running, returning.

Spring Break in five memorable pictures; I'll make a more detailed (and food centric!) post later this week.


My best friend Serena, who I've known since I was 5, came up to Berkeley to visit me! I got to take her to Bear's Lair :)


We decided to try a Guinness for St. Patrick's Day and discovered that we didn't like it, whoops.


Driving through the Grapevine the morning after it was closed for snow and black ice.


Entrance to the Contemporary/Modern Art building at LACMA.


I got to see two of my closest friends (and members of the West Wing Crew!) Marisa and Amelia.

Not pictured (by request) is my amazing family, who were the sole reason I came home, as well as my friend Kristina because I never seem to take pictures when we hang out. An excellent break indeed!

volume I.

I thought I'd share some of the songs I'm currently listening to. As I sink deeper and deeper into the abyss known as writing a thesis, making playlists that motivate me to work and focus has become a fun (and semi-productive?) way to procrastinate. These nine songs are some of my favorites at the moment.

Also, if you have yet to take my survey, make sure and do it! Super easy and super important :) Thanks!


"Rivers and Roads" by the Head and the Heart


"Hiding My Heart" by Adele


"Naked As We Came" by Iron & Wine


"Helplessness Blues" by Fleet Foxes


"Airplanes" by Local Natives


"Ivory Road" by King Charles


"The First Days of Spring" by Noah and the Whale


"King of Spain" by The Tallest Man on Earth


"Rise To Me" by The Decemberists

cards & quarters.

So much for a having a regular Monday post, eh? No worries though, it'll be back next week--this week was Spring Break (and quite possibly the last one of my life!) and so I wasn't online as much as I usually am. I spent the first half of the week in LA, after a weekend with my best friend and an adventurous drive down on Sunday. We left Berkeley around 5, and soon encountered snow, accidents, and flooding, leading us to spend the night in a cigarette and apple scented motel room in Bakersfield. My life! In any case, I got to LA safe and sound by Monday afternoon and proceeded to spend the next three days seeing some of my closest friends and family. It was much needed trip home, and I'm feeling recharged after some well-deserved rest. Hopefully I'll make a picture post soon, lots to share!

I'm back in Berkeley and hard at work on my thesis. I put up my survey today...if you have the time, please take it! I've got a lot to do and I'm running out of time...I can't believe that this semester is very quickly coming to an end.

here, there, and everywhere.

Five things that make me happy!


Another Team Alice picture, but this one is at a Harry Potter themed party. The combination of two of my favorite things...what could be better??


I very much enjoy making silly faces at the camera. Just like many people, I've struggled with my self-confidence for years but I think I'm finally starting to love myself for who I am. I'm silly, slightly awkward, intelligent, decent looking, short, and awesome...all good things! It's okay to not always take myself--and life--so seriously. My life is a sitcom, so why fight it? Take yesterday, for example, when I slipped and fell on a bus. Could have started crying (it hurt! and I'm STILL sore), but instead started laughing. If my life is going to be a sitcom, then I'm going to enjoy having a laugh, even if it is at my expense a bit sometimes.


Oh god, Cheeseboard. Perhaps my favorite eatery in Berkeley and definitely my favorite pizza in the world, Cheeseboard makes quality vegetarian pizzas that are fresh, delicious, and creative. This pizza is roasted potatoes, caramelized onions, mozzarella and gruyere cheese, garlic oil, & fresh herbs. PERFECTION.


Katie (of the brilliant RedSaidBlog) is one of my best friends and I love spending time with her. So much laughter, so much love!


Not to brag, but this is the highest grade I've ever gotten on a paper at Berkeley. I never get solid A's, always B+'s or A-'s. So frustrating to almost get an A but not be good enough...but not this time! It's an amazing feeling to see my hard work (and lack of social life) paying off.

This week is my last week of classes before Spring Break, and although I've got a lot to get done, I'm super excited because my childhood best friend is coming up on Thursday! I haven't seen Serena since winter break and I'm stoked to be able to show her around Berkeley...and by show her around, I mean eat at all of my favorite places in Berkeley in one weekend. After she leaves on Sunday, I'm packing my bags and heading down to LA for a couple of days to see my lovely family and recoup; I'll be back on Wednesday and ready to work on my thesis for the rest of my break!

shaking my confidence daily.

Feeling overwhelmed, so I'm going to copy one of my favorite bloggers (Emily of Cupcakes & Cashmere) and do a post about five things I currently love. I figured it would be a good way to keep me posting (at least once a week, every Monday) and also force me to look at five things in life that make me smile.


Wednesday night trivia with Team Alice! My friends and I all go to our favorite campus pub (the Bear's Lair) and play trivia every week. They are such an amazing group of women and even though we never win it's always the best part of my week. Also, the staff is incredible!


Cooking has somehow become the way that I relieve stress. This mac & cheese (which is this recipe for the actual mac & cheese and this one for the topping) was probably the best I've ever made. Amazing.


The Yoda that my friend Elek made out of tape is absolutely amazing, and it's definitely my favorite part of my room. Looking at it reminds me "do or do not, there is no try." Got it, Master Yoda!


Judge me if you want, but it gets me through the day...and with the amount of shit I have to get done everyday, it's necessary.


Right, I'm a nerd. Hope you don't mind. I love Harry Potter and when I have a spare minute (or I'm procrastinating) I'll pick up one of the books and read a couple of chapters to clear my mind. I'm definitely a Gryffindor for life :)

This is going to be a long week, but I think that looking at it one day at a time as well as looking at the good things around me will help me make it through. Also, listening to good music also helps, so here's the Local Natives doing a cover of Simon & Garfunkel's "Cecilia," enjoy! xo

we both go down together.

