Paradigm shifts and Medical Dramas on DVD

Oh what a time it's been.

I can't recall the last time I posted, and I'm not much for caring.

I've been dating different careers lately, it seems. Sure, I'd love to go steady with a good, reliable boyfriend of a job, but hey - i have barely played the field, and there have been no love at first sights in, well, sight. Heck, I don't even think I've been hanging out in the right bars lately even, to take a terrible metaphor even more painfully further.
Shall I continue?

So I sew my career oats! I make mistakes a'plenty. The odds are in my favor as long as I see them that way - mind over matter being one of the stronger forces when you're dealing with career discovery.

A wise lady once said :
"Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don't do that by sitting around wondering about yourself."
- Katharine Hepburn

I couldn't agree more - not that Kathy would know, acting sortof found her through the pathways of destiny that only some of us ride upon, and I'm thinking she didn't have to support herself so much either. Still, wise words!
So, I'm recently released from a rather destructive relationship with Penn (though it was more of a learning experience than anything, obvi) -- a very controlling and needy boyfriend, and one not altogether conducive to my sanity, focus, and ME-time. SO suddenly realeased, the blinders of stress come off, and what I was blind to before - opportunities, research, pathways of work/information, dormant passions, etc... - are suddenly popping up everywhere! Its cool, but its overwhelming. And it seems that penn was the station where all these trains would arrive, and oops, I was too busy in my own little mind to catch one.

But that doesn't mean they won't keep on schedule - all I need do is find a new station.

At least this is what I tell myself - again, mind over matter.
I wonder what my Managing People professor - Dr. Dwyer, who believed that the excuses we make to justify our own laziness are the bain of society's (and the individual's) existance - would say.
He gave me an A, so I shoud feel good about managing this person, and I do in a way.

Anyway, close that chapter - too much navel-gazing is bad for perspective.

But allow me to talk about myself some more.

I've recently become slightly-more-than-obsessed with House MD, a ridiculously amazing medical mystery show on FOX (yes Fox).

“Hugh Laurie… the British actor is the thinking woman’s sex symbol.” - Entertainment Weekly

Tcha, duh. He's pretty grouchy, but if you combine his character's grouchy, tortured and intolerable genius with his real life persona of this self-deprecating, piano-playing british comic, its like, nothing short of blowing my mind. For better (but usually worse) I love me some blue-eyed wierdos, mon amie pointed out. Perhaps I'd do better to go for the Patrician types, like Laurie. Do I have to point out that if - in another time, obvi - Hugh and I were go get married my name would be Lori Laurie?

Enough gushing.

So, I went to Target with the mom with the purpose of buying Prince's new album - b/c he was just relaly cool on SNL the week before. But it wasn't there, so Mom decide's that we should splurge and get the DVD of house.

Watching House was sortof a Eureka moment for me - and got me thinking about what I'm doing and if it's as satisfying as I'd want it to be. I've always had a fascination with the sort of team work mystery-solving that affects people directly that you see in shows like House, and read in books like Nancy Drew, and that I've been lucky to experience here and there and I'm like, why didn't I run with that? Again, clarity come a little late, but not too late (I ain't dead yet!), but it came nonetheless.

sidenote: my writing style is being peppered with some pretty annoying words - nonetheless being one of them -- and I think it's b/c Pride and Predjudice is on. I digress. (see, I did it again!)

Right now at my current post there's not teamwork, and not direct lives/reputations/etc hanging in the balance problem solving, no high pressue, no dynamism. Ugh! I know everything's about the bottom line, but there have to be professions where that's a footnote, not a headline.

I wanted to live a life like House, where you're frustrated, and busy and you're making things happen! Sure, its awesome to know the best club to go to, and where all the young professionals love to get mojitos, but I don't want to live the rest of my life like its one big popularity contest that changes with the season...I've always opted for respect over popularity (at least in intention) and though that won't (and didn't) make me much of a politician/social butterfly, it worked and will work for me. Hopefully it will eventually work for me at my place of work -- hey-o!

So paradigm shifts and medical dramas are what's new - farewell then, respectable and lovely magazine career, and hello something in consulting/international relations/fellowships/ and the like. Hello washington DC, i suppose - the most tolerable city on the Easter Seaboard for a missouri gal like me. I've been reading Bill Clinton's autobiography, and it's been helpful. I used to be (like 3rd grade) an avid consumer of the Robinson Elementary Schools bio/autobio section. I remember I repeated ly checked out the biography of Jackie Onassis (and no I'm not telling you this so you'll think I'm cool and classy - again, respect first, popularity will either come or it won't). I thought I was going to solve the assasination of JFK by reading about his wife 4 times over. Kooky, huh?

