Juxtapositiously

Confession

2009-01-28T20:38:00.002-05:00

I have never read Animal Farm. I am repenting for that right now.

Also, my boyfriend thinks he is better than I am at finding things on the internet. Because he's never pitted his skills against mine. (Trust me; I don't think he even knew what IMDb WAS until I came into his life; he cannot possibly be able to navigate the internet better than a seasoned pro such as myself.) (That parenthetical has THREE semi-colons. Too bad that won't fix the economy, but still, I'm pretty proud that I pulled that off, and I think it also breaks some fairly major grammatical rules.) Here is my proof: I have spent the last several evenings feverishly searching for a red bedsread. Comforter. Duvet cover. I don't care what you call it, I just mean that thing that goes on top of your bed and looks nice and keeps you warm at night. Bed-thingy. There we go. Anyway, I have this exact shade of red in mind to complete the look of Chris's new bedroom, since I am in charge of decorating his condo. Well, I had no idea how few red bed-thingies were in production until I actually tried looking for one. Maybe I'm just ahead of the curve? I have a vision of three years from now, when the textile markets are filled with luxuriously red bed-thingies, three years too late to save me from a nervous breakdown.

So I go over to Chris's, and his best friend Karl is there, and I am telling them of my woes, and they are only 1/8th listening, because they are playing Playstation, which is just fine, because I didn't really need them to listen anyway. But enough penetrates Chris's brain for him to turn to me (once he's been shot by another player, and therefore has the time) and say something like, "I bet if I put 'red bedspread' into Google, it would turn up plenty of results."

Ohhh, if ONLY I had thought to use Google! Thank you big, strong, smart boy, I am so glad you came along and fixed my world and picked me up out of the dark, dirty chasm that had been my life. Wait, no.

The only suitable reply was, "Oh, if oooonly your dumb girlfriend had thought of that!" with an extra helping of sarcasm to seal the deal.

So now I will find that bed-thingy if it kills me (if it KILLS me!), and I wish you all the best, please come pay your respects at my funeral, and make sure they're playing appropriately awesome music.

(He apologized, by the way. I don't want anyone out there thinking I'm dating a jerk. He apologized and probably poked me for good measure.)

Because I Find Lists To Be The Easiest Way Of Letting You Know What I'm Up To

2008-11-30T12:44:00.003-05:00

Hello, Internet! Hi. You can't see it, but I'm doing one of those low, self-conscious waves at you that little kids do while they're coiled tightly around Mom's leg. Because, Internet, I feel like we are strangers, but possibly you have candy to give me, so I'm willing to give it a shot. Do you like the analogy? I like the analogy. Also, I spent my day with two-year-olds, so it came readily to mind.

Here are some things I have been up to:

1. I got a Wii. It is fantastic, and I have been playing Mario Kart like a mad woman, and my plan was to assemble all of my friends, and we would play Wii, and it would be fantastic. And then they all went out and got their own Wiis. I almost had real-life friends, though. Almost.

2. Watching all those movies people just ASSUME I've seen, because everyone has seen them, but I haven't. I don't know what I was up to while everyone else was out watching Forrest Gump - that's right, haven't seen it.

3. Compiling Christmas Gift Lists. So many people these days have so little, and I am blessed enough to have more than I need. I am doing my own, small part to stimulate the economy, and presents are involved, too, hoorah! You don't know how I agonize over gift-giving, either.

4. Fiercely combating with entropy. Do you know how difficult it is to keep a room clean, when it's not YOUR room, and the room's occupant keeps bringing dirty dishes into it and saves every last receipt he has ever gotten, ever? I started with a hamper, a bill folder, and some organizational drawers. It will end in bloodshed, I have no doubt. Bloodshed, or scented candles.

5. Buying laptops for people. Everyone wants a laptop, and no one knows what sort will be a good fit for them. So I get to show off my skills and sniff out the best deals, and for some reason people think I am using my own special brand of magic, instead of Google and a little splash of patience. Here's my advice, people: Type in "good deals on laptops," and have at it! Or just "good deal laptop." "Good laptop deal." "Deal laptop good"? Turn it into a game. Play with the kids!

6. Using illegal quantities of lotion. I cannot stand dry skin. Winter time, I am looking at you.

7. Bathing a large, unappreciative, very furry cat. At one point, he tried to escape from the tub, and of course it was when he was covered in soap. I suddenly had a vision of this soaking-wet, twenty-pound, slimy gargantuan cat streaking loose through the house. You should try it some time.

8. Hunting down Count Chocula cereal. I used to buy it about twice a year for friends and/or church activities, and it was always easy to find, back then. Then came a day when I wanted some for myself, and lo and behold, it became the rarest and most impossible thing to find. I moved back to Maryland, which had plenty of grocery stores, and I thought my luck would improve, but alas, it did not. Now if a store sells it, I buy two boxes. Also, because I am an adult, I can eat it any time I want. Sometimes I'm lying around, enjoying a bowl, then I go grab a slice of cheesecake to complete my dinner, and I think to myself, "Holy cow, it is cool being a grown-up. Rent is not cool. But the food selections more than make up for it."

9. Not doing laundry. Worrying about it takes up a lot of time. Trust me on this one.

10. Missing you. Seriously.

To All My Homegirls Out There

2008-07-30T11:36:00.002-05:00

I hope she doesn't kill me for posting this.

Now, girls aren't getting off easy, here. As often as boys can be idiots, girls are scheming jerks. But in my broad experience there have been many, many boys who've blown it big time, and it just sort of leaves me with my head cocked to one side going, "Really? That was your choice? Because...seriously?" And then I shrug my shoulders and go find something better to do with my time.

While the guy I want is wasting his time with a crazy/stupid/wimpy girl. But his punishment is that he has to spend time with her, so karma takes care of everything for me.

The moral of this story is, call when you say you'll call, we really do want to hear from you. And if we miss your call then call you back, don't passively-aggressively punish us by not answering your phone. We know you're busy, and we're willing to give you yards and yards of the benefit of the doubt, but eventually we have to decide if you're legit or just a tool, and there are terribly few capable, smart, cool girls out there - and we all know each other, and trust us, we talk - so don't ruin your chances. Or else start looking forward to a lifetime of watching 27 Dresses with Brindee and watching her spend all your money on throw pillows and pedicures.

And in exchange, we'll try really hard to have rational explanations for our feelings, and to express them to you in clear-cut, up-front, honest ways. We won't make you pry them out of us to show us how much you REALLY CARE, we won't throw things at your head when we're frustrated (except when you deserve it, and you know sometimes you do), we won't pitch screaming fits about how you never really cared about us. We know, we have issues. Try processing seven different emotions a second. Go ahead, try. Were you successful? Now picture doing that all day every day FOR THE REST OF FOREVER. It's exhausting. And we're usually too busy to take a nap. So cut us some slack and learn to work with us.

We could really work out something pretty fantastic.

A Lake Story

2008-07-22T09:13:00.002-05:00

So yesterday Jason and I planned to escape to a lake in PA and enjoy the heck out of it. We pulled up to what looked like some information center, and when I got out of the car I spied a fenced-in enclosure with some sort of animal inside. I couldn't quite tell what it was, so of course it was all I could think and/or talk about. Once we got inside, we were told that basically we had to be campers/lodgers to enjoy the lake, so we scrawled a big, fat "Screw you!" on the walls (metaphorically; we have great and deep respect for personal property) and left.

We stopped in the general store to buy supplies (some water, pop rocks, and something called a "Charleston Chew," which frightened me greatly) and Jason asked the cashier lady for something awesome to do while I walked around and pretended like I had no idea what was going on. I cannot ask questions like that. I will not ask you for directions. I will not go into your Blockbuster store and ask you to help me locate a movie. I will walk around that store for twenty-seven minutes looking for what I came in there for, and I will never once ask you for help. It is a side to my personal independence that could really stand to be worn down some, but I'll worry about that later. Like when it's a life & death situation.

So anyway, we left, and went to go check out the mysterious animal, and realized it was a goat. (What are those animals there, the ones that look like half cow, half dog?) (That is an inside joke. That is HILARIOUS to me.) And there were more! And they had a playhouse in the trees! Yay, goats. It's going to be a good day when goats are involved.

So we went to a State Park instead, with a creek and a waterfall and a...jiggly bridge thing...and hiking and crawfish and no sunburn, hooray!

And then the day ended at Baja Fresh where I wolfed down a burrito the size of my head that was stuffed with chicken and grilled vegetables and - I don't know, fricking SOUR CREAM, who can say no to sour cream.

Now I'm typing this and listening to the rain outside my open window, tabbing back and forth between this window and looking at pictures of Dallan's escapades in China. I'm not sure what could make this a better weekend.

I Will Shout That If/When I Am Ever Arrested, As Well

2008-07-20T23:15:00.003-05:00

Here is why I hate Facebook Chat: People keep signed off just as I send them super witty retorts based on their status messages. How cruel and unusual is that?

Also, it keeps telling me that people I'm chatting with are offline, when I know they are not. We'll be in the middle of a conversation, and they'll blip offline for a few seconds or a minute.

Both ways in which Facebook is sadly attempting to undermine my wit. It won't work, Facebook. I shall win this war.

They may take our lives, but they will never take our freeeeeedoooooooom!

Sleeping Habits

2008-07-17T07:49:00.002-05:00

I need about three naps to get me through my day. Why is this, what is wrong with me, and what can I do to fix it?

I sleep about 7 hours a night, at fairly consistent times. I fall asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow. The last thing I'm usually thinking is, Oh, doesn't it feel so nice with my head on the pillow like th- , and I'm out until my body wakes me up at the trained hour.

I dream a lot, and it's always about real life. I sort through stuff in my dreams, process all the emotions I don't have time to feel when I'm awake (I'm pretty busy, and I'm always feeling something or other, so a lot of things just fall by the wayside. Plus, my mantra is "repress, repress, repress," which is entirely healthy, shut up.) Sometimes, and maybe it's more than I realize, the dreams exhaust me. My brain is more alert on waking up, but I'm still, somewhere, tired. Turns out the brain is a little complicated, huh.

I exercise regularly, I try to eat healthily, plenty of vitamins and vegetables. I usually don't even touch caffeine, which makes 2 - 4 p.m. at work soooo hard, but I feel better about myself in the long run.

Maybe the answer is that I'm a wuss. Probably. In fact, I established that a long time ago when Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit proved a little too intense for me.

Or maybe it's just that starting at 6 a.m. a giant mutant cat jumps on my bed and starts pawing at my face for me to wake up and, I don't know, feed him, or clean up his barf, or pet him, or just be awake to witness all his cat antics. Cantics. Whatever it is, he's more pushy than any boy I've ever known, including the one who spent the night outside my bedroom door. But he's also way more soft, so bonus.

Anyway, I need to go take a nap now.

Avoidance, But Not Quite

2008-07-15T22:34:00.002-05:00

I just checked my e-mail to find a picture of me kneeboarding wearing, I kid you not, pearl earrings. Only me. I rock so hard accidentally. Also, my dad sent the picture to me, and in the message body he wrote, "I hope it's not too big." I didn't even need to open the picture to know what I would find, because I have known the man for 23-odd years. I had to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll even to find my body, the file was HUGE. Which I like, don't get me wrong; it's just weird to play Where's Waldo with a picture of you instead of an animated stripey shirt guy in a book from the children's section of the library.

All this is to avoid talking about how I found out this morning that a friend of mine died last night. I got the message, and I didn't believe it at first. Even now, I think that maybe it's a joke, as sick as that would be. This kid was amazing - at 22 he graduated from a top-20 law school, and he always had time to come over and play video games. He even put up with my foolishness and participated in the only two mini marshmallow roasts this world has ever or will ever see. You were a good kid, James Bodell. I kind of just assumed you'd keep on shining in this world forever. Shine in the next, my friend. Shine in the next.

As I Write This, Two Girls Are Slip N Sliding Right Outside My Window

2008-07-14T13:51:00.004-05:00

Jared came into town on Saturday, and I think it was at some point while I was folded into one of the audience chairs at the band shell, clutching a black-eyed susan I'd stolen from the grounds while he played Brand New on his guitar that this huge sigh of happiness escaped from me. It was a perfect night, just the right temperature between hot and cold, the air was moving but not breezy, and the humidity wasn't all that intense. And we'd just spent the evening at Harper's Ferry, which is my favorite place on this entire planet. We talked physics and sound engineering while swinging in the park. That's pretty much what it takes to be friends with me; I love knowing I'm surrounded with interesting people who are always willing to teach me things and to run the wild, dizzying race of speculation.

