[cue pomp and circumstance]

1. If you don't know what you want to study in college - and most people don't honestly have it set in stone - community college is a really fantastic alternative.

I was unmotivated to go to school, didn't really know what I wanted to do and didn't like the idea of leaving home right after high school. For a year, as my friends packed up and went to school, I took classes and worked and it was the best decision I could have made.

It should be noted that people will talk and wonder why you didn't leave for school. This is fine. Come June, your parents will explain later that the college you are transferring to in August is actually paying you to go. This is sweet.

2. Take as many pictures as you can. It doesn't matter how dumb they are.

3. Buy and sell your books on half.com or Amazon. You should get about three times more than you would at the bookstore. If you need a book, like, that day, make a friend in your class. It is going to be weird having to talk to people. It's worth it.

4. Turn off the BLEEP! BLOOP! noises on your AIM in the dorm. Encourage others to do the same.

5. STUDY ABROAD. You will learn more about yourself and another culture than you would in any classroom; having explored a country and owning a passport is a very good thing. It's scary and expensive and so worth it.

Now throw your cap.

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I need a new voicemail message. Just like away messages, I obsess over my voicemail and feel obligated to change the outgoing message all too frequently. I've had a bunch:

As recorded by my sister Kat:

WHAT UP, THIS IS SETH'S PHONE. um. It's not being answered right now, so um, leave a message and I'll get back to you later. peace.

That one confused some people. Most messages would start, like, "um, I'm calling for Natalia..."

When I was getting calls about internships and had to be super-professional at all times:

You've reached Natalia Lastname at 614-mynumber. I can't come to the phone right now, but if you'll leave your name, number and a brief message I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks! Bye!

Barf.

As recorded by me, Matt and Andy and to be performed in a sort of round and then holding the note out to create a barbershop quartet-esque chord:

THIS IS NATALIA'S PHONE LEAVE A MESSAGE
THIS IS NATALIA'S PHONE LEAVE A MESSAGE
THIS IS NATALIA'S [laughter]

CALL ME BACK!

We had been drinking.

As recorded by Kat, sung to the tune of the Three's Company theme song (can't really explain the S Club in that video, sorry):

Come and knock on our door! This is Natalia's phone! And I'mnotpickingitUPrightNOWbut if you leavemeamessage then I'll call you back! da-da-da-da. That would be so dapple...

So for now, mine is the kids I babysit and I saying "hey girl hey" and then the standard "leave a message...kbye!"

I am open to suggestions. Also, what does your voicemail message say right now?

"Regret" is a strong word, but I wish I would've kept playing piano.

I started taking piano lessons when I was ten. Mary Fran, the go-to church pianist, would come over once a week and teach me and my sibs songs from what we deemed The Baby Book. Said book contained songs like the deliciously un-PC "The Indian Song" and a tale of equine adoration called Horse Sense. Beats one and three (it's 6/8) are capitalized because that's what we intentionally played (and sang) loudly:

I'm RIding the PLAINS on my FAVorite HORSE!!!
His HORSE sense is KEEN so we NEVer get LOST!
You MAY think I'm CRAZY but ONE thing I'll SAY
This HORSE has more SENSE than a BUNdle of HAY!

My poor parents.

Anyway, I got through the first book and decided that was enough ivory tickling for me. But since then, the piano's sat in our living room gathering dust and occasionally obliging us for rousing renditions of Heart and Soul, Chopsticks and that buh-duh-duh-DUH-DUH! song you play on the black keys.

I felt particularly ambitious a few summers ago and printed out sheet music to Praise You (well, that's more like four measures than actual music), Fur Elise and Only Hope by the artist Mandy Moore (Chris loves her) and learned those. They're sloppy and I don't play them correctly, but I missed the way it felt to press keys and hear music instead of garbage.

