A little Emmy's snark for you

As you know, last night we had the joy of watching Glee get robbed of most of the Emmys for which it was nominated. Though I wasn't even planning on watching because the vast majority of the TV I watch is by no means Emmy-worthy (Real World/Road Rules challenges what WHAT), I got a last minute call to liveblog from Dan who, as you may remember, was my partner in liveblogging the Oscars earlier this year. We were joined this time by the fabulous Jess, and even though the Emmys weren't all that exciting after the first 10 minutes (I even abandoned the last hour to watch Mad Men), we still managed to squeeze in a few gems. Here are my favorites:


Jess: God I hate Seacrest. It's like watching a man's soul leaving his body on live TV.


Jess: Is it my TV or is Guiliana orange?


Arielle: ...not that i follow any of the glee cast on twitter or anything
Jess: I've @ replied Corey Montieth like three times


Arielle: the top of her dress looks like spray-painted seashells
Arielle: like an art project i would have done at sleepaway camp



Arielle: oh no
Arielle: naya rivera has a pineapple on her head

(Ed note: HELLLOOOOOO Mark Salling)

Jess: Oh my god Billy Bush and the chick on NBC doing the fashion stuff is awful
Jess: and she's a raging bitch
Dan: love it when you get mad jess
Dan: you go big


On Lost:
Jess: Yeah there was stuff unanswered
Jess: But the finale was so emotional
Jess: Bawled off all my make up


Jess: if you don't cry in Up, dead inside
Jess: fact
Dan: well I didn't cry
Dan: but I DID feel bad
Dan: (I felt bad because I spilled my Mr Pibb)


Arielle: this chick needs a bra
Arielle: or some chicken cutlets
Jess: for real
Jess: no free boobing it


Arielle: can i just put Hugh Laurie, Jon Hamm, Joel McHale and Cory Monteith in a room together?
Jess: Can I put Kyle Chandler, John Krasinski, Cory, Mark Salling and Matthew Morrison in mine?
Dan: my room would just be scarlett j
Dan: mila kunis would be in line to get in the room
Dan: then diane lane
Arielle: betty white
Jess: Good call
Jess: betty white, I'm sure she knows her way around a....
Arielle: nursing home?


On the Oscars winning an Emmy:
Arielle: an awards show winning an award at an awards show?
Arielle: how meta

That's it for now. See you all at the...whatever the next good awards show is.

I hate stuff

There, I said it. I'll say it again: I hate stuff. Not the generic "stuff" that can mean anything, I mean, "stuff," a large amount of crap that seems to accumulate over a lifetime. The collective belongings that come with you when you move, fill up your closets and overwhelm your life.

I hate it all.

In an ideal world, I would own 5 dresses and a pair of flip flops and be able to have an outfit for any and all occasions. I would also own a computer and a toothbrush and maybe that's it.

The thing about all of my belongings is that I love them. I know that makes no sense, but hear me out. I love having the option of choosing a completely different outfit every day. I love the tiny model QANTAS plane that my sorority little sister gave me, the massive photo album from my Israel trip in high school, and the battery operated card shuffler that I got for my 26th birthday and have yet to use but seriously, one day we're playing Blackjack at my house, people.

I love all of that and more. I just don't love the amount of space it takes up.

I moved home yesterday (wah) and for the first time in 9 years, everything I own is under one roof. As I unpacked and tried to merge the stuff I brought back with the stuff that was already at home, I was totally overrun with conflicting emotions. There was a mix of

"Oh my gosh, funky party tops I bought in Australia! I miss it!"

with

"Some things are worth the wait, others are worth the RUSH? We Tufts sorority girls were so clever with our rush t-shirts!"

with

"Hey, my old discman! I'm going to use this for....nothing."

with

"WHERE AM I SUPPOSED TO PUT ALL OF THIS CRAP?"

And so on and so forth. Relative to other people my age, I think I have less stuff than most, mostly because I'm not the shoes/bags/jewelry fanatic that a lot of women are. Not only that, but I'm a compulsive thrower-outer which means that I regularly get fed up with things and chuck them even if a normal person wouldn't do so. Which leads me to wonder where all of you non thrower outers put everything.

The thing that really bothers me about is not so much that I don't have anywhere to put my belongings, because I have now resumed living in a 4 bedroom house and there is certainly plenty of space, technically. The fact that my stuff is not ORGANIZED is what makes me want to break out in hives.

