Two Degrees and Separation

As if this past week wasn’t enough of a bizzaro adventure, I’m about to embark on something far crazier.

I am officially moving to NYC!

Via some sort of divine intervention, I was offered the apartment that I loved from Wednesday night and I took it! I know I haven’t spent a huge amount of time with the two women who will be my roommates, but from the time we did spend together, I can tell that we will get along fabulously 🙂

I can’t properly express how grateful I am for all the good fortune I’ve had over the past few days. I’m tired enough that I could probably burst into tears if I overthink this.

I’m grateful that my friend (and her family) let me stay at their apartment for several nights.

I’m grateful that several people took the time out of their day to show me their apartments.

I’m super grateful for my new roommates and them choosing me to live with them when I know they showed the place to other prospective tenants.

I’m grateful for my friends who sent me texts and called me throughout my last few days to offer words of encouragement or help me apartment hunt from hundreds of miles away.

I’m grateful for my friends I already have in NYC who are genuinely happy that I am moving there.

I’m grateful for my family who are happy/proud of me for finding a place and my upcoming move. (I’m grateful that my mom and dog picked me up from the airport today 🙂 )

I’m grateful for the really nice man at the bank who help me set up my new bank account.

I’m grateful for people who think of me for job openings.

I’m grateful for my former coworkers who have left me encouraging FB messages as I pursue something else.

I’m a very, very lucky girl.

I’m also a very, very sick girl

I really over-did it these past few days. I barely slept (it was impossible to – I was so stressed out over everything) and now my body is punishing me for it. It started with a runny nose yesterday, and now I’m up to a scratchy throat and some sneezing. My head/ears were so clogged up from the airplane that my balance was out of whack, resulting in me crashing into various pieces of furniture once I made it home. I also fell asleep for 3 hours while watching the Olympics this afternoon w/my mom.

I know I need to pack, but I can get on that tomorrow. I physically couldn’t handle anything today. I have fist-size bruises on the backs of both of my legs (I have no idea where they came from). I went through a sizable amount of tissues. And, I’m pretty sure I could sleep Rip Van Winkle amounts if I wanted to. I’m thankful I don’t have to set an alarm or anything tomorrow.

SO, I’m going to get some sleep. I hope to feel better soon b/c I have a 2 day car ride ahead of me this coming week!

Have a good one

For the record, I did see The Dark Knight Rises… And I can say, with confidence, that apartment hunting is the Bane of my existence.

I am in NYC right now. I got in Wednesday afternoon. That night, I got to hang out with some people from undergrad (I am staying with the girl who lived across from me freshman year of college and two more people from our same floor came over that night to eat pizza and laugh).

Yesterday I booked 4 apartment viewings. Two of them were horrible and two of them were great. Of the two that were great, I asked the women from the one I liked best if I could be their new roommate. They weren’t able to give me a response right away, as they promised to show the room to another person too. I am supposed to hear back about that room tonight.

Today I had zero success on the apartment-hunting front. None of the people I contacted about apartments got back to me, so I didn’t see any places today.

Tomorrow is my last full day in town. If that room from yesterday falls through (god, I hope I get it), then I basically have one day to look at places and convince someone that I should be their roommate.

This is not an easy task and I wish I had more time. But, I am on the smallest budget ever and could not afford to stay any longer. SO… Please keep your fingers crossed for me.

Man, I was on such a high yesterday. I knew what trains I needed to catch, I had lists of questions for people, I knew where I was going. Today my morale definitely dipped to sub-par levels. There were some high points (impromptu job interview, I had lunch at my favorite pizza place), but there were mostly low points (caught in a rainstorm, almost got on the wrong train and then couldn’t re-swipe my metro card for a long time so I walked 5 blocks to catch a different train, I have an uncomfortable blister – or several – on my feet from my stupid shoes, no one called me back about apartments).

I mean, on a whole I should be happy. I am breathing, I’m not homeless yet, etc.

But, I am frustrated. And tired (haven’t slept much in several days… Totally full asleep at my computer while looking for apartments).

I think I might have to call a broker tomorrow. I really don’t want to, but I am running out of time.

The final days of work in MN are drawing to a close as my impending move to NYC is upon me.

That being said – I love my coworkers.

These people have practically been family the past 2 years. They might not know everything about me (I’m a fairly closed-off person… types the girl who blogs about herself… but seriously, there is a boatload of stuff that few people know about me), but they care about me and I care about them. I’m going to miss them so much when I leave. I work with the nicest bunch of ladies a person could ever hope to work with.

So, I was really touched when one of my colleagues arranged a going-away dinner for me tonight. About 10 of us met up at a restaurant and we were there for 3 hours. It was really fun. We chatted. Some people sang. Some people drank (not me). There was a lot of laughter and a lot of smiles.

