blogenstein's monster

cold as ice

2012-01-13T03:02:00.001-05:00

http://witchbyrd.tumblr.com/

remember our life?

2011-03-09T12:55:00.004-05:00

ahh i've had an uneventful couple of days ! but i'm still gonna write a thing !

i'm pretty swamped at work- i was out for several weeks, and on vacation right before that, and i am taking on a bunch of new projects and responsibilities now (which include a surprise event tomorrow and an event next week)- but if i don't take a minute to like, think my thoughts, i will probably go insane.

last night mouse came over and we went to get coffee at the green line. i have to interrupt myself and say that i'm giving up caffeine for lent. it isn't ACTUALLY for lent, because i am not a practicing catholic and the tyranny and evil of the catholic church makes me sick to my fucking stomach, but i'm still "a catholic" in the way that people who grew up in the catholic church are- real superstitious and preoccupied with the saints and junk. but, anyway, i'm switching to decaf for now in hopes of switching to no caffeine, because i've gone from barely sleeping to not sleeping.

anyway, i met up with mouse and we went to the green line and had a good talk about ancient history. he's been listening to the hardcore history podcasts about ancient rome (which probably explains why he changed his facebook picture to a bust of caligula, but that could also be the fact that he is like a vegan caligula. minus wine. minus incest. minus vomiting. plus 8 hours of sleep a night.). it was pretty interesting, and boy, he sure taught me a lot about claudius.

facts about claudius
- super dumb
- ....or was he?!?!?!

in other news, or non-news, my cats still fucking hate each other. well, maybe not HATE. roxy jr. seems to really want to be friends with pizza- he follows her around and tries to sniff her and stuff, and she freaks out and hisses and runs away (or attacks him). here's a picture of him coming to say hi and her trying to run away:

i am slowly coming to terms with being a single person with two cats, and it isn't bad so far. i'm conscious of seeming like a "cat person", but in reality i'm an equal opportunity "animal person" who just happens to have cats. if i had a turtle i'd talk about it and anthropomorphize it and dress it in clothing just as much !

i cannot write another interesting thing right now because i'm so swamped with work. i might do some hanging out/movie watching tonight (unfortunately i have to miss ryann's show at the bean, but you should go !), but i'm mostly going to be working from home and possibly eating cream of wheat.

p.s. maybe i should get a turtle

2011-03-07T09:16:00.004-05:00

sooooo on friday they announced a major restructuring of my department (basically half of the department- not my half- is being moved to another group, and my half is changing names and taking on some events from a different area) in a meeting that i missed. i didn't have the energy to be anxious about it all weekend but now i'm back at work and everyone is whispering about it and that is making me anxious. we're having a meeting at 11 to "discuss our questions and concerns." my concern is not so much what is happening but like, if i will still have a job at the end of the fiscal year. it's like... 99% likely that i will, but my worry is that my job will change so much that i will hate it. oh well, can't do anything about it now.

i had a very full weekend ! friday was the opening of mike and jeanne's art show at part time studios in fishtown, so mouse and i went down there. their show was sea-junk themed and everything both of them made was absolutely stunning.

i'm really proud of both of them. fishtown is... weird, i basically never go there and didn't even realize this block was there, but there was a little block of galleries and junk (including the fabled coffee shop that biz lives over ! where i... saw two of my coworkers? it was like seeing bugs bunny in real life or something). fishtown is full of weird people who look like aliens who heard tell of earth hipsters and tried to emulate their look without the use of the earth internet, so there was lots of weird flapper clothes, giant feathers in peoples' hair, and slouchy socks. i also saw at least two bolo ties. the gallery was pretty crowded because it was first friday, so i got to very briefly see and barely talk to a lot of people i like. here are my two favorite things from the show:

unfortunately i don't have a full picture of this, but it is a beautiful melusine by jeanne

a leviathan by mike !!!! my actualllll favorite of his was this tiny fiji mermaid but this is my other favorite

afterward, mouse and i went to whole foods and i came home, where i went to bed surprisingly early to avoid cleaning my apartment for company this weekend.

on saturday, i procrastinated so hard i actually played windows solitaire (i use cumulative scoring so i end up in the hole, and always think one more game will get me back in the black), but ended up doing an okay job cleaning my room and getting my laundry together and getting some of my junk off of the couch. my friend brian from connecticut was in town, and luckily was up for a bunch of stationary back pain fun. we got indian buffet and gelato and then watched the naked gun, which i just realized is available on netflix instant !

it kind of fell apart from there because, as you know, there is basically nothing good on netflix instant, but it was fun. i ended up actually going to sleep early, which is sort of a bummer because i go to sleep at 4am on work nights, but i slept for like ten hours, which is unheard of. i think it might be due to the fact that roxy jr. didn't sleep in my room and it was raining so it was like super dark in my bedroom.

oh yeah ! i introduced pizza to roxy jr. on saturday too !

they are not really getting along yet- lots of hissing and growling, though surprisingly pizza seems to be the alpha (do cats have alphas?) and roxy jr. immediately backs down. no real fighting or confrontations, but no grooming and cuddling yet. oh wellllllllll.

on sunday, i met up with brian, christina, nick, and sandi at local 44 for brunch. christina had gone up to nyc to see wild flag with nick and sandi, and then brought them back to see wild flag here. local 44 was kind of disappointing (righttttt after i updated my yelp reviewwwwwwww)- bland bloody marys and the removal of vegetarian disco fries from the menu was pretty heartbreaking. nothing really looked too appealing on the menu, so i chose the new menu item replacing the disco fries with eggs on top that i had last time- weird spicy french fries with eggs on top. i'm not sure why i got this because i'm not really wild about french fries, but it was pretty gross- the fries were super super super super salty, they didn't taste hot at all, and they were pretty dessicated. also the eggs were the size of peanuts.

i tricked everyone into going to cvs with me afterward to get cat supplies, and i also treated myself to some nail polish-

rimmel hot cocoa, purple rain, and steel gray

and then came back home and hung out with nick and sandi while christina napped, and then *i* napped, and then they all went to see wild flag again (i'm bummed that i didn't try to go to this- my back was so messed up when christina strongly urged me to go see them that i thought i'd never be able to go, but it looked fucking amazing and i love mary timony and ahhhhhhhhh). after they got home i had some wonderful drunk bonding with them all, and then watched futurama in bed until it was time to go to sleep- 2am, still pretty early !

so, overall, good weekend. not much on the horizon this week except lots of work, hanging out with mouse, maybe going to ryann's show at the bean if i can make it (the walking junk is still pretty tedious), introducing jeanne to roxy jr, blah blah.

p.s. i love nick and sandi
p.p.s. work is stressful right now

nothing's ever gonna make me plan tomorrow

2011-03-03T11:37:00.003-05:00

first off, let me say that jonthan richman did a cartwheel on tuesday night.

the show was great, as usual (though jonathan seemed a litttttle off, maybe melancholy or something? i know that sounds hilarious because i'm talking about jonathan richman, but... not his usual melancholy), and he really warmed up toward the end of the night. he did two encores and played a good mix of new songs and old songs (assuming that the songs i didn't recognize are all new, which is a pretty fair assumption). the highlight for me was definitely the very extended version of "when we refuse to suffer". his sincerity and weirdness are like.. the best thing in the universe.

incidentally, the show was the longest i've stood up in about a month. it was really rough at first and my leg actually went numb- i thought i was going to have to sit down or go home or something, but after about an hour, the pain passed... and my back feels better now than it has in weeks. i still can't really bend over and certain movements will catch me off guard, but i feel like... 75% better.

oh. i forgot to upload that jonathan richman solo mix. i'll do that when i get home.

i had a doctor's appointment yesterday and took the afternoon off after that, and ended up going to the green line for a few hours to read and work on some work stuff. i ended up running into my old buddy eric, who talked to me about:

- his cat
- making animated gifs
- skateboarding
- stephen belafonte (a guy he grew up with who dated someone in the belafonte family, changed HIS last name to belafonte, and married scary spice?)

i'm sort of frustrated at work right now. i was out for like nine million days because of my back (and a week's vacation before that), and i'm super behind on everything, and i keep getting new projects dumped on me. someone is quitting (more power to her, i would not blame anyone who isn't on my team for quitting) and i have to take something of hers over that is going to be confusing and annoying for me. and will also require me to wear nice clothing occasionally and rub elbows and crap. ugh.

in other news, that cat still hates me. he spends a lot of time hanging out on my bed with me, and occasionally approaches me to be petted (or pets himself on me), and after 30 seconds he's still like I CANNOT FUCKING BELIEVE WE HAVE TO GO OVER THIS AGAIN. he does have a cool snaggle tooth though:

i worked out cat food costs (based on 3/4 a cup of dry food and 2 pouches a day for pizza, and 2 cans a day for roxy jr.) and ended up with $150/month. that seems kind of insane? my grocery bill/food bill for myself for a month is like $120-$140 and that includes eating out and stuff. i guess there's two of them and one of me, but between them they weigh like under 30 lbs. and that's not even factoring in stuff like flea medicine and litter !!!!

jeez.

i have a meeting right now, but i'll write you guys something good tomorrow.

the arrow goes straight through my heart

2011-03-01T12:42:00.003-05:00

i just microwaved an EVOL bean and rice burrito for lunch (i've had zerooooo appetite since hurting my back and i'm forcing myself to eat at least breakfast and lunch at work) and tossed the wrapper in the (pretty full) trash can, and a coworker came up behind me and picked the wrapper out of the trash and started reading the ingredients.

i asked her what she was doing and she was like, "i just wanted to see what you were eating." 1) why? 2) why not ask me like a normal fucking personnnnn? (so i can tell you to mind your own business).

anyyyyway. i had a crappy day yesterday, so i came home from work and put in some requisite time with pizza- we watched the simpsons on the couch and stared at each other and then she walked on my collarbone and put her butt in my face. i'm pretty psyched that she seems to absolutely love the wellness pouches (the cans are all pate, but the pouches are chunks), butttt sort of disheartened that she seems to have stopped eating her dry food in favor of the pouch. wahhh. my plan to supplement the pouches with dry food might not work ! anyway, after that was taken care of, i retired to my room to read john bellairs books and pet roxy jr..

that pillow looks gross, but it's a cream colored pillow ! it isn't a yellowed white one

1) he is obsessed with this scar on my leg and licked it obsessively a few times.
2) when i was taking some aleve, he obviously remembered what treats sounded like and got all excited to get a treat, and i felt so bad- all the treats i have are crunchy and he has one tooth. i wet one down for him and he didn't seem interested, so i gave him a spoonful of food.
3) he slept behind me on the bed, by my butt, and i farted and he tried to bury the fart :(

things are still a little icy- for most of the night, he slept curled up under my bed, peeking out a little. i kept my hand over the edge and scratched his face while i was reading, and he occasionally growled and gummed my fingers in rage. i think i'm going to keep him in my room til the weekend, and then introduce the cats- i'd like to be at home all day for their first couple of days together.

as i mentioned, i'm on a john bellairs kick. after reading a bunch of depressing stuff about world war II and genocide, i need a break, so i got a collection of the best lewis barnavelt stories (not my selections for 'best', i just got some 'best of' books). i have always loved lewis the most because he is a little fat wimp who cries a lot, and rose rita pottinger is one of my favorite characters ever.

VENIO

i might pick up a few others for super cheap from the last word, if they have them. ideally i'd like to read them alllll again.

i need to sit down serrrriously and make myself a to-do list. i have a few tasks that i need to get done, and i feel so overwhelmed that i can't get everything in order ! i'm going to make a quick work to-do list (which i won't share with you because none of you care about what i do and it would require boring backstory) and a home to-do list. which i will bore you with.

not fun
- clean room
- clean up livingroom
- order catfood on amazon
- get stuff ready for integrating cats this weekend (which requires moving a bunch of my shoes to make room for a new litterbox)
- pick up laundry
- drop off rent
- get new pillows
- try to cook/eat dinner

kind of fun
- possibly start an ugly zooborns blog, suggested by christine
- possibly start a photos of people heismanning their pets blog
- update history blog
- take more pictures of pets
- buy myself some nail polish :( specifically interested in zoya shawn

and sephora by OPI leotard optional

- get some other john bellairs books
- go to the library
- hype jeanne and mike's art show here tomorrow !

hmm what else? mouse and i are going to see jonathan richman tonight. last year he played at johnny brendas, which is okay but annoying to get to, and tonight he's playing at the church. i'm pretty excited- his last show was one of the best nights in recent memory.

i've been listening to the jonathan richman solo mix i made for a friend to psych myself up- i can upload it for you guys tomorrow if you want/care.

okay, gotta go !

back on the chain gang

2011-02-28T14:12:00.003-05:00

man. i really want to go get a latte but i keep forgetting and putting on this disgusting minted rose lip balm. i accidentally bought it instead of regular smith's rosebud salve :(

what a weekend ! on friday, christina and i went to south philly to go to target and the pet store to get ready for the new cat. my back was bothering me and we were both exhausted, so it wasn't thatttttt exciting of a trip. i got TP for our bungholes, and dish soap, and a pet hair roller, and some cat food. i'm trying very hard to switch pizza to wet food, specifically wellness brand (when she and weirdo ate this together, her dander and shedding reduced by like 100%), but she hates pate style cat food. i got a few of the wellness pouches to see if she liked them, and she does, buttttttt feeding instructions indicate that she would need five pouches a fucking day !

i think i'm going to try giving her a mix of the wellness wet food and wellness dry food and see if that helps. it will certainly be cheaper than like, $6/day which is more than i spend to feed myself (not counting coffee) per day. i alsoooooooo met up with jeanne's friend jim (MY friend jim now !) who lives on my block and was kind enough to lend me his cat carrier for my trip the next day.

on saturday, christina and i woke up at 6:30am (after both falling asleep at 4:30am) and drove to brooklyn to get my new cat ! we met up with nick and sandi and their friend hanna first at hope and anchor in red hook for brunch. i got a bloody mary (bloody roxy/roxy mary), which was pretty intense (very horseradishy, very strong, pickled asparagus spear, olives, etc !!!!)

but i was pretty disappointed about the other food i ordered. i had a breakfast burrito, which was actually like... 8lbs of breakfast food rolled in a tortilla, which two open ends. it was so gigantic and wasn't meant to be picked up, and it was a big disappointment because i had to basically dissect it to eat it. i also got a root vegetable hash which should have been good, but it was unevenly cooked and underseasoned. i also tried some of their french toast, and it was mediocre. buttttttttttttt i got to see nick and sandi, who are my favorites, and i got to see my old buddy milo, who is just eyes:

after thattttt we went to go pick up my new cat. his previous owners were very nice and gracious and friendly, and seemed sad to see him go (they have toddlers who are just learning to walk, and his personality does not go with that- more on that later). his name was mr. puffins, which... i changed immediately, though his previous owner calling him "puffy" seems to have stuck as a nickname because i keep calling him that ! anyway, meet roxy jr.:

i haven't had a chance to take any good pictures yet, but he's like... the most beautiful animal i've ever seen in person. he has blue eyes (no, he isn't deaf) and the pinkest nose and the longest, silkiest coat. that's the good news. the bad news is that he quite possibly has the world's worst personality? he isn't just getting adjusted or anything, he seems generally pretty comfortable, so i think this is him ! he likes to curl up right next to you and be petted ON HIS HEAD ONLY for less than 10 seconds, and if you touch his body or pet his head for 11 seconds, he starts hissing and growling and swats at you and bites you. this is pretty hilarious because he's wearing soft paws and he only has one tooth. he kind of sadly gums your hand and then gives up.

so far i think it's pretty funny, but i wonder if it will bum me out that i'm now saddled with my dream cat and he fucking hates me. at least he wants to sit next to me all the time? but is that any consolation? because of the forbidden fruit aspect.

i was super exhausted when we got home, so i took a short nap, and then mouse, meesh, and brendan came over to take a look at the cat. he didn't disappoint- he walked around rubbing against everyone's legs and growling like a crazy person !

on sundayyyy, mouse and i went to adobe in manayunk, where i, for some reason ordered a taco pizza? it was pretty rough, i was only able to eat about two of the triangles. i never actually think about what i'm ordering at restaurants and usually end up hating what i get- in this instance, i was like "well i like tacos, and i like pizza"

we had fun, though- he also helped me run some errands (because of my back)- i dropped my laundry off, bought more aleve, and went grocery shopping (this week's breakfast/lunch menu: cherry greek yogurt and granola, string cheese, cinnamon applesauce, carrots, oranges, and bean burritos. baby food !). it was also nice to hang out with him, because i hadn't in a million years.

soooo. yup. my back is still pretty hopelessly fucked- i can get around and stuff, but every morning the pain resets and it takes a lot to get going. i made an appointment last month with an orthopedic guy, but the earliest available appointment was march 24, so i have another month of miseryyyy. it gets worse on the weekends because i sleep more and sit at a desk less (oddly, sitting at a desk really helps), so i'm already feeling a lot better today.

okay, i have to go do some work !!!

p.s. i'm seeing jonathan richman tomorrow, and i totally forgot ! pleasant surprise.

oh god, i'm the worst

2011-02-24T18:42:00.002-05:00

i already forgot i was doing this again !!!!

i'm updating my blog from home, which i basically never do because i'm a total baby about typing long blocks of text on my laptop at home? i only really enjoy typing sitting up at a desk, and i uh, don't want to clear my desk off enough to put my computer on it.

speaking of that, i'm going to do some cleaning tonight to get ready for my new cat. i haven't been able to move in quite awhile because of this back thing, and my bedroom is a disaster- my clothes are wherever they landed when i struggled out of them and everything i've dropped in the past 2-3 weeks has stayed where it landed. plus i went on vacation in january and haven't unpacked my suitcase.

i started by taking down our christmas tree when i got home. well, sort of- i can't physically move the tree, but i took down the ornaments and lights and packed them up. i loved having it up, but immediately after bringing it indoors in december i discovered that i am horribly allergic to christmas trees. i was miserable for a few weeks and then it leveled off, but tonight (when the branches were breaking off and the needles were falling everywhere) it came back full force. lord. i feel like my head is stuffed with cotton. mouse came over to keep me company and entertain me and he got stuck taking the lights off of the tree. i did let him watch my expensive cable though (we saw an episode of 'good times' that confused both of us a lot).

this is my first week back at work after being out forever and ever, and it was pretty rough. i did non-standard hours most days so i could catch up without having everyone in my face, and that worked out okay. my sleep schedule is so screwed up from back pain/back pain medicine/no morning obligations so i've felt like a zombie all day. also i think i'm going blind from pain or medication, based on the fact that my vision was blurry today. i mean, other than that, i'm doing okay, but i'm definitely a cranky zombie who is going to blind and is going to die of blindness and pain.

maybe i'm being melodramatic. i have to keep in mind that being in pain and being stuck laying on my side on my couch with my cat walking on my face, watching the food network, was actually worse than going to work (i love my job and my team but i hate like, putting real clothes on and sitting in an office all day).

hey, it turns out that i spent like two hours procrastinating about writing this and now it's like 10:30 and i don't want to clean. bummer. i'm not even going to advertise this on facebook because it's so boring.

heroinnnnnnn, be the death of me !

2011-02-22T12:21:00.005-05:00

okay, i'm going to give this a whirl again. i'm NOT going to catch you guys up on the months i haven't been updating, because that would be annoying and i don't want to, but i'll fill you in on SOME stuff.

i was out of work for like one billion weeks recently because i gravely injured my back. i have an old injury, and i mysteriously reinjured it a few weeks ago. it was rough- i couldn't get out of bed, i couldn't stand up, and laying in bed was making it way worse. i ended up getting a prescription for vicodin, which i was reluctant to take, but a regimen of vicodin and aleve (and sleeping on my side on the couch) got me to a point where i can like... mostly walk around. it really hurts if i stand still for a long time, but walking isn't too bad and sitting up isn't too bad and sleeping isn't too bad.

i'm back at work now, but as a result of laying around for like 2 weeks in my livingroom, basically unable to do anything, a few things happened:

1) i finally learned how to use the appletv and started... watching television. i have a tough time paying attention to television or really WATCHING any show because i just tune it out, but there were entire days where i could literally do nothing but lay on my side facing the telvision. i watched all of parks and recreation, which i loved- actual feminist main character who identifies as feminist, and only ONE JOKE in all 3 seasons that has disappointed me ("on a scale of one to chris brown, how mad is he?"). i was cautious watching the first three seasons because i figured it would turn into a moronic rape joke bonanza like 30 rock, but so far it's smart and funny without selling out women. oh and uh, i also watched top chef.

2) there was a wasp or hornet in my livingroom and it made me insane. it was a baby, and it landed on me several times without stinging me, so... i decided it thought i was its mother and that it would never sting me. i spent days feebly trying to prevent my cat from attacking him and i named him rodney, and then i leaned on him by accident and he stung my elbow. after four hours of deliberation, i flushed him down the toilet, and i've never felt so guilty. the sting didn't leave a mark for the first two days, but then became so itchy and inflamed that i thought it was infected. it seems to be clearing up now though. alas poor rodney.

3) i spent a lot of time with biz, my middle school best friend who coincidentally also lives here. she kept me company while i was immobile and dirty and complaining constantly.

toward the end of the week, i was actually able to move a little bit, so i made myself a pair of those stupid twilight mittens :( i'll be done with them tonight, probably. i bought a red/blue/white plaid jacket that only has half sleeves, so i decided to make a pair of red mittens to keep my arms warm.

in berocco vintage in sour cherry

i also made myself another star-crossed slouchy beret (also berocco vintage, in 'tidepool') but i'm never going to wear it because i hate how i look in hats !

hmm. what else? i dropped all of my classes for this semester (i am just too anxious lately and i need some time off to take a breather and reorient) and i really, really need to finish my genocide paper. i just completely choked like i never have in my entire life, ever. i've been doing lots of reading and have my research organized, but the longer i put this paper off, the less i want to do it. i recently got to hang out with my friend natalie (another friend from middle school, who is also great) and she very very sternly chided me about how i need to get this done and not let it hang over my head for the rest of my life (or at least the rest of my school career), and she's totally right. so, maybe soon i'll take a weekend to work on the paper.

not this weekend, though- this weekend, i'm going to brooklyn to adopt a beautiful white fluffy dreamboat cat. i'm sufficiently healed, i think, after weirdo's death from kidney failure, and i'm ready for the cat of my dreams. there's a few things i have to do this week which may be difficult (lots of cleaning and rearranging, which is going to hurt my back) to get ready for the cat, but i think it's worth it.

his current name is mr. puffins buttttt i'm going to change it. he's 10 years old and only has one tooth and is a big fluffy dreamboat and he's beautiful and i already love him. he's basically my dream cat- his m.o. is to curl up next to you and sleep and is into a LITTLE petting but isn't a petting maniac like my current cat. i'm excited and can't wait to get him and can't wait for him to be best buds with pizza and to put on a fancy dress and pet him all the time and eat out of a goblet with him.

this is a little harried because i have to get back to work, but i swear i'll write much more thorough and better entries in the future. if i keep this up, which i may not.

where have i been?

