In lieu of posting something new today, which I was thinking about in between my new yoga routine that’s now two days old and putting off doing work for my actual job by reading interview materials for a potential new job, I’m going to send you over to the wonderful Renee’s blog, where my Powerful Woman Monologue is up! I wrote it after a particularly annoying day talking to my students about Twilight and after FINALLY watching all of Miss Representation with my sister. I’m so happy Renee put this project together, as it is an awesome way to spread awareness about a prevalent problem we all too easily forget about.

I’m happy to say my students are in the midst of the project I referenced in the piece, and it is going amazingly well. It was amazing and empowering watching their eyes open to the ways media can manipulate our views of ourselves and others, and I am proud of myself for making my students a bit more media literate and, hopefully, a bit more accepting of themselves and those around them.

Please check out Miss Representation’s website to learn more and join the movement!

There are 8,000 topics I keep meaning to blog about, but my sad dying iBook combined with my apparent inability to climb stairs to use my parent’s computer have combined to create an almost insurmountable obsacle to my blogging. Thus, I bring you a list of things I’ve been spending a lot of my time thinking about lately in one easy-to-digest blog post. Here goes:

1. Ira Glass – Last Thursday night, I dragged my mother to go with me to see “This American Life LIVE“, an event put on by the brilliant and addictive Public Radio show “This American Life” in which they do a live broadcast of their show in New York and beam it out to movie theaters around the country like freakin’ Star Trek! I was beyond excited for it, as my love for “This American Life” knows no bounds, PLUS the fact that actally watching Ira Glass, the freakishly amazing host, talk could entertain me for hours, as I’m so used to hearing him as this omnipresent voice on my walks to and from class rather than a noise actually coming out of a human face. When we got to the theater, we were one of two groups of people there, and my mother laughed at the lack of NPR listeners in the area – 10 minutes later the theater was almost full. Suck it, Mom! (Just kidding, I love you! And Happy Birthday!) I instantly wanted to befriend everyone there, as liking TAL (especially enough to drop $20 to see TAL LIfe) is one of my cool people indicators (you know you have them too). My love was even further solidified by the fact that they had word puzzels playing on the screen as the pre-show entertainment! It was like writing geek heaven. The show itself was great, as the radio show most always is. I cried at two stories and cracked up at all of them. My favorite comedian, Mike Birbiglia, told a story about a car crash in which he was wrongly found at fault (the other guy was drunk, so this was a pretty big slap in the face), and it was alterntately hilarious, infuriating, and touching, like every awesome story should be. (And because I haven’t mentioned it here before, I saw Mike’s off-Broadway show in March and it’s amazing! If you haven’t listened to his CD’s or seen is show, I strongly suggest doing so.) Basically, it was $20 well spent. I reccomend listening to the radio broadcast of the show next week, which you can do on their website.(It’s the episode titled “Return to the Scene of the Crime”)

2. Gregory House – Am I the only one who has noticed that there are only about 3 hours in the day when House is not playing on the USA Network? Take a minute, and check it right now. I’ll be you $20 bucks it’s on. Go ahead. I’ll wait…….As someone who has always thought I should watch House, because it’s a quality show and I am a lover of quality shows, it’s been nice to be able to watch some episodes here and there, but it’s becoming ridiculous. I watch one because it’s the only thing on, then I can’t change the channel in time before the next episodes starts and BOOM someone collapses with a siezure or heart failure that is TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE and OMGIHAVETOKNOWWHATTHEYHAVE!! Suddenly it’s three hours later, I still don’t exactly understand what was wrong with the patient, and I’m dreaming in medical jargon. Luckily, House’s witty dialogue and curmudgeonly attidute make it all worth while.

3. Flickr – This site is like photography crack. I get on to upload a few pictures then BOOM, I see someone made a comment on one of my pictures. “Join our group! It will be fun! Everyone’s doing it!” I click on the link to check out the group then suddenly I’ve lost ANOTHER three hours I thought I’d use to do something productive after breaking free of House, but instead I go from photostream to photostream with my mouth hanging open wondering how in the hell someone took this picture. It’s a problem. (Speaking of photos, have you checked out my new photoblog? Have you? Again, I’ll wait…../end shameless self-promotion)

4. Work – It’s slowly sucking out my soul. I don’t do well dealing with the public. At all. Especially when I have to work to please them and live with the mantra that somehow, despite how stupid and ridiculous and clearly WRONG they are, they are right. It hurs my soul. It really does.