The next day I was at my desk in the afternoon, getting some things done and talking to some people online, when I noticed I could hear the rain outside, and it was LOUD. I opened the window and watched it pour. Pour, as in, I don't know if I've ever seen it rain so hard and so consistently. There was no fitfulness in this rain, it was not one of those big gushes that steadies out in a few minutes. This was just RAIN. So of course I had to go out to play in it. I ran around to the swingset behind my house and pumped my legs and watched the water droplets fly off of them into the bushes. I don't know how to describe the rush of that feeling, but it was pretty much pure happy. Too bad getting drenched left me freezing, so I rushed inside to go take a long, hot shower, and then I snuggled down with a book.

Today I went to the Sprint store, because my phone is broken. Very broken. Throwing it against the windowsill didn't even fix it broken. But I was charming and patient, and they're rush-ordering a new phone for me to come pick up tomorrow for FREE. I like free things. I especially like that it was going to take four or five business days, but when I told the guy, "Wow, really? That's great! I was expecting to have to wait two weeks!" and I thanked him so much, he was like, "You know what? Thanks for being understanding. I'm going to go ahead and put a rush on this, we should have it sometime tomorrow." And then as I was leaving, he offered me a job. THAT's when you know you've been a good customer, the sales rep is like, Not only did I enjoy seeing you today, but you were so cool I want to see you every day. And I want to give you money!

I was so pleased with the way things turned out, that I decided to get my hair cut at long last, and now it has movement and shine and not bugging the crap out of me by hanging on my neck. Ness.

And now I'm off to go wakeboarding, hooray!

Puke And Pancakes - It Really Is All About The Alliteration

2008-07-10T09:43:00.002-05:00

Today I scrubbed up cat puke from the carpet while (while!) somehow managing to make myself a delicious breakfast of hot pancakes. Check out them skills.

And it only leads me to wonder, How am I not married yet? I am the oldest single Mormon in existence. (True fact!) How did a massive conclave of notoriously commitment-happy Mormon boys not scoop me up into their prayerful, obedient clutches?

Then I remembered - I ran screaming from their clutches and into the hermit cave known as Intellect.

But still, I'd make a great candidate for Mom, since I'm pretty sure all you do is clean up puke and fry up dozens and thousands of pancakes. At least by the way they tell things.

Revisionist history starts in the home.

Oh, And I Learned Where Bhutan Is. And What It Is, Too.

2008-07-06T08:50:00.002-05:00

I spent my fourth of July getting rained on, sleeping in corners with all my worldly possessions piled about me, running barefoot through the questionable sidewalks of D.C., sampling a petunia and hoping they're not one of those toxic plants while at the same time thinking it would be kinda cool, wishing for more dinosaur-related gore at the IMAX, eating a festively-blue rice krispie treat that was as large as my head (with help) that dyed everything in its wake a brilliant unmistakable shade, sleeping on the Metro, and watching the fireworks obscured by a dense smoke cloud.

Vive Le Quatre Juillet!

Titles Are The Worst Part Of My Job

2008-07-04T20:54:00.003-05:00

I was going to write something very, very different originally, so I'm glad I waited two days.

For - well, for years. For many years, which is purposely vague, because I don't know when it began, I would experience pretty intense stomach pains. Idiopathic, because doctors were stumped, so I dealt with it mostly. Then I moved away from college, and I'm not really sure when it stopped, I just sort of noticed one day that, hey, my stomach hasn't hurt in a while. Not like that. For years it stopped, and I thought myself cured.

Then I moved back home in the beginning of May, and here I found myself two months later experiencing those same daily stomach pains. Nothing hurts quite the same, and boy was it all so familiar. I've even considered that there's some sort of environmental factor. By Wednesday night, I was pretty miserable, and I'm pretty sure I almost got up from my desk, walked out of my job, grabbed a sweatshirt, and headed out of town for good.

But then I held out for Thursday, and that went pretty well. I was happy again, nothing hurt, and I waited in line at the Wal-Mart for twenty-three minutes without killing one person.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone. I just had the best Fourth ever, but I'm sure yours came in pretty close. I'll post pictures sometime when I didn't spend the whole ride home sleeping.

This Is How It Works

2008-07-02T10:30:00.002-05:00

I am tired of wringing words.

Mid-morning I caught a glimpse of the sun, and then my own pale complexion, so I decided to bring my book outside to partake in the glory of the day. Barefoot on the deck, my skin drank in the warmth and the glow, and I'd brought out some pomegranate juice in a glass bottle, naturally. I think my entire body took a gulping sigh of contentment. Which lasted all of twenty minutes.

In that time, I managed to fling a spider to his spiraling, violent death, so at least I had an accomplishment under my belt when I decided to beat a retreat back inside. Yes, the air was already shimmery hot, and everything looked blue because the sun was so bright - when you close your eyes to it and reopen them, everything takes on a blue tinge, try it - and I was already growing uncomfortable. But more than that was a growing mental disquietude.

I told myself I was taking a break, three minutes tops. I ran upstairs, carefully conscious of how my muscles worked as I bounded up; I cannot escape from my obsessions for very long. Into my room to glance at my computer, and still no response.

I am tired of wringing words.

All thoughts of mid-morning sunshine fled, and I sought for something else to do. My number one rule when facing something of this nature is No Dwelling. If my time is not important to someone else, then I refuse to waste a single moment more thinking about it. I cast about for a What Next. Filtering through my abundant projects, I found nothing that suited me, casting idea after idea aside like thumbing through the garments at Goodwill. There had to be something in there, though, and then came to mind La Follia.

I used to be a musician. I used to spend hours every day at my craft, poring over pages of notes, aching with the thrum of four strings. I wanted to be a concert violinist until I was seventeen, and I realized that I hated performing, so I left that world. At eighteen I played my last concert, and that was when I stopped. But I never stopped wanting to be a musician, wanting to feel the confidence of the notes beneath my fingers.

The miracle of the internet is, that if you look hard enough, you can get what you want, and most times immediately. I wanted to play Corelli's La Follia again, but somewhere in my many moves, I'd lost the music.

YouTube had a performance of it, and I listened, but that wasn't enough. So I googled. And googled some more. And switched up my google searches and honed them and finally found a place to download pdf files of sheet music, and as I printed the pages out, I brought out my stand and tightened my bow and tuned my strings to the a442 that I prefer.

And then I practiced. 45 minutes poring over just two pages of the piece, going over note by note, working until my fingers had the pitches just perfect. That is the joy of the violin, there are a million degrees of a pitch you can sound with just the tiniest variation in finger placement. You strive and strive for just the correct clarity of tone, and often the same not won't be played in the exact same manner a second time, due to chord progression.

And then I was filled, caught, free, held. This is why I make the rule No Dwelling, because nothing in life is worth wasting the time that could be spent on a thousand different pursuits. Go out there and chase the things you love to do. And if you want, come find me and we'll make some music together.

The Persephone Factor

2008-07-01T10:49:00.003-05:00

What is it about pomegranate that is so irresistible? I swear, if you put pomegranate juice, or seeds, or scent, or probably IDEA into a product, I will see it and feel compelled to buy it. And then I will feel so good about myself, so complete and nourished, and for some reason, prettier.

And I want to know what it is, what archetypal whisper keeps nudging me to do these things. Next thing you know, I'll be traipsing down to the Underworld, saying my last goodbyes to sunlight and happiness, trading it all away for the sweet promise of pomegranate.

The stuff is even littered with seeds! I HATE seeds. Above all things, I hate seeds, as long as you count pulp under the seed category, and believe me, I do. But it smells so.... And it tastes so.... And it is so very, very red.

Hello, Craig

2008-06-29T08:32:00.002-05:00

I know, I know. Blogs are an easy way to keep up on someone's life without having to go through that hassle of calling them and holding a conversation, ugh, so tired. So it's great when people have blogs! Especially people you're secretly stalking! And incredibly frustrating when they constantly withhold the juicy details.

Want some juicy details?

I have a 9 - 5 job, people. 8 - 4:30, really, but it's in that 9 - 5 category. Sometimes interesting things happen on my job, like that time I left a voicemail for someone named Harry Dickey (no joke, I even wrote it down in my notebook to remember always), and because I am a twelve-year-old, I had to text my friend Dan to let him know. It's nice to have friends like that, especially when they return the favor. Also, there are three young men whom I work in close proximity with that I have nicknamed Sketch, Creeps, and Yikes. I'll probably be telling many, many stories about them in the near & upcoming future until they are fired for crimes against humanity and general shiveriness. Dickens wrote about these guys a hundred and some years ago. They are that level of amazing, and obviously not in a good way.

Beyond that, my job is not exciting. No juiciness there.

When I come home from work, I make dinner. After dinner, I read my scriptures, work out, clean up, go for a four-mile run, come back, and start thumbing through whatever philosophical text I'm combing through that evening. Right now it's Aristotle's Politics. I want to know, really understand, if a country actually needs a military to be prosperous. And why. And what is prosperity, anyway.

That is what I do. I go to bed before midnight. I bake (incredibly delicious) muffins for potlucks. I give talks in church.

Oh, and I field phone calls from some of the most interesting, entertaining people on this planet, barring Stephen Colbert himself. And given that only one person ever calls me regularly (maybe one and a half), I guess he gets all the credit for that himself. It's your choice, people: Share in the wealth, or silently lurk my blog.

P.S. If you actually, sincerely believed that what I outlined is really all I do, then you don't know me very well.

Don't Throw Rocks

2008-06-13T22:37:00.001-05:00

I didn't like Juno. There, I said it. I will accept all of your contempt and derision, and then I will tell you why you are wrong.

Click Here

2008-06-12T20:47:00.004-05:00

I got the weirdest (maybe-)compliment today. Trina saw me sitting at my desk and came by to ask me if I'd been a dancer at one point in my life (as in a ballerina, I see where your mind is going, and I'm going to nip that right in the bud). Well, yes. I was once a ballerina. Until I was eight.

But apparently when I cross my legs, I point my foot like I've had lifelong training. Go me? At least when I'm sitting down I can manage to be graceful. Also when I'm directing minions, but that's a different sort of grace entirely.

Science Lesson

2008-06-07T09:39:00.002-05:00

I realize that I shouldn't make fun of her or expose her to embarrassment because she gave me life, blah blah blah, whatever. She had children and raised them in the internet age, she had to expect that something of this sort would happen eventually. So here is what happened in a conversation between my mother and I today.

(First, some backstory. A couple weeks ago we went to the National Art Gallery, and while we were shopping around in the gift store, she came upon a little solar-powered contraption that attached to a window and had a prism dangling from it, so when the sunlight came in, it would turn some internal gears, spinning the prism around, and making rainbows dance all over the room. That device stopped working today, and I could hear little gears trying fruitlessly to turn, so I decided to perform some microsurgery on it and get it working again, to soothe my mother's heartbreak over a lack of spinney rainbows.)

Me (as I'm holding the contraption up to the window, trying to catch some light to see if my work had any effect): No, there's not enough light coming in, I can't tell.

Mom: Do you want me to get a flashlight?

Me: I'm sorry, what?!

Mom: A flashlight.

Me: No. How would a flashlight do me any good?

Mom: Well, I figure light is light.

Me: ...No, Mom. Solar power requires a Sun.

Mom: Are you sure?

Me: Yes.

See, the thing about a flashlight vs. sunlight, is that your standard flashlight is about 3 watts (I googled it), while "the power at noon on the equator is about 1 kW per square meter," leaving room for all sorts of variables to enter in and mess with that figure (I maybe googled that as well, don't judge me). So, while light MAY be light, you know, photons bouncing around, making physicists scratch their heads, because (and they will admit this to you when REALLY pressed) they have NO IDEA what is going on with those little buggers - light may be light, but 3 watts vs. 1,000, or even 500 is kinda a huge difference.

And now you know.

An Update On Work, My Way

2008-06-05T17:07:00.002-05:00

Today at work we tried signing into the system with our brand new IDs and passwords, which of course failed miserably, so our trainer was on the phone with IT for a good hour or so. Which left us free to mill about and talk amongst ourselves - !!! I got paid to sit around and chat. This is truly an amazing country.

So of course we spent a good portion of our time coming up with creative ways to kill each other, and in the interest of full disclosure, I probably have the market cornered in original, grisly demises.

Like anyone here is surprised.

I also met some of my soon-to-be team members and introduced myself, and then went skipping (literally) across the production floor, certainly not drawing any attention to myself in my pink, butterfly'd clothing. Basically I own the place already.

