trying to save money is leaving me in a trifecta of funk: work, eat, sleep. repeat.

but recently the fog of funk has been lifting:

we saw juno. i don't want to give anything away or give any hints, but you should watch it for yourself and then we can discuss in the comments.

last thursday we went to matyson, a downtown byob, for their (weekly changing) tasting menu. pv alerted us to one of her "favorite meals in the past year" so since we didn't have anything else to do, we took the train and made it in time to grab a drink at elephant and castle (a big MEH), and to our 6:30pm reservation.

last week the tasting menu focused on duck:
1.rilletes with a trio of garnishes [apricot marmalade, crumbled blue cheese, & cornichons]
2.foie gras ravioli & truffles [black trumpet mushrooms, parmesan foam]
3.cassoulet [crispy duck confit, andouille sausage]
4.duck l'orange [potato puree, haricot vert, almonds]
5.chocolate toffee cake [vanilla ice cream]

while it wasn't the best meal of my life, it was very affordable ($45 for the 5 course tasting menu) and delicious. probably my favorite course was the foie gras ravioli & truffles second course: a very savory pasta and mushroom dish, one that i could have eaten 10 more of (seriously). the cassoulet was not as heavy as the dish could have been, which is a good thing, but the spice of the andouille sausage was too strong and overshadowed the duck confit (which was delightfully crispy). everything else was good and indicative of the quality of food they prepare. we'll definitely be going back in the future.

matyson
37 S. 19th street (between market and chestnut)
philadelphia, pa 19103
215.564.2925

i'm also super excited because i've started listening to yrock at work, and i was just talking to cavin about maybe going to the electric factory to see this "freezetival" show (three bands: editors, hot hot heat, louis xiv). i was listening today and they were giving away free tickets to the show, and guess freaking what? i won! yea! i never win anything! so now we have a date to go out again and be social (or something).

things are definitely picking up, i can feel it!

Labels: music, restaurant

so nothing serious, but cavin and i got into a car accident this morning on the way to work.

we were on germantown pike going west, past st. philip neri, when the truck/van in front of us just stopped. because it was a little bit rainy and wet out, and when cavin hit the breaks, we skid and hit the truck/van in front of us.

we got out of the car, and the guy in front of us got out also and was saying that a car pulled out of a driveway and he had to stop suddenly. there seemed to be no apparent damage to his car, but the front bumper of our car hit the trailer hitch of his car, thus pushing up the bumper and preventing us from opening the hood of our car to make sure there was no internal damage.

no information was exchanged, basically because nothing happened to his car and because we hit him. i guess it's better so that our insurance rates don't go up, but looking at the damage of the car, it's something that we are definitely going to have to get fixed, especially since we can't open the hood of our car unless we use a screwdriver, which we'll probably have to do once we get home today.

cavin dropped me off at work but now i feel a little depressed. i'm not sure why. maybe i'm also just tired from our trip to matyson last night (i'll write about it in a bit).

i feel like going home. blah.

Labels: chaos

so i've been living at home for the past couple months - something i never would have guessed i'd be doing. but here i am, 30 yr old sachi, once again living in my pink bedroom (but without the hot air balloon wallpaper!!), the only difference is that this time around i've got crosby and cavin (plus all my kalat).

it's really nice that my parents are so giving and letting us stay here for a year or so while we save up money to buy a house, and especially magnanimous of them to allow us to live rent-free. and while this is really great, i've come to realize that there is an underlying reason why i never moved back home since college.

whenever i have a conversation with my parents, i can't seem to communicate as clearly, or i can't really understand what they are saying. it's really frustrating to me and i think it's one reason why living at a distance is preferable. i already have a hard time getting my point across, so add trying to talk to my parents, and i'm completely stressed out.

case in point. we got my dad a computer for christmas. he's super excited, and i'm glad to be able to afford this present for him, especially since he's totally into "new gadgets". but i honestly don't have the patience to try to teach him how to use it, especially when we can't communicate what problems arise.

