here's to pleesure on the floor

so, milan in the middle of the night is really quite entertaining. first things first: i'll start where i left off last time. i leave the internet cafe at approximately 1:35am and i have four hours and change to wait for my train in the face-numbing cold. i'm standing in the enormous loggia at the milan train station... trying to read 'raise high the roofbeam, carpenters and seymour: an introduction' by j.d. salinger to pass the time and i happen to look up as this random man is walking past me with his absurdly large rucksack. would ya know that right at that moment, scrawny little thief whitey runs up behind big-rucksack-bum and steals his pack. whitey runs away and big-rucksack-bum takes off after him... he eventually comes back to the station with his pack and a very satisfied look on his face... i'm assuming that there was some sort of ass-whooping involved, but who really knows?

i think that it's probably pertinent to insert a little side note here: i was the only girl - repeat: the only girl - at the train station. ugh.

next, homeless man with all but his eyes covered up with a scarf breaks out into a two minute tap dance without music. then i witnessed a mini fight club between two friends who laughed hysterically after they consecutively punched each other in the face for about 20 minutes... very eenteresting... then i was stalked by a private security guard until i got onto my train. dude kept asking me if i wanted to go find an open bar so that 'we could get something hot to drink' - thankfully fight club was still there and they proceeded to look out for me until i got onto my train at 5:30am.

i get on the train and proceed to try to sleep [as, at the time, i hadn't slept in two days and was really looking forward to some shut-eye] when crazy, red-eyed milano soccer fan spent the next thirty minutes trying to steal my ajax [amsterdam soccer team] scarf. harrumph. it was really kind of scary, because soccer fan man was really scary and we were the only people in the train car. needless to say, i didn't sleep until i got home... i refuse to let my guard down around crazy, red-eyed, straggly haired people... ‘nuff said.

so onto current events: david - roommate - didn't end up making it to amsterdam. poor baby. he was really looking forward to spending an entire week of being completely lost in every sense of the word before going home... he woke up about fifteen minutes before the train was supposed to leave, ended up making to the train station with a miraculous five minutes to spare ... guess what? no freaking train! yeah... we think it was a sign that he wasn't supposed to go to amsterdam... he even had trouble when he was trying to buy his ticket to amsterdam, so maybe it was meant to be.

last but certainly not least: my dad is coming into rome tonight and we're gonna rock this town until we leave on the 26th... oh yeah!

b boys... b girls...

the beastie boys concert in milan was abso-freaking-lutely marvelously rockin!!! i have absolutely no voice left, because i was screaming my friggin' head off the for the whole blessed two hours... this was my first concert to attend completely 'sola'... kind of intimidating, considering that it was in milan [i'm still in milan... but i'll explain that in a tick], i was alone, i had no idea how the hell i was supposed to find the concert or how i would get back to the train station from the concert... aaanyway... everything worked out just beautifully... they played my favoritest tune 'body movin' and i rocked my socks off... mix master mike totally burned vinyl on the turn tables and the boys were just amazing. the eight years i've been waiting to see the beastie boys in concert was totally worth it... i will be smiling for days and days and days... oh, and talib kweli was brilliant. he played my favoritest of his tunes 'just to get by' and was bloody fantastic... sigh... wonderful stuff...

oh, and i met some really cool people... davide and marco from modena kept me company during the concert [no speaky english... but it was great anyway. i could understand them and they tried to understand my retarded italian... tutto sta bene, i guess] and then maryanne and tura from norway helped guide me back to the train station. people are so nice here... they should all come to rome.. rome needs more nice people... 'nuff said on that account.

so, currently, i'm sitting in an internet cafe [gr@zia cafe] outside the train station in milan, trying to 'blow some time' until my train leaves for rome at 5:30 this morning. it is positively frigid outside and i wanted to be warm and i wanted to blog, so i figured that this would be the best way to spend my time until 2am... yeah. so after this, i get to go sit in front of the station and freeze my white pasty bulbous ass off for a few hours and finish reading 'raise high the roofbeam carpenters and seymour: an introduction' while i watch the bums sleep of their drunken stupor for the evening... hopefully i'll see something entertaining while i'm turning myself into a human ice cube and if i do, i will be sure to notify you, my loyal reader[s].

poot yourrr delicaite leeeeetle fingers heeere...

i am feeeeeeeeneeeeeshed!!! my crit went very nicely and i was able to keep my head, even though i've only had about an hour of sleep... have i ever mentioned that i absolutely worship dr. ethel goodstein? because she is an absolute goddess and i only hope that one day i can be somewhat as lovely as she... sigh. i just wish that she'd been here about two months ago... aaanyway...

whooptie friggin' woo!!! i am done and done... and done!

and now, time to caffeinate myself...

indie schmindy

i am a mix taper!