Driven

2008-06-03T22:01:00.002-05:00

I will just put it out there like this: I really like conversations with people who make me feel like an imbecile. I don't enjoy them, that's not what I said; I like them. Because they are important. And I wish I could have three of them every day.

Because what happens when someone makes me realize, geez, I know so little about x, y, and z, I can't even express a coherent thought concerning the matter, let ALONE an interesting one, is I make darn sure that doesn't happen again. I start reading, hunting, fishing around in my mind, sorting my feelings out, getting the facts straight, and coming to some sort of conclusion. Even if it's just about a pudding flavor, I do the research. The shame is that I usually never have another conversation with that person on that subject x, y, and z, so they never see how much I have learned, and so my pride is never assuaged on that matter. They will probably go for the rest of their lives thinking, Boy, she knew so very, very little. And I HATE that. I want to be considered smart, capable, and well-informed by my peers, because guess what, the whimsical draw of having a favorite color of Bank lollipop, it only goes so far. When I am thirty-seven, people are not going to accept that from me anymore. I'd better be prepared.

It had never occurred to me, really, before tonight, that there is something wrong in having a huge, clumpy group of Big Ideas that are so broad in scope that nothing can be made of them. It's something that you'd better believe I am fixing starting right now, though.

I don't know how anyone has time for baseball games and friends.

I Will Admit It, I Use An Anti-Wrinkle Cream, And I Don't Even Have Wrinkles - Yet

2008-05-31T22:49:00.004-05:00

My concept of Zion (Zion, you know, perfect city, no poor, everyone is decent to each other - don't you kids read anymore?) is a place where we don't have to wash our faces every night, stripping them of moisture they naturally produce, because it's bad for our faces, and then religiously reapplying a different, man-made moisture, because our faces need to be moisturized. Is this process not zany to anyone else? And yet, it's not something I've been suckered into. I don't pay ten bucks for a bottle of lotion because some smart advertising firm has decided to sell something I don't need to me. It's completely necessary!

Except my concept of Zion used to be a place that had those divided paper plates, and then I went to a Baptist barbecue with a friend of mine, and there were divided plates there, and the irony struck me pretty hard. Like getting smacked with a two-by-four hard. So maybe I need to think more before I just start theorizing about what Zion will be like when everyone reaches their full awesomeness potential, although divided plates and no need for paying for external moisturizers WOULD make for a pretty rad city.

Ah, human physiology, you truly are the most whimsical of sciences. And here everyone thought it was astronomy, because no one really knows the difference between astronomy and astrology.

2008-05-30T19:12:00.001-05:00

Someday, when I have a disposable income, I am going to waste my money on leatherbound books.

It's comforting to have a plan.

A Little Bit Black Sheep, Perhaps

2008-05-26T12:39:00.003-05:00

It is a great thing to be a skinny girl in America. I get attention for something that I happen by completely naturally (not that I don't also work hard at improving upon my genetic lot), and this being America, and the obesity rate being what it is, I'm not exactly a dime a dozen, either.

And now I'm going to spend the rest of my day hiding out in my room reading books and conducting a science experiment, because I like that far better than meaningless comments from boring strangers.

I Really Like Those Endorphins

2008-05-24T23:28:00.002-05:00

There is definitely something to be said for running after a full, long grueling day, getting a cramp, and then powering through that sucker because, what, is a little bit of wrenching abdominal pain going to slow you down? Not a chance.

It's The Little Things

2008-05-21T17:08:00.003-05:00

The corporate world has been robbing me of my creativity and whimsy and, you know, DRIVE - so today I thought I would fight back a little. I'm in my third day of training at a company who shall remain nameless, because I do not think they would hesitate to fire me for expressing an opinion online. And I have a feeling Jamie Dimon might be a bit of a googler. Anyway. So I've been in training for three days, and it's pretty dry stuff. So today we were supposed to fish around on the company "Intranet" (I feel so dumb even typing that word) and, um. Find things? Learn all about "links" and the magic they contain? And we had a scavenger hunt. Way to ruin a perfectly good scavenger hunt with the doldrums of a company intranet. Putting "Scavenger Hunt" at the top of a photocopied worksheet is not going to change it into something exciting that your employees will care about.

So I took some recent legal counsel to heart, and I answered each question with faultlessly vague answers. And I may have at one point implied that the company was not very wise in letting me have all this information so conveniently at my fingertips. Pretty much I treated their worksheet like a Myspace survey; and at the end of the day, I held my head up high.

And I Am Finally Seeing, Why I Was The One Worth Leaving

2008-05-19T20:05:00.003-05:00

The last step in getting over someone is discovering all the things you did that hurt them. Confronting those wrongs, your flaws; and in that realization, something changes. And you can finally leave.

I used to believe, vainly, that this Nietzsche quote applied to me: "Independence is for the very few, [for those] not only strong, but also daring to the point of recklessness. He enters into a labyrinth, no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes lonely, and is torn piecemeal. And he cannot go back." But I was never really lost before. I was never lonely. I had my gang of misfits, and my gang of ideas. They evaporated in the hot light of his cynicism. I can't call him anymore, and my friends don't want to hear about him or what he thinks — in the end, they decided he's too cocky, proprietary, doesn't recycle. Our love affair was a thrilling voyage into hostile territory, and now I'd returned home — to the things I think, to the things I know — and it didn't feel like home anymore. I can't make it in his world — can't afford it for one thing, don't like it for another — but I no longer wanted to be in mine. Having fallen into a void, now I was lost, now I was lonely. Now I was free.

-Lisa Carver

Rules on Driving

2008-05-17T21:15:00.002-05:00

Here are my thoughts on passing on the right: It is completely acceptable, as long as you do it like I do.

I know, I know it's illegal, but sometimes it's also necessary, and so what do you do? Simple. Say you're on a three-lane highway and the person in front of you inexplicably slows down to an unacceptable speed. The lane to your left is completely clogged with fast-paced traffic largely unwilling to make room for you. But the lane to your right is completely open! Too bad passing on the right is illegal. But lane-changing is not.

So before switching lanes, I think to myself, Oh! Right lane! You look pretty good right now. Fierce really. I like that. I think I'll come for a visit. And then I drive on it for a while, passing well ahead of Mr. Slowbeans. And then I think, You know, Right Lane, I liked you much better before. I think our time is up. And I merge back into my original center lane, where I prefer to be. And no illegal acts committed, because of my very deliberate and conscious thought.

And also, why would you be going 45 mph on 495? Do you have a death wish?

We're Not The Same, Dear, As We Used To Be

2008-05-14T15:08:00.002-05:00

I am still consistently amazed at how happy I am. People ask me how I'm doing, and my response of, "Good! Really, really good!" isn't hiding anything, it's just the plain, simple truth. I am doing really, really good. I don't even care that that's not grammatically correct, THAT IS HOW GOOD I FEEL.

I had one low moment soon after I moved home, and that was my first in a while, and it hasn't been repeated since. Frustrating things happen, and I get through them just fine. I almost got lost in the backcountry of Smithsburg and had to become a mountain man for the rest of my life, because I thought I sure wouldn't find my way back to civilization. But I retraced my steps just fine, discovered the error I'd made in the dark, and even figured out why my directions weren't taking me where I needed to go. All while laughing.

It occured to me a while ago while I was listening to an album I really like (Brand New, "The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me"), when I thought to myself, That will never be me. I will never again be the mess and jumble of heartsick, disastrous emotions over love, or anything else really. I worked hard at getting myself stable and healthy, but that meant giving up the huge, passionate bursts of feeling. And I wondered to myself if I would ever regret the loss.

I regret the loss. I regret the loss of a lot of things; I'm not one of those people who doesn't believe in having regrets, but also, mine are different. I feel those losses, keenly, but in facing the decision again, I would make the same one every time. I am where I am supposed to be, I am convinced of that. And even if I don't know where I am going, because I haven't the slightest clue, well. I am happy right now. And I will treasure that.

I'll Admit It, All Those Fancy Badges Are Kind Of Intimidating

2008-05-09T21:28:00.002-05:00

I thought Buena Vista was overrun by police people. I thought it was probably the most overrun by police people locale in the entire history of ever. And then I moved back to Frederick. This place is crawling with cops! I counted and saw five different cars just in the four blocks I walked to a boutique in town in happen to like. Four blocks, five police cars, and still people are allowed to behave like complete tools. I wish that were an arrestable offense.

On a side note, I almost went back to one of the nice police women just to tell her I thought she was really pretty. But then I thought better of it. But really, she was pretty, and she looked way too nice to be wielding a gun and a badge.

Password Frustration

2008-05-08T10:34:00.003-05:00

If Sallie Mae wants to make it so difficult for me to make payments to them, then I will stop paying them. And when they contact me to let me know I have an overdue balance, I will tell them that the mirey swamp of their payment system has left me a lost, wandering savage, and they probably should send a search party if they really want my cold, hard cash. Also, they should pay ME for the time I spent on their website, trying to get my dang password to work. I use two passwords very, very consistently. One is for the nice websites that don't require letters and numbers. One is for the skanky websites that demand a combination of both, like someone would be able to guess my password anyway. My alphanumeric password is FAR easier to guess, because I have to be sure I'll remember it. And the pure numeric PIN I had to choose for Sprint, that could not be in any way related to my birth date or Social Security number? I made it a math joke. A math joke that no one down at Sprint headquarters got, even though I had to tell it to half a dozen of their employees to get my account activated.

Anyway, so the password I KNEW was my password wasn't working, so I had to answer all sorts of security questions, and once I ran that guantlet, I got to pick a new password. So I picked the password I always use, and guess what? Couldn't use it. Because you're not allowed to input for the new password whatever your old password had been. Meaning that password I tried inputting five different times, and it kept rejecting me? Yeah, it was my password the whole time, but the ol' whore Sallie Mae just didn't like the way I typed it. I guess.

I am moving to the mountains.

Wikipedia Can Help You with Those Philosophical Terms I Threw out There Like Everyone Knows or Cares

2008-05-07T09:41:00.004-05:00

It's a little strange to me that the boy who mocks people for valuing anything material should be so crazy about his car. Crazy about it to the extent of bragging. But there you are.

To me, everything is material (I'm a materialist, philosophically; it comes from being a Mormon), so you have to care about SOMETHING that's material. I realize I'm equivocating, but I think possessions and progress can be very good things. Thoreau and I would not be the greatest of friends, and I'm okay with that. I believe in living in the world, and connecting with people, and all those grand things that can come from a life not spent alone in the woods.

Don't Think I'm Ready To Settle, Though

2008-05-05T10:52:00.003-05:00

I was sitting by myself in church yesterday, my mother having scurried away some minutes before to run back home and procure the bag she needed, and the service was winding down, when I found myself with a little visitor.

There was a family with kids sitting a few pews ahead of me, and the little boy, about three or four, wandered back to my pew. He draped his arms over my knees, put his head down on my lap and started playing with the bracelet around my wrist. I just put an arm around him and played with his fuzzy hair and felt my heart melt around my bones.

If the Church really wanted to get us married faster, they wouldn't sequester the single people in small groups together, to get bored and frustrated with the small-minded maneuvering and shallow manipulations of everyone else around them. They'd keep us in family wards to be surrounded by the loud, frustrated wailings of parents and children and those raw, brilliant moments when it all becomes worthwhile.

Goooooo Science!

2008-05-03T08:51:00.003-05:00

My mother stole my barometer to hang in the living room, and I don't know if I was more jealous or so, so pleased. I mean, MY barometer should hang out with me, in my room, telling me all sorts of fascinating things about the current pressure and humidity and stuffy bedroom temperature. On the other hand, my mom likes it enough to want to hang it where she can see it, and that's a high five and a half in my book. Plus, I'm tired of living with people who are constantly weirded out by the phallic symbol on my wall, no matter how many times I try to explain.

I Caved, And Other Stories

2008-05-02T00:26:00.002-05:00

And now you will always, always know.

The very very first thing I unpacked was my computer. I didn't arrive back in Maryland until about 11:30 p.m., so I didn't bother hauling everything in, but I made sure I had the important stuff, goshdarnit! I also found my sheets and brought those in too, in case I felt like doing a little sleeping at some point.

Who am I kidding? Today was seriously one of the least fun days of my life. I thought I'd gotten so much more done than I actually had, and the problem was that I didn't realize I even had a problem until I got well into packing. It was one of those, "Oh, not much more to do - wait, I still have to do that...and that other thing...and oh yeah, I can't forget to do that" situations. On top of bagging everything up and throwing it down the impossible stairs of my apartment and bending all rules of physics and human anatomy just to get the front door open with my load, I also managed to squeeze time into my day to serve my country.