at work yesterday, i missed his phone call. when i called him back, he told me that the computer wasn't working but now everything is fine. but when i asked him what exactly happened, all he kept saying was, "well, when i clicked, nothing happened." and while i'm not a whiz with computers, i do know that i would need a better, more explicit description of what the problem was in order to fix it. when i got off the phone with him, i realized that i was talking much louder than i had started and that people around me probably picked up on my rising stress level.

so when i got home, i see my dad and he's telling me that the calendar and other stuff that used to be on his desktop is now missing. ok. easy enough. i can help fix that. and i did. and everything was fine.

but as cavin and i were leaving to go to the movies (to see juno), my dad is telling us that the dvd burner isn't working and that he can't burn stuff anymore. i left it up to cavin while i went upstairs to get ready. when we got back 2 hours later, he's still on the computer, and next to him is a new stack of coasters, the result of those that didn't burn correctly. i'm trying to ask him what exactly what happened, except he's backtracking with his words and just when i think i pin down what is going on, he's telling me that's not what's going on and something else happened. cavin is trying to calm me down because at this point i'm just yelling, but it's no good. so i just retire upstairs, hoping that cavin can fix whatever the problem is.

and it's not just with my dad i'm having communication problems. early on when we first moved back, we went to dinner with my immediate family. we drove an hour + away to go to this smorgasbord that my parents had gone to several times in the past. i seemed to have remembered going there also when i was younger, and when i brought this up to my mom, she's telling me that it can't be. but i'm pretty sure that i remember being there and definitely remember that on the way back home, i was driving with art and pv in the car and a bee flew in while art was driving. he started flipping out and we almost crashed. so anyway, my mom is insisting that i've never been there before. i'm telling her that i DO remember being there and that i'm not making it up. well, it won't drop because she can't be wrong, and i can't be wrong, and then it turns into this chaotic conversation ending with me talking very loudly in a room filled with people, asking my mom how she knows my memories and how can she know what i remember?

i don't know how my brother does it - he's never moved out except for college. i'm glad to be around my family, in fact, i like it very much and it's a welcome change from my jersey and dc days when i would only be able to visit for a weekend. i guess i just need to figure out how to deal with them without freaking out and getting an ulcer from stress.

Labels: chaos, random

um...so yeah. when i first started this blog, i was living in dc and i had more downtime at work and could blog while getting paid. but now i'm living in philly and have a new job where i'm constantly busy. in fact, just today i was telling cavin on the way to work that i was "not going to do anything today because i didn't feel like it."

of course, when i got to work, i had at least a dozen emails with details of all the things i had to do. blah. i guess it makes the day go by faster. something.

so i've been working for about 2 months now and it's actually not as bad as i thought it would be. the people i work with, for the most part, are pretty friendly. but i've come to realize that i don't want to mix work with my outside life anymore, and honestly, i don't need any new friends. i have enough right now - some i haven't even seen since i've moved back (i'm the worst!).

now that this is my third "real" job, i've been thinking that there are certain types of people that you inevitably end up working with. there's one particular character that i've come across that i can't quite figure out.

so there's always this one person that seems to be someone that i would get along with. but when i try to actually talk with them or be friendly towards them, i don't know...something just isn't right with this person, or rather our relationship. here are some examples:

let's call the first person, felly. felly started work after i did, and since there weren't that many young people where we were working, especially girls, i thought i would be extra friendly and try to engage her in conversation. but whenever i did, our conversations would go like this:

sachi: hi felly!
felly: hi.
sachi: so, did you do anything exciting this past weekend?
felly: no.
sachi: oh, so you just stayed in town then?
felly: no.
sachi: so you went out of town?
felly: yes.
sachi: oh, i went out of town also. i went to philly this weekend to visit some friends.
felly: oh. me too.
sachi: oh, you went to philly? that's cool! did you go anywhere exciting?
felly: no.
. . .

as you can see, having a conversation with felly was very painful, as she basically only gave one word answers. i probably would have had a better time talking to myself (which i probably did later at my desk because i was so bored). but i just couldn't understand why she didn't want to be friends with me. am i that unappealing? at the time too, i could have really used a friend, but alas, a friendship was not formed with felly. a year later or so, new people started coming into the area and she somehow became good friends with these other people, and then, of course, i became bitter about it and now i hate her. ok. let's move on to the next example.