It’s kind of weird for me to be the center of attention. It’s also weird for me to have people tell me they are going to miss me and sincerely mean it. I don’t know how I got to be this way, but I always just assume that once I’m out of the picture, people’s memories of me are going to just Eternal Sunshine themselves away or something. I remember everything about everything, but I never assume that’s how other people function too (because I know it’s not).

Today was a good day. Even though I am super stressed out about a LOT of stuff right now (thanks, Robin, for reading that string of texts), it was still a good day. I woke up this morning after having a super bizarre dream that involved apartment hunting and a few actors. (Super long story short, the last thing I saw before I went to bed last night was some photos of some friends of mine who met Grant Gustin last night. Then, in my dream, I was apartment hunting in Brooklyn and made an appointment to look at an apartment in his building [he’s shooting a movie there right now… he doesn’t live there]. ANYWAY. When I went to the appointment, Bradley Cooper opened the door. [Why he was there, I do not know. I haven’t seen anything w/him in it in awhile.] He and I befriended each other and then some other stuff happened…) Then, I went and saw The Dark Knight Rises with my best MN buddy. It was AMAZING. I won’t spoil anything for anybody, but holy hell that was so good. There were a few little things that bothered me, but on a whole IT WAS INCREDIBLE. It was really sad too… I got a little overwhelmed toward the end because the movie was almost over and I was really feeling it for Joseph Gordon Levitt’s character (he had my favorite arc in the film). I teared up a bit and took a huge, deep breath in… at the EXACT same time my friend leaned over to make fun of something. A few minutes later when the credits rolled, she turned to me and said loudly, “DID YOU CRY?”

Technically, no, I didn’t.

But I did tear up.

OKAY? I TEARED UP.

All the feels, yo. ALL OF THEM.

And then tonight was a lovely dinner with my work ladies.

God, I love them so.

I should try and sleep now. I haven’t had much success of that in the past few days (though, if I could somehow get Bradley Cooper in my dreams again, that’d be lovely). I’m super stressed and this week is gonna be crazy like whoa.

Have a good one

So, super long story short… another blast from the past happened the other night and this impromptu meeting spawned the idea for a new blog. (Thanks, MJ…)

ERGO,

I give you my new blog… a Tumblr (gasp!) called Watch With Kate

That blog will be for popular culture sharing purposes only. It’s meant to be a haven for people who need movie/tv/theater recommendations. People can ask for a recommendation in my ask box and I’ll be sharing some of my own recommendations as I see fit.

So, yeah…

This is my contribution to popular culture.

I’ll still keep this blog. It’ll track my progress apartment hunting, job hunting, and living in NYC.

Speaking of apartment hunting… I should get back to that.

Have a good one

So… today in my epic quest to find an apartment in NYC, I had not one, not two, but THREE blasts from the past. As in, grade-school past.

I FB messaged all of the people I know who live in NYC. And to be honest, most of these people I haven’t spoken to in years. BUT, since I am in serious need of help apartment hunting, I figure it was better to contact everyone I knew. What’s the worse that could happen? (Answer – someone wouldn’t answer.)

And guess what – some people didn’t answer. That’s to be expected…

HOWEVER, two of the people I heard from were guys I went to high school with (actually, one of the guys I went to elementary, middle and high school with). I hadn’t spoken to either of them in over ten years. But, one of them works in real estate and said he could help with my apartment search (I already emailed him back). The other guy called me and gave me the contact information with a girl we went to high school with because SHE is moving to NYC too. I spent a good few minutes racking my brain… like, I remembered her name and kind of remembered who she was. I called her up and was like “Hey, so-and-so gave me your phone number. We totally went to high school together and are both trying to move to New York. Crazy!” We talked for, like, 15 minutes and are legit going to look for a place together. Even if we don’t find a place together, though, it sounds like we will be making an effort to hang out. It’ll be so nice knowing someone else in the area… and reconnecting with someone from high school! (btw – I found my senior yearbook after our phone conversation. As soon as I saw her picture, everything clicked. Crazy times.)

I was really touched that people I haven’t spoken to in forever totally reached out to help when I sent out that message this morning. I can’t help but smile. See – social media isn’t entirely evil.

What else, what else?

I applied for an awesome job today. It would be pretty much the greatest job of all time and I think I would be perfect for the position. My fingers are epically crossed that the powers that be think this way too.

I still don’t have an ending for my script. I let a couple people read it and so far have only gotten in-depth feedback from one brave soul (thanks, Robin!!!!!). I know there is a bunch of stuff I have to go back and edit. I thought I had a decent start, though. I’m still proud of myself for writing 120 pages of stuff… that’s a lot for me 🙂 I’m not pleased with the grammar mistakes I seem to have made. Oh, homophones… why you gotta suck so much? But, at least my biggest writing problem only happens when I hand-write out stuff. Somehow, when I’m writing, I mix up my lowercase p and b… and sometimes d. Not all the time… but enough to make me a bit frustrated. I’ll have to Google that to see if it’s a real thing or if it’s just me.

