What I've done, what I'm doing, where I'm going

I can't believe that it's already Labor Day weekend. The hell?

I can't believe that classes started at Ithaca College two weeks ago, and I'm not there. In my mind, it's still summer vacation and I'm just waiting to go back to school. Am I going to feel this way when there's snow on the ground?

It's weird. My super-long winter break before Argentina was similar, because all my friends were in class and I was home. Working at my dad's office translating letters for dental patients into Spanish, and going to the gym every day because I had nothing better to do. But this time there's no classes on any continent to look forward to, and I'm not going back to Ithaca as a student again any time soon (although I am trekking up for apple fest. Nothing can ever separate me from apple fest!).

Instead, I'm working. Two weeks after graduating from Ithaca, I packed two suitcases and made my way down to Washington, D.C. for an internship with American Rights at Work. They're an amazing organization dedicated to promoting the fact that workers' rights are human rights, and that every worker has the right to join a union.

They're one of the main reasons I haven't been blogging here this summer. Because I've been blogging over there. Check it out. I've been writing quite a bit! I really love it at ARAW. I get to write about human rights every day, and I'm learning a crazy amount about labor laws and unions in the United States. My articles about the Tompkins County Workers' Center and Ithaca Coffee have really taken me far!

Next week I'm starting another internship, with the Pan American Development Foundation. They're a really large charitable organization, and I'm really super excited to be working on Latin American issues again. In Spanish! God, I've gotten so rusty with that this summer. I went to a party last night and tried to speak Spanish. Probably didn't help that I was drinking...but boy did I suck.

So this summer's been really crazy. I graduated from college, got my own place in Washington D.C., and am simultaneously trying to act like a grown-up and am waiting for the morning I need to get up at 7 a.m. to register for classes. A morning that won't come again until I decide to go to grad school. But I need a real job and not an internship for that to happen first!

Keep an eye out on the blog, now that I have my life in some kind of semblance of order I'm going to be posting regularly again. In the next few days I'm definitely going to be posting pictures of my fabulous new house and town, and some of the better blog entries I've done for American Rights at Work. Along with a review of the CELEBRITY TWEET-A-THON I helped organize! I certainly miss my old life, but my new one is really turning into an exciting adventure. Love!

Roll Into My Heart, Baby

So at the beginning of the school year (only three weeks ago?!), my friends and I sat down and made a bucket list. Even though it was only August, we could feel graduation breathing down our necks and decided to make a list of everything on and off-campus that we had yet to experience. Even though we've been in Ithaca for almost four years now, there was really SO much in the area that we never did.

I blame homework and alcohol.

But ANYWAY, tonight my friends Katie, Brian and I were able to scratch one of the most important things on our bucket list: go to a roller derby match.

A very brief explanation of roller derby: two teams of women skate in a tight group around a circle, and try to keep certain players, called jammers, from breaking through the circle. Whenever the lead jammer passes through the pack, they get points for every person they pass.

Knocking people down and/or throwing them out of the ring is ok.

The teams: the Ithaca Sufferjets versus Buffalo's Devil Dollies.

The final score: 131-130, Sufferjets. The final point was earned in like, seriously, the last 20 or so seconds.

The experience: I want to find my old skates and run over bitches. It was amazing. I don't typically get pumped up for sporting events...ever...but this roller derby match had me out of my seat and screaming. I would have been cursing too, but Summer Bludgeon's mom and baby girl were sitting right behind me. I'm a respectful spectator when I want to be.

Then again, Summer Bludgeon was seriously skating the shit out of the Devil Dollies and got thrown into the penalty box at least four times. While her family kept cheering. Maybe they wouldn't have minded if I started screaming for their daughter/mother to kick people in the face with her roller skates.

After witnessing a match, I really think that roller derby is a good role model for little girls. Goodness knows, there were certainly a TON of them at the rink to watch. The roller girls show that you don't need to be a certain size or shape to play sports, and that because you're a girl you don't have to be dainty. It also really showed teamwork, with skaters in the pack working together to get their jammer through the group and in the lead.

Anyone with the balls (figuratively speaking) to run people over in roller skates can play. This is a sport where girls can get dirty, act and dress a little crazy and have a ton of fun.

Get me some skates and fishnet stockings and sign me up.

Here's some photos from the match, brought to you by Katie Venetsky. The quality isn't super great, but that could have something to do with the fact that everyone was skating in circles.


skating in a giant circle and out for blood.

Ithaca has the lead jammer!

The Ithaca Sufferjets just before the national anthem.

New Travels

Summer's not over quite yet, but my vacation almost is. Last week I quit my job and have been using the extra time to pack up the bags I feel like I've just unpacked from Buenos Aires.

Saturday is Ithaca, until mid-October.

Home is kind of becoming something of a posting station between my travels.

Over the weekend I decided to check some cookbooks out of the local library, to you know, practice not killing people. I grabbed a copy of Moosewood Restaurant Celebrates, a collection of recipes from the Moosewood Collective dedicated to all kinds of holidays and celebrations.

The book has a lot of references to Ithaca, from local celebrations to tofu kan to the Tibetan population and its influences. And it hit me, it finally hit me, that I haven't been in Ithaca since December.

This is going to be a school year dedicated to really getting to experience the Ithaca outside my campus. More hippie organizations, gorges, festivals, art shows, contra dances, EVERYTHING I can possibly get my hands on.

Oh, and getting a job.

Other super-important question: what should I do with this blog? One thing hasn't changed since Argentina: I'm still an attention whore. If I kept blogging about random happenings, would you guys still read it?

People who say "they are blogging for themselves" are stupid attention whores that like to make pretend that they are ignorant of the fact that they are attention whores. I am not one of those whores.

Example: I had a really bad experience a few semesters ago where my professor told the class we had to blog about every single assigned reading, which I did. Apparently about three months into the class, I was the only one that still did and no one told me. Even the professor gave up reading the damn things.

I had a bit of a blog meltdown after that one. Not pretty, kind of scary.

Go me.

So what do you guys, if anyone still reads this since I haven't updated in almost a month, think I should do with this thing?