Alright, maybe I've been overdosing on 24 lately (I have, it's true, but 24 is the drug that WON'T ruin your life and drive all your friends away one by one), but I did do something pretty handy for a friend of mine, who was stuck at school doing a humanitarian project. Stuck was his word, too, so don't even try to start judging me. I went to the school, got some money and his student I.D., then went to Hardee's to grab him some lunch. Our local Hardee's, apparently, gives out student discounts. Ricky's idea would be for me to just sort of wave his I.D. at the cashier with my thumb covering the photo-like, and no one would be any wiser to our scheme. Instead I just told her that I was fetching lunch for a lazy friend (hi, Ricky!), and here was his I.D., and she waved me onward. That's probably the first and last time I'll ever be telling the truth, so I'm glad it worked out so well for me.

Oh, and then a psychotic bumblebee started following me around. I can't even explain, you really just had to be there. Come to think of it, I'm glad you weren't, because hoo boy, was I a girl. Igh. Oh, well.

And now I'm home. And the cat is asleep next to me, and my computer is merrily lighting my dark bedroom with its soothing blue fan lights, and things are just pretty happy for me.

Let's see how the Career Event tomorrow goes.

The Pressure's On

2008-04-29T12:59:00.003-05:00

I'm seriously thinking about getting a Twitter account. Because more people need to know what I'm doing at every moment.

The pressure to be completely awesome 24/7 is just ratcheting up. You have to have cool, insightful things to write about on your blog, and you have to go funny places with your funny, photogenic friends to take pictures to post on Facebook, and you have to know about all the latest, hippest, undiscovered music to have in your IM feed, and now. Now, you have to be doing ALL THOSE THINGS ALL THE TIME, OR ELSE EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD WILL KNOW YOU'RE A LAME-O WHO SPENT THE ENTIRE DAY WATCHING GREY'S ANATOMY RE-RUNS AND EATING SOUR PATCH KIDS.

Or else you could become a magnificent liar and just manufacture a life for yourself on the internet whilst escaping to the sweet, sweet confines of your bedroom and your tried & true DVD collection.

Hmm.

I guess the question is, how much do you want the world participating in your life?

Really Good Things That Can Happen

2008-04-10T14:14:00.002-05:00

I got a package in the mail from my old roommate cointaining one grey zip-up hooded sweatshirt, one dessert-sized plate purchased at Deseret Industries, one bag of Riesens, and one happy birthday note. It is mid-seventies here in Virginia, but I am wearing the heck out of that hoodie.

I happened to glance at my reflection as I was walking by a mirror and actually agreed with what I saw. Usually drive-by ambush sightings are the worst, too.

Someone compared me positively to Uma Thurman. I didn't know that was even possible, but apparently I am a warrior.

My living room is covered with books on Charles Dickens, no doubt the result of someone's harried finals paper writing. I am going to browse through all of them, and I may not even make it to work. Just kidding. Sigh.

I'm done with this job in less than a month. I am going to paint my bedroom the exact shade of happy I feel when I hear "home."

Time To Get These Seeds Into The Cold Ground, It Takes A While To Grow Anything

2008-04-07T00:14:00.002-05:00

Where to begin? I told my boss he wasn't interesting about two weeks ago, and ever since, he has been obsessing about how he's Boring and blaming it on everything he can think of. Completely ignoring the face that he himself owns dozens of guns and once told me, with absolutely no prompting on my part, to "never hide my guns on my own property," because then The Man could find them. My boss is many things, but boring is not one of them.

Also, Mom, when I called you today and you asked me if there were any boys in my life, and I told you no? I said that because it's actually a Yes, oh my goodness yes, but he lives a million miles away and doesn't like me anyway. Is what I'm telling myself so that darn disappointment won't sting so bad. See what life has taught me?

But no matter, because there are fresh flowers on my desk. I got them from a boy, an eleven-year-old who thought I'd like them, and that is the sweetest thing that anyone has done for me in a while. So when the birds started singing alarmingly loud outside my window this evening, I just kind of smiled and threw a little laugh at my roommate who didn't really like it all that much.

Spring is no time for sourness.

Buena Vista At Night

2008-03-19T00:23:00.002-05:00

How long do you think you can lie awake, staring at the lights glowing up from the town below your window, and contemplate what, exactly, you are supposed to be doing with your life?

How long, I mean, without swearing, crying, or resorting to immature name-calling.

The lights really are peaceful.

Because This Might Embarrass Her

2008-03-08T14:06:00.002-05:00

A copy of the letter Bree left on my desktop before she and Kyle left on Spring Break (I offered to babysit their little love ferret):

"Betharoonie-

The Cheetah print key on your desk is the key to Kyle’s house. You know where he lives…

The furry fairy is in the first room at the top of the stairs. He is in the closet. You will see/smell him instantly. Please do not clean up any poopsies or anything. I seriously DO NOT expect you to do that. Just play with him for a bit, let him get some exercise. His food is in the closet too. And just make sure he has water. Like I said, if you miss a day, it is not the end of the world.

Kyle and I seriously appreciate this! You can call my cell if you have any questions…

Love your face off!!

Bree"

Things I Love About This Letter
1. Being addressed as Betharoonie.
2. There seriously is an honest-to-goodness cheetah print key sitting on my desk. It is just too perfect.
3. Poopsies. With the chinchillas it was "EWWWWWWW, POOOOOOOOP, get those monsters away from here, hiyah!" with that last exclamatory being made as we hiked them through the window. Without even waiting to open it. But now, poopsies. So cute.
4. She loves my face off. And there really is no better place for my face to be right now than off. (I may have been so tired I fell asleep without washing off my mascara, and now it may be caking the entire cheekular region of my face. Maybe.)
5. The ferret will probably die under my care.

More Personal Than a Face Shot

2008-03-04T22:29:00.003-05:00

I really like the way dead wildflowers look.

Some other items of note on my desk:

The bottle of French mineral water Mike gifted to me.

The box of band-aids Mom bought for me that I've half used already.

A snowman cookie cutter full of plastic cases for the trinkets you get for a quarter from vending machines. Audrey and I spent something like four dollars on those.

A corner of the paper on my wall that says "Art was here," because he was. Once. And I was in the shower and missed it.

The Steelers bear Doodoo (nickname, seriously) won for me out of the Claw from my old job.

I've Got One Hand In My Pocket

2008-03-03T22:38:00.002-05:00

I've been staying away purposely. When I'm too overwhelmed the very worst thing for me is to be confronted by a webpage that is quite thoroughly me. I want to avoid more me, and so with every line written by me, the progress of thoughts dictated by my whims, avoiding me on my blog is hard. And I've been a bit overwhelmed lately.

What with the fear I was going to be fired, and the fear I was going to be thrown in jail, which fear was supplanted by a newer, realer, and highly more irrational fear that I was going to be thrown in jail, and planning and cooking for one hundred starving, young people - but get this, I wasn't allowed to actually cook anything on location, only warm it up; yeah, it was a logistical feat, and tangling with a mother/daughter team at work who are so backhandedly mean to me that I'm torn between an intense desire to fire them and a very actual fear that they will corner me one night and beat me bloody, because that's how they roll, and I was agonizing over the situation with my boyfriend and finally broke up with him - and this was all in the last week and a half, or so.

But some happier things have happened, too. I didn't get thrown unceremoniously in some dank prison - so no file had to be baked into a cake for me, sadly, but my future also remains unruined, so, bonus. I have a new computer on its way to me. I found pants that fit me.

Little triumphs fit together keep me going. I was so looking forward to today, to an end of the almost crushing stress that I couldn't even talk about, couldn't let anyone know that I was so scared and probably going crazy, and then two hours into my freedom, something else comes along and smacks me off my feet.

To which I say: Do your worst. But not really, because spring break is coming up, and everyone will be in the warm, swarming beaches, and I will be begging and scrounging the way only I can beg and scrounge, and I just want to feel a little of that sand-between-my-toes-nap-on-a-towel-warm-ocean-breezes feeling. So. Do your sort of worst, but then stop there and maybe hand me an ice cream cone.

Sweet, I just found a Twix in my coat pocket.

Handywoman

2008-02-16T14:55:00.003-05:00

I singlehandedly fixed the bathroom sink today with only a teaspoon and my intellect.

And I may have deliberately phrased that so I sounded much cleverer than actually I am. Really what happened was I entered the bathroom this morning to shower, etc., and found that there was a lot of water just sort of...chillin' in the sink. Hi, water. How are you? Um. What are you doing there?

I figured one of my roommates was saving it, or experimenting on something. But selfishly I wanted to brush my teeth, so I pushed down on the stopper release to send the splashy-splashy splashing down the throat of the sink. And pushed down again. And then pulled up? And then down again. And tried to make it go perhaps farther down. And then puzzled.

Once I'd decided that the accumulated water was NOT a science experiment (sad), but rather that someone had wanted to, I have no idea, and something went awry, and now there was all this WET gathered about that wouldn't just LEAVE, I figured I'd better fix it.

So I reached my hand in, grabbed at the stopper, and tried to pry it up. My fingers, alas, are human, and thus too fat for that purpose (curse these human genes), I looked about for a spoon. In the bathroom? I know, I know. Didn't actually think I'd be successful, but went about it anyway. And then, success. I was surprised for all of point three seconds, then shrugged, blessed a nameless, crazy roommate for doing who knows what, and pried that dang stopper up.

Blurb, blurble, blurb came the air pockets, then a little further, and it all started to spin about and chug away down the drain.

Success.

Lost on Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T16:52:00.002-05:00

I'm not really the kind of girl who gets really into Valentine's Day. Or who really pays attention to it at all, really. I have an entire world to save! Who can care about cards and sappy, ill-felt, ill-expressed, superficial sentiments anyway.

But then I caught the bug. I saw a roommate get really into baking for her boy thing, and a small part of my heart went, Awww. And then I found amazing valentines from woot.com that I HAD to give to my roommates. I live with four girls, there were four different valentines, it felt like heaven was solving for x for me.

So now I'm in the kitchen, mixing up pink, frothy angel food cake mix for a special Valentine's Day treat. And I have cool whip and sprinkles and frickin' RASPBERRIES. I don't even know who I am anymore.

A Sort of Stream-of-Consciousness My Parents Will Never Be Able To Follow

2008-02-08T22:24:00.000-05:00

My printer works! Just like that, I had to reboot my computer one day, and it turned on. As if it had gotten really TIRED during the paper jam fiasco and just had to take a really long NAP. And really, how can I blame him. I can't. Printer, you are absolved. Next time, perhaps we shall take an extendo-nap together.

But this means! This means that promotional posters can return. Ha! Like they ever really will make a comeback. Our apartment is still wallpapered with the old promotional posters from a year ago; I keep meaning to make new ones. And then I wander off to do something else, like drool over computers I will never in my life be able to afford.

Or get a new roommate. Yes, the vacancy in my room has finally been filled, and it feels good. I finally realized that I just let my room get messy because before it felt so EMPTY. I had to stuff that void full of something, and what I stuffed it with was borrowed magazines, dirty clothes, and suitcases. Just sort of laying about in an entropy-approved fashion. But no longer. Now I have a reason to clean, and someone who would actually notice if I got killed on the way home from work and just never came home.

Kidding! Art and Mike would notice. Art would text my phone, wondering where I was, and then eventually assume I was being a girl and taking a very long shower. An extendo-shower. With my printer.

The Worst Things Ever

2008-02-05T23:34:00.001-05:00

Off the top of my head, just a list of the ten worst things I could possibly imagine. Except not, obviously, because phone conversations is not an item on that list. (Joking.) (Not.) (Yeah, okay.)

1. Throwing up.
2. That skin on jell-o.
3. Passwords that require letters AND numbers.
4. Forgetting to bring chapstick.
5. Mint chocolate chip cookies.
6. The squeaking of lead pencils.
7. Flossing.
8. Running into a professor when you skipped his class that day.
9. Ground beef.
10. Bills.

Rubber Ducky, You're The One

2008-01-30T00:53:00.000-05:00

I love feeling clean. If my face is washed and bright, my hair clean, my teeth brushed, my lips chapstick'd, my skin lotioned, my deodorant applied, and my clothes fresh and neat, I feel like I can endure anything. Absolutely anything. Bring it on, I say! I am feeling completely up for it! Nothing can get me discouraged!

And truly, nothing can. It's why shaving my legs is an automatic mood fixer for me. I feel neat, capable, and pretty. The perfect mix for world conquering, I say.

