five things i've recently bought.

1. heather gabel tote bag (had to).

2. weakerthans ticket (amazing show).

3. pork roll (i missed it).

4. arizona iced tea and lemonade (3.49 a gallon).

5. rum and coke in BK (bacardi, but oh well).

all of this because i knew that i had a little extra money coming in from working the lupe fiasco show. by the way, it was incredible. governor's island is so so so sweet. the ferry over there was free, so i expect to be going back a lot. the show was on water taxi beach, which featured a real beach and a pretty bad ass stage. not to mention an incredible view of manhattan. so i got there, worked the guest list, only had to turn three people away, heard lupe fiasco (i want all of his stuff. quality hip-hop), saw lupe fiasco from probably the best view in the house, got 12 dollars worth of free food, got paid $75. made it home in time to hop a subway to brooklyn, attend a pretty stellar indoor/outdoor party with cheap drinks (bacardi, but oh well), hold my friend's hair back while she puked all over the subway and the taxi and 23rd street, eat a chicken gyro that my lovely roommate brought home for me, pass out at 4 AM.

here's my awesome view of the show and the island.

five things i've done in these five months.

1. lived at the beach.

2. listened to a lot of crime in stereo.

3. mourned. cried more than i ever have before.

4. moved back to new york.

5. lived life.

i'm always doing #5. i like doing it, i don't like complaining about it because i love my life. i wish i had wrote in this over the last five months because they were probably the most important months of my life so far. so much happened. i'm glad i've been writing it down somewhere (actual journal, what?). here are pictures from the last five months. in short.. i went on a life-altering trip to california, i only hung out with a few people at home but they're my favorite people i've ever met and i love them dearly, lost someone very close to me (rest in peace MPD, love you always and forever), parted ways with a few good friends who may have never really been my good friends in the first place, got my art tattooed on my best friend, explored the rest of my city, explored some great parts of my state, grew incredibly close to my family, saw and listened to and loved a lot of great music.

so that's that, in a nutshell. now i'm back in school and really excited about this semester. i'm taking a journalism class, a literary interpretation class, a creative writing class, a poetry class and a class on adolf hitler. aside from school, i've been trying to get my foot in the door at a few publications and boring bullshit like that. i write weekly for college magazine, i'm doing the SPIN street team. i got a twitter? twitter.com/amandadel. i've had one since february, katy made me do it. i'm working on a piece about cigarette smoke and men right now. story of my life. i'm too tired to finish it, but i will. i've been writing more than usual lately and i forgot how much i love it and miss it when i don't do it. i also miss a lot of people. especially matt, i was thinking about him today. he seems so far away. i made a mix for him, i'm working on a letter to pair it with and then i'll send it to some place in syracuse new york where it's probably snowing already.

fast forward to what i'm doing at this exact moment: listening to the weakerthans and feeling unattached to the feelings i felt five months ago when i listened to them. now i don't get sad or upset or any of that bullshit. i'm just happy they exist. i'm happy to exist, that's all. john k. sampson, or at least i feel anyway, is a fucking genius and i take every word and line he says to heart. i'm seeing the weakerthans with nick tomorrow night in brooklyn. i'm really excited and not worried about who will or won't be there, which i'm proud of.

right now "left and leaving" (album, not song) is on and i've listened to watermark (song, yes) over and over and over. it's beautiful.

hold on to the corners of today, we'll fold them up to save until it's needed.

five things i hate about "growing up".

1. my heart hurts.

2. i don't want a job.

3. $200,000 of debt makes me constantly need to vomit.

4. being sort of alone.

5. when i fight the law, it usually wins.

"things are weird right now". i saw that on the webster hall marquee and it's really true. i thought i was going to bed but i think i'm going to stay up and paint and stop thinking about things that should no longer matter to me. i need cait and brit and the boys and adventures real soon. i have a crazy adventure coming up: california. writing, picture taking, relaxing for ten days. good. i need this. i need this. i need this. i keep telling myself that and it never seems to be any less true. cool.

five people i saw today that i really like and don't see every day.

1. lindsay!!

2. dale!!

3. dann

4. professor ward regan

5. josh (he's been at coachella, so yeah)

it was a good day overall. the weather got better, i wore shorts and flip flops, managed to procrastinate until 9PM (and i'm still procrastinating by doing this).  i just have to write another page or so on the first draft of my final writing paper. the one about what myspace is doing to affect cultural production. kewl. my last paragraph was about N*SYNC. no strings attached, muthafucka.

five songs i've listened to every single day since i last updated this thing.

1. calexico - sunken waltz

2. okkervil river - song of our so called friends

3. the weakerthans - my favourite chords

4. alkaline trio - do you wanna know?