2011-01-24T23:16:00.002-05:00

i've lost some of my ZEST for blogging, but i'm going on vacation this week, and my resolution when i return is to do more blogging. this means that i'll be posting updates both on this blog and on cool thoughts.

some highlights you've missed since thanksgiving
- i started using coconut oil as moisturizer and it has cured me of ingrown hairs
- i got some swamp things to supplement all my genocide/world war II reading
- i did not finish my genocide paper and have an incomplete in the class until i do. i really, really need to do that.
- i am taking one class this semester- creative non-fiction: perspectives on race, class, and gender. i was taking elementary german II, but i dropped it, because it was wayyyy too advanced for me. i think i'm going to take it over the summer.
- i laid in bed a lot and watched simpsons dvds.
- i have been watching every season of the x-files in order. in around 2 weeks, i got to season 5. i'm a little burnt out now, and since i know the story arc, i'm greatly enjoying the monster of the week episodes.
- i've been a hermit this winter
- i've been looking at fluffy white dreamboat cats on petfinder
- i'm in love with my life and my friends and i need to start acting like it. actually this is probably how i'd act if i was in love (moody and jerky and weird), but you know what i mean.

sit tight, dogs. i will try to be back next week. get off my sack a little.

we can finally start a family

2010-12-03T23:19:00.004-05:00

i'm uncharacteristically updating my blog on a friday night ! i want to make sure that i cover all the great stuff that happened last week, despite the one major, major, major, major bummer.

last wednesday, nick and sandi came down from nyc and we had the besttttt timmmmmeeeee. we went to south philly tap room, where i got the most delicious eggplant parm i've ever had (and everyone else had the best brussels sprouts they've ever had- but they had bacon) and a really delicious apple and watercress salad, as well as a couple of delicious san diego beers (recommended by gavin, the biggest proponent of san diego ever). nick and sandi were like... fucking adorable and delightful and hilarious as always. nick has a new haircut where he looks like half of a depeche mode video and sandi said a thousand hilarious things. we came home after dinner and (wahhhhh) played with weirdo and had the best family night.

on thursday, i cooked all day and like... every single thing i made came out weird. it ended up not mattering, though, because jeanne's new roommate alexis made a shitload of super delicious food. jeanne, mike, alexis, ned, and i had a good thanksgiving and watched the kids in the hall.

the menu was:
- seitan turkey
- vegetarian ham
- stuffing
- cornbread stuffing
- mashed potatoes
- shepherds pie
- cranberry sauce
- orange honey cranberry sauce
- delicious gravy
- roasted vegetables (potatoes, sweet potatoes, brussels sprouts, parsnips, carrots)

there was a surprising lack of dessert (the dessert i made was overcooked and i burnt my ganache !) but i'd rather have food than dessert anyway. i had the best time, though ! ned had a good story about his customers that i am still laughing about, alexis is super cute and nice and has a really cool mean cat, mike is my favorite, and jeanne is ESPECIALLY my favorite. vinegar and fig too !

on friday, i worked on school work a little, and then christina and i braved local 44 again. i don't know if i've talked about it here, but i had the worst meal of my life at local 44 when i went with bill and christina- it was like... "mushroom stew" that was just unseasoned boiled mushrooms, pearl onions, carrots, and potatoes, and it tasted like they were boiled, rinsed, and boiled in new water. i seriously like recoil in horror every time i walk by because it was so gross ! anyway, we braved it because we were cold, and the food was awesome. i got a vegan reuben, and we split disco fries (fries with onion gravy and cheese) and it was... very heavy, but delicious.

i also tried some new scotches- i tried laphroaig and dewars, and of course they were both gross. guys, what's with scotch? why do i keep drinking it? one of these days, though, i'm going to love it. i know it. on saturdayyyyyyyy, mouse came over and we watched a few episodes of it's always sunny in philadelphia and ate delicious food and played with weirdo (wahhhhhh).

on sunday, i met up with mouse and kati to go to berlin mart in new jersey ! we met up with meesh and greg there, and we saw a lot of funny things and mouse made me laugh so hard that all of the people at the flea market thought i was behaving inappropriately for a flea market. it was a great fucking day ! i got:

- a greedo
- a yoda
- two jawas
- a grizzlor (a he-man guy- i got him for jeanne cause someone made him into a magnet)
- some work gloves (even though i don't do work)
- the best possible hairclip

after that, we went to blackbird pizza, where i was psyched to try a seitan cheesesteak, but they were out of seitan. they had some pizza and stuff butttttttttt i'm not vegan and i can eat real pizza so spending $3 on slices of vegan pizza didn't seem appetizing, so i just had some water and a good, awkward sulk. annnnnnd then we came home and weirdo died.

this past week has just been... stress and studying. next week is my last week of classes, and i have four papers to finish- 1 two page but with heavy research, 2 one page with heavy research, and one 10 page with heavy research. my genocide final paper is stressing me out a lot- i wrote a proposal that was mostly based on like... my strong emotional reaction and not a lot of research that i did, and my professor wrote this back (she actually wrote one email with this praise and then wrote a second cause she forgot she sent the first, with MORE INTENSE PRAISE):

"This is going to be a great paper. In fact, you could probably publish it--if you feel like putting the extra work into it (which need not be done for the version you hand in as a final paper in this class). I would be happy to help you polish it and send it out. The idea you will be pursuing is very innovative and also very important. It could put women on the genocide map, so to speak. And it would bring necessary attention to their suffering--their suffering as survivors not just of a genocidal process, but also of genocide written on their bodies and lives"

i know that someone suggesting that an undergraduate freshman publish something is a big insane compliment, but it put this insane amount of pressure on me- i feel super unsophisticated and emotional and like i barely even know what i'm talking about? like i'm just kind of chauncey gardenering my way through this.

so, this week? studying reading freaking the fuck out and not being able to do a bunch of shit and alksdlksajdlkjalskjdklsajs alas poor roxy. anyway, i just wanted to get that out.

i will follow you into the dark

2010-11-30T10:42:00.004-05:00

mannnn. not sure how to start this entry, because i really don't want to write it, but weirdo's kidney's failed suddenly on sunday and she had to be put to sleep. she was fine on saturday- playful and energetic and annoying and cute, but she didn't finish her dinner. on sunday morning when i left, she was playful but sleepy (kitten attacked my hand when i petted her goodbye), and on sunday evening when i came home, she was completely lethargic and her gums were white. i didn't notice anything strange at first because she was kind of a little floppy noodle cat when she was tired anyway, but after about a half hour of that, we started to get worried.

mouse dropped me off at the emergency vet, and they took her right back. the first time the vet talked to me, we talked about what i should feed her when i got home (i transitioned her to regular cat food, but they suggested i keep her on kitten food for awhile), and then she went to check her bloodwork results. when she came back, she was carrying a box of tissues.

the last picture i took of her

the vet said that it looked like she had congenital kidney problems and at that point, she was so sick that there was nothing she could do. christina came and met me there, and we got to say goodbye to her (and sob and use the entire fucking box of tissues) and hold her and pet her and tell her how much everyone loved her. i had to hold her while she was put to sleep, and she went in about ten seconds.

this... fucking sucks? i don't really know how else to talk about it. i really, really, really miss her and i hate that this happened. like, on saturday specifically i was thinking about what she'd be like when she grew up- any time i picked her up and rested her head on my chest she'd fall asleep, and i was wondering if she'd still do that when she was big.

bleh. what a great little friend.

p.s. christina has been really amazing throughout all of this- i know she loved weirdo just as much as me, but she's been super supportive and great and funny and caring. she also made a donation to citykitties in weirdo's name.
p.p.s. i had a great thanksgiving weekend filled with terrific people who love me and weird stuff and maybe i'll write about that later this week. right now i'm pretty bummed.

cool thoughts on the present situation

2010-11-24T10:39:00.003-05:00

first ! christine, brooke, and i started our history blog, cool thoughts. the name is based on a document brooke and i saw at the benjamin franklin underground museum called cool thoughts on the present situation of our public affairs (authored by one benjamin franklin, alias mrs. silence dogood), and the blog is woefully located on tumblr because the name "cool thoughts" is literally taken everywhere else, and is mostly parked domains or blogs of like, "confucious say..." shit and doors quotes. alas ! anyway, the purpose of the blog is for us to post anything we are reading about or interested in throughout history, in any format, whenever we want. if you'd like to contribute something (anything !), please send it to coolthoughts@nervous.org.

one of my main goals here is to get comfortable talking about things i know about< without the crippling fear of being wrong or considered "not smart enough"- this is a problem many people have, i'm sure, but women specifically are made to feel intellectually inferior or like they have to apologize for or soften their opinions. it may not seem like i have a big problem with this if you know me, but it's something i struggle with every day- especially in regard to my lack of formal education.

what else ! i've been taking an ill-advised break from reading for the past few days because my brain needed a break, which means i'm going to have to really and sincerely bust ass all weekend to get everything done. i have a research proposal, a few essays, and a rough draft for my genocide paper due. i'm actually waiting for my professor's feedback for the rough draft- she's really awesome but can be a little slow with stuff over e-mail, and our class meeting is canceled this week. anyway, i've been mostly farting around watching simpsons dvds, and it's been... heavenly.

i only have seasons 5-9

i also ended up breaking down and buying cataclysm, the next world of warcraft expansion. i am waffling about whether or not i want to play- like, i just don't have time for wow anymore with school, and i have mixed feelings about the new 10 man raiding structure. like, i love the dudes (and two women) i play with, but i often found myself being the 11th man when 10 mans were forming up previously. i'm not the most amazing player, but i was better than some other people who were chosen, and that was because i had a lot of personality conflicts with some shitty random norms in the guild (like a handful of idiot privilege denyin' dudes who wanted to be able to call women bitches and stuff). luckily those dudes were sort of phased out or alienated (by me !) so there's a small chance things will be different now, but who knows? yesterday was a patch day, and the world was ripped apart and orgrimmar was redesigned, and everything honestly looks pretty cool. i also saved the name astralweeks for a goblin shaman. sigh. i really like this fucking game, who am i kidding.

what else ! oh ! nick and sandi are coming today ! sandi told me not to eat anything in anticipation of a family dinner? which is exciting and also easy to do because i'm only at work for 3 hours today and i forgot to bring lunch and also i have zero groceries that aren't thanksgiving ingredients (actually i have some trader joe's burritos i guess). i'm excited to see them because it's been figuratively forever. also i get to bro down with christina, who just got back from san francisco.

my plans for the break? cooking, hanging out, thanksgiving with jeanne and mike, reading, writing, agonizing, procrastinating, simpsons, history, internet. i gotta get some work done in my last 30 minutes at work, though, so.. ttyl. happy thanksgiving !

he knows where she is

2010-11-22T10:27:00.003-05:00

hollllllllyyyyy shit ! everyone is so fucking annoying this morning ! my coworkers will not stop fucking talking to each other ! guys, shut up ! it's fucking monday ! shut up ! stop talking ! that said, we had a staff breakfast this morning and they got vegetarian sausage just for me, but i'm not sure it was worth it i'm currently on hour two of breakfast being THE MOST INTERESTING FUCKING THING TO EVER HAPPEN that everyone can't stop fucking talking about !

i'm so reluctant to do anything today that i've been read the wikipedia entry for vladimir putin's dog for like 15 minutes.

so ! the weekend ! on friday, i came home and farted around and went to bed super early (midnight, which is early for me), because i had a day of exciting errands planned ! but i was incredibly exhausted all day and ended up... sleeping until 2pm. i didn't even take a shower or get dressed until like... 7? i had a runny nose and headache and was sure i was getting sick, but i think i just needed water and caffeine. i met up with mouse, benji, nate, and anna for all-you-can-eat ethiopian at ethio cafe, a new ethiopian restaurant directly next door to the one i usually go to.

the staff was super nice, and they specifically referred to everything as "vegan," and the food was good, but i can't eat all that much ethiopian food. a regular entree at abyssinia (the place next door) is the same price, and i probably eat the same amount both ways. i may continue to just go to abyssinia, though i feel guilty cause the women running this place were so attentive and sweet, and the quality of food was not appreciably different.

after dinner, mouse came over and let me windbag him with my incomplete knowledge of genocide- it was a very interesting role reversal, because usually HE is the windbag. it felt like how it probably feels when those high powered businessmen on craigslist have to dress like a baby and get spanked to have an orgasm ! i didn't have an orgasm though, i guess. maybe mouse did, i forgot to ask.

on sunday morning, i woke up and met mouse and kev for breakfast at green line, where we had bagels and coffee. i love when jesse (and patchie) are working because they make the best lattes. i love when eric is working too because he's funny and has a great beard, but he makes coffee drinks that actually taste like coffee which isn't really my m.o. it was nice to see kev and catch up, because i haven't seen him in a million years ! after breakfast, i got a car and went to whole foods and got cat food. i'm preparing my menu for our delicious friendsgiving at jeanne's house- she and mike are getting back from romania right before, so we are going to have thanksgiving at their house (plus her friend alexis who i am super super excited to meet will be there and cooking !). here's what i'm making (vegetarian versions of all):

vegetarian ham ! i'm going to make an apple cider/brown sugar/mustard glaze, which i don't usually use a recipe for and just WING.

caramlized onion and cornbread stuffing

roasted potatoes, carrots, parsnips, and brussels sprouts

orange honey cranberry sauce

mini orange chocolate chunk cakes (jeanne's will be an orange pecan cake since she doesn't like chocolate !)

anyway, after shopping i came home and relaxed and didn't do any school work and felt okay about that. i got through a whole lot of simpsons episodes this weekend- first i flagellated myself with DVR'd recent episodes and then i rewarded myself by watching season 6.

no, you owe ME $900 !

my goals right now are to get through this week at work (2.5 days !), get through class tonight, finish my essays for writing class, and write my paper for genocide class. my BIG paper. it's going to be a super fucking busy holiday ! also, brooke, christine, and i are starting a history blog together and i need to work on that !

p.s. christina gets back from SF tonight and i can't wait to hugggggg her

i'll never tell

2010-11-17T10:05:00.003-05:00

dudes. i'm so far ahead on my reading for genocide class ! and by "ahead" i mean i am exactly where i should be. i've gotten into the habit of procrastinating all week and then panicking and trying to read everything/write everything wednesday night or thursday at lunch, and right now i read a whole book and one chapter and just need to read an article and another chapter. i'm psyched to read the article because my professor wrote it and i think she's a genius.

i went on a really exciting shopping spree yesterday, in which i purchased mostly books for $0.01 on amazon and a pair of sensible shoes. books first !

mass rape, ed. andrea stiglmayer

rape warfare by beverly allen

gender & catastrophe, ed. rohit lentin

a problem from hell: america in the age of genocide by samantha power

eichmann in jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil by hannah arendt

regarding the pain of others by susan sontag

remember how like five months ago i read nothing but young adult novels? most of these are either for the paper i'm writing or have been recommended to me or cited in several other things i've read. this should be a super fun thanksgiving !

i also uh, got a pair of saddle shoes. my friend sarah got a pair of bass enfields in brown and i decided to give up and be a total herb. i hope they're comfortable and don't look weird on my big, impressive feet (i had to put "impressive" in there so it didn't sound like i was disparaging my feet- they're useful and i'm glad they're big, for balance !)

what else? yesterday i went to penn's library for the first REAL time- i've had to look at periodicals there before, and use computer stuff, but i've never really gone um, into the stacks. i actually started panicking a little bit because the library is so fucking big. the library is like.. a block long, and there's just shelf after shelf after shelf of books ! that seems like it would be a total paradise for a terminal bookworm but it was so empty and so big and i felt like a monster was going to start chasing me or a creepy person would appear and say "may i help you" and startle me (both equally scary to me).

that's just in one direction and it's just as long in the other direction and there's like 6 floors of that !!!!! scariest. also it was full of young rich teenagers which is scary for other reasons.

when i got home, we attempted to do ICC, but it didn't work out- some people were having problems zoning in (oh i just started talking about warcraft like it's a real thing and you guys care about it) and some people were grumpy, so we postponed it until thursday. i did some pvp with gavin, josh, and rachel, but i really suck at pvp and mostly just wanted to talk to them cause i like them. and get some poison on some jerks.

harridan

so today- work, writing essays, class. reading. i'm meeting a classmate about... something? at 2pm today. she said we should "get together" and she said it with such authority that i was like, "oh, okay" except i don't know why we would get together. we're both pretty far behind in our writing class, so i think we may have to team up to peer review each others' late work. i was just about to write out a rant about this class but i realized that i already posted that rant on monday. in the beginning of the semester, i couldn't understand my classmates' ire and lack of cooperativeness and now i'm just like, "GOD FUCK THIS CLASS I FUCKING HATE IT, GODDDD FUCK IT I HATE IT."

p.s. i hate it for real.
p.p.s. i HEARD TELL that we may only have to take one critical writing seminar now instead of 2 to graduate? the women in my class were talking about it but i was half-listening, because the class is sucking the life out of me and i can't even make myself listen to gossip.

yes we arrre, yes we arre

2010-11-15T09:17:00.005-05:00

this was a long fucking weekend ! but guess what guys ! i actually got some work done. not as much as i should have, but it's a vast improvement over previous weeks.

on friday, i did some grocery shopping and read half of s.: a novel about the balkans by slavenka drakulic. it's not a long book, and i probably could've finished it, but i felt like i was having a fucking panic attack halfway through and i had to put it down.

okay, i understand that i'm writing a paper about genocide and rape and sexual violence, so this stuff isn't exactly avoidable, and i should steel myself for it. however, i don't necessarily see the merit of reading a super super in depth descriptive novel about how rape makes you feel. like, on the one hand, of course it's important to understand and appreciate the horror of what happens in these situations, but the book was pretty vague on facts and high on emotional response, and an unfortunately high number of women are already personally aware of these feelings. like, not comparing and weighting experiences against each other or anything (since systematic rape during war in camps set up for rape is obviously not the situation in which most women are assaulted), but i don't necessarily think that it's important to make undergrad students feel, experience, or relive rape and the trauma that follows rape in order to teach them about rapes that have occurred (especially since undergrad males across the country are doing such a great job of making sure college-age women are aware of them). at the very least, i think it was kind of irresponsible to assign the book without a disclaimer, as most of the other material we're reading is straight statistics or dry facts. i know it's a class about genocide, and that i'm going to have to read many, many, many horrific things, but i think rape is unique because it's so personally relatable and familiar to so many women, no matter the context it occurs in.*

it's sort of hard to switch to light-hearted stuff after this ! but i need to ! for my brain ! christina's friend chris stayed over that night, and in the morning we all met up with mouse (whose name, if you didn't know, is ALSO chris), and got ethiopian breakfast and got coffee at green line. jesse made me this beautiful mean latte:

and i got some reading done and eavesdropped on people ! on saturday night, mouse and i went up to his mom's so i could hang out with scottie the baby (his nephew). ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh god he is the cutest fucking baby ! daisy the dog (and rookie the dog) was also there, and she seemed... a little jealous of the attention the baby was getting.

we had a great time though. scottie just learned how to do that buhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuhbuh thing where you put your finger in front of your mouth and make your lips vibrate. also he just laughs randomly and it's really cool ! i also wore my hair down so he could pull it a little and he was psyched. after that, i came home and read more- i finished s., and i read part of the chapter about bosnia-herzegovina in our textbook.

sundayyyyy i went to trader joe's to get stuff for lunch (which i forgot to bring to work today !) and mostly chilled out with christina and the cats. christina cooked a bunch of delicious food and let me eat some of it, and i got sort of panicky about my writing class essays and only finished one. i really really need to get my shit together ASAP so i get an okay grade in this class. i just like... can't make myself care about it, and the instructions are all so muddled and weird. i think it speaks volumes that i'm getting As on every single paper in a 400 level history class but doing subpar work in a 100 level required writing class. i'm not trying to downplay my responsibility here, since i've been a pretty crappy student, but it's a pretty crappy program. even with a good instructor who's doing her best with the material she has to teach, it's incomprehensible. hateeee it.

um, what else? i got my eyebrows waxed on friday and they gave me a free nail polish because one time in the winter they were closing and couldn't do my eyebrows. they've already given me a free eyebrow wax, a discounted eyebrow wax, and a different nail polish for this same incident, but i'm not complaining. nail polish is my one stereotypically feminine vice- in middle and high school i painted my nails a different color every fucking day even though i didn't brush my hair and i wore old man's pants and t-shirts from the flea market. the color i got is um, lucerne-tainly look marvelous? which is like a gun metal with teeny glitter.

oh yeah. i possibly registered for spring classes? they aren't on my schedule now but christina thinks that they're off while they're working on registrations and crap. the classes i selected are:

Course title: Elementary German II
Course description: A continuation of GRMN 101. The student's expression and comprehension are expanded through the study of literature and social themes.

Course title: Creative Non-Fiction Writing: Perspectives in Race, Class, and Gender
Course description: A workshop course in the writing of expository prose. Assignments include informal as well as formal essays, covering such topics as autobiography, family history, review, interview, analysis of advertising and popular culture, travel, work, and satire.

imaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagine how fucking annoying that second class will be ! imagine ! i can't fucking wait. i think my plan is to see how the creative non-fiction classes are and then take a couple of them, because it will come in handy for history windbagging.

anyway, this was a pretty good weekend. my plan for this week is to get caught up with my writing class (like tonight, or tomorrow) and get more into my genocide research for my big paper. luckily these idiots are committed to helping me:

i swear this blog will get interesting again once school is over, and then become not-interesting again when school starts again.

