More Sites I Love...

Asterisque

Women's Inspiration Network

Urban Outfitter Bikes

The Athena Film Festival

Rant

Something that annoys me is people thinking they're unique because of the bands they like or the clothing stores they shop at. Everyone is unique, and certainly your taste in music and clothing can be indicative of your personal style, and therefore be an expression of your individuality, but they shouldn't be your source of identity, or you're screwed. If I ask "who are you?" and all you can tell me is that your favorite color is black, you shop at hot topic, and you label yourself as "goth", you haven't told me anything about who you are as a person (besides telling me two things that are a dichotomy - would true "goth"s really shop at a chain in a mall? I think not).

Blogs I Love

Diary of A Vintage Girl

I love this blog!! Her outfits are always so inspirational and amazing and I love the little tutorials she has on how to do forties hair. I also love her circle of friends and all of their "vintage" get-togethers!!

The Stylish Wanderer

Another really awesome fashion blog. The stuff she wears is always giving me ideas for stuff to do with my own wardrobe. Plus, the photos are amazing! :D

The Last Door Down The Hall

This blog has everything... Recipes, fifty billion different kinds of craft projects, pictures of gravestones, and more. But what I really love are her journals. I make journals like these, too (I call mine scrapbooks, actually, but whatever) and I thought it was really awesome to find someone who did them, too, and get inspiration from hers. 

Surrounded By Utter Randomness

I must say, I'm a little biased, seeing as this is written by one my best friends, but I can honestly say I have laughed out loud at every single thing she's ever posted. 

The Style Rookie

I bought a tutu in freshman year, and I gotta into fashion after realizing I was too much of a coward to actually wear it to school. I stumbled upon this awesome blog, and was totally inspired by the ballsy outfits this girl even younger than I, Tavi Gevinson, wore. In short, I ended up wearing the tutu to school, found an awesome blog,  and totally got into the whole street style thing. 

Andrea Joseph's Sketchblog: An Online Sketchbook

Seriously. She drew these. Before I found this blog, I considered putting some of my own drawings up, and then I saw these, and realized how much my drawings resemble toddler scribbles. 

Karla's Closet

Another fashion blog that gives me tons of outfit inspiration! This blog and the Stylish Wanderer make me wish I lived in L.A. just so I could go to the Fairfax flea market they're always talking about... :D

I gotta three day beard and I don't plan to shave :D

Another snow day today. It's all good, though, because it's melting fast and it's actually pretty sunny out. I'm in a pretty good mood, been listening to some good ol' happy country music, thinking about the kind of person I want to be and how I want to get there. I'm starting to realize that I don't need all the things I used to think I needed to be happy. I'm not going to achieve happiness by having an Ivy League diploma, living in a big city, or having everyone know my name. I'm not going to give up on working as hard as I can to have those opportunities, but I don't need them. Good music, happy people, trees, and books are really all I need. 

Wish list

I really need to get a job...

1. Beaded Geometry Bag from Anthropologie

2. Simple Compositions Blouse in Moss from Anthropologie

3. All Star Slim Slip in Parchment from Converse

4. Yuma Cardigan from Anthropologie

5. Belted Jacket with hood in Insignia Blue from Mossimo Supply Co. (Target)

6. Simple Compositions Blouse in Gold from Anthropologie

7. Super Shiny lip gloss in Juicy Peach from Burt's Bees

8. Margarita Sock in Loden Heather from Smartwool

9. Solid Perfume in Meringue from Simpatico

10. 993 Running Shoes from New Balance

We're looking for something dumb to do

Went to a cute place to eat last night. It's an old home that's been converted to a restaurant and it's only open when they have live music, which is about three or four times a week. It's usually some form of bluegrass or country.

They have stuff all over the walls and underneath the tabletops. It kind of reminds me of my room. 

(I did not take these pictures)

I love living in a small southern town where places like this exist. And where 90% of the population owns a guitar and a pair of cowboy boots. 

In other news, I went driving for the first time today in the mall parking lot with my mom. Let's just say her stomach's probably a little sore... :D

Whenever you smile

Chill Saturday at home. I have rediscovered a couple of books I bought for the purpose of looking at the pictures. The first one is called Maripolarama, a book I picked up at a used Book Store in Dallas a couple years ago. It's a series of old, artsy polaroids by a woman named Maripol. Unfortunately, my scanner is broken, so I can't show you the pages of the book at the moment, but here's a photo I found of a gallery of her photos. They're so awesome!!! lovelovelove

The second is the living solo book, distributed by Ikea. For this one, I couldn't even find anything from it online, so you'll just have to wait for my scanner to be fixed!! But for now, you can look at these beautiful pictures of Ikea rooms!

