Blurgh

You know what's the worst? It's the worst when you're sitting innocently, watching a movie, when suddenly you burp up stomach bile for no good reason. Cause like, it tastes nasty. And it burns the back of your throat. And why would that happen to me, cause I ate a normal amount of a normal type of food a normal amount of time ago, and there is NO REASON WHY MY STOMACH SHOULD BE STAGING A REVOLUTION AT THIS TIME. Do you hear me, stomach? I mean, it'd make sense if i hadn't eaten in three days and just dumped a quart of chili into my system, BUT I HADN'T. I ate breakfast this morning, then had a plain white-bread-and-turkey-and-mayo-and-mustard sandwich with a glass of milk. I hate you, stomach. You think you can just do what you please, when you please. But you're wrong. Oh, yes, stomach, your time will come. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but if I were you, I'd be watching my back. Or at least not spewing pure acid into my throat. Cause that's just nasty.

volleyball

Playing volleyball is fun. Especially when you play in the church building, where there's these strange rafter things at all kinds of odd angles that hang down from the ceiling, so if you hit the ball too hard it can run into a corner and go in unexpected directions. The reason why this is so fun is this: there is just enough space between the rafter things and the ceiling for a volleyball to fit. Some guy hit the ball right into that space tonight, and we were all ready to get unhappy about losing a ball. Just then, the ball fell out, followed by a much older, flatter volleyball. Cue the "it's a miracle! Like the loaves and the fishes" comments. That, my friends, is why playing volleyball in the church is so great. Because of comments like that. Someone else later thought of something along the lines of "miraculous conception," but it just wasn't as great as the almost instantanious loaves and fishes one.

i hate having a cold

it started out simply enough; on thursday evening i started feeling my voice not working immediately, like a pump that you have to prime before water comes out. i'd have to say a few words before you could actually hear them. the next day, more of the voice stuff with some phlegm gathering in my throat, followed by some light sniffing. saturday i ran around in the rain and cold for several hours. i'd been planning this day for months, and some rain and illness were NOT going to ruin it. well. they didn't ruin the day, but they made the evening and today pretty bad. i'm now in full-blown-carry-the-kleenex-with-you-wherever-you-go-so-you-can-leave-snowdrifts-of-wadded-up-tissues-everywhere cold. i felt pretty weak and fainty today, so i stayed home from church and sat under a blanket reading for most of the day. i've got school tomorrow that cannot be missed. whatever. no big deal. however, i'm also scheduled to work from 5-10. back to the whole moral issue: is it worse to go to work with a cold, possibly infecting my coworkers and our customers (hey, we ARE fast food, for heaven's sake) and making myself miserable, or to stay home, leave my coworkers short one person, and not make any money? plus, because i took saturday off to run around all day in the rain, i'll be skipping out on an entire week's worth of work (i did schedule myself off on saturday- i'm talking about my usual week), and i have to take off next monday, since i have a final from 8-10. what moron, i ask, would schedule a final to go till ten at night? that is possibly the worst time to expect college students to remember all they've learned throughout the semester. nighttime is NOT the time for me to be speaking a foreign language. my speaking skills even in my own language are markedly worse anytime after 8:30, as seen by the amazing trouble i had in writing this sentence, and still having it come out wrong. this post is rapidly developing into a rant, so i think i'd better go to sleep and hope i magically get well again so i don't have to worry about going to work sick.

i'm wearing a ski mask right now. it squishes my nose so i can't breathe well.

i love my italian class. it's fun. i believe i've told you before of the Romeo/Ophelia/Hamlet/Juliet love... rectangle.... but i love my class for two other reasons. 1) my teacher is originally from germany. she often slips when doing numbers or really obscure words. as i've also taken german, i notice it when she does it, and i inwardly laugh. 2) my teacher also has a funny way of speaking english. she uses the word "gunna" ALL THE TIME. as in. "i gunna get some lunch", "we gunna read this chapter", "you gunna answer the questions", "she gunna write it on the board". oh yeah, and my very favorite: "what's the weather gunna like?" i spose it just comes from the way it's phrased in her language(s), and the fact that NO ONE likes to conjugate things in anything other than their native language. that is all. i gunna go to bed.

My hands smell like restaurant soap and limes

Hey, Internet! Long time, no see! How's everything been going? Seen any good movies? Neh, me neither. Hmm? Yeah, not much. Wrote a paper, went to classes, took some tests, the usual. So I'd really love to stay and chat, but I was just on my way out... yeah, I know. We should have lunch sometime and talk about the good old days. Yeah, I'm pretty busy too. But we should really get together sometime and catch up... I'll give you a call... yeah, see you around!

random attractive italian!

Tiziano Cucchiarelli may just be my favorite actor-that's-only-been-in-one-movie-and-it-wasn't-really-that-big-of-a-part-either. And of all two of the italian movies i've seen, i like Pane e Tulipani the best. Life is Beautiful is just way too depressing. Look for Nic's transformation at the very end of the movie. A change for the better? I think that's a resounding Yes! The whole movie is just the greatest thing ever. I like it so much, i think i'll rent it and watch it again, so's to pay better attention than i could in italian class.

in the computer lab

at my school, we have an underground giant sea of computers. right now is the first time i've ever looked at my site from a computer other than home, and it gives me a little shiver of "wow. my words can be accessed from anywhere." but i have two little observations from where i sit. first, it kind of smells like a Penguin's, for some reason. second, about 1/6 of the computers here are macs. there's like these tiers, or landings, in the lab, so it's like a big staircase. the top landing is the one full of macs. i think that says something. something like, macs are superior. or perhaps something like macs are weird and need to be segregated so's not to infect the other computers with their appleness. however, i like that we're segregated. in the morning, when everyone on campus is trying to check their email and there's a line of people waiting on each tier, i know that i can always walk straight to the top and find an empty mac. because stupid people are afraid of them and don't know how to use them. i am of the priviledged class that can use either a mac or an ibm or a dell or whatever. but i try to use the apples whenever i can, because they're just so much easier, and i feel like i belong here. whenever i'm too tired to walk up all the stairs to get to the mac area, and i settle for a dell, i can't relax and enjoy myself, because i feel like an outsider. i think i've rambled on for too long, and the things i'm saying aren't all that interesting, so i'll leave you with these parting words: apples are good. especially when they smell like frozen yogurt.

overheard conversation

guy: "yeah... mick jagger and steven tyler have been technically dead like four times each"
girl: "i know! their hearts stopped and everything"
guy: "and you know that if someone else, like if i tried to do that, i'd just die"
girl: "tried to do what? wear a woman's scarf?"
girl: "wearing women's scarves actually gave steven tyler a heart attack"
guy: "yeah, it couldn't have been all the drugs and alcohol"

cake mix

I love it when I come across some old cd that I haven't listened to in a long time. Like years. This summer, I went to a play (in Hollywood, while visitng relatives) where the intermission music was an album I had almost forgotten I have. Hush, by Bobby McFerrin and YoYo Ma. It's so great. Once we got back home, I went and found the cd, and stuck it into my computer so I can listen to it any time I want to. Lately, I stole a few cd's from my sister, and I realized that I really DO like Cake, and they're actually a lot better and more fun than I first thought. I made a compilation cd of my favorite Cake songs, and what better name than Cake Mix? Informative, simple, and something I just have to laugh at every time I see it. I think maybe I should hide a few of my favorite albums, so I can find them later and enjoy them again.

sad songs and waltzes

you know what's just the crappiest? when you have a great day, do homework early in the afternoon, go to two different social events, have tons of fun, then get in your car and start crying. and you cry for like a half hour straight while driving home. yeah, that's totally the crappiest.

hey HEY!

the evidence of my very THIRD reader! excitement galore. But I thought I'd inform you of my future job, as predicted by this site: Fluffy Bunny Trainer. Ohhhh yeahhhhh... so cool. Now what was I really meaning to say? Did I already tell you about the whole travel journal idea? Yes? Well, I haven't used it yet. I'm thinking it'll have to wait till after this semester ends, when I'll have more time, and I'll be changing my work schedule anyway. Oh. I remember what I was going to say. I burned a bunch of cd's from Isabel the other day. MY Simon and Garfunkel's greatest hits that she stole from me, 3 Cake cd's, and, er, the Eagles of Death Metal. And I'm really enjoying Pressure Chief (Cake's latest album, I think). Especially the End of The Movie. It's so cute with the banjo and all. I like timid-sounding songs by artists that aren't usually timid. They always make me happy. Like If I Ever Leave this World Alive by Flogging Molly, or Blackbird or Mother Nature's Son by the Beatles. Sweet little songs are nice. Like sitting inside in a sweater and fuzzy socks and watching it raining outside.

parlo italiano, e tu?

So I'm taking Italian 101. I am obviously as good as fluent already, no? Anyway, we do a lot of group work (writing dialogues, etc), and my usual group is fun. We did an exercise awhile ago where we had to write letters of advice to lovelorn kids, whose names were "Romeo" and "Ophelia." Hmmm, we thought, suspicious. And their stories were oddly Shakesperian. So we wrote each telling them to dump their crazy significant other, and hook up with this cool guy/girl we know named romeo/ophelia who's also breaking up with their SO. Since then, any dialogue, any story about a picture, is a continuation of the Hamlet/Ophelia/Juliet/Romeo love tri...rectangle.... It's been very fun, leading to some hilarious stories. Like Hamlet being a barista and poisoning Romeo's coffee because he stole Ophelia from him. Anyway. today's dialogue was almost about Giulietta, but we decided against it. Instead, it was just us. We went to a restaurant, and our check had the wrong stuff on it. We complained to the waiter, got free dessert out of it, but still didn't leave a tip. Poor waiter. It was more fun than I'm making it sound right now, but I think the humor would be lost in translation (read: I'm too lazy to write down the whole conversation). Io capisco paroli italiani. Capiscete, o non capiscete? Io vado al camera di letto, perche ho sonno, e voglio dormire. Buonasera!

don't read anything into this

Girl in my singles ward today: "i hope nobody reads anything into this, but i've been thinking a lot about motherhood lately, and how great mothers are..."