* please note that i'm talking about teaching this material in a specific context- an american ivy league university, undergrad class, in 2010, with a specific student population. i know that there are many, many places and times in history where other factors of genocide besides rape would be familiar and palpable and real to people learning about them

watching the whites of your eyes turn red

2010-11-12T09:36:00.004-05:00

saddest life of just monday and friday bloggggggggs !

yesterday was, to say the least, a shitty day. i spent most of the day reading about rape and genocide and war, gendered violence during genocide and war, how/why rape is used as a tool to control and terrorize and destroy women during war, etc., which was rough, and then went to genocide class (which is a great class but always, uh, a downer?) and thennnnnnnnnn on my walk home, two dudes started saying weird fucked up shit about my body ! generally i don't react to stuff like this, but i told them to fuck off, and one "jokingly" said to the other, "we should rape her"

i wasn't scared that they would do it- it was obviously a hilarious joke meant to intimidate and scare me, but at the same time like... howwww fuckingggg depresssinggggg that men know the weight a threat like that carries, and use that threat because they understand how that would terrify and intimidate and demean a woman ! misogyny, amirite??!?!! i have a lot more to say about this i guess but it's making me depressed to think about it.

on to less depressing news- genocide class was good last night. we covered cambodia and argentina, and watched the documentary new year baby, about a woman who was born in a refugee camp after the DK were overthrown- she goes back to cambodia with her parents and finds out the truth about what happened to them (and about her siblings). it was a great documentary, funny and sweet and gutwrenching and moving, and of course i was the only one crying (my professor cried a little too). this week we read why did they kill?: cambodia in the shadow of genocide by alexander hinton

which was really readable (except for the part where he talks about eating someone's liver for like 6 pages), but the big thing for me this week was the article we had to read, "political violence in argentina and its genocidal characteristics" by daniel feierstein. i don't want to windbag too much about it, but the conclusion of the article absolutely floored me and helped me focus my research proposal a little. he was discussing the problem of calling the holocaust and the political violence in argentina in the late 70s/early 90s both genocides or genocidal, and made the point that he wasn't saying they were exactly the same or equal:

However, using the same concept does indeed mean that we suggest the existence of a connecting thread which makes reference to a technology of power in which the “denial of others” reaches its peak: their material disappearance (the disappearance of their bodies) and their symbolic disappearance (that of the memory of their existence). A technology of power in which, unlike war, this disappearance has an effect on the survivors: the denial of their own identity as the synthesis of a being and an action; the disappearance of a given form of articulation, precisely, between a way of being and a way of doing (a particular type of identity which is defined, like all others, through a particular way of living). That is the reason why the specificity of the term genocide appears only in the middle of the 20th century (and, in any case, the specificity of its historical practice towards the end of the 19th century), to designate a disappearance which exceeds the extermination resulting from a war, because it does not end with the deaths that it generates, but begins with them.

my paper is (loosely) going to be about rape and gendered violence against women during genocide and the way that these things are truly genocidal (something that most people associate with murder, and quantify with a body count) precisely because of the effect that they have on the living survivors of a targeted group, and his quote sort of articulated how i feel about... what i want to say. i've been thinking about it since we watched my neighbor, my killer in class, where several women who survived rape and witnessing the murders of their partners and family and children repeatedly referred to the genocidaires as "our killers," even though they were alive.

um, enough about genocide. and rape. i bought some boots? this is also kind of a bummer because i betrayed my "i don't buy accessories from stores that don't sell plus size clothing" thing to get them, and i'll probably have a crisis of conscience and return them.

they're backordered for now butttttt i will keep you guys posted on how well i stick to my guns here.

um, what else? reading for school, writing for school, sleeping, eating canned soup from cvs, petting some cats. weirdo has been valiantly helping me study:

sorry this entry is so disjointed, i'm exhausted and antsy and stressed right now, and i uh, had a crappy day yesterday. this weekend = grocery shopping, reading, mouse? maybe getting to bro down with mouse's nephew?

p.s. right now for class i'm reading s: a novel about the balkans by slavenka drakulic, and this week is gendercide week, soooooo this will be a grim week.
p.p.s. yesterday i bought used copies of the books: rape warfare, mass rape, and gender & catastrophe for my paper. seriously, this will be a really grim week.

i'd love to love you, lover

2010-11-08T09:00:00.004-05:00

dudes ! dudes ! i seriously did zero work this weekend and i'm freaking out ! i don't know what's wrong with me ! usually i am a master procrastinator, which means i procrastinate but am able to get things done by a deadline, but i really dropped the ball. i think my big problem here is my writing assignment, because nothing on earth interests me less. to be fair, though, i'm behind on a genocide assignment too, and nothing interests me more.

the most interesting search result for "procrastination." poor guy.

on friday, i...? i'm not sure. i got a car to go to whole foods, but i didn't realize it was like 9:30 at night, so i ended up dropping my laundry off and wandering around cvs for awhile. i'd had 9 shots of espresso at that point so i was mentally insane, and i stopped at a light next to a giant mcrib billboard and was totally perplexed by it. now, i have eaten a mcrib before ! i know about mcribs ! i call those morningstar riblets 'mcribs'. furthermore, the billboard featured a giant picture of a mcrib. despite all of that information, i stared at it for the duration of a light and could not figure out what the sign said. i was like, "m.. crib? m.c. rib? m crib?" please note that i also know what mcdonalds is and am familiar with their naming convention.

on saturday, i cleaned my room a little (not totally) and went to the green line to study. this did not go well, but i had a wonderful time hanging out by myself listening to weird al. also, patchie came in and hung out with me and it was the first time i ever hung out with her FOR REAL, and she is fucking cool. she let me windbag her about genocide and we talked about what a dork god is. mouse met up with us after that and he and i went grocery shopping and came back to my house to watch the masque of mandragora. it was awesome to hang out and watch doctor who with him (and eat the thanksgiving food i bought for $1000000 from whole foods' hot bar !) because we haven't had time to hang out for real in weeks.

i have the novelization of this story (because i suck), and i'd always pronounced it man-dra-GOR-uh but it turns out it's man-DRAG-or-uh ! fascinating ! basically a ball of energy and that dr. doom guy were going to prevent the renaissance from happening through fake doctor who science and some people got caught on fire and the doctor stole two horses. not too bad? i have specific interest in people getting all burnt up in a movie (especially if a charred skeleton is left behind !) so i was satisfied, but mouse was disappointed that the doctor didn't kick anyone in the nuts. after mouse went home i stayed up late and accidentally ended up watching a softcore hbo porno called "cougar school" which had serious script problems.

on sunday, christina invited me to get ethiopian breakfast with her and amber !!! i had to study, but i realized that i wouldn't have actually studied if i didn't go, so i went with them. amber is the best- she's so funny and cool and it's great to have other friends who understand anxiety junk. neither of them had ever been to abyssinia for breakfast/brunch before and they loved it as much as i do ! sigh. amber got the ye'inqulal tibias (which is scrambled eggs with cool spices and hot peppers and tomatoes and onions), and christina had her first bowl of foul <3<3<3<3<3 i also got dabo fitfit for all of us, which is just... french bread ripped up and soaked in a spicy tomato and onion sauce, which sounds super simple but is like one of the best things i've ever tasted.

we got coffee at the green line after that and had a wonderful time talking and sitting in the window seat. eric was working and he told me he saw me on ravelry, which is probably like... the least embarrassing time anyone has commented on my internet activity. i trieddddd to do some work when they left but i got caught in a weird youtube loop where i tried to find every instance of cookie monster wearing clothes (healthy food rap, various monsterpiece theaters, etc.). jesse and her friends also came by for a minute and entertained me, so i gave up and spent $40 at cvs buying like, lipsmackers and arm hair bleach.

i'm beggin' of you, please don't burn my arms

at hoooooome i tried again to do some reading, but i ended up talking to christina about the x-files, fucking with the cats, posting romantic stuff on facebook, and re-organizing my itunes. i did like one third of one assignment at some point (which took like 20 minutes, leading me to believe that i could've done all that work in 2 hours or so !).

sooooo today i have a bunch of work stuff to do, and i'm going to try for a miracle as far as getting school stuff done at lunch. i need to take a trip to the mouse-infested library (i mean that in a good way, because i have positive feelings about vermin) at some point today too because i need to bring shit to class. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i have so much to do !

p.s. i'm taking a mental health day tomorrow !

know that i'm important in your life

2010-11-04T08:45:00.003-04:00

seriously next week i'm gonna stop drinking so much coffee because i want coffee all the time and my mouth always tastes like shit anddddddddd i spend $4-$16 a fucking day on coffee !

the only reason i'm updating my blog today is because i have a research proposal and a paper to write today, as well as a chapter and the rest of my stalin book to read. i woke up at 6am today intending to study, but instead i laid in bed for an hour watching rancid and no doubt videos and stewing about what posers they are. i don't have much to say about rancid besides the fact that they're nerds and i'm embarrassed for them, but seriously like... gwen stefani is such a pud. i cannot stand the awkwardness of that album being all about her mooning over SOMEONE IN THE BAND. why was everyone afraid to tell them that that was weird and that it made everyone uncomfortable??? i'm convinced that the only reason that they sold all those albums is because everyone was too wimpy to tell them that. i've never met a single person who ever liked no doubt but i think my friend type might be "people who never liked no doubt".

this was NEVER cool

not much going on this week besides studying. i've been at the green line basically every day, and i haven't made that much headway. i'm pretty behind in my writing class, but i had a good meeting with my professor and i'm feeling more confident. i know i'm a decent writer, but the critical writing program here is super fucking rigid and we have to follow pretty asinine guidelines (written by a person who legitimately, from her instructions, appears to be some kind of rude maniac?) and i was worried that i was failing to follow the guidelines. i was at ease during the meeting though because the basement of van pelt library is infested with mice so i got to look at a bunch of cool mice during the meeting !

what else? blehhh i upgraded my cellphone. after breaking three blackberries and not being eligible for an upgrade, i got an iphone 3G for $99 (since they were trying to get rid of them) a couple of years ago. i basically hated it the entire time and it became basically non-functional when the iphone 4 upgrades came out. i figured i would always like, get some other phone when it was time to get a new phone- i used paul's droid thing in california and it was awesome ! buttttttt i ended up getting an iphone 4 and it's actually a decent phone so far. maybe it's just because my phone has been non-functional since the summer so this seems great in comparison, though. whatever, i feel like a disgusting yuppie asshole jerk and i am ashamed that i have a phone that a poor child probably assembled. what apps should i get?

i'm being flippant but i really hate that it's 2010 and i'm posting in a blog about iphones

i also don't want to make this a list of stuff i bought but i got a necklace on etsy made of a deer's rib from a found carcass, and i've had the most annoying conversations about it at work.

everyone keeps saying that it's "sad"? like, i guess it's technically sad that everything on earth doesn't live forever, but like... all of them eat meat? how is that less sad than acknowledging the fact that animals having skeletons ! i am so insulated by my social circle that i always feel like a fucking teenager at work when anything related to animals and vegetarianism comes up. it is so fucking bizarre to be almost 30 years old and still have to have this conversation or have people who are 30+ years old be like, "MMMM MEAT I COULD NEVER BE VEGETARIAN OH SORRY I'M EATING MEAT ARE YOU OFFENDED WHY ARE YOU VEGETARIAN IS THAT VEGETARIAN??? WHAT'S IN THAT??? MMMMM MEAT" to me. i'm not offended by people eating meat. i do not care that other people eat meat. i do not want to have philosophical conversations about not eating meat. but anyway, no, my deer rib necklace isn't sad, it makes me look like a cool witch. and not a fucking wiccan, a witch ! fuck you !

this is the worst blog entry i've ever written. back to JSTOR or what the fuck ever.

i know the nervous walkin'

2010-11-01T09:12:00.003-04:00

dudes ! last night i got two hours of sleep and i feel suspiciously okay? this morning was a little rough, especially because it's too cold for bare legs and having a kitten try to climb your stockings is really fucking annoying ! but also cool. ideally i would be watching her climb someone ELSE's stockings, but this is ultimately okay.

so ! this weekend ! on friday i went to the green line after work, where i am permanently installed until this semester is over, and drank like, one metric cornholio of soy lattes. i barely got any reading done (of course), but my friend gavin (who is cool and GENERALLY has good taste in everything) recommended that i listen to the pj harvey album that came out in 2000. i've sort of pretended that nothing came out after to bring you my love, but i figured i'd give it a shot.

welllllllllllll i fucking love it. it has some low points, and lacks uh, some of her balls? how do i express this without using male genitalia as a sign of courage? and the whole thing is new york city themed which i don't care about, but it's is a great album. the first time i heard pj harvey i could tell that everything she was talking about was feelings i didn't understand yet and like, i guess she's still doing that. i figured i would've acquired some emotional depth by now, but here we are. fart !

after that, i decided to go be the person i pretend i am and went to fiume (the bar above abyssinia) BY MYSELF and sipped scotch while reading:

the bartender was very helpful in windbagging me about scotch, and i ended up trying something that was the best of all the scotches i've had. i don't remember the name though and every name i make up is actually something from LOTR? wait, christina took a picture of it and sexted it to me so i'd remember !

i'll be honest, it still tastes like shit, but it's the best i've tried so far ! for some reason, people keep telling me that different scotches taste like honey or caramel and like... they all taste like poison? it's like no one wants to be the first to admit that scotch is gross. i'm brave though- emperor, u naked. i'm still going to drink it though ! oh, but, yeah, after the first couple of scotches i was totally trashed and called christina to come keep me company and she came down and we talked about farts and got pizza fries and went to cvs and bought a bunch of candy and i woke up to see i'd sent my friend a 2000 word IM to the aforementioned friend gavin about what makes the average hulk TRULY incredible and how one pj harvey song reminds me strongly of blood-queen lana'thel ("and i draw a line / to your heart today / to your heart from mine"). so much for adult roxy.

on saturday, i did a minimal amount of reading again ! i got a car to run errands and was going to go get a bouquet of fake lilies so i could be a WIDOW, but i got stuck in traffic for 45 minutes and just came home. and then jeanne came to west philly and christina put makeup on me ! i don't wear makeup, and she really put a minimal amount on, but i felt like i was painted like a clown. the overall effect was pretty fucking cool though:

it's weird, though- i got an overwhelmingly positive reaction to me wearing makeup and a thousand different people told me that i looked pretty, and it was a total mindfuck ! i was like MAYBE I SHOULD WEAR MAKEUP ALL THE TIME !!!!! and even looked at makeup at cvs (and was like, 'what is all this shit?' and realized that i have tried very hard in life to NOT know that) and then remembered that i think makeup sucks. i understand a lot of women choose to wear makeup and what could be more feminist than a woman making a choice !!!!, butttttt i am too creeped out by the beauty industry and uncomfortable with the idea of giving my money and time to an industry whose function is to undermine womens' self-worth and manipulate them into thinking they 1) need to be "beautiful" and 2) need to buy all this shit to be "beautiful". i don't know ! it's fun for a costume but like, a colossal bummer for me for every day life. like, the sheer power that people calling me pretty had on me even at this age with this level of self-awareness was INSANE.

anyway, we went to the west philly coverband show and met up with mouse, but we missed the pj harvey band (boooooooooooooooooooooooooo) and dk band, saw the wipers, and then went upstairs and sulked on a couch and then left early ! there was a neutral milk hotel cover band and we got caught in like, an aching pit of sincerity where people were earnestly singing along, and like... that + bell peppers is the portrait of hell for jeanne and i. we stopped on the way home to get cookies, and then came to my house to pet the kitten and eat cookies. i made a grave mistake and got oatmeal dark chocolate cherry almond cookies which sound delicious but they were all cinnamon-y :(

on sunnnnnnday i mostly slept and went to green line again to try to finish reading. i read like... 25% of the stalin book. basically it's a long essay arguing that stalin's mass killings are genocide- in general, they are widely believed to NOT be genocide, largely because of soviet pressure during the genocide convention to exclude political and social groups from the definition of genocide. i'm excited for this week in class, though i have a lot of work to do- i talked to my professor after class last week (because i realized that, despite hearing about the holocaust my whole life, i never ever once heard anything about sexual violence during the holocaust, and it's such a huge factor in almost every other genocide) and she told me my papers were some of the best in class and we had a great conversation- she really is like, one of the fucking coolest people i've ever met? i'm so psyched to be in this class, even if the work is killing me a little.

why are the hot ones always jerks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

okay ! two last things ! that grand army messenger was a good buy- it fits all my school books and my laptop, the strap is really comfortable, and it looks cool.

also, last night while i was trying not to study or sleep, i dug out a mixtape that my friend shannon made me like ten years ago:

this is the most romantic thing i've ever gotten from a dude who wasn't in love with me. the front of it has a termite squished to it, under packing tape, with the caption, "termites. devour my heart."

side A:

swans, "live through me"
the black heart procession, "on waterfront"
electric wizard, "funeralopolis"
eyehategod, "thirty dollar bag"
supermachiner, "flight of vultures"
supermachiner, "i am legend"
neurosis, "belief"
the black heart procession, "til we have to say goodbye"
harvey milk, "brown water"
swans, "secret friends"

side B:

harvey milk, "one of us cannot be wrong"
converge, "disintegration"
today is the day, "ripped off"
eyehategod, "methamphetamine"
boards of canada, "the color of the fire"
mogwai, "stanley kubrick"
the black heart procession, "a light so dim"
swans, "the sound"
slowdive, "here she comes"

this is one of the only things i brought with me from florida and i've unpacked it at every single house i've lived in. of course it is dorky as shit, but it was significant for me because shannon is my first friend who i ever realized was cooler than me. of course, lots of my friends were cooler than me (erica was a feminist in like, ninth grade ! natalie introduced me to pj harvey in middle school !), but he was the first time i REALIZED it. he is the most incredible gifted maniac weirdo and ever since i met him i have been committed to only being friends with people who are cooler than i am (or at least equally as cool) and this has enriched my life beyond belief.

okay ! this is a windbaggy entry and i forgot a lot of stuff ! but i have to do some work now ! bleh !

i don't want to change the world

2010-10-27T08:41:00.003-04:00

goddddd i'm the worst blogger in fucking history ! i've been really fucking busy lately, almost entirely doing reading/writing for school. i'm seriously almost regretting my decision to go back, because i have so little time and i feel like i haven't seen any of my friends in weeks. i barely see christina and we live in the same house. blahhh. all this for a degree that will be totally useless ! five years of AGONY !!!!!!!!!!!

i had a good weekend last weekend- on friday night, i forced myself to do some homework, KIND OF. which is, incidentally, also what i did on saturday. i seriously have never, ever, ever in my life had such a hard time reading a book as i did with beyond the culture wars by gerald graff (and i remember my recent experience with that mamdani book !!!!!). basically the book is about how educators should teach their students about conflicts and controversy surrounding literature and like... every single line of the book is a restatement of that sentence. and like... no offense gerald graff, i'm sure you are a really rad person, but you are a windbag of the highest degree and i hate your book and i fucking hateeeee you.

i'm gerald graff ! i'm a professor ! blah blah blah ! teach the conflicts, kids !

i spent most of the day studying at the green line, half with christina, half without, almost all with jesse (she was working), butttttt i didn't really get very much done. on saturday night, mouse and mike came over to watch the phillies break my heart and we got thai food (well, mouse got chinese food) and the boys played with the kitten. that was cool for me because she's a pain in the ass. i love her, but she's in like... extreme attack mode right now and my arms and neck (she likes to hang out on the back of the couch) are a mess of little bite marks and scratches. anyway, mike played feathers with her for awhile and mouse let her attack his shoes. i was happy to see them both because it's been forever. mike got mouse eskrima sticks for his birthday, so i'm looking forward to getting hit with eskrima sticks while i try to knit or watch movies.

i chose this assortment of nunchucks and violence sticks because it says "quality wood"

speaking of the kitten, she is still totally obsessed with food. it is the weirdest thing in the fucking universe- there's nothing medically wrong with her, yet she constantly acts like she's starving to death. any time anyone else besides her is eating, she starts yelling at them and trying to get the food ! this past week, she has bitten, eaten, or tried to bite: vegan pizza, mushrooms, peppers, spinach, TOFU SCRAMBLE, pretzels, a piece of pineapple from pineapple fried rice. what the hell ! here's a picture of her being really cool:

on sunday, i ran some errands and went to whole foods to get food to try to make myself eat food (ED stuff has been weird lately. understatement). i got vanilla yogurt and gingersnap granola from the bulk bins (!!!!!) and pears for breakfast, and i'm gonna try to eat that in a minute. after doing mooooooooore studying all night (at the green line, where patchie entertained me and played good music), francesca came over because she was in town ! holy shit ! i didn't even notice she was short because she acts so fucking tall. she ordered vegan pizza and i ate some pretzels and it was neat. i'm sort of embarrassed because pizza was being aloof and weirdo was being a weirdo.

as for the rest of this week, i've been cornholioing on lattes and studying and i'm still pretty far behind despite my professor giving us a much-needed extension on our genocide paper proposals. i'm going to do my damndest to catch up and get all my work done today and tomorrow. i seriously doubt i'd spend so much time studying if my study habits were more efficient- as it stands, i spend like 8 hours zoning out and read like 2 pages and then the next day spend 5 hours freaking out about how i spent so much time zoning out and then read 2 more pages. life ! is weird.

the only other news is that cam was totally right and my laptop didn't even come CLOSE to fitting in the h bag. i'm going to return it (i guess? i really like it but $58 is too much for a bag i can't use every day, even if i have to bring my laptop to school) and i got this bag instead:

i love it, and it should fit my laptop and school books and crap. and jeanne described it as looking like "something you would put horse feed in" which might be my style? if i wore leather or boots fit my calves i'd either be a robin hood person or look like someone who rides or tends to horses.

i wanted to make this entry more enriching and entertaining but work is fucking annoying ! i hate everything right now ! byeeeee.

oooo-ooooh BLACK DIAMOND (replacements version)

2010-10-22T10:13:00.003-04:00

i'm not kidding, guys- school has been the busiest ever the past couple of weeks ! between school work and work work (plus... not doing any school work over the weekend last weekend) the past week has been oppressively brutal. but on the plus side, you really haven't missed anything besides me reading books.

last night was genocide class, which was great as always. we talked about the armenian genocide and watched voices from the lake. there are a lot of totally brilliant people in my class but it sort of bugs me how some of them (even the brilliant ones !) kind of like, fuck off on their laptops and laugh at stuff when we're watching movies about... actual people being slaughtered? kids these days. i love it though, aside from that, and i can't say that there's one person who doesn't contribute positively to the discussion (though the guy who is studying religion and obviously sort of hates muslims is pushing it sometimes).

to avoid posting more grim genocide pictures, here is a turkish van, a cat who is from around lake van in turkey, where the armenians used to hang out

so... i'm excited about genocide. i'd love to study it FOR REAL once i'm ready (like, once i learn how to actually go to school). i'm kind of bummed that i took this class so early in my career because i feel like i'm not really able to engage fully or express my opinions in an intelligent way. every paper i've gotten back has been an A+ with really encouraging notes, but while i'm writing them i feel like a total clueless idiotic idiot. i guess i've been talking about it a lot lately, though, because my coworker printed out an article for me about ratko mladic.

f u ratko

i have to write two research paper proposals this weekend, which means i finally have to read this asinine book for one class and check out a bunch of articles my friend anna (a genocide scholar ! and like, an infinitely valuable resource to me as i'm exploring my interest in genocide) suggested to me and skim a few books (gendercide and genocide by adam jones and gendercide by mary anne warren), plusssss do my regular reading for genocide class and write my response paper for it.

right now everyone is trying to hang out with me this weekend, which is like... a really wonderful problem to have, but i might have to break everyone's hearts and hole up and read/write for most of the weekend.

some other notable heartbreakers

what else? oh, i figured out that i like lattes. i figured this out on our road trip when we stopped at a dunkin donuts of all places and i had what i now realize was a really disgusting latte, but without the context this week has provided, it seemed great. now i've had one every day of this week and have been somber cornholio with loose stools for days.

on that note, i think i'm going to switch to soy lattes next week.

i bought a large H bag from brooklyn industries just now because i need a big bag that fits my laptop and some school books (also i had a $40 GROUPON), but some evidence (testimony of camille cruz) suggests that my laptop may not fit in it.

i'm sorry that all my problems are so fucking stupid privileged. my expensive laptop won't fit in this expensive bag ! i have too many friends ! my completely free college education is stressful !!!!!

what else am i gonna do this weekend? knit baby stuff for helen's baby (i've BARELY had a chance to do this), clean my apartment this weekend (it is horrifying me and stressing me out), go grocery shopping. spend a lot of time actually studying at green line (cause all my stuff at my house is too cool).

okay, i have a bunch of work to do at work right now so i'll TTYL LYLAS.

somewhere, some time

2010-10-18T12:09:00.004-04:00

i haven't had a lot of time to update lately because i've been so busy with work and life and school ! sorry guys !

i had the best weekend in awhile this weekend- on friday, ryann, mike, jeanne, and ned picked me up (in a rented prius ! 5 people in a prius including one big person and one tall person ! but it really wasn't bad) and we drove to new jersey to stay with ryann's friend eric for the night. we ate at a diner once we got there and our waitress was super fucking high and really neat. i truly cannot remember what i ate, because it seems like a million years ago. eric is a great host and had lots of places to sleep, but i slept on the floor because of my back. it was probably like... the worst night's sleep ever (only because i was sore and sick) but i wasn't tired at all when i woke up ! we stopped to get breakfast, and then proceeded on to brattleboro, vermont.

we got lunch at a place we thought wouldn't be opened, one of many places named vegetarian paradise- it's a vegan jamaican restaurant. they brought us out a platter with blobs of all of the dishes on the menu (not a huge menu but there was some variety) so we could taste them before ordering (!!!!). everything was delicious, but we all ended up getting curry chunks (which i think was wheat gluten) with cabbage or kale and rice and beans. ryann also got a ginger beer and it was like... the most intense delicious spicy ginger beer of all time. mike and i also got vegetable patties (which jeanne and mike relentlessly called hot pockets- culturally insensitive) which were delicious and kind of spicy. they also had a store attached which mostly sold like... hats with fake dreads attached and 'jah is my co-pilot' bumper stickers, but i ended up buying this tiger hat.