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

was a total jackass, can I just say? I mean, the guy was a total hypocrite. His whole philosophy was about how children should be nurtured and cultivated and their education should be carefully looked after. But the dude didn't care jack shit about kids. He had five illegitimate children (yes, FIVE, with this one woman who he didn't marry until, like, forty-five years after they hooked up), which he just dropped at random orphanages around Europe and didn't bother to check up on them or anything.
But does it matter that I think Rousseau was a douche bag? No. I still have to do a massive research paper and dress up as him and prove that he had this wonderful impact on history, when really, he was just mean. He was a meany poopy head.

Prospective Colleges

In no particular order...

Brown

UPenn

NYU

UW

Barnard

Sarah Lawrence

BU

Harvard

Sick of Snow

There's supposed to be another snow day tomorrow. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I love days off of school to do homework (yeah, that's what I end up doing with my snow days - homework - I know, I know, I'm a freak), and for a while there, I could really appreciate the beauty of white wintery world outside, but I'm getting kind of sick of the snow. See, it's, like, cold, and, like, you can't drive, and when it "melts" it accumulates in these big ugly grey piles of slush on the sides of the road and in parking lots, and you have to wear waterproof shoes or it sops through and then you have to walk around with freezing wet socks for the rest of the day. And for your viewing pleasure...

This interesting... thing. It's awesome, isn't it?

The Mondays

Um, yeah. I have been trying to update consistently lately, to no avail. See, I actually think to go to blogger on a relatively consistent basis with the intent of writing a new post, and then I just sit there with the "New Post" box open and no ideas come out. My mind is a creative void. I blame school. I should just cut that out, and then everything would be A OK. Really. It would. Anyways, I had a fabulous new year at my friend's house

I've had a nice few weeks back to school, with so many snow days, I'm still not quite adjusted. In school district, it's always one lady who calls everyone's house to tell them that school is going to be cancelled, and she has a lot of fans here. I've seen t-shirts, facebook groups, and recently discovered a song that some teenage boys wrote for her. I'm not kidding.

One of my best friends, who shall be named Bob, gave me the link to this really awesome intensive language study abroad program. I now really want to go to India for a semester to study Hindi sometime in 2012/2013. GAH!!!! That would be so awesome!!!

Currently, I'm thinking about majoring in Conservation Biology. This is completely unrelated to anything; I just thought I'd throw that out there.

New York

If it were possible to marry a city, I would be married to New York. I'm in love with it. I plan on living there in a few years, and I can't wait. Being there makes me feel like I'm in the center of the universe, exposed to every idea and trend worth being exposed to. I love walking down the street and hearing and seeing people from so many cultures and walks of life. The diversity of New York City is something I think is unparalleled by any other setting. Anyways, I had a BLAST in New York with the fam. I went skating in Central Park,saw Jersey Boys on Broadway, went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ate delicious pizza from John's Pizza (No Slices!) as well as the best BLT I've ever had in my life from a Deli somewhere on 8th avenue (I think...). Anyways, I had a blast, although the rest of the fam didn't seem to be having quite the blast as I. My sister was sick and got stuck in the hotel and my parents seemed to be tired. Oh well. New York is kinda my thing. It is my life partner.

Pennsylvania

Christmas was (and is, as I feel I'm still experiencing it) simply wonderful this year. My family stayed at the Inn at Pocono Manor, a beautiful 1902 resort not five minutes from skiing (or in my case, painful attempts at snowboarding) at Camelback. I feel like I've been sucked into the resort world depicted in Dirty Dancing. Although I've seen many kids my age and younger, I've seen no avid texters or Nintendo DS players. Most of the families would congregate together in the many lounges of the hotel, talking and playing games. It was perfect. We drove up on thursday, after driving from Philadelphia and stopping at an adorable art deco diner in Allentown. On the way to the Inn, we passed many turn-of-the-century Summer homes. I told my parents I was going to have one, and they could come visit me in the Summers. They laughed, but I really wasn't kidding.
We ate dinner in the buffet at the hotel restuarant pretty much every night, which was delicious, but didn't vary much. I loved sitting down to a full table setting. It contributed to the being-taken-back-in-time feeling. My grandmother, of course, chatted up the hospitality manger every night, which provided much amusement.

