Tina Fey is hilarious; Sarah Palin is terrifying.

Wow. I just realized 1.) how long it's been since I last posted & 2.) how dramatically my life has changed since I last posted. I guess it's time for a Brenda Update, huh?

First off, I'm no longer suffering from the Unemployment Blues. I got a job at the end of July as an Assistant Editor at TechTarget, an online IT media company. TechTarget owns & maintains about 50 technology websites geared mostly toward IT professionals, so it publishes information about high-tech business software that, honestly, I have a very vague understanding of at best. But I'm learning little by little! Everyday all the jargon makes a little more sense to me. I'm the AE for SearchManufacturingERP.com, a brand-new site set to launch soon. Despite the stress that comes along with launching a new website, I'm really loving life at TechTarget. It's a hella laid-back, young environment & the people are really cool. Plus having a salary is kinda awesome, not to mention having insurance & a 401k. The only downside is the long commute (TT is in Needham), but it's so worth it.

Secondly, I no longer live in the ghetto. Woohoo! I got a new apartment in Brookline with Stacey, Tayler & Scott 2 & we moved in on Labor Day. This place is fucking amazing; wicked nice, huge, clean & not infested with rats/mice/roaches/homeless people. Bonus: it has a porch!!! We're still working on decorating the place; I think another IKEA trip is in my future. Love those Swedes (but hate putting the furniture together). It just feels so nice to actually have a home that I look forward to returning to everyday.

Last, but certainly not least, I'm no longer sitting at the singles table. I met this girl online back at the end of June (I know, I know, online dating...whatever). We had so much in common & just clicked instantly, so after a few weeks we decided to meet in person. The first date went great & we started seeing each other at least once or twice a week, going out to dinner/movies/museums/other fun stuff. A couple weeks ago, she finally had enough of me being too much of a wimp to kiss her & took the initiative (thank god); long story short, we're now "official" & it rocks. She's kinda the most amazing girl ever. :) Not to sound too lovey dovey & lame, but I'm so happy when I'm around her. I'm still finding it difficult to grasp the concept of a girl I like actually liking me back, since that's never happened to me until now. Whodathunk?

Yeah, so my life has gone from really crappy to pretty much awesome in just couple months. I keep waiting for something terrible to happen, because it all seems just a little bit too perfect. But hey, maybe post-college life isn't so bad after all?

Not too much has changed since my last update. I'm still unemployed & I'm starting to get the feeling that my B.A. isn't worth the paper it's printed on. I've lost track of the number of jobs I've applied to, but I believe it's somewhere near 30 now. I'm really trying not to fall into the job search Pit of Depression, but geez, how much rejection can one person take? The fact that the U.S. economy is in the toilet probably isn't helping much either. I wish that employers would at least tell you when they're not interested instead of sending no response at all. My empty inbox makes me wonder whether I'm just tossing these applications into a blackhole. Why didn't I major in engineering or nursing or you know, a career path that actually leads to a career?

The sensible thing for a person with zero income to be doing is saving her money. So what did I do today? I went to Best Buy & got a Nintendo Wii. Yeah, I know. I've always wanted one though & now that Scott & Lisa & their Wii live all the way in Malden & I've got endless hours of free time, I decided to go for it. Wii fucking rules. I really wanted Mario Kart, but they were sold out, so I opted for Transformers & The Golden Compass to start me off. I'm pretty much addicted to Wii Sports, which are the only sports known to mankind that I'm actually good at. Yeah, so let it be known that the party is officially at my place. At least until I, you know, get a job.

Laundry list-type entry, because I'm tired & don't feel like writing paragraphs & such:

1.) I'm a college grad. Yay!
2.) I'm still unemployed. Boo!
3.) Stace, Tay, Rach & I are living together in September. Yay!
4.) Apartment-hunting is frustrating & realtors are jerks. Boo!
5.) My cellphone is dying. Boo!
6.) That means I can get a new one. Yay!
7.) I shouldn't be spending money (see item #2). Boo!
8.) But I'm an irresponsible bum & will do it anyway. Yay!
9.) It's cold & windy in Boston. Boo!
5.) The retarded bear in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian makes me LOL. Yay!

So last night was not good times for 56 Queensberry St. Stacey & I were sitting in the living room, studying for finals & watching Intervention (I love me some addicts), when I decided to go into my bedroom to check my email. The hall lights & my bedroom lights were off, as we've been trying to shrink our mysteriously growing electric bill, so I thought it was rather odd that there was a bright light shining into my bedroom. Then I heard the sound of something scraping on metal. My bedroom windows face a small courtyard that is completely dark at night & can only been accessed from inside the building or through the recycling/boiler room, which you, in theory, need a key to get into. Or, if the building management company happens to be a bunch of slums lords who don't care if their property is falling apart, you can just yank the door right open, lock & all.

But I digress. I walked into my room, thinking that perhaps the maintenance staff was actually maintaining something for once. I got halfway across my room (& didn't stop to turn the lights on, in a moment of temporary retardation) when I realized that the light was coming from a flashlight being held by a hand attached to an arm which was coming through my window. I didn't really know the correct thing to say to somebody who is breaking into my apartment, so I yelled "HELLO?!" in an accusatory/panicked tone. The arm immediately disappeared & whoever it was attached to took off back through the boiler room & into the night. I slammed the window (which had been open just a crack to let in badly needed fresh air) & saw that he had been working on bending my security bars. That explained the scraping metal. After I stopped shaking long enough to pick up my phone, I called the police. They sent 5 or 6 cops over (slow night, I guess), who took down my & Stacey's information & walked around the building a few times. They couldn't really do much, since the guy was gone & the only description I could give was "male arm, tan or possibly Hispanic, wearing a black puffy jacket," which is like every other person on the street.

