Sunday, May 12, 2013

a new dawn, a new day, a new life

I'm going to write a rare morning post because I just checked last night's post and it was incomprehensible to the point of concern. I wasn't actually that drunk...I was just exhausted (I hadn't stayed up until 2:30 in a long time, and I'm still a little bit on midwestern time, so it definitely felt like 3:30 or 4:30), and I remember falling asleep over my keyboard and having trouble remembering the words that I wanted to use. So, suffice it to say I had a good time, but I was merely in the same state of mind that I was during that memorable Stanford finals period where I tried to argue in a paper that Russian intellectuals like to eat at Senor Taco - I was not at the point where someone had roofied me. And, like that paper, I've awoken with a clear head and can rectify my mistakes in time.

sssanyway. Yesterday was totally lovely; I took the day off (shocker) in the interest of seeing friends and having some semblance of a life. Priyanka's birthday was last week, so Adit invited a bunch of people over for what was supposed to be a lunch party. It should surprise none of you that a lunch party turned into an all day/all night extravaganza of fun. I went over a little after noon and spent close to three hours hanging out in their house and backyard, catching up with them, John and Jess, and some other randoms (who are probably not randoms to Adit and Priyanka, but they were to me and I intend to keep them that way because I'm a curmudgeon who has no time for new friends). I also, quite shockingly, saw one of my first managers from my first go-round at the day job oh-so-many years ago; his younger sister is also friends with Adit/Priyanka, and they apparently hang out with Bill sometimes as well. I did not know this. I also didn't know he was still alive (hence my shock); the last I had heard, he'd been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer a year and a half ago, and since neither I nor any of my friends at work had heard any further updates, I kind of assumed that the statistical odds of living with stage four lung cancer (very low) had claimed him. But he looked good and seemed to be in good spirits despite having had chemo every three weeks for the past sixteen months. Crazy.

I left the party around three to come home for another crazy development...some researcher at USC wanted to interview me about this blog for research he's doing, and he had a film crew with him who are filming a documentary on people who blog frequently about their personal lives. I knew I was a dying breed in this respect, since I have no friends who still blog and most blogs are now career-focused (i.e. fashion or food blogs where the person is hoping to build an audience/get ad revenue). But apparently I'm such a dying breed that my blog may be of interest to 'science' and there are potentially other researchers out there who have/will scrape it because I've got what must be approaching a million words of free content about daily life. Odd.

But the people were v. nice; the researcher asked me some questions, and then the documentary guy asked me some questions, and two other guys filmed it all. And I suppose my key takeaway is that I don't care that this is public, since I came to terms years ago about what I share here (my daily life in all its minutiae) and what I don't (some personal subjects, emotional reactions to or criticisms about friends, family, coworkers, other writers, etc.). And I will probably only stop if Sara Ramsey gets so famous that this becomes a liability, but even then I might just keep going and be more circumspect.

For what it's worth, the researcher also said that I was very good (better than most of the other subjects) at keeping my identity secret - which surprised me, since I wasn't trying that hard, and also since my blog is one of the first search results for my actual name. But I suppose that's by design - if you know who I am, I'm very easy to find, but if you find the blog first, it's harder to identify my full name. Similarly, you can get to Sara Ramsey easily from here, but it takes more digging to get here if you start with my writing name. And I think that's probably a good thing.

After the researcher left, I ate some leftover Thai and considered writing for the rest of the night...but my hair and makeup were better than usual, and I succumbed to the lure of going back to Adit and Priyanka's. I had a most excellent time at the second part of the party; Katrina was there, and Chandlord eventually came back (for the third time, although the first two were during my initial absence), and I built a friendship with Jesse (aka Jasvinder) and Maya - Jesse was in SLE with me, although I'd forgotten that since I wasn't a model pupil and we lived in different dorms. I may have drunkenly promised him that he could be my maid of honor someday, so that's something. I also drank a lot of bourbon (which I don't like) and red wine (which I know I shouldn't drink heavily because it gives me headaches), plus a tequila shot, and this is a recipe for the kind of post I wrote last night.

We did karaoke for hours, but Chandlord/Jesse/Maya/I plotted our escape a little after midnight and went to Sparky's, where I had a v. restorative two-egg breakfast with bacon and hash browns and coffee (which did nothing to help me stay awake to blog last night). Then, Chandlord and I shared a taxi home, I was sober enough to wash my face and brush my teeth before writing that disaster of a blog post, and then I fell immediately into a deep, deep slumber.

Now you're caught up, my head doesn't really hurt (thank you, poisonous Diet Mountain Dew), and it's time for me to get cracking. Good day!

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