Monday Night Blog Buffet

Welcome to the Monday Night Blog Buffet! Just like a real buffet, you get to sample all the juicy morsels in a variety of choices... bon appetit!

Humidity-D, the allergy cure
There are things I miss about Chicago... like how happy my skin and sinuses were, *le sigh*. I'm a native Colorado girl. Carrying around a Nalgene water bottle, lip balm and lotion are as necessary as oxygen to prevent withering up like a prune in this dry state (and I don't mean liquor - umm, Colorado breweries??). Any "humid" day here causes all of us natives to whine and moan like spoiled children... I thought the humidity in Chicago would near kill me. The opposite actually. My skin LOVED it, and suddenly my allergies were nonexistant. Gone, cured, nowhere to be found! That's nothing short of a miracle, considering I have the worst allergies known to womankind. Well, sweet. I guess the sinus surgery I discussed with my doc back in May can be put on hold... indefinitely. Apparently I just need to move to a humid place. I don't even want to discuss what my skin has been doing for two straight weeks. FREAKING the F out, yo!! No amount of lotion or oil is soothing it. I've been drinking water by the gallons (okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but still...) Hey, um, skin?? I don't graduate for another year and a half (if I'm lucky), so we're kinda stuck here for a little while longer, so throw me bone, huh??

No excuses!
At some point over the weekend I decided that it's time to step it up and get my little behind into the studio every night after work. The semester starts in two weeks! I'm not going to stay in shape and maintain my sweet physique (haha) by sitting around all day and night. Enough lollygagging around and no more excuses for me... "I do better in a formal class... I have this and that to do... I'll go tomorrow..." If I could crank out 6+ hours each night in Chicago, I can get myself into the studio for at least a couple hours. One of the many lessons I learned in Chicago was, where there's a will, there's a way.

Craigslist
... can suck on it. I'm so frustrated. Just like before leaving for Chicago, I'm trying to sell some things for some quick cash. Cash I really need. Like now. Well, out of the blue, I've been getting spam email about my items... LOTS of it! Each time I open my inbox there are 10 or so emails, and each one of them is crap... "Did you lose your job or are you in debt? I can help!" "Do you need help with your bill?" "Do you need assistance with your financial situation?" OMG!!!!! Not one email has been a bonafide person interested in buying my stuff. Awesome. I'm pulling my ads tomorrow and going to sell stuff the old fashioned way... putting up posters in my apartment building. And eBay. Take that, craigslist!

Scholarship hunting
... is as much fun as the dentist. For a non-traditional, second-bachelor's candidate performing arts student, it's slim pickin'. I always hear about the thousands upon thousands of unclaimed scholarships out there, but I'm starting to think it's just an old wives' tale made up to sucker us. My usually positive self gets realllllly discouraged when it comes time to hunt down financial aid... it's like going to the dentist to get fillings without drugs. Good times!

Time flies
Work zipped by today, which was positively glorious! I'm praying/crossing my fingers/making sacrifices to the 9-to-5 gods that the rest of the week is the same...

School shopping
I'm not talking leotards and tights here people. The fall fashion in the magazines and online have pulled me in hook, line and sinker. I'm enamored with some of the trends for fall... as I usually am, I LOVE shopping at this time of year... AND I'm inwardly gloating that some of them are my old stand-bys... um, grey eye shadow? Been there done that. Grey the "new" neutral? Oh honey, been rockin' the grey for years... And the rich, jewel colors are deelish and a good balance to all this grey... I'm not quite ready to give up our hot summer weather, but a part of me is excitedly anticipating when I can bust out some fall fashion goodness.

Well, I'm stuffed. Check please!

Surviving, $2.80 at a time

I'm in "gotta make some extra money fast" mode, as the finances have, well, reached a scary level. I'm trying to sell old clothes, accessories and some other things of mine via eBay, Craigslist and local consignment shops. I'm a newbie at this selling/consigning thing, so it's been interesting so far. I took two full bags of clothes to Plato's Closet (is this a national chain?) last night, hoping for about $20 in return... uhh, it didn't exactly go as planned. They bought one thing from me - one! - and I made a whopping $2.80. So frustrating. While the clothes were name brands they take, the store clerk told me that they are a bit too old (they want things that have been purchased no more than about a year ago) and too "sophisticated", as in my clothes don't cater to the teen/young adult clientele Plato's Closet focuses on. Alrighty. Never thought I had sophisticated style, but whatever...

That was only Round One, so I'm not giving up yet... I have many more clothes and a bunch of accessories that I'm going to take back there for Round Two tomorrow night. Heck, maybe I'll make another $2.80???? And I'm going to attempt to sell the clothes that are "too sophisticated" at a local consignment shop here in town. If that doesn't work, then I might make like a crazy person, set up a table on some street corner, and sell my stuff garage sale-style on the corner. It's kinda hard to have a bonafide garage sale when living in an apartment, so...

I went to my dad's for dinner Monday night, thanks to a night off from ballet, and since he's moving his house is in pre-moving disarray. He's getting rid of stuff and giving me and my brothers our stuff that we've stored there. He sent me home with my golf clubs, which have been sitting in his garage for who-knows-how-long. I will be selling those bad boys on Craigslist. The only reason I bought them in the first place, many, many moons ago, was to appease my dad by playing golf with him, but I don't really like golf and I will most likely not golf again anytime soon, so they should go to a home that will use them... and give me money in exchange.

Lastly, there's eBay... I have a bunch of repro, "vintage" Coco-Cola stuff that I will attempt to sell as well. Hopefully that puts more than $2.80 in my pocket.

Somehow I'm going to survive these next couple weeks, $2.80 at a time...

And stay tuned later tonight for this week's Wednesday night review of So You Think You Can Dance... dance... dance...