Author Archives: Emily Chapman

Coping Mechanisms

Posted on by

1

It has been an anxious week.

There’s nothing bad happening. I just am overcome–as frequently happens, particularly when my mind isn’t occupied with school and three jobs–with a creeping sense of existential dread. I blame my impending move to a new apartment. It’s the first time I’ve been in non-campus housing, and the idea that I might actually have to set up my utilities is causing me to stare feebly, sadly into space.

It’s not that I can’t do it. I am aware that, objectively, calling Georgia power is Not That Hard. It’s just that sometimes things seem to be a Bit Much on the adulthood front, and then I stick my head in the sand and spend another six hours looking at dog photos. As you do.

But eventually I run out of adoptable, house-trained, under-40-pound dogs to look at on the internet. And then I revert to my secondary, far less healthy coping mechanism.

My name is Emily, and I am freaking myself out by searching on LinkedIn.

Continue reading →

Dachshunds and Coffee

Posted on by

0

Friday night began with a shot lightbulb.

You know what goes well with coffee? Dogs. At least, that’s the idea behind ParkGrounds, the combination coffee shop/dog park that I dragged my friends to this weekend. And the shop owners are right to have faith in this business model–watching the variety of dogs that folks brought by was approximately 800% more entertaining than just coffee alone. (Particularly the mastiff puppy who just wanted to take a nap, because d’aw.)

The reason that I was at ParkGrounds in the first place was in order to creep on the event hosted by DREAM Rescue, the local dachshund  rescue group. I’ve been looking at their adoptable dogs while killing time at work over the last week*, and since they were having a get-together I decided to drop by.

Continue reading →

The Flossing Lecture

Posted on by

2

Me with glitter nails.

How much do I love my glitter nails? This much. (This is also how much I love the weird smile detect auto-photo feature on my camera.)

Yesterday I went to the dentist. My family dentist, by the way, is medical professional with whom I have the longest ongoing relationship that I have ever had with a single practice. Given that I have the (arguable) best teeth in my family, this is great, because it allows me to constantly feel like I am winning at medical care.

I’m a little petty, what can I say?

Continue reading →

Fun Facts About The Lion King

Posted on by

0

A lion.

[Source. Licensed under CC 2.0.]

So I went and saw The Dark Knight Rises this last week. (Spoiler alert: it’s awesome. Additional spoiler alert: gun control laws in the US need to be stronger.) Since my friends and I got there before the film began, we were treated to the pre-previews, which at this particular theater took the form of “fun movie facts.”

These fun movie facts included things like, “In Bridesmaids, the bridal party goes to a Brazillian restaurant,” and, “Tom Cruise stars in Mission Impossible IV: This Franchise is Still a Thing.”

Though factual, I think most people (other than the stoned intern who wrote these) would hesitate to call them “fun.” So, when a friend of mine texted me about the fact that Darth Vader and Mufassa are the same person, we were inspired to come up with our own fun facts.

  • The Lion King is set in Africa.*
  • Simba, the star of The Lion King, is a lion. Continue reading →

Monsoons and Flowers in the Attic

Posted on by

3

Me holding Flowers in the Attic.

Delighted and horrified in equal measure.

It is July in Atlanta, and that means one thing: it is monsoon season. When I moved here as a 12-year-old, I didn’t realize that Atlanta is actually secretly the subtropics. But, after 10 summers here, I can safely confirm: the weather here is surprisingly similar to India’s.

Every afternoon at about 3pm–starting last week, and (according to the weather report) continuing until we all drown–the skies open up with the wrath of god. The streets flood, lightening strikes, and traffic comes to the standstill that happens every time that Atlanta has weather. Like clockwork, it clears up by dinnertime and leaves the streets steaming in a way normally reserved for black markets in dystopian science fiction films.

It’s driving me a little stir crazy, not to mention ruining my shoes. I am not a fan. (Looking on the bright side, I am learning a lot about how quickly leather dries.) I need to find some way to occupy my now-shoeless time, and I have found it: Flowers in the Attic.

