Vamp;A/RCA
Big big IMPORTANT exciting awesome LONDON NEWS!
I JUST BOUGHT FOURTH ROW CENTER SEATS FOR HAMLET STARRING BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH!!!!! The show is like a year from now but YAAAY! I have never seen any of my favorite actors live before and I am gonna see Benedict. BENEDICT. I sadly missed out on seeing Tom Hiddleston in Coriolanus this year but you know he's going to do more theatre (especially Shakespeare) and I am SO down. But BENEDICT. When he's up on stage I'm going to throw a copy of Parade's End at him so he knows that I am DEEPLY DISPLEASED with how sad Christopher Tietjens is/was.
If you haven't seen Parade's End (or don't know who Benedict is...dear GOD go get a free Netflix trial like right now), you need to see it this very moment. It is without exaggeration the best British period piece I have ever seen (and I've seen a lot), and maybe the best movie/miniseries I ever saw. Everyone in it is fan-tas-tic and if you can watch it without wanting to throw a brick through the TV (stupid sad British people being AMAZING YET VERY SAD), you probably have a heart of stone. There are uniforms, Votes for Women, fabulous socialites, Hobble skirts, and accents so posh they're unintelligible. And Benedict cries like every ten minutes so you might want watch it with a pillow or stuffed animal that you can squeeze in anger.
UNIFORMS!
READING!
Are you watching it yet?
In other London news, (Bum-ba-da-dum! That was a triumphant trumpet sound) I got my visa! That means I
can jet off to London any time I want to! But I'M NOT READY! I mean of course I was born ready to start a spectacular life in London, but I still have so much to do before I go. There have already been some bag-packing tests, clothes shopping expeditions, and account-closing phone calls, but I still need to visit my extended family and buy some Hunter rainboots (yaaas!). Did I mention that I have lost enough weight that I will be able to wear boots again? TALL boots! Riding boots! Rain boots! Four-hundred dollar tall Burberry riding-style rain boots!
Sigh. Some day.
In the meantime, I can look forward to the Ypres Salient battlefield tour in September that my residence hall invited me to! Ypres Salient is in Belgium and they are having tours of three battle sites for the centenary of the First World War this year. If there is anything related to the early 20th century going on, I am all over it. Especially military history things. This has zero to do with Parade's End I swear.
LONDON LONDON LONDON BENEDICT LONDON YAY!
If you haven't seen Parade's End (or don't know who Benedict is...dear GOD go get a free Netflix trial like right now), you need to see it this very moment. It is without exaggeration the best British period piece I have ever seen (and I've seen a lot), and maybe the best movie/miniseries I ever saw. Everyone in it is fan-tas-tic and if you can watch it without wanting to throw a brick through the TV (stupid sad British people being AMAZING YET VERY SAD), you probably have a heart of stone. There are uniforms, Votes for Women, fabulous socialites, Hobble skirts, and accents so posh they're unintelligible. And Benedict cries like every ten minutes so you might want watch it with a pillow or stuffed animal that you can squeeze in anger.
UNIFORMS!
READING!
HORSES!
SYLVIA.
Are you watching it yet?
In other London news, (Bum-ba-da-dum! That was a triumphant trumpet sound) I got my visa! That means I
can jet off to London any time I want to! But I'M NOT READY! I mean of course I was born ready to start a spectacular life in London, but I still have so much to do before I go. There have already been some bag-packing tests, clothes shopping expeditions, and account-closing phone calls, but I still need to visit my extended family and buy some Hunter rainboots (yaaas!). Did I mention that I have lost enough weight that I will be able to wear boots again? TALL boots! Riding boots! Rain boots! Four-hundred dollar tall Burberry riding-style rain boots!
Sigh. Some day.
In the meantime, I can look forward to the Ypres Salient battlefield tour in September that my residence hall invited me to! Ypres Salient is in Belgium and they are having tours of three battle sites for the centenary of the First World War this year. If there is anything related to the early 20th century going on, I am all over it. Especially military history things. This has zero to do with Parade's End I swear.
LONDON LONDON LONDON BENEDICT LONDON YAY!
London Trip: V&A Fashion Exhibits, English Gardens, and Tapas
London London London London is the greatest city in the world and I am so completely in love with it. I had the most amazing trip: the weather was perfect, everything I ate was incredible, and my Airbnb was swank. My host was awesome; she made me tea, bought me fruit for breakfast, and told me how to get to Selfridges. Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pictures because I was running all over the place getting lost, but I managed to take a few in between stuffing my face, taking the wrong bus twice, and running up and down Regent Street looking for--wait for it--the perfect bag.
