Deep Thoughts: The New Shoes & Stress Baking Edition

• Dating is exhausting.

• Having something wrong with my foot is clearly a good excuse to buy new sneakers. I mean, the doctor did tell me I needed to wear sneakers. I may have promptly gone home and broken in my new heels over Shabbos, but this still seems legit.
  

• I am stress-baking to recover from this exhausting day (chocolate chip cookies with white chocolate chips added in). Which only means I will be more stressed when I realize how much work I haven't yet done tomorrow. It seems like this is going to lead into an endless cycle of stress and baking. Which will lead to weight gain. Which will lead to more stress. If you give a moose a muffin...

• What if, according to this typography, I will be a "Yes caffeine/No sleep Robot" forever?

• I almost sent an e-mail last night that went something like: "Dear huge news company, If you let me interview your reporters, I will buy them coffee." It's so pathetic they might have had pity on me and let me do my research.
   

She Has a Valid, if Impractical, Point

A Gchat conversation with one of my classmates:

 me: I drove to Ralph's [a supermarket], which is not that far from my apartment because I am lazy

 classmate: No, it is because you are an LAer
          People drive in LA, that is the norm

 me:  Shhhhhh

         Don't say that
         It's not true

         I am a New Yorker

 classmate: Then you should have taken the subway to the market

Boots in 80-Degree Weather: An L.A. Milestone

Last week, I became that L.A.-er (I know the correct term is Angeleno, but that still sounds so weird to me) who wears completely weather-inappropriate clothing. In my defense, when I left my apartment at 7 in the morning it was cold and when I left school at 8 p.m. it was also cold. So, it totally made sense to wear boots. Even if it may have been somewhere around 80 degrees for some of the hours in between. Yeah, whatever. I deserve to be made fun of.

But in honor of this L.A. milestone of mine, I have collected some L.A. quotes for your entertainment—and my procrastination. (There don't seem to be very many happy quotes about L.A., but the tone of the collection is not necessarily reflective of my thoughts on L.A.):

“Los Angeles is 72 suburbs in search of a city.” —Dorothy Parker

“I'd move to Los Angeles if New Zealand and Australia were swallowed up by a tidal wave, if there was a bubonic plague in England and if the continent of Africa disappeared from some Martian attack.” —Russel Crowe

“In Los Angeles, by the time you're 35, you're older than most of the buildings.” –Delia Ephron

“Between a quarter and a third of Los Angeles's land area is now monopolized by the automobile and its needs—by freeways, highways, garages, gas stations, car lots, parking lots. And all of it is blanketed with anonymity and foul air.” —Alistair Cooke

"As far as loneliness, I feel Los Angeles and its layout, having to drive everywhere—it is a lonely place. It's an isolated city in that respect because you're driving to places alone listening to the radio." —Jason Schwartzman

"I don't like Los Angeles. The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I'm from New York. I will kill to get what I need. —Lady Gaga

And You Think I'm Kidding When I Complain About Driving in L.A.

That's right outside my apartment building. Neither car is mine—since I don't drive a pick-up truck or a Lexus. And I'm told no one was hurt (I was in school when this happened, and by the time I got home, it was all cleared, but Facebook kept me informed), but I still can't figure out how it happened.

Back From Vacation and Back to Work

(And back to blogging more regularly. Or so I hope.) So far, I have articles to teach, books to read, research proposals to write, data analysis to do ... and I've only had two days of school so far. Also, a heel broke off my shoe, I was called "professor" by a student, I'm pretty much stalking one of my professors, I shipped 25 pounds of books from New York after buying books at something like three different bookstores on the East Coast (and digging up some of my old books that I wanted), and bought another a bookcase. And I'm just hoping that my next game-night date doesn't end in being dumped (like my last one did). But it's 70 degrees here, so I'm not complaining.