What can Brown do for me? Easy--stop requiring signatures.

Dear UPS,

I note on your website that you declare, in a pantheon of languages, "We <3 Logistics."  I must say I find this declaration remarkably Kafkaesque given my recent interactions with your company, which have been frustrating mostly due to their lack of logic and inconvenience.  How about, instead of declaring your love for logistics, you let your actions do the talking?

I shop online because I have a job.  The whole point is that I come home after shoe stores are closed and voila! My new shoes are sitting in a box outside of my house. Coming home to a yellow sticker on the front door is NOT as much fun.  Telling me you will come back on Wednesday from 2:00-5:00 is also not helpful.  A burning question that keeps me up at night is this: which Americans find this system workable?  WHO is home from Wednesday from 2:00-5:00?  What is their job and how do I get it?

My id is trying to tell me something.

When I think about walking around an MFA program, having nothing to do but read books and write, it fills me with joy.  Joy, I tell you.  The very idea fills me with joy, makes me smile and close my eyes like I can already feel the warm literary sun on my face.

I signed up for a GMAT prep class because I thought it would compel me to study, and that if I spent the money -- money I don't really have to spend--I would keep up with the pace of the class.

I forgot to attend today.  I didn't skip class. I just forgot to go.  Learning GMAT math is supposed to be my number-one priority, and I straight-up FORGOT.  I was engrossed in this essay, and ordering a copy of Walden from Amazon.

At what point do I stop fighting nature?

For St. Patrick's Day, I wore envy

My friend Katie has this amazing blog, Eating Stuff Everywhere.  When I read Katie's blog I think I feel like other girls feel when they click through photos of their high school friends on Facebook and are overcome by desperate urges to have babies and homes with nightstands to put Yankee Candle Company candles on. In other words: why is that not me?  I want, I want, I want.

I lived in Cairo for a year and it was the most alive I've ever felt. I had an apartment on the 26th floor of a building on an island in the middle of the Nile. I could stand on the balcony with light from my bedroom shining through floor-to-ceiling glass behind me and listen to the call to prayer roll through thick hot air from dozens of directions, staring out over the maze of cream-colored stucco building rooftops to where the city skyline faded into rusty haze on the horizon.

But then I got overwhelmed by the fact that my rolodex was the biggest in Egypt and that was not where I wanted to build a life. Or so I thought. So I applied for one job in Washington, DC and I got it. It was a hard job to get.  Many other people wanted it. I remember knowing this, and being very nervous sitting at my 26th floor kitchen table preparing to do a phone interview via Skype.

I am 25 and single and I am about to reconcile two document boxes worth of expenses from our field office.  The sun is shining and there is a great big world of people selling oranges by the Mediterranean and I am in Washington, DC giving myself paper cuts on 10-pound stacks of receipts.  I feel like this was a terrible, terrible mistake that I'm too risk-averse to recover from.

I tried to explain this to my dad on the phone last night and he suggested I move to Newellton, Louisiana, where we have a small camp on a lake. I said Dad I miss being jostled in markets thronging with 20 million people in exotic garb who know what living feels like.  I don't think retreating to sleepy southern town with population 1,227 is going to do it for me. At precisely this moment I opened the fridge and bent over to remove organic green beans wrapped in a plastic bag. I paused with my head in between the door and the fridge, bent over, surprised by a spasm of tears.

I can see myself becoming quiet desperation and it is the most soul-withering feeling imaginable.

StrogaStruggle; or, Why the Silver Bullet is Always Illusory

LivingSocial recently tried to tempt DCists to patronize the yoga-strength-training-fusion establishment that opened in Adams Morgan over a year ago to the fanfare of teal flags under the name Stroga.  If you think yoga-strength-training sounds like an amazing idea, I agreed.  Jealous, laboring under a previously-purchased Pass to Elsewhere, I imagined Stroga full of sweaty urban yuppies with bods of steel stretching taught buns to the heavens in downward dog, their Dartmouth sweatshirts carelessly flopping around their waists, Deloitte nalgene bottles standing at attention. Consequently, when a Groupon went out last year for deeply discounted classes, I was shocked. Surely, the place was already bursting at the seams with beautiful people and their wannabes?

I imagined sweaty urban yuppies with bods of steel stretching taught buns to the heavens in downward dog, their Dartmouth sweatshirts carelessly flopping next to Deloitte nalgenes.

Turns out, it isn't.  Turns out their absolutely stunning space (a former ballroom) is actually for rent for evening events as a way to help the business generate income.  Turns out, Stroga isn't doing as well as planned.  Now we were even more curious.  How could it not be?

To welcome 2011, I bought a membership to Stroga, and pranced my spandex-clad fanny across the "hip-grit" 18th & Columbia intersection in Adams Morgan (revelers take note: this neighborhood is so much better during the day), sweeping past the belly-dance advertisement into the reception of this vast and elegant space.

At first glance, the room itself certainly did not disappoint.

Women of a Certain Age

At what point does hooking up with someone on the regular become "taking a lover"? "She took a lover" sounds ever-so-much more sophisticated than "and then they started sleeping together."

I now round up to 30. I might have to consider it. There's such a wonderful sense of agency involved.

Häagen-Dazs: nothin' but poseur with an artillery of corporate-speak?

I heard a rumor that Häagen-Dazs staged one of the greatest branding coups of all time. Did you think they were a high-end European import? I did. Turns out they've been American all along.

This stealthy bit of genius nearly catapulted them to the top of my favorite brands list. But then I read further, and I just couldn't get past the phrase "frozen dessert experience." Even if they mean to encompass things beyond ice cream, what is wrong with simply "frozen desserts"?! I buy their products at Safeway, generally pass a homeless person or two en route to my house, and then consume them rabidly while standing in the kitchen surveying the counter to be sure I've left no dinner crumb behind in the space I share with my 7 roommates--there, or in my bed, buried in books and wondering whether getting an MFA would be my ticket to a life of misery or my salvation. Either way, I'm not sure what kind of "experience" Häagen-Dazs is offering-- and I'm pretty sure that no matter what they have in mind, my reality is not it.

Of course, none of this will stop me from shoveling "Five" into my mouth after a bad day, which I suppose is what they are counting on.

Holy crap!! (If you aren't saying holy crap right now, it's because you didn't follow my "five" link.) Very tricksy, Häagen-Dazs. Now you've fooled me twice.

Has knowing I'm now getting ordinary Häagen-Dazs, which is actually produced in an ordinary American factory, further eroded the purported "experience" of eating the formerly pure, simple, Euro-chic Five? At this point my positive associations with consumption of that product are so strong that I highly doubt it. Cross your fingers for a stressful day and I'll let you know.

Charlie Sheen might be bicycle; describes self as "fixie"

While we are certainly used to hearing a person on drugs labeled a "junkie," ever the rebel, Charlie Sheen has taken the opposite approach and described himself as a fixie.  Speaking to ABC on Saturday, he said, "That's how I roll. I have one speed. I have one gear: Go."

Indeed, in writing about Sheen's evident brethren with their single speed and lack of brakes, the WaPo continues, "They don't make much sense, yet for one more fleeting season at least, they are the rage in certain circles. Sort of dumb and super hip: the twin characteristics of many things in life. "

Charlie Sheen, we enjoy your sort-of-dumb statements, and know anything as super-hip as you are now is bound to fling a messenger bag over its shoulder and pedal its skinny jeans right out of our lives.  Go ahead.  It's impossible* you'll produce a better quote than: "I'm on a drug. It's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available. If you try it once, you will die."

*I stand corrected. Winning!