“In Retrospect” will be a semi-regular series of previously written, unpublished blog musings. I’m starting with this one from a year ago today, which discusses what is probably still my favorite article written about the website:

“I was sitting in my dorm room on Saturday night when all logic, reason, and prior history suggested that I should have been flying out the door in a miniskirt and stilettos. I instead spent the night reading an article in The Yale Herald about the Ivy League blog trend. I was one of the subjects, and I am still trying to process the words used to describe my blog. For the first time since I started this website, I feel like an outsider gets it.

Cally writes:

No college experience is diametrically opposed to any other in its difficulty, isolation, community, laziness, or degree of personal fulfillment. After all, contrary to the sensationalist mantras on the seat of so many sweatpants across the Northeast, the opposite of Yale is not Harvard. Students at elite academic institutions are not only products of their rarified environments; in other words, Princetonian ‘masters of the universe,’ like college students everywhere, bring to New Jersey cultural, social, and economic baggage that four years of even the swankiest dorm-living cannot completely unpack…

She understands in a way that I don’t think most people do. It is almost uncanny how spot-on she is in her interpretation of my position (read the rest of the article). I can’t speak for IvyGate or IvyLeak, for whom self-deprecation and snark is the point. The former say, ‘The last thing people want to read is a sincere blog about the Ivy League.’ But for me at least, if there’s anything I want to accomplish with this blog, it’s sincerity. This was never about self-promotion, never about being outrageous for its own sake.”

– October 18, 2006

I’m sick of iCal and switching to Sunbird. Does anyone have any idea how to two-way sync Sunbird with Google Cal on a Mac?

Update, after hours of searching: Figured it out! Fantastic instructions that apply for both Lightning (the Thunderbird extension) and Sunbird can be found here. I am so ridiculously pleased with this.

Now all that’s left on the before-school to-do list is organizing my Gmail and making an efficient shopping period schedule. Four days to Cambridge …

Or more accurately, I killed it … by dropping the damn thing into the foot basin during my pedicure today. I tried blowdrying it, but I wasn’t as lucky as CK’s boyfriend who salvaged my Powerbook frosh year with that method. And I have Verizon so I can’t just pop the SIM card into a new phone.

This is terrible timing, especially considering the number of people I’m supposed to see before I leave the city on Saturday. I’ve already missed three text messages, two phone calls, and one date because of my phone. Eep!

For those trying to get in touch, please email or IM me. I’ll be on a new phone (and in California) by Sunday.

On the bright side, my toes look cute?

Yesterday, my friend Jess Haralson wrote on her blog:

I was on the phone talking to my slacker, calls-in-a-blue-moon, recovering-drug-addict-dad. He remembered my birthday (which isn’t today, but soon).

I walked into Bucks County Coffee continuing our conversation. As the cashier rang up a Diet Coke, I said (with genuine feeling):

“Thank you for remembering my birthday, Dad.”

The cashier BUSTED OUT LAUGHING.

“What’s so funny?”

“You have to thank your Dad for remembering your birthday?”

I had no idea it was considered abnormal for a parent not to remember your birthday. I mean, my Dad… he loves me, God help him, but he’s not exactly the most attentive or mature parent.

Am I going crazy? Wow, perspective can fuck with your head sometimes. I guess I’d never thank my Mom just for remembering my birthday, but I would thank her if she got me a present. Hmmm.

I can relate. I can more than relate. I didn’t even realize that my own father had forgotten about my birthday until I read this. And I don’t know which is more hilariously tragic: the fact that he forgot or that I forgot he forgot.

It isn’t as if my insanely well-attended, well-lubricated party on Saturday erased the realization that Monday was my actual 20th birthday and I should be expecting some form of communication from those not in attendance. All day, I fielded text messages, calls, and emails from California and waited for a phone call from my family … by which I mean my mother. She didn’t call until 10pm EST when I was already out in Union Square. On her coast, it was only 7pm, so I suppose it was still a reasonable hour to ring in. But even if it slipped her mind, I would’ve forgiven her. She was on a trip to San Francisco then; and besides, she had already wished me a happy birthday two days before.

My father, on the other hand, didn’t even cross my mind. He and I don’t speak regularly — maybe monthly at best, and that’s during financial aid season. But we manage to see each other at least annually and I always call him on Father’s Day, which is the last time we spoke this year. It’s almost an excuse — almost. Because really, if not for a holiday, what other reason do I have for calling? I know next to nothing about what his life is like, other than the day-to-day going-ons of his job. I don’t know where in the city he lives. I don’t know if he’s happy. I don’t worry, though. I don’t worry at all. I think he is, if nothing else, fine.

And that must be what he thinks of my life as well. That I am, without him, fine and that his absence makes no difference. To some extent, this is true. I miss my mother, dearly. I don’t miss my father. I can’t remember the last time I did, or if I ever did. I don’t yearn for him though I do yearn for my mother, nor do I intensely miss San Francisco (his current residence) though it is my birthplace. What does this mean, then? That home is a concept I associate with Los Angeles and the woman I still call “mommy”? That there is little significance to the person or the place around which the first decade of my existence revolved around?

Something else disappointing. My father was in good — well, plentiful — company on Monday. There were only two guys who called if you discount my close friends. One was someone I went on a date with a week ago. The other was CeCe’s new boyfriend, someone I met at Dartmouth in June. The latter particularly really amused me. None of my ex-boyfriends bothered to remember even though my best friend’s boyfriend did (and gave me flowers at my party to boot). Even Summer Guy, who has a remarkable knack for drunk dialing me at least twice monthly, missed Monday, though he called the next day. But besides him, no one. I marvel at the men in my life and their ironic penchant for letting me down without fail. But I guess it is something I’ve gotten used to.