For my birthday I went for a run in Regent's Park and even though the tulips were a little sad and droopy, the flowers there were insane. The English have some kind of deal with the devil to make outrageous gardens and beautiful, sprawling parks. There were lots of ducks and HUGE ENORMOUS GEESE, although not as big as the swans at Hampton Court Palace. Have you ever seen a swan up close? They're TERRIFYING. Luckily I was a safe distance from and and all water fowl this trip.
How is it that I am moving to this wonderful magical place?! Does it really exist even though I've been there three times? Am I really going to get to poke around in archives and museum collections and go to Europe on school trips?!?!
AAHHH!
Casa Brindisa is an amazing tapas restaurant right down the road from the Victoria and Albert Museum. I could quite literally sit in there and eat their anchovies on that soft, thick toast covered in aioli for the rest of my life. After I successfully scarfed down two small baskets of bread (oops) I strolled down to the V&A and saw their two new fashion exhibits: The Glamour of Italian Fashion since 1945 and Wedding Dresses 1775-2014. They were phenomenal, and made me unbearably excited (as if I wasn't already) to study there in September/waltz around like I own the place.
For my birthday I went for a run in Regent's Park and even though the tulips were a little sad and droopy, the flowers there were insane. The English have some kind of deal with the devil to make outrageous gardens and beautiful, sprawling parks. There were lots of ducks and HUGE ENORMOUS GEESE, although not as big as the swans at Hampton Court Palace. Have you ever seen a swan up close? They're TERRIFYING. Luckily I was a safe distance from and and all water fowl this trip.
How is it that I am moving to this wonderful magical place?! Does it really exist even though I've been there three times? Am I really going to get to poke around in archives and museum collections and go to Europe on school trips?!?!
AAHHH!
The Year of Eve
I got in. I got into the Royal College of Art. I'm going to live in London for two years and study history of design. Please excuse me while I scream loudly in another room because LITERALLY ALL MY DREAMS HAVE COME TRUE! There has never been any person in the history of the universe that is as happy as I am right now. I have my victory song picked out and I plan on blowing out my speakers with it later on. And yes, it is Daft Punk.
Now that my happy happy news is out and about, I feel great: partly because I have a great near future ahead of me, and partly because I promised myself that this would be The Year of Eve. The Year of Eve is meant to be the exact opposite of The Three Years After College When I Did Nothing and Complained About My Life To Anyone Who Would Listen. At some point this past October I realized that no one was going to jump-start my life except me, and I started volunteering at the art museum and began the RCA application. Now I have a part time job at the museum and a two year MA program to look forward to. It's amazing what you can do if you start small with baby steps, and have some kind of plan in place for yourself (and a Plan B). This January I did what everyone does (and then throws away); I made a resolution list. Well, it's more of a poster. And now looking at the word poster I think I will turn it into one...
Anyway, I made a list of really reasonable things to do this year/every month/every season. It worked out pretty well for me last year since I did go to London, watched Star Trek Into Darkness and started a (failed) blog. This year I decided I was tired of sitting around waiting for thing to happen to me, and instead I want to go out into the world and do all the things. But I didn't want to set myself up for failure, so I made two really big goals and a lot of smaller ones (so I felt like I accomplished something):
1) Four detoxes. I read somewhere that you should detox your body every season to flush out all the toxins. This time I won't try to be hardcore and jump into the Clean program cold turkey.
2) Twelve books. Reading one book per month doesn't sound like much, but I can never find ones that I like. I do have a Goodreads account, and it's good for keeping track of what you want to read (you can even scan barcodes of books to save to your little bookshelf on your phone--we are living in the future).
3) Lose 50lbs. I am almost halfway there. I've lost 22 pounds running so far and even though it's been rough lately with all the Reese's eggs peeping at you around corners at CVS, I think I can reach my goal well before the end of the year.
4) Natural beauty. In 2008 my friend brought me to a Sephora for the first time, and since then I have built up a rat hoard of luxury beauty products. But most of them are full of chemicals and they're CRAZY expensive, so I've decided that when I run out of something this year, it will be replaced with a natural version (or something I make myself from Henry Happened: that woman is a genius).
5) Mint. I. Need. To. Stay. On. BUDGET.
6) New City. It was either London or Houston and I think we know who won.
7) 5K. I haven't run a race yet (I was in England when my running group ran theirs) but I can run for five miles nonstop, which I think is pretty impressive for someone who prayed for death when I had to run a lap in P.E. Also, half-marathon training really shows you how having a plan makes reaching your goal not scary.
8) Thank You Notes. Nothing is better than receiving a hand-written letter in the mail, unless it's a cute little thank you card saying how awesome you are for that thing you did.