*Googles “mix up lowercase p and b*

So… after some Googling, I can self-diagnose and say that I probably have a form of dysgraphia. Wikipedia says, “The word dysgraphia comes from the Greek words dys meaning “impaired” and graphia meaning “making letter forms by hand”.

Awesome.

It makes sense, though. With the exception that I am an awesome speller (2nd best speller in the 5th grade, yo), a lot of the other symptoms (if you will) fit. My grammar skills are probably not as awesome as they could be. I have difficulties with the letters p, b and d (only lowercase…). And I also write the wrong word/s when I am formulating my thoughts on paper.

Up through probably my junior or senior year of undergrad, I would actually hand-write out all of my papers (yes, even the 20 page papers…). There was a lot of times when I would start writing one word, but end up putting the wrong ending on it (like, combining two words together), or I would have weird looking p, b and d’s all over the place.

Of the three types of dysgraphia listed on Wikipedia, I don’t really identify with any of them. I mean, I would lean toward Motor Dysgraphia, but I am a great typer. Like, 70 WPM… So, that can’t be it. I’m not dyslexic, though… then do I lean toward spatial dysgraphia the most? Hmmm…

Who knows?

Anyway… whether I have this dysgraphia or not is not going to slow me down. How often to we hand-write out stuff these days anyway?

Exactly.

So… I’m going to go read for a couple minutes and then sleep. I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night, so my eyelids are heavy and hurt.

Have a good one!

You know when you are super tired, but you have so much going on in your head that you can’t sleep?

I’m in that not-so-awesome place right now.

In a little over 2 weeks, I’ll be in NYC looking for an apartment.

I have never properly looked for an apartment ever. I lived in 3 different apartments/houses with my sister, but she found all of those places. When I was supposed to move into an apartment with a friend a couple years ago, I looked at apartments (but actually only physically went and scoped out one place), but that never came to fruition. And, now, here I am… going to NYC on my own to look at apartments on my own. I’m terrified. I mean, I’m excited – I can’t wait to live there – but I am TERRIFIED. I wonder if any of my NYC friends can come with me to check out some places? Hmmm… I will have to ask them.

I’m still applying for jobs like a mad fiend. I applied for another position today that seems PERFECT for me. Hopefully I will hear back from the person. I was supposed to have 2 job interviews this week. I ended up only having one, but it went really well. That made me feel really good – it made me feel confident in myself in that someone liked my cover letter and resume enough to seek me out and talk to me.

I turned in my 2 weeks notice at work the other day. It was empowering. My dad (and other people) tried to convince me to just transfer to a different branch of the same company when I move to New York, but I said No. I am fairly miserable there right now and even though it would be amazing to start off living in NYC with a job already in place, I don’t want to keep working for a company that just makes me feel horrible all the time. I am confident that I will find a job (or a couple jobs) in New York. I have a lot of skills and I am a damn hard worker. I deserve to work at a place that doesn’t suck the soul out of me (in addition to paying crap wages). I am hirable, dammit.

I’m really going to miss the people I work with, though. Some of the ladies at work have basically become extended family. I mean, I don’t really hang out with anybody outside of work (though I have legit befriended a girl my age and we have gone and seen a few movies and we text outside of work), but I spend enough time with these people to know about their lives and families and interests and I sincerely care about these women.

One of my colleagues is reading the script I’ve been working on. She’s not super far in, but she already had an amazing idea for me, which I am about to put into motion once I post this. I had been thinking about something along the lines of what she said, but it wasn’t until she said it out loud did I have an “Ah Ha!” moment and know exactly what needed to be added. I still don’t have an ending for the script, but I feel one forming. It might end up kind of vague (a la Garden State), but it could work.

SO – I’m going to go add onto one of my scenes and give one of my characters a bit more of an entrance to solidify some of his better character traits.

Have a good one

Something about the 4th of July just doesn’t feel right anymore.

Maybe that’s just because today was a weird day. I worked from 8:45-3:30. Work was busy, but it wasn’t bad because I was inside in an air-conditioned space while it was a million degrees outside.

Today was supposed to go as such: work until 3:30, job interview at 5:30, movie at 8:30. Two of those things happened. The job interview did not.

It got bumped to tomorrow (though I don’t have a time as of yet). It has been a comedy of errors (minus the comedy part) setting up this interview. Even the application process was funky. I had to submit two emails because I forgot to attach my resume to the first one. Trying to leave a voicemail to set up an interview went wrong and some phone tag ensued. Then, the interview was supposed to be tonight at 6:30/5:30c. Some miscommunication led to us needing to reschedule for tomorrow. I really am passionate about the position and I just hope that by some miracle, the interview happens tomorrow and it goes well. I honestly can’t believe the man who is interviewing me hasn’t given up on me already, after all these little snafus. But, maybe, just maybe, this is all meant to be. I have to believe that. I have to believe that if I’m meant to earn it, I’ll earn it. (You don’t get a job, you earn one.) So… fingers are crossed for tomorrow.

