Blue Sky and Hard Rock

A happy year of the ox to everybody! Hope your holidays were as nice and lovely as mine was... well, with the exception of last night's festivities when I was reluctantly absent as I was medicated (I had a cold) and thus was in deep slumber.

I wake up this morning feeling loads better, thank God, and I discover a friend, whom I haven't seen for months, lying on our couch and watching tv. She has come back to LA from the Bay Area following what can only be described as a catastrophic marriage to a psychotic middle-aged gambler. Turns out she has finally left his penniless ass for good. Not a bad time for making a brand new start.

A couple of cups of coffee (it was too early for the alcoholic goodies I have leftover from my birthday), several stogs, and all horrendous details of the said marriage later; she insists that she is, in fact, done with men and with love forever and is going to direct all her energy to her career. I could not, for the life of me, offer words of aggreement and support to her lunatic decision.

See, I have done quite a lot of reading lately. I have just consumed more literature (in the loosest sense of the word) in a month than I had in the ten months prior. This, I admit, includes Alexa Chung's Girl About Town column in The Independent. It has become a guilty pleasure of mine not because I am enjoying her boring and what-seems-to-be-endless pointless ramblings, which she's trying to pass off as better than crappy writing, but because I am rejoycing in the fact that London's 'It-Girl', the girl who has captured the heart of Alex Turner, could possibly be nothing more than a pretentious, self-absorbed girl with mediocre intelligence. I mean, if the girl was writing a personal blog it would probably have been fine but she is supposed to be a columnist for The Independent, for sobbing out loud.

Anyways, having just finished reading three chic-lits in two consecutive days (a direct result of finding out that the holidays still get a bit lonely when you are single and dateless even if you are surrounded by friends and family), I have finally admitted to myself that I am and will always be a hopeless romantic despite all the disappointments the fates have thrown at me in the love department.

I think it was Harriet Evans and her delightful novel, A Hopeless Romantic, that finally convinced me that I wasn't such a pragmatist after all. It is very unnerving how an author, who lived hundreds of miles away and whom I have never met, could create a character that is a more or less a perfect embodiment of me. I mean, look, she is no Jane Austen but she has restored my faith in finding the right man for me and finally falling in love the way the heroines do in the novels.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a fool to think that I’d meet a handsome marquis or an irresistible vampire who seems to have developed a soul and live happily ever after. I am reasonable enough to know that that stuff only happens in novels (or maybe to a selected, blessed few). I am, after all, just a regular girl. But I do hope of something extraordinary to happen to me in the future and of meeting “The One” for me (images of walks in the beach, coffee shop conversations about books and music, romantic backpacking in Europe and the Caribbean, and quiet times at home, watching tv come to mind) and have my own version of ever after.

Sorry for my dear sweet cousin, Klimie, who I apparently forgot to put on my Christmas list and who apparently noticed the absence of her name. I'd like to give her what she wants most right now - that would be Edward from Twilight - but they haven't discovered that kind of magic that brings book characters to life and make them fall in love with you yet and she has tons of clothes already (she shops on her lunch breaks!) so I really don't know what to get her. Maybe if she takes a week off work and flies to LA from London to visit me, her favorite cousin, then she can pick out the gift herself. Hint hint!

So there I am, donning my favorite gray cardi and my new plaid shirt which my bestfriend gave me, and as usual, my mind is brimming with thoughts about things that could never be. Soon enough, my mom rudely pulls me out of my happy land and asks me if I wanted a party for my coming birthday. I stop, not knowing what to say.

The truth is that it completely slipped out of my mind that I'm having my birthday in a few days. I haven't even really thought about how I wanted to spend it. I guess it is true that as you get older, you are less inclined to get excited about the day you officially get a year older.

I never really thought I would become one of those women who worry about their age. My previous stance was to never worry about the prospect of getting old. Yet here I am, grappling with the fact that I am about to be 26, career-less still and with tons of unfinished lists in my hands - booklist, music list, travel list, list of languages I want to learn, list of things I want to do.

At this rate, I'm beginning to think I'm completely incapable of making something of myself. It's like I'm waiting to be some place wonderful so I can finally start my life when the fact is that my life had already started and I had horribly put up a wall against it. As a rule of life, it's a trap that many people fall into. Though, again, I never thought I'd be one of them.

I am a bit rattled. I think it is high time for me to stop dreaming of sweeping oceans and start sailing them instead.

I'm listening to folk music right now and I'm feeling a bit nostalgic and longing for some small town tranquility and romanticism. Nobody loves big cities more than I do but they can get a little exhausting to live in at times. How I'd give anything just to see the red and gold of New England right now. I miss autumn in New England. It calms me down. It's like folk music. If there's one thing I love about USA, it is its good ol' contemporary folk rock music. Ooh I can listen to Ryan Adams, Jeff Buckley, Elliot Smith and Josh Ritter all day. There's something about their music that relaxes me and makes me want to stop and smell the scent of the earth (although, admittedly, that sounds weird).

If you'd like to listen to some great music, check out the soundtrack from House, M.D. (the tv show with Hugh Laurie as House). It features some really cool stuff.

We finally got our Guitar Hero World Tour last Sunday! So happy! I figured since my wonderful friend Ken, who promised to teach me how to play the drums, is not about to make good of his promise anytime soon; I'll just practice with Guitar Hero. It's not the real deal but it'll do for now until I can afford such lessons.