I have a fear of overstuffed drawers and closets. Not being able to close drawers because there's too much shoved in there, or opening up a closet and not being able to grab one dress or sweater because you can't push the other dresses and sweaters aside gives me an irrational level of anxiety.

I also like all my things to be easily accessible and for me to know exactly where they are. If someone asked, "Arielle, where are your Pumas?" I would probably cry because there are a ton of boxes in the basement containing everything I didn't need for a summer in New York City and I wouldn't even know where to begin in trying to locate those damn shoes.

Furthermore, I don't like not being able to see everything. My bedroom closet at home is supremely narrow, but deep enough that there was, at some point in time, room to put a bunch of shelves and boxes and other nonsense on the floor. Now it's gotten to the point where I don't even know what all is in there and it's not really a task I feel like tackling so instead when I open my closet I just want to scream WHAT IS BEHIND ALL THOSE CLOTHES AND WHAT ARE IN THESE BOXES AND WHY CAN I NOT HAVE A HUGE CLOSET LIKE IN THE SEX AND THE CITY MOVIE WHERE I CAN JUST PUT EVERYTHING AND HAVE THERE BE SIX INCHES OF SPACE IN BETWEEN EVERY BOOK OR PAIR OF SHOES OR SWEATER OR RANDOM TCHOTCHKE FROM MY YOUTH?

My last apartment in Boston had TWO closets. I had a place to put all my shoes without stacking any of them, there was never a hanger with more than one article of clothing on it, and in general I was at peace with the state of my life. Eventually I will learn to live with the fact that I don't have a closet big enough to spread out my belongings in the organized, easily visible and accessible way I would like. And then the winter will come and I'll have to unpack all the aforementioned bags and boxes of summer-inappropriate stuff that are sitting in the basement from when I moved home from Boston, and the process will begin all over again.

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

Just gimme the liiiiight

As long as it stops raining (fingers crossed), I will be trekking into Brooklyn tonight with my peeps Anna and Avani for a free Sean Paul concert. Or as I like to say, "Seana Paul." In the Sean Paul voice.

When I arrived to my temp job this morning, I had the following email from Avani:

"It's really gross out. I hope it stops raining before this evening!"

I also had the following response from Anna:

"Um ya. If it's not the right temperature to shelter me from the storm I'm not feeling the concert.

I just wrote that."

This, my peoples, is why Anna and I are friends.

And if this post makes no sense to you, I apologize. You are probably not a fan of Seana Paul. And yes, I only hang out with people whose names start with "A." Just so you know.

When I grow up...

Three of my friends recently shared this link on Facebook. It's a New York Times Magazine article about how 20-somethings are taking longer to grow up these days, how they're traveling around, relying on their parents too much, "avoiding commitments" and otherwise not accepting the imminent demise of their youths.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I didn't read the whole article. It was really long and I got lazy. Judging by the comment stream on Facebook there is a lot more to the article than what I read. But I'm just commenting on the first section. You know, in case any of you read the whole thing and get confused as to why I didn't address the rest of it.

The article mentioned the 5 milestones of adulthood: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. People are reaching these milestones later than ever, and apparently, this is concerning.

While the article fully admits that the idea of these milestones is outdated, it still sort of uses them as a basis on which to judge whether or not people have "grown up."

This concept, in my opinion, is completely and totally ridiculous in a really frustrating way.

While I have successfully reached the first 3 milestones, it will be a long time before I reach the last 2, if ever. Furthermore, I'm moving back home in a few days and while I don't receive any money from my parents, I'm not really sure you can be considered financially independent if you live at home and don't pay for rent, food or laundry. So essentially I'm back at milestone #1, which I have actually completed twice (extra credit?).

Somehow, though, I don't feel like any less of an adult. My concerns these days are more of "I need to find a job," "I have a mountain of debt," and "WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T MY WALL STREET JOURNAL COME TODAY?" (seriously, that stressed me out and is pretty much the reason why I thought to even write this post). These are far different concerns than the ones I had when I was 22, fresh out of college and admittedly a lot less mature. I worried about where I would drink on the weekends and whether or not I would receive any funny emails at work that day. Those are still my concerns, don't get me wrong, but they've moved down on the priority list.

When I think about my friends who are married or have children, it seems totally foreign to me. I say things like "Wow, he/she is like a REAL PERSON now," but it's all said in the spirit of facetiousness. Because really, I don't think that having a spouse or a child makes someone any more of an adult. It means they may have more responsibilities and again, different priorities, but not necessarily that they're more "adult."