we were making good time and had a pretty fast trip up to new hampshire- ryann is a great driver, ned was an excellent dj, and mike was good at farting and reading maps. jeanne didn't do much but touch my butt a bunch to buckle her seatbelt- i've had better, but i like jeanne. the pumpkin festival was insane- it was super super packed with a billion cool jack-o-lanterns and food vendors and kids in costumes ! i got terrified by people in old man costumes several times. there was also a grilled cheese and tomato soup booth so i didn't even have to have a vegetarian-at-the-fair all french fry day ! here's some stuff:

that last picture is ned and mike eating barf in a cone (which some people were calling 'pumpkin pie in a cone'). there was a beautiful historic theater there playing free cartoons all day, so when we got tired and cold, we went inside and watched looney toons for like 2 hours. i was surprised at how funny and weird and fucking grim they were? i didn't really pay much attention to them when i was a kid (aside from pete puma) so i never noticed, but like... every single one ended with accidental suicide.

after that, we went to see the pumpkins all lit up and walked around some more and i almost peed my pants and we went to a neat little bookstore ! i also had the disappointment of my life when i went to a fudge stall and got what i thought was a chocolate covered caramel apple, and it was just... a chocolate covered apple. GROSS. is that a real thing people eat????? i was shocked but everyone made fun of me and didn't feel bad for me.

we went to our hotel room after that and i had such a good night. i was super super super cornholio'd out on sugar and everyone just barely put up with me, and i ended up getting the best night's sleep i've had in forever. maybe i should always sleep in a room with four sleeping people ! in the morning, we ate continental breakfast (ooh la la) and headed out to providence, rhode island. holy shit, providence is cute ! the houses looked like dollhouses and there was a good record store and and and it was great. we ate at julian's, where i had the best most delicious bloody mary ever, sweet potato hash (which was delicious), a french toast, home fries, and an omelette with avocado, black beans, and tomato. holy shit ! there bathroom also had this case of star wars guys

the drive home took considerably longer, but we made a few stops and listened to weird al and i got to ride up front with mike, which was neat. unfortunately we're both tyrants and he won the ipod tyrant contest by holding the ipod in his lap so i couldn't reach for it. i maintain that everyone would've loved my cool music playlist even if they wouldn't have, and also didn't.

anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy i had the best time, and new england is beautiful, and i didn't feel anxious once- not even in keene, where my cellphone didn't have reception for an entire day. being "disconnected" or far from home are two of my biggest anxiety triggers, and the whole time i was having such a good time that i didn't want it to end and was never anxious to get home. mike, jeanne, ryann, and ned are all neat and hilarious and i haven't laughed that much in a million years.

nowwwww i have to get ready for class- i'm behind on my school work and it's causing me stress.

you're no rock'n'roll fun

2010-10-14T09:27:00.002-04:00

i'm going to list all of the bad horrible things going on right now:

- my back still hurts ! the pain completely transported to my right leg, though, and it hurts for an hour in the morning and then goes away, but that hour in the morning blows.
- i'm getting over a cold (this hasn't actually been a bad cold- i just have a runny nose)
- we have back to back events at work today and tomorrow so the last week at work has been hectic and shitty
- i have an unreasonable amount of reading to do for school. like, no clue how i'll actually get it all done.
- my apartment is messy and i have zero time to clean it and it's stressing me out (all my mess !)
- cannot get the new patch to work in WoW (it downloaded but crashes every time i try to start the game)
- last night i suddenly realized that my dad is dead? he died in june, and i was more than likely never, ever going to talk to him ever again, but it didn't occur to me that he was gone from earth forever until 3am.
- i haven't really had time to hang out with anyone. i saw mouse and christina for like 10 minutes total last night but that's it.
- wahhhhhhhh.

i feel like this, without a wang

i'm super stressed and not being able to bend over is like.. a huge life hinderance? if you have a kitten who is being litter trained and knocks everything onto the floor and you need to put on stockings for work and and you want to like... fucking bend over ! it's definitely getting better every day but i want it to be better now so i can function as a human.

tonight i have my genocide class, which i missed last week, and we're talking about rwanda. i've been reading we wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families by philip gurevitch, and it's (so far) a really good read. i don't actually know enough about the case to know what i think of it as an actual study of genocide, but i assume i'll find out tonight. so far it has really driven home the horror and devastation of what happened without being emotionally manipulative- like, i think i would classify it as emotionally effective. i guess most of the criticisms are that it is more emotional than critical, but since i have supplemental material to read with it, that doesn't bother me.

i actually am just going to post this without trying to put neat positive stuff in it cause i'm so stressed and grumpy and sick and grumpy and stressed !!!!

p.s. new hampshire this weekend? weird, i never go anywhere.

gucci mane

2010-10-11T10:02:00.003-04:00

what's up ! hey ! on friday mouse and i went to mike bukowski's art show at benna's !!! it was all monsters inspired by d&d manuals and everything looked amazing. i was basically having an anxiety attack about getting there first to get the owlbear and i'm glad i didn't sleep on it because everyone kept admiring it and a few people were coveting it. i also bought the giant troll. i wish i had some pictures of it but i was too excited ! here are a few that appeared in the interview he just did for denis' bloggggg.

"an Achaierai, a Grell and a Necrophidius"

jeanne also made a really cool vegan axe cake, which mouse cut with a plastic axe. it was pretty awesome because the handle basically looked like real wood and the blade looked like an iced fart. no offense jeanne !!!

after the show, we went to the pope and i had the best vegan meatloaf i've ever had in my life, with mushroom gravy, broccoli, and mashed yams. holy shit. i wish i was eating it right now, and also forever. i also decided to try scotch on the rocks for the first time, to debut my signature drink, and it did not go well. i got a johnny walker black first and it was pretty repugnant- it was also a gigantic glass of scotch (i figured a... whatever, on the rocks would just be a shot on ice? but it was like a full glass of scotch).

mike and jeanne's friend justin g. (maybe my friend too? i'm gonna add him and his gf on facebook RIGHT NOW) suggested that i try glenfiddich 12, which he said tasted like honey, so i got a shot of that with ice. i discovered that... it tasted like scotch, but at that point i was like, 'hayyyy' from drinking a bunch of scotch so i didn't feel betrayed or anything.

after that, the waitress (who was extremely nice) suggested that i try irish whiskey if i wasn't into scotch, so she brought me a tullamore dew, which at that point did not taste perceptibly different to me because the scotch had burned off all of my tastebuds. at that point, she suggested i try tequila instead- not that night, but if i was ever at cantina. she was referring to a local establishment called cantina los caballitos, buttttttttt i thought she was talking about this cantina:

and was like, "why would i ever be there? that isn't even like.. here and now." and felt pretty dumb. i had a great time though, and mike, jeanne, and ryann invited me to come to new hampshire with them this weekend to see a bunch of cool pumpkins and junk !

on saturday, i intended to read and study all day, but early in the day i stood up and something horrible happened to my back. i got a really really horrible not right pain and barely made it back to my bed (i was in the living room). i basically spent 8 hours saturday laying face down on my bed, holding in my pee, totally unable to move. it was really fucking scary- a bunch of people offered to help me, and i really wanted to go to the hospital, but... i couldn't get up to let anyone in.

it was really weird and shitty ! if you aren't a fat person, you may not know that doctors are really shitty to fat people. despite many thin people i know having back problems and having similar stuff happen to them, i know what would happen if i went to the doctor- i have gained weight lately and i'm sure it's related, but what's probably more related is that i have done very little physical activity since starting school- i feel like i have very little time anymore to do anything, and since this side was injured a few years ago, i think i have to be more consistent with doing yoga/walking/riding my bike to keep it from getting reinjured. anyway, i knowwwww i should talk to a doctor (a friend with similar problems suggested sports medicine) buttttttt i don't want to have to deal with it.

anyway, around 9 or so i was able to get out of bed and walk around and take a shower and pet my poor stupid kitten and felt more human almost immediately. by the time i went to bed, my back actually felt pretty good. today it feels even better, though i keep getting an on and off nerve-y pain in my thigh, but my back itself feels better than it has in weeks. i think this is like... when a coconut falls on someone's head and they turn into a sexy version of themselves? and then all that has to happen to fix them is another head injury?

for instance, something that probably happened to all of these women

on sunday, i did some studying (finally), and went to mouse and kati's birthday party at ed's. alan, nate, and anna came and we had the best time. i got a greek salad and it was totally the worst, but all of my friends are so cool and funny i can't stand it? mouse looked particularly sharp in his button suspenders. the only real disappointment was that benji wasn't able to make it, because mouse realllllly wanted to wrestle someone for his birthday. pooooooor mouse. we got gelato after dinner (at my nudging) and i picked up some new cat litter for the kitten (she is not psyched about feline pine, because the granules are bigger than her feet), and came home to do some reading and pet her a little bit. here are some pictures:

weirdo is as bored by this asinine book as i am !

right now i'm reading critical essays about huckleberry finn (i don't careeeeeeeeeeee), that gerald graff book (ughhhhhhhhh), and we wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families by philip gourevitch (hooray). i actually wish i'd opted for a writing seminar with less reading because these books are such a waste of time, and my genocide class requires SO much reading.

so, that's about it. my back feels okay, this is going to be a busy week at work, i have a lot of reading to do so i'm going to try not to do anything fun this week, and and and.. i don't know. i have to go because the receptionist is being fucking annoying because she doesn't understand what the job of a receptionist is.

east timor

2010-10-06T09:45:00.003-04:00

i gotta make it quick cause i have a meeting soon ! hey !

yesterday i mostly slept. i meant to do reading for school but i didn't really get much done because i felt so crummy. i guess that's like... barely even interesting for me to write about, huh? anyway, later that night jeanne and i got dinner ! i didn't eat all day because i didn't feel well, but i got super super starving right before i had to go and i couldn't take it anymore, so i... ate like 10 pickled baby beets on an empty stomach !

please enjoy this genius covered in beet juice

so by the time i got to the restaurant, i had a pretty gross stomach ache ! which was a shame because i ate a big cream-based dinner (pappardelle in a cream sauce with sun-dried tomatoes, onions, shitake mushrooms, marsala wine, pecorino cheese). also, i decided recently that my new signature drink is scotch on the rocks, and i e-mailed my mom and consulted with my friend justin about how to order it in a bar, and was totally ready, but i got a shirley temple instead because my stomach was so upset. maybe next time.

after dinner, we got frozen yogurt at scoop de ville, and then i had to take a cab home because i had to use the bathroom and we were in a weird bathroom desert (i usually know where every public bathroom is and the closest one, barnes and noble, was closed). i got home and hung out with the kitten and edited my essay and got to catch up with christina a little- i've barely seen her since she got back from new hampshire !

sooooo, the kitten. she does not understand the importance of the litterbox. like, she goes in the litter half the time, but the other half she either goes 1) NEAR the litter or 2) where ever. i'm going to have to figure out what to do to give her the encouragement she needs. i'm not home during the day, but when i am home i grab her and put her in the litterbox if i see her squatting to go to the bathroom. other than that, she's super weird and cute. i can entertain her for an hour by putting my hair in a ponytail and setting her on the back of the couch.

i wish that accurately conveyed her smallness. that's christina's flip flop, and christina has little tiny feet (little tiny adult sized feet !). her flip flops are like, a 5.5-6 in womens' sizes. so the kitten is REALLY SMALL.

i have to go because my coworker needs help with something that she made much more convoluted than it needed to be, and i also have a staff meeting. bleh.

oh by the way ! i meant to post this picture of mouse and his nephew because it's the greatest thing ever, so i'm posting it in honor of mouse's birthday. he's not excited about his birthday but i am because he is cool and my favorite.

lots of reading to do today. lots of work at work.

when i'm dreaming of you

2010-10-04T08:22:00.004-04:00

i had the best weekend and now i don't feel well !! i'm not sure if it's allergies (since my eyes itch) or what, but my nose has been gushing, my head and neck hurt, and i've felt super super super exhausted since yesterday afternoon. i called out of work, but i still have to go to class tonight because i missed class wednesday. blehhh.

welll here's all the good stuff ! on friday, i picked up weirdo II from jeanne ! i had to drive in south philly, which is sort of a nightmare of narrow streets and jay walking guidos, and was not able to parallel park to go inside (her street is REALLY narrow !), but weirdo and i made it home and she is the cutest sweetest smallest best dude ever. seriously, i cannot convey how fucking small she is ! here is a picture of her being small with me:

mouse stopped by on friday night to visit her and loved her, of course (he is interested in kittens)- we also discovered that she's obsessed with food. the second he opened his burrito and she could smell it, she frantically climbed all over him, meowing and then ran down his leg and bit his burrito !!! it was the funniest weirdest, but during the course of the weekend she did that with:

- thai curry
- pickles
- bbq seitan
- twizzlers

basically any food sends her into a ridiculous frenzy and she screams and tries to bite your food. it's very cute now that she's tiny, but will possibly not be that cute when she's big !

on saturday, mouse, nate, anna, and i went to linvilla orchards and met up with kati, alan, james, rachael, ashley, and sarah (who i FINALLLLLLY got to meet !). that sounds like a billion people, and it was ! linvilla is my favorite orchard, and it was packed.

i had the best time with everyone- we mostly looked at animals and ate food. a real stupid goat ate some corn out of my hand !!!!! and i saw a cow pee for like a minute straight. a horse too ! and we looked at some super gross emus. i also had french fries with vinegar, an apple cider slushie, a cider donut, and a slice of frozen chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick. who knew such a thing existed? holy shit. i felt like cathy.

but because of all of that, i DIDN'T get a caramel apple, which is a bummer because caramel apples are my favorite food and i only get to have one a year (because i have terrible teeth !). i also didn't get to have deep fried oreos, which i get to have no times a year (only because i'm not often around them, not because of any kind of cathy-esque food rules). so many regrets ! i declined going apple picking (since i can never find any good apples on the trees) and instead bought some neat stuff at their store- i got:

- pumpkin butter
- orange blossom honey
- pickled baby beets
- sweet garlic dill pickles (!!!!!)

anyway, i had the best time and got the worst stomach ache ! after all that, we came home and parted ways- i had a ton of homework and was super tired, and ended up crashing out and not doing any homework.

on sunday, mouse and i went to laurel hill cemetery (a gigantic beautiful victorian cemetery here) for the spirits and spiritualists tour. it was great, and laurel hill is beautiful (especially on an overcast day, because i'm a goth teenager), but there wasn't really thaaaaat much about spiritualism on the tour. we did learn about margaret fox, who was basically the inventor of spiritualism, who was very famous for being able to communicate with the dead with rapping and crap, and her love affair with the famous explorer elisha kent kane. they were going to be married, but his family forbade it because they were stuck up assholes !!!!!! anyway, he wrote her a bunch of romantic letters about how she'd be buried in his family crypt with him when she died (why don't guys do stuff like that anymore?) and after he died she was like, "actually we secretly got married and i want his shit", and i believe she ended up getting some of his shit.

his tomb is in the side of a hill just outside the cemetery fence (i think cause they couldn't fence around it?), and margaret didn't end up in there. boo. other than that, there wasn't too much spiritualism on the tour, but he did show us all the famous graves (general meade, harry kalas, frank furness, charles thomson, etc.). i had a good time, and i tried to touch every tombstone to see if a ghost would haunt me, but it didn't happen.

after the cemetery, we went to whole foods, where i got $98329829832 worth of stuff from the salad bar/hot bar, and i came home to study and do homework. i didn't end up getting too much done because i was already starting to feel sick, but i got the main assignment i had due finished. today i have to do a little reading and maybe work on an essay, but i'm probably going to take mucinex and sleep.

class tonight- the syllabus instructs us to bring our laptops, which is awesome because it's rainy and gross outside and my laptop is too big to bring places, but i'll do it.

oh how happy you have made me

2010-10-01T10:36:00.003-04:00

blahhhh hi ! class last night was kind of rough- this week we were covering settler genocides and specifically aboriginal child removal in australia, so we watched rabbit proof fence, a movie based on a true story of three "half-caste" (of indigenous australian and european descent) girls who were taken from their indigenous australian parents and put in a "school" (to be trained as servants and bred with europeans to "breed out the black"), who later escaped and walked 1000 miles home.

it was a great movie and it was brutally sad, and of course i was the only one crying. i'm not sure what is up with like, the dead-eyed unsympathetic generation that i'm going to school with? anyway, i have to write a paper for this class, and i'm thinking about doing something about gendercide. i got gendercide and genocide by adam jones, and gendercide by mary warren. i also have some other books already that may be relevant (rape of nanking for one). wish me luck !

sooo what else, besides genocide? i came home from school and remembered i had to raid. our plan was to kill the lich king, buttttt we kept wiping on sindragosa. we don't have a ringer group right now since no one is really playing, so it wasn't an ideal set up, and paul was cranky because the padres blew it.

oh, also ! ALSO !!! tonight i'm picking up my new kitten. hannah was fostering her, and she dropped her off with jeanne last night to babysit (since i had class), so i'm going to get her after work. according to jeanne, she enjoys playing and eating and putting her paws on you.

i'm excited ! and a little nervous. it's been a long time since i had a kitten.

weekend? hanging out with mouse (i feel like i've barely seen him lately), going to linvilla orchards (unless the weather blows?), hanging hard, doing homework.

it's too much for me

2010-09-29T11:00:00.005-04:00

yesterday i actually took care of business and did some reading for my class ! it was ESPECIALLY hard for me because i had plans later in the evening, but i went to green line after work and powered through a thing about aboriginal child removal and about half of a chapter in adam jones' genocide textbook, which is fucking great. i've felt intimidated going back to school because... i have very little experience in school, and some of the readings i've had so far since the summer have been hopelessly indecipherably jargon-y, and this textbook is really well-written and accessible. like, i've never read a textbook before that really felt like i was reading a good book.

after that, i went to meet jeanne and mike b. at their friend's house (he is also named mike b.)- he owns a really beautiful house in west philly that filled me with envy. i should buy a house in my neighborhood with my millions of dollars ! that i have. i drank 100 iced coffees and had read so much genocide stuff that i felt like somber cornholio. anyway, we watched black death, a movie about.. the black death ! the premise is that a bishop sends a group of dudes to go to this remote town that they heard is untouched by the plague because a necromancer/witch is raising the dead and protecting them and crap.

boromir is in it, as well as a redhead jeanne likes whose name is EDDIE REDMAYNE (what are the odds). the movie was really fucking cool and understated and grim- there is a quartering scene that made all of us make audible noises of disappreciation (i never thought about how slow a quartering would be) and the bubos were totally gross. the best part was that the necromancer/witch was this beautiful badass blasphemous lady

i was so into her, and the movie didn't fall back on a lot of shitty sexist tropes (like, a movie that takes place in ye olden times without any rapes is a rare thing), and she was such a great character and obviously the winner of the movie... until we got to the kind of unnecessary tacked on ending in which women lose throughout history. i recommend stopping the movie like 8 minutes early !

jeanne and mike walked me home after, and i came home and i did slightly more reading and painted my nails with christina's um, parlez-vous opi

and went to bed at a reasonable time ! oh, and while we were watching the movie, i got a lot of knitting done, which is nice. the baby sweater is knitting up fast, but between the two classes, i'm nervous that i won't have that much time to knit.

bleh. i have a slightly busy weekend (of my own doing) which involves getting the kitten on friday, so i really need to buckle down and get a jump on my schoolwork. i have to write a loose proposal for my genocide research paper by next week, and i'm sort of panicking because i don't know how to do that and i'm not really sure what i want to write about. i see that adam jones has another book called gendercide and genocide that looks really interesting, but i'm not sure what my paper would really be ABOUT, and... my professor is especially interested in this topic, so i'm afraid she'll be disappointed by what i write. academic insecurity !!!!

i have to go pick up stuff for a stupid thing. bleh.

throw every last care away

2010-09-27T09:44:00.003-04:00

ahhhh my back is ruined ! i fell asleep in a crappy position when i was benadrylled out and hurt my back and it's felt crappy for a week ! it's specifically the muscle i use to get up and sit down- so it's fine when i'm up walking around or laying down or sitting (except in my work chair, which is a problem), but having to sit down and get up from a sitting position is torture. TORTURE !

it actually hurts right about where the skeleton is hurt

i had a good weekend ! on friday i intended to do homework but ended up taking a nap, eating dinner, reading a non-school book, dropping my laundry off at the laundromat, and loafing. i managed to finish my outline of a chapter we had to read but i still have an essay to write before my class tonight ! i'm nervous that i won't be able to get it done because all of the material for the writing seminars is poorly written and i don't think i understand the instructions, but i'm sure i can bang something out- it's a first draft, anyway.

on saturday, i got a car and went to the bank and picked up kitten supplies. i got a tiny litterbox, a bunch of (tiny) cans of kitten food, and ordered a broken heart best friends necklace for the kitten and pizza's collars.

i didn't get THIS one cause it was $220

after my errands, mouse, nate, and anna came over to watch the phillies game, which was a total bummer. fuck the mets. we got pizza from ed's buffalo wings and pizza, since they have vegan pizza. the vegan pizza was probably the best vegan pizza i've ever had. the non-vegan pizza was probably one of the worst pizzas i've ever had. the vegan pizza was better than their regular pizza ! probably the best development of the night, though, was that nate and anna decided to come with us to the old timey baseball game on sunday !