But deprive me of that shower, and I get weird. It's a lot like being in a bad relationship. Well, maybe not really a bad one, I have miniscule-to-zero experience with those. Just a boring relationship. You start feeling caged and frantic, and it always ends in tears.

And then you just feel more disgusting and unappealing, and terribly unspeakable things can happen then.

I Am Like A Star Shining Brightly

2008-01-27T17:39:00.000-05:00

Hello, blog. Do you know what you do to me? Do you?

No. You cannot. You're just a bunch of <'s and /'s. There is no way for you to feel the things you do to me. The trauma you put me through. Though it would be an interesting exercise to strap you down, dismantle you like a hopeless game of Scrabble, shake all your codey letters up, and see what it spells. Perhaps hidden in the html lies a portent of my own doom.

Probably. Because this is what you do to me. I sit down to write at you (In you? Through you - yes, through you), because I have so many things to SAY, and there is so much I FEEL - and then I find myself absolutely overwhelmed, and I scrap the whole bit and go gad about youtube instead.

But there are many things to tell you about, like how my printer, it is gone. Out on vacation perhaps, tired of all the paper jammed up into its innards. I can't really blame it; wish I'd known about the jam sooner, perhaps we could have larked around Central America together. Ah, HP 5500. The thousands of dollars I spent on your ink. The pounds of dust I allowed to accumulate on your sleek shell, because no matter how diligently I went at it with a damp towel, it always came back again FIVE SECONDS LATER.

Or also, how about the fact that I own a PS3! Yes! It is amazing. It is sleek and shiny and powerful, and if it were a man, he would be just my type. The games! The graphics! The frequent and humiliating circumstances of my newb deaths! This, truly, is life.

Or. Well. I could tell you that I've been feeling a bit down lately, in a sort of rutless, vague - rut, I suppose, but now I am better. I shone! Only for a fraction of a millisecond, but I felt it. It tickled in my bones.

And that's all I have to say to you right now.

I Need Ideas

2008-01-03T00:52:00.000-05:00

Do you know how many movies I have watched over the past two days? Legion, for they are many. This is what happens when I'm suddenly not working over fifty hours a week. Suddenly I have boundless freedom, and it paralyzes me!

Well, and also, I realize that I can't just sit around playing video games. I mean, I would, but I have other people to pay attention to, and they don't really like it when I disappear for eighteen hours.

But I've cleaned a lot! And it just goes right back to being messy! I've spent hours and hours scrubbing unmentionable things over the past few days in preparing a Christmas Surprise, and my greatest fear is that entropy will take over before any of the surprisees get to enjoy my hard work and devotion.

Screw the universe.

Also, I'm making some sort of shrine in my bedroom to kind of fill up the void that a second girl living in that immense space would normally take up. I have a plug-in Christmas window candle sitting on a black crate covered in cloth so far. Any ideas of what else I could put on it? I'm happy just with worshiping Christmas window candles; I love the things. But...maybe I need more.

Oh, And:

2007-12-29T23:51:00.000-05:00

This is my new favorite song.

It's called "Still Alive," by Jonathan Coulton, and it's the ending credits song to the video game Portal. Two things to note - 1. This was definitely the year for the Jonathans out there, and 2. I have no idea how MLA would punctuate a video game title. MLA, this matter needs to be addressed, and quickly. When I go back to school, you KNOW I will need this for several varied papers on intelligent subjects. That's just how I do.

Why It's Taking Me So Long To Save For A PS3

2007-12-29T23:36:00.000-05:00

I have an application on Facebook (no, Mom, you cannot be my Facebook friend) that lets people see what books I'm reading, ones I want to read, and ones I already have read. It's a game to me to see how many books I can chug through to add to the "already read" section, and I feel a little gleam of triumph each time that pile grows.

The problem is, it's growing a lot these days, but "currently reading" is going nowhere. I was in Target on Christmas Eve with my Mom (everywhere else was closed, and we wanted to go shopping), and I snagged up a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera that I happened to see as I was walking by, and I lovingly cradled the book in my arms. I adored his One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I've been hearing so many wonderful things about this book. But the debate began in my head: "It's only twelve dollars!" "It's TWELVE WHOLE DOLLARS." "That's not much. Twelve dollars? You can't buy a pair of shoes for that. And this is a book! Books are so much better than shoes! You don't even need shoes anyway if you're inside all day, caught inside a book." "It's more than you make in an hour. Think of how much work you have to do to make that money. Think of all the Christmas presents you just bought for people, and the bills you have to pay. You don't mess around with money."
"I hate you. You're not even rational." "I've saved your butt on at least six different occasions." "Well. Poopsmith." And I put the book back.

And also, poopsmith is my new "well, shucks" expression. Because my brain thinks that since it's a reference to a popular humor website, then it's more topical, and therefore BETTER than saying poop.

Sigh. I don't need to debate about buying any new books. I definitely need to re-crack the ol' Complete Works of Shakespeare. He makes talking dirty sound so lyrical.

On The Subject Of Making Out

2007-12-24T01:51:00.000-05:00

[01:42] SanctAgnes: i hear it's kinda boring
[01:42] aroundbychance: really?
[01:43] aroundbychance: that's a let down
[01:44] SanctAgnes: but maybe you can jazz it up!
[01:44] aroundbychance: how how?
[01:44] aroundbychance: do tell, wise sage
[01:44] SanctAgnes: with glitter glue and some snazzy accessories
[01:44] aroundbychance: or maybe some old fashion iron-on logos
[01:45] SanctAgnes: i'll bring the puff paint!

You'd never guess what we were talking about if you just read the conversation. And those are the conversations I love the best.

Perhaps This Is The Sort Of Thing You Worry About As You Get Older

2007-12-16T23:57:00.000-05:00

I am desperately afraid, in this moment, of becoming boring. Or that I'm already there. Maybe that's why I don't blog that much anymore: I read other people's blogs, and some of them, the ones of the people who remind me of me, or of Future Me, are so, SO boring.

Whimsy, if you ever leave me, I am pulling a Virginia Woolf, and don't you forget that.

On The Fridge

2007-12-02T03:29:00.000-05:00

I am going to preface this by saying that I am not perfect. And frequently I like to share things about myself that are not perfect, but that give me that human edge, that whimsical charm you don't get from robots, mostly because they don't have souls, but also because they ARE perfect, and perfect is foreign, and alien, and grating.

This is a different sort of not perfect, not something meant to win anyone's hearts or affection. It's mostly just a confession that I realize I can be a horrible, flawed individual, and I want to revel in that for a moment.

And then I want it preserved in Google archives for the future of the entire world to be able to read about forever. It's a guilt thing.

There are three shelves in the fridge I share with my roommates. There are three girls who live in my apartment. Three total, including me. This has not been the case for most of the year and a half I have lived here, so I gladly and willingly shared a fridge shelf with other people, cramming my milk and my pickle jar and my seedless strawberry what-have-you in there, which were mainly the only things I DID have in there. But now, three and three, there needs be no sharing.

So a while ago I asked to have my own shelf, and my roommates complied, moving there things about and hither, and I had my own shelf. Which contained:

1 jar of pickles

1 snack-size container of applesauce

1 small, half-empty container of chives & onions cream cheese

some old salsa

So it's not like I can't spare the room. Yet in my mind, that shelf is My Shelf, and nothing else should touch it. It's not that I'm lacking in my own personal, private space because I am smashed up living with too many people and fighting to brush my teeth while someone else styles her hair and someone else applies her fourth layer of mascara in the same itty bitty mirror and OH SWEET MERCIFUL HEAVENS I HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO CALL MY OWN, JUST ALLOW ME MY FRIDGE SHELF.

No.

I have my own, very spacious room, to fling about my dirty laundry as I please, so that when I wake up in the middle of the night it looks like an old minefield. I keep odd hours, so I'm almost never brushing my teeth when anyone else is even around. I can jump about and cavort and frolic in my own space as much as I wish, and yet. And yet. When I open that fridge door and see something foreign on my shelf, I can feel my jaw tightening, and seriously, the urge to throw everything in there on the ground and petulantly let it decay in non-refrigerated agony does spring to mind.

But there is another Yet. I have not said one word to my roommates about it. Sometimes I move their things to whichever shelf I guess those things belong to, and sometimes I let some things stay. But I haven't said anything, because I realize how irrational my fridge coveting is, and - well, I did use the word covet on purpose. It's bad, it's stupid, it's SINFUL, and maybe if I persist in it, maybe I will grow out of it, or trick myself into a more worthwhile application of my time.

Bloody Bunnies

2007-11-23T23:33:00.001-05:00

Do you ever find yourself really, REALLY liking a song - so much that you google the lyrics, and realize, wow, this song kinda sucks/is gross.

I embrace music like that. I love bold, beautiful, clever lyrics as much as the next girl/music aficianado/English major, but really. You cannot stuff your music library full of plain old wonderful music.

Some people have weaknesses for *NSYNC (is that how you spell it, because I seriously do not know, and I won't give that part of my soul up), some for S-Club 7, and I? I for this:

How I Spent Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T09:40:00.001-05:00

2:17 a.m. - Met Melissa and Melody at the gas station so I could get some rocky road cake. I saw Don peering at us through the windows, and I'm pretty sure he thought it was a drug deal. Buena Vista is pretty slow at 2 a.m., so the mind starts playing tricks on you, looking for a thrill.

7:03 a.m. - Woke up. Got up and drove a few blocks. Waste of gas, but really it was just an excuse to park my car in front of my apartment.

7:47 a.m. - Couldn't sleep. Peeped around the curtains three different times to see if it was raining, or if it was just the rustling leaves right by my window I heard thrashing about so loudly. I'd be a great meteorologist, really, except I would fail the part on BEING ABLE TO TELL IF IT'S RAINING BY LOOKING OUTSIDE.

8:06 a.m. - 8:42 a.m. The poetry of Wilfred Owen failed to calm my mind, so I went on a run instead. Just a short one, but enough to get a kick of endorphins.

8:44 a.m. - My run had been rather directionless, but since I'd decided to run around town rather than the River Walk trail, I picked the destination of Art's house. It helps to have a destination. And then I ran inside and tried to shake him awake. I am the worst, most selfish friend of all time, but I was tired of his asleeping, and I was bored. Also, I wanted to say hi to Mike before he left for his Thanksgiving Day unfestivities, but no luck. Everyone was still abed. Or, uh, acouch.

9:17 a.m. - Stopped by Penny Park to go swinging on my way back to my house. The birds were chirping wildly and the squirrels were literally frolicking right around my ankles. Felt a little bit like Snow White. Threw up in my mouth a little at the comparison.

9:32 a.m. - Spotted the most wondrous, most glorious, fall foliage-y tree ever in the existence of ever. Regretted a little not having my camera. But it's the first time in the two? three? more? weeks that Jaela has had it that I have even once only the teeniest tiniest bit wanted to use it for something, so no biggie. The Greater Good, y'all.

9:49 a.m. - Oh my sweet merciful heavens, I just used the word Y'ALL. Who cares that it was planned or calculated, STILL. I have standards. I am a Yankee, and Yankees do not say that word, ever.

9:51 a.m. - Wondering if there will be mashed potatoes, and if so, how much I can get away with eating without attracting too much negative attention.

Announcement

2007-11-06T23:28:00.000-05:00

I am the next David Neeleman.

No, get this: college dropout, ADD, and I know Jeff Benedict.

I am going to be the next CEO of a major startup company. World, look out.

Oh, Double Cheeseburger

2007-10-18T01:40:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking lately that maybe I'm anemic, but that thought has been tossed around with other gems like Maybe I'll move to Boston, or I should enter the school's writing contest - so you can see first that I have no prolonged attention span, and second, my thoughts are so flighty and grand and varied all at once and together, that it's really hard to trust anything I think.

But I can't ignore that I take several naps a day just to make it all the way through, and that I eat hardly any red meat, ever. And when I do, like tonight, my body seems to rebel.

"Nooo, what's this!" it screams. "You're treating me too well! I don't want it. And I don't want you to have nice things," and then it proceeds to do something like throw up the meal that I splurged on, or make me wish I could figure out a way to divorce mind and matter.

The more important thing, though, is that I really should enter that writing contest and win, because there's a cash prize involved - that I can actually claim this time.

Fat People, and a Dance

2007-10-16T19:41:00.000-05:00

The nation really needs to quit it with the whole health conscious approach. Yes, we'd all like to have less junk in our trunk, and maybe then other countries would take us more seriously, and we'd be happier, blah blah blah whatever.

