Hi y’all. Go follow me on Twitter (@melissa) where I post a lot more often.

Penelope emailed me earlier:

“you have @melissa on twitter? that’s really cool.”

One minute later, she emails again:

“you are good at twitter. i have never read your feed before.

but it’s good. fun. and smart.”

You heard it from the source, first.

I have linked to Penelope exactly twice (Being A Digital Native and Human Moments) in the two years that I’ve known her. She has linked to me only once before. So, now we’re even.

This is shocking, because depending on the varying levels of our individual (in)sanity, we probably talk somewhere between eight and forty-two times a day — or night, in my case, now that I live on the other side of the world.

I once had to change my cell phone plan in order to account for all of the extra minutes I was using to call her, all day, all the time. (You already know why she can’t call me. Her phone is always out of battery, misplaced, or legitimately lost.)

Penelope instant messaged me about three minutes before she wanted the post to go up. At 4:27AM in Hong Kong:

Penelope: are you awake?

me: hi

Penelope: i have a post with you in it. i’m sending it to you. you can add keywords

me: i do this [CRAZY INSANE REDACTED THING] that you do too!!

Penelope: i need to post now. so look now, please. i hope you like it.

me: yes of course i will read it right away

Penelope: i love that i’m writing about posting on my blog and you’re writing about [REDACTED].

Penelope: the two of us make me laugh

Penelope: we are absurd

Then she abruptly signed off. And that pretty much sums up our relationship.

Which, in case there is any doubt, is actually an incredible and inspiring friendship, one that I value so highly that I don’t know how I ever lived without it.

In her post, she wrote that I’m God’s gift to “whatever [I] want to rank high in SEO for.” And she wrote that because it’s true. What I want to rank highly in, whether it be for SEO or for life, the universe, and everything, changes on a daily basis. Sometimes hourly.

In increments smaller than that, I wouldn’t know, since Penelope dictates how many messages, emails, or texts I can send her, and within them, how many words, characters, and bullet points I can use.

Penelope: at first i was like, hey, i don’t do that! but it’s true. i do.

So, here I am. And here it is — short and sweet — and posted now.

writing | photography | style | facebook | twitter | tumblr

In New York City, my starting salary was so low, that after rent, bills, and taxes (federal, state, city), I only had about $500 a month to live on. That’s not much, when you consider a box of no-name knock-off cereal costs $7.99 on the island

Fortunately, the job in NYC did not require much of a wardrobe change; just a little sharper than college, with heels all the time. That wasn’t a problem, since I’d already amassed a vast collection of shoes. Continue reading »

First and foremostly, I’m a geek. No, seriously. You can tell because I’m the only one reading from my iPhone, and not a piece of paper or memory.

Secondly, I’m a writer, not a poet. So, forgive me, if I suck. I’m new, I’m learning, learning to appreciate.

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I had another bad dream last night. Not that this is unusual, in fact, it’s more the norm than the exception. Another notorious nightmare. But maybe, maybe, if I start writing them down, they’ll go away? Lessen, at least? Spare me the sadness and the strife, the tears in the darkness between sleep and wake.

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Starting from kindergarten, I addressed all of my teachers by their first name. Of course, this was in Beverly Hills in the early 1990s, at an extraordinarily elite (and that’s putting it mildly) elementary school. The kind where you get on the waiting list as soon as you know you’re pregnant.

It was a very forward-thinking institution, and was dedicated to culture, intellectualism, and perhaps most, diversity. I knew nothing about racial tension while I was there. With no offense intended or implied, my three best friends were a black, a Jap, and a Jew. But I didn’t know that as a child. They were just my three best friends, in various sizes and shapes and colors.

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Dear Dad:

Every year, it gets more and more difficult to describe the deep feelings of gratitude that I feel towards you. I am grateful, for everything tangible you have given me, yes, but especially for the intangible, the incommunicable, the imperceptible.

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Let’s consider the brief history of the message:

1) We have mail, you know, “snail mail,” which has to physically go to a location and takes “time.”

2) Then we have email, which goes electronically to a location without requiring “time,” only requiring the time between which it arrives and which it gets read.

Then there’s the path of development to Google Buzz.

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After spending the day being lost in Tokyo and loving it, I returned to my hotel after finally finding MUJI. After resting for awhile, I left for another adventure, this time to Yokohama. I set out with low expectations, but high hopes.

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In the past, I’ve spent a lot of time wandering around in foreign countries. Sometimes I know where I’m going, sometimes I don’t. When I arrived in Shibuya, Tokyo and didn’t know where I was going, I did what I oftentimes do in these cases. Which is get in a taxi and let them figure it out for me.

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This first appeared on 2.26.09 as the first ever guest post on Blommit called “People Not on Facebook Need not Apply.”

First dates are completely, totally, and inexcusably obsolete. There is just no good reason for them to exist any longer.

Join me, my friends, in the quest to eliminate first dates forever. I am hereby refusing to ever go on a first date again.

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