's what she said" moment and no one else noticed.

I love my apartment when it's clean.

I love letting it get messy just so I can clean it up for the grand effect.

I love sleeping in clean sheets when they smell like dryer sheets.

I love the feeling after you puke and your stomach stops hurting.

I love when you go back for thirds and everyone else stopped at seconds.

I love secretly wearing pants without washing them because they're not visibly dirty yet. Sometimes for weeks at a time.

I love going camping and wearing the same shirt for the whole time.

I love coupons!

I love the color gray.

I love that no one else does.

I love GLEE. I love that I cried during an episode in the middle of studio instead of doing my work and everybody noticed.

I love when you stop being sick and the color comes back to your face and you can taste things again.

I love being single on valentine's day, because a year ago I was in a relationship and I didn't love anything.

Hair: The Miraculous Journey

It's been about two months since I started experimenting with blonde hair, and it's been frightening and fun and a lot of time invested so far. It all started with boredom, mostly, after final reviews and finals but before I left before winter break. I had always wanted to see if it was possible to get some jet black hair up to blonde, so I gave it a shot while I'm still in school and allowed to be irresponsible like that.

It sucked at first, when my hair went from black to a really ugly coppery orange, and then went up to highlighter yellow and stayed that way for what felt like forever. Then, in between trying to nudge my hair toward a lighter shade, my roots came in and it was another battle trying to get those to match what color my hair already was. But then I think it was 4 layers of bleach later, I ended up having to cut off a lot of hair and deep conditioning like a mad man, but it's pretty light now, and I think I'm going to stop now before I get a "chemical haircut" and it all falls out.

TIMELINE

My natural hair is like outer space minus the stars. BLACK.

Dyed once, it's still practically black.

Dyed twice, it's kind of almost brown.

Bleached once: ORANGE

Bleached Twice: Copperfest 2010

Bleached 3 times: Highlighter Head

Then I toned it and it still looked kind of brassy and you can't even see it that well from this picture

AND TODAY! It was super fluffy when I first dyed it, but two weeks worth of deep conditioning and protein have done it some good :)

So all in all, I still can't decide if it was all worth it. It's just hair and it'll grow out. Meh.

Frank Gehry

Frank Gehry scarf
Last seen: Some christmas many years ago

Look at how warm it is for winter!

My parents gave me this scarf a few years ago, when I either just started architecture or had just set my mind on architecture. I'm not gonna lie, I didn't know/care who Gehry was at this point and it seemed kind of a lame thing to get at christmas. It's really funny to me, to see how much I've changed since starting college. Never in a million years did I expect to have this architecture thing take over my life, that I'd make & lose friends based on how much people enjoy/can tolerate it, and that I'd actually want to drive across America to see "just a house".