But have you considered the side effects of quitting your junk food binges? HAVE YOU? Probably not, because I know I was all for a sexier new nation until Monday, when I realized that all of you salad eaters are putting me out of a job. Quite seriously. No one is buying fast food anymore! I mean, some people are, but it's not like it used to be, in the golden days.

Bring back love handles, people, before you starve me into the streets! Oh for the love of all that is good and decent, listen to Damien Rice and learn to love your double chin. And order a pizza, before it's too late.

In other, happier news, I have a date to the big dance, which means I get to dress all pretty-like, and I get to pretend that I like shouting small-talk into the ears of overheated people I barely know who don't quite care, but they can't hear me well enough to KNOW that they don't care. My date has been nominated to be Mr. SVU, which means he's practically the most popular boy in school. I am waiting for the "Ricky Mania" posters and the clods of screaming, adoring fans. And the witchcraft. Oh, the witchcraft. (See what you have done to me, Teen Witch? Do you see this? This is all your fault. Yours, and the eighties.)

I Finally Fell In Love, I'd Been Waiting Forever

2007-09-27T23:09:00.000-05:00

Some people will want to make fun of me for my sudden declaration of wanting to marry an Amish boy. And some people will be casual and dismissive of my comment, writing it off as whimsy, or silliness.

That's how they always treated me with my declarations growing up, and I still hear echoes of it now. But I can't help it, I cannot help seeing something and being so gripped by that thing that I must share it, with those I trust to understand me. But I can't seem to get most people there; language doesn't do it, and examples don't do it.

Well, so. I've become quite taken with an Amish farm boy. I passed him the other day as he was driving his buggy in the twilight, and suddenly I thought, That. That. He looked strong and sensible and reliable and quiet, and I wanted that - I had never considered before how GOOD for me that would be, until that September quiet and that car ride, and that little burst of fate. I don't know his name, I'll certainly never see him again, but flashes of him keep coming at me.

I'm not being silly. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's because you're missing something, and I don't know what that something is. I've never felt its loss, so I can't recreate it from a hole that is familiar.

And that is all I will say about him.

A Plea

2007-09-26T23:48:00.000-05:00

It's a shame practically no one reads this thing anymore, because I would really like to open up the future of my life to you, the reader. As in, let's play a game called Where Should Elizabeth Move Next? I've had offers for Maryland, Boston, and back to Utah, and I think I can wiggle a Tampa offer if I'm charming enough. The thing is, I have no idea. None. Maybe I'll stay in Buena Vista. Maybe I'll even find a way to pay for college AND keep a roof over my head, although the latter accomplishment is no minor feat, and I think I should receive some sort of heavy duty certificate just for that.

It all goes to show that this life thing? It's hard.

The Hazards of Being a Woman

2007-09-24T09:18:00.001-05:00

I have never been more proud of my mother, nor more certain that I was indeed her daughter, than when I saw her reaction to my telling her that my book club insisted on reading "something Jane Austen."

On an unrelated note, I am sorry to report that the bridesmaid dresses are not hideous as I was not-so-secretly hoping (because that's what bridesmaid dresses are supposed to be), but rather very lovely, and I look forward to wearing mine the one time in my life I will get to successfully be a bridesmaid.

While A String Of Pearls Is Nice, This Isn't Bad, Either

2007-09-16T12:47:00.000-05:00

After discovering that Frank Warren was locked out of his PostSecret blog (poor, poor call on Blogger's bot's part, because the 11th most popular website in the...country? world? something, gets a lot of hits, and now millions of people are pissed off at Blogger), I realized that I should probably check mine and make sure no e-robot has seized control and locked me out for spam-like qualities. Although not updating frequently probably doesn't make their radar whir, so maybe it was a good strategy on my part.

I have little to say, except that I continue to be unexpectedly happy. Even through setbacks like not having enough money to really buy food, or falling asleep after thirty-six hours of wakefulness and then starting awake the next morning in a cold dread of the parking ticket you know will be snagged underneath the windshield wiper, or maneuvering to talk to that smart, interesting boy you just met and being waylaid by someone from your institute class who just wants to shoot the breeze. Oh, setbacks, how you fill my life with color. Like zucchini.

I've joined a book club, I got called "regal" today by the stake president's classy, glamorous wife, and I get free pizza whenever I want it. Despite the setbacks, life is good.

Digital Is Leaking All Over My Desk

2007-08-17T11:39:00.000-05:00

I would pay someone so much (imaginary) money to go through my computer and clean out & organize my music collection.

I keep starting this task, and I keep giving up at the utter immensity of it.

" Computers give me sight, they'll probably make us slaves in forty years."

What E-Mail Has Reduced Me To

2007-08-14T22:20:00.000-05:00

Often in the shower people get epiphanies - great ideas, mental breakthroughs, all that kind of jazz. I'm one of those people, and my only disappointment is that those flashes don't often last much longer than the steam on the mirror.

Well, I was shampooing my hair today, and my head did one of those tilts. You know the kind; your head tilts to one side, your eyebrows knot up with all the force of whatever it is that has suddenly hit you. This isn't an epiphany look, really: the eyes generally open wide, and the head comes up when the ol' lightbulb comes on. No, this is a different sort of look, generally indicating that something odd is afoot.

And something odd was afoot! Because while I was massaging my scalp like the bottle indicates I should do (well, probably; I haven't actually read this one, but I've read plenty in the past - really gripping, shampoo bottles), I realized -

- that I'd mixed up the return address and mailing address on a letter I'd sent off a few minutes earlier. I was all kinds of proud of myself putting my pennies and dimes into the little machine in the front lobby of the post office, and I thought myself a clever girl indeed when I slipped it into one of the blue mailboxes on the sidewalk on my way back to my apartment. What I'd failed to notice, however, was that I'd been so upset the other day as I was prepping the letter for all of these festivities, that I just filled in addresses and zip codes willy nilly.

So needless to say I'm expecting mail tomorrow. I'm sure the handwriting on the envelope will be very familiar indeed.

Breathing, At Last

2007-08-12T20:33:00.000-05:00

After three or four of interminable days of breathless heat, August has finally given us a break. I took advantage of that by going on two nice, long walks today, relishing the fact that there was AIR. I could feel it, on my face, poofing up my already-frizzy hair, swishing along the hem of my skirt.

It was wonderful.

Gone, Gone, Gone

2007-07-18T12:26:00.000-05:00

Eliot, a.k.a. Kittylicious, a.k.a. Ghostface Killa (and my mom left me a charming message the other day calling him Ghost Killa, which makes him sound a little like a Ghostbuster) is finally gone. I dropped him off at the SPCA today, after yesterday's failed attempt.

And it turns out that being a biter and breaking skin the way he does, I was definitely right in giving him up, because he's a health hazard. And dangerous. Still so cute, but I've been very turned off to cats by this experience.

Maybe someday I'll adopt a nice cat, though. One who doesn't try to tear my legs off every moment of every day.

Harry Potter and the Big Pre-Order

2007-07-16T13:33:00.001-05:00

I just pre-ordered the last Harry Potter book. Oh me, oh my.

Enlightened

2007-07-11T21:52:00.000-05:00

You know how every light in your house seems to burn out all at once? Someone told me it can happen when you have big electrical storms, (which we've had quite a few of recently) and I'm not sure how much I buy that theory, but almost every lightbulb in my apartment blew out this last week. So I had to change them, or risk being homicidal-psycho-jungle-cat-ed in the dark just trying to make it out the door in the evening.

The first one I had to change was in the kitchen. There aren't any chairs in the house except for the desk chairs we all have, so I grabbed mine and rolled it out to the kitchen. You maybe think you can see where this is headed: I climbed on, lightbulb in hand, spun wildly around, flew off, banged my head on the washing machine, and woke up 34 hours later in a bloody heap. No. ALMOST, though. I managed to hold my act together long enough to get the lightbulb in, and then switched on the light to admire my handywork.

I bought more lightbulbs the next night so I could complete my project, and I started with the one at the top of the stairs. The very long set of stairs. The very long, all wooden, no padding, no railing, set of stairs. Again, I wheeled my chair out. I think I may even have started to climb on when I realized, Hey, this? This is not your best idea. Last night did not kill you. This will.

So I hunted around for something I could stand on and found a folding camp chair in our living room. (Don't ask.) (Mostly because there's no one around here for me to ask, and I certainly have no answer for you.) I brought that out and had to set it riiight on the edge of the stairs. And then stood on it. And balanced oh-so-carefully. Then the cat came around to watch me, which reeally freaked me out, because if he decided to be in a pouncy mood, I'd be a goner, and he most certainly would not survive murdering me in my own household. I'm certain I have friends who would avenge that death. (Even if he's not responsible, kittylicious will take all responsibility for my death, and really for most awful things that happen in that place. Katie Grumblecakes has left for the summer - probably for Utah, suckers.)

Well. And I survived! And then it was the bathroom's turn. So I brought the chair in there and had to figure out how to dismantle the glass light fixture that has been burned out since, oh, last September, and realized that it unscrews! How nifty! Except when it unscrews and falls to the floor, and I have visions of it shattering into thirteen trillion tiny little shards all over the bathroom floor, leaving me marooned on top of a blue camp chair, able only to lap up the small bits of water I can reach from the sink faucet until someone finally thinks to come rescue me. Which thankfully did not happen. It just kinda cluncked, and I picked it up. Huh.

And then some more lightbulbs, and I almost had so many things fall on me, and I almost fell off so many times, and I think my legs were shaking a lot from adrenaline, but that wore off so now I'm not quite sure.

But I'm really appreciating being able to turn on a light.

In The Mood To Write

2007-07-08T15:56:00.000-05:00

I'm looking forward to a few things these days. Old friends coming to visit, and old friends moving back into my home, where they belong, and where their absence has been felt greatly these past few months. The prospect of meeting new people, and the hope that I will have the schedule to actually do it. And excursions. Oh, the excursions. I've felt so cooped-up lately, which is why I'm spending this Sunday afternoon cleaning and reading and then it's out for a nice drive and a walk around the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains. Don't get me wrong, video games are nice (okay, more than just nice), but summery days only last so long, and I can't squander these.

Some New Things

2007-07-03T14:01:00.000-05:00

- I have decided to rechristen the cat (formerly Eliot, or kittylicious to those flippant among us) as Ghostface Killa. Ghostface because he is white, and therefore has a white face, and for some reason I think of ghosts as being white. (PacMan would be ashamed of me, I know, but it's just too late to change me.) Killa, because that cat is a stone cold killa - he jumped four feet in the air to kill a moth, for example. He ripped the toys I bought for him to small, feathery shreds. I came home today and his collar has completely vanished from off his little, fuzzy neck, leading me to believe that he has masticated it to such an extent as to leave no remaining fragment larger than an atom.

- I finally conceived of, created, and completed a Wal-Mart list, remembered to bring it with me, and bought only those things on the list, which turned out to be everything I needed. I know this is a personal first, and I believe it is also a first for mankind. That store does things to people to make lists void and fruitless. I have changed all that and am now considering penning a self-help book and making millions on proceeds. And blowing that on my next Wal-Mart visit, when I go only to acquire a curtain rod, some Windex, and fishing lure.

- PostSecret wasn't updated on Sunday, which makes it the first Sunday in perhaps a year when I have not voyeuristically perused other peoples' deepest, darkest parts. And then stared at the picture OtherJennifer gave me to put my own secret on and mail it in. I still don't know what to say.

- Everyone is going to Europe(/Utah), and I am still in Buena Vista. And I like it here and never want to leave, except maybe to visit Egypt.

I'm Too Hungry To Think Of A Title

2007-06-21T17:22:00.000-05:00

The trashcan is stuffed with empty ice cream cartons from continued four a.m. milkshake feasts.

Summer, late nights, and video games are what it's all about. Oh, and downloaded copies of Ocean's Thirteen subtitled in Greek for our viewing pleasure/trying to guess what the real captions actually said.

I'm really excited to be leaving tonight and heading up to the Philadelphia area. First of all because it is a miracle that I actually get to go, and thanks only to the generosity of some very amazing coworkers (it's nice to be in with the people who are in charge, let's just say), and second of all because we have tickets to the King Tut exhibit up there.

I only hope I don't come back to find the place completely in shambles because kittylicious will be lonely, and he gets bitey when he's lonely. Extra bitey. And pull the ugly green curtains that are all that gives this place any privacy from the gaze of passers-by who can see right into our glass front door-y.

Just Putting It Out There

2007-06-18T22:32:00.001-05:00

I need to go on an awesome roadtrip. Or maybe just roast some marshmallows over a campfire. Any takers?