...the old timey baseball game got rained out on sunday, but we all went to delaware anyway and went bowling with kati and alan. i didn't bowl because i'm too competitive and also too bad at bowling, but i knitted and drank a giant fountain coke, so i had a really good time. the bowling alley was blaaaaring like... weird tween music? like a mix of bad teen pop music and... adult pop music being covered by teenagers? also they had cosmic bowling at 2pm.

i like all that stuff though ! after bowling, we stopped at a kind of crappy thrift store (this was like, the most teenagery day ever- bowling and thrift stores !) and went back to kati's, where she and alan made us dinner- sweet potato fries and those veganomicon chickpea cutlets. kati also had cherry cider which was excellent. their house is so cute. they also have a very handsome 3-legged cat named sandy who sort of has a half leg? and the tip of his half leg is hairless and the nub feels like a paw pad ! pretty exotic. he is the cutest and he and anna formed a special bond.

sandyyyyyy. after dinner, we came back to philly and i unwisely took a nap before starting my homework which means i.. didn't really start my homework. i SORT OF finished huckleberry finn, because the essay i have to write is about the end. i'm probably going to write the essay at lunch today. basically i have til 5:30 to cobble something together. i sort of hate this writing class? no one wants to be there so the environment is weirdly hostile and i don't really have a class friend. oh well, i like the professor and it's a good class to take alongside a hard class.

hmm, what else? i started the presto chango jacket for helen's baby. it will look like this but less purple, more red, and cooler with cool faux jet buttons:

i'm going to go find breakfast or something and then get to work on... work.

consider this the hint of the century

2010-09-24T09:58:00.003-04:00

class was great last night ! i was nervous because i hadn't finished the book, but i ended up being able to answer every question she asked. unfortunately, i became the old person who talks too much in class, but it makes me feel awkward when people don't raise their hands so i always blurt something out. we had a pretty good discussion about genocide in darfur, and the problems with mahmood mamdani's book, and we watched the devil came on horseback, which was pretty interesting in contrast to mamdani's work. we also had a pretty good class discussion about the investigation and results that led to the US calling it genocide (janjaweed identifying themselves as "arabs" [even if that is not technically true, as mamdani points out] and identifying their victims as "africans", stating that their intent was to kill all africans, systematic use of rape of men and women, killing children and babies, killing livestock, poisoning water, breaking cooking pots in villages, only attacking "african" villages, etc.) in contrast to mamdani's insistence that the genocide distinction wasn't accurate.

the documentary is primarily about brian steidle, a US marine who took a job in sudan to monitor the ceasefire, and ended up documenting the genocide in darfur and trying desperately to get someone to intervene. it is currently available on netflix instant viewing if you want to watch it !

i also got an A+ on my first paper !!! i'm pretty excited and i'm excited to get into this week's reading- too bad i have homework for my writing class too. blehhh.

after class, i um, got taco bell for dinner (a horrible tradition i have started, since i get out of class at 9 on thursdays... across from a taco bell) and came home to raid for the first time in months. i have to say, i've really missed some of my guildmates (i mean, they're people i talk to anyway, but i enjoy playing with them) but i really fucking hate icecrown citadel. maybe it's because we did it so many times so recently? but it's so flat and tedious and boring. the only fight i really like is the bloodqueen, because i get to turn into a vampire.

that said, with the 30% raid buff we basically one shot everything and we only have that dragon guy and the lich king left. we're going to try it again next thursday. i have to say though- with school and everything, losing four hours of my life to a video game kind of sucked? before i knew it, it was 1am, and i didn't have time to do any reading or anything. i don't know if this means i won't go back for cataclysm (i probably will. haha) or what, though. i AM interested in being a goblin.

most accurately, i wish i could be a warhammer goblin, pictured left

ahh, the weekend ! tomorrow i'm going to watch the phillies game with mouse, nate, and anna- we also have plans to order pizza from ed's, a place in west philly that serves vegan pizza made with daiya, which i've never had-

though i'm disturbed that their vegan pizza description says: Dairy-free Daiya cheese, cholestrol free, Eggless dough. A perfect blend of vegan italian shred and a vegan cheddar shred. cheddar cheese on a damn pizza?

on sundayyyyy we're going to an old timey baseball game in delaware with kati ! i'm not exactly sure what that entails. probably mustaches.

also on the agenda this weekend:
- doing my writing class homework which means finishing huckleberry finn, writing a justificatory essay (whatever that is), and writing an analysis of the second chapter of beyond the culture wars.
- dropping my laundry off TONIGHT
- cleaning my room
- starting my genocide reading
- going grocery shopping maybe?

hold me to it ! hold me to it ! okay i'm gonna go eat a sandwich.

fall back to stone

2010-09-23T09:15:00.003-04:00

one work thing that stresses me out a little- i have a coworker friend (like, we enjoy each others' company at work but are not friendly outside of work, as it should be) who, over the past 3 or 4 years that we've worked together, somehow got the idea that i'm into old movies/kitsch/pop culture. i have never had the heart to tell him i'm not, or that i don't quite get his references. i was born in 1982. unless carol channing was a ninja turtle, i don't know who that is. when you mention charles nelson reilly, i think you mean this guy:

yesterday i had class, which was slightly annoying- the conservative person who announced she was conservative apropos of nothing once again displayed that she doesn't actually know that conservative as a word has meanings outside of politics, and the departmental slides our professor had to show us seemed... confusing? like, i copied them down but i have no idea what they were really about.

after work, i went to green line to try to do some reading- i was doing okay for awhile, but some older dude with a giant stack of newspapers came in and started... tearing the newspapers up? and rustling the newspapers. i know a coffee shop isn't my office and i could just read at home, but i think the ultimate thing you can just do at home is tear up some newspapers. i ended up going home again. i read about 100 pages, and then i gave up- i know that kind of sucks, but i'm just really not into this book. we have to turn in ten response papers over 13 weeks, and we can skip any 3 weeks we want, and i think i'm going to skip this week. i think i have a decent understanding of what he was trying to say, and i read all the other material, but i just couldn't get through that book.

it's weird because i love tedious histories, and i didn't know much about the history of sudan before, but there was just something that wasn't clicking for me with his interpretation of sudan's history. i ended up reading a few other sources about the history of sudan instead to better understand the conflict because i couldn't get through his. i'm bummed though, i hate not being prepared for class and i especially hate not finishing a book.

i also need to work on not being so easily distracted. the following things were all more interesting to me than studying last night:

- a video about how to put on a female condom, which was linked from
- a video of some ice skater guy skating to "sex bomb", which i found through
- a discussion about how "slow hand" by the pointer sisters is a gross song to sing with your sisters.
- a text message conversation with mouse about our favorite jiu jitsu people, which turned into a conversation about joe rogan?
- the wikipedia for troll dolls (called GONKS in the uk)
- looking at nail polish on amazon
- trying to untangle a knot in my hair by hand

class tonight, and then... possibly trying to kill the lich king? our guild kind of petered out over the summer so most of us have never killed him, but there was talk of some of the wow dudes i actually like wanting to try it out tonight.

who knows, though? none of us really care and i don't think we have any tanks lined up. okay, back to work !

how to boil water

2010-09-22T10:21:00.003-04:00

okay i haveeee to complain a little about my writing class again. we have a class blog that we have to write in, every day, monday through thursday. we have to write at least three lines, about any topic. nearly everyone is acting like the professor tossed them a scalpel and asked them to perform brain surgery. so far, many of the blog entries are like, HOW CAN I FIND TIME TO DO THIS EVERY DAY? HOW CAN I REMEMBER TO DO THIS EVERY DAY. like, how do you remember to do anything every day? just do that. i personally put an outlook reminder on my calendar for every day, monday through thursday, until the end of the semester. put me in, coach !

i don't know- i guess i'm surprised that people are acting like whiny high school kids in college? like IS THIS GOING TO BE ON THE TEST? GOD THERE'S SO MUCH READING I DON'T HAVE TIME, THIS SUCKS. THIS CLASS SUCKS !)(!#@())(###

oh, did i mention that getting my courses evaluated has been a total bust so far? i had 7 possible classes that i was told "would transfer" (which i think was a poor choice of words on the part of my adviser, who seems to be... totally clueless. it took 3 days and 6 emails to get her to actually attach the attachment she forgot to attach to the first e-mail). of the six courses i was able to find syllabuses for (out of 7), 1 has been accepted, 2 have been denied, and 3 are in various queues. my dream of knocking a year off of my school career (in exchange for attending 2.5 years in the early 00s) isn't going to become a reality.

last night i desperately tried to read for genocide class- still reading saviors and survivors. it is a very intelligent and well-researched genocide denial i think? but it's frustrating me because i don't actually know enough about darfur to say this guy is wrong, and i only know that some people who DO know about darfur say he's wrong. i am also frustrated by his recounting of the history of darfur, including the ancient history- this SHOULD be interesting, and the history of race and politics in sudan and specifically in darfur are super important to understanding the current climate and conflicts, buttttttt he's just rattling off lists of names and dates and it's fucking boring ! it's frustrating because 1) i love history and 2) his writing was engaging in the previous chapters ! so i don't know what's up.

mahmood mamdani

anyway, all that aside, the main point is that i didn't do as much reading as i should have. i have a good excuse- my back is sort of fucked up and sitting in a crappy chair at the green line away from my computer and xbox and stuff seemed painful. haha. so after my writing class tonight, i have to do exactly that- no excuses. i need to read like 200 more pages tonight.

so far this entry has been all complaining and genocide denial so i'm going to cut it with knitting and kittens. first, here's a picture of tavi in an awesome sweater (let's ignore the fact that kathleen hanna gave it to her):

all of my knitting dork friends are trying to figure out how to make a chart for that so we can all be huge copy cats of a 14 year old. granted, a super smart and sharp 14 year old who makes our 14 year old selves look like total posers. i definitely think that pattern would work well on a scarf.

in other news, the kitten i'm adopting is very cute. here's proof:

i'm going to have to look into teeny kitten accessories for her- like a collar tiny enough to fit her, a litter box (though she'll probably use a pizza box til she gets a little bigger), toyssssss, etc. i'm also going to shop around philly vets because mine is in the suburbs and it's sort of annoying to go there, and the little lady needs her vaccinations and needs to get spayed. ahhhh my baby. i hope pizza likes her.

i have to go get ready for a stupid meeting now. blehhhhh.

men like you can never change

2010-09-21T09:33:00.004-04:00

man. my writing class. i'm not sure what's up, but like... everyone curses and criticizes the class and class material constantly in class and in our writings, and it's the weirdest classroom environment in the universe? i feel like i'm on the bad news bears.

in class we had to bring an extra copy of the essay we wrote and do peer review of other peoples' essays. we weren't allowed to edit the copy, we just had to make an outline of the paper from our point of view so they could review it and see if their paper was actually saying what they meant to say. i guess that's a useful exercise? the paper i got needed editing but since it wasn't my job, i didn't do it. it did say "huckleberrey finn," "huckleberry fin," and "hick finn" in it though.

i feel guilty or like i sound snobby (or worse, classist) about this but my class is comprised half of privileged ivy league snots and half adults who have been working in professional jobs for 5+ years.

some dunces

after class, i came home and typed up my peer review and... watched tv for like 4 hours. i was in a really thick haze of allergy medicine fog (how do people with allergies DO this every day?) and couldn't make myself pick up another book. today, i'm refocused- i'm going to:

1) re-write my essay based on my peer review
2) read more of that mahmood mamdani book at lunch
3) write a quick paragraph about whether or not the kent state shootings count as genocide (someone asked this in class so we have to write about what we think)
4) go to the green line after work WITHOUT MY LAPTOP and read more of that book

i think i scheduled my classes well- having tuesday and friday as no class days gives me a lot of time to work on homework and special projects and reading and stuff. oh, and my eye feels a lot better today- it's still itchy but it isn't swollen or red. maybe i'll take the opportunity to put my new sheets on tonight?

okay, time to get to work !

p.s. hannah sent me a video of the kitten playingggggg. i wish i knew how to post it !

walk the dinosaur

2010-09-20T11:54:00.005-04:00

hey dudes ! i had a wonderful and very benadrylled weekend ! on friday, i came home and actually wrote my essay- i had to write an essay about huckleberry finn, and then write an essay about my essay where i went through every line and had to paraphrase each line (to say what it SAYS) and then explain what each line DOES. it wasn't as tedious as it sounds ! then i had to read a chapter of beyond the culture wars by gerald graff and do a SAYS/DOES outline for that. what a weird book- this is my first year back at school in a billion years and it is some like... weird academic-y jargon-y book about problems in academia. why would i care about that? i have no clue what he's even talking about. like, going to school to learn about going to school doesn't seem interesting to me.

the class is pretty rough. so far it is like... middle school type stuff, but the instruction is muddled and the assignments are tedious. i'm bummed, because i have a lot to learn about writing and i'm not sure i'm going to learn it in this (required) class. we have to do a class blog and i know that not everyone is a superstar blogger or whatever, but everyone's entries are so weird and tedious and are a mishmash of incomplete sentences. also even though they can be about ANYTHING, most people write about the class. i feel like a jerk complaining about it though !

on saturday, i went to hannah's to meet my new kitten !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! hannah found a teeny tiny baby kitten, and i get to take her home in 3 weeks. she's about 3 weeks old now (though she seems to be around 4 weeks developmentally and 3 weeks in size? so she may just be tiny). she is seriously like... the cutest kitten in the world. she put her paws on my face and nibbled on my chin and alksjdkaslks she's so cute. hannah is a saint for taking care of her !

after that, i went to target to get some qtips and new bedding and ended up running into jeanne, mike, ryann, and ned ! and then a few minutes later, benji ! it was pretty neat, except i was self-conscious about my eye and the fact that i was sort of covered in kitten pee. i got some bedding and some qtips and headed home, where i met up with mouse and benji (again !), fresh from their jiu jitsu lesson. i made them spaghetti with field roast sausages:

and mouse and i tried to sell benji on band of brothers. benji isn't a tv person but he's a cool human so he'd probably love band of brothers. i got to hang out with mouse a little too after benji left, which was nice because i don't get to see him as much because of school.

on sunnnnnday, i did some reading for my genocide class- this week we have to read saviors and survivors by mahmood mamdani. it's about darfur, and my professor said that she considers it to be genocide denial. so far, that seems pretty right on, but i have to claim ignorance here and say that i really don't know enough about darfur to know if what he's saying is completely preposterous.

i have a lot more reading to do, because i hope to write my paper for the class about genocide denial, so i think i need to actually stick to my plan of reading when i'm supposed to be reading ! after doing some reading, though, i went to jeanne and mike's house for fake thanksgiving ! ryann came too. we made quorn roast, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and brussels sprouts, and i brought a cherry pie and some pastries. the food was so good and i had the best time, and i'm glad i got to hang out with ryann again cause she's cool. also thanksgiving is the best possible meal of all time and i want to have it again right now?

someone else's vegan thanksgiving

what else? i'm off of work today because my eye totally sucks. benadryl made the swelling go down, but i didn't take it last night so i could get up for work today, and it came right back. the hydrocortisone my doctor suggested (did i mention that? my doctor suggested benadryl and hydrocortisone on friday for 3 days, and if it wasn't gone today, come back) seemed to make my face redder, and the really itchy spot is my tear duct. this really, really sucks.

what else? oh, in times of stress, i get fixated on stupid things. troll dolls. bill paxton. floaty pens. right now, it's, uh, how i met your mother. i will say right off- this show is not funny. it has a good cast (minus the main character, who is like jimmy fallon taped off the radio, and then someone made a tape of that tape, and so on and so on and so on) and good writers and almost good jokes, but the delivery of every line is so horrible, the laugh track is really weak and oddly placed, ugh. it's a TERRIBLE show. and yet i am downloading all five seasons and have bought some episodes on itunes.

- why would the main character's voice change as he aged so he turns into bob saget instead of having the same voice?
- how do two assholes in nyc afford such a HUGE apartment?
- how do they afford to go drinking every single night?
- why bother living in nyc if they don't go anywhere but their apartment and the bar directly downstairs?
- some of the stuff barney does is super sketchy/sexual assault-y. why are they friends with him? especially the women?
- who on earth would tell their children some of the stuff that goes on on this show? why would a child ever care how their parents met?
- why am i so attracted to jason segel?

these are questions i cannot answer. i hope this passes soon.

anywayyyyyy see you tomorrowwww

a race against the clock !

2010-09-17T09:18:00.002-04:00

hayyyy. i have to start getting ready to go to the doctor at 10, so i have to MAKE THIS FAST ! my eye is getting progressively more swollen and itchy every day- like, it goes down by the end of the day with zyrtec eyedrops + zyrtec, but every day when i wake up it looks worse than the previous morning. today it's veryyyyyy swollen. if it's allergies, which everyone keeps saying it is, i'm obviously allergic to something in my room, because it gets horrible overnight. and maybe it's no coincidence that it's my left eye, and i sleep on my left side.

christina just said they might SWAB MY EYE ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

on wednesday, my writing class went okay- we were assigned a short paper to write over the weekend and another reading assignment, which should be fine, and we did group work, which was, as always, infuriating. the lady i got grouped with was super nice but she hadn't read huckleberry finn and hadn't done the reading for her class but was arguing with what i was saying based on what she thinks the book is about. buhhhhhhhh.

lasttttt night was my genocide class, and of course i loved it. we watched a christiane amanpour documentary for cnn called, scream bloody murder. it's available on youtube, and it's about the people who saw genocide happening and how no one listened to them. to break up the heartbreak and injustice, christiane interviewed everyone and seriously to every person was like, "would you say you... SCREAMED BLOODY MURDER?". also despite being so interesting, the last segment (part 14 if you're watching it on youtube) was pretty horrible and was about a hutu man apologizing to a tutsi woman for killing her family, conveniently leaving out the fact that the government required him to do so.

i'm so, so excited about this class. it's going to be tough because there's a tonnnnn of reading and a tonnnnnnn of writing, but it's so interesting and the classroom discussions are great. i want to talk way too much in class though so i'm going to have to curb that so other people can talk and so i'm not the older student who dominates the conversation and demands the professor's attention (aka the person i hateddddddd when i was 18).

oh, so far, the worst thing about going back to school, by far, is christians in the classroom. i don't think that religious people realize how boring their religion is to other people and how alienating it is when they talk to a group of people from other cultures/countries/religious groups in a university setting about their faith like it's an absolute given and absolute truth. like, the only book you like is the bible cause you DON'T LIKE FICTION? cooooool. you don't worry too much about the problems with the genocide convention that hinder prevention, international intervention, etc. because the victims will go to heaven and god will judge the perpetrators? that's so interesting and also like, almost sociopathic. jesus is probably rolling over in his grave right now because you're using him as an excuse to not think critically about the world around you.

okay, gotta go get ready to go to the doctor. i'm gonna go to work afterward i think, if only because i left my school books at work.

this weekend: studying, studying, studying, going to target to get allergy pillow covers (if the doctor says this is allergies), making dinner with mouse tomorrow, studying, having vegetarian thanksgiving with jeanne and ryann on sunday? and also possibly meeting a kitten to adopt (i don't want to get my hopes up yet !)

we are 139

2010-09-15T12:18:00.004-04:00

yesterday was my 138th entry ! hayyy.

this morning my eyes were so swollen and i looked like this guy:

christina put zyrtec eyedrops in my eyes, which was super relieving, and i took a zyrtec- the alavert i was taking just wasn't cutting it, and i feel a little better, but i also had to drink a 32 oz iced coffee to combat it and now i feel like, Very Insane.

the bigggggg news is that weirdo's owners found out we had her, so we had to bring her back to them. it was a bummer because she's back outside already. the cat seriously has zero street smarts and is constantly almost getting hit by cars. i guess they'll be sorry when she's dead? we'll miss you, weirdo (and i reserve the right to name any future cat i get "weirdo II" with a silent "II").

at least jeanne got to meet her ! jeanne came over and petted her forever, and then we ordered delicious thai food. i had crazy allergy head/face so i didn't feel like going anywhere, so we hung out at my house and talked. jeanne is coooooooool. after she left, i read some of huckleberry finn. wow, huckleberry finn is a total sociopath ! i remember his exploits sounding a lot more fun and clever when i was a kid and now i'm like, "what a maniac." i'm kind of kidding, but kind of not kidding too. reading nothing but huckleberry finn and a million genocide books and articles this semester is probably going to turn me into an empty shell of a person who eats a lot of corn pone.

i got some yarn in the mail, too, to make baby stuff for some babies ! first, i'm making mouse's nephew scottie a tiny little mailman replica cardigan (using a patch from one of mouse's old work shirts), and this pattern:

and knitpicks worsted swish superwash in dark navy:

and i'm going to make the presto chango cardigan for helen's upcoming baby

with garnet heather swish worsted yarn, which looks a little like this but is more vibrant with black heathering:

and these faux jet buttons from etsy:

i'm pretty excited to do some baby knitting, since it seems like things will knit up fast and i have a little while before i need to finish, but i ammmmmm a little worried about knitting time vs. school time. i barely knitted anything over summer, but knitting in the summer also kind of sucks. oh, i also bought these buttons on etsy, for use with... some other baby thing? maybe a fancy baby sweater?

they seem too beautiful to waste on a baby (i love babies, but they don't know an ornate button from a shit-lined shoe) but they're also super tiny and i think they'd get lost on any kind of adult garment. i just need to meet a really elegant and fancy and worldly baby. maybe a millionaire baby? dannielynn birkhead? hillary swank?

i guess i should get to work- i'm going to read huckleberry finn on my lunch break, and do a little reading for my genocide class. i have to write a response paper for that class, which is intimidating because i don't really know what that is. here's what the professor wrote us:

I encourage everyone to try out a response paper for Thursday. This will help you codify the definitional questions involved in the study of genocide and perhaps clarify some deeper thoughts you have on the subject. It will also give you a chance to see how these response papers work. As I mentioned last Thursday, guiding questions will be posted each week. Feel free to use them as a guide when writing your response paper. I have found that the most successful response papers engage one question or a set of closely related questions in a sustained way. Response papers are semi-formal--please correct spelling and grammar before handing them in! You should also feel free to draw on personal experience, and by all means use the first person.

hopefully this all works out and it isn't graded too harshly- we have 13 weeks in class and only have to write 10 papers, so i could skip it, but i want all the feedback i can get, so i'm going to try my best and try not to be too worried about "doing it wrong."

okay cya !

the winds of quiet change

2010-09-14T09:38:00.003-04:00

mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn i woke up this morning and my eyes were dry, swollen, and itchy. i've never had this happen ever, but i've deduced that it's probably allergies? but allergies to WHAT ! i'll never know. i'm going to die.

hayyyy. so last night was my first writing seminar and... i'm underwhelmed. the professor was very nice, but there was a weird exchange at one point- i missed the first class, and we were supposed to bring laptops to do a writing diagnostic (which just involved... typing in a word document? why couldn't this be done on paper?), but i didn't have mine with me because i wasn't at the first class. i had to use hers, and we had this exchange:

her: please don't look at any of my documents
me: i wasn't planning on it !
her: good. that would be very disappointing

it seems like it will be a pretty easy class (knock on wood) so i'm not too worried. what i ammmmm worried about is that i bought my textbooks on amazon (because they were... $111 cheaper) and i may not get them by tomorrow. i really hope i do- amazon prime hasn't failed me yet. in the meantime, i may stop by the last word after work and see if they have a used copy of the huckleberry finn book (which is not just huckleberry finn) that i can take a look at.

i have like.. nothing else interesting to say because i'm hungry, dying of allergies, and dying of death, and am miserable. my morning was obliterated by a stupid meeting, and also i just realized i have to read like 238293088923 pages for genocide class !!!

p.s. remind me to talk about knitting tomorrow

shyness is nice and shyness can stop you

2010-09-13T08:58:00.004-04:00

what a wonderful weekend ! friday was jeanne's art show at benna's and it was phenomenal ! jess and laszlo came down from new york to go with us. everything was so beautiful in person and a million billion people came ! unfortunately, kat bought the sirin, but i bought a print of it ! and also bought prints of like.. every other possible thing. christina bought this one:

it was the most fun- jeanne's art looked so great and it was so impressive. there were a ton of people so i kept getting like social anxiety horror feelings, but i made myself stay inside and talk to new people and act fairly normal, though at one point i almost reached out and stroked a girl's hair? we were packed in like sardines and my brain misfired and was like, "if someone is this close to me it means we're on hair petting terms". luckily i didn't do it ! there were a million people there that i know and kinda know, and i got to meet nate's brother (finally) which was exciting !

after the show, we tried to go to the pope and were REBUFFED, so we went to the pathetic adobe which is always empty. i split a pitcher of apple margaritas with someone and got instantly hammered. p.s. apple margaritas taste like garbage. i actually got to talk to labuda for awhile, which is a feat (since i never leave my house) and got to talk to ryann and ned (ryann, ned, and kat are the friends of jeanne's that i'm trying to pokemon) !

on saturday, jess, laszlo, christina, and i tried to go to mi lah (not to be confused with my lai), a vegetarian restaurant in center city with a really amazing looking brunch menu. we got there at 2:30 (brunch is from 10-3) and.. were told that the kitchen was closed. we ended up going to monk's since we were already on 16th street, and we had a good time. i wish they lived here, but i'll have to settle for emailing jess and getting a weird al bro tat with laszlo.

when we came back, there was a beautiful stray cat on our porch and we petted her before dropping jess and laszlo at the bus station. then we went to whole foods, where i got a vegan carrot cake for carol's party that night ! when we got home we couldn't resist the beautiful stray anymore and i decided to take her ! so, if everything works out with her health / her relations with pizza, i'm going to keep her. her name is weirdo and she's really super tiny (like 6lbs) and very sweet and nice and has big eyes and a teeny mouth !

god she's great ! she's so soft ! and tiny ! after getting her situated in christina's room, mouse picked me up and we went to carol's house. i only got to see carol for a little bit, but i got to pet three great cats and hang out with jeanne and look at all of carol's stuff in her bedroom- she's the only person i know who has a kurt russell action figure.