9) Buy from Etsy. There are lots of really unique handmade shops on there, and since I am unbearably picky I can usually find something there when I can't in regular stores.
10) Draw from books. A while back I got some super cute How to Draw books for animals, dresses, plants, and people. I just like to draw cute things and make my planner happy.
11) (how stupid is it that I have eleven things and not ten) Green/Aveda tea. I must have been tired at this point in the poster process. Basically I need to buy my yearly bottle of Aveda tea (the best tea you will ever drink in your life) and drink less English Breakfast.
So I've done pretty well so far; there are still some tiny things I can do that I haven't gotten around to. I might even make some new goals for myself this year. Although I don't think I can top moving to England and studying in the coolest program ever. In the best city. At the most amazing museum.
AAH! ❤❤❤
London Celebrities & Bad Oysters
YES THAT IS A PICTURE OF CHRISTOPH WALTZ FOUR FEET AWAY FROM MY FACE. ❤
I am finally, FINALLY back from almost two weeks in London, where I had my interview for the Royal College of Art, stood about three feet away from HRH the Duke of Cambridge, and got food poisoning from some bad oysters in Soho (tip: you should probably never ever order raw oysters unless you are willing to BET YOUR LIFE that they are super fresh). I'm still a little weak but mostly over being sick, and I did lose some extra weight although I would rather have kept it and not been ill. It was the kind of sick where you pray for death, but death never comes.
Anyway, my trip was incredibly busy but great. London is beautiful even in cold, nasty winter and it felt wonderful being around so many people running around doing London stuff. I saw more museums, palaces, and churches than I thought possible. I pretty much ignored every piece of advice or logic I talked about in my previous post about packing, and ended up bringing an obscene amount of extra junk I didn't need. We all have such lofty dreams about the makeup we'll wear and the clubs we'll grace with our presence, but it's just not meant to be. Not when you've been at the British Museum all day or waiting an hour in a common room and sweating buckets before the interview of your life (which went really well by the way, and I hope they appreciate all the money I spent on a last-minute dress, coat, and bag to look presentable). The tube is great to get around the city but once you've transferred to three different lines a day for five days you really want to shell out whatever a cabbie would ask you to ride in a car, in the open air, above ground. Walking up and down all those steps and riding 500 escalators makes you a little crabby at the end of 11 days. But it was worth it in the end to be able to wander around some of the best museums in the world (especially the free ones--yay!) and just drool over their collections. Except maybe standing a few feet back.
Now that I am back home in my own cozy bed with recognizable food brands and outlet-shapes, I signed up for a pro account with NoomWeight, which puts you in user groups to motivate you to log meals and lose weight. Although cutting back on calories is easy when you are sickly and have no appetite, I really like how minimalist the interface is. It's cheerful and easy to input food, and I actually like having little messages from my group encouraging me to log meals or exercise. I cannot wait to start running again; I feel like my muscles are just wasting away even though they couldn't be (no one's could after climbing that spiral staircase of death and barely-safe uneven ledge you had to scoot around at the base of the dome). It will be nice to get back into my gym routine and cook my own food with some vegetables in it no less. Sweet, delicious, gorgeous, not-bread food that will be very happy in my stomach. Coconut butter and greek yogurt and spaghetti squash and granola bars and roasted cauliflower *lip smacking noises* I AM EXCITED.
While I'm recuperating I will have to consider my potential home for the next two years. If I don't get an acceptance letter in mid-April, it will leave me a whole year to save money, get more museum experience, and do more research for my next application. If they accept me, I'll be really worried about money and being homesick, but I don't think this is an opportunity that I can pass up. This is the best program, in the best city, with the best resources and staff that I could possible ask for in my wildest dreams. Two years isn't that long if I decide not to continue living in the UK, and while I'm there I could make an unreasonable number of amazing contacts for jobs elsewhere. Being in another country so far away will be hard, but I moved across the country when I was 18. Why couldn't I move across an ocean at 24?
Assuming they accept me. Erp.
Existential Packing Crisis
Tomorrow I will be jetting off to England, land of incredibly articulate and easily embarrassed actors, Alexander McQueen, and meat-heavy cuisine (although to be honest there will probably be more Asian than British food sliding down my gullet). I am SO excited for about a thousand reasons but most especially because the BAFTAs are happening Sunday the 16th! And if you think I won't be waiting outside in the cold and rain for hours to catch a glimpse of my favorite thespians, you are DEAD WRONG. Guys. I could see Christian Bale. Or Tom Hiddleston. I don't think the gravity of this situation has registered yet because I'm pretty sure when the actors start showing up I'm going to have a breakdown. SO BE IT.