Both of the families I babysit for have kids who play piano, and I'm pretty sure the 11-year-old girl I sit for now is going to quit later this year even though she's getting good. And although I can't make her do anything, I do kind of want to sit her down and tell her that as dumb as it feels now, she needs to keep doing it, lest she be 23 and want nothing more than to sit down with a teacher and have to be reminded to curve her fingers and look at her key signature.

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I was born a Windows girl; I will die a Windows girl.

Just like the hokey commercials spoof, my boyf is a Mac and I'm a PC. This is something we continually (jokingly, but not without standing up for our OSes) argue about.

He says he likes to be able to find his things right away without having to look for them; I say I like the challenge of finding my stuff (and sometimes, you want to hide files, amirite).

He also says he never gets viruses because he has a Mac. While this is true, anyone who has successfully killed spyware knows the sheer joy and the ohyesIdidjustslaythatgarbage feeling of eradicating harmful files from your computadora. Honestly, I like the feeling of knowing I can control how things work and occasionally totally screwing things up. I'll hit the "advanced user" button on the install because I know what I'm doing. Sometimes I download stuff by accident and it gets ugly. But I can handle it.

Last, he says he can do more artsy stuff on his computer, which is admittedly accurate. My artsy stuff is limited to making stick people drawings on Paint, making awesome MIDI arrangements of pop songs on NoteWorthy Composer (that was what I spent the better part of high school doing) and making ringtones with Sound Forge.

I think of Macs as being like

typety type apple iLoveMyMac blah blah blah iMovie Garage Band omg

and PCs being like

!!!!!!!!! yeah pwned!!!!!!1 and stuff

You nerds know what I mean.

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I got an email from YouTube today saying that one of the videos I posted was infringing copyright. I apologize to anyone in Djibouti who cannot see the two-year-old video of me and my sister dancing in her room to Blink-182! I am pleased, however, that people in Tuvalu can watch while their island sinks. Here's what the message said.

As a result, your video is blocked everywhere except in these locations:
American Samoa, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cuba, Fiji, France, Germany, Guam, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kiribati, Mexico, Nauru, Netherlands, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Spain, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, United Kingdom, United States, United States Virgin Islands, Vanuatu

What should I do?
No action is required on your part. In some cases ads may appear next to your video. If you want to make your video available globally you can use AudioSwap to replace the audio in your video with a track from our library of pre-licensed songs.

Under certain circumstances, you may dispute the copyright claim from UMG. These may be any of the following:

    * the content is mistakenly identified and is actually completely your original creation;
    * you believe your use does not infringe copyright (e.g. it is fair use under US law);
    * you are actually licensed by the owner to use this content.

WOW. brb looking up fair use

edit: interestingly enough, there's a woman who had the same thing happen - and successfully sued the record company. She posted a video of her kids dancing to a Prince song, had her video taken down and reinstated six weeks later.

I think I might hit the Blink guys up on Twitter.

So I bought a Ped Egg yesterday at Rite Aid after being slightly emotionally scarred by the infomercials but completely intrigued. At a minimum, I walk three miles a day, so my feet are pretty disgusting, especially my heels - I'll spare you a graphic description, but . . . they're gross.

I opted not to buy it online because I read horror stories of people being charged $30 for shipping, having their credit card numbers run several times and never actually getting the product, etc., etc., etc. This is why I bought it in stores.

(omg, you can also buy a Shamwow there. I thought about buying one, but I don't spill enough stuff to merit purchasing any sort of choppable polymer cleanup thingy.)

Anyway, I got it home, read the directions and went to town on my feet. It takes a while to get the motion down - you have to go left to right instead of up and down, and for a while, it doesn't feel like it's doing anything, so it did take a couple of minutes.

This is also kind of disgusting, but I kept checking the scrapings to see how much it picked up. It got a lot off of my foot, but I was a little underwhelmed. I think I was expecting to see large chunks of pure foot in there and that wasn't the case.

It's easy to clean - warm, soapy water, let it dry, store it somewhere - and is small/inconspicuous enough that you can stick it on your shelf and not have someone say "OH MY GOD IS THAT THAT GRATER THING? I CAN USE IT ON MY FEET, YES?"

