I knew the moment that the flamboyant boy two rows behind me yelled “WHAT TEAM!?” and everyone around him answered with a resounding “WILDCATS! GET YOUR HEAD IN THE GAME!” that I had made a smart decision: to travel downtown at 11:30PM on a Thursday night to take in what could possibly be the third and final saga of the greatest high school related musical trilogy of our time. Yes, I just attended a midnight showing of High School Musical 3: Senior Year (Most original title EVER!)

And…it…was….AWESOME!

From the first frighteningly close, close-up of a sweaty Zac Efron in his signature Wildcat basketball uniform, which was met with resounding yells and catcalls from all women and gay men in the audience (which was, save for about five sad boyfriends, everyone in the audience), to the gratuitous slow-motion, pink-covered entrance of Sharpay Evans (the inspiration for my Halloween costume: pictures coming soon), to the eight moments Troy and Gabriella almost kissed (including one where he is IN HER BED ROOM. AT NIGHT. WITH CHOCOLATE COVERED STRAWBERRIES! What are you DOING Disney?!), to the awkward forced sexual tension between an obviously gay Ryan and a pre-pubescent looking Kelsi, to…to…every last awkward, subltly sexual, over-the-top, ridiculous, dance-filled moment of the whole movie, I and everyone in the audience (made up almost entirely of 18-20 year old theater students, thanks to our chosen theater’s location in the heart of Emerson College) soaked up every minute: clapping, yelling, awwing, possibly crying, dancing, and swooning. (Zac Efron’s arms could star in their own movie…and don’t even get me STARTED on the gratuitous and immensely satisfying naked back shots in the locker room…)

I think it might be my favorite one yet, but that might also be because I got to enjoy it with a room full of college kids who also like to ironicly love and obsess over children’s programming (as further evidenced by the round of applause Miley Cyrus got during the previews) as opposed to watching in the living room with my dad, whose entire review of High School Musical 2 was “Well, that’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back.”

So, I implore you, if your life has sucked lately, if you are stressed, angry, sad, or at all just plain ticked off about the world (and let’s be honest, there’s a lot to be just plain ticked off about), get yourself into a theater full of theater-loving, Zac Efron-obsessed girls and gay men and escape for a while. After the cast members take their final bows and do one last freeze frame jump in front of that famous red curtain, go home and download the soundtrack to try to hold onto that feeling. My soundtrack is downloading from iTunes as we speak. Let’s hope this helps.

Yes, today is indeed my 22nd birthday. Here are a list of things that make me happy about  my birthday:

• 4 Birthday Voicemails (Thanks dad, Sarah Mac, Jonah, and Uncle David!)
• 1 Birthday Text
• 2 Birthday phone calls
• 25 (and counting) Birthday Facebook wall posts
• 2 Happy Birthday Twitters
• One Birthday card (Thanks, Jillian!)
• One birthday dinner (and cake!) tonight

First of all, thanks for all the comments It’s nice to know I’m not universally  hated. I WILL be back soon. I think I’m cutting back on my work hours starting next week, so I can get an actual handle on my life and not have to sit around at work doing nothing while thinking about all the other things I need to be getting done, but can’t. 

Second, while I’m not writing extensively here today, I do have a guest post about my lack of travel experience over at one of my favorite blogs, This Is Not The Life I Ordered, while Ashley has an amazing German adventure. Make sure to check it out!

So I can keep making excuses for not blogging, and I certainly have them. My mom visiting, too much work of all kinds, my personal slash social life slowly falling apart (through my own doing), constant nausea due to all of this (well, not my mom visiting…that was a good time.) I just can’t seem to deal with my life right now (evidenced by me crying on the phone to my mom this morning for a good half hour), so I just need another couple days to process and see if things are going to work out before I can sit down and organize my thoughts about anything.

Sorry this is cryptic and depressing. I promise I’ll write a really awesome Mom weekend recap (complete with a large list of Boston restaurant recommendations found during said weekend) and some kind of update about my actual life super soon. 

Until then, I hope your lives are far less confusing than mine.

Hello? Remember me? The owner of this little space on the internet? Yeah, me, who has trouble prioritizing blogging over things like homework, actual work, seeing friends, and um…sleeping? Yeah, that’s me. *waves* 

I hate neglecting this blog, but I’ve been so busy, that I seem to not only always have something to do, but I also seem to always have two things to do, thus I always feel guilty no matter what I’m doing. What fun! Case in point, this weekend, my mom is coming to visit, which I’ve been excited about for a while, but it is also the weekend I planned to go see “Title of Show” with my friends in New York. Way to write things down, Amanda! So now, I have to find someone to take my place in New York, because I would feel like a total bitch ditching my mom to go see a show. Boo. 

But this week has been eventful in many ways. Some of which I shouldn’t really talk about here…but I might…eventually. Stay tuned. (Please note: this is a time I wish I was an anonymous blogger. I finally get good stories, and I have to censor them. Double boo.) 

So without further ado, I present to you….a bulleted list. (Get excited!)

This week I…

• Had a phone interview for Teach for America that I thought went alright. It wasn’t my best phone interview ever, but I definitely didn’t bomb. I was tentatively hopeful. Well, today I found out, I got invited to an in-person interview! It’s the final step of the whole admission process and consists of teaching a 5-minute lesson and a personal interview, among other things. The interview is in two weeks, so now on top of all my other fun school work, I get to think of things to teach other people. That’s a good thing, right? Right. 
• Had a fun girls night out. Jillian and I had a ridiculously delicious dinner at Tremont 647 in the South End. My dinner consisted of a mouthwatering flank steak with pistachio pesto, roasted vegetables and HUGE rosemary tater tots filled with fontina cheese. Yeah…it was insane. I also had this beautiful pink gin cocktail. It’s my new favorite thing, basically ever. We then had to waste some time before our friends got off work, so we decided to go up to Top of the Hub, the restaurant/bar at the top of the Prudential Building to get a drink and gawk at the view. It was beautiful, and as an added bonus, we got to ride down 52 flights with three middle-aged drunk women who claimed to look like Jackie O and asked us for cigarettes. They also remarked that we looked like sisters since we had the same hair color. Good times. The rest of the night was spent at various bars on Boylston, where I overheard many drunken 20-somethings discussing their financial portfolios. I felt mildly out of place, but I’d been drinking since 7, so I managed. 
• Went on a 1AM run to IHOP with my friends. I even got to drive there in a Blue Prius! My main hobby in LA was counting Prius’s as I drove to work (one time, I saw over 70 in a day, and on my way from San Diego to LA, I spotted OVER TWO HUNDRED!) It was like a dream come true – my life coming full circle. We also discovered IHOP is the place to be after 2AM, as its the only place open after 2. Damn Boston bars and their early closing times, not that we’d been at a bar. We’d just been hanging out…and decided to drive to IHOP. At one in the morning. I know what you’re thinking: you wish you could hang out with people as cool as my friends. 
• Bought an AMAZING winter coat. I had an hour off of work, decided it was freezing, and ran two blocks to the Shops at the Prudential Center for some power shopping. I hit (in ONE HOUR) 344, J. Crew, Banana Republic, Saks 5th Avenue, Gap, and Free People. I, of course, found a coat at the first store I went to (344), but had to check everywhere else to make sure they didn’t have anything better. They didn’t, so I ran back to grab the coat. I even got $25 off for being a student. Power shopping win! It’s soooo pretty, and I’ve been wearing non-stop, possibly even when sleeping. I wish I were joking.