i also saw her lil wayne - the carter record's spine and thought it was a tia carrere album about wayne. everyone was hanging out on the roof, and i was wearing a dress and didn't really know anyone and didn't feel comfortable like, awkwardly climbing out there and showing everyone my vagina so that was sort of a bummer. we left around 10:30 and went back to my house and tried to find videos of dusty's love on the internet (dusty's love being a saturday night live thing mouse is obsessed with, about a blind girl played by sarah michelle gellar who is in love with a disgusting alien who eats horses?). SURPRISINGLY, we came up empty-handed !

on sunday, i tried to do some reading for that social contract class but it was so oppressive and uninteresting that christina and i cleaned the livingroom as a distraction. after assessing the reading for the class, though, i decided that that class would be too hard to take in conjunction with my genocide class, and i dropped it. i signed up instead for a mandatory writing seminar (which i have to take at penn- no previous composition or english course i took can be used to fulfill that requirement) about huckleberry finn.

i'm your huckleberry

What is a literary education good for, anyway? What makes a Great Book? In this class we will look at the debates and crises that have shaped literary study over the twentieth century. Our entry point into these controversies will be Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has been alternately celebrated as a “Great American Novel” and trashed as a childish, racist, and outdated relic. As a critical community, the class will engage with debates over this novel and reflect on our own literary educations—what they have been and what they should be. Students will write, peer review, and revise several short essays throughout the semester. They will also keep a class journal, in which they will write informally both inside and outside of class.

the class meets on monday and wednesday, but only for 1.5 hours, which shouldn't be toooooo bad. hopefully i can handle it with the genocide class !

oh, mouse came over to to meet the kitty and to copy some good music from christina (i also might do that soon). tonight is my first meeting of the aforementioned writing class and i'm nervous and excited. i hope i can do it !

okay talk to you later.

ning ning ning nang ning nong ning nang

2010-09-10T09:20:00.004-04:00

dudes i am having major allergies ! well, not major allergies- i'm actually more accurately having minor allergies- but i don't usually have seasonal allergies !!!! my sinuses are killing me and so are my teeth. blehhhh.

sooooooo i had my first real class last night. not to say my summer classes weren't *real*, but they were both online. i was really, really nervous and ended up being like 30 minutes early, andddddd of course it was a classroom with these crappy desks:

i don't know if thin people have to think about stuff like this, but these are like the bane of every fat person or big-boobed person's existence. there was a woman in my class with big boobs whose boobs were just like.. resting on the desk and taking up all available desk space. for me, they're just super uncomfortable and it's a three hour class, so i opted out and just sat at a little table in the front. everyyyyyyyy other classroom in the building just had long tables and chairs ! every classroom !

aside from that, the class was really fucking cool and interesting. like everything she said made my brain excited. the professor herself is extremely knowledgeable and engaging, and surprisingly (for a genocide class) kept laughing? i think it was a combination of enthusiasm and incredulity. the only problem is that it's a 400 level class? i didn't know.. levels.. was something, i guess, so i didn't pay attention (i don't know how to go to school !) so i consulted with her after class. she said she thinks i'll do great and that first years have taken her class and done well, and that she doesn't grade on a curve because she's really into individual improvement and development of work, and she isn't a stickler about paper deadlines.

i'm going to go to the writing center on campus because i'm a good writer generally, but don't remember how to write papers. we have ten one page papers and one ten page paper, and for the ten page paper we have to hand in our proposals, our outlines, and our rough drafts so she can guide us and make suggestions, and i think that will work perfectly for me. i'm still nervous though and afraid i'm in over my head.

here's a picture of raphael lemkin, because there's not a lot of fun genocide pictures to post in a blog

i'm going over to the bookstore in a minute to get my books and i'm going to treat myself to some school supplies. hoorayyyyy.

okay ! big news ! tonight is jeanne's show at benna's. the show is called unclean spirits and it's russian folklore stuff and everything looks fucking awesome. check out her blog for more pictures of everything. i think this is my favorite piece and the one i'm going to try to buy:

i'm so excited and super proud of her because everything looks so great and because she worked super hard on this. her work keeps getting better and better with every show ! alksdkjaskd jeanne. !!!!

alsooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo jess and laszlo are coming tonight and coming to the show with us ! i'm passing on my old laptop to jess so she's coming down to get it. which reminds me that i forgot to take all of my shit off of it so i'll have to do that tonight while everyone is sleeping.

this weekend is going to be cool.

these eyes will stay wide

2010-09-09T10:16:00.005-04:00

basically i don't want to talk about anything except how nervous i am about school. i'm really scared ! what if everyone hates me ! what if i'm not smart enough ! or rather, not... academic-y enough ! i have to write a ten page paper for the genocide class which is making me really fucking nervous- not just the paper writing stuff, which is huge because i don't really remember how to write a research paper, but because of my procrastination issues. i somehow managed to get this done when i was 18, though, so maybe i can pull it off now?

this is the part of the syllabus that makes me most nervous, though:

Each student will be asked to choose a date to guide the classroom discussion for the first 30 minutes of class.

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh what the fuck ! why would you do that to me ! why ! i'm pretty good in front of audiences and i'm not shy or anything, but i'm.. not a college person and don't know how to do this junk !

in other sad nerd news, i actually dressed up for my first day of school? my mom sent me an email this morning that said, "i wish i was there to braid your hair on the first day!" me too, mom. me too. i'm wearing:

with a wide black belt

and two of my coworkers have said i looked cute, which of course i found annoying because i hate coworkers talking about my body or appearance. because i'm the dourest feminist !

bleh. i don't know. i'm too nervous and rushed to write anything good- i have meetings from 11-3 today, both redundant in one way or another. one specifies that a boxed lunch will be provided, but it's most assuredly a red bell pepper stuffed with a green bell pepper for the vegetarians (aka me). i actually told the guy running these meetings that i'm allergic to bell peppers (not a lie. well, a lie. but i would rather eat any of the stuff i'm allergic to !) but i am willing to bet $9,000,000,000000,00,00000,000,000.47 that he forgot.

sorry this entry is so grumpy and negative. i'm really, really, really, really scared.

p.s. clark park is closed for renovation ! boooo.
p.p.s. jeanne's show is tomorrow !

i say that every hour

2010-09-08T13:33:00.004-04:00

first update from my new laptop ! i'm at home today because i got the brilliant idea to try to find a suitable schoolbag in my closet last night and got the worst dust allergy attack ever. my sleep patterns have been iffy at best lately, but i had watery stinging eyes/sinus pain/tooth pain (a weird allergy symptom i get)/a runny nose/an itchy throat until 5am or so. the worst part is that i didn't find a suitable bag. actually wait the worst part is that i feel like shit !

yesterday i heard back about my transfer credits. out of 20 possible credits, seven will transfer. i expected zero, so that is really encouraging ! work will pay for me to take six credits a year, so 7 credits takes a whole year off of my school career. the only trick here is that i have to get the syllabuses for those seven classes so they can determine if they fulfill requirements or if they're electives. surprisingly, i tracked down 4 of them within hours, and the other 3 are allegedly on their way- i had to get current syllabuses because um... i took the classes 9 years ago, but they accept those.

after work, i met up with mouse at green line (where i had a vegan chicken salad sandwich and giant iced coffee). before he got there, this dude came up to the counter behind me and said, "do you guys have any SKIN MILK??????" and i cracked up in the dude's face and was horrified by how rude i was being and then it made me laugh even harder so i was just like... laughing like a maniac for five or so minutes. ahhhh. it's still making me laugh to think about it ! mouse and i went on a short walk and got subpar fruit at supreme and a hairbrush at cvs.

and thennnnnnn when i came home, i transferred all of my music onto my new laptop, installed some programs on it, filled out my refund form for the free ipod i got with the laptop (i sent it to my mom) and did some other junk.

two more things !

1) i need comfortable and cute walking shoes. i need shoes that are as close to being barefoot as possible (that aren't those shoes with the individual toes), and are good for wide feet. the most comfortable shoes i've ever had, the birkenstock annapolis, are like $170 everywhere or on ebay but not in my size (i accidentally won a pair that are too big). i might go with the birkenstock eden?

2) i start school tomorrow and i'm really fucking scared. i'm nervous about like... every possible aspect of everything, from not being smart enough to the professor not liking me to the desks being uncomfortable for fat people. ugh.

anywayyyy blehhhhhhhh blehaslkdajslkgg wish me luck bleh.

my fiction beats the hell out of my truth

2010-09-07T10:09:00.003-04:00

heyyyy dudes. i had a pretty low-key, uneventful weekend. on friday, i actually went out somewhere ! christina and i met amber at the south philly tap room. i haven't seen amber in like a billion years because she moved out to the sticks a few years ago, but she's back ! it was really great to see her. the south philly tap room is famous because they used to serve lion meat, but they don't serve that now and they didn't have any vegetarian lion meat.

i got a strawberry and asparagus salad, which probably sounds disgusting but was very delicious (it was a warm salad with spinach and pine nuts and goat cheese and red onions), and... a tomato sandwich. it was the special, and one of my ultimate comfort foods, and it was really good, but paying $8 for that sandwich is insane. also it was on really thick good bread, which is sort of a nightmare when your sandwich fillings are like, some goo.

after dinner, we went to capo giro to get gelato (i got dark chocolate and this weird candied black cherry one that is The Best) and hung out. it was so so so nice to see amber. after that, we came home and i can't remember what happened after that. i probably stayed up real late.

on saturday, christina and i went to pick up her computer and get a cord to transfer stuff from my old computer, and we went to loop to visit amber (two days in a row !). seriously, loop is my favorite yarn store ever. they have an awesome selection and everything is really well-stocked, and they put the prices on everything. they also have really good sales. i got two balls of noro chirimen #1 and another ball of sheep shop yarn.

noro chirimen #1

sheep shop one, lilac

when we got home, i went over to mouse's to watch mouse and mike wrestle. that wasn't too bad, i mostly just sat on a blanket in the grass- it was actually almost cold out ! then we got indian buffet for dinner, which was already more bland and less spicy cause the penn kids are back, and went to capo giro again (!). then mike came over to my house to watch survivorman.

on sunday, mouse and i met up and ate a late lunch in fairmount park. we picked a random spot and there was like one thousand geese there (to my delight and mouse's chagrin). mouse wasn't feeling well so he didn't even protest too much when i fed the geese some (pitted) cherries. i really should not have fed them anything butttt they came up to me and it was really cute and scary, cause geese are assholes. it's also funny because the geese were hanging out on a bike path, and instead of running off to the sides into the grass when bikes came, they'd haul ass down the bike path. luv u, geese.

after the park, we came back to my house and watched the terminator. maybe it's because i'd never seen it in HD before, but i never noticed that you can see arnold's dong in the beginning? also, i really want to buy the shirt kyle reese wears from old navy or something.

i posted that sentiment on facebook and my brother said "didn't he just wear a trenchcoat over a flashbeagle shirt?"

yesssssssterday i was supposed to go see mouse's band, but i got horrible diarrhea from the pound of cherries i ate the day before (i'm worried about the geese !) what better day than to finish the girl with the dragon tattoo. i thought this would be a fun book to read to make fun of, but it was actually like the dullest garbage ever and not even fun/funny !

so, if you haven't read this book, i'll save you the trouble- the plot is that this disgraced journalist gets hired to investigate the disappearance of a wealthy industrialist's niece in the 60s. it turns out that her brother and father are serial killers and serial rapists and she ran away to australia to live in secrecy or something. and also some boring stuff about business.

cons
- the book was super poorly translated, either by someone who doesn't speak english or someone who doesn't speak swedish
- it was basically like.. rape and torture porn?
- it took 350 fucking pages for something interesting to happen and then they dragged it out for like 350 more pages
- the business stuff? no one gives a shit.
- he forgot to really put the title character in the book, and repeated the same things about her over and over and over again- an ANOREXIC BITCH, socially awkward, socially retarded, damaged, a VICTIM, pierced eyebrows, tattoos, etc. also does anyone else think that 95lbs at "just barely 4'11" doesn't sound that skinny? it's small but it's in the normal weight range for that height.
- i mentioned this before, but he forgot to make lisbeth salander socially awkward in her interactions with people, despite telling us that she was 100000 times, and he forgot to make mikael blomkvist charming in HIS interactions despite telling us he was 100000 times.
- the rape and torture was just tooooooo fucking over the top and unnecessary and unbelievable
- there were too many fucking people in the vanger family. i kept having to flip back to see who people were.
- super poorly edited
- the book was also basically an advertisement for apple computers and he never once said 'his computer' or 'her laptop', it was always 'his ibook' or 'her powerbook'.

i have a million other complaints with how crappy this stupid book was but i can't even remember them cause it was so boring.

soooooo, my classes start thursday. i'm really nervous about getting books and stuff ! i got the syllabuses for both classes, and they both mention a required text, but then they also mention other books we'll be reading in the weekly plans, so am i supposed to buy those too? i'm really nervous in general because i haven't been to an actual classroom in like ten years. buhhh what if everyone hates me and i'm too stupid for school?

i'm at work now, and i look really cool.

p.s. once my friend diana posted on a messageboard about those tomato sandwiches and this dude said, "ahhhh, the classic t"
p.p.s. Initially, Zona's cause of death was listed as "everlasting faint"; later, this was changed to "childbirth".

i've made a huge mistake

2010-09-03T09:34:00.004-04:00

mannnnnn. i've been hemming and hawing about getting a new laptop for school and yesterday i impulsively decided to go get one, and i made a terrible choice. i used a friend's macbook pro and loved it, and mistakenly thought she had a 17". THEN, on the table at the store, there were two sizes of macbooks which i thought were the 15" and 17", and the 17" one looked perfect for my needs, so i got the 17" one. wellllll it turns out i'm very stupid and there is actually a 13" macbook and the two i saw were 13" and 15" and the laptop i got is fucking gigantic. i don't mean to complain and have like, the brattiest most privileged problems ever- it was just a stupid mistake on my part and now i'm stuck with a very expensive laptop that isn't actually convenient for my needs.

it was only $100 more than the one i MEANT to get, and wow will look great on it, and it's really beautiful and will be great for watching movies and whatever, but it's just like... not practical. i like to bring my laptop on vacation with me or bring it places outside my room (away from all my cool stuff) to do work or bring it to friend's houses and sit in silence while we're both on our laptops and i don't even think i have a bag big enough to fit this thing. blehhh.

i know this is the stupidest problem ever and it's my own fault for not understanding how measurement works so i don't blame you for not having sympathy.

i didn't end up doing much last night. i watched the phillies game (9 run 7th inning?) and i intended to clean my room but what i ended up doing was laying on my bed watching youtube videos for like three hours instead of cleaning my room. you'll be happy to know that the gin blossoms music has held up, and that i now know how to crank that (courtesy of soulja boy).

big plans for the weekend: doing nothing, knitting, reading, setting up my new laptop, having adventures with mouse? christina invited me to go to the south philly taproom with her and amber tonight. i obviously love christina and i haven't seen amber in YEARS and i love her too, but i'm pretty wiped out and socially exhausted right now. maybe i'll be brave. the south philly taproom used to serve lion meat

they also have stuff like wild boar and bear bacon (which isn't exciting to me because i'm a florida redneck). i wonder what the vegetarian options are? mandrake root tacos !!!

vegan dodo eggs.

so, yeah. buyer's remorse, exciting weekend with mouse, exciting evening with christina and amber?, boring weekend holing up in my room reading about the civil war and watching survivorman.

on the road again

2010-09-02T10:29:00.002-04:00

booooo, my mom is leaving today. i feel bad for being such an impatient jerk. i haven't really had any time to decompress and relax since the first week of august- like, thankfully i've had a lot of fun stuff to do and cool friends hanging around but i'm sort of like... at a breaking point where i need to be able to sit in my room and watch netflix and fart without any obligations. still, that's my mom, and i shouldn't have snapped at her so much. i feel super super super guilty and like the worst child ever.

we had a pretty low-key evening last night- i was super exhausted after work so we ate chinese food and watched a very riveting television show about celebrity murders. blehhhhh i love my mom more than anything or anyone and i'm going to miss her. christina and i may go to florida though in the winter !!!!

i have a credit evaluation interview with a lady from the program i'm in for school in a few minutes. i have... 15 classes that would theoretically transfer and 3 that wouldn't (i got Cs in them). i'm actually assuming that zero will transfer or that i'll get one or two electives at best, so i don't have my hopes up, but it can't hurt to try- if two classes transfer, that makes this ordeal one semester shorter.

i actually took too long to write this so i already talked to her- she said she'd do the evaluation tomorrow morning and tell me what could possibly be transferred, and then i have to get syllabuses from all the classes. whattttt. i went to college like ten years ago ! she also said that she thinks more stuff than i think will transfer, which might be kind of cool and less bleak. i'm stilllll not going to get my hopes up though.

in other news, i'm excited for the long weekend and excited in general to be able to relax with some giant boring books

speaking of boring, i'm going to go do some work now (ZING !), which includes, today, digging 5050500505 t-shirts out of our basement.

p.s. my friend dean is supposed to stop by tonight to give me a birthday present he got me like 4 years ago. i am NOT banking on him showing up.

reunited blah blah blah blah goooood

2010-09-01T08:48:00.004-04:00

hey guyssss i'm back at work. today our new website launches anddddd it's move-in day for penn students. today is going to be really, really cool.

my mom is still here until tomorrow- i initially thought that she was leaving september 5, but she's leaving the 2nd ! it's been great having her here, though i have lost my patience a few times. like, the #1 thing that stresses me out is people asking me questions and making me repeat stuff and she is like... a constant stream of repetitive questions. she told me that i was being mean on monday though and i'm proud to say that i've been the nicest daughter ever since. yesterday she asked me some iteration of "what are we doing today" 13 times in 2 hours and i didn't even get mad !

this is my mom's favorite painting cause it looks like me and her

we've done all kinds of stuff this week, but most of it has been shopping. when my mom visits, we end up shopping a lot, but like... shopping at ross and the dollar store and stuff. it's hard for me to post about this stuff because the least interesting conversations and blogs are all about the stuff people bought, but at the same time finding cheap plus size clothing is pretty exciting. i always forget that ross is a decent option for plus size stuff (well, shirts and dresses- they had a single pair of pants in my size and it was a pair of old lady peach elastic waist pleated pants). i got two neat stuffy society lady dresses and a bunch of shirts with puffy sleeves and a shrug by my favorite company, candy rain.

i wonder where ross gets their plus size stock from? like, i've never seen any of these brands in stores or anything ever. if i knew what stores carried like, candy rain and leena jeans and steves of new york and stuff (that last one is made up) i'd definitely go there and get work clothes ! though i guess getting everything for like $7 each is a plus.

we also went to famous footwear, where i got... two pairs of shoes made by fergie. i don't really know anything about fergie except she peed herself in public and didn't give a shit (cool) and she's in the black-eyed peas (not cool) (also i think EVERYONE is in the black eyed peas, but especially wyclef and ?uestlove), butttttt her shoe line is called FERGALICIOUS? she has to know how disgusting that sounds. it sounds like putting your tongue on a moldy piece of cheese. i hate it ! they were $30 and buy one/get one, so it was a pretty good deal. they also fit my advanced ankles (though i don't really have comparatively big ankles)

so, what else did we do? we've hung out with mouse a few times, mike, and diana, and of course christina. we've watched a few movies, walked around, and eaten a lot of food. i love my mom, but it'll be exciting to get back to (relatively) normal eating once she's gone because my bowels are in turmoil.

oh, i also finished reading mockingjay. i can't really get too in depth with a review because a bunch of people i know haven't read it yet :(

i'll try to not ruin the book for you guys. overall, it was much better than catching fire and a good ending for the series, buttttt

- katniss became the most unlikable character ever by the end of the books (and suzanne collins kind of went nuts with the EVERYONE LOVES KATNISS AND ALWAYS HAS AND THINKS SHE'S SO SPECIAL AND LOVES HERRRR thing)
- i do not agree with the resolution of the team gale/team peeta thing
- some major characters died and there was like no reaction or emotion or even proper death scenes for them?
- muttations are the dumbest

okay, i guess i'm going to go. i should be able to write a better entry tomorrow when i don't have 10,000 people breathing down my neck !

p.s. please remind me to post about adult mutant ninja turtles (a series of texts mouse sent me).

woke up too late

2010-08-27T09:07:00.003-04:00

what's up dudes ! i have learned this morning that angel on angel is a vampire, not an angel, and completed my financial aid forms (to possibly get grants !) for going back to school. what a productive morning !

having my mom here is great, though she asks a thousand questions and nothing makes me cagier than people asking me a bunch of questions ! i've tried to keep my temper in check. having christina around is a great buffer because christina is endlessly patient and is like... the most socially intelligent. plus my mom has essentially kidnapped her and calls us 'her girls' and calls her 'my other daughter' now.

me, the old baby

we haven't really done a terrific amount of stuff. yesterday we went to bobby's burger palace, a restaurant on penn's campus owned by bobby flay. i wasn't hungry (annnnnd they don't have veggie burgers anyway, and i already had an upset stomach so i didn't want to eat grilled cheese), but i had a few of christina's sweet potato fries and they were pretty incredible

then we went to the last word (the huge used bookstore in my neighborhood), where i was overwhelmed as usual. i grabbed a nice old library copy of the figure in the shadows by john bellairs

and this YA novel by joyce carol oates called big mouth and ugly girl. i think joyce carol oates is an abysmal writer and i've absolutely hated every adult book i've written by her, but maybe she's... better at writing YA books? i thought i'd give it a shot.

i have tried reading mockingjay a little, but after catching fire, i don't really care anymore? like, the obvious outcome is that peeta will sacrifice himself for katniss, she'll get to live and be with gale, the rebels will win, and life will be hard but the fight will be worth it. disclaimer: please don't tell me i'm wrong if you've already read it cause i'm like 70 pages in. haha.

i alsooooo bought the graveyard book by neil gaiman- i feel sort of lucky that he released an extremely popular novel based on my favorite chapter in a short story book a respectable time before i read the short story book, because it was $3 on amazon !

to counteract all the YA fiction i'm consuming, i also got used copies of shelby foote's the civil war: a narrative because brooke hyped it up so much to me when she was here. my american history to 1865 class actually weirdly stopped short of the actual civil war? so i'm going to slake my thirst with 99239230923 pages about it.

anyway, what else? oh, we went to cvs and then we came home and my mom dyed my hair for me. as a person who has extremely tangly hair and was formerly a CHILD with extremely tangly hair (who lacked the adult shame and instinct to brush it), having my mom comb and mess with my hair was very triggering !!! i was going OW OW OW OW STOP OW OW GODDDDD OW STOP every five seconds. she did a really good job though. i dyed it this color:

but it is not quite purpley art teachery red in real life, because my hair comes out the same shade of auburn no matter what color i dye it.

tonight i'm going to go see dangerbird and red devil in my neighborhood (sans mom) and then come home and hang out with my mom. she's totally a night owl- she stays up until like 3-4am. so much for trying to fix my sleep schedule.

p.s. i took vacation days monday and tuesday to hang out with her so i MAY not update.

roxy the obscure

2010-08-25T09:02:00.003-04:00

somehow i totally fucking forgot my mom was visiting today? like, my mom lives 1000 miles away and i only see her once or twice a year, so it isn't like.. her driving down from the suburbs or something. how did i forget !

i did not update yesterday because we had a meeting from 9am to 3pm. we had our team retreat for work. i'm sort of bummed with the format- my team is split into two halves, and each half would have their own retreat in previous years. my team's retreat was going to my boss' house, eating a ton of delicious food, going over our business plans, and then going home early. i understand the value of having both halves of the team go over our business plans together, but it was just... a six hour meeting in our conference room. totally not fun. other teams got to paint ceramics !

that said, it wasn't too bad and it went by super fast and we got to go home afterward.

