Why I hate Phoenix, Arizona

I know I promised an update on the Fourth Annual Quidditch World Cup that took place this past weekend in NYC, but I ended up getting exciting news on Tuesday of this week:

I was being flown out to California for an interview with a company that was considering hiring me for the summer!

So...naturally I got sidetracked. Between the two exams, homework assignment, and 12 page lab report, I didn't have time to write about Quidditch.

Oh and this entry? Being typed from my hotel room in CALIFORNIA! Yep! I'm already out here! The email I got Tuesday? It said I needed to be here (San Carlos/Menlo Park*) by today. So here I am!

Anyway, I had to be in California by 3pm PST. This meant that I had to leave Pittsburgh at ridiculous o'clock**. Shock #1 was getting to the airport and finding out that I forgot to book a checked bag with my flight***, so I had to pay $25 to put a tiny duffel inside of the big plane. WTF.

Then, I managed to get through security perfectly fine only to find out a guy from the company I was interviewing with was ON MY FREAKING FLIGHT (Shock #2). What in the HECK?!

Once I got on board, I found out I had a center seat, even though I asked for either window or aisle. No such luck. And I was between two very, very large men, who didn't understand the concept of shoulder room (Shock #3). I didn't sleep much on the flight.

I had unintelligently decided my pre-flight breakfast would be hash browns and a sweet tea from McDonald's. It hit me partway through the flight to Phoenix that I really had to go to the bathroom, but could not wake up overly-large-man to move and let me out. Oh well. I'd wait it out.

My original layover time was about 7 minutes. Enough to get me off the plane and near my next gate when the plane started boarding. My plane arrived in Phoenix almost an hour early. Huzzah! I think, now I have an hour layover!

Wrong. So very wrong.

It turns out another plan was in our arrival gate. And it sucked at leaving on time. We landed at 9:25am. We were supposed to get the gate by 9:55am. At 10:10am the other plane finally left our gate, but then a bunch of planes weren't moving because, for whatever reason, there was a freaking FREEZE of movement of planes at the gate (Shock #4). My boarding time for my connecting flight to California was 10:20am.

FINALLY at 10:20am our plane docks at the gate. At this point I make a mad rush out of the plane and start speed walking**** to my gate.

Oh and by the way. We arrived in gate A25, I needed to be at gate B26. Which was about a half-mile away. Eff.

So I'm speed walking to my gate, barreling past old ladies who move slow and stupid men on cell phones who move slower. I rush past the last bathroom on my way to the gate, at which point it's already 10:37am. My plane departs at 10:50am and it was on time.

I skip the bathroom and run up to my gate. Right when I get there, they announced that I needed to board.

Relief! Sweet sweet relief! Except not. That sweet tea was mocking me. "HEY RITA YOU HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM BECAUSE OF ME HA HA HA"

Curse you, sweet tea. You and your sadistic ways.

So, I'm stuck in a middle seat again (am I surprised? no.) and the second the seat belt sign comes undone I see like 4 people trying to get to the bathroom. NO WAY SUCKERS. I force the guy next to me to get up and run to the back, finally reaching a bathroom.

Once my bathroom and connecting flight ordeal were done, I only had one problem left. The nagging worry that, although my human body had sprinted a half-mile to my departure gate, my little duffel bag had gotten mixed up with other bags and NEVER LEFT PHOENIX.

This nagged and nagged at me. When we landed in San Jose, I ran down to baggage claim and anxiously waited and waited and waited for my little duffel to appear. Finally, after what seemed like every one else's bag had come up on the belt, my little bright-blue duffel appeared! HALLELUJAH!

From there, things seemed freaking FANTASTIC. My pre-reserved van didn't have any other passengers, so my driver took me straight to my hotel, having a great discussion about the show "Cash Cab", airport security, and why the news sucks. He also referred to me as "my friend" every minute or so. It was kind of awesome.

Since then, I checked into my hotel, had a relaxing time checking email and surfing the net*****, and got ready for my dinner.

Turns out there were about 15 people who had been flown out to California. At dinner, which was really REALLY delicious, I got a chance to talk to a bunch of them. We ranged in studies from juniors in undergrad to post-PhD students. Everyone was incredibly nice and intelligent, and we all had really funny stories to tell.

Now I have a full day tomorrow: tours of the engineering facilities, meals, and interviews.

But, even though things turned out okay, I will never, EVER, stop hating Phoenix, Arizona. Because while I may be able to one day forgive it for this airport fiasco, I will never EVER forgive it for spawning the character "Bella Swan".

Until I'm in Pittsburgh again!

--R.

*It's really close to Cupertino/Apple/Google and about 1 hour from San Francisco

**I woke up at 3:30am and was waiting for a bus at 4:15am. YUCK.

***Why the heck is this a requirement now? Paying for bags is dumb. This is why I love SouthWest.

****Really it was just gracefully slow running. Like when you give up on running the mile but still want to look like you're putting in effort? That.

*****Relaxing? Just kidding. The first thing I read was an email from my lab TA saying I had to add more discussion to the report I turned in, and it had to be done before I went to dinner. Fantastic!