How indie are you? test by ridethefader

You're really enthusiastic about the music that you like. You attempt to discover your new favourite
band every week. You continually try to get your friends into the music you like, which annoys the fuck
out of them, but you don't know it. At least you're not arrogant about it.

my water is fizzy and i like it like that

final crits are tomorrow. i should be nervous, but i feel too shitty right now to really allow the jitters to have any effect on me whatsoever. i've been coughing up my lungs and everything else you could possibly imagine for three days now and i see no signs of my body deciding to let me feel better. i just hope that i can get through my presentation tomorrow without having to double over in a coughing fit... talk about embarrassing.

after tomorrow at approximately 1pm [that’s the time the crits are supposed to be finished... so what i really mean is: tomorrow at 5pm], i'm home free... i get to go to a good-bye party at a professor's flat with the class and some of his students from cornell university and then sit through the rest of critiques on thursday and then i get to finally relax and start trying to feel better.

i must feel better by saturday because i am going to milan to see the beastie boys and talib kweli in concert. woo! after i get to come back to rome and pack because i get to come home!!! twelve days and counting until my plane leaves for home and i really couldn't be more excited - i know that's bad and whatnot, because i'm in italy and i'm not supposed to want to come home, but i'm broke and sick and i miss my friends and such in the u.s.

all that i have left to do until i can enjoy my last days in rome is finish up a model and polish up my presentation for the jury tomorrow... let's just hope that i don't fall on my face or anything while i'm on my way up to the front of the room to present... because that would be embarrassing...

hip me!

You're the Artiste!
Take What sort of Hipster are you? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

You paint, you draw, you cut up bits of paper, you take digital photographs. You're always on the move and great with your hands. You use words like "Postmodern," "image," "simplicity," and "project." You frequently fuss with your sculpted hair. Your clothes speak to others with their symmetry and color scheme. You spend hours in the studio. You've little money or accomplishment, but aren't concerned one bit. You listen to electronic music. You have friends and roommates who are also devoted to the creative side of life. You don't care if you never get recognized--as long as you've created art, then you'll die happy.

invisible friends are for grown-ups too

i just saw the most wonderfully entertaining thing that i have ever had the privilege to witness. brad and i just went down to 'pizza crepes' to get our midnight snack, as it were, and there was a man on the sidewalk, apparently having a very intense argument with a pole. brad and i exchanged 'that was weird' looks and walked into 'pizza crepes,' leaving the angry man and his argument with the air to have at it on the sidewalk outside.

well, as fate would have it, the man and his argument followed us into 'pizza crepes.' he turned to his invisible friend and said in very angry italian, 'what are you doing here?' - it was really funny, because then he proceeded to have a whole conversation with his invisible friend. about half-way through the part of the conversation that we were able to witness, he ordered a beer and apparently wasn't considerate enough to buy one for his friend... maybe the guy thought that his friend would buy his own... i don't know, but the whole thing has totally made my night.

i know, i know, it's terrible that i would find any sort of joy in someone else's lunacy, but i can't help it... that was some really funny shit. genuinely comical.

i should'a butter-knifed him...

the studio in rome smells like rotting banana peels right now... needless to say, this is fairly unpleasant, considering that it's too cold to open the windows to vent the smell [plus, it's still raining and stuff] and i have to be in here all day, every day, until friday night at 6pm... when all of our studio junk is due... ok, so explain this to me, because i simply don't understand: our stuff - all of our stuff - for studio is due on friday at 6pm... now, our crits aren't until next wednesday [if i'm correct, that's a total of 5 days after our stuff is due...]. wouldn't it be more intelligent and more productive to place the due date - if it has to be a couple of days before crit and such - on, say... monday? so that all of us could have the bleeding weekend to get stuff accomplished? it just doesn't make sense to me... it's like they're just itching to stress the living hell out of all of us [well, not all of us... as some of the people here are machines and stuff... but there are a good 6 people out of the 11 here that would probably really appreciate having the weekend to tie stuff together and make everything really 'sing' before it all gets graded. sigh. i just don't get it...