Pwned Indeed, Ladies and Gentlemen

2007-06-15T03:53:00.000-05:00

So I just ground some Emerald Weapon into the cold, watery pavement. EAT THAT, FINAL FANTASY VII. Granted, I only caved and demolished said fishy beast after repeated failed attempts to vanquish Ruby Weapon - and to get THAT emotionally invested, and to be SO sure of victory each time, and to get SO, SO close to the, what, two point four quatrillion hitpoints that Red Beasty has, and EACH TIME to fail, well, there was some moping and some couch draping after each failure.

But not this time. No, there was much arm pumping and checking and re-checking the screen because, seriously? I could not just have won. No, I believed such grand things to be incredibly beyond me. Art made me go to the t.v. and turn up the sound, and then I just sat there and WATCHED. Watched and counted and heard and FELT each and every experience point drain into my characters. Such happy little sounds.

And then I ate a rainbow chip cookie, watched The Office, and went back to scavenging up maps for World of Warcraft.

Rainbow chips ftw!

Day Four Of World Of Warcraft

2007-06-14T03:59:00.000-05:00

"So I'm going to bookmark this map with the...batleys."

"I was actually waiting to see how long it would take you to call them batleys."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I was going to call them batleys earlier, but I thought it would be more fun to wait for you to do it first."

Managerial Drama

2007-06-13T22:46:00.000-05:00

Why is it that when I turn someone down, they all of a sudden get real shady with me? I mean, I don't care if they stop going out of their way to do nice things to me; that's understandable. But don't clock me out of work half an hour before I actually leave because you're a child and you're pissed at me.

I guess I just don't understand the male psyche. Or the human psyche. I guess I'm cool enough to date, but not a cool person independent of that? Whatever, I just file that under "Doesn't Respect Me," and I HATE people who don't respect me.

My solution? Get him into an intellectual conversation where he's in waaaay over his head and completely eviscerate him. You don't wanna respect me out of basic human decency, fine; I'll MAKE you respect me.

Ewwww

2007-06-13T00:45:00.000-05:00

We have a cockroach or several in our apartment.

Sweet merciful heavens.

It's A Hard Job, Can't You Tell?

2007-06-10T00:15:00.000-05:00

I think my favorite part about tonight was when I answered the phone ("Thank you for choosing Domino's Pizza, this is Elizabeth, how can I help you," spoken as quickly OR MORE than humanly possible, so that the "this is Elizabeth" part comes out as one garbled mess of ssSSSSsssssss's) and some kid was like, "Yeah, can I get a fried ice cream pizza?"

I did a doubletake for a second because HOW DID HE KNOW? How did he know that just before I answered the phone I had enjoyed a delicious slice of Scott's famous fried ice cream pizza? WAS HE WATCHING THE STORE??? And then I realized it was Andy calling, and that I'd called Andy earlier in the evening letting him know of the exact time the frying of the ice cream would occur. You see last week Scott was showing off and he was all kinds of promising us he knew how to make this fried ice cream pizza, but when I got all excited about it, that's when he got off on being withholding or whatever and came up with all kinds of excuses, like how we had neither cornflakes nor honey nor ice cream on the premises, so the pizza would be a little hard to make. Whatever. This week I came prepared, which I think startled Scott a little, that anyone could hold onto one little idea so fervently (seriously, it's pretty much all I've talked about) that they take such pains to bring the plan to full fruition, but it's what I do. I am the Plan Leader after all.

And now I know how to make fried ice cream pizza.

Maybe I Can Get My Mom To Do His Family History, Too

2007-06-08T14:21:00.000-05:00

Apparently Eliot is part Turkish Van, which is where his gorgeous cheekbones, round eyes, and fluffy tail came from, along with his amazing jumping abilities, love of water, and, oh yes, the "love nips." I could do without the love biting, kiddo, which is why I slip sleeping powder into your cat food, bwa ha ha.

It's good to finally know where this little beast came from and to have an explanation for a lot of the weird stuff he does. For instance, he's not a big meow-er, but he makes this sort of squeaky...sound...is really the only way to describe it, and I know it freaks some people (Stephanie) out, but apparently that's just what his DNA makes him do, so back up off him.

And yes, this was a blog about a cat. My cat. I'm turning into a Cat Lady....

Thrilledy Is Copyright Protected, So Don't Even Think About It

2007-06-06T22:31:00.001-05:00

My day started at seven a.m. with some rolling out of bed and applying my "I run a meth lab out in the woods, but I can also fool two twnety-something boys into thinking I am just an innocent (and hot) jogger so that they kill the undercover cop who's onto me" makeup to make it out to Neil's on time to begin shooting. Too bad Nick, who plays the undercover cop, was late anyway, but I got to meet Neil's kids and wife, as well as his father and mother.

So yeah, I'm playing a leading role in a thriller/comedy, or a thrilledy as I like to call it. Neil asked me if I'd done any acting while we were working together a few weeks ago, and then he started churning out script ideas. I don't think I was originally supposed to be such a druggie, but I guess once he got to know me a little better....

Anyway, we filmed for a few hours then took a break so Nick could get to class, and I went back home and watched The Office/crashed. I drove all the way back out to Neil's for our afternoon shoot and passed Sid going the other way, which really confused me, and SHOULD have been a huge red flag that, hello, something is amiss ('cause Sid was scheduled to be in some of our afternoon takes), but I continued on to Neil's anyway...to find that no one was there. And I couldn't call, because I left my charger at Audrey's and my phone was dead, and I only had just discovered that they sell phone chargers at Wal-Mart. So I kept driving to where we'd filmed that morning, hoping they'd just continued on ahead. No one, and by this point, I was running out of gas. So I drove a little further into Lexington to get gas, swung by Wal-Mart to get a charger, and only then realized that I was still in full-on meth-lab get-up. (Ooh, hyphen-tastic!) Seriously, I live in a small, rural area that has a higher concentration of ugly, freakish, warped-from-prolonged-inbreeding people than even a NASCAR racetrack could handle, and they look at ME like I'M the idiot. Whatev. At least I had my charger, and I skedaddled out of there, back to Neil's to check one last time, and then back home to plug my phone in, check my voicemail, and discover that this afternoon's filming had been cancelled.

But at least my legs looked really nice in my costume.

Summer Cleaning

2007-06-05T14:25:00.001-05:00

I am still (still!) trying to clean up my mess from Disney World and then that trip up to go shopping with Audrey. There's just no excuse for it, but of course I come up with lots of justifications.

Like the fact that the vacuum cleaner I got worked for about three minutes just fine, and then started spitting dirt back OUT at me. I guess it was just overwhelmed by the challenge that is our apartment, and this is a vacuum cleaner's way of screaming for mercy. And so I tell myself, hey, it's pointless to do any kind of cleaning without a working vacuum cleaner.

Also, we have this cat who loves knocking things over, getting trash out of trash cans and carrying it around and then leaving it in random rooms, and scattering things about. I hang my clothes nicely to dry and go off to work, only to come back ten or eleven hours later (yes, my shifts really are that long) to find clothes scattered on the floor.

So really, I'm facing a few challenges. And really, I would much rather lay on my bed and read Shakespeare or look at PS3 prices on the internet than clean anything. Who has the time?

Afterwards

2007-05-14T13:40:00.000-05:00

Hi.

Remember me?

Finals are over, and I've quit my job at the gas station. I work at the Domino's in Lexington now, for more money and less managers using surveillance to spy on me. I'm also in the process of redecorating my room, which means right now I'm struggling to put a Wal-Mart bookcase together. I borrowed a drill from a friend, which was fine for all of the first step, and after that became so terribly useless. I've been using the other end of an Xacto knife to try to screw the thing together, which...well, given my propensity for cutting myself on POT ROAST, we'll see if I complete the project with all fingers intact.

Audrey and Jaela moved out a week and some change ago, so Stephanie moved into my bedroom...and almost immediately moved out again and down to Alabama/on to California. I'm going up to see Audrey soon before she leaves for Utah, and Jaela's coming back in the fall. Bree is still here, and a girl named Kylee moved in. I was nervous about getting a new roommate, because heaven knows I am not too fond of girls, and I was braced for exacting some sort of silent, cruel war with her, but she swept in one evening all full of charm and cheer and liking all the same television shows I do, that I'm pretty sure I want her to stay forever. Not like we can really persuade anyone to stay for long in this charming little craphole we call home, but, ya know, that's the use of not having a door handle for two months and getting periodically locked inside your apartment - no one can leave, muahahaha.

And now I'm off to work, to earn more money to support my habits.

Who DOESN'T Think They're Going Crazy?

2007-04-28T22:26:00.000-05:00

Someone came into work a couple days ago and asked what "that big, red building up on the hill" was.

This building:

I laughed and told him it was Southern Virginia University, a local liberal arts college. His response was a simple "Oh," followed by a pause, followed by a "I thought it was a mental institution." I laughed even harder, explained that I attended the school, and that it was finals time, so "mental institution" probably hit the nail preeetty close to the head.

Mental institution, indeed.

Finals Week, Part VIII

2007-04-24T13:31:00.000-05:00

I didn't think it was humanly possible to be this exhausted, but here I am, with a eight-hour shift ahead of me, and then two and a half hours in the library. I hate finals.

My last day at the Stop In is on Saturday, and I'm extremely touched by the number of people who have told me they'll miss me. It doesn't mean they actually will, but they took 4.3 extra seconds out of their day to say kind things to me, and if this last week has taught me anything, it is how precious 4.3 seconds are. I can write two sentences in that amount of time, or locate 15 relevant sources. Or stare blankly at the monitor while I try to remember what my argument was, why I even thought I could do this double major thing, and why I hate myself so terribly.

I'm living for Tuesday night. When I (hopefully!) start my new job.

Spending Money Is A Sign That I Actually Have A Day Off

2007-04-19T22:09:00.000-05:00

I went to Wal-Mart today with the intention of buying two things: a scratching post, and a floor mat. (There was a third item on that list, a bag of Chester's cheese-flavored puffcorn, but I was certain that all production had ceased on the cheesed puffcorn, and all bags had been seized by some government agency, because I had been searching for the stuff for days and no dice.)

Upon entering I spotted the biggest box of plain Cheerios I had ever seen in my life, on sale, and I HAD to have it. HAD TO. I'm a determinist, so don't even bother arguing that with me. That right there blew the whole gameplan, and I went around the store buying all the stuff I'd been needing for ages, but had been too stingy to buy. My bedroom now has curtains. And we can actually Swiffer the floors again, which doesn't mean anything outside of my bedroom will actually be cleaned (I think our kitchen is a lost cause, really), but at least we have it, for appearance's sake.

Oh, and I went to Goodwill and found a stunning leather trenchcoat for $7. Be entirely jealous.

Life Changes

2007-04-18T10:14:00.000-05:00

I've been trying for a couple weeks now to switch jobs to a more lucrative career (trust me, they do not pay me enough to deal with hick psychos all day, while I slowly feel my intelligence dribbling out and messing up the floor I just spent 45 minutes mopping), but there have been a few hangups.

Until last night Art looked at me and told me I could just work at Domino's, no hassle, making pizza, for $8/hour. SOLD.

I think I'm going to wait until the end of the semester, though to make the switch. That gives me enough time to fulfill the standard two weeks of notice that they certainly don't deserve and buy myself some khaki pants.

13

2007-04-13T22:19:00.000-05:00

It's Friday the Thirteenth, so to celebrate this auspicious holiday, I have:

- Had to literally cut poo off of my kitten. With scissors. Which he didn't like one bit, and I was almost certain the ordeal would end with my cutting his tail off, but I guess it ended well. Except for the trauma experienced by both parties.

- Gotten locked inside my apartment - yes, inside. Kelly and I tried to get the attention of a passerby to open the door for us (it doesn't have a handle on the inside, so if it's closed, we can't open it from the inside), but just our luck, no one was walking by. So we called Frog, a friend of ours (and, um, the local fire marshall), who in turn called his buddy Randy - a local cop who was on duty at the time - to come see the fun. So all the people driving by on Main Street got to watch the police seemingly swarming our apartment. And Frog and Randy stood at our door for a couple minutes laughing at us before they would let us out so we could get to work. Awesome.

- Officially become hooked on energy drinks. It all started when I accidentally had a SoBe energy drink, not realizing what it was. That kept me up for about a day and a half, and now today Kelly bought me a Red Bull. I am so frickin' buzzed. Buzzzzzzzzed.

April Showers

2007-04-11T13:10:00.000-05:00

My kitten is curled up, playing with his feet next to me, and I'm thinking, Is work REALLY going to happen today?