My actual post: i read several liberal-type blogs, etc, and it seems like there's been an eerie silence since tuesday. NOTHING has been updated. no new posts, no new flash animations to watch. nothing. i'm neither here nor there on the issue; i just noticed, and wanted to point it out.

i need to stretch

I went to Borders today. I hate that store. It's so... common. Take Barnes and Noble, take out all the pleasant, atmosphere-inducing furniture, make it less friendly, put a bunch of creepy old people (not nice old people), and replace anything that might be useful with crappy best sellers and mass produced teeny-bopper address books, and you've got Borders. Although I don't drink coffee, I'd bet that their cafe is crappier, too. So while I was looking through the postcard/ stationary set area, i came across a box of postcards labeled "Going Places." The pictures were awful, but behind it there was a matching book. The book was pretty interesting- it had a section for 'where I'm going/what to see/how I'm getting there', one for 'pre-trip budget/how much I actually spend per day/ etc', and then places for notes and journal type stuff. The way it's set up, though, makes it useful for exactly one trip. Want to go somewhere else? Gotta buy another one for another $15. But. After I had looked through it, and stuck it back on the shelf, I thought to myself, too bad I'm not going places. I'm not even going place. So I walked away from that book and went and bought an overpriced "leather-look" empty journal. I know, that's so Tolkien-fan-like of me. I actually bought it because it had a little flap on the right hand side with a magnet in it so the book stays closed, and because the paper had a nice feel to it. I could really do without the leathery look and plasticky texture. Anyway, back to my narrative. I'm going to clean out my car so there isn't any trash in it. I'm going to put the book somewhere where it'll be really noticable so i see it every day, and it reproaches me. I'm going to change my work schedule so I don't work Saturdays. I'm going to be a good student and do my homework during the week so I'll be free weekends and not feel guilty. I'm going to start small. Day trips. Afternoon trips, even. Just to make my life a little more interesting. After doing this for a semester, Stacey (my well meaning, but empty-headed car) and I will be ready to make a real road trip during the summer. Drive all over, do a Twine Tour. Hopefully Krista will come, too. Or Lauren. Or maybe I'll make a new friend between now and then. Or maybe I'll buy a dog. The point is, I'm tired of driving down the same street every day, seeing the same line of businesses followed by the same line of houses, and then driving back the other way a few hours later. Everything in my life is too familiar, and I want to see something different. So there. Go watch Breaking Away. That was the other thing I thought when I saw the book. "But I'm not going anywhere." "Oh, I'm not so sure about that..."

Holy Moly!

I actually did homework today! I worked on two separate projects, writing about two pages for each, and neither of them are actually due tomorrow! Maybe I've gotten over my procrastination problem. Or maybe I had five hours between my last class and volleyball tonight, and didn't feel like going home. Yeah, I think it was the second one. But still! Go me. Now to reward myself by ignoring all work for a week. Because we learned in sociology today that if a person isn't rewarded according to what they believe they should be rewarded, productivity is lowered, and you end up doing less work than even before. But perhaps I should study for that pesky italian exam tomorrow... nah. Too much work. Did any of my 1 (one) readers pick up on my decision to use capital I's? We'll see how long that holds up.

oh- and I'm still annoyed that Myst IV won't install onto my computer. Stupid Ubisoft.

ouch

hail hurts. it's especially annoying when the five minutes you pick to walk from class to class are the same (and only) five minutes the sky decides to shoot ice at you. i mean, seriously, after i entered the building and sat down in class, i looked out the window and there weren't even any clouds. it went from STORM! to sunny in five minutes.

the internet knows my name

okay. thanks to cookies or IP addresses or whatever, when i go to certain websites, the page calls me by name. this is okay when it's a site i use often, when i'm on my own computer. but i have had two odd experiences concerning the internet calling me names. Amusing Anecdote #1: i took a year's worth of PE during one summer a few years ago, mainly because i hate getting myself all sweaty during the middle of the day, and i have an aversion to bathing in front of people. so. during this summer school, we went to the computer lab a couple of times to type stuff up, and since i'm a superstudent (ok, not really), i got done early. so i decided to check my email. typed in the address of my email provider, and the page came up greeting me by my name. how in the world does the internet know it's me? i wondered. i still don't know, but i assume i'd checked my email earlier on that same computer some other day, and it just remembered me. creepy, nonetheless. Anecdote 2: i just followed a link from lileks' site that led to an error screen from expedia (old bookmark). no biggie. but as my eyes followed the cursor up to the "back" button, i came across two words, slightly bolder than the rest of the page: "Welcome, Melville." my name is not melville. i never use expedia. why is the internet calling me melville? because my dad (who isn't named melville either) once used expedia to purchase plane tickets for my uncle. i never knew that uncle wes isn't really uncle wes, but uncle melville. i guess you learn something new every day.

yarrgh

ok. so i haven't posted in a while. so sue me. i'd just like to say that i'm only posting now because i somehow woke up too late to get to my only important morning class, so i'm staying home this morning, and going to school for just my italian class this afternoon, cause italian is so cool. so now i've got a bunch of free time that i can write in, but i probably won't say much. anyway, after complaining to my friend that her college (read: within the university, not a different univ.) was way more friendly and active than mine, i got an email announcing the sociology picnic. yay and hoorah! i shall go. and maybe they'll have tshirts like my friend's college picnic had. one can only hope...

and on a completely different note, i woke up this morning not able to move my neck for fear of EXTREME PAIN, and my shoulder's kinda achy, too. i guess when one plays volleyball after a year of nonactivity, one should start out slow. but it was fun, and i'm going to keep going each week. hopefully after a while it won't torture my body to do it.

there's the rub:

the guy i dreamed about marrying is a real guy. he goes to my church, and is the older brother of one of my friends. he is also already married to a girl that was very nice to me in high school. creepiness of creepinesses.

to sleep, perchance to dream

i've been having some really oddly themed dreams lately, and it's getting a bit disturbing. the theme of several of my dreams of late has been this: marriage. i am not married. i am not engaged. i am not even in a relationship. but for some reason, i've been dreaming about being married, and i'm getting a little freaked out. they're not particularly nice dreams, either. i had one last night that i agreed to marry some guy that i barely even knew, and that it was the day of the wedding. i was frantically trying to get ready, trying to find someone to do my hair, and freaking out because i hadn't bought a dress yet. and during all this franticness, i realized that i didn't even know this guy, much less love him. but i had already agreed to do it, and i was running around in some wedding dress that i somehow got at the last minute, trying to figure out how to keep myself from making this mistake while at the same time not being horrible to the guy by breaking it off on the day of the wedding. i eventually decided that since he was of my faith, and since he was generally spoken highly of, i should just marry him. my dream ended just as we got to our new home. i awoke all sweaty and upset, thinking, "how could i mess up my life like that, take such a big step in life without even dating him first, getting to know him, seeing if i was even attracted to him?!" i was stressed all today, still feeling that i had totally messed up my life, and not realizing that this horrible feeling was due to the dream, which SO DIDN'T HAPPEN. i still feel shaky just thinking about the dream. it was stressful and disturbing and upsetting. all this about something that's supposed to be such a great and wonderful thing. i don't want to dream about marriage again.

my neighborhood

here's a little story to give you an idea of the type of people living in my neighborhood:

about two weeks ago, i went to check the mail (we have those annoying group mailboxes, like a little extension of the post office sitting on the sidewalk). i noticed that on top of the mail structure, there was a rather nice pair of glasses. i went to get the mail the next day, and they were still there, untouched. day after, still there. and so it went for about a week. then one day, they were gone from the mailbox. i thought, wow, it sure took a long time for some kid to finally steal them. but no! on the way back home, i saw that they had only been moved to the top of the corner house's brick wall. and so they've been for a week now. my neighborhood is dead.

blueprints

the building that my major department's offices are in intrigues me. doesn't look like anything much from the outside, a hundred years old, maybe, but... brick, and, you know, a building. four corners, a couple of stories, big old front doors. it's no Winchester House, BUT. it has just enough staircases, in just enough slightly unexpected places, in just enough nonstandard sizes and directions, to make me want to spend the rest of my life walking around in it. this building is cool enough for me to major in sociology even if i wasn't interested in the subject. i wonder if i ask them if i can see the blueprints if they would call the police. it's that fun. if i ever have the opportunity to build my own house, it'd have staircases in the same vein as this building. the hallways are tiny (except for when they're huge), and when you make three righthand turns in quick sucession and open the door you're faced with, you're totally surprised to see a staircase there. how did they fit it in such a small space? i thought i was already on the top floor? and why is there another staircase directly across the tiny hall? truly great. total lack of respect for regularity, symmetry, and general laws of physics. i think most architects would agree that whoever designed this building should be shot, but i hope i can talk to him before that, so he can design my house.

fo' shizzle

i came across The Shizzolater while leafing through my daily blogs. it converts any webpage into, uh, Snoop Dogg Speech. hi-larious. of course, being the vain thing i am, i stuck my page in. enjoyed it thoroughly. be warned, though- snoopy doesn't have the cleanest mouth.

overheard at the restaurant

While my sister and i sat at my new favorite place to eat, we heard the following:

" but yeah, abstinance is really coming back nowadays..."