"You don't have to be straight to shoot straight"

I was so ecstatic yesterday to find that the Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) policy had finally, after seventeen years of ridiculousness, been repealed, with a vote from Congress of 65 to 31 votes. Since, I've observed a resounding elation for the repeal, from the trending topic on twitter to the always enlightening banter on Smart Mouths to the shout out on Maddow blog. I'll be honest; it's made me a teeny bit more optimistic of America's future. :D

Midterms

Winter exams are finally over. I publish so inconsistently on this blog that it makes me laugh that I've had a post on winter exams each year, and that my first post ever was on semester exams (remember, with those pictures I put up of Harvard's primal scream that came up as 100% pornography on my friend's computer? yeah...).
You know, everyone told me that Junior year was gonna be tough, but nobody warned me about Sophomore year. And I think it's been pretty ridiculous. I haven't had the time to read a single book for pleasure since the school year started (I won't make the overly optimistic assumption that anyone actually noticed I haven't made any book review posts in the past six months, but I haven't). The first semester of Sophomore year has been pretty stressful, and I am SO happy that it's finally winter break. I'm a little disappointed with how my first semester has turned out, so I'll definitely be using Winter Break to do some restrategizing for the next semester.
Ah, screw that, I'll be PARTYING IN NYC, LOSERS!!!

Wizard Rock Concert

Got to see a wizard rock concert this weekend. I have to say it was pretty epic. I shared my excitement over this to my french class, and my french teacher was apalled at the concept that people wrote actual MUSIC about HARRY POTTER. She was all "really, Andie, you're willing to share that with the PUBLIC?" and went on to tell us this story about how she used to watch this reality TV show about people who were so obsessed with Jane Austen that they went to go live like the characters of the time period. (I fail to see how this correlates to my wizard rock concert in any way, but whatever)
Anyways, this "concert" was in someone's GRANDMOTHER'S LIVING ROOM. I'm serious. Like, we had to drive around in suburbs until we found this person's address, and her parents and her grandmother were, like, sitting in chairs in the kitchen behind us looking at us like we were, like, freaks, or something (where would they get that idea?)
My friend made this lovely analogy when we were driving there about a "Harry Potter sea". See, normal, non-harry-obsessed people are on land, far away from the sea. People who think they're harry potter fans are on life rafts floating on the top of the sea. My friend and I are hanging on to the life rafts, with our feet dangling in the water. But there are people at in VOLCANIC VENTS at the BOTTOM of this sea, and they're not coming up for air. People like that were at this concert. These kind of people actually are GROUPIES to these wizard rock bands, and like, FOLLOW the bands on their "tours".
A little creepy.
BUT, Justin Finch-Fletcley and the Sugar Quills, and The Whomping Willows were well worth being in the company of these slightly creepy albeit funny-ish-ly lovable people. I've had the "Dumbledore is Gay but that's OK" song stuck in my head ever since, and I was very excited to place my order for a Justin Finch-Fletchley t-shirt. :)
So...Yeah...

Marching Band

Sometimes I resent the very existence of Marching Band. I don't even march, and yet, the grueling three-hour-long rehearsals four times a week plus eleven hour camp days and away football games and competitions that inhibit us from getting home until the early hours of the morning wear down on me. The lack of social life that band members possess between the months of August and early November kills.
The thing is - and if anybody from band or school read this, they'd probably think I'm a freak (who doesn't?) for admitting it - but I can't deny the pride and satisfaction felt at the end of a grueling season. It's the end of the year, you're at the last competition, and you've played the show for the very last time. You know you've just given the performance of your life, and you're so ecstatic that you can't help but smile even when you know you're supposed to look fierce and intimidating. But you have absolutely no idea how anyone else has done. You stand out on the field, not allowed to move a muscle, and they start calling results. Your anxiety grows as the numbers get smaller and smaller. The band could very well have made tenth, but you didn't. Not ninth, either. Or seventh. Or sixth. Or fifth. Or fourth. They call third place, and you don't have to hear the first full syllable to know it's not you. You can't believe you've done this well. Yout start calming yourself down. 'Second', you think, 'second would be so great.' But what you really want is to hear that you've exceeded your wildest miracles, by some miracle beaten out every other band and gotten first. Then, the announcer calls second place. It's not you. You've won. You want to scream and jump and hug every person in the band, every person who has stood out there with you for twenty hours of rehearsal a week, in the heat, in the rain, in the freezing cold. But still, you have to stand still.
When they call first place, you listen carefully, to make damn sure they call your bands' name, and there's not some fluke. And they do.

I've been reading The Feminine Mystique lately (more on that later in the form of a book review), and I have to say it's been making me kind of depressed. I read what this woman wrote in 1963, nearly fifty years ago, and I can't help but see how little we've come since then. It seems as if being allowed to wear pants and allowed to be professionals and allowed to do pretty much anything is enough for women. It's not about being allowed to do things, it's about doing them, and asserting our power and perspective as women in positions of leadership. I truly believe that women posess a kind of intellect and reason that would make them far superior leaders to our male counterparts. Those behavioral characteristics that are inherently feminine - consciousness, nonviolence, maternal instinct - ought to be the traits desired in a political leader, especially in this 21st century, when diplomacy and compromise should be prevailing. No longer do we need leaders with good battle instinct or military strategy. We need leaders who won't be corrupted by power or money, who are working for humanity and morality and not political gain. Now, more than ever, we need women.