Quote of the Day: F. Scott Fitzgerald Edition

In the course of packing, I found a bunch of old books today, and when I say "a bunch"  I mean boxes and boxes.  Way too many boxes.  (Friends of the Library, here I come!)  It's entirely contradictory to efficient packing but  I couldn't help but flip through a few of my old favorites and found this little gem highlighted in my copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise:

“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.”

 

 

Anna’s Top 3 Worst Online Openers of All Time*

Some situations in life are just inherently uncomfortable.

 Say “yes sir” to a ma’am on the phone.  Oops.

 Introducing yourself to someone…for the third time.  There’s nothing quite like that quietly irritated “we’ve met before” to make me squirm. 

 And then there’s writing a blind email to someone whose profile you saw on an online dating site which in my opinion,  re-writes the book on uncomfortable.

The initial “what’s up” email requires you to cautiously express interest while simultaneously conveying your hardcore awesomeness to a complete stranger.  It helps to be funny, or witty, or both and you have to do it in no more than five sentences.   To helpfully add to the challenge and discomfort as you try to compose this tidy little manifesto, the site chimes in occasionally with helpful little tips like: “your future match is 72% more likely to respond if you don’t use emoticons!”  (And while I’m on that train of thought: eff-that!   I’m an over-emoticon-er and it’s best that people know that up front.)

 My point is that writing an opening email is wicked awkward.  Some people are better than others, most of us do our best, and then there are those certain few rock stars who just close their eyes and swing for the fences.   Most of them get a little leeway just for the effort but from time to time, some are just down right spectacular in their horribleness and so in reverse order I bring you: 

Anna’s Top 3 Worst Online Openers of All Time*

 
#3: dunno wut to say.  Chat?,, text my cell: three5 2, 77six seventeen 2 six. (numbers have been changed .)

Wait…what does this even mean?  And who writes a phone number like that?

#2:  I may not be Fred Flintsone but I bet I can still make your Bedrock.  Email if interested.

Two things, first: Ew.  Second – did you just quote Young Money at me?

 

#1: Knock, knock, knock.  Is the sweet princess home?

As much as I wish that I were kidding on this one…I’m not.  I don’t think I could have made it up if I tried.  Some poor, unfortunate gentleman caller actually tried this, which in turn required me to call upon all of my self-control to keep from vomiting on my laptop.  The fact that this even got thrown down in writing begs the question: has this particular brand of patronizing, infantile nonsense work for him before? 

 

*And by "of all time" I mean the 6 months that I spent on Match.com

 

 

 

The rant I'm too frustrated not to post today

Bye bye love, I'll catch you later

Got a left foot down on my accelerator

and the rearview mirror torn off

I ain't never lookin' back and that's a fact

 - JoDee Messina 

I love the morning light in my parent’s house.  Admittedly I don’t see it all that often; I’m up quite a bit before the sun on weekdays and it takes a lot more than pretty light to pry me out of bed before sunrise on the weekends these days. But that’s neither here nor there.   All of the living areas and most of the windows in the house face west, and so the morning light in the family room is clear, diffuse and greenish-blue. I think that it’s the trees.

It's my last weekend in the house and I got up early this morning to lay on the couch with a cup of coffee while the sun came up.  I will miss the windows and the trees, especially early in the mornings.  It’s okay though because I know that I’ll  get to see it again.

I am excited to move; to quote my Mama: forward ever, backwards never.  And there’s so much going forward that I am excited for: to live with my Meredith again (let’s hope that we don’t drive John nuts), to be closer to school and to have roomies again.  I have loved (loved!) living alone but I’ll admit that it probably won't hurt for me to have just a little bit less solitude in my life.  It also doesn’t hurt that future roomies are both gigantic smartie pants’, can you say free homework help? J

Still, as I start packing and getting ready for the move I can’t help but remember moving in. There’s a certain amount of sadness in it, there always is when dealing with extinct dreams.  I am relieved though to find that there's only a little bit of sadness, I finished mourning the death of the hopes and dreams went with that relationship a long time ago.  The more I pack, the more I find that while I am not sad, I am pissed.  My Mama has always been pretty strongly opposed to that word.  Adverse enough that I’ve spent the last twenty minutes trying to come up with less vulgar, equally as accurate word and I have failed.  I can’t avoid it: I am pissed.  

It doesn’t escape me though that when he packed up and went away, I was here helping him.  I made it easy for him to leave yet here I am, packing and dealing with the things that he left behind. What's left behind you ask? Almost every single gift I gave him over our five year relationship.  Nothing quite like packing to know exactly what was left.  I get not wanting to keep things but have the decency to take it with you and dispose of it yourself.  

More than anything though, I’m pissed that I wasn’t smart enough to charge him rent.



 

QotD: true story

I don't like studying.  I hate studying.  But I love learning, learning is beautiful. 

- Natalie Portman

 

Such a true story. 

Quote of Day: Art

Lately, the idea of uniting artistry with science has been my jam.  Not really in the arts in medicine kind of way where you stand in the hallways playing a lute and bringing colored pencils to the hospitalized masses; there's definite benefits to this but it's not what I'm all about. 

I've always been a liberal arts kind of girl but in recent years I've spent more time with science.  I love it exactly for it's science-y-ness but I can't help but see the art and beaty within it as well.  Probably why I love this quote so much...it's what's getting me through this week though, as a reminder of why I started down this path in the first place.

"Nursing is both scientific and artistic.  I seek to combine science with humanism…Nursing is a therapeutic interpersonal process…Nursing is a scientific discipline that derives…its practice base from scientific research”