People around OUR table may have heard this;

"my shoe is giving me a toe wedgie"

whee for mealtime conversation!

hey hey, my cheese!

i just changed my preferences (didn't know i had it set funny), so now anybody can post a comment. so i plead to you again, drop me a note and watch me dance with glee!

suburbia bites

i'm so tired of living in the land of skinny moms with 2.5 kids who all play soccer, and an suv that's too precious to park in a regular parking space- i know, let's park it across THREE HANDICAPPED SPACES! those jerks in the wheelchairs don't deserve their own space, not when my rav4 could get dinged and my children could be 3 seconds late to soccer practice! grrrrr.

i went to the park today. can you tell?

oh yeah- and this one guy videotaped (digitally recorded, rather) his child's soccer practice while he sat and read a book all evening.

and what gives? why soccer? i know, i know, it gives them a place to burn of energy, and they get socialized. i don't think i would want my children socialized to be competitive little witches who never have time to make friends or do homework. and as for the exercise, they'd do it on their own if you just brought them to the park. EXCEPT that there's no swingset. WHAT KIND OF A PARK DOESN'T HAVE A SWINGSET??? not even a crappy little stupid one that's built into the jungle gym... if we had a swingset, there wouldn't be enough room for the THREE soccer fields and TWO basball diamonds and the track that goes around the edge so the suburbian moms don't get too fat. and there's like 4 basketball courts and 3 tennis courts. it's a sick sick world where the neighborhood park doesn't even have a swing. guess they'll just have to play soccer.

after these messages, we'll be riiiiiiiiight back

remember watching saturday morning cartoons in the eighties? remember those little jingles? they had these three cartoon singers with giant beehive hairdos saying that and turning around. and sometimes there was a dog instead of the singers. with a fire hydrant. but my favorites were when the calfornia raisins said it. those guys were the coolest.

nature says "ahhhh"

this weekend has been wonderful. apart from work on saturday, and even that was pretty nice. there's just something absolutely thrilling about a good weather weekend. i was reading the Bleat today and he mentioned how nice it was to have a warm weekend; here, the beautifully overcast, rainy saturday and cool, fairly cloudy sunday blew our minds. i came out of church today, and stood in the parking lot for almost half an hour. and this at four in the afternoon! in september! i swear it's been less than 85 degrees all day. we stood outside just to enjoy being outside. we didn't get sweaty or even feel like going inside. a cool breeze made our skirts press against our legs in a pleasant manner. right now, i'm sitting outside again, in the backyard, enjoying the chilliness of it all. whne you can be outside and comfortable, you notice things that you usually don't have time to observe. for instance: the stars really do twinkle. especially cassiopea. that's always been my favorite constellation; so sweet and nice. again, there is a cool breeze blowing, with the sound of windchimes coming from across the wash in someone else's backyard. the rustling of the trees and bushes is so soothing. i wonder if anyone else is enjoying this moment, taking a break from being inside, relaxing and thrilling in the starry night. this feeling is something i wish i could share with the whole world, but it isn't something that can be shared. part of the serenity comes from the solitude and darkness and silence. ahhhh.

ow, my back

yesterday's frisbeeing left me a tad sore, from a particular lunge at a low throw. compound that with working from 9-5 today on not much sleep, and you get... um, discomfort.

today was a good day, though. it rained! it was so pleasant and cool. this evening, i was reminded of a certain drawing created by the guy that sat next to my best friend in one of her classes in like freshman or sophomore year of high school. my friend and i had classes in the same room, but at different times, and since we didn't see each other that often, we would leave notes in the room, and read them during class in order to pass the time. anyway, one day she left a little drawing glued to a piece of card stock so that it stood up like a paper doll. an odd little drawing that cody had made and given to her. she gave it to me, and i kept it. at the end of the school year, i took it home and put it in the little box of stuff that i wanted to keep always and forever. the box was full of items chosen not for their amazing worth, but for a record of my life. some have deep sentimental value, some have gained it by being in the box for long enough, and some are just little things i don't really want to throw out. here are the contents:
1 baby t-shirt from my first family reunion
2 girl scout thingies (brownie vest w/ patches, junior across-the-chest-over-the-shoulder thing w/ patches)
1 shirt that a family friend made (he worked at a silk-screening company) that i wore as a child
1 length of rope that i twisted at girls' camp
1 blankie. nuff said
picture i already talked about, plus one more that has the same story, but isn't as fun as the primary one
1 tiara. crappy plastic thing worth maybe 30 cents. during my freshman year of hs, our orchestra gave out titles and awards for each section, the king and queen of each section. there were 3 girls and one boy in my section, so when it came time to hand out the awards, it seemed obvious. however, about a week before, the guy was expelled. he was a senior, too. couldn't walk at graduation or anything. anyway. so we were sitting there during the awards ceremony, and our section leader (whom i looked up to very much, and whom was a very cool person) named me the Viola King. i was so honored. i kept the crown that said Viola King as well, but that isn't in the box. the tiara is.
1 set of mint condition coins from the year i was baptized
1 medal for being the Most Improved Player in the orchestra, 2001
1 pink eraser (normal, "back to school" type) that i secretly drew a picture of the guy i had a crush on during chemistry :P
1 tiny purple mitten. i think i wore it as a baby
my first swiss army knife
1 white poker chip. the marching band used them as markers to show how they did their routines, i think. i found one on the floor and stole it. my secret ambition was one day to join the band
various notes passed in classes
various movie ticket stubs
hotel key cards (they have to change them all the time anyway. why not steal them?)
tickets to museums and the like
4 pokemon cards (i have no idea why)
1 dollar bill that has a speech bubble coming from George that says "I grew HEMP"
a wizened balloon that we stole from a Wendy's on an orchestra trip (it wasn't wizened when we stole it)
yellow floppy disk that i put my math projects on sophomore year of hs
ID card from junior year of hs
rattlesnake rattle. i found a dead snake during a clean-up for a widow in the area, and hacked off its rattle with my spade.
paper bugs i made with my best friend. one year, we couldn't have girls' camp on the mountain like usual, because of wildfires, so we had to "camp out" in the church building. in order to make it seem more like camp, we two made a bunch of paper bugs and taped them up all over the bathrooms. it was great.
a medal from the 1994 brownielympics. i didn't win anything, but they gave everyone that came a medal so we wouldn't cry and have low self esteem. because low self esteem is a disease. why let your little twerpy kid get this disease when it could be avoided by giving them a medal they didn't earn?
my ID card from 7th grade. MAN i was ugly
ok so pretty much all of my ID cards ever
1 tiny little rubber sword i found in the hs library. like an inch long
1 horse carved out of some kind of stone. white. smaller than the sword
2 tiny clothes pin dolls i bought at colonial williamsburg many years ago (George and Martha Washington)
the clippies my viola mentor took out of HER OWN HAIR in order to make my halo stay up. oh yeah... that's the origin of my handle. we each picked a title: she was the Viola Goddess, the other girl was the Duchess of Violi, and i was the Patron Saint of all that is Viola. Violasaint. and she made me a halo for the last day of class. we had viola spirit day, as well. in october, she bought mini pumpkins and decorated them with our name and title, and Viola Star Power. we were so cool.
1 note i wrote to myself: "Open only after graduation!" v. odd. written in early 1999, when i was still dorky. wait, i'm still dorky now... ok. when i was dorky in a way that i took seriously, and didn't realize i was dorky.
another note, "to be opened on my 18th birthday." whoops. why didn't i immediately think of these notes when the specified events happened?
1 glow in the dark sheep (you know, like the stars you stick to your ceiling, only it's a sheep)
1 giant sewing needle

so that's pretty much it for the box. those are my personal treasures. obviously some are more important and worthy of the box than others. but my general rule is that i don't take things out, only put them in. because at some point in my life, each of those things seemed like something i wanted to keep forever, even if i don't remember why now.

huh.

of all the people in the world, the person i was least expecting to see at my church's young adult dance at the university was the guy i tried to introduce to the church during our freshman year of high school, who later told me he thought i should know that he didn't believe in god. odd how these things happen.

another interesting note from tonight: while it is fun to play frisbee on the top level of a parking structure at 10pm, be cautious in your throwing, because it sucks to have to climb up and down all those stairs when you overshoot and throw the frisbee into the bushes below.

The Wookie Has No Pants

i am not a pale, geeky 30 year old guy who has a room in his house devoted to jedi memorabilia. i didn't wait in line to see the first midnight showing of the Phantom Menace. i do not reference (or even know the difference between) boba fett, jango fett, and any other fetts there are.

i DO believe that in one way, Star Wars has been the defining movie of my young life, if not the greatest movie i've seen. it's the movie i watch when i'm bored/alone/exhausted/lazy/done with homework/avoiding homework/etc. i've probably watched it more times than any other movie in my life, and i use it as a rubric for all other movies i see, whether conciously or subconciously. does it have a way cool story? check. character development? check. a way cute major character? check (harrison ford, not mark hamill. though when i was eight, it was all about Luke). were the actors cast to fit the movie, instead of the movie being cast for the actors? check.

all the movies that i like fit those criteria that were set in my mind be repeated viewings of Star Wars from the time i first watching movies. Breaking Away, A Room With a View, Much Ado About Nothing, The Princess Bride, and disney's Robing Hood (mmm mmm gotta love that sexy fox! really. i do.) all have each of those elements. ooh! i just thought of two more elements that stem from Star Wars: great soundtrack, and comedy! and each of those movies have those as well.

so of course when i was flipping around the channels tonight and ran across a documentary, i stopped there and didn't get off the couch for two hours. it was interesting, going through the story of production, etc. i particularly enjoyed seeing shots of stuff like yoda disappearing into the ground as the puppeteer lowered his arm, or artoo rolling down an incline that ends up being too inclined so he just falls on his face (funny to see, but prolly wasn't too fun for the guy in the suit). and it was great fun to hear about the stuff the argued about; whether it should be Return of the Jedi or Revenge of the Jedi, whether or not it was obscene that Chewbacca was completely naked, etc.

the thing that REALLY made me scream (i literally yelled out loud when i saw this) was a commercial. for the original trilogy. on dvd.

let me repeat: ON DVD.

i don't know if this is just newly announced, or if everybody already knows about it. but it was the first i'd heard it advertised, and i'm just ecstatic. i've been waiting for this ever since dvd's came into fashion, and especially since we got one. i went out shopping one day about a year ago, thinking, it'd be nice to have star wars on dvd, cause our tapes aren't quite cutting it anymore. and i was dumbfounded, shocked, and deeply disturbed that there was no such thing. i had just taken it for granted that they would be sitting there on the shelf, waiting to be purchased. i mean, they have some of the crappiest, not-even-worth-watching-on-tv movies totally stocked up in dvd form at walmart. i just bought Labyrinth on dvd a few weeks ago (i know, either you're thinking "she BOUGHT that piece of crap movie?!" or you're thinking "how DARE she call that movie not even worth watching on tv?!" for me, it's neither, and it's both. it draws me.).

so yes. i will totally purchase the dvd's. probably not on the 21st, when they come out, but perhaps within a week or two. because i watch the trilogy several times each year, and why watch vhs when you can watch dvd? with bonus features!