I have tomorrow off from work, but since I haven’t heard back from the man regarding the interview time, I’m going to wake up early and then just keep checking my email. I know that’s probably silly, but I don’t want to chance it. I am making sure I do everything I can to make sure this happens, so if that means waking up early on my day off, so be it.

Though I was a little frustrated the interview didn’t happen yet (frustrated because now I will stress about it for another sleepless night), the day still ended pretty well because I went to see Magic Mike with a friend.

Magic Mike turned out to be a better film than I was thinking it was going to be. I still laughed hysterically at the strip routines (I can’t help it… those thongs just look so uncomfortable, and those ladies were just throwing themselves and money at those dancing men), but the dialogue-driven scenes were pretty solid. I am slowly, but surely, warming up to Channing Tatum. It’s taken him a few years, but the man is on the verge of becoming a decent actor to the point where I would actually consider watching a movie because he is in it (I’m not there yet.) Not going to lie, but my main reason for seeing Magic Mike was Matt Bomer. I was pleasantly surprised to walk out of the theater actually appreciating the dramatic aspects of the film more so than some of those strip routines. Like, Tatum in the car near the end of the film… that was great. No dialogue. Just his presence.

(btw – I did not get that Tarzan guy. Like, Fireman – yes, any of Tatum’s dance routines – yes, cowboys – yes, uniformed officers – yes… but that Tarzan guy was just not attractive. At all. But, to each his/her own.)

This probably sounds silly, but I’m really looking forward to this on DVD so I can watch it while listening to a director’s commentary. I want to see if he can justify why that girl playing Adam’s sister (brook?) had only one facial expression for the entire film. I mean, seriously… did this girl study at the same place Kristen Stewart did. Could they just not afford Kristen Stewart so they just hired a less famous girl who could hold a stoney facade for 2 hours? Yikes. I mean… there were glimpses of feelings throughout, but not enough to keep me from questioning if she and Kristen Stewart were long lost relatives.

Buh-what

So, on the drive home, I saw some fireworks. I don’t know if I’ll ever just be able to sit and enjoy July 4th fireworks ever again.

The best fireworks displays I can remember were from when I lived in Akron, OH. Downtown Akron used to put on quite a show. We’d also go to Fairlawn and listen to the symphony and then watch the fireworks (set to the 1812 Overture… awesome). But, I remember one summer, my brother and I walked downtown to watch the fireworks together. It was nice – just him and I (among thousands of people). We never really did a lot of stuff together, so that was kind of special and something I’ll remember forever.

Watching fireworks from the car while driving also reminds me of my sister and our trip to Chicago four years ago. We were living in Indiana and found out that morning that one of our grandmothers was sick/dying. We were too far away to go visit, so we did what we do best (and what we thought our grammy would have wanted us to do) – we took a road trip.

My sister and I hung up the phone from our father and decided to drive to Chicago, see a musical, spend the night, and drive back to our apartment the next day. We used the trip to try and acclimate me to driving on the highway (I had never driven more than 3 miles on the highway before and we were about to move back to Ohio… so I needed to learn how to drive distances by myself). So, I drove us to Gary, IN and then she drove us the rest of the way. We saw Jersey Boys, then drove back to our hotel. Since it was the 4th of July and late at night when we got out of our show, we saw fireworks shows from all over the city on our drive back. We stopped and got day-old doughnuts at Dunkin Donuts and ate them while watching crappy television in our hotel room. Then, the next day, we drove back.

So, it’s a little hard to celebrate America’s birthday when this day marks the anniversary of my family losing a loved one

That’s why I was extra thankful that I was able to go see a movie with a friend tonight. It was nice to not be in my own head for 2 hours when there’s usually too much stuff going on in there in the first place.

I should probably try and sleep. I have an interview tomorrow (probably…)

Have a good one

Hola,

So, I finally have some updates. I have decided to grab my life by its balls and am making great strides in an attempt to make my dreams come true.

As of this morning, I booked my flight to NYC for a 5-day apartment hunt adventure. I also found out today that I have a Skype interview this week for a potential internship. Soooooo, I am pumped.

And super tired.

To be perfectly honest, I have been so stressed out about everything lately that I haven’t slept much over the past week. Hopefully that’ll change soon. I still have to deal with properly informing my place of employment that I will be seeking opportunities elsewhere. I need to do that this week.

Sigh.

But, I an on moving on to bigger and better things.

I deserve this.

I am sorry if that sounds selfish, but I am ready to prove myself to myself and everyone else.

🙂

Have a good one