I'm pretty much never opening my windows again, no matter how hot it gets. Alpha Management fixed the door lock today after Stacey's dad called & ripped them a new one. My bars are bent, but intact, & I'm thinking of getting some planks of wood or something to jam the windows. I didn't sleep for shit last night; every noise made me jump out of my skin. The scariest part is that, since my room is on the other end of the apartment, the guy could have walked all the way into the living room before he saw us or we saw him. I don't even want to think about how much worse it could have been if I hadn't decided to check my email. I cannot friggin' wait to get out of this ghetto apartment. I love living in the city, but shit like this makes me miss the safety of the Pioneer Valley.

Is it ridiculous that buying a handgun is now something that I can see myself doing?

Horrible mental image #1: Sarah Silverman is fucking Matt Damon:



Horrible mental image #2: Jimmy Kimmel is fucking Ben Affleck:



Brenda Cole is too busy with papers & exams to be fucking anyone. See me after May 2.

Stunning high-quality camera phone imagery of a ferocious predator in her natural habitat:

It's alive!!! Yes, friends, after much deliberation, soul-searching & putting off of actual responsibilities, I've decided to resurrect my journal. It seemed appropriate now that my college days are coming to an end & I am being dragged kicking & screaming toward graduation to have an outlet for the frustrations & fears that have been piling up in my mind during the past months. So basically, I just want to bitch about life.

I'll split this into thirds: one part positive, one part negative & one part both positive & negative.

Positive: Tonight I met Anthony Rapp. He was at Northeastern & put on an amazing show, singing, speaking, cracking jokes, all the good stuff. For those who don't know, Anthony was the original Mark Cohen in RENT & also played him in the movie version of the musical. After his performance, he signed my RENT theater book & we had a very short conversation in which I blurted out something vaguely intelligible & he humored me with a reply. Needless to say, I was wicked stoked & happy with the experience. Not bad for $5 (thanks NU student activity fee)!

Negative: Umm... I'm graduating soon. Very soon. Extremely soon. Friday, May 2, 2008. I really cannot comprehend how five years of my life went by so quickly, but here I am. I'm sure that there are those among the class of '08 who know what they're doing with their lives, but I am not one of them. I don't think I want to be a journalist, which is awkward, what with that being my degree & all. Maybe I want to do editing, maybe I want to do publishing, hell, maybe I even want to do insurance. I wish someone would just come along & tell me what the fuck I want to do, because I'm failing miserably at figuring it out on my own. Co-op only served to show me what I don't want to do (excellent use of an ENTIRE EXTRA YEAR OF SCHOOL) & pad my sad little résumé a bit. In short, I've spent the past seven months sitting in my shitty roach/mouse/rat infested basement apartment trying to find some direction for the rest of my life & have yet to do so. I'll keep you posted on how that's going.

Positive/Negative: I adopted a cat yesterday from the MSPCA. She's a little thing, no more than a year old, black with a white tummy & paws & just about the sweetest girl ever. Her name is Lyra, after the protagonist of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. The only other pets I've ever had before were fish (which are basically room decorations that you have to feed), so this is a pretty big deal for me. Having a pet is a big commitment & you should all know that I'm somewhat of a commitmentphobe, so yeah. The other problem is that I've discovered that I'm quite allergic to cats. Claritin isn't cutting it. I bought a air purifier & I'm making an appointment with an allergist on Monday; hopefully some prescription meds will do the trick. Otherwise I'm in store for roughly 15 years of red eyes & sneezing. But she's so, so cute though... It's worth it.

August was perhaps the busiest month of my life...ever. Hence the lack of updates. Here's a brief rundown of things I've done, things I'm doing & things I need to do:

- Summer classes were ridiculously demanding, especially since they're usually a joke compared to regular semester classes. Shakespeare wasn't that bad, but Soviet Secret Police kicked my ass. Final papers = no sleep for two days. I am now an expert on espionage in the Cuban Missile Crisis & sex in Othello & Measure for Measure. I also hate the name Khrushchev & pray that (exluding this entry) I never have to type it again.

- Due to Northeastern's wonderful waitlist policy, aka the "We'll-Let-You-Think-You'll-Get-Housing-&-Then-Totally-Fuck-You-Over-At-The-Last-Minute-SUCKAZ! policy, I was given one month to find an apartment. In Boston. Ooooh yeah. After recovering from the shock of being thrown out on the streets & discovering how friggin' expensive apartments are around Northeastern, Stacey, Tayler & I finally found one near Fenway Park. Basement unit at $2050 a month with heat & hot water included. It's pretty tiny, but it's cute & a ten-minute walk to campus, which means we don't have to buy T passes. Biggest minus: in order to get to campus, we have to walk through (& at night, RUN through) the infamous Fens. Biggest plus: we might get a cat from the MSPCA! Moving in September 2, holla!

- I got a job lined up as a proctor, which is fancy title for the people who swipe student IDs in the dorms. I'm basically getting paid to sit there, do my homework & play on my laptop while occasionally sliding a card & pressing a buzzer. Pretty sweet deal.

- I watched High School Musical 2 twice this past weekend. On Friday I went to a premier party at Scott & Lisa's apartment. Seven very excited 20-somethings + Disney Channel Original Movie + sing-along + pizza, cupcakes & brownies = awesome. Don't judge me.

- I'm going to D.C. for a week starting Saturday. My inner nerd is very excited. I'm spending a day in Virginia at Mt. Vernon & another day in Baltimore for an Orioles game. Note to self: Must resist urge to walk down streets singing "Good Morning Baltimore."

- Heroes season one on DVD in six days. 50 deleted scenes. I may will definitely pee my pants.