The Wookie Has No Pants

i am not a pale, geeky 30 year old guy who has a room in his house devoted to jedi memorabilia. i didn't wait in line to see the first midnight showing of the Phantom Menace. i do not reference (or even know the difference between) boba fett, jango fett, and any other fetts there are.

i DO believe that in one way, Star Wars has been the defining movie of my young life, if not the greatest movie i've seen. it's the movie i watch when i'm bored/alone/exhausted/lazy/done with homework/avoiding homework/etc. i've probably watched it more times than any other movie in my life, and i use it as a rubric for all other movies i see, whether conciously or subconciously. does it have a way cool story? check. character development? check. a way cute major character? check (harrison ford, not mark hamill. though when i was eight, it was all about Luke). were the actors cast to fit the movie, instead of the movie being cast for the actors? check.

all the movies that i like fit those criteria that were set in my mind be repeated viewings of Star Wars from the time i first watching movies. Breaking Away, A Room With a View, Much Ado About Nothing, The Princess Bride, and disney's Robing Hood (mmm mmm gotta love that sexy fox! really. i do.) all have each of those elements. ooh! i just thought of two more elements that stem from Star Wars: great soundtrack, and comedy! and each of those movies have those as well.

so of course when i was flipping around the channels tonight and ran across a documentary, i stopped there and didn't get off the couch for two hours. it was interesting, going through the story of production, etc. i particularly enjoyed seeing shots of stuff like yoda disappearing into the ground as the puppeteer lowered his arm, or artoo rolling down an incline that ends up being too inclined so he just falls on his face (funny to see, but prolly wasn't too fun for the guy in the suit). and it was great fun to hear about the stuff the argued about; whether it should be Return of the Jedi or Revenge of the Jedi, whether or not it was obscene that Chewbacca was completely naked, etc.

the thing that REALLY made me scream (i literally yelled out loud when i saw this) was a commercial. for the original trilogy. on dvd.

let me repeat: ON DVD.

i don't know if this is just newly announced, or if everybody already knows about it. but it was the first i'd heard it advertised, and i'm just ecstatic. i've been waiting for this ever since dvd's came into fashion, and especially since we got one. i went out shopping one day about a year ago, thinking, it'd be nice to have star wars on dvd, cause our tapes aren't quite cutting it anymore. and i was dumbfounded, shocked, and deeply disturbed that there was no such thing. i had just taken it for granted that they would be sitting there on the shelf, waiting to be purchased. i mean, they have some of the crappiest, not-even-worth-watching-on-tv movies totally stocked up in dvd form at walmart. i just bought Labyrinth on dvd a few weeks ago (i know, either you're thinking "she BOUGHT that piece of crap movie?!" or you're thinking "how DARE she call that movie not even worth watching on tv?!" for me, it's neither, and it's both. it draws me.).

so yes. i will totally purchase the dvd's. probably not on the 21st, when they come out, but perhaps within a week or two. because i watch the trilogy several times each year, and why watch vhs when you can watch dvd? with bonus features!

define ironic

my sister's kittens are afraid of her rat. ha.

ps

reminiscing is fun. *see also: favorite ex-coworker came in to talk

not the best. day. ever., but pretty good

labor day. the day when supposedly everyone drinks and parties and people say "don't drive at night! you'll get killed!"

i've never noticed any partying or weird driving or anything. even the guy at work who always knows where the parties are said that he called everyone in his cell phone, and they were all at home tonight. and i drove home just now round midnight, nary a car on the road. well, maybe three or four, but not drunken freak-driving. just driving.

so my day went as follows: wake up circa 10am, feverishly read plays in order to find the perfect scene to do with my partner in acting class. find one that *might* be okay, but the person i'd be playing has the same name as me, and is a whore. not sure if my little psyche would handle that well. too like me while too different from me. anyway, round 3pm i realize that i wasn't supposed to go to work at four, but five. yay! an hour has been added to my life! so i continued reading plays.

work started out terrible. they put me on register, the ONE job i had been hoping i didn't have to do tonight. the first customers i got was this family who ordered a ton of food, chose the tiniest table to sit at so they had to drag chairs from other tables to fit themselves in, spilled a huge amount of soda all over said table and chairs and floor underneath. so they moved to another table and told me to clean it up. while i was mopping and wiping off the table and chairs, they came up to me and said "you're out of dr pepper. could you go and change it?" this WHILE I WAS STILL CLEANING UP THEIR HUGE SODA-MESS. so i dropped my mop, ran to the back of the store where the bag-in-a-boxes are kept. the dr pepper is fine. i go back up and tell them this, and they're like, oh sorry. so i finished cleaning their mess. they leave: the store, the mother's purse, and an entire taco's contents on their second table. i clean up their second mess, and don't see the purse. about half an hour later, another party sits at that table, and brings me the purse just as the mother walks in frantically. so that family made it look like my day was going to be crap, but a couple of things happened that made it great.

one of my male coworkers who's all the time picking on me was actually nice to me like all night. we're really friends, and he's a good guy and likes me and everything, but he also likes to talk crap and generally put up a big, swearing, mean front. he's like those strawberry candies: hard on the outside, but soft and gooey on the inside. anyway, he was nice on the outside today, and that made me happy.

our favorite ex-coworker came in. he sang for us and we all talked and had a generally good time. while we were talking, my parents came in, and he and i went over and talked with them and ate the ice cream they'd brought me. his ten minute break from where he now works turned into more like an hour. it was great. so he made the evening great as well.

previously mentioned male coworker ordered pizza, and i went to the store and bought candy. we got to eat food without making it ourselves! yay!

and i finished cleaning the lobby pretty quickly, and would have gotten out only a few minutes after when i was scheduled, except my manager and another coworker and i sat in the office for like 45 minutes and talked. so while i didn't go home when i had planned, i pretty much got paid for sitting around, gossiping and eating candy for nearly an hour. we didn't even have drive thru orders in between! we had like an hour when no one came in at all! it was great. so my day was grood. how was yours?

Saturday, August 28:

worst. day. ever.

there are days when nothing out of the ordinary happens, you feel peaceful and satisfied, if not terribly excited. yesterday was not one of those days.

1. went to work with a cold
2. walked into work an hour after a mandatory meeting i'd forgotten about had started
3. terrible drive through customers. people who insist on giving exact change without knowing that the big ones are 25, the medium ones are 5, the little ones are 10, and the copper ones are 1. absolute morons.
4. got yelled at by my boss for drive through taking a long time. (duh, that's what happens when my customers don't know what they want or how to pay for it)
5. i was supposed to get off at 5. no one got there till 5.20, no one took over DT till 5.30, no one counted my drawer till 5.35. the managers (one of whom had waltzed in 20 mins late) were too busy gossiping about what happened last night.
6. got frickin' angry at said managers, started crying, general hysterics. only then did they realize that i wanted to go home. plus, my cold medicine had worn off an hour and a half earlier
7. got home, grumpy at parents
8. parents leave 10 mins after i arrive to go have dinner without me, saying, look- your sister came to visit you for the evening. she'll keep you company and make you dinner and you can have sister time
9. sister leaves to visit friend (he's only here for one night!) half hour after parents leave
10. and doesn't make me dinner
11. i break filter for fish tank, decide to go to petsmart to buy another filter and a plecostimous (sp?)
12. petsmart closes at 9.00, i arrive at 9.02
13. well, since i'm out, i'll pick up some tacos at the new shop
14. restaurant: cash only. me: card only
15. i'll console myself with ice cream from new ice cream shop
16. while they do take cards, it tasted like crap because i accidentally got sugar-free topping (read: tastes like cardboard flavored dirt. or dirt flavored cardboard)
17. after all this, i go home and forget that i have homework. hooray! midnight sunday homework session for me, after only one week of classes!

why?

the first day of school, i felt absolutely fine, aside from having like 3 hours of sleep the night before. yesterday, i woke up with a full-blown cold. where did it come from? no one i know has a cold. i haven't even been around anyone lately! so i called in sick to work today, and my manager was all like, "well you were in here yesterday." all suspicious-like. yes i was in there yesterday, but if she wasn't so unobservant, she would have noticed that i was doing a lot of sniffling and coughing and going "ungh". plus, it wasn't like i was in there WORKING; i dropped in on my way home from school because it was payday, and i wanted my check. anyway. she hung up the phone before i could tell her that i had asked a coworker if he would be willing to take my shift. oh well. if she's too rude to even signal that she's hanging up, then screw her. she doesn't deserve to have a good day. it's like, she never says "oh i'm sorry you're sick. rest up and get better!". when i tell her i'm sick, she mutters "that means we'll only have five people tonight..." as if her problems will make me magically unsick, ready to work. when i call in sick, it's not because i'm weak and too wimpy to work. it's because i don't think it's best for anyone if i come in and go "*sniff* i guess i'll make this food for this customer...*cough cough* here's your order, sir...*snerk*"
i feel that it's best for me to keep my nasty, snotty, germy self at home, for the safety and peace of mind of both myself and my customers. and coworkers.
*steps off soap box*

why?

the first day of school, i felt absolutely fine, aside from having like 3 hours of sleep the night before. yesterday, i woke up with a full-blown cold. where did it come from? no one i know has a cold. i haven't even been around anyone lately! so i called in sick to work today, and my manager was all like, "well you were in here yesterday." all suspicious-like. yes i was in there yesterday, but if she wasn't so unobservant, she would have noticed that i was doing a lot of sniffling and coughing and going "ungh". plus, it wasn't like i was in there WORKING; i dropped in on my way home from school because it was payday, and i wanted my check. anyway. she hung up the phone before i could tell her that i had asked a coworker if he would be willing to take my shift. oh well. if she's too rude to even signal that she's hanging up, then screw her. she doesn't deserve to have a good day. it's like, she never says "oh i'm sorry you're sick. rest up and get better!". when i tell her i'm sick, she mutters "that means we'll only have five people tonight..." as if her problems will make me magically unsick, ready to work. when i call in sick, it's not because i'm weak and too wimpy to work. it's because i don't think it's best for anyone if i come in and go "*sniff* i guess i'll make this food for this customer...*cough cough* here's your order, sir...*snerk*"
i feel that it's best for me to keep my nasty, snotty, germy self at home, for the safety and peace of mind of both myself and my customers. and coworkers.
*steps off soap box*

blargh

as i lay here, on the eve of my sophomore year in college, quietly doing not much, and not even remembering that tomorrow is school, my vomitous stomach decides to remind me. every year, i get queasy on the first day of school. as far back as i can remember. my mind may not even be aware, but my stomach always knows. i remember my senior year in high school, i had an early volleyball class. the first day, i got sick worse than usual, probably because of the physical activity. anyway, my teacher decided to make an example of me to the class:
"did you eat breakfast today?"
:"no"
"let this be a lesson to all of you- always eat breakfast. doesn't matter if you're on a diet or whatever. you gotta eat."

