i'm for real this time, i swear.

remember that last post when i said i'd update this regularly again?

oops.

i'm not sure if anyone still checks this, considering i pretty much abandoned it, leaving it without any updates for a couple months. so, if you are reading this, spread the news-- i'm back baby!

this semester has been nuts. i'm taking 17 credit hours, working as a TA, doing ifc, and becoming involved in numerous side projects that come my way. oh and i'm happy to say i'm becoming a part of signature entertainment (more to come on that in the future)!

as for right now, i'm on thanksgiving break, relishing in the fact that i can sleep as much as i possibly can. i have a decent amount of work to get done, but honestly, the biggest dilemma i'm facing is finding a dress for gretchen's wedding.

i think the last time i wore any kind of formal / semi-formal dress was sorority / fraternity formals during my freshman year at gcc. so, i need to buy a dress.

(one thing you should note: i love clothes, fashion, but i hate shopping. well, it is fun for maybe 15 minutes then i get bored and cranky. i also am super cheap, which doesn't help the situation).

shopping for a dress shouldn't be too hard, right? i mean, i'm not the bride, so it doesn't really matter what i wear, so long as it is appropriate and i feel at least a little comfortable in it. however, i'm finding that it's not as easy as you think.

although i am 22 years old, i still shop primarily in the junior's department, so naturally, i started there. here's an example of the typical dress (yes, it is a dress, not a shirt) i find:

Okay, not so bad if you are looking to bump and grind the night away at your high school homecoming... but not quite what I had pictured for my friend's big, beautiful wedding she is planning.

So, after seeing rack after rack of this type of dress, I thought to myself, "Maybe I'm just too old for the junior's department." After all, I am 22 and their target audience is probably 15.

So, I ventured off to the women's department to see if I'd have better luck.

Well, I learned that apparently, if you are old enough to be shopping in the women's department, you should just settle with covering your body in dresses that closely resemble burlap sacks. Exhibit A:

After unsuccessfully bouncing back and forth between the junior and women's department at a few stores, I decided a new tactic: try cooler stores.

So, I started off with Forever 21. Not the classiest, I know, but it is cheap and I have no money. Normally, I find Forever 21's oversized jewelry and glitzy clothes kind of endearing (let's face it, tacky jewelry is kind of my thing).

But seriously, going to a wedding in something like this? Really?

So, I decided to give in and try somewhere a little more expensive. I wasn't quite ready to go to BCBG or Anthropologie, but I figured I might be able to find something reasonable to Urban Outfitters. 

They've got some cute dresses there. Like this one. It is conservative without being a burlap sack, young without being tween-y. Besides me still being unsure if there's a unspoken rule against wearing a black dress at weddings (I think it's okay in the winter??? I don't get these things.), I was sold on it.

That is, until I saw the price tag. 

$264

...where's the burlap sack?

an update finally..

i really want to start writing in here more often again. i feel like as soon as i got back to taylor, i got so overwhelmed that i've slacked in keeping in touch. 

being back here has been tough for sure, but not as bad as i thought.  i have a couple amazing friends here that have really made it worth coming back. there have been disappointments and frustrations, but when you have a couple amazing people to lean on, it makes it all seem pretty tolerable.

i have also been submerging myself in music, just trying to stay involved however possible.

listen to "soil, soil" by tegan and sara.

what does a vegan eat when they can't eat fruits or vegetables?

so, having my wisdom teeth removed has made being a vegan more challenging than ever. with stitches and huge holes in my mouth, i can't have any fresh fruits or veggies, anything with seeds, or any nuts. aka, all the foods i usually eat.

so this is what my diet has consisted of the past 5 days:

- v8

- apple sauce

- oatmeal

- soy milk

- soy protein shake

- sorbet

- soy ice "cream"

- mushed potatoes (no not mashed potatoes... they have milk, these were simply mushed)

+ a failed attempt at baby food. i don't want to talk about it.

like a rolling stone

it seems harder and harder to get my feet planted anywhere

anthony kiedis just has so much love for us!

this weekend was the new american music festival... hands down the best concert i've ever been too and possibly one of the best moments of my life. at the very least, one of the most interesting.

friday started off with the tiny masters of the universe, who i actually skipped to get my  free tee shirt / water bottle and check out the set up of rest of the festival. from what i hear, i didn't miss much. next up was NASA, who I had never heard of but really impressed me. they kind of reminded me of a toned-down version of girl talk, and did a great job of getting the audience pumped. their mixing was accompanied by "martians" in bathing suits and break dancing "astronauts."

the black keys, in my opinion, really stole the show on friday night. their set was ridiculously high energy and i think dan auerbach started channeling hendrix on some of the songs. the roots put on a great performance as well, but seemed slightly anticlimactic after the black keys. 

saturday started with the duke spirit, whose lead singer liela moss reminds me of a blonde, slightly less psychotic version of karen o. they played for a relatively small crowd since it was only like 3 in the afternoon and they were the first band. still, it was a pretty BA performance. during black mountain (the next band), lily and i grabbed dinner and water, since we made a pact to get as close as possible to the stage for the rest of the bands and knew that meant no chance for a water / food break. 

making our way towards the stage for gnarls barkley we ran into costanza. i forgot how much i miss that kid! after gnarls though, lily and i descended further into the sea of people to get closer to the stage.  by the time spoon took stage we were about 10-15 rows of people back and dead center. 

during spoon, the kid in front of me fell back on me. at first, i thought it was just someone in the crowd pushing to move forward, but then i realized the kids eyes were only half-way open, he had lost all color in his face, and was sweating like crazy. so, next thing i know, i am holding up this 17 or 18 year old kid trying to ask him if he is okay. he said he was fine, stood up, but then fell back onto me again and when i told him i was going to go take him to get help he just kept saying "i can't hear anything." finally, his friends he was with realized there was something seriously wrong with him and took him to the paramedics. i know the kid was smoking pot a little while earlier (like 50% of the people there), so i am not sure if it was just extreme dehydration or if what he was smoking was laced with something else. so, spoon's set was really good, but needless to say, i was a little distracted during it.

after spoon, the raconteurs played.  i don't really listen to them that much, but holy crap. they are fantastic live. we kept making our way more forward until we were probably no more than 10 rows from the front. at the end of their set, the drummer tossed his drum sticks into the audience and the kid THREE people away from me caught it. i was soo close to catching it... and pretty close to getting crushed to death.

lastly, dylan played. he played some new stuff but some old stuff like rainy day women, tangled up in blue, and it ain't me babe. however, he stuck on the keys and harmonica the whole time (he didn't pick up a guitar) and played new versions of his old songs that were more reminiscent of early rock of the 1950s with a touch of swing than 60s rock. but you know, if dylan had played the popular versions of his hit songs, i really would have been disappointed. that just doesn't seem like a dylan thing to do. his voice was more of a growl on the low notes (a bit garbled sounding even for dylan), but the guy still kicked ass for being 67.

at the end of his set, dylan came back out for an encore. as he came out, the lights turned out bright and a huge backdrop came down, and "like a rolling stone" started. i seriously got the chills. as the chorus started, it felt so surreal as the whole crowd (10,000 people) began singing along. definitely a moment i will remember the rest of my life.

i got home, completely exhausted, and found out my parents locked me out. they also didn't wake up when i rang the doorbell or called the house 3 times. so, i got to sleep in the garage until my brother came to my rescue, haha.

this weekend was $25 well spent.

it has been a tough week.

at least i get to see dylan on saturday, right? right.

too true.