It's a rainy, cold, terrible day, and all I want to do for the next five hours is watch movies. Then mosey on over to the library to get this presentation for my Platonism class done, and hope that one late-night library employee is there again. He lets me print out stuff for free; I'm pretty sure he considers that flirting, and I am willing to take it.

I'm feeling the need for a partner-in-crime. Life is stale right now, and I don't do stale. I'm just going to try to hold on 'til the end of the semester, and somehow manage to crank out two more fantastic papers - it's what I do.

Home Again, Home Again...Okay, Everytime I Come Home It's the Same Title

2007-04-05T21:09:00.000-05:00

One paper down, two more to go. Well, four more if you count graded revisions, but whatev.

Since it's Easter weekend, I decided to take off work and come home. Apparently my parents now own a NordicTrack. Which they've had for "well over a year." Never mentioned it to me, once, and I've never seen it, which is...I mean, NordicTracks are HUGE. I don't know how this happened, but it's very expressive of my new relationship with my family: estranged and vaguely embarrassing let's-pretend-it's-not-ours child. But I got to work out on the NordicThing for a while, and that was fun. So much more boring than running; I almost cracked a book open and tried reading, but settled on staring at an exposed nail for a while instead.

And now I'm waiting for my younger brother to scrub out our tub, the tub that has steadily become en-caked with his boy germs for the last who knows how many months since I've been gone (apparently "well over a year," by the feel of things) so I can bathe in it. Bubble bathe in it. Maybe even with a candle or two for atmosphere, mmm. And then there is a chocolate Easter rabbit waiting for me in the kitchen; waiting to be steadily nibbled away until he is just one small, disgusting little nub of maybe-this-is-chocolate that I don't think anybody actually eats. Some people lose it under the couch, other people lodge it in the back of their fridge for a few months until it fuses with the old tortelini and becomes some jellied congolmeration of ew, and probably others just look at it for a bit and toss it into the garbage. I think I'll do some scientific testing on my nub this year. Science seems to be pretty in right now.

Falling In Love Again

2007-03-30T23:01:00.000-05:00

What have you been doing this past week? Because this is what I have been up to:

Jealous yet? His name is Eliot (after T.S., the poet who created the poems that Cats is based on); he's about six weeks old; and he is the result of a convenient birthday present from a coworker who couldn't keep him anymore. I never expected my roommates to agree to him, but oh they did. Who could resist?

I panicked the day after I got him when I realized I'd just signed on for a 16-18 year commitment; but then he curled up on my pillow next to my face and I watched him drinking me in, and I thought, hey, sixteen years of this isn't a bad thing.

The downside? He wakes up several times a night wanting to play, so he entertains himself by chewing on my fingers. Ah, kittens.

<3

Snickering In The Background

2007-03-26T13:13:00.000-05:00

Snickers bars. No, no, wait, hear me out. I'm going to rant for a little bit about the Snickers bar, and you will not stop me. Because, this candy bar? Is frankly waaay too much work. All the peanuts you have to chew through, I mean, COME ON. My point in eating a candy bar is NOT to waste my energy, OR my time. I want deliciousness, and I WANT IT NOW.

I just get bored with all the chewing, and so maybe I stop midway and frustratedly try to swallow, and I choke a little bit (a lot), and it's tedious. So so tedious. Which is why I will always choose Milky Way over Snickers. And what was that thing with the "high protein" Snickers bar, like they were trying to make a candy bar healthy, or something. Trust me, people: learn from the grave errors of Mr. Krispy Kreme and do not try to healthify something. Americans will be distrustful at best, and mass riots with hugely obese women lighting their undergarments on fire in protest and the such at worst. It's happened before. The calories and the fat of the candy bar cancel out any good adding extra nuts does to us, and the nuts cancel out the sweet sweet taste of melty caramel, because there's no more room for any deliciousness with all those fricking nuts packed in there.

It's stupid. I'm glad you've discontinued it. Now just take out the nuts altogether so I can blithely swallow my way into nougat-filled cardiac arrest, and we'll all be good.

One Year Older

2007-03-25T22:22:00.000-05:00

Embrace the drama.

Those are the words I have chosen to represent this new dispensation - that examination that comes with a birthday (if you choose to recognize such a date). Embrace it. It's the only way you will learn to survive it.

Okay, so that may have just come from a discussion I'm having with Bree about Grey's Anatomy, but I thought it sounded all wise and worldly, the way a twenty-two-year-old should sound. And by wise and worldly, I mean dumb and herdish and faux-intellectual, which is exactly the sort of thing I despise, so I owned up.

Tonight is a midnight slushie run to the gas station to ring in my birthday. Then maybe laying out by the river and enjoying the weather, and late-night outline writing when I come back. I can only imagine what the professor will think when he tries to make sense of my tired thoughts.

I have two days off this week. TWO. I'm planning on enjoying them to their utmost, in a way that none of you slackers out their can really appreciate. And THAT is a great feeling.

Maybe If I Dyed My Hair Too

2007-03-13T01:02:00.000-05:00

My roommate's mom came to visit over the weekend (she has purple hair; PURPLE!), and we all fell in love with her warmth and her motherliness and her...frickin' purple hair, really. But also, she brought us presents: these gorgeous little journals with such beautiful covers that whatever you write on those pages must be significant and transcendent and life-changing. You must channel Camus to write in these books, really.

Which leaves me with a problem: What do I write in my book? Do I collect quotes into it? Do I die in its pages? Do I enfold those deep, spiritual experiences I am lucky enough to have? Whatever I do, those pages will be filled. (Which probably means I will eventually put it on a shelf to take out every so often and stare at the cover, then replace on the shelf, overcome by the sense of my own non-genius.)

Still A Little Hard To Say What's Going On

2007-03-05T23:18:00.000-05:00

I am supposed to come up with something to Say. Something to explain myself, something Important. If life were like television, my well-crafted script would be executed flawlessly, and the recipient would consider my words carefully, and a change would be wrought, in everyone.

Wroughting change. Wrighting change. Something-ing change. That's what words are for, right? But we're too stubborn and stupid in real life to do that. We mess up our lives blindly, happily forging away at some small, useless corner of existence, when we could be living in the entire extended sphere of our potential.

Potential. What a silly word. Potential. I quit believing in it months ago, when I realized my own fatalism (in the fate sense of the word this time, not the fatal), and embraced the idea that we can only do whatever we know how to do. It's why people run faster to break shorter records these days, and why more and more kids are succumbing to anorexia. There is no such thing as potential. There is an is, and there is a was, and there is perhaps a path to a can be.

The end of the story is, words are useless, and I expect no change wrought in anyone, until that change is good and ready to happen. Which pulls me back to time.

His Isolation Grows Defined

2007-03-01T23:58:00.000-05:00

It's funny how this morning, just this very morning, I was worrying about what to do with Herman, my one remaining tetra fish, whom I can no longer find the time to care properly for.

That is small change. Cheap, insignificant, dirty old pennies.

Because now? Now I have somehow acquired ink stains on my pants. (This was my attempt to make a joke, make a joke out of something that is not funny, with the ink stain crisis. I really do have ink stains on my pants, but a little hairspray will take care of that right away.)

Here is what I don't understand: relationships. How do two people with two different brains possibly come together on any level and create any sort of real understanding? It just doesn't seem possible. Two perspectives, two voices, can continually be engaged in a dialectic, can even see something in similar ways, maybe, but words are too transient and too confusing, connotation is too significant, and that just covers verbal communication. The present. This does not touch on the past in the slightest way, and heaven forbid we even consider the future.

As someone who studies relationships, who is passionately involved in the understanding and the connection of people, and cultures, and ideas, this problem seems like one I should have dealt with a long time ago, should have solved and moved on to other things; should have made my peace, at least, and not continued a hypocrite, believing that we can understand the metaphor of truth without believing we can understand anything outside our head at all.

I'm helpless and watching as things spin out of my control. As I step out of the shower and go to towel off to watch my favorite earring slip off my ear and down the drain, too far to catch it and recover it, and matter-of-factly pull the other one out and set it on the counter. As in, Well. As in, Of course. Watched, knowingly, half-cocked-smilingly, feeling like a clairvoyant. Perfect.

It Was Salieri!

2007-03-01T11:56:00.000-05:00

Mozart's Requiem has been dogging me for days. Three times in the last twenty-four hours I've awoken to it; jarred out of sleep by its intensity, and familiarity, probably. When I deflate after work, I pump those strains through my speakers while unpiling the stack of books from bookbag to bed where I pore through them, hour after hour.

I don't know what it's a sign of; I think the universe is just having its comedic little moments with me. I'm laughing away, universe. Oh, I'm laughing.

2007-02-27T14:41:00.000-05:00

I do NOT need more on my plate right now. My left eye is twitching from fatigue and stress, my head is engulfed in one of my worst headaches from smacking my head multiple times on my car as I tried to enter it last night (don't even ask me how that happened), and I'm starving and poor.

On the bright side, my paper for Vic Lit Theory is coming along so so nicely, and I love being able to read my way through literary criticism and have a purpose in sight for it. Mr. Williams, Mr. Greenblatt, my hat is off to you, sirs.

I want a slice of cold Papa John's mushroom pizza and a back rub.

Love Is...

2007-02-20T01:20:00.000-05:00

Love is going down to the police station to get a job application for someone; even though you consider one of the Worst Things Possible to be asking for an application, and you really only make a habit of it if your options are, 1. starve on the streets, or 2. get an application from somewhere, anywhere. And this wasn't just the local McDonald's (Buena Vista doesn't even have one of those) - this was a locked-and-barred, buzz in through an intercom and search out the mysterious "door in the back," be treated as very-much-possibly a criminal and/or cocaine abuser, police station.

You'd better appreciate me, Nicolaus Copernicus. Appreciate me to the tune of killing the spiders nesting in the apartment waiting to grow up and crawl down my face. Appreciate me to the tune of long nights and Legion Forts and Wal-Mart talks and rap music.

East Coast Lovin'

2007-02-19T23:37:00.000-05:00

Jared's coming on Thursday. We're having a picnic.

It's the little things - (things I couldn't do in Utah because it was ugly and arid and cold).

Voluntary Injustice

2007-02-18T22:02:00.000-05:00

The best way to cure disappointment is to leave a bag of cookies on someone's desk. Especially if they're oatmeal chocolate chip. Point taken indeed, ladies. Have a fabulous Hollywood edition mocktail party; I'll be sure to crash it in my full-on work get-up.

The entire bishopric strolled in tonight while I was sitting, huddled in a blanket, with a ridiculous(ly gorgeous) Russian hat on my head, playing Final Fantasy IX. Only if I had been doing naked pirouettes while eating peeled grapes could I have felt more awkward. I believe the conversation went something like this: "Heeeey, guys. I'm, uh...I'm really busy. Don't let the fact that I'm sitting in the dark being goofy and killing monsters throw you off. I'm taking a break. ...Yeah." To be fair, I was completely esconced in piles of papers for a presentation in Platonism tomorrow, and I really WAS just taking a break.

The consciense is STILL pricking. I don't do getting caught very well, even if it's in my own imagination.

The Very Un-Mocktail Party

2007-02-16T23:21:00.000-05:00

I took tomorrow off of work three weeks ago in anticipation of our apartment's mocktail party, the first of several we were planning on throwing. I doublechecked with my roommates that, yes, we really were having the party, and yes, it really would be held on Saturday the 17th. Saturdays are hard to get off where I work.

I was talking to my room-roommate (you know, the one who actually shares a room with me), and she told me she was working tomorrow. I told her I was sad that she'd have to miss the mocktail party that way, when she was like, "Oh, they rescheduled it. For next week." "What? When did they reschedule it?" "Last night."

Awesome. Really, really awesome. Because, you know, everyone in this apartment can just make it to a party on a random Saturday night of someone's choice. Oh, wait, no, I would have had to know about this change weeks ago to actually be able to make it. And we're changing it so some roommates can go do other stuff tomorrow. Even though this party has been in the works for a long time now.

Glad to know I'm losing money for a missed shift to get to not go to a party I was really looking forward to. And glad that someone told me about it other than inadvertantly - oh, wait, that part didn't happen.

Super.

Running To Catch Some End

2007-02-15T01:18:00.000-05:00

I have this need for superlative, and for only. If I am close, then I want to be the closest, and the only closest.

How did it come to this?

"He...knew it was all so completely wrong, everything from the moment of his birth to this, everything was coming out the wrong way - not the opposite, but worse: close."