i didn't like that. first of all, if i had eaten breakfast, i wouldn't have fainted, but i WOULD have blown chunks across the freshly buffed floor. second of all, the beginning of my senior year was the time when i was really fat, right before i decided to go to weight watchers. mentioning being on a diet was embarrassing and repulsive to me. how dare she figure i abstained from food because i wanted to be thinner! i didn't eat because i couldn't! i ALWAYS get sick on the first day of school. this was my problem, not hers. and now she was making it the business of every snobby girl and hot guy in the class. so i'm not feeling well tonight.

how to spend the night before the first day of school, you ask? stay up freakin late playing this game, that's how. so what if i don't know my schedule or what time i need to wake up. so what if i don't have my books. so what if i haven't purchased any paper or pens or anything. i have marbles, and that's all i need.

btw, the 'no books' thing is not my fault. it is the school's fault. i ordered the books online. the confirmation said "your order will be processed within 48 hours." apparently, 48 hours from thursday afternoon is not saturday afternoon, but monday morning. i swear, i took college algebra, and i thought 48 hours meant two days. i did get a B in that class, but that was only because i was too confidant and never studied. "hey, i took this same class freshman year of high school! why do the homework or listen during lecture? if they didn't want us to play minehunt during class, they shouldn't have put us in a computer lab for lecture." i sat in the very back of that class, and i know that 3/4 of the students were checking email or playing minehunt during lectures. the other quarter were asleep.

mmm... granola...

i went to the health nut store today with my sister. she has two pet rats, and it makes her feel good to buy bulk health foods to make her own special rat mix. on today's menu: dried banana, "o" type cereal, sunflower seeds, dried tomato, split yellow peas, etc etc. anyway. we went to the store, had fun with the little pour spouts you never get to play with when you're a little kid in the coffee/ jelly bean/ bulk sunflower seed aisle (but it'd be so FUN to open up all the spouts and make a mountain of coffee in the middle of the store, mom!). we wandered around, getting some other fun things like chips and salsa. saw a few health food hotties stocking peanut butter, etc. when we were ready to check out, there were two of said hotties running one line. so we go up, unload the many self-done baggies of rat food ingredients, smile at the boys.
"so what are you girls doing today?"
:"oh, just making rat food"
"did you say 'rat food'?"
:"yes. i have two pet rats, and i make their own mix of food"
"oh. i thought i was behind on the latest lingo. you know: "rat food..."
all: laugh

then on the way out, sis went and tripped on the mat in front of the door. not the first time she's tripped in the middle of a market :). oh yeah, we're cool.

btw

i have the words "and boris karloff has no hair" dancing around in my head. sigh. it really is time for bed.

whoa

so a couple of nights ago, no, last night, this girl that i hate came into my place of work to order food. actually, she just asked for a glass for water, which she filled with soda. anyway, she was talking to her friend saying, "i know i should eat something. i haven't eaten or slept in four days. my best friend just shot himself in the head" etc etc. now, considering the type of girl she is, i wasn't at all surprised that someone she knows just did himself in. hehe. before she mentioned the dead friend part, i was thinking to myself, "hmm, not eating or sleeping for four days? that's what Meth will do to you, genius." in fact, she probably has been on it all week. the dramatic ending of life was just an added bonus. i doubt very much that he was her best friend, but i suppose saying "one of my acquaintances just killed himself" wouldn't be as pitiable. anyway. i thought nothing of it, until tonight, when my manager said something about a friend of mine that used to work with us. she said that this guy who killed himself did so in "alice's" apartment. (name changed to protect the innocent. or guilty. or me.) so i got online when i got home, and have only found one reference to this incident on any of the newspaper and news station websites. it says that the police are looking for a "man and a woman" who were witnesses to the shooting, but are not considered suspects. i assume that this is "alice" and her boyfriend "gustav". i swear, this job has made me make friends with more criminals than i would have thought possible. of all the crimes i would expect to be committed in "alice's" apartment, a shooting is pretty low on the list. i would expect drug use, prostitution, and burglery before murder/suicide/accidental shooting. now that i feel real good about myself and the position i'm in because of my job, i think i'll go to bed. and have sweet, sweet nightmares.
needless to say, i'm really creeped out by all this. and i'm just putting on a bitter, sarcastic, sardonic appearance for the entertainment of my loyal readers. except there are no loyal readers. no readers at all, i believe.

duhhhhhhh

ever have a day when you suddenly realize that you don't have any thoughts? and then you freak out, thinking, why don't i have any thoughts? and you try to think of something, but there's nothing there in your head? at all? so you just sit around outside of work for two hours after you were supposed to leave, and whenever your coworkers come out for a cigarette you're still there, and they ask what's the matter, and you say "i don't know"? and your answer to any question they put to you is "i don't know"? seriously, i'm all... empty feeling. and i don't know why. i don't know when it started, i don't know what it is i want to know, etc etc. sigh. not tired. not energetic. not worried. not happy. just. static.

clouds are lame

i really love rain. living in arizona, rain is an exciting event, that just has to make you smile. but..., does it HAVE to be cloudy on the day when this big wonderful meteor shower culminates? i mean, we have like 335 days of sunshine and clear skies per year! couldn't the clouds come tomorrow? no blazing sky for me tonight. :(

ps

i want a Tipi
*squeal!* it's so cute!

Funfurde

so i'm taking this summer class on shakespeare. we read 5 plays. we have to write a 1/2 page-1 page thing on our reading every day. and i didn't read Henry IV. i tried, really i did. it's just an amazingly easy play to not read. anyway. i also got lazy and didn't do the daily writing for the past two weeks, and we have to turn them all in tomorrow. whee! i've written 5 of the 8 i need to do before tomorrow, but can't do the last 3 until i actually read henry the fourth, so it'll be a fun morning. anyway, while i was busy avoiding doing all this earlier this afternoon, i found this nifty site, and i suggest you all go take a look. i'm not into design, or furniture, but the stuff they put up is so cool i want to be into design and furniture. here we go with my mad link-making skillz:

Funfurde

enjoy.

it's my birthday and i'll cry if i want to

actually, it's more like "and i'll eat a ton of chinese food and poppyseed cake if i want to". and i did. and i shall. in 24 hours and 49 minutes, i'll be nineteen (19). i really didn't pay much attention to 18 when i had it- i don't smoke, don't go clubbing, don't buy porn, why would i need to be 18? i must've used it to my advantage at some point... seems that i did, but can't think what the reason was. i did register to vote, so i can have my very tiny little say in who leads our nation, as well as who gets to be a town councilman. and i'll tell you one thing- i'm not voting for anyone whose platform includes restricting growth of my town in order to keep it a "resort-like atmosphere" for the old folks. neither will i allow anyone who plans to zone for more dry cleaners or real estate offices. you can spit from one dry cleaners to the other. oh yeah, and i'm freaking SICK of walgreens and osco drugs. i hate the old people! THEY'RE the ones who need all of those stupid drugstores, THEY'RE the ones who do all of the idiotic real estate stuff, THEY'RE the ones who wear fancy-shmancy clothes that need to be dry cleaned (actually, the annoying young rich people use the dry cleaners also, so i hate them too). and THEY'RE the ones who drive like morons, causing me to be late to work on the best of days, and causing huge accidents involving going on the off ramp and such on the worse days. i swear, the old people are ruining the world for the rest of us. we need to go back to prehistoric times when there was no medicine to be heard of, and therefore no old people. the world would be WAY cooler if we just let them die.

i hope you know i'm kidding. well, exaggerating. anyway... where was i? oh yeah. i was celebrating my birthday by complaining about old people. kind of ironic, isn't it? i didn't even mean to talk about that. i just jumped out of my psyche, somewhere deep down, when i thought about the people running for town councilmen. why? because they're all old, and they all want to make my town into a resort for old people. sun city will spread and take over the world. we will all shop at walgreens, buying their crappy selection of snack foods and novelty shirts, but living mainly on prescriptions and real estate. sigh. happy birthday to me.

hast du etwas zeit fur mich? singe ich ein lied fur dich von 99 luftballoons auf ihrem weg zum horizont...

i've been trying to collect all of the stupid music from my lifetime, no matter how silly, fadlike, or downright bad they are. anything that sounds familiar that i thought was cool at the time. i know they're stupid, but for some reason i like them all the better for how ten years ago they are. they comfort me. a few are not from my lifetime at all, but are nonetheless familiar. here's a bit of what i've got so far.

99 Luftballoons (obviously)- Nena
Safety Dance- Men Without Hats
Blue Monday- both Orgy and New Order
What's Up- 4 Non Blondes
Loser- Beck
Lovefool- Cardigans
I Want You to Want Me- Cheap Trick
Linger- Cranberries
Rock the Casbah- The Clash
Mmmm Mmm- Crash Test Dummies
Friday I'm in Love- The Cure
You Spin Me Right Round- Dead or Alive
Breakfast at Tiffany's- Deep Blue Something
Come On Eileen- Dexy's Midnight Runners
Why Don't You Get a Job- Offspring
How Bizarre- OMC
I'm Too Sexy- Right Said Fred
Dragula- Rob Zombie
Rock You Like a Hurricane- Scorpions
Tainted Love- Soft Cell
Ballroom Blitz- Sweet
Shout- Tears for Fears
Free Fallin'- Tom Petty
Even Walls Fall Down- Tom Petty
Bittersweet Symphony- The Verve
Oh Yeah- Yello
She Drives Me Crazy- Fine Young Cannibals

That all would make for a great party, no?