Writing a novel?!

So, I kind of like to write.

I don't get to do it very often, mostly because I'm working on homework, in class, or distracted by the internet (and occasionally because I have a life*). But, this year I am more determined than ever to complete the great writing challenge known as:

National Novel Writing Month**
aka NaNoWriMo

I've attempted two times in the past (that I remember) and both times I gave up very early on. The idea is that you spend the entire month of November, and November only, writing a 50,000 word (at least) original story! Last year I got up to 8,000-ish words before I accidentally deleted almost all of it and gave up.

This year, I'm already at 11,500 words! And I'm almost caught up on meeting my normal daily word count of 1,667 words a day!***

Anyway, that was my plug for my ability to do NaNoWriMo. My point for writing this post, really, is to talk about motivation, and what it takes to get me to write****.

I come up with a lot of stories. A lot of them are pretty well developed in terms of plot and character, but many of them never escape my brain to be written down. My major problem is that I always get ahead of myself in my head. I imagine "Oh this is the beginning of the story and this is how it goes OH MY GOODNESS this scene I just imagined would be great but it doesn't come in until further in the story."

Essentially, I imagine a bunch of scenes from different points in the story that I think are brilliant, and then have to go back and write all the connecting parts so that I actually have something coherent. Those connecting parts are the hardest for me.

And so, I try to help myself write. Sometimes, I'll spend the day imagining the scenes I want to write. What exactly do I want to happen? And not just a general plot, but I'll actually envision the scene like I'm watching a movie, mostly on silent, but every now and then a phrase or part of conversation will pop into my head that I know I want to include.

It helps doing these "exercises" so to speak, for me, because it allows me to be creative in my head and then just take everything I've thought up, and transfer it to the document I'm writing on. Because there is nothing more daunting than a blank screen and the blinking cursor staring back at you while you try to write.

And, I guess that's what I want everyone to know. If you're having trouble writing, or transferring thoughts, or whatever, give yourself some time to think first. Imagine your story, watch it in your head, and then write down what you think would naturally happen. Don't try to force something out without the creative juices flowing! You can't make literary lemonade that way!*****

I better end it there, I've still got 3,000+ words to write tonight to catch up, plus Darren Criss is on Glee and I am not missing that for the world!

Off to writing-dom!

--R.

*I can't believe I had to use the adjective "occasionally"

**Website here: http://www.nanowrimo.org/

***Except I'm behind, because guess how much I wrote today! (Hint: 0)

****For instance, it took me three days to write this post

*****I should be banned from making analogies. I apologize for that one.

Sane people in an insane time of fear

That title was on purpose.

This past weekend I traveled to my "hometown" of Washington, D.C. with my closest friends to attend Jon Stewart & Stephen Colbert's "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear". It was a crazy, great, fun time, but I have been seriously messed up in terms of my sleep schedule since then*.
Anyways, the great thing about this rally was how awesome everyone was. No one shouted or yelled (angrily, at least), and everyone was super polite.

Oh and the people themselves? Some of the best costumes I had ever seen. This guy:

is the best Joaquin Phoenix impersonator ever. It was great that he just kind of stood around awkward talking to no one. Really cracked me up.

I also got to see Dr. Horrible:

who was also awesome, even if he did have a Ph.D. in horribleness.

The rally itself was insane, there were so many unrelated-yet-cool people there! Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman from Mythbusters did some experiments, Sam Waterson from Law & Order read a poem, Yusef and Ozzy Osborne had a song-off, Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow performed a never-heard-before song...

Rally aside, I got to spend some quality time (both in and out of the car) with my friends, which I really enjoyed. PLUS, the weather looked like this:

all weekend! Can you ask for a more perfect Halloween weekend**?!

On a more serious note, we did end up spending the night at my house because no one was in any condition to drive back to school from DC. This meant I got to be home! For all of about 12 hours! It was both nice and kind of sad. Nice because I got to sleep in my own bed and briefly see my parents. Sad because I had to acknowledge that I had to go back to school and wouldn't be home again until Thanksgiving.

I do think going home has made me slightly homesick (which normally doesn't happen). I think it's partially due to not being home much all of last school year and this past summer.

Anyway, we got back to school and I got to meet my roommate's family, finally! They've been here for the past couple days, and just left to go to the airport this morning.

There aren't too many exciting things happening for the next few days, I might go camping out in the mountains this weekend, but the next big event will be when I travel to NYC to attend the Fourth Annual Quidditch World Cup. I am so excited!

Until then, stay sane and avoid fear!

--R.

*Friday I woke up at 7:45am for class. I went to sleep at 1:00am and woke up again at 3:00am Saturday to drive down to DC at 4. Then I stayed up again until 12:30am and woke up at 9:00am Sunday to get ready to leave DC. Then classes happened. Needless to say I feel a bit zombie-like still.
**This could only be more perfect if I had managed to wear my Katara Halloween outfit and gone people watching in Towers Lobby. My actual Halloween night was pretty awesome though.