YU know who.

I just came accross these photos of the Yeshiva University Hurricane Katrina benefit concert, and I had to share.

The pictures speak for themselves.





And you wonder why I am the way I am.

LA and Crash

I know I didn't post anything about my holiday weekend in LA, but that's because I don't have anything to say about it. It was fine. My family's still crazy. I'm handling it better. And that's all I have to say about that.

Mir and I went to the beach and had an enormous amount of fun writing messages in the sand and then taking pictures of ourselves next to them in weird poses:



And a lovely shot of the street I grew up on (well, around the corner) Fairfax:



I watched Crash this weekend so I'm not in the best of LA moods.

Also had a funny incident with my aunt, whose stories everyone enjoys. We went out to dinner and she and my uncle were talking about the Rotary CLub and how much fun it is to be a part of, etc. My aunt then turned to me and said, "...and you know, they let people of all ages and sexual orientations in. You know, it even says in their bylaws that people of all sexual orientaions must be allowed to join!" So there's an awkward pause where I try to figure out if my aunt is hinting that I'm a lesbian and then my mom says, "Well speaking of that, or not speaking of that at all, what's everyone ordering?"

No new posts, wah wah.

Cooking/baking Stephanie is back! After a pretty long hiatus, I'm totally back in cooking land. I baked up a crazy storm this weekend (white bread, banana bread, cookies) and bought ingredients to make even more stuff. I'm having my friend Debra over for dinner tonight and made a simple yet luscious dinner: zucchini quiche, a green salad, and chocolate pudding for dessert. I'll post the quiche recipe tomorrow from work...
I also signed up for Urban Organic again. They're pretty cheap, and I think with fall coming it'll be fun to have all kinds of squash and apples and greens delivered to me. I lay in my bed this morning with a pile of cookbooks around me, picking out all kinds of stuff I want to try.
You're all invited, one by one, for dinner parties, yay!

In other news, I just realized that I should have been updating on my nose-ring situation, with pictures and gruesome details. For those who haven't seen me lately my newly re-done nose piercing had become infected, swelled up, and turned black. It looked like Beck Weathers' nose. (Ugh, I just tried to link to a picture of Beck, but couldn't bear to. If you must know, google image search poor Beck and have a look.) ANYWAY, it's pretty much all better. Phew.
It wasn't a flesh-eating bacteria after all-- so sorry to disapoint Emil.

Ah, airlines. If only I'd known that they would be the least of my problems.

There's so much to say, and so little time as I hide here in my mom's room. It's only matter of time until they realize I'm awake and come get me so I'll make it brief.

LA, 10/05

-There's no kitchen here, and they're having people over for dinner tonight and tomorrow. No one wants to talk about this or acknowledge the fact that they usually prepare fore these holidays weeks in advance. No one wants to come up with a Plan B either. Trust me, I tried.

-I had an asthma attack and had to go the ER at 2am last night for a breathing treatment.

-My aunt and uncle made me go to dinner at 5pm so that they could be home in time for Sixty Minutes. My aunt also made sure to tell me that the Rotary Club (of which they are members) is really gay-friendly. Hints anyone?

-I found my grandmother standing on a chair re-organizing her closet. I, of course, freaked out (she's 93!) and asked her to come down. She wouldn't, but she did let me take a picture.

Is it alzheimer’s or too much o’ the green?

I am such an idiot. I don’t know how I actually get by on the planet while stll being so stupid.
Last week, I decided to go home to California for the Jewish holidays. I had already decided not to but then I thought about how if I was starting school in March I probably wouldn’t want to go home before then, so here I am. I made sure to limit the amount of days I actually spent at home so that I wouldn’t want to die before the end of the trip. I actually bought the ticket eight days before I was scheduled to fly. I didn’t notice anything strange about the ticket at the time, but a few days later when I was giving my mom the info so that she could pick me up at the airport, I told her that the plane left at four and landed at midnight. After I hung up, it registered that that was weird, but I just put it out of my head. On Thursday I looked up the info at work and copied it into my planner-- again registering that the times seemed weird on the return as well: leaving LA at seven and getting in at eleven seemed too good to be true, but I again, just ignored it. On Friday evening I talked to Kelly about it, finally bothering to calculate. “Wait, so if I leave NYC at 4 I should arrive in LA at 9 o’clock Eastern time, which is 6 o’clock LA time. What’s going on?” I AGAIN put this out of my head, and we go make dinner. About halfway through making dinner, I decide to quickly take a look at the flight info and see what’s up. At this point I think I must be looking a something wrong, or that there’s a typo or somthing. Also bear in mind that this is at about 8pm, not even 24 hours before I’m supposed to fly. pull it up on the computer and there it is, right on the screen: LA to NYC! I TOTALLY reversed the locations and bought a ticket to New York instead of to LA! Do you believe that?? I called home and then called the airline, convinced that I was just screwed and not going to be able to fly at all. Here’s where it gets even more ridiculous. They said I would have to pay a change fee of $25, as well as any fare difference. So the ticket I bought 8 days ago for $261 is now $683. I don’t agree to this, of course, and ask what my options are. Well, they can just cancel the ticket and give me a credit, but it has to be with the same airline. I ask my mom and she says to go ahead and do this and just buy a new ticket (on a different airline) for the next day instead. So: the original ticket is on American Airlines. The flight I want is also on American Airlines, but now listed at $683. On the SAME website, Travelocity, Alaska Airlines has a flight “operated by American” for $361. In case this isn’t clear yet, let me point out that these two tickets, for sale on the same day on the same website are for the EXACT same airplane. The only difference is that I can’t use my credit towards the new ticket because it’s listed as Alaska Air. So I still have to just buy a new ticket and save the credit for later. Jeezus.


Update: I'm now "home" in LA and able to post this. It's Sunday morning. I already want to die.