let's call this second person, fee. i was working in an office that was hiring new people every other week, or at least it seemed. in a matter of months there were 4 new people, and when each one started, i talked to them and they seemed pretty nice, though they weren't necessarily people i would hang out with outside of work. but no worries - i wasn't looking for that kind of relationship. i just thought it would be nice to be friends with someone that i could have lunch with every now and then. then fee started working, about a few weeks before i moved to another office at the same company. i found out from a third party that fee and i had lots in common. but for some reason, every time i would see her, we would have the most awkward conversations. sometimes i'd get to work and happen to be walking in with her at the same time, forced to ride the elevator with her. but every conversation we had would go like this:

(walking into the building, waiting for the elevator, riding the elevator with her, and then walking past her office to my office)
fee: oh. hi.
sachi: hi.
(silence)
sachi: uh, so. how's work going?
fee: it's ok.
(more awkward silence)
sachi: oh, did stephanie have her baby yet?
fee: yup.
(more silence)
sachi: oh, that's nice. i was thinking i should stop in and say hi because i haven't seen everyone in a while since i changed offices. it's so different in my new office.
fee: hmm.
(we FINALLY get to her office door)
sachi: well, have a...
fee: (at the same time) uh, yeah, have a good day
sachi: yeah, you too.

i just could never get into a jived conversation with her. but when i would have lunch with my old officemates, she would be jibberjabbing away, laughing at inside jokes, and basically ignoring me. so i said, 'fuck her then!' and i ignored her whenever i'd run into her on the train or see her in the hallway. so yeah, i hate her too.

finally, at my new job, i've come across another one of these people. let's call this one, feather. at the holiday luncheon, she sat diagonally across from me, and basically with all the younger people in the office. because we sat pretty close to each other, i could hear what she was saying. it sounded like she had some interesting things to say and we had some things in common, like traveling. and i was going to talk to her, but during the lunch, out of the corner of my eye, i could see her kind of looking / staring at me, and i was kind of uncomfortable, so i didn't approach her. and at work, she is good friends with the girl who sits across the aisle from me, so every now and then she goes to her desk and chit chats. but i feel like she says things really loud so that everyone (especially me) can hear. in fact, just yesterday she trampled over to the friend's desk and was basically having a one-way conversation:

feather: oh! good! you're here.
friend: yeah, i just got off the phone with this company who screwed up my online order...
feather: oh yeah. my vacation was really great. you know, cause i like to travel, and my new year's resolution is to ski every black diamond out there
friend: mmhmm.
feather: and so i did that, but you know, the black diamonds out on the east coast are way different than the black diamonds on the west coast. but next time we're going to this other place so that we can try all the other mountains
friend: mmhmm
feather: and then after that, i'm going to try to...

it was pretty obvious that the friend was trying to tell her the story about how she ordered this coat online and when it got delivered it was the wrong color and she had been on the phone for a while trying to get it straightened out (i know because i sit across from her and i heard the entire thing!), but feather just wanted to talk about herself. and while it is cool that she likes to travel and have fun (she was bragging at the holiday luncheon about a xmas costume party she and her husband had and how they made a 12-month calendar of him w/o his shirt on at all the different places they traveled to as the take-home presents), she just comes across, kind of fake.

she's actually a manager and i'm glad that when i interviewed with her, i didn't take the job working for her. i think my opinion of my job would be a lot worse.

but yeah, i basically stay away from her and, you guessed it. i hate her.

i don't know what it is. maybe as i get older, i'm more bitter about people not wanting to be my friend, or at least willingly want to talk to me. and i know i said i didn't want to really make any friends. but it's always nice to have a family-like relationship with the people you work with (like my very first job, which i will forever be thankful that was my first real job experience) and it makes it more enjoyable to be at work and go to work functions or even just to have options for lunch.

i guess we'll see how it goes in my first few months. but as of right now, i'll just stick to hating the fellys, fees, and feathers out there and flying solo for lunch.

Labels: random, work