are you there god? it's me, roxy

ughhhh i just realized i have a team meeting in 30 minutes so i won't be able to finish this until after ! ughhhhh ! ughhhh. what's up guys? i just ate a trader joe's mini quiche for breakfast (spinach and mushroom) and it tasted exactly like a white castle? minus the ketchup. muy bueno.



i had a pretty great and actually relaxing long weekend ! on friday we were dismissed unexpectedly at 11, so i went downtown to meet biz (biz being my best friend from sixth grade who incidentally lives in philly now !). we had a rough plan of buying stupid shit and eating and i'm happy to say that we stuck to it ! we stopped by the place i'm catsitting to check on miss hoolie (she was okay !) and then walked up walnut looking for places to buy cheap jewelry. the first place we came across was the most bunk overpriced second hand store where i felt super guilty cause we made fun of everything and didn't buy anything, but it was like... some rich lady peddling size 0-4 garbage from the salvation army at like 10x the price you'd find it there?



we DID find tselaine at 19th and walnut which is like the cutest store ever with the best stuff, but unfortunately i like... don't ever want to spend money and am a cheapo so i just got some wind up dinosaurs there. but if you like purses and jewelry and notecards and foofy umbrellas and wind up dinosaurs you should definitely check it out !



christina met up with us after that and we ended up just going to nova ice (the cheap-o jewelry store) where i got exactly what i wanted for exactly what i wanted to pay- big colorful beaded necklaces for $5 each. i basically just wanted some necklaces to match my work dresses so i look more dressed up (without wearing something other than a $14 jersey cotton old navy dress) so i got dark purple beads and orange beads to match this dress


that crap on the bottom is flowers !

and a sort of slate blue one to go with whatever. then we went to sephora where i almost bought a $14 hydrocortisone stick (what does it say about me that i was in sephora and the thing i wanted to buy was... hydrocortisone? but it was awesome and i put it on the heat rash on my knee and it basically cleared it up in minutes ! my regular tube of hydrocortisone isn't doing ANYTHING !). i didn't buy it though cause i'm a cheapskate.



then we got dinner at pietro's and finally went to rittenhouse needlepoint. rittenhouse needlepoint is... a needlepoint store that's on the second story of a building at 18th and chestnut, and we always consider going there and never do. holy shit, it's the nicest store ! one of the owners talked to us forever and was super nice- they offer free classes on saturdays for beginners and the culture that they're trying to create around crafting to make everyone feel welcome and included is super nice and refreshing. also one of the owners' dad is a former wharton dean who is a really nice guy !


lulu, the owners' standard poodle. she kept walking in front of a fan and it looked very glamorous

christina and i went home after that (she got crewel supplies and is already making something beautiful) and i took a quick nap. mouse came over and monitored my progress in getting my bike ready for our trip on saturday. on saturday morning, we went to nockamixon state park in quakertown (quakertown is really cute btw !). nockamixon was really nice and surprisingly not crowded for a holiday weekend.



we rode our bikes a little (their path is short but really well maintained) and ate lunch at a picnic area and went swimming in their pool which was super exciting for me- i haven't been in a pool in FOUR YEARS or more ! i can't find my bathing suit top so i wore little shorts and a tank top and that was a sort of terrible idea because i forgot that boobs float, but only one person made a weird comment to me and also... i'm never going to see any of those people again.



after the park, we went up to mouse's mom's house because his sister was in town with scottie the baby. hooooly crap he's huge now and he laughs and his legs are so fat ! i held him for a little and he ripped out a ton of my hair and it was the best. he also got obsessed with the letters on mouse's shirt and kept trying to eat them:



after that, i went over to mouse's and we watched full circle, the first series in the doctor who e-space trilogy. the story was surprisingly deep for a doctor who serial ! basically these people on a spaceship have been preparing for 100 years to take their crashed ship back to their home planet, but they keep getting attacked by mysterious marsh men. it turns out that the survivors on the ship evolved from the marsh men and were unable to pilot the crashed ship because it was never their technology and the original survivors didn't leave instructions !!!!



on sunday, christina and i went to trader joe's and pathmark to get groceries, and i got two watermelons and two pounds of cherries (did i mention i ate a pound of cherries at nockamixon? haha.). i've already eaten one watermelon with minimal help ! later that afternoon, jeanne, mike b. and carol came over, which was exciting because carol and i haven't really hung out yet but we've been planning on it. we mostly watched rocky and i shared some fruit with them. mouse came over too and after everyone left, i showed him more futurama because he wanted to see this:



did i mention that futurama is now available on netflix instant viewing? this has changed my life and i basically did very little other than watch it for most of sunday and monday !