Possible celebrity interactions aside, my favorite part of any trip is probably packing. For me it's an incredibly exact art; you can't bring all your nice things, because something might get left behind or lost, but you don't want to buy too many travel-only things that will just sit in your closet most of the time and be lonely. It's like a really intense, high-stakes competition to see if you can pack the perfect amount of stuff, and it's the hardest look at your life you'll ever take. And you sort of have this really existential conversation with yourself, like, "How many blushes should I bring? Do I really need three? Do I need any? Why do I wear makeup anyway? Why do I care about my appearance? WHY AM I EVEN HERE?!" The trick for me is to be realistic about what I actually use. And I'm becoming more and more minimalist these days (more minimalist...heh) and I find that I'm happier with less things in my bag. But sometimes you gotta whip out your never-worn dangly gold scroll earrings because when else will you wear them? (the answer is never)
The other challenge is playing Tetris with your clothes and shoes in your suitcase or duffel bag of choice. I can usually roll up all kinds of things and stuff them into a pair of boots, although once it backfired when I couldn't find my retainer for a month (it was in a high top sneaker). I have a really nice Coach computer bag that I got at an outlet about 6 years ago; it's still looks great and is made well, but a semi-rigid rectangular prism shape is tricky to stuff things in. You pretty much have to layer and stack things exactly right like a tangram and god forbid you need to take anything out during the flight. It is kind of fun to see what tiny things you can slide in the empty spaces, but it does turn into a bear trap when you try to dig anything out from the bottom. Maybe this will be the first plane trip in years that I will cheat on my Coach bag with a shapeless mini duffel instead, so I can stuff snacks and coats and maybe even a pillow inside.
Also, I'm SO excited because I'll be visiting the Royal College of Art, whose MA History of Design program is pretty much the dream of my entire life. The program has a partnership with the Victoria & Albert Museum (aaah!), and you have access to their collections as part of your study (AAAH!) and you basically get to study the one thing I have always wanted to study but I thought it didn't exist but it does in London and it's perfect (I'M DYING). I have never wanted something so badly in my entire life. But if I don't get in, I won't worry; it will give me a chance to work for another year, save my money, and get more experience, so when I apply again I can tear up that interview. It's happening.
I still can't believe that this is my life and I'm going back to my favorite, favorite city and there is a really good chance that I might stand across a barricade from Michael Fassbender. THIS IS REAL LIFE.
Possible celebrity interactions aside, my favorite part of any trip is probably packing. For me it's an incredibly exact art; you can't bring all your nice things, because something might get left behind or lost, but you don't want to buy too many travel-only things that will just sit in your closet most of the time and be lonely. It's like a really intense, high-stakes competition to see if you can pack the perfect amount of stuff, and it's the hardest look at your life you'll ever take. And you sort of have this really existential conversation with yourself, like, "How many blushes should I bring? Do I really need three? Do I need any? Why do I wear makeup anyway? Why do I care about my appearance? WHY AM I EVEN HERE?!" The trick for me is to be realistic about what I actually use. And I'm becoming more and more minimalist these days (more minimalist...heh) and I find that I'm happier with less things in my bag. But sometimes you gotta whip out your never-worn dangly gold scroll earrings because when else will you wear them? (the answer is never)
The other challenge is playing Tetris with your clothes and shoes in your suitcase or duffel bag of choice. I can usually roll up all kinds of things and stuff them into a pair of boots, although once it backfired when I couldn't find my retainer for a month (it was in a high top sneaker). I have a really nice Coach computer bag that I got at an outlet about 6 years ago; it's still looks great and is made well, but a semi-rigid rectangular prism shape is tricky to stuff things in. You pretty much have to layer and stack things exactly right like a tangram and god forbid you need to take anything out during the flight. It is kind of fun to see what tiny things you can slide in the empty spaces, but it does turn into a bear trap when you try to dig anything out from the bottom. Maybe this will be the first plane trip in years that I will cheat on my Coach bag with a shapeless mini duffel instead, so I can stuff snacks and coats and maybe even a pillow inside.
Also, I'm SO excited because I'll be visiting the Royal College of Art, whose MA History of Design program is pretty much the dream of my entire life. The program has a partnership with the Victoria & Albert Museum (aaah!), and you have access to their collections as part of your study (AAAH!) and you basically get to study the one thing I have always wanted to study but I thought it didn't exist but it does in London and it's perfect (I'M DYING). I have never wanted something so badly in my entire life. But if I don't get in, I won't worry; it will give me a chance to work for another year, save my money, and get more experience, so when I apply again I can tear up that interview. It's happening.
I still can't believe that this is my life and I'm going back to my favorite, favorite city and there is a really good chance that I might stand across a barricade from Michael Fassbender. THIS IS REAL LIFE.
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