BTW

i was carrying about 19 dollars in fives and ones at the time of the intended scamming. i lied to him when i said that i don't carry cash. i usually feel bad about deceiving people, and often blush or do something else to give away my untruth. my "i don't carry cash" was immediate, casual, and honest. i feel absolutely no guilt about it. as george said when coaching jerry seinfeld on how to beat the lie detector, "it's not a lie if you believe it." and i never carry cash when people i don't want to hand out money to are around.

scamming

i just read today's Bleat at lileks.com, and he told an interesting story- he'd gone to the mall of america to buy a duvet, and been scammed out of five bucks by some teenaged or twenty-something'd girl. he knew it, but didn't mind- hey, it's only five bucks! you can read the whole thing, worded by an actual writer (and not me),

here

. it's witty and interesting and everything that i'm not. the reason i mention it is because about a week ago a similar thing happened to me. here's my story, written by me, and not an actual writer.

i went to the mall after school one day, because i'd not been in a looooooong time, and also because i'd gotten a five dollar gift certificate in the mail to waldenbooks. it's great- you sign up for a little card that says waldenbooks on it, get endlessly annoyed by email messages that tell you all about the anime books you could be buying RIGHT NOW, and once in a while they throw you five bucks. anyway. i decided to use it before i forgot about it till after it'd expired. while i was at the mall, i got some much-needed exercise (it's amazing how hard it can be to find the ONLY store you frequent in such a not-so-big mall when you only go about once every five months), bought some overpriced lipgloss at macy's cause i really like Benefit, and that's the only place you can buy it without having to order it from the catalogue, and bought the 50th Anniversary Edition of A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein (it comes with a cd with him reading 10 count'em 10 of his poems). as i meandered around the mall trying to find my way back to dillard's, where i parked, a forty-something year old semi-homeless looking guy walked by me and said something like "hello" or "it's a nice day, isn't it?" or something like that, so i decided, "hey, i just dropped a hundred dollars on stuff i don't need, but saved five dollars, mind you... i'm in a good mood." so i said hi back, and kept walking. mistake. (the saying hi part, not the kept walking part)

as i turned my head back to where i was walking, the guy made some sort of "uh" or "oh" noise, turned around, and started talking to me. "hi, uh, i've been here a while, and uh i was downstairs and uh all the security guards know about it and uh my uh wallet uh and i need some uh money to call a cab so i can leave and uh..."

note to all men over 30 years of age: if you are unbathed, on mind-muddying drugs, very large, very wirey, very homeless, or otherwise scary looking, you DO NOT approach women under 30 and ask them for money. especially if they are alone. and even if you aren't scary looking, you still do not bother women who don't know you. it's just one of those things that you'd think even unbathed, drug-muddied homeless guys would know.

anyway. i was almost ready to panic, but i noticed that there was a security guard not to far off, so i figured i'd try to bow out gracefully, and if the guy didn't let me, i could always make a scene to grab the attention of the guard and all the people in that half of the mall. it would be fun.

i told him "i'm sorry, i don't carry cash," turned around, and left. nothing happened.

my conclusion is that homeless men, broke men, and any other kind of men soliciting money from complete strangers should stay on the medians at intersections with signs made of cardboard and/or newspapers to sell. i have given money to these people. i feel safe sticking my hand out the window while waiting for the light to turn, because i know that my doors are locked and i will drive away very soon. however, i never have, and never will, give money to any stranger who approaches me in a place of business, or even worse, in the parking lot. people sitting or standing on a sidewalk where there is a lot of foot traffic, maybe. but i prefer approaching them, and not being approached by them.

one interesting anecdote, and then i'll be done: a friend of mine was in a parking lot for the bus station (she leaves her car there, then rides the bus in to town for school, cause it's cheaper that way). she had gotten off the bus, and was heading for her car when she saw a man walking towards her. she hurried up, and got in her car. the man continued walking towards her car, and she didn't feel comfortable anymore. so she leaned on her horn. she only released when the man had turned around and left. i think she was a little rude, or obnoxious, or something, in doing that, but. that's the type of thing that happens to guys who have absolutely no social awareness. you are forewarned. if you act like a creepy suspicious guy, you will be treated as one.

yawn

i've been reading madly for several weeks now, beginning as soon as i get home in the afternoon (around 3:30) and not stopping till like midnight. and i would go on past then, if it weren't for the fact that i have to get up early in order to do the homework that i didn't do the night before. BUT. it's not like the books i'm reading are worthwhile, or even well-written. they're stinking harry potter! i hate JK Rowling. with a passion. i wouldn't mind her at all if she was just another crappy writer with no talent, but she's pulled these mildly interesting stories out of somewhere, and written them down. if there's anything more infuriating than reading a really well-written book, it's reading a poorly written book that still has an entertaining plot. i feel... unclean... like i'm watching Survivor or something. and yet i can't stop. i've even read them before! it's not like i have to know what happens, cause i already do! and it's not like i don't have anything better to read- i'm still in the middle of Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, which is great, and i still need to read Henry IV for my shakespeare class. darn you, JK Rowling. i hope Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light makes your life mildly unpleasant for years and years. and i wish you'd hurry up writing the last two books, so i can read them and get them out of my system, so i can go back to reading Real books.

arrgh, arrgh, and double arrgh

on saturday i went to the grocery store after work. i bought various stuff for making a nice dinner for myself and my parents. i also bought one peach. it looked good, and smelled good, and felt like it would be the perfect softness in a day or two. i came home and made dinner and set the peach on the counter to ripen. on sunday i looked at it, smelled it, felt it. oooh it was nice. but no! it wasn't quite perfect, and i wanted to eat it at the right moment. monday morning would be perfect. wake up around 10:30, get dressed, eat a peach, a perfect peach, and then head off to my first day of summer session. (to get ahead. i'm a good student). so i woke up this morning, got dressed, and walked out to the kitchen for my peach to meet its fate. hmm, now where did i leave it? i thought it was right next to the bag with two pears in it (pears are okay, but not for breakfast). hey mom, did you see where i left my peach? i've been waiting for it to ripen and today is the day! i can't wait to eat this peach! i haven't had one for so long! and the anticipation will make it taste that much sweeter. i picked it out specially at the store because it was so beautiful, and now i can't find it. did you move it? "..... i think dad took it to work for his lunch...."

i ate a pear for breakfast today.

and made dad feel really guilty this evening when he came home from work. that was MY PEACH, darn it! i picked it out, i bought it, i watched it ripening all weekend, and you had the unmitigated temerity to steal it right out from under my nose the day it was to be my breakfast!

tee hee

there is nothing funnier than watching british actors play american characters. they sound stupider than we do when we fake english accents!

back to work

i went to work today for the first time in almost... 2.5 months. and boy how things've changed! i only know like 6 people anymore- all the rest of the employees were hired after i left. it's not good. because when you completely replace the employees with new people all at once, things just go down the drain. i admit, the people working there before weren't the most savory coworkers, but we were like a well tuned... no, um a big happy... no... well, we were used to each other, and all were good at our jobs. despite (or perhaps because of) the drug problems. all these new people are, well, new people. and because Everyone is new, there is no one to train them how to act and how to do their jobs. so everyone sucks. it's like the blind leading the blind, or as i like to say it, 'inexperienced people training inexperienced people makes bad burritos.' it really does. anyway, i still know a couple of the people from olden days. one of them is like my favorite, even though (or perhaps because) he mocks me and tickles and pushes and stuff. it's fun to fight with him. like the brother i never had :). my favorite manager is still around, and so is my favorite schoolmate (of the many many high school graduates that work there, it's kind of sad that only three of us are in college...). so i've got some pals, and a few others that i'm comfortable with. this will have to do until i can find a better job, and even with the annoyance of these new people who are slow and inefficient, it's not that bad. i'll live with it, but i no longer see it as one of my home bases. now it's just work. which, in a way, can be a good thing. above all, it's just way better to be working than to be sitting around at home ALL SUMMER. maybe it wouldn't be if i had friends, but my few friends don't really do much, and as krista's working at that camp all summer, i can't hang with her. so working is my best option. plus, my shakespeare class starts monday! woo hoo! shakespeare! i'm really very excited about that. i can't wait! it's gonna be fun.

Griffith Park

for those of you in the LA area, planning on going to visit the Griffith Observatory, you can Forget It. we looked up the hours and stuff on its website before we left the hotel last week. apparently we overlooked the fact that it's undergoing a four year renovation, and won't be open again till 2006. we drove all the way up the hill, only to find at the very top a bunch of construction fencing and mess. and a sign saying that they're fixing it up. so we drove back down the hill feeling like fools, and went to the LA Zoo, which is also in Griffith Park. it was fun, and we got smashed pennies, and crappy plastic animals (you stick two bucks into a machine, and get to watch the plastic go into the mold, then you wait for two minutes so you don't grab molten plastic, and you open the hatch and have your very own crappy plastic lion. i highly reccommend it- they're fun, and i've gotten attached to mine). we didn't see the elephants, and the gorillas were out for the day (where were they? shopping?), but everything else was fun. we saw sea lions sleeping at the bottom of their pond thing, and wondered if they weren't dead. they weren't- we stayed and watched till they woke up and came up for air.

so even though we didn't get to see fun planetary stuff, the day was still wonderful. and again- the sun was shining, but we didn't get hot! amazing!

hello out there

does anyone actually read this? leave a comment, for i am as insecure as a lonely puppy. but not as much as those people we all knew in high school. you know who i'm talking about.

so leave a comment, and watch me dance with glee!

argh

trying to figure out enough html to be able to make my page look and work like i want it to. this is proving frustrating, since i'm too lazy to go in depth enough to understand. plus, computers really aren't my forte. i like microsoft word. that i understand. but all of these >'s and /li's just confuse me to no end.

insert title here

now that i've forgotten my blog long enough for anyone who possibly read it before to forget it as well, (did that clause make sense?) i'm back. i've been back in town for a while, thinking, "i want to tell about my fabulous week in sunny California." not that it's not sunnier here in AZ... but every time i try to make myself write anything, i get discouraged because there's so much to say, i'm lazy, and i've forgotten most of the witty, interesting things i had thought of to say about it last week. so all i'll say is this: in california, when it's hot, you can step under a tree and be instantly cool again. and lie in the grass. there is no grass in az, and shade is never cool. unless it's the shade of being inside an airconditioned building. i actually found myself being glad that i brought a sweater along. in june!

the other thing i remember that i wanted to say was this: in places like hollywood and los angeles, you know there's a lot of tourists. but think of this- there are also people (many, many people) who live there, spend years there working at the 7-11 or the video store. chew on that for a while. think of the taxi driver in paris who spends all day taking sightseers to the eiffel tower. does he goggle at its greatness anymore? did he ever? do the people who move to these cities have to check their souls at the door? because i think that would be the only way to keep from getting depressed and killing yourself after living a humdrum (i don't really mean humdrum. i mean.... regular. a life like mine.) life in a place that the rest of the world looks at with longing and wonder.

i think i should start living a larger life, in this smaller part of the world. to make up for all those people who don't.