on monday, i finally made myself do my homework. it was worse than i thought- i forgot how to take notes ! all i had to do was read three chapters, but i took six pages of notes on 20 pages. i finally gave up and just started writing down stuff i didn't know and finished the final 40+ pages in the time it took me to read 20. i'm a little nervous that i'm studying wrong or something?



i think it may also have been the boringness of the chapters though? i know it's an american history to 1877 course but basically every history class i took from elementary to high school was too- i mean, not EVEN to 1877, i feel like i learned indians -> revolutionary war like 900000 times already. i know which explorers explored what, who gave smallpox to who, which indians had mounds, who colonized what, etc.

after i finnnnnalllllly finished, ken and i played left 4 dead 2. we had to re-do the carnival campaign except carrying a gnome statue, and i mistakenly thought this meant that i would get a gnome. it turns out that my xbox avatar gets a depeche mode shirt? ripoff ! i wanted a gnome.


this IS the fat avatar !

then we watched a few episodes of futurama (don't judge me !) to the point where we were stupidly tired and i may have made a few rude smallpox jokes.

oh yeah. my classes start today. my first class is from 6-7 (history) and my german class is from 7:30-8:45. i'm super fucking nervous but i think i've done all of the preparation i can do ! wish me luck.

p.s. sorry i made an entry with two animated gifs
p.p.s. i forgot that we went to claire's on friday and i got a julius caeser laurel headband? it's really hard to shop there as an adult. they had like 80 different colors and patterns of... sports wrap?

i've never felt like this before, i say that every hour

okay ! i'm going to start with my to-do list ! and i'm going to add a thing to it so it looks like i did more !

- straighten up bedroom
- read my history chapters and take notes
- view the online portal for my history class and do the set-up for my german class
- tune up/grease/clean bike
- straighten up the kitchen and livingroom
- go back to trader joe's for some frozen crap
- catsit hoolie !
- brush my own cat and clip her toenails

after work i had my online meeting with my german professor where he showed me how to work adobeconnect and stuff. we actually use that for (i apologize for using this word) webinars at work so i was kind of familiar with it. he seems like a very nice dude and the class should be fun ! i also signed into the online portal for my history class. the professor introduces herself there and i'm less intimidated and nervous now because she seems like a nice history nerd !



we had to write introductions for ourselves on the site and we are instructed in the syllabus not to use humor or sarcasm in our online postings, so i was kind of at a loss. i figured i'd focus on my excitement about history and how grateful i am for the opportunity to go back to school for free, and i basically ended up writing this wooden dorky thing? the jumpoff questions were about where we were this summer, what made us sign up, etc.

Hello! My name is Roxann **** (I prefer Roxy, but Roxann is okay too). I will be in Philadelphia this summer, working at ***** and attending this class and a German language class through Penn LPS. While that may not sound exciting to many, I am really looking forward to returning to school after a hiatus of nearly 10 years, and am thankful that Penn's generous tuition reimbursement for employees is affording me an opportunity I would not have otherwise.

I too have been interested in history since childhood, and am particularly interested in war and warfare. I've spent most of my life reading history books and more recently listening to history podcasts (Hardcore History podcast by Dan Carlin is one of my favorites), and it finally clicked for me that studying history in an academic setting was an option for me, and an exciting opportunity for me. I'm eager to learn and to turn my favorite hobby into a real area of study, as well as to learn from our texts, the instructor, and my classmates.

think that doesn't sound too bad? well, i edited it and took out some of the dorkier words ! cause i was too embarrassed to even show you guys.

after that, i straightened up my room and ate dinner (a hoagie !) and then settled in to not do my history homework or anything. i played left 4 dead 2 with my friend ken for awhile- we were on the last campaign and it was pretty exciting. i regret our choice to switch to easy at the end because i think it was TOO easy, but the end of the campaign is navigating a fucked up bridge full of zombies to get to a helicopter.



the bridge part was a lot of fun ! ken was a good leader and didn't do my least favorite video game thing (freaking out and repeating a word or command over and over again- RUN RUN RUN RUN RUNR UNR UURN RUNR UNR RUN) so i didn't get stressed out or anything. unfortunately this means we're done with the game, unless we want to go back and do stuff on different difficulty levels. there is an achivement where i can get a gnome though? and a depeche mode shirt?



after that, we watched the lost world (not the jurassic park sequel, the silent movie based on the doyle novel). i was taken in by the dvd cover and put it on my queue right away, and wasn't disappointed.



first of all, silent movies are great for watching on xbox live because you can talk all you want and you don't really miss anything ! second, there's a part where they see an allosaurus and are like, "ahhh, the allosaurus, pest of the dinosaurs" which cracked us up, but then the allosaurus is such a factual pest throughout the movie ! he literally just runs around taking bites out of every dinosaur. not even eating them, just killing them and maybe taking a bite. at one point he jumps up and bites a pterodactyl out of the sky !!! and then he just spits it on the ground and steps on it.