The difference between being single and free childless and being married with children is mostly circumstantial, and partially a matter of different life choices. My [legally] single friends aren't married because they haven't met the right person or haven't reached that point in their relationships (circumstances). The reason they don't have children is because they haven't decided that they want children yet (life choices - because even if you're single, if you want a baby you can obviously have one anyway).

I guess the idea that I'm not an adult purely because I haven't yet completed the good ol' all-American college-job-husband-child path really just doesn't sit well with me. What about the path of college-job-grad school-focus on career-kick ass at aformentioned career-let the husband/baby thing happen when it happens? I don't think there is anything wrong with slowing down and taking the time to figure out what's right for me. Maybe if everyone wasn't so desperate to get married we wouldn't have a 50% divorce rate in this country.

If your blogs are any indication, I have a feeling a lot of you out there would agree with me on this one.

Trying not to let the bedbugs bite

I assume it's not like this in any other city, but you cannot open a paper or any news website in New York without being attacked by stories of bedbugs infiltrating the subway/hospitals/hotels/retail stores/everywhere. Today alone I've already been bombarded with 3 bedbug stories and as I write this it's not yet 11 AM.

A lot of you know, either from knowing me in real life or perhaps from reading my old blog, that I used to have bedbugs. And let me tell you something: they are No. Fucking. Joke. Here's why.

In October of 2007, I started getting itchy red bumps all over my face, arms and legs. I thought I was having an allergic reaction to something and went to see the dermatologist. After 2 visits and multiple tests, they had no idea what was going on, but new bumps were still cropping up. In the meantime, I missed a day of work because I woke up one day with multiple bumps on my face and neck, in addition to one on my eyelid that made it swell up and look like I got punched in the face. I purchased nearly every type of cover-up I could find at the drug store and combined them all to try and look presentable for a wedding I had to go to. It didn't totally work and you can look at the pictures and see some red on my arms.

The following week, after talking to a coworker who had just finished dealing with bedbugs, I had my lightbulb moment. I told the doctor, and he confirmed that bedbugs made sense. I went back to my coworker to talk to her about it, and she walked me through the hell of getting fumigated. I had no intention of doing that and decided to seek other options.

I went to a hardware store and purchased some anti-bedbug spray. It proved ineffective. I bought a bedbug-fighting powder and turned my bedroom into something that resembled a sloppy cocaine den. That didn't work either. I began a nightly ritual where I would douse myself and my entire room with bug spray before going to bed. I knew it wouldn't work, but at that point I took every suggestion I got.

As I struggled to get rid of the bugs, I was itchy. I had bumps everywhere that ranged from mosquito bite size to as large as if I had been hit with a fastball. The biggest ones were more like welts. Despite the research, there was no rhyme or reason to them. Sometimes they were in groups. Sometimes in lines. Sometimes I would wake up with 7 bites in completely different places. They didn't stop itching for about 2 weeks, by which time I had amassed new ones. I went back to the drug store and purchased all sorts of cortizone creams and moisturizers, and had a few donations from my coworker who didn't need her anti-itch stash anymore. I also began pumping myself full of Claritin and Benadryl and promptly took to taking daily naps with my head down on my desk at work due to the resulting drowsiness.

The thing about bedbugs is that it's not just being itchy that gets to you. I went from being pretty stable to going absolutely out-of-my-brain crazy. I was afraid to go to sleep knowing I would get bitten. I would delay going to bed as long as possible, and then I could never fall asleep because I knew the bedbugs would come out as soon as I stopped moving around (they're attracted to warmth, carbon dioxide, and things that stay still). When I finally did fall asleep I would wake up itchy, either from old bites or new ones (or both). So I didn't get much rest those days. This fear of going to bed only multiplied into an overall uneasiness about going home, because I soon realized that I could get bitten while watching TV or sitting at my computer. If I wasn't moving, they were biting. So I was walking around like a panicky zombie who, as I already mentioned, was uncomfortable due to the itching and self-conscious from the welts. I was on edge and started snapping at my coworkers (and probably my friends too, sorry!) for no reason.

It was after the failure of the aforementioned powder that I knew I had to get fumigated. I called and left a message with my landlord. No response. I left another messge. No response. I called again and unleashed all the fury of a Jewish Woman Scorned on the answering machine and finally, someone picked up the phone and gave me the information for the exterminator. I called them and learned that they refused to make an appointment until the apartment was "prepped." They sent me a prep sheet and I got to work. But as it turned out, this was no easy task.