CA: day three

today we went to the park with my cousins. it's a fun park, with these giant sandstone boulders that you can climb around on and pretend you're king of the world. it was fun when i was six, and it's still fun today. interestingly enough, while i was at another area in the park, a newspaperman came up and took a whole bunch of pictures of my sister and cousins climbing. he was doing a human interest thing on that neighborhood, so they're going to be in the paper tomorrow. isabel pretty much summed it up when she said, "this town loves me." we visit for a week, and she gets her picture taken for the local paper. arg.

this evening we went down into hollywood to see a play. "All in the Timing," we saw it in this tiny theatre called the Elephant Asylum. it was pretty cool, except mom was freaking out because we left our car unattended for more than two minutes in hollywood at night. and we wanted to walk around, since we got there 45 minutes early, but . we walked like a block with mom cowering and making horrified "we're all going to be slaughtered" faces, and wondering how much of the car has been stripped so far. so we turned around. she makes things no fun sometimes. anyway, the play was grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat (as tony the tiger would say). very very funny.

two fun short anecdotes from driving around trying to get back to the freeway after the show:

1. driving along in a pretty ratty-looking part of town, and we see a sign for a shop. "'Crazy Cuts'... is it a butcher? or a hairdresser? I don't know..." Later, we saw another crazy cuts on a different street. also on the sign were the words "hair" and "nails." hmmm... butcher, or hairdresser? i STILL don't know... :)

2. i saw one of those moments that seem to have more significance than meets the eye. there's this big building, two stories and a block long, with shops on bottom and a row of windows on top. all of the windows were dark, except for one. a second after my eyes came to rest on the lighted window, it clicked off, and all the windows were dark. there's something oddly american and familiar about that. reassuring? maybe. it was a "moment."

3. i lied about there being two anecdotes. there's three. but this one's really short. when we came out of the theatre and onto the street after the play, i vaguely thought, the play must not have been very long, it's still light out. when we got into the car, i looked at the clock. it said 11:02. and i realized that LA has lights. lots and lots of street lights, traffic lights, neon signs, etc. where i live doesn't have street lights. they would mess up the observatories. when we moved there from CA, we thought, "MAN this place is a dark dark hole."

oh yeah

and our hotel has free wireless internet. w00t!

CA: day one

it's been a pretty good day overall. we all took turns driving so the 8 hours didn't drag on as they used to, and we watched invader zim on my laptop for a few hours, with the sound hooked up to the radio so we could blast it. isabel and i discovered that we could set up a network and use Rendezvous to IM each other while sitting next to each other in the back seat. : 5 minutes of silence, then a sudden synchronized outburst of laughter, followed by mom saying "what? what? are you talking about me?": very fun. very stupid.

we spent a few hours this evening at our grandma's house with an uncle and his family. and a raving lunatic kitten. hehe. it's fun to let a kitten attack and gnaw on your hand when you know her jaw isn't strong enough to break the skin. "aww look at her chew all angry-like! isn't that cute?"

tomorrow: geocaching with our grandpa.

Helloooo, Mr Hyde

the setup:
my mom wakes up in the night. she'll wake up to go to the bathroom and normal stuff like that, and then she wakes up and has to come over to my side of the house for an advil. then an hour and a half later she's thirsty, then at 3 in the morning she wants cheerios. ok, so never does she do all those things in one night, but they are all common things for her.

usually my web-surfing and solitare playing goes into the wee hours . in fact, i haven't fallen asleep before 2:30 at all since the beginning of may. so much so that now i can no longer fall asleep before then if i try. which is annoying when i once in the while have to be somewhere the next morning at six, or whatever.

i usually have my door closed, and my lights off just for convenience- that way i can just put my computer on the floor and fall asleep when i finally do get tired, instead of having to get up and close my door and flip off my lights, thereby getting just enough adrenaline pumping to keep me from falling asleep for another hour. so usually if/when mom comes over thisaway in the middle of the night, she doesn't know i'm up.

the action:
but tonight, for some reason, i have my door open and lights on. i think it's cause i'm halfway thinking about packing for tomorrow morning, and haven't yet done the "i'm going to bed" stuff like get into pajamas and try to be tired. anyway.

a few minutes ago, mom came slogging out in half-sleep for an advil (she just got crowns, and has some freakish nerve pain off and on). i am reading through various blogs for fun, and have just read one talking about the Horatio Hornblower books by cs forester. mom likes those books, so i think, hey, i'll tell her about it.

so imagine me (hard to do, eh? shame i don't have a pic up to help you) bounding up the hallway to said half-asleep mom, and just as she realizes i'm there, and who i am, and such, i say to her (in an energetic voice, with absolutely no lead-in) "hey mom guess what winston churchill liked the horatio hornblower books!" being accosted like this can have a disquieting effect on a recently wakened person. i don't suggest doing something like this.

she started, made a horrified expression, and said "are you INSANE?! what are you doing UP?! go to BED!" i tried to tell her about winston churchill and his love for the seafaring adventure series, but i don't think it sank in. we'll see what she says in the morning. once she left me standing in the hallway and went back to bed, i stopped by the bathroom to turn off the lights i had left on in there, and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

HOLY COW I LOOK LIKE A PSYCHOPATH! apparently, sitting for hours craning my neck and staring into the unholy glow of the computer does something to my appearance.

after sitting back and thinking for a few minutes, i just realized what i looked like. i looked like martin short in the movie Clifford. you know, the part where his uncle says he's afraid to look him in the eyes because he's afraid he might see little pinwheels turning. except it's funny in the movie.

i guess the hours of communion with my computer bring out my personal Mr Hyde. or my Clifford. whichever.

Packing list

for one week away from my comfortable, comfortable home:
clothes

(7) shirts
(2) pairs of jeans
(1) swimsuit
(1) pair of cutoffs since i don't like people seeing too much of my thigh when wearing a swimsuit
(1) denim skirt for wearing to church. with one of the seven shirts.
(7) underwear(s?)
(2) bras
(1) church shoes
(1) pair of thongs (flip flops. i'm not into butt-flossing) for at the beach. prolly won't use them, tho.
(1) pair of my birkenstocks that are really the only shoes i ever wear
(1) pair of PE shorts from my high school for sleeping in

toilettries

dandilion (really nifty blush from Benefit. smells good, too!)
dr feelgood (also from Benefit. makes your face even and nice, so it doesn't glint in the sun. doesn't smell so good, tho. Benefit is da bomb)
eyeshadow
lipstick
soap
shampoo
conditioner
deodorant
face scrub
razor
toothbrush/toothpaste/mouthwash
perfume
hairbrush
circular hairdryer/brush thing (aka the "whirry thing")

stuff for keeping me sane the rest of the time

computer (with dvd drive)
dvds (Pirates of the carribean, invader zim, other various crep)
headphones for listening to said dvds (computer speakers don't cut it)
power cord for hooking computer up to the cigarette lighter
mouse, since my trackpad mysteriously died a few months ago
camera
coupla books and a booklight (hmm we're not traveling at night. maybe booklight is excessive)
GPS and trading stuff so we can go geocaching while in CA

i think that all should do it. i hate the night before a trip. i can't relax, can't sleep, can't do anything useful. arrrrg.

Recommended Reading

yay! my first "i don't have anything interesting to say, but i still want to say it" post!

so here are some grood books i've recently read, or reread, as the case may be:

Moby Dick - herman melville

Where Angels Fear to Tread- e.m. forster

A Room With a View- e.m. forster

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea- jules verne (i haven't actually finished this yet, but it's good so far)

On Market Street- arnold and anita lobel (kids' alphabet book, but it's truly amazing)

The Wonderful O- james thurber

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and the rest of that "trilogy")- douglas adams

The Crows of Pearblossom- aldous huxley (who knew he wrote kids' books???)

The Princess Bride- william goldman (even better than the movie!)

The Merchant of Venice- william shakespeare (it's got cross-dressing, a guy who wants to cut out another guy's heart, and religious persecution! whats not to love!) (not that i condone any of those things)

The Doubtful Guest- edward gorey (again, truly amazing. not quite a kids' book, but about that length)

HAR!!!!

worship me, fools! i can make links!

my life may be tiny and sad, but i am broadening my horizens... *sheepish grin*

pay no attention to this post, unless it works

i'm just trying to figure out how i can make things be links. i know, i'm stupid and computer illiterate. don't laugh at me. pity me. watch my ignorance at work!

a while back, i referred to the Hand Puppet Theatre. here it is, if anyone is interested. it's really quite funny.

T minus 2 days

we're going on a family vacation! w00t!

well, we're actually just going to california to visit mom's family, but we're going to actually DO stuff, like go to the beach, and the Griffith Observitory, and the Summer Solstice Dulcimer Festival, instead of just sitting around grandma's house for the whole time like we usually do. Yay for not having to spend the whole vacation with relatives! isabel and i are going to bring our laptops and watch invader zim and movies in the back seat (i really wish mom and dad could take one car and is and i could take another. then we wouldn't be all smushed).

so i'm looking forward to the next week and a half with a little more glee than i usually do when we go to california. :)

chewing magazine

i just looked at my last post, and noticed the little blogspot ad at the top. i'd never noticed that before today. huh. it's a gum advert. i guess if i want anything to be advertised on my blog, gum is a nice harmless subject. i like gum. i chew it. often. my current brand is Orbit, the green kind. i'm not married to it, though. i will chew any type of "green" or spearmint gum you put in front of me. unless it's ABC, or covered in ants or something gross like that... i will also chew wint-o-green, or the yellow flavor from Carefree. is that peppermint, maybe? dunno. cinnamon is right out, though. i hate cinnamon when it's red (gum, mints, red hots, etc), but i enjoy brown cinnamon (cinnamon rolls, cinnamon toast, etc). i don't know why i have such polar opinions on these two types of cinnamon.

i wonder if there really is a magazine devoted to chewing gum, like in one of my favorite calvin and hobbes strips. maybe if i follow the link in the ad, it will take me to that magazine. probably not, but that would be pretty cool. i was recently talking to a friend who told me that her cat is called hobbes. that is also pretty cool.

my fish tank is getting cloudy

a few weeks ago, my plecostemous (i know that i've spelled that horribly, horribly wrong, and i don't care) died. he had gotten pretty big, and i felt guilty for never having named him, or the other two normal-type fish in the tank. since it was a little late for giving him a name, i decided to get rid of the carcass before it made the tank smelly and gross and... fishy. turns out with the strange optical tricks that water plays with your eyes, he was a lot bigger than he even looked. and he didn't fit in the little net i have for scooping out fish that don't survive. so he was precariously perched lying flat across the top of the net while i ran to the bathroom for a burial at sea:

slosh... i don't think he'll flush, mom.