So anyway, now my heels are all pretty (not sparkling like they are on the package, but I threw out my body glitter from seventh grade a while ago) and I think it was $9.99 well spent.

A+!

My college roommate is in Germany on a Fulbright, but his Cleveland pride is something even a hop across the pond can't change. He sent me this video and I've watched it about 347 times over the past day and a half (caution, one quick f-word, so wear headphones if it's not kosher):

BRILLIANT. My favorite video of the city where I live now is this one (it sums up a lot):

ha! what have you been watching on YouTube lately? (if you say Susan Boyle...well...don't)

Here are various Xanga anecdotes:

I started my first Xanga on August 1, 2003 at the insistence of my darling sister Kat. I had a blog on another site but it was mostly for ranting about my junior year Brit Lit teacher and posting surveys that asked about your shoe size and your propensity for using certain adjectives to describe your group of friends. Xanga was something I had to ease into (my first twenty posts or so are one-liners, inside jokes long forgotten) but once I did, I was addicted.

(kat: "i told you that you would fall in love with xanga. i knew it.")

I had, like, one sub but liked looking at my other friends' sites because this was before footprints started - I remember one of the girls I went to school with subbed to Dan and I was, like, whoaaaaaaa, she knows him? also, why does theology necessitate a café?! Little did I realize she just liked replying to his posts. I WAS YOUNG; I DIDN'T KNOW.

Unrelated, but one time I was at Borders and I heard these two girls talking about "zonga" and I laughed really hard. I've heard "ex-anga" and "zango," too.

Anyway, since (note: not "because" because of temporality!) I said peace out to Ohio after college, moved to NYC, started working here September 5, 2007 and have met about a bajillion Xangans, mostly online but some offline, too. One introduced me to a pretty dashing gentleman; one sent me cookies when I was having a crappy day; one sent me a picture of his truck and told me about what he did before he retired; one helped me keep my Misto addiction alive after killing spammers on Valentine's Day; one sent me a postcard from Croatia! I have scary dreams about some users. I've been out to lunch with two Xangans. I haven't married a fellow blogger like John has, but maybe someday. Time will tell, I 'spose.

I guess the bottom line is that you never think that a website you take part in can become such a big part of your life. I went from blogging sentence long blogs here to checking Datingish at 3 a.m. and pouring my heart out when things got crazy. To know you have a big support system like that is pretty incredible, you guys.

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uh, so I had a dream that a Xangan somehow procured the drafts of three of my Nanowrimo novels (not good ones, mind you) and was threatening to post them on the site. When I asked this particular user where he/she had gotten these drafts, he/she informed me that they came from Cloris Leachman.

WHAT

what was your most vivid xanga dream? my other one was when a certain Evil Xanga Klique opponent was stalking me and my sister in a hotel and was somehow managing to break through the door locks and yell at me. that one was actually really scary...

oh happy easter and whatnot, too. the bunny brought me a bunch of chocolate - I'm sure my dentist will be thrilled

He picks me up but lets me drive. We go to 7/11, procure Slurpees and compare brain freezes*; following cranial defrosting, we go to an olden-timey arcade and play Skee-Ball until my arm is sore*. We trade in the tickets we have accrued from said ball throwing for some sort of plasticky delight (preferably a guy with a parachute that we can throw) and leave.

We go back to his place and bake cupcakes* (not a metaphor) and eat them until we either run out or feel like we may explode, take a post-baking power nap, wake up feeling too lazy to do anything else and spend the rest of the afternoon hanging out, talking, whatever.

END

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* = I have actually done this on a date and it was splendid

also, random, but if you remember my ranting about not liking "best" as an email signoff (see fourish entries ago), I was hoist with my own petard the other day - I had to email someone I didn't really know and I was, like, what do I use?! Cheers? It stressed me out so I just wrote -Natalia. That works, right?