anyway... last night freaking rocked my world. i had been up for basically three days [a total of four hours sleep in three days] as of yesterday after studio... we had to sit through a lecture that would have been really interesting, had all of us been awake enough to really pay attention - that's another thing that irks me about the studio here... there are two hour lectures planned the week of the due dates for studio... this particular lecture and the one from about three weeks ago [2 days before our last crit... mind you...] both would have been extraordinarily helpful at the beginning of our project but seemed just ridiculous now. anyway... brad, camille and i decided to go grab some grub before heading off to catch some z's...

we went to this great restaurant in trastevere called 'pancotto'... we proceeded to have a freaking four hour dinner. holy. crap. we had such a good time. we ate steaks and drank lots of wine and had tiramisu and then we walked around trastevere being ridiculously silly... we were completely sober, as by the time we were finished with dinner, all of the effects of the wine had long since worn off... but we were just giggly and wonderfully jovial and such. we took a really funny picture in a photo booth that i will post as soon as i get home. after photos and stuff, we went to 'the chocolate shop' in trastevere and had some wonderful gourmet chocolates... i made camille and brad try chocolate with chili [as in the pepper, not the stew] and they actually liked it - it's my favorite!

anyway... on the way home, we passed palazzo farnese and were standing right in front of the arch on via giulia... i asked brad, since he's the tall one in the group - camille and i are both midgets in comparison to his 'fathom' of height - if he could touch the ivy hanging from the arch... now, the ivy stops about 9 feet from the ground... brad takes a running start. brad jumps with all of his might. brad only achieves about four inches of vertical lift. ha! ha! ha! the jump itself was the funniest thing ever - it looked like judd nelson's jump at the end of 'the breakfast club' - oh my god. camille and i nearly pissed our pants we were laughing so hard. sigh. it was wonderful.

the hobbit-hole fish tank may be more of a reality than i initially thought possible

so, the tiber is ridiculously flooded today - by about 8 - 10 feet. it's also supposed to rain all bloody week... brilliant. i just hope that my flat doesn't end up at the bottom of a new roman lake or anything. all i have to say is that i'm really glad that i do not live on the isola tiberina... it's only got a couple more feet to go until it will be flooded along with the river. i just hope that the water level goes down a bit - soon. not just because of the possibility of the city flooding [for that to happen, it would have to rain a lot more... but because, now that the river has flooded all of their homes, all of the roman rats have decided to come out and play in the city and such. i passed six of them on my way home from studio this morning... ugh. i don't really have a problem with rats, per se, but with as filthy as this city is [which is to be expected of any major metropolis, honestly], i can't even begin to fathom what kind of putrid diseases they must carry here. insert shudder here.

on to more boring crap: i have a very large drawing due in the morning. and no drawing due-date in rome would be complete without my very own final... it's delightful, really... i mean, why only worry about finishing a rather large rendering when i can also worry about studying for a test?

i'm off to render [aka color-in a drawing ... for all you non-archy folk out there].
tah tah

aww... man. come. on.

it's literally raining cats and dogs here in rome... well, maybe not actually 'literally,' but you get my drift... the tiber is really flooded - the sidewalks on the river walk are under about 2 feet of water and it's still raining... thank you, mussolini for building the river walls, otherwise, my flat would probably be like a hobbit-hole-fish-tank this evening/morning [whatever it is, now]...

camille and bradley returned from paris this evening. to celebrate their return from lovely paris, we decided to go to a grand restaurant in trastevere called 'il duca' [also on rome’s ‘top 10 list’, by the way] - wonderful food... actually, all i had was the 'fiori di zucca' and crème caramel, some wine and a cappucino... mmm. we decide that it's high time that we get back to the stu-stu-studio [said/sung to the mtv 'pop-up video' tune] so that we can get some work done [ugh, i know...].