: is he bigger than a turd?

....uhm...

: just flush it, and we'll go from there.

*flush*

...he's still there. he didn't bend like i thought a recently deceased fish would.

well, we ended up yelling for dad, and he did with the fish what he does with all the birds that drown in our pool- put him in the pool skimmer and catapulted him into the wash behind our house. we hope the coyotes find the Body before the stupid little kids who run around back there do.

the two remaining non-pleco fish are now living in filth, until 1. i get a new pleco (unlikely) 2. i clean the filter so it runs properly (even more unlikely) or 3. they die (inevitable, and the choice that requires no work from me)

a pant?

i had the hgtv channel on today while cleaning house. well, mom had it on, but since i was around, i was forced to listen to it although i despise those type of shows: here's some really cool stuff that you COULD have... if you had disposable millions....

but that's beside the point. now i've forgotten the point.

oh yeah. a pant. all of those shows with designers and style gurus and such. when they do makeovers for people, and make them buy all these ugly clothes and then say "now you're Hip!". the designers say things like "we got you this trendy pant" or "and here's a striped trouser". obviously these people are designers because it's the only job where it's ok if you mangle the english language and forget the traditional rules of grammar.

i like to envision a person wearing "a pant". people who can wear a pant or a trouser are Vets who stepped on a land mine in 'Nam, or people who were born with only one leg. i know it's stupid that a single item of clothing is referred to as a pair, buttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt..........

it's tradition. you just don't wake up one day and decide, "the stuff growing out of my head is actually a lot of little things, so from now on i'll call it hairs instead of hair." nice hairscut. could you hand me that hairsbrush?

no. it doesn't work that way. language evolves, i know. i acknowledge that english, and every other language that is in use, changes. it changes every day, very slightly. but stuff like that doesn't change. they've been called pants ever since there WERE pants. some silly english tailor made them plural, and we're stuck with it. you cannot simply change hundreds of years of a word's history because you're a Hip and Trendy style expert with a tv show. so mleah.

new hair (!)

i got my hair cut on tuesday. keeping in mind that i haven't changed how my hair looks since, uhm... the beginning of my freshman year in high school (almost 6 years now), this was a pretty big step for me. it's now only shoulder length, and i'm still getting used to it. both my mom and the hairdresser said it looked good, but of course mom isn't exactly the best judge of whether hair looks good or not, and the hairdresser, well, yeah SHE likes it, cause she did it. and even if she thought it came out horrible, she wouldn't say so. so i dunno yet. i'm going back tomorrow to get highlights (yikes! my first step away from natural hair, and one step closer to being one of *them*). she said she would do them really small and really close to my natural color so it won't look too obvious. one thing is certain, though- i will look New and Different for my trip to california next week.

since my initial cleaning of my room, i've discovered that i don't have enough hangers for my clothes, and my dresser is falling apart. so i've got three laundry baskets full of clean clothes with nowhere to go. so i decided, if i pack for ca now, not only will i be less stressed later on, but i'll free up some room in my closet so i can get my room less cluttered! genius! but of course i can't pack everything now, cause i'll want my pants and my good bra and makeup and shoes and stuff between then and now. or i could just go au naturale for a week... hehe. so i'll probably forget what i've packed already, and either pack not enough, or twice as much as i need. fun fun.

I'm not a feminist, but....

i've decided that skirts really are an evil invention used to keep women submissive and uncomfortable. :) i've never felt this before, and i wonder if it's a sign i'm turning into one of *those* type of women. i don't think so, it's just, sitting in church for two hours on a hard chair would be fine with me. i've sat for much longer in less pleasant conditions with no problem, because i was able to sit in comfortable positions. but in a skirt, being comfortable means also being completely immodest. i therefore left church with a sore rear end and a horrible backache, feeling annoyed that i couldn't properly listen to what was being said because i was so aware of my physical discomfort. argh.

in today's Bleat (lileks.com), he mentioned a singer who does children's music. i went to the site, and he also does some albums for "grown ups". the site has a few songs (about one per cd) that you can listen to, and of course i listened to the kids ones first, which were pretty inoffensive as kids songs go, and then i listened to the two grown up songs. they weren't so bad either. listen, if you will, at http://www.justinroberts.org/music.htm . i kinda liked the Ruby Red Slippers song, although i can't tell if it's supposed to be serious or not. either way, it's pretty good. perhaps i'll look for it next time i go music shopping.

AGH, a green cloud of death is attacking my butt!

hehe... i like the hand puppet theatre (maybe someday i'll post a link).

so today dad and i went scouting locations for our first cache. we like these two particular areas near home, so we might set two consecutively. i bought some of that altoids gum recently because it had a neat tin and i thought it might be useful for a microcache, so today when we went out i took it along, just in case. as we got in the car, i popped a piece in my mouth and started to chew.... "WHOA that is some curiously strong gum" i thought, and kept chewing. i chewed while at both of these possible locations, also through a trip to home depot to look at paint, and when we were about two miles from home, i realized, "heyyyyyyyy..... this doesn't really feel like gum anymore.... it feels like when you eat a dum dum and then just keep chewing on the stick cause there's nowhere to throw it out and it gets all mushy and gross. i thought this, then opened my mouth to see what it looked like in the rearview mirror. "GAAAAA it's turned into FOAM!"

they should really make a warning label on those tins: "Do not chew for more than an hour. Elongated chewing may result in foam." i mean, i've chewed gum for entire days, slept with gum in my mouth all night, and never before has it changed its form from a chewy solid to a foamy liquid. Never. see if i buy more of THAT gum...

Hey, it's a title!

slowly but surely learning my way around the whole blogging concept...

spent the day driving around town with dad, geocaching. then i had the evening to myself so i got some movies at blockbuster and went to taco bell to beg for my job back. of course the new GM wasn't there, but my old manager was, and she said "don't worry- she'll be here tomorrow morning. just tell her i said you could come back." so i guess i've got my job again so i won't go COMPLETELY insane sitting around the house all day the rest of the summer.

i just realized, sitting here typing, that i've been wearing this shirt i'm wearing for the past three days. odd. that's how screwed up my mind is getting- i do a TON of laundry, then proceed to wear one shirt three days in a row without noticing.

so i got Lola Rennt (why do they translate that to Run Lola Run? a lot of the english subtitles are kind of screwy, now that i think of it) and watched it. such a cool movie. so at the end, i went and looked at the Amazing DVD Special Features that never could have happened in VHS times... and watched the preview for it. turns out it's rated R. R? excuse me? the Lord of the Rings movies were WAY more violent and disturbing than Run Lola Run, and they're only PG13. i have no idea why it's rated R. unless it's for language... there is a lot of swearing in the movie, but it doesn't seem like something to up the rating for. maybe it just seems not so bad because they're not "our" swears. hehe. when it's in a foreign language and subtitled, it seems more... artistic. or something. anyway. i've gotta get up early tomorrow (8:30ish) to go and beg this new GM for my job. so.

favorite line from a song: "AH'VE GOT BLISTERS ON MAH FINGERS!"
i couldn't tell you which song it was from, only that it's somewhere on the White Album by the Beatles. ok that's a lie- i could tell you, but i'm too lazy to think about it right now.

it's a neat feeling to be able to see the floor of your room, when you've not seen it for about a year. hooray for summertime to shovel the crap off the floor, put it in boxes and drawers, and put up surveillance cameras to watch all the stuff gradually jump back on the floor when i'm not looking. it's taken 3 days, but i'm down to vaccumming and dealing with that little bunch of stuff that never goes away no matter how long you work at it, till you get fed up with it and stick it all in a box. it's always fun to find that box of miscellaneous crap a few months later, and wonder why i didn't just throw it away...

after 7 loads of laundry, i'm pretty sure all of my clothes are finally clean. maybe that's why i always seem to need new clothes- all my old ones are on the floor!

oh- and i've been doing a lot of reading. so far i've reread all of the chronicles of narnia (cs lewis), and i read an excellent, if a little jane austen-ish book called Wives and Daughters (elizabeth gaskell). So now i've had my fill of childlike fantasy and sitting-room romance, and i'm moving on to adventure, with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (jules verne). I would've read Moby Dick (herman melville) again, but i've been wanting to read some of the books from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which i thoroughly enjoyed. I think after this, i'll read a Picture of Dorian Gray (oscar wilde? i'm not sure).

I try not to start projects and then forget about them after a week or so, i honestly do. It just happens. I've fitfully kept a journal for several years, with spaces of a year or so often between entries. I guess it's just the way i am, whether online or on paper. Anyway, i've remembered about this one, and shall try to keep up on it during the summer, since i'm really not all that busy. I'm on a leave of absence from work till we come back home after a week in California at the end of June, and i'm taking a summer course at the university (works of shakespeare! w00t!) in the second summer session, so right now i have absolutely nothing to do. except go to the dentist EVERY WEEK.
haha- funny story: our family has never been very good at remembering things for long periods of time (my journal and blog-keeping habits as a case in point). so we all had our last dentist appointments about two and a half years ago. plus our dentist was a jerk, and yelled at his staff and patients and wasn't very sorry if he hurt you. anyway, mom finally decided to find a new dentist, and this guy is just terrific. he's really nice, and explains things to you, the staff ladies are so friendly and sweet you just HAVE to like them, and he's really a good dentist, and hasn't hurt me yet, and he keeps a cd player for you to listen to music instead of the drill if you want to (which i do). however, it's still kind of annoying because of our 2 year hiatus, in which several cavities formed in my mouth. so he's been doing them by region- first the upper left, then the lower left, then the lower right, and on monday i get to do the upper right, which i think is three fillings, and he said it's going to be harder then the other ones we've done. so i'm a little nervous. but it'll all be done this time next week, so it's ok.