5. chuck ragan - california burritos

i can't believe it's taken me this long to organize my thoughts enough to write them down. i've been terrible at keeping track of things, i've been terrible at doing things lately. i just don't know what's going on and i feel like once school ends i'll be a lot better. things have been stressing me out. like this week, i have hundreds of pages to read and a little over 20 pages to write. the question is: what is the intent of modern philosophy? i've been considering writing the entire thing on bruce springsteen, but i'm not sure how that would work out.

this last semester of school i've tried to write papers that i actually enjoy writing. my paper for writing class is how myspace and other social networking sites have affected the music business and the public's concept of celebrity. i wrote another paper on why kanye west isn't a genius. i wrote something about the human brain. it's whatever.

i've found lately that life is generally better when you stick to doing things you love. i mean, i've always known that.. but lately i've been dragged down by a lot of STUPID THINGS. i need to stop being so crazy. i would like to blame this all on every english class i've ever taken and the need to analyze and compute every word someone says. sometimes you just need to take things for what they're worth and not worry that you're missing the real point. sometimes there's not a real point. if someone says they like you, then maybe they do (i understand that's bad grammar). maybe i need to stop thinking of reasons why they shouldn't. he shouldn't. whatever, english.

instead of thinking about words, i'm just going to think about feelings. the feeling of laying in bed and still being awake when the sun comes up. the feeling of tiredness that will last the entire next day. the feeling in your stomach when you hear the first few chords of "thunder road" on an acoustic guitar. the feeling of the possibility of a zombie attack, just so you can say you were prepared. (actually, in the event of a real zombie attack, i wouldn't know what to do. how do you kill something that's already dead?)

i like all of those feelings.

i like the feelings that i get listening to these five songs, which is why i've listened to them every day. right now, i'm listening to the version of "hey salty" from summer of the shark (portastatic!). i love listening to this song because: 1. it's so good. 2. it makes me feel so good. 3. i remember one night, dann texted me asking me to listen to it for him because his iPod was dead and he didn't have his computer. poor dann, he doesn't feel good. first it was the pink eye and now i think i gave him my tonsil disease. i'm currently working on a mix for him that we can listen to when we go home this weekend.. maybe that'll make it him feel better. going home this weekend will make me feel a lot better about everything. it will consist of a house party at brian's (also, brian called me today. had some good conversations. he's drumming in asher roth's music video tomorrow. fuck him for being awesome, but i'm glad we'll eventually be working together and taking over the world) and going to see alkaline trio! perfect feelings, perfect company, perfect weather.

hey salty, these days you might only haunt me, but it's okay. yeah, it's okay.

five cool things.

1. beard.

2. tattoos.

3. camera lens.

4. glasses.

5. bruce springsteen.

i get it, no one else may. anyway.. lately i've really been feelin' spring break. i haven't really spent the last three weekends here and it makes me sad, though the places i go make me happy. i've got family all over the place and it's taken me a few months to realize that. i went to dinner with dann tonight and there was a copy of the anthology of tom waits on tape sitting on the table. FOR ME. it made me really happy, and now i'm in a happy mood. happy and lucky. happy go lucky? happy AND lucky to have such good people in college with me. most importantly dann, it's crazy that we both ended up here. sort of crazy, anyway. i still remember visiting NYU with him when i was a SOPHOMORE. damn.

lately i've also written a lot of papers and read a lot of books. right now i'm "reading" hobbes leviathan. i say "reading" because i'm just reading the sparknotes. whatever. i just spent the last half hour or so (probably more) dancing around our room with manoa with glowsticks and all the lights off, dancing to a lot of rap with this awesome new york hat on. she had an atlanta hat on. north vs south, civil war status.

this has become my newest favorite picture. my best friends! broken down, helpless on 287. northbound. bound for less than jake and goldfinger. in reality, bound for a night of dave diange and hookah on my back porch. i think it may have rained. i remember sitting with my feet dangling into the pool talking with cait about everything that just fell apart. physically, emotionally, etc.

five things i'm slowly going to do.

1. organize my iTunes.

2. read all the books i never finished.

3. do work on time.

4. be outside more.

5. physically write in my journal more.

sometimes when i type too much, i feel like i'm going to get carpal tunnel. lately life has been packed. that's all. just packed. this weekend was amazing, i did a lot of fun things and went to a lot of good parties (sig ep/chip style, sip ep/bolton style, uptown). i'm hanging o

ut with someone more often and it's making me feel really good. i hope the feeling is mutual and not awkward. because there's always that awkward period of friendship when you can't tell if you're trying to hard and if the person doesn't mind you trying. you know? i know. i also took on a small internship (three days) with an artist manager. i worked almost twelve hours and got really sick in the process, i think. too much with too little to show for it. i really never want to be a manager. shit. he said being a tour manager is still fun, but other than that.. nah. i agree.

ps: this is where i hope to be living this time next year...