Stormy Monday

I have two short things to say. 1. I love how I check my favorite blogs every day, often more than once during the day, to see if they've updated, but I very rarely update my own site. The double standard at its finest. 2. I spent saturday in a town that has probably about, say, a thousand person population. Know what I saw? I saw a car stopped in the middle of the road, waiting for maybe the three thousand tumbleweeds to cross the street in what looked like a buffalo stampede. That's right: there are more tumbleweeds just crossing the street than there are people in the entire town.

I'm in!

Ok, so not quite yet, but I'm >this< close. I turned in all but one of my forms, I paid the fee, I met with the guy. He thought my choices of schools were interesting. Why did you pick THIS school?? He totally understood why I wanted to do this, and was really helpful in talking me through various stuff. So after that I made an appointment with my major advisor for her to sign the last form, and talk about courses and stuff. Then, I wait until the middle of march. Then they tell me that I've been accepted. Then I do a whole buncha paperwork, talk to people at the host school, talk to my major advisor again, get a visa and a passport, apply to the host school, register for classes, apply for housing, go for a summer course here since I dropped my Italian class (awww) and will need to keep up the number of credits I have in order to finish in four years, figure out how I'm going to get myself and mystuff up there, and then I'll be ready to go to Canada for a year, as long as Mom doesn't die of fear of my being away from her for more than a week. Oh yes, and somewhere in there I'll have to like, you know, buy a jacket. Or two. Probably I'll need shoes as well, since my current lifestyle involves only Birkenstock sandals and thongs during January. Scarves, hats, etc would also be a good idea. Cause I hear it's cold up there. In Canada.

sheesh

i swear, italian must be the most polite language on earth. they have a tense and a mood for EVERYTHING. THIS tense is for talking about things that happened last week. THAT tense is for last year. THIS one is for what you're going to do soon. THIS one is for things that you hope to do sometime in the distant future. THIS one is for showing politeness. THIS one is for giving commands. THIS one is for when you're sitting down in the evening, eating a light snack and talking about whether or not underwear should be worn outside the pants. i mean, come ON! NO ONE needs that many tenses and moods. i'm sure we could all get along fine with one past, one present, one future, and maybe one wishing-type tense. all those other ones are totally unnecessary.

So, you know how i just cleaned my room?...

When I cleaned my room, I threw away a lot of junk. And some stuff that I probably could have sold online or as a garage sale. But, since I'm not keen on sending my stuff to people around the world and figuring out the payment methods and such, and since my family is morally opposed to garage sales, I threw out a lot of stuff. Simply because I never used it, and I needed the room for other things. One of the main problems I encountered was where to put all of the books I've acquired. I have a bookshelf with room for... (lemme go count... ok) 89 of my books. I recently (about a year ago) got a large desk with a hutch-thingy over it. The hutch-thingy has a bookshelf that is full up with another 45 books. I then keep my 20 or so oversize books (too tall for my bookshelves) on top of my desk, but underneath the hutch. I have no more room for books. I stated this to myself when I beheld my room in all of its clean (though book-filled) glory. I rarely conciously admit ANYTHING to myself, but this was one of those occasions. So what do I do? I decide to create an account on amazon.com. Duh. It started out innocently enough- the university bookstore is a total ripoff, so I came to amazon for my textbooks (I ended up paying 31 dollars for a statistics book that cost 75 in the bookstore). Then I said to myself, since this is so cheap and all, why don't I go ahead and buy the "optional" books on my booklist? It'll still come out as less than buying at the bookstore! So I did. Then, today, I realized my... (deep breath) Habit. I purchased a book. Not a textbook. A book that I bought only for me. For enjoyment. In full knowledge of my bookshelf space limitations. And the moment I pushed the "Place Order" button, I knew that there was no going back. Sigh. The upshot of this whole situation is that, hey! I'm going shopping with my sister on monday. Guess what. We're going to Ikea. If I don't post again, you'll know it's because I lined my entire room with bookshelves, and can't find the door.

Hey, look! It's a big, looming Update!

So i'm all into this idea of going to a different school for a year. It's one of those things that i really want to do, but never end up doing because it's too... big... and stuff. Anyway, like my resolution (NOT New Year's) to travel more. I'm really trying to get both of these aspirations off the ground before they atrophe and die and get moldy and gross. And then they'd like sink into the ground, and a new dream would grow out of the fertilized area they created, and then IT'D die and fall over and the whole thing would start over again. So i printed out the application papers for the school exchange, and i'ma fill'em out and turn'em in and give the university $150 and they'll send me to Parts Unknown. Or rather, the school of my choice. Where it will be cold, and with snow, and people that aren't my parents. Cause i seriously am tired of living with them. I love them, and they are my parents, but i need room.

Oh and i cleaned my room AND my car this week. The room took two days, and i moved furnature to make it look like it wasn't the same room i've been living in for the past eleven or twelve years. The car took a good hour and a half today.

How to tell when you need to clean your car: 1. there are more clothes in the back seat than there are in your closet. 2. there is a puddle of soda that has gradually seeped out of a paper cup and into the bottom of the cup holder, overflowed that, and seeped into the cupholder next to it. 3. you can't drive barefoot anymore because the driver's side floor is like covered in gravel. 4. when you can't find a particular pair of shoes, or textbook, the first place you look is your car.

Work was fun tonight. I got to waste fifteen minutes tonight, and get paid for it! I have a coworker that listens to his headphones continuously, even though it is strictly against the rules. And he listens to rap. Nothing else. Tonight he left his cd case in his girlfriend's car, and he needed a selection of music for the evening. So he made me drive him to his apartment to get his music back. I didn't clock out. I feel like such a rebel. Well, not really. Anyway, i tried to get him to listen to the cd of Soviet Union Music that i checked out of the library recently. I had fun trying to persuade him that he would like it, that it was just so cool. But no dice. I just imagined in my head what his reaction would be to the cd. And that entertained me almost as well as if he had actually heard it. I seriously need to put that cd into my iTunes before i return it to the library.

Along similar lines, sort of, the earbuds for my iPod REALLY HURT! My ears just aren't the shape that any company expects ears to be. I really can't bear to use any of those in-the-ear deals that anyone comes out with. It hurts too much. So instead i have to look like a nerd with giant eighties-looking headphones that entirely engulf my ears. I've been wanting to get some headphones like my coworker has, you know, the ones that clip over your ear, so they're separate, but also outside of my tender ear canal. Cause he's always making me listen to his music, and it's always so nice to use those headphones. They're cool.

Conclusion for the evening: earbuds bad. Soviet music good. Parents so-so. School where it's cold and away from home good. I think.