Anyway, I remember why I read biographies, and why its important to find one that's contextual. I tried to read Elizabeth the first's biography, at the reccomendation of a teacher of mine who I now realizes acts a WHOLE lot like Christopher Walken, hoping to absorb some of her leadership qualities here, her female prowess there -- but the fact remains that I was not born into a royal family, I didn't know how to dance the volta, and I didn't have any brooding lovers, or spanish assasin monks running after me - in view of how I use biographies as a resource and not for the sake of a good story (perhaps someday I'll be able to read about someone and not want to be as cool as them - though the chances for that are slim) -- so, the bio of the virgin queen was altogether inappropriate.

I have a lot to learn from Bill, a southern/midwesterner like me - who was a lot more determined than I, but whose drive I know I could share if only I could find the road.

As my new favorite artist, KT Tunstall writes, "Well, I can't reach for the sky until I like it on the ground."

Word up,my scottish sista - can't wait to see her at Blueberry Hill in March...she's pretty rockin', and even my mom - who's newly rediscovered that she likes music - totally digs KT. She's a cool mom - hormones get in the way often, but she's pretty rockin' most of the time.

On a brief footnote, b/c I am runnin out of steam : I went to mardi gras yesterday, and it was just like, being drunk with lots of people and the sun was out, and sometimes youd' get beads. Not all that aMAZing. Though i will admit I SUPER loved throwing beads to the hundreds of people from the stage I snuck onto...I do love stages...not sure how to incorporate that into the paradigm shift, but no worries. I also liked trying to get dance lessons from the 13 year olds that were just hanging out at the festivities...that's an original source of good dance moves! Needless to say, I was a comically terrible and enthusiastic student. I did get a, "girl, you're not so bad!" so I feel good.
I think soon thereafter I had a dance of with multiple unwilling contestants b/c during mardi gras, unitnentional eye contact means, "hey lori, I challenge you to a dance off."

Who am i kidding, and day of the year uninentional eye contact means, "Lori, I challenge you to a dance-off." Its just I was more apt to accept the challenge, given the kooky atmosphere.
We met mostly rude rude boys - b/c boys - more openly and unabashedly at mardi gras than at other places - only want one thing.
And girl, I did not show it...as usefull a currency as it is!!! (and my currency would've been valuable I'm sure....but how close do you have to come to be a prostitute? honestly!) But I'm so much more than one thing, and my humanity cannot take such obvious objectifying (as if anyone else's can.) OH, another day, another disection of misogynistic religious holidays. I wish there were some exclamation that embodied "oh, lets not talk of this annoying crap, b/c really its better to just ignore it and do other things!"

Pish posh? but that's neither here, nor there? but let us not talk of such unsavory things...that one's probs best, but again with the sounding like jane austen.

My froggy ancestors express this sort of eye-rolling malaise best with the phrase, "Bof."
So, bof.

Anyway, back to mardi gras and the understanding the boob question.
I suppose I'd freak out if there were some festival I could go to where boys would be flashing their financial promise, intellectual, endearing and self deprecating wit, capacity for love, and their sense of humor all over the place.
I would freak out! I'd probably even give them beads if they flashed it.

Ok so the parallell isn't so stable, but are you suprised?


Anyway, more blurbs to be written - check out Testimo Boutique for some of my snarky, fluffy product descriptions. If you do go there, tell me what you think, b/c I can't tell if they're lame or not -- though I'd like to say they're awesome, but I'm trying to develop my self-deprecating nature to overtake the over-exaggerated self-aggrandizement nature, the sort of personality that jumped the shark as soon as Chandler married Monica. Much unlike the neo-biker-goth tattoo art and skulls you'll find @Testimo's, self deprecation's a trend I hope won't be going away with the season.

On that note, I'm signing off - Iet me know if you'd like to be sent a dose of excedrin - that I have ready for addressing in pre-stamped envelopes -- in case my blog gave you an eye-crosser of a headache, as it is prone to do!
I take excedrin before i begin writing, but far be it for me to deny someone else a headache free blogspot experience just b/c i'm the only one who could see what's coming.

Peace,
~Lori

hm, this is weird

for some reason, my own computer doesnt' think I'm authorized to view my own blog.
In other news, I'm going tanning tomorrow, and I might just go to sears, too.