the basic plot of the movie is that a crazy old scientist (dr. challenger !) thinks dinosaurs are alive in brazil based on a diary he found, and then he goes with an expedition team (including a young journalist whose girlfriend won't marry him because he isn't adventurous). some other shit happens and they see dinosaurs and are terrorized by an ape man- the ape man looks vaguely like an olde timey racist stereotype, which made me uncomfortable until i saw the member of the expedition team who is straight up a white dude in blackface. ugh ! ken said he was going to tell people i watched a movie with blackface characters, but i think it would be even more controversial if i was rumored to watch a movie that featured womanface.

blehh. i'm gonna go do some work. jeanne and mike b. are coming over tonight and i'm really excited (by the way, if i ever talk about 'mike' it's usually my friend mike g. if i talk about a mike in conjunction with JEANNE, it's mike b.. also if i mention drawing, weird al, or madballs, it's mike b.) because mike has never been to my house or met my cat.



i only have a few more days to complete my to-do list so wish me luck.

like the fool i am and i'll always be

ohhhhhhhhhhhkay, i'm going to start with my to-do list from yesterday and cross off the stuff i did.

- straighten up bedroom
- read my history chapters and take notes
- tune up/grease/clean bike
- straighten up the kitchen and livingroom
- go back to trader joe's for some frozen crap
- catsit hoolie !
- brush my own cat and clip her toenails

not too much progress there, and i'm actually cheating a little because i decided not to go to trader joe's this week ! haha. oooops.

i stopped by after work to visit hoolie. she was doing well but was very very lonely, so i petted her and let her show me her toy mice and let her roll over a bunch for me. i also cleaned her water bowls and gave her fresh water and made sure she had enough food (this is what catsitting is if you didn't know). here she is, hanging out:





i also noticed that jon is weird:



i ended up taking a cab home after that because i'm an adult (and also because it was rush hour and i didn't want to be jammed into a trolley or bus with a bunch of assholes). i came home and tried to go to bed really early because i was feeling really anxious, but i ended up waking back up around 9:30 and killing zombies with ken. this is coach, the character i usually play:



i usually prefer an axe or a chainsaw as my melee weapon, but i feel guilty because a coach should probably use a baseball bat. oh, one way i've noticed that i am at a clear disadvantage when playing some video games is that i do not know anything about weapons. i know a lot about history and wars, but i know very little about guns and grenades and shit ! i think it has a lot to do with the fact that male childrens' toys come with weapons and weapon details and most female childrens' toys come with like, makeup you can also wear. fucked by society !

i decided that my favorite gun is the M16. did you know that the name stands for model 16? i looked at wikipedia.



it's frustrating though because the dudes i'm playing with will be like, "grab the submachine gun ! use your sniper rifle !" and i'm like, "lol?". like, i'm an intelligent person and i would like to learn more about it (i guess i'm more interested in the history of weaponry and how it relates to warfare than like, HEYYY TOTALLY SWEET SHOTGUN BRAH, though) and i find it frustrating that nothing in my childhood prepared me for this. you dropped the ball, ann m. martin ! my brain is full of impractical babysitting tips !



(all joking aside, i think it's a bummer that even as like, a gross nerdy tomboy with a cool older brother and cool mom, gender branding in toys/play/products/books/other media was so intense that i have gaps in knowledge as an adult)

my main plan for this evening is to clean my room and read some chapters for history. i have to meet online with my german professor tonight to test out my internet connection and headset for our class. i'm getting kind of nervous because my history professor said we'd be doing something like that "at the end of the month" but hasn't written again to make appointments, and she comes across as kind of coarse so i don't want to bug her.


viola swamp !

okay. if i post here tomorrow and my room is messy and i haven't done my reading, i want you guys to punch me into little pieces.

p.s. ughhh i just realized i should clean up tonight too cause mike and jeanne are coming over tomorrow ughhhh. maybe i just won't let them in the kitchen?

hoo's on first

they're cleaning the windows at work so all the blinds are open and it looks so sunny and cheerful in here. unfortunately the building is like... entirely windows so if we live the shades up we get cooked like ants under a microscope.



i got my first textbook yesterday and intended to do my reading for my first class ! and then of course i totally didn't do it. class doesn't start til july 6, so i have time ! heh? i helped paul make a website, which so far just contains a picture of his dog



and ate some m&ms and tried to watch another movie with daniel bruhl called ladies in lavender, where he um... plays a violinist who washes up on a beach and is nursed back to health by