I had to pack up my room as if I was moving out. Every little thing had to be thrown in plastic bags and moved out of the room. Though I worked at top speed, I had to wait for my roommate, who worked 14 hour days and came home only to sleep and who, I should mention, NEVER got bitten, to do the same. She slowed down the process and there was nothing I could do about it. So as I waited for her to pack up her room, I got bitten.

I was able to schedule the exterminator after we had made substantial packing progress. And thus began an awesome week which involved packing in the earlier days, getting fumigated on Wednesday, heading to NJ for Thanksgiving the following day, coming back to New York on Friday to unpack my life from the garbage bags, and oh, taking this little test called the GMAT on Saturday.

Once I had unpacked and the GMAT was a thing of the past, I felt home free. On Monday morning, I woke up to go to work and had fresh new bites. I resisted the urge to tear out my hair and instead called the exterminator. He informed me that it's perfectly normal to get bitten after fumigation because the bugs don't die unless they come out of hiding and walk through the poison. So essentially I had to lay there in bed as bait for them because if someone wasn't there to draw them out, they wouldn't die. In the words of Adam Sandler, "Once again, things that could have been brought to my attention YESTERDAY!!!" Grumble.

So I kept getting bitten for a bit, but as promised, it stopped. And eventually I had cycled every article of clothing I owned through either the laundry or the dry cleaner (they were ALL supposed to go to the dry cleaner but hello, that's expensive). I added to the ridiculous list of bedbug-related costs by purchasing brand new everythings for my bed. Things were actually, finally, thankfully, better.

Fast forward to several months later, July of 2008. I had been sleeping peacefully in my brand new sheets/pillows/comforter for over 6 months. I awoke in the middle of the night with an itchy face. I lay there scratching for probably about a minute before I realized that my bedbugs were back. I broke down in tears because I knew the whole process was just beginning again. And it did, start to finish. Because that's just how the fucking bedbug story goes.

"It's a funny thing about life...

...if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it."

My dad emailed me this quote from author Somermet Maugham after one of the many job-related talks I've had with my parents. The fact that my dad has an appropriate book quote or recommendation for any situation is testament to the fact that he is smart in a way I will never be. And also that he reads a crapton.

The point is, my job search is still in full force. The main problem with it is that while I'm flexible about what I could do next, the thing I really DON'T want to do is exactly the thing I was doing before business school. And so my resume, which no matter how much rearranging or emphasizing of other things will still always show what I was doing before school, speaks really well to recruiters and potential employers about me being awesome at the very thing I don't want to do and therein, my lovely readers, lies the problem.

Despite the fact that I have an MBA which is sort of the Unofficial Degree of Career Changers, I still get comments such as, "you don't have the required experience to get a job doing anything else." This would be true except NO IT'S NOT. I'm bright, I learn things quickly, and why the crap would I spend all that money to go to school just to do the same thing I was doing before at the same salary? (Do not even get me started on the people who say there's no way I'm getting my desired salary increase because I "haven't worked in 2 years" ALSKJFOAIWJERLKASJ).

I am not willing to settle. This is especially true because what I'm asking for is, compared to other MBAs, nothing. Last week I turned down a second interview. It was a job I didn't want to do and over an hour outside the city (!). It was a fancy firm that supposedly "only hires from the Ivies" and "pays a shitload" and sure, I was flattered that they were interested but I just couldn't imagine myself in that kind of role and frankly, I didn't feel like I needed an MBA to do it or that I would be proud to tell people that that was my job.

So I'm working as a receptionist until I find that close-enough-to-the-dream job, which seems all sorts of contradictory because answering a phone and making sure the fridge is always stocked with Diet Cokes (SERIOUS JOB PERK) certainly does not require an MBA and of course I don't sit here with my head held high knowing that I suffered through a 7.5 hour long Accounting review session just to pass the final, get a decent grade and eventually land myself here. But there's a comfort in knowing that this is only temporary and that after 3 weeks of working here I will have made enough money to pay off the massive chunk of interest that has accumulated on one of my student loans.

I will turn down as many interviews as I have to if it means that it leaves me open for something better to come along. I worked too hard to settle.

The curse of an old cell phone

This past weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to hang out with some fabulous bloggers (I would link to all of you but I'm lazy) at BlogHer. Not that I was part of the conference (on my unemployed budget? heavens no), but I managed to snag some people's free time when they weren't meeting Padma or eating cheeseburgers or whatever else they were doing over at the Hilton.