Continue reading →

Summer Photos and Haikus

Posted on by

0

This weekend, I went with a friend to see Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. It was all the insane revisionist action film a girl could dream of. Y’all, there was literally horse parkour.

Parkour. On stampeding horses. Between Abraham Lincoln and a slave-owning vampire with a missing eye.

After that non-stop thrill ride, I spent most of the weekend at home, with the exception of drinking lots of $2 Full Sails at a (fun, Trivial Pursuit-filled) birthday party last night. For my Atlanta readers, East Atlanta is where it’s at if you want Athens prices without, y’know, UGA.

So I have very little to report from the weekend! Instead, I present to you photos from my summer, accompanied by haikus.

The old waterworks

Are now maintained by DeKalb

Saw a photo shoot. Continue reading →

Down at the Write Club

Posted on by

1

The Write Club state.

The Write Club stage.

There is almost nothing that I love quite like the weirdness of mid-sized professional theaters. This has a lot to do with childhood nostalgia–I attended theater camp from ages 10-15, and worked at one for a few years after that. Professional theater folks are weird and funny and a little bit too edgy for high schoolers (thus causing high school me to adore them), and I think that being allowed to work with and for them as a younger teen made me a lot of who I am now.

So it was with great delight that I continued the summer of Cool Atlanta Things by spending last night at Write Club Atlanta, hosted by PushPush Theater. Write Club is modeled on Fight Club, and began with a rousing round of:

“What’s the first rule of Write Club?”
“You must tell five to seven people about Write Club!”

Continue reading →

Steampunk Out on the Town

Posted on by

1

20120708-142800.jpg

Licensed under CC 2.0 // JvL // Source

This weekend, I got to party like it was 1899. (No, I didn’t go hang out with the Amish.) As part of my effort to Do More Things, I spent Saturday night at the Midsummer Night’s Steam bash put together by Atlanta’s local steampunk group–the Artifice Club–and my new favorite local startup, Scoutmob.

Given that the event flyer promised dancing, costumes, and a portion of the proceeds going towards the Atlanta Humane Society, I was in. Luckily, it turned out to be a totally delightful (if surreal) experience.

My friend and I were able to find the event by following the trail of folks in brown leather and corsets. There is a joke that steampunk is what happens when goths discover the color brown, and–though it’s not just that–there are certainly similarities. Off-the-shoulder white blouses and ballgowns certainly were present, and there were multiple folks in fairy wings. (Aren’t there always?) Continue reading →

Being Idle

Posted on by

0

I finally got around to reading “The ‘Busy’ Trap,” a NYT article that’s been making the rounds. I particularly enjoyed this quote:

Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.

This is something I used to write about with greater-than-normal frequency at HackCollege. Though the author of the NYT piece is talking about busyness as a specifically New York thing, I think it certainly manifests in universities like my own. Busyness–pulling all-nighters, not having time to do anything but eat, sleep a little, and study study study–is next to godliness for a certain kind of American college kid. And why wouldn’t it be? We’re never asked to consider if our work is valuable before we’re in college, and so we don’t once we’re there, either.

Continue reading →

Adventures with StoryCorps

Posted on by

0

Over the weekend, I had the good fortune to participate in the StoryCorps project as an interviewee. For those whose parents didn’t make them listen to NPR as children, StoryCorps in an oral history project in which two people who know each other take 40 minutes to have a conversation–anything beyond that is up to them, though there are initiatives to capture specific stories (folk life, or experiences of major historical events). The most interesting stories are edited into NPR segments, and all of them are archived at the Library of Congress.

Walking in, my friend and I were greeted by an NPR employee who was certainly appeared to be cut from the same cloth as us. She went to my high school, has an MPH, and spent time in a different African country for study abroad. It was one of those small world moments that Atlanta is very good at providing.

Once the project had been explained, we were led to the recording studio (think black foam walls and very large microphones) and let to talk. The conversation–which we had originally planned to be about my trip to SXSW back when I worked for HackCollege. Because, let’s face it–sharing a hotel room with internet strangers for a nerdy weekend in Texas is Not a Typical Experience. (As my friend helpfully reminded me during the interview, she was somewhat concerned I was going to be murdered while I was there.)

Continue reading →