yesterday when i got home i took an epic nap (bad form !) and made a card for my craft swap recipient. i'd love to show it to you guys but i'm afraid that she'll somehow see it ! i also did a little more work on my herringbone neck thing:

seriously, most relaxing pattern ever. it looks really cool and it's super easy and knits up really fast. i've probably spent less than an hour on it so far. i also want to marry sheep shop yarn. here are some other colors i'm considering buying when i'm a millionaire:

modern

lilac

royalty

lime

ocean

at $12.50/skein at loop, and with my commitment to not buying yarn without a project in mind, i'm not really likely to buy all of those, but i love them ! and i've read that the yarn is discontinued so if i don't buy it now, when can i ! but i'm a miser and a scrooge and unless i can think up some projects i'm not getting them ! you guys just watched me convince myself of that, by the way.

oh, what else? i got mockingjay in the mail today ! i can't wait to read it and most likely be disappointed by it. i'm currently reading the girl with the dragon tattoo so i can write a scathing review of it a la my twilight reviews, but it is actually too boring and dull to even... scathe.

i'm about 150 pages in and so far all he's done is

- call everyone by their last names and have the characters all each other by their last names 300000000x
- use the phrase "wennerstrohm affair" like 700000x
- describe every single piece of furniture in every room ever
- wrote the most unnatural dialogue? like in an attempt to make the main character seem cool and professional, he actually made him the rudest most socially awkward person in the universe. and yet he writes about how awkward and weird lisbeth salander is but all of her conversations with people are polite and normal?

it's just like... not compelling? at all. i also feel like i'm reading "the socially awkward guy with no defining characteristics" because the aforementioned girl with the dragon tattoo has, so far, sent an email and took a picture of a thing. maybe she shows up more later, but i'm not really that interested because so far she's just a one dimensional character written by a dude who obviously wanted to fuck a thin "goth/punk" woman.

anyway, i have to rearrange my schedule a little because of my mom's visit. i was going to hang out with mouse and kev tonight but i probably shouldn't leave my mom alone on her first day here. i'm still going to see dangerbird and red devil on friday. i may also take off of work monday and tuesday ! the sky's the limit.

i'll leave you with this picture of baby meerkats in honor of my newfound love of meerkat manor

did you know meerkats are under 2lbs and 1 foot tall??? best dudes.

a light so dim

2010-08-23T11:38:00.002-04:00

what's up ! hey ! it's monday and i feel refreshed and totally not annoyed at work even though i had to make a stupid powerpoint ! what's up !

on friday, i got out of work at 3 and immediately came home to take a giant nap. afterward i knitted for awhile, and then got ready to go to mill creek to see mouse's band. mill creek is in my neighborhood and is a fairly cheap and large bar with good food, buttttttt they didn't uphold the smoking ban until recently so i tried to avoid it. luckily they actually started to, so i could go there and bring my knitting and not end up stinking. i had a really good time- drinks were like $2.50 and dangerbird was good. i had minimal pleasant interaction with my exbf where we acknowledged that we barely remember dating aside from watching event horizon together and playing video games.

i haven't actually gotten drunk in awhile so i was trying really hard to act serious but everything i was saying was nonsense. also when i drink a lot i can't feel my teeth and christina said i was tapping my teeth constantly. whateverrrrrr. i had a good time, and mouse was unusually funny- i think he had a pepsi or something.

on saturday, christina and i had a wonderful day out. we went downtown to see a movie at the prince music theater. i've seen lots of movies there, as part of the film fest- almost all smart people boring silent movies with organ accompaniment and stuff- but since they are sort of struggling to stay open right now (and will most likely be sold by TD bank soon), they're showing first run movies. soooooo we saw the other guys at the prince !

it was... surprisingly good? it was really really super fucking weird, so of course christina and i liked it. i can't really give an intelligent review of it because it was just a bunch of weirdos being weird for 90 minutes, but it had a surprisingly low incidence of misogynist and homophobic jokes (though it did have a few, but i guess the joke was that marky mark was an asshole). i recommend watching it for free when it's on hbo.

after the movie, we... went to ihop ! i don't think i'd ever actually been to one before, but i felt like a teenager in the suburbs (though in the suburb of my rural shithole, WE used to go to denny's ! and the rich kids went to steak and shake). i want to invent a restaurant where they serve you one half of a pancake because that's all i ever want.

i got these without all the shit on them !

i got the harvest grain and nut pancakes which were pretty good, and they also watermelon lemonade which was cool. after we ate we were stuffed, so we came home to try to entertain ourselves without cable. we watched serenity, which i surprisingly didn't hate (i am Not a Joss Whedon Person) ! it was funny and entertaining, and redbelt from the movie redbelt is in it. he's super handsome and a wonderful actor and i really wish they'd chosen him to be the doctor instead of matt smith (that was a rumor for awhile)

i also finally finished my craft swap scarf ! i even blocked it, which i've never done before. the only thing that makes me feel weird is that like... it emitted a gross sulfur smell when it got wet and i still think it smells weird? anyway, it flattened out beautifully and is definitely long enough (which is what i was worried about). i just have to make a card for it and get it in the mail tomorrow. blocking really makes a huge difference, i feel stupid for never doing it before.

please ignore the dirty underwear and lampshade

on sunday, mouse and i were originally going to swim somewhere, but the weather was shitty, so we went to the mall. i saw two movies in one weekend, which is unusual cause i almost never go to the movies ! we decided to see the expendables because we're both meathead jocks.

what a surprise that my idea of what is cool and sexy does not match up with a 60 year old man's idea of cool and sexy? the women dressed like sylvester stallone got their costumes from kelly bundy's estate sale and the men dressed like... well, old douchebags. lots of the scenes were super tight shots of peoples' faces (rough when the cast is mostly like... plastic surgery disasters whose faces look like the dumpster behind the leather and ham factory) because some of the actors were never in the same room as others (there's a whole scene with stallone, arnold, and bruce willis where it's obvious they were never all in the same place) and the dialogue was full of super awkward one liners delivered poorly by stupid musclemen or thoughtful stallone-written dialogue sputtered out by people whose action movies never required them to learn english.

randy couture (mma fighter) played the crazy one and they kept talking about how crazy he was and how he sees a THERAPIST, but randy couture is like a bowl of oatmeal who can wrestle and was totally bland, but they did put a hawaiian shirt on him to indicate how zany he was. overall, i think this may have actually been a slightly better movie if stallone hadn't tried to shove every action movie star ever into it. the plot was mildly interesting and some of stallone's intelligence and sensitivity accidentally leaked out at some points. i also appreciate that stallone didn't actually get to kiss his love interest because she was super young and gorgeous and he was older than her father (a character in the movie).

speaking of her, what does it say about modern film that when the bad guys capture her, i was relieved when they only waterboarded her instead of trying to rape her? i've never seen a movie with a female hostage or prisoner where she wasn't raped, assaulted, or nearly raped and assaulted, so it was refreshing that they... well, used some other kind of torture? of course like 20 minutes later some prison guards try to rape her, though, but at least stallone saves her (um, spoiler?).

overall it was terrible, of course, but i appreciated that everyone got their moment to shine- randy couture got to wrestle steve austin, jet li got to karate dolph lundgren, mickey rourke gets a sort of touching soliloquy (he's such a good actor, too bad he looks like a hot dog you microwaved too long), jason statham got to beat up 2 different groups of guys, "crews" (the... pepe le pew of the movie white chicks?) got to blow people up with a gun, etc. plus i have a weird boner for dolph lundgren that i've had my entire life, so it was nice to see him wearing sleeveless shirts and picking on people who were smaller than him again. i do feel bad that eric roberts and steve austin were such BAD GUYS though- eric roberts is a soulless businessman who exploits a whole nation because of his greed, and steve austin is a thug who likes hitting women. luckily they both meet an end that involves guns, swords, AND fire (spoilers !!!!!).

jet li and jason statham were pretty fly too.

after the movie, we walked around the mall for a bit, which was fun because like what the fuck are me and mouse doing at the mall? we gawked at the rich people and how expensive all their stupid shit was, and i got some body butter at the body shop on sale (strawberry, satsuma, and moringa). then we went to su tao, the vegan chinese buffet in malvern. that didn't go that well because neither of us were buffet hungry, but i really wanted to go there cause i haven't been since my... 25th? birthday.

featured: spring rolls, fried vegetables, lemon chicken, some other chicken, steamed dumplings, fried rice

thennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn i came home and was very quiet while christina watched 'true blood' (which was excruciating because i kept wanting to go 'true BLEHHHHHHHHHH' in a dracula voice ! but i didn't !) and started my herringbone neck warmer with the sheep shop one i bought last weekend.

the pattern is super easy and fun to knit- i had a hard time making myself put it down to go to bed ! but eventually i did, and then i woke up and came to work, and now i'm going to eat lunch because it took me forever to write this.

p.s. when these aging action movie dudes get plastic surgery, why do none of them get their broken noses fixed? they all go right for lip plumping.

chipwich for sale

2010-08-20T09:15:00.003-04:00

there is free food at work today, and my advice for everyone is just eat the fucking food and stop talking about the food. WHAT'S THIS? WHAT'S THIS? WHERE DID THIS COME FROM? WHO BROUGHT IN FOOD? WHY IS THERE FOOD?

between today and yesterday (where one other person and i spent 5 hours cleaning out a closet with only brief and annoying interruptions from other people) i'm very ready to have two days off of work. i love my job 90% of the time and love 90% of my coworkers but i am Over Them right now.

i guess the highlight of my afternoon was that i registered for fall classes ! unfortunately, the two classes i wanted were on tuesday and thursday and i wanted to leave at least one of those days free in part for *cough* raiding *cough* (in case cataclysm is totally awesome). i know that sounds lame and nerdy but i think i'd die of jealousy if my friends were raiding without me. also i can just take the other class next semester ! i have other reasons, too, but that one was the first one i thought of D:

anyyyyyway, the classes i registered for are:

Course title The Social Contract
Course description This course examines the history and significance of social contract doctrine for modern social and political thought. In particular, we will study the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and J.J. Rousseau. We will also study the utilitarian critique of social contract doctrine and the utilitarian views of David Hume, Adam Smith, J.S. Mill, and Karl Marx's criticism of liiberal-democratic justice. This course thus serves as an introduction to many of the major figures in modern political philosophy.

Course title The Comparative History of Genocide
Course description In this seminar we will study modern genocide with an emphasis on the causes of genocidal processes, possible preventative measures, and social healing after the fact. Particular focus will be on the Holocaust, Rwanda, Bosnia- Herzegovina and Darfur, but other cases will also be examined, including the Herero and Armenian genocides, the genocide of Iraqi Kurds, Guatemala and Cambodia. Using scholarly texts, fiction, film and other media, we will discuss the definition of genocide and its representation, the long- and short-term historical contexts that enable genocide, the question of the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the value of comparative genocide studies,the problem of international response, and the relationship between genocide and other forms of social and political violence.

i'm excited ! though i regret not being able to take creative non-fiction this semester !

after work, mouse and i went to watch rocky on the art museum steps !

it was put on by rolling roadshow, and they totally didn't have their shit together and the movie started an hour late, with a bunch of super loud unpleasant sound and video loops of good luck chuck, but they were totally lucky that rocky is such a good fucking movie and that no one in the audience had batteries to throw. here's a quick recap !

south paw, south jersey, south camden

it STINKS !

working hard nowwwwww

cut me, mick

adrian !!!!!!

we had a good time. mouse is cool.

no big plans this weekend- tonight i'm going to see mouse's band at millcreek (one of my exboyfriend's bands is also playing. we aren't on bad terms but we used to be, and i haven't seen him in like 238283 years. it will probably be normal and we won't talk to each other !), and on sunday i'm doing something fun? i assume almost all weekend will be consumed by finishing my craft swap project, ughhh. bye guys !

cleaning cleaning cleaning cleaning

2010-08-19T09:28:00.003-04:00

ugh. today is clean up day at work, meaning that we have to spend the entire day cleaning our office. i have to make this fast ! i'm like supremely annoyed already and want to punch everyone in the face. i cleaned out my area in december and only have stuff i want to keep, but i feel guilty not doing anything. at the same time, i'm not going to start on cleaning shared areas without them because... i don't put any stuff in those areas and would only be assisting them as a courtesy to them.

yesterday i seriously had no idea what to do with myself because i'm used to having to either go to class or do homework every day ! i laid on my bed for like 25 minutes smiling because i didn't have anything to do ! mostly i worked on my craft swap project and watched survivorman because i have a weird boner for les stroud.

sigh. i know he looks like such a stepdad but he's so cool and he has cool chest hair and he knows everything about the earth and will eat gross stuff and can build shelters. last night he was like twisting up roots and drinking the dirty water from them. sigh.

anyway, this scarf. if you recall, i'm making an entrelac scarf for my recipient in an anonymous craft swap. the deadline to get it to them is 8/27. i'm almost totally done and then i have to block it. i think this may be my last obligation knitting project. like, the pattern is super super super fun to knit (though i sort of hate the way it looks) but the whole process has been totally joyless because i'm stressed about finishing it in time and stuff.

someone else's more beautiful entrelac scarf

what else? oh, on recommendation, i read m is for magic by neil gaiman. the last thing i read by neil gaiman was coraline, which i was pretty lukewarm about, but m is for magic is short stories.

for the most part, i really loved it, but it was like eating a delicious dodo egg omelet. like, eating something really great that you've never tasted before and knowing once it's over, that's it. in a couple of pages he created a really beautiful reality for the story to take place in and then as soon as you get comfortable in that world, the story is over. he gives very little explanation- like, he'll refer to character histories, or that someone is a living boy raised by ghosts, and he won't tell you WHY that happened, just that that's what's happening now. that's one of my favorite things (especially in science fiction- i don't care WHY the technology works, i just want to see what it does !). that said, a couple of the stories were total stinkers (humpty dumpty story, rogues society story).

oh my god. i have to go. i seriously am going to go ballistic because my coworkers are so annoying ! like, we're being 'casual' today since we're cleaning instead of working, and... i don't usually have to hear them talk this much. also a startling number are totally helpless and are like, "WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS? WHERE SHOULD I PUT THIS? HOW DO I RECYCLE? WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS? SHOULD I KEEP THIS?" about every. fucking. thing. they. pick. up. alskdjalksd.

hopefully i hurt myself today doing a bunch of stupid manual labor and can take off tomorrow ! bye !

you're the whole package

2010-08-18T08:58:00.004-04:00

mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn okay my visit with brooke was the best ever ! i actually made an outline for this entry because i don't want to forget anything but i still think i'm going to cause it was so action-packed.

on friday, brooke went out with a friend, and i came home and had my german interview. it feels like it was a million years ago now ! i was nervous, and the person interviewing me was a german woman from GERMANY (or maybe austria or something) !!! she was super super nice and helpful and fun to talk to, and had a really beautiful speaking voice, so that made it easier. at the end, she told me i did really well and that i should continue on with german because i have the potential to sound really nice in german !

after the interview, i finished some other assignments for german and intended to do my final exam, but i re-read the instructions (in german) and realized the exam wouldn't be online until sunday. so i knitted and hung out with brooke when she got home ! brooke, christina, and i had the best time because we are all the weirdest ever.

on saturday, brooke and i went to the benjamin franklin underground museum, which is my favorite museum in the city. it's free, and weird, and so crummy and charming. unfortunately, the (totally stoned) park ranger told us it's closing this year. i'm bummed, because the utter lameness was the best part ! it was especially sad this time because the cool hallway was dismantled- here's a before and after:

we did see this, though, which made our lives:

we are going to start a history blog called COOL THOUGHTS, buttttt that name is taken on every blogging site and is mostly like, a couple of confucious and jim morrison quotes. booooo ! there was also a ben franklin film at the museum and we had to leave cause we laughed so hard that a 9 year old glared at us.

after the museum, we stopped to get some colored pencils. the security guard at rite aid, a middle aged self-described CRAYOLA FANATIC (cutest) suggested we check out k-mart for a better deal, and he was correct. i ended up getting the 50 color box:

we met up with christina after that and went to the girls rock philly camp showcase. oh my god, cutest best coolest most inspiring ever. if you aren't sure what they do, check out their website. the bands were all super good and all sounded like music i already listen to. most of their lyrics were about being strong and cool and smart. my personal favorite was called burrito daydream and they had songs about how awesome food is. like, the power of seeing young women proudly and unabashedly talking about eating and food was almost too much for me, because most adult women i know can't do that.

NOT girls rock philly, but very cute

brooke and i had good talks about this, related to a blog post by jen twigg- this camp is such an amazing thing because women are judged so harshly and made to feel so unwelcome in music that most adult women i know wouldn't feel comfortable doing what these little girls did, and it's a bummer. like, how many dudes do you know who totally suck at their instruments who feel comfortable and entitled to be in bands? and how many women? women are judged so harshly and judgments are made about their gender related to their capability ("i just don't like female voices," "girls suck at guitar") that they basically aren't allowed to have fun and fuck around and make cool music, and it fucking sucks. i hope all these girls are empowered by this experience and somehow remain untouched by all of that.

anywayyyyy after that, we got my broken glasses repaired and went to dinner at singapore, my personal favorite of our 20392093 vegan chinese restaurants, with sarah jane ! i was happy to see her, because she's hilarious and i don't see her enough.

it was especially fun because she and brooke were both raised pretty religious and got to talk about weird religious stuff that is endlessly entertaining to me, like not showing cleavage so you can be a good sister in christ and not be a stumbling block for christian males. p.s. religions are stupid.

after dinner, we went back to west philly and got gelato with mouse, mike, and benji ! we sat in a park at 40th street and fed swedish fish to rats who were being oddly brave and friendly. i've never really seen rats act like that !

then we went to a bookstore, where brooke got a biography of general sherman and i got... nothing. i got too overwhelmed by all the weird kid and YA books i wanted and just didn't buy anything, which is actually okay because i spent a lot of money this weekend.

on sunday, we met up with lesley, jess c., and sarah jane at abyssinia for ethiopian breakfast. it was great to actually HANG OUT with lesley (i've only met her once, at a bar, when it was loud and i didn't know what was going on) and meet jess, who is the sweetest/cutest. i haven't had foul in awhile (fava bean stew with ethiopian cheese, ghee, jalapenos, tomatoes, and onion, with baguettes) ! lesley got a kind of fitfit that was just baguettes soaked in tomato sauce and it was totally delicious.

then brooke and i went to green line for awhile and knitted while we waited for mouse- eric was working and i forgot how great he is (because i hadn't seen him in awhile). he showed me some pictures of his cat and talked to us about knitting. we met up with mouse after that and saw ben franklin's grave (covered in pennies? "a penny saved is a penny earned" = "please throw a penny on my grave") and finally went to the constitution center. wow. what a beautiful building and what an utterly boring museum. and i say this as the biggest dullest nerd ever.

i had fun though because there were some buttons i could press, and brooke and mouse are funny ! after the museum, we ate at monk's, which was open despite being hit by a SEPTA bus last week.

we got vegan burgers and frites (my vegan burger had blue cheese and leeks :O) and brooke got to have a monk's sour flemish AT monk's ! ooOOooOOoooOOOOOOOoooo. after dinner, we came back home (in a cab, cause i had to poo) and i took my german exam. it was surprisingly easy- things finally clicked for me with cases, and i was feeling confident after my interview on friday.

on monday morning, i checked my grades, and i got As in both of my classes !!! to celebrate, we got breakfast at the green line and went to the mutter museum. i assume most people who aren't in philadelphia have seen the mutter museum on the discovery channel, but it's a museum of medical oddities, old medical equipment, gross models and busts, and pieces of bodies and junk.

i've been there a bunch so i was kind of "over it" but going with brooke was a new experience because 1) she is hilarious and we are the most hilarious (well, after me and mouse) and 2) it was like seeing the museum for the first time through a gross child's eyes. we cracked up at everything, even though i got queasy at the eye infection/injury/anomaly wall (i hateee eye stuff) and kept gagging at all the jars of preserved tissue. i reallllllly hate those because i imagine having to bite them. we decided to get a bff tattoo of this little guy:

then we met up with jeanne for a delicious lunch at citi marketplace. i never went there because the font on their sign sucks

but they had an extensive vegetarian menu with lots of made to order vegetarian and vegan options. also they're a bodega type place so i got to get whatever drinks i wanted and junk ! i'm so glad brooke finally got to meet jeanne- i was so excited for her to meet mouse and jeanne because i've been talking about them for years ! we walked jeanne back to 17th street after lunch, and then headed over to loop. i needed another ball of yarn for my craft swap project and i wanted to show brooke how fucking awesome loop is. i got a skein of sheep shop #1 in "wood":

to make the herringbone neckwarmer for myself, which i'll never wear

we got delicious gelato after that (brooke got tamarind and lime sorbettos and i got dark chocolate and cream cheese gelatos) and stopped in a pet store to pet these kittens. they were siblings up for adoption, and this guy's name was larry !!!!!

he was obsessed with licking our fingers. he was GREAT. when we got home, we relaxed for a little and then jeanne came over to eat thai food and hang out. christina made appearances too but she had to write her paper. brooke and i stayed up super late since it was her last night here (boooooooooooo) and watched legally blonde and shark week stuff and waited until we were super exhausted to the point of delirium to go to bed.

yesterdayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy was her last day. we got breakfast at green line and mostly planned her next visit, and how i want her and julz and max (and sombra) to move here. ahhhh, i can't even really express how much fun we had. i was so happy and proud to show someone philadelphia, and bursting at the seams with happiness to have all my favorite people hang out, and lkasdjlaksd. brooke is like... the funniest coolest smartest weirdest.

i know i probably forgot a million things but i've been super distracted reading heidi montag's wikipedia all morning.

oh yeah, i was accepted to LPS and found out this morning and now i'm going to school in the fall.

p.s. i'll fill in loose ends tomorrow !!!!
p.p.s. eajsdlkasjlfkhg best weekend.

everybody wants some

2010-08-13T09:33:00.004-04:00

i just spent like ten minutes reading jersey shore cast bios. i've never really watched the show or heard anything about it (though oddly MOUSE seems to know a little about it?) and i'd read the wikipedia description of each person and then do a google image search and like... apparently guidos all look the same to me. there was one photo of three guys from it and it just looks like the same guy photoshopped in four times?

also did you guys know that it's like the real world with guidos? i thought it was just like a random guido safari of a pack of guidos who were already buds.

okay, i haven't updated all week because it's finals week and i've been super busy, but the most important development is that BROOKE IS AT MY FUCKING HOUSE RIGHT NOW.

brooke at a different house but she is at my house now

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. we got her from the airport last night in a carshare car (getting slightly lost on the way home !) and we had the best time laughing. i seriously was in physical pain from laughing so hard ! i had to go to bed pretty early (well, 1:30) cause i had to work, though :(

my last summer class was yesterday night by the way- my last history class was tuesday, and it was fine, but for some reason i felt like crying at the end of german? i guess cause i've spent 4 days a week talking to those people for six weeks. i did my history final exam yesterday, and now all i have left is:

- german final exam
- german test (i know, right?)
- voice presentation (i have to record a spoken paragraph about myself)
- german voice interview at 3:30 today

i tried to find an octopus doing lots of work, but i found this punk octopus

i'm not entirely super confident about my german stuff. i still don't exactly understand the cases and my vocabulary as far as knowing the genders of nouns isn't great. hopefully i do okay? this class has been a ton of work so i hope homework is weighted heavily, but the syllabus is like 40 pages and i don't feel like looking !

anyway, i guess i should cut this short and go study. i have off of work monday and tuesday, so i probably won't update. sorryyyyyyy dogs.

big plans this weekend ! we're going to eat a bunch of food and go to museums and also see people from our dour feminist messageboard, and hang out with mouse and hang out with jeanne !