And that is what has been taking up my time. Clearly, these are life-altering things I’m devoting myself to. I mean, I’ve got all major medium covered – radio, TV, internet. My life is crawling with excitement. Soon, though, that sarcastic statement could be true! Thursday, I’m headed to Boston for two days, then I’m back for a week, then it’s off to Boston AGAIN for senior week, then home for two weeks to pack up my life, then it’s off to Vegas, Baby (!!) for a little meet-up you may have heard about, then I’m flying to San Diego to pick up  my car and see the family, AND THEN I’m driving to LA and hanging out with my high school BFF and you know, starting my new life. So…yeah…this  may be the end of me complaining about how bored I am. Thank god.

The last few days when I should have been recapping my trip to LA or my day trip to Annapolis, reading my TFA readings or  my new found novels, I’ve been online shopping…well, online window shopping, mostly for my future LA apartment. See, picking out items and decorating in my mind makes me feel less like I’m living at home for a few months and more like I’m just passing through, planning for my new fabulous life, which I suppose I am, even though it doesn’t feel like that most of the time.

Some of my favorite finds include:

1. 3-D Chandelier – Urban Outfitters

2. Autumn Kiss – Original Papercut Art – Tinatarnoff on Etsy

3. Yes Frills Jewelry Organizer – Urban Outfitters

4. EXPEDIT Bookcase – Ikea

5. Phone Gocco Screen Print – Labpartners on Etsy

6. Brighton/Vanity Desk – Crate and Barrel

7. Wall Art Vinyl Decal Sticker Decor Headboard – Art Wall Project on Etsy

8. Happiness Ring Catcher – Five Tress on Etsy

In searching for apartment dressings, I inevitably end up on Etsy, which then inevitably leads me to look at pretty, pretty jewelry (and the occasional purse and headband) for hours and hours. I mean, how adorable slash beautiful is this stuff?

1. Ruffle Linen Bag with Lace – Straige

2. Strech Me On Sterling Silver and Pink Swarovski Ring – Always Chic

3. Leaf in a Drop Earrings – Shlomit Ofir

4. Pearl Scented Rosebud Stud Earrings – hot-pins

5. Poppy Ring with Gold Centre – Simone Walsh

6. Citrine and smokey quartz double sterling silver necklace – Essensual Jewelry

7. Long Double Element Necklace – Simone Walsh

And now I guess you can add writing this post to the list of things I’ve been doing instead of what I should be doing. Ugh. Off to do some reading…maybe…oo look at this ring!

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.

From time to time, I come across something truly awesome and amazing that I need to share with the world. Thus, I have decided to share these with the blogging world, and today is the inaugural post! Can you feel the excitement? I thought so. Here goes: 

When Lynn and I moved into our apartment, many things were not so wonderful (dirt, bugs, a stove that was always weirdly warm…), but the one thing that was wonderful was something we found in the cabinet: half a box of NO PUDGE BROWNIE MIX. At first, we read the box and scoffed. Brownies made with yogurt? No fat? Please, these have got to be disgusting.

Now, I consider myself something of a brownie connessouir. I have very high standard. No cake-y, dry brownies here. Nope. I’m all about the melt-in-your mouth, fudgy squares of deliciousness. There was NO WAY this box of brownie mix you can cook in your microwave could be any good.  

Then one fateful day, after tiring of getting ice cream from Emack and Bolio’s all the time, we decided to test out the brownie mix. While there are directions to make the whole box at once, we opted for the single serving option. It seemed more fun (and was 10 times quicker…)

So we spooned four tablespoons of the No Pudge Mix in a bowl with two tablespoons of non-fat vanilla yogurt, mixed, and microwaved for two minutes. What came out, I have to tell you, was close to brownie perfection. If you tasted these things without knowing where they came from, you might think they were real life, butter and egg filled brownies, but no! These babies will keep you slim…er, and they taste simply delicious. 

Best of all, while researching for this post, I’ve found that their website has tons of recipes to spruce up the mix, in case you aren’t a big fan of plain, right-out-of-the-microwave brownies. I, myself, enjoy microwaving these babies up in a big bowl, then toping the steaming hot bowl-brownie with carmel pecan soy delight ice cream. Mmmm….

So where can you pick up this wonderful little brownie mix? I found some at Trader Joe’s, the Mecca for cheap-grocery-loving gourmets like myself, but my mom also found them in her local supermarket (and was equally impressed with the results). To check out if the mix is available near you, check out their website. 

Luckily, if you don’t feel like looking, I’M GIVING SOME AWAY! That’s right! As part of this inaugural Amanda Recommends post, I will give away two boxes of No Pudge! Fat Free Brownie Mix in two different flavors to one lucky reader. All you have to do is leave a comment with your favorite dessert, and you’re entered! Easy enough, if I do say so myself. I’ll close the commenting Monday, as that is when I get home and could actually buy some Brownie Mix for all you people. 

Now, if you don’t want a brownie after all that, I don’t think you have a soul…or a tongue.