well, mr. snobster drives by in his wonderfully snotty porsche boxster and, of course, drives through the largest puddle possible at the highest speed possible, right bloody beside me!!! i am currently soaked. i mean, my jeans [that i just washed and waited for four days to so they would dry so that i could finally wear them again, i might add] are sopping wet up to my mid thigh and my beautiful camel coat is soaked. i should have chased after the bastard and spit water in his window and asked how he liked being wet when he hadn't asked for it... and then told him that he could expect my dry cleaning bill for the coat, thank you. but i guess that i will come another day. i can dream. right? i mean, putting a snotty, inconsiderate, rich, i-drive-my-porsche-while-you-have-to-walk-in-the-pouring-rain jerk in his place would be positively delightful... shallow, yes. but brilliant nonetheless. one day. one day...

mr. boxster-man, watch out who you splash next time, because i'll be armed with a mouth-full of water and ready for you!!! [threat, of course, followed by maniacal laughter... so, insert that here.]

i've hit a wall...

writer's block is really one of the most terrible temporary states to be in that i can think of at the moment... pure, unadulterated frustration... it's like all the ideas i have for two bloody papers are bouncing around inside my head like a mini idea mosh-pit and every time i try to write them down, i sound completely retarded – pseudo-academic, non-sensical gibberish is all that ends up on the page [screen, rather] in front of me... why? why? why? why can't i write today? ugh.

now that i've given you information that you have absolutely no interest in, i will once again go try to sound somewhat intelligent – i’ll just consider it my super-human feat of the day... i guess.

oi oi oi

so... the misfits, huh? like, frickin' right!!! i paid witness to the wonderful conglomeration of 1] marky ramone, 2]dez from black flag and 3]jerry only from the misfits. sigh. it was abso-freaking-lutely fabulous. i don't believe that i've ever rocked so hard in my life. i got dez's and jerry's autographs and tried my very bestest to get marky's, but my efforts were futile, as he ran out the back door as soon as the concert was over. i did get a great photo with jerry and i got a marvelous hug from dez. all sweaty and rocked out and delightful and stuff. great night. yeah. great night.

so, on to other news in natalie's world:
in the past two days, i have become certain that i want to run for southquad director of the american institute of architecture students... i realize that i have a lot on my plate for the next year, but this is nothing new for me. i have also been highly active with aias at fayetteville since i was in freshman year and i would definitely like to involve myself at a national level as i feel that aias is doing great things for people in architecture school. i also desire change in the condition of architecture school and i know that the best way to incite change is to become involved on the inside. so, cross your fingers and wish me luck - if that's what you feel like doing. ...as for me, i will cross my fingers and 1] hope that i am elected and 2] hope that i do a good job.

i'm also in the middle of crunch time here in rome. final drawings are due for grading next friday. [insert deep heavy sigh here]... i have two five-page papers [i'm not worried about them, though] and a large rendered 'pretty drawing' about campo dei fiori due on tuesday. if it's worth showing you when i'm finished, i'll post a photo of the drawing when i get back to the states...

other than that, i am really, really enjoying having my flat to myself this weekend. the boys are in paris [brad] and london [david] this weekend. i'm broke, so i stayed in rome... i also have much more work to do than most people here because i work really slow and stuff... oh well... i finished reading 'franny and zooey' [bloody marvelous book…] yesterday and got 150 pages into '100 years of solitude' [so far, pretty marvelous] today... i cooked dinner for austin, ariana and baldwin tonight... i totally improvised, but i tasted alright, i guess... and now i have absolutely no motivation to do anything... with exception of finishing up my book... terrible, really, as i have so much to do.

anyway, i'm off to attempt to be productive and such...
cause some trouble kiddies... i won't be able to until after friday, so you better cause a lot of trouble to make up for my not causing any... toodles.

yeah... so, like cool and stuff.

woo! i am about to be on my way to see the freaking misfits [in t-minus 4 minutes and counting]!!! yeah... i'm headed for an eardrum-pooping, bounce-till-my-calves-burn, all-out punk-rockin' event! whooptie woo! [can you tell that i'm excited? i didn't know if i was being blatant enough... so i guess that i'll clarify: I AM COMPLETELY STOKED!!!]

rock your socks off kiddies!!!
and to all a good night/day/afternoon/morning... whatever it is, wherever you are.