There were a number of moments over the weekend where I just had to laugh to myself because, as is sort of understandable for people in social media, everyone was on their iPhones and BlackBerries all the time. I mean, ALL. THE. TIME. The reason I thought this was funny is because I think I'm the lone person remaining in the 20-something age bracket who does not possess a smartphone.

I KNOW. I will give you all a moment to go grab some Benadryl for the hives you just broke out in at the thought of having a phone on which you cannot check email.

I've been meaning to upgrade to a BlackBerry ever since I became eligible for a new phone almost a year and a half ago. The thing is, my little LG flip phone is the most reliable thing I have ever encountered in life, and for awhile I was loathe to fix something that technically ain't broke. Now that it's come to the point where I really WANT to upgrade (phone still works like a charm, though), I refuse to do so until I have a job. It will be both a congratulatory present to myself as well as a lovely confirmation that I can now officially afford the inevitable increase in cell phone bill that will come with having to pay for data.

My lack of a smartphone has never really bothered me all that much, mostly because I've been able to work around it and it doesn't inconvenience anyone other than myself. However, I was reading BusinessWeek yesterday and came across something truly disturbing.

33 percent of iPhone users find out-of-date gadgets a turnoff.

As if I wasn't already doomed to fail at the NYC dating scene. I'm now doubly doomed.

Epic fail. Going to hang my head in out-of-date phone shame.

UPDATE: I wrote this post this morning and planned on posting it when I got home from my temp job (you know, one of the few temp jobs that didn't reject me because I don't have enough admin experience). I have since been offered this job on a full-time basis and turned it down (I am not a receptionist, thank you), but negotiated a way to stay here until I find a permanent job that I actually want and maybe needed an MBA for. Does this mean I am now allowed to get myself a Blackberry? Or is that cheating? Does having a fake job to go to until I get a real job count for something? I can't decide.

Where ya from, you sexy thing?

Yesterday I was apparently having a very sexy day.

I left my apartment fairly early to run some errands, and as I headed towards the subway I battled the usual onslaught of pedestrians. As one particularly ragged, possibly homeless man stumbled past me, he looked in my direction and said, "Morning, sexy."

Now, lots of women are going to disagree with me on this, but I love getting compliments from randoms on the street. Or anywhere else, really. You know why? Because no matter how old or gross or homeless or drunk you are, you are still entitled to your opinion. And if your opinion is that I'm looking particularly fabulous today, I salute you.

Fast forward many hours to 2 in the morning. My friend Anna and I, the lone survivors from the initial group of 7 partiers, were dancing it up at Nexus Lounge in a way that signals to the world, "Yes, I took shots of Jager on an empty stomach and am feeling the subsequent effects." Over the next 2 hours, we were approached by a wide variety of men who wanted to dance with us. While I'm not particularly crazy about dancing with random men as I feel that they inhibit my ability to dance the way I want to, I had no problem with all the nice things they had to say. There was a "sexy" and a "hot" and a "you have nice hips" and even a "you dance like a black girl," which I take as an extreme compliment even though I know better than to think it's true.

As if that wasn't enough, I arrived home shortly after 4:30 in the morning, and as usual said hello to the night doorman who is an adorable old man that has probably been working in the building longer than I've been alive. He stopped me and said in his thick Eastern European accent, "You such a nice lady. Very beautiful."

And then he gave me my favorite compliment of the day: "Number 1."

Number 1!! Can't beat that, even coming from a doorman 60 years my senior.

Today, I left my apartment again, feeling pretty pleased with how I looked considering that I was running on 5 hours of sleep and hadn't had time to shower off last night's dancey sweatiness.

Yet again I walked towards the subway. I had my iPod on, and was jolted out of my musical daze when I noticed that a man leaning against a brick building was talking to me.

As if to show me that no one should ever get too high on themselves, and in a way that reminded me just how quickly everything in New York changes, he said:

"You're going to hell."

Randomness

I am low on things to say these days. Or rather, I think of things to say but then I'm too busy drinking unlimited margaritas and climbing on skee ball machines to take pictures next to my awesome score and going to the Jersey shore (GTL baby) to hang out with my parents, play pinball and take phone interviews on the beach.

I don't really know why I came back from the shore, actually. My parents' beach condo rules.

I guess I had to resume my life of eating 10 cent wings with Crapface, getting $10 Maroon 5 concert tickets and getting rejected from more temp jobs because I "don't have enough admin experience."

I am also studying to be a certified project manager. Booyah.

Also, I think my grandma's cell phone keeps butt dialing me.

As always, I love New York. So much.

End nonsense.