all the stars were shining bright

2010-08-09T10:11:00.004-04:00

i have had the weirdest craving lately- fruit punch gatorade. i don't like gatorade OR fruit punch, but i can't stop thinking about it. i just got one and i'm choking it down right now despite its disgustingness.

i'm gonna try to do a quick weekend recap because i have a lot of work to do today- i didn't write my german essay or do the quiz online this weekend and i have to do it ASAP. i guess, despite what i said before, i still don't get the different cases. i also need to watch some history lectures and do some reading.

speaking of homework, on friday i stayed at home and did some homework. i tried to get as much as possible done, which ended up only being 2/5 of what i was writing. HOWEVER, i finished it around 2pm on saturday (instead of 5:30 like the last few weeks) and went to trader joe's and dropped my laundry off. i spent most of saturday night bro-ing down with christina (who i have barelyyyyy seen lately) and:

1) working on my craft swap project
2) catching up on DVR'd shark week stuff

my craft swap scarf is really coming along. unfortunately, the due date is like... this week? and there's no way i can finish it this week. i didn't think about how much school would affect my free crafting time before i signed up, but all my finals stuff is this week (for my german class it's like.. 4394093 things? and a history exam that should take HOURS), plus brooke is coming ! anyway, i'm on my final ball of yarn and one solid weekend should do it, so i petitioned for extra time.

the shark week stuff i watched was all pretty good, too- as a result, though, i have a new favorite hunky zoologist. you guys know i'm not shallow (not really anyway) and my other celebrity crushes are like... kevin james and snagglepuss, but dave salmoni is the handsomest charmingest and loooooves animals. he lived in the wild for 6 months with lions !!!! the best part about all this is that he didn't have any shark experience and was totally a terrified wimp the entire time.

he is also a dictionary defintion hunk with a ninja turtle bod if you want to check it out.

on sunday, mouse and i went to tyler state park ! we met up with mike, which took forever cause he got lost and his dog got diarrhea in the car. my intent was to take portraits of them butttttttttttttttt mouse wore a damn tie dyed shirt and mike took his shirt off immediately and tied it around his head like a roofer, soooooo. we walked around for a bit and settled at a picnic table near some corn fields and talked about guns? as i've mentioned, i don't know anything about guns, and i have very little interest in shooting, but i agreed to go shooting with them if i could shoot an ak-47. they both seem to be into the 1911, which is nice and everything, butttttt i don't know or care about guns !

those are mike's dogs, beale and berry (they were found on a highway in memphis, hence 'beale', the worst name for anything ever). they were cute and everything but were totally uninterested in petting so i'm basically uninterested in them !

after the park, mouse and i went up to his mom's house to hopefully see the baby butttttttttttttttttttttt he was asleep ! jenny let me gently squeeze his foot though. i did get to pet mouse's parents' dog, daisy, who is one of my favorite dogs and totally made up for mike's duds.

after that, we went to whole foods and i came home and knitted and worked on my german homework, before going to bed way too late and now i'm awake and very tired and cranky. and this entry still took me HOURS to write even though i didn't do anything or put any jokes in. oh well, at least you got a hunk.

p.s. blehhhh jeanne's on vacation and i miss her !
p.p.s. there was a show on the history channel about the war of 1812 and two people asked me my opinions about stuff independently of each other ! aw.

sawblade and speak and spell

2010-08-06T08:55:00.003-04:00

my advice for you guys today? don't grow up poor. if you already did grow up poor, go back in time and have not done that. especially if the people in your family have bad teeth and you don't have dental insurance. because you will end up 28 years old and missing three molars and about to lose another ! and also, you will have had so many root canals that you actually lost count of them.

i know that's shitty advice, because poor people are the ones least likely to time travel (cost prohibitive, can't miss work, etc.) but it may be my only option at this point.

hey. i'm in a bad mood.

history and german last night. we're getting ready for our finals, and my history final is worrying me. it's a word document we download and write in and upload again- it's open book, and available for 24 hours, but it's 24 hours in the middle of the work week. like... it's available at 6pm on wednesday, then i have my german class from 7-8:45 on wednesday night, then i guess i have to do it before bed? cause i work 8-5 the next day. i'm sort of bummed- between this and my german professor scheduling interviews during the work day friday i'm getting anxious about how school will work with my work schedule. blehhhh.

helpful infographic

i was actually going to take a day off next week to work on my final, but since i have to deal with my tooth today i don't think i'll be able to do that. ugh. at least brooke gets here thursday- brooke is one of my favorite people on planet earth and i cannot believeeeeee she's actually going to be here ! everyone, we have to do a good job of selling philly to her so she moves here. everyone be great ! independence hall, be historic ! ben franklin museum, be charming but janky ! liberty bell, stay cracked ! christina, be weird ! mouse, don't wear short shorts ! we have to make this perfect so brooke (and also julz- julz doesn't know me yet but i'm putting her in my poké ball too) moves here.

what else? no real plans this weekend, which is okay with me. tonight i'm probably going to work on my homework so i don't waste a whole day doing it tomorrow, and then saturday i'm probably going to work on my craft swap project. on sunday mouse and i are going to go do a thing but we don't know what yet !

to-do list for the weekend
- german essay
- misc. german homework
- history essay (i'm actually DONE with the reading for the week already !)
- supplemental history reading
- work on craft swap thing
- read m is for magic
- catch up on sleep

i guess most of that sounds pretty boring, but i promise that next week will be cooler.

p.s. fuck teeth.

i hear the mermaids singing, each to each

2010-08-05T10:10:00.007-04:00

hey buddies. right now i'm uncomfortable because my dress keeps riding up and my butt is touching my chair. at least this makes it very funny when other people sit at my desk.

my week is a little bit more calm now- i've done all my major assignments until after class tonight so i can have a day of relaxation... at work. i'm KIND OF getting the hang of the cases because of a helpful comment left on my blog last night, but i'm going to have to make myself a cheat sheet for the future. last night we learned how to say things in past tense. one thing that was making me uncomfortable is that we had to watch and answer questions about this song, "ich bin nackt," and one of the lines is basically "my neighbor sees my tits" and our professor keptttttttt asking us, "what does her neighbor see???"

after class, i somehow persuaded paul to kill attumen with me in karazhan, despite the fact that he hatesssssssss doing that stuff. i've never really done kara, but i do attumen every week to try to get his mount.

after that we messed around in there a little to see what other bosses we could kill- we killed the lady who is kind of like freya and consecrates all the time, some rich guy having a dinner party, and romulo and julianne. one part of kara is an opera house, and you have a chance of getting one of three 'plays' as a fight- big bad wolf, wizard of oz, or romeo and juliet. that fight was pretty funny and romantic- the spells julianne casts are eternal affection, powerful attraction, blinding passion, and devotion.

then i played resident evil 5 with ken ! unfortunately, his headset was messing up or something so i couldn't hear him, so we just gave up halfway through- it was really scary though, we had to go through a mine with only a little bit of light and there were gross zombies everywhere. we also ran into the aforementioned irving, but he was whisked away by a lady in a cape (cathy????). it was okay, but the best part of playing games with ken is talking to him so i gave up.

i understand that listening to other people talk about video games is boring but yesterday was the first time in a few days that i've been able to zone out and do stupid shit instead of concentrating on school or work ! no court would convict me !

oh, i pre-ordered mockingjay, the next (and purportedly last?) book in the hunger games series. i was so so so utterly disappointed by catching fire though that my expectations are pretty low. if you haven't read the books, they're about a bleak future where the US is separated into impoverished districts based on production of goods, by a tyrannical oppressive government. to keep the people in line and entertain the rich people in the capitol, two kids from each district are chosen in a lottery every year to fight to the death on live tv.

i LOVED the hunger games- totally bleak and suspenseful with a strong female heroine, unflinching portrayal of poverty, love, mental illness, having to MURDER people, etc. totally gory and disgusting and brutal at times and tender and sweet at other times. i seriously loved every minute of it, except for the wolves, which were somehow bad CGI even though it was a book and not a movie? but the sequel, catching fire, was dull and full of romance in comparison. like, there were zero doubts about who would live or die and too many boring scenes hanging out in the capitol eating food.

don't get me wrong, it was still a decent book, but nothing to write a whole blog thing about ! but, yeah, i have my reservations about mockingjay, but i'm curious to see how the story turns out, and it was only $9 with free shipping.

i don't have a history lesson for you guys today. i hope you aren't too disappointed !

p.s. i decided to get a mary wollstonecraft tattoo

i want you to know what love is

2010-08-04T09:27:00.004-04:00

blehhh ! i have so much school stuff to do ! blehhh !!!!

what's up guys? i haven't really done much the past couple of days besides go to class and do my homework. german is actually getting pretty hard because i cannot make my brain understand the difference between the cases. like, i know what to DO for each case, but i don't know how to tell if something is nominative/dative/accusative. i give up. history is okay, despite two weeks of group work where i got grouped with the same dude who is like... intent on denying the contribution of women to american history and talking about how our female professor is WRONG and the female writers are WRONG.

in the words of mary wollstonecraft, "fuck you, ballbag !"

i have german homework every night this week and next week, a big german essay to write, a german voice presentation (which is basically just reading the essay), a german interview with someone who isn't my professor, and a final exam. for history, i have to answer a discussion question TODAY, watch the lectures, do the reading, do one more timeline essay, do some more little online questions, and then do a final exam. i'm totally fucking swamped and i'm procrastinating like crazy !

last night while doing some reading, i actually got choked up because i hate andrew jackson so much, so today's (very brief, cause i have studying to do) lesson is about how andrew jackson is the fucking worst.

you may know him as the $20 bill guy, or maybe OLD HICKORY, but what you should really associate andrew jackson with is the indian removal act and the trail of tears (a genocidal relocation of native peoples so we could take their shit, in case you missed middle school history). during the war of 1812 he killed a shit ton of native americans, and during the first seminole war he went into spanish territory and killed a shit ton more of native americans (which is significant because it was totally illegal and fucked up). he then went on to basically be the forerunner of anti-intellectualism in the united states who fiercely defended the idea that his racist hunches were better and righter and more noble than fancy book learning. and um, here is a quote from his first state of the union address that is one of the grossest things i've ever read:

What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?

blehh. i fucking hate him ! why is he on money ! why do ATMs only give $20 bills ! here's what i'm using instead of $20s now:

um, on a lighter note, that beautiful dress i got fit perfectly and looked great on me and is my favorite thing ever

and it comes in several other beautiful colors that would look great on me:

but i'm not sure what to do about my most recent ethical quandry about target. like, most of us have pretended that target is better than walmart because they are like 20% less soulsucking, community-destroying, and unethical, plus they have cuter stuff. it's cool, i'm not perfect, this is an inconsistency on my part and i probably should do more than half-heartedly acknowledge it. recently, though, the store donated $150,000 to a political candidate who is homophobic and aggressively supports homophobic legislation, as well being affiliated with a band who supports the violent extermination of gay people (and um, see above for my feelings about violent exterminations of people).

here's the rub, though: target is one of two clothing stores that sell clothes in my size. there are a handful more that sell plus size clothing, but most are $30-$100 a piece, whereas most clothing at target (and the other store, old navy) is below $30. they also have reasonably cute clothing, an extreme rarity for plus size women, who very rarely get the opportunity to feel comfortable and attractive and cute in clothing, with target's clothing being slightly more well-made (presumably because their child workforce is more disciplined? i hate life). but, that brings me to another point- why is it important for me to look or dress cute? why do i care about that? i know why i SHOULDN'T, so why do i?

anyway, i don't know what i'm getting at here. if i look at this like cute dresses vs. being an ally for my fellow human beings, the choice is easy. if i bring in a bunch of other complicated stuff about being fat/plus size clothing/socialization/consumption, it seems slightly more complicated. i guess my conclusion for now is that you should throw red paint on me if i end up buying those dresses, but i'm going to try not to.

tell her it's over

2010-08-02T09:41:00.004-04:00

buhhhh work is annoying. i came in ready to tackle both school work and work work for the day, only to find that i have to help label 900 t-shirts for some stupid thing. i spent all morning so far opening and lifting boxes and i inexplicably only have deodorant on one pit.

my weekend was good though ! on friday, i stayed in to try to get some work done. i had my german class interview and got a 45/50 ! i currently have an A- in the class, so i need to try harder to solidify my chances of getting an A. i really, really, truly don't think i got anything else done though. i did some knitting and watched goodbye lenin.

the movie is about a set of siblings (one being daniel bruhllllll) whose mother, a loyal socialist lady, has a heart attack and goes into a coma during the fall of the berlin wall. when she wakes up, she can't suffer any kind of shock (lest she have another heart attack), so her son persuades everyone to put on an elaborate farce where none of this happened. it was a pretty cute movie, but i can't imagine that it would be interesting if you don't know anything about german history? like a lot of the cuteness and jokes hinge upon events in history and stuff !

on saturdayyyyyy i went to the green line to theoretically work on my paper. i stopped at a garage sale on the way to buy myself this:

both jesse and eric were working, so unfortunately i didn't get much work done. i haven't really talked to eric in a few years so it was good to see him ! also jesse is the funniest most interesting person. she told me some good jokes (not fit for the internet) and showed me some cool maps of holes in the ground ! after awhile, though, i gave up and went to cvs and impulse bought a bunch of pens

two packs of these

they were buy one get one free !! between the hydra and the pens i spent $5, but i'm trying to be more critical of my consumption and not spend that $20-40/mo on stupid stuff ! i finally finsihed my paper at 5:20 (it's due at 6) and showered and got ready to go to shakespeare in clark park with mouse. but guys ! surprise guest ! benji was at mouse's for a jiu jitsu lesson and he came with us. i was super happy to hang out with him because he's the funniest handsomest, and also cause mouse wanted to watch the play and wouldn't let me talk to him but benji would.

oh yeah, the play was a midsummer night's dream, which is actually my least favorite shakespeare play. i also always forget that going to plays doesn't mean a bunch of stuffy british thespians and it usually means drama club people so i'm always a little disappointed (i'm coming around, but it's hard for me to take them seriously because drama club people were LITERALLY the only people lower on the totem pole than gifted nerds !). we sat in a bad place, anyway, and couldn't really hear or see the play. we were right behind a kid eating an entire block of cheese like a candy bar though, which was pretty cool.

benji went home after the play, and we met up with nate at my house and watched futurama. nate declined attending the play cause he remembered what plays are like, but i'm glad i got to see him.

on sunnnnday i slept super late and worked on work stuff and knitted a little bit. i tried to motivate myself to do my history reading but did a pretty awful job. i mostly managed to set up the DVR for shark week (since i'll be too busy with school to watch it) and eat a sandwich. when mouse got out of jiu jitsu, i went to his house because his sister and mom and SCOTTIE were there !!!! scottie is like, the cutest baby in the entire world and his feet are so fat and he made teeny little mouth farts at me.

also, did you guys know that baby spit up is really disgusting? i think baby spit up and drool are like, the deciding factors in me not having kids- unfortunately, this is also the same reason that i will miss out on many beautiful dogs:

(never mind that i also would never buy a dog from a mill or breeder so my chances of having a purebred dog ever are slim anyway !)

we also went to capo giro, where i found out that all of their sorbettis are vegan. i'm so bummed, because we've gone here a thousand times and mouse sadly drinks a decaf americano while we talk about how good the gelato and sorbetti is. i had nectarine and dark chocolate.

after that, i came home and finished my german homework (voice recordings about 'run lola run' !, online exercise, essay) and did some more work work and ended up going to bed before i did my history reading. on my agenda for today: history reading ! and maybe watching one of my history lectures after lunch.

what's up, guys? this is already week five of my six weeks of classes ! it went by super fast. i hope i can hold it together enough to do well in both.

p.s. i want a coffee milkshake more than anything on earth right now?
p.p.s. dogs dogs dogs dogs
p.p.p.s. brooke is coming to visit me aug 12 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
p.p.p.p.s. christina is home from maine !!!!

let us go then, you and i

2010-07-30T09:20:00.002-04:00

blehhhh stressed ! last night i had class, which was okay- the discussion in history was infuriating at times because one dude, who is like... some 20 year old undergrad, is convinced that the woman who wrote the chapter we had to read was totally wrong about what she wrote even though it's something he never researched (it was about political roles and actions of women post-constitution when they didn't have the right to vote or run for office). he was like, "no, women didn't do ANYTHING, the author is WRONG, women didn't do ANYTHING." and he harped on it for the whole class.

to be honest, this is exactly what i visualized when i searched for "wind bag"

then i had german, which was okay despite missing a class- i had to look at my notes a lot. and speaking of that, the covers fell off of both of my notebooks. despite being messy and apathetic about most stuff, i really hate when my school supplies get messed up. it's like the lamest control issue of all time- i don't like having pens that are low on ink, unsharpened pencils, crinkly papers, etc. i have three boxes of crayons that have never been used because i can't figure out how to use 96 colors evenly.

by the way, the crayon thing isn't part of my stupid peewee herman adult child thing, but part of my lifelong interest in having lots of little things in different colors.

normally i'd be able to relax a little bit right now, but i have a big project to finish for work today which i'm pretty sure i won't be able to get done, and after work i have a german interview. i'm pretty nervous- i'm having trouble with some of the articles. learning another language has taught me a lot about what i DON'T know about english- like, when he talks about using stuff in the dative/nominative/accusative/etc. i actually have no fucking clue what that means and just guess. i should probably look it up. whatever, i'm a product of the florida public school system !

after my german interview, i may go see mouse's band in fishtown, depending on whether or not he wants to give me a ride (it's easy to get to on the el, but taking the el at night alone makes me nervous because i've been followed/jerked off at). i should actually stay home and do homework but i like hanging out with mouse and i haven't seen the rest of the dangerbirds in awhile ! on saturday, mouse, nate, and i are possibly going to watch 'a midsummer night's dream' in clark park and eat food? and i'm not sure what i said i'd do on sunday, but i haveeeee to do my history reading.

oh yeah. my application for school won't be processed til they have my summer grades, and my semester doesn't end til 08/13. boooooooooooooooooooooo.

today's founding father is benjamin rush, notable philadelphian and doctor who is sort of like the andrea zuckerman of founding fathers. he was super smart and accomplished but his role in history is like, a lame background character who appears to move other character's development along.

he is best known for encouraging john adams and thomas jefferson to reconcile their bitter fued. totally more important than pioneering in mental health and the study of addiction, his bold commitment to abolition, founding dickinson college, representing pennsylvania at the continental congress, and inventing dr. rush's bilious pills (mostly mercury, but they were a wonder for the humors !)- jefferson and adams NEVER would've gotten back together if it wasn't for benjamin rush !

to-do list for the weekend
- german interview
- german blog essay
- german voice postings
- history essay
- history reading
- clean bedroom
- read m is for magic
- do the work i've been slacking off on from work

p.s. my humors are pretty bilious today
p.p.s. brooke is coming to visit NEXT MONTH !!!!

come with me if you want to live

2010-07-29T10:03:00.005-04:00

okay i have to make this a quick one because i have both work work and school work to do today !

yesterday i skipped my german class ! this is the first time of the summer session i've skipped a class, and probably will be the only class i skip. i had a good excuse though- jess silk was here !!!!!!!!!!! she and christina are going on vacation together, so she came down so they could get a rental car. i was so happy to see her, she's the best/cutest/funniest. plus i like having a non-judgmental third party to observe how weird christina and i are. pizza was also excited and being super hammy

we mostly talked about feminism and painted our nails? i painted my fingernails a dark purple and my toenails a dark green, once again proving that i'm fixated on the incredible hulk.

after awhile i retired to my room to do my german homework. we had to watch a video for like... one of the stupidest songs i've ever heard? and answer questions about it (and record ourselves speaking them) and about the singer of the song, herbert groenemeyer. the song is like, "MEN ARE VERY STRONG, MEN CRY SECRETLY, MEN START WARS, POOR MEN" basically. it also doesn't seem to have a real melody or chorus or anything?

school seems to be going prettyyyyyy well. i actually finished my application for fall as of this morning, and i'm going to be really embarrassed and bummed if i don't get in, so if i suddenly stop talking about school in 3 weeks it's because i didn't get in and i'm miserable and embarrassed and don't want to talk about it everrrrrrr.

what else? i got this dress from target online (i heard about this immediately after. great ! i basically have two stores i can shop at and one is like 100% child slave labor and the other funnels money to intolerant racist and homophobic bigots !) and i'm hoping it works out- they have it in a few other colors and it looks like a perfect summer/fall dress and also it has pockets.

in a color i call "hulk shorts purple"

last night i made a commitment to learn a few facts about each of the founding fathers, so i'm going to share that with you now ! i started with the signers of the declaration of independence and i will share with you some facts about the dudes with the funniest names.

1) button gwinnett - this dude always stuck out to me cause he's the first name on the declaration of independence. he was a representative of georgia. his signature is the most valuable american signature (rated worldwide in value comparable to SHAKESPEARE). he was killed in a duel (which he initiated) by lachlan mcintosh in 1777. alas, poor button

2) william whipple - representative of new hampshire. he crossed the delaware with george washington, and his slave PRINCE WHIPPLE may appear in the famous "washington crossing the delaware" painting. he died while FAINTING FROM A HORSE !!!

3) caesar rodney - representative from delaware, appears on the delaware state quarter ! revolutionary war guy who dramatically rode his horse 80 miles in a thunderstorm to break a tie in the vote for independence.

4) robert treat paine - representative of massachusetts. it would be so fucking funny if he was a doctor but he was a lawyer. his family were the principal founders of... newark, new jersey. zzzz.

5) william williams - i'll never get over this type of name ! he was a representative of connecticut. only thing of note is that he showed up late and didn't get to vote on the declaration of independence, but he signed it anyway !

stay tuned next week for a list of the hunkiest founding fathers ! powder your wigs !

i gotta go do work now.

p.s. george washington is cool
p.p.s. i watched a show about terror birds with ken the other night where the terror birds kept smashing honeydew melons and now all i want on earth is honeydew melon, but i don't like it. and i feel guilty because i think dr. bunsen honeydew is made of it.

we both know how hard it is for both of us to try

2010-07-27T09:21:00.003-04:00

dudes ! i have nothing to say, and only 30 minutes to say it !

yesterday i came home from work, fully intending to do some reading, and ended up dozing off until about five minutes before my german class. oooops. class was okay, except i got like... every answer wrong, which indicates that i should be paying more attention.

i just realized looking at that- i totally love dunces. maybe i'll be a dunce for halloween? my other idea was eye of sauron but i'm not that good with papier mache. but i but jeanne is !!! dunce of sauron.

after class i really truly intended to do my history reading and i ended up not doing it. a crappy behavior pattern of mine is that if there's something i need to do (homework, housework, errands), and i'm clearly not doing it, i also don't let myself do anything else. no reading, no watching tv, nothing. i basically like, laid on my bed like a log until it was time to go to sleep.

fyi, did you know that stasis apparently isn't just when aliens put you in a tube of goo? according to the google image search it's also some kind of disgusting skin condition where your skin rots off. anyway, i understand that this method of... being isn't really the way to be, so i'm going to make a commitment to doing my reading for school.

speaking of that, i have to try to find time to drop my high school diploma off as part of my stupid application. i was going to mail it since i have a busy few days but i suddenly got paranoid that it would get lost in the mail and then i'd be screwed since it takes 900 years for the florida board of ed. to send a new one.

i'm gonna have lunch with mouse today, possibly at magic carpet? possibly at the burrito truck? maybe i can convince him to walk over with me.

that looks super unappetizing, but it's vegetarian meatballs and rice from magic carpet and it's delicious

man, i told you guys i had nothing to say. i have to go help set up for a stupid meeeeeting now.