I've noticed that as of late, I've become a lot pickier about what I want to post here. I don't want to post inane ramblings, or miscellaneous film reviews. I haven't posted pictures in awhile, mostly because I haven't really done anything worthy of documenting and I never have my camera with me anymore. I'm in an unusual state of mind, trying to finish strong at Cal and make a decent entrance into the so-called "real world." I'm so unsure of what I want and of where I'll be in the next few months that it's making it really hard to focus on the present.

School is stressful. Such a simple sentence for such a complicated statement! Last night, I came to the alarming realization that this weekend I was way behind on on work. I needed to write a 1 page response on the documentary "We Live in Public" (which I HIGHLY recommend watching if you get a chance, it's on Netflix Instant watch!), a 4-5 page analytical paper on an image and the cultural myth/ideologies it perpetuates (which is far, FAR more complicated than it sounds; I'm writing my paper on this image), a 4-5 page segment for my thesis on the methods I'm utilizing PLUS editing and re-writing my literature review (the first 10 pages of my thesis). I also had to watch The Jazz Singer, and this isn't taking into account the hundreds upon hundreds of pages of reading that I have yet to do, or the stuff I have to do for my Apartment Assistant job.

It's so funny to me when I hear people tell me that they think I have it "all together"...if that were the case, I wouldn't be freaking out right now! I guess it's best to appear put-together rather than frantic and mildly neurotic, but it's also frustrating that people don't believe me when I say I've got a lot on my plate; a double-edged sword indeed. It's stressful, but when I think of how far I've come, I start to feel better. I'm a transfer student and yet I've taken on so much; I'm actually really proud of myself, and when I think about that, it helps me calm down and focus. I've made a to-do list and a calendar of the weekend, trying to balance out my ridiculous amount of work with a pathetic attempt at a social life and I think that if I stick to it, I should be alright. I've been at FSM all day with Nick, one of my fellow AAs and I've already finished the 1 page response paper and outlined a lot of my 4-5 page image analysis, so hurray!

Also! This past Monday was Valentine's Day. It's a holiday I've never liked (reading through my old paper journal, I laughed when 13-year-old me complained about the commercialization of love~), but my friend Katie surprised me with tickets to go see The Decemberists at the Fox Theater in Oakland. It was without a doubt one of the BEST concerts I'd ever been to, and it was a necessary reminder to stop killing myself over school and live a little. When they played my favorite song ("The Engine Driver") I started crying; to finally hear a song that has helped me through so much played live, by the people who wrote it...that's a feeling unlike any other. They also married a couple on-stage (!!) and had a jam session...all in the middle of a song. It was, in a word, epic. Another word? Perfect. Another? Amazing. There are not enough good things to say about a band that I've loved since I was sixteen and has been with me through some of the most challenging and important moments of my life, and I'm so lucky to have been able to see them for a second time with such delightful company :)

Here's a video someone in the audience took of the very last song they played in their second (!) encore, "June Hymn." Enjoy!

blue valentine.

Nothing lasts forever. We're born, we live, and we die. What happens after that, no one knows, and although we have no control over our birth or our death, we certainly have much to do with the quality of our lives while we're living. There's no such thing as "forever," at least in my mind, and that was one of my favorite parts of Blue Valentine--the acknowledgement of the idea that we live and love in the moment, but that's all we can do. We don't know what the future will hold, so how can we control it, or pretend to think that we know what will work 30 years from now? We don't, and we won't. I'm quickly learning that it's all about living in the moment. I know we all have our share of bad days, but it's about trying to see what we don't like and taking it upon ourselves to fix it. It's easy to let the negativity get to us, and much too easy to let it overwhelm us. I'm incredibly guilty of this, but I'm trying to fight back.

Today I was talking to my boss, complaining about the last few days. They'd been pretty shitty, to be honest--thesis-ing is stressful (as much as I love my topic, it's a bit daunting), and add lots of work, root canal recovery, hundreds of pages of complex reading, a 3 hour silent film about white supremacy (watched for a race & film class, mind you) and an unexpected break-up to the mix and you've got all the makings for disaster. "But you know," I said, "life goes on and all that jazz." My boss made a comment about admiring my positive attitude, and it caught me off-guard. Me, positive? When did that happen? The truth of the matter is, I was always a negative kid. It would drive my parents crazy how I would always find *something* to complain about or be upset about. But, reading through my past few blog posts and my own personal journal, I realize that I've made a complete 180 in terms of the way I look at the world. It's been a slow process, but all of the sudden I am finding the best in everything around me. Dumped unexpectedly? It sucks, definitely...BUT, I am super busy with my thesis/last semester of undergrad...and who wants to be tied down when I've got the world ahead of me? There's always a silver lining. It was what it was, and it was lovely while it lasted, but it's over and that's that. Time to move on, focus on my research, my future, and my life. My friend Morgan and I were discussing this over mimosas at La Note and decided that this is going to be known as "Fresh-Start February," a clean slate to start over with. As President Bartlet would say, "What's next?"


Speaking of my thesis, I'm writing it on the Internet, identity, and privacy--why do people post what they post, and how does this determine the image they want to give off to the world? Obviously, I don't have an answer yet, but in terms of myself, I've always found that writing is the most therapeutic way to deal with the world. The reason I post is that I hope that someone will read this and find that my words help them through a similar situation, or that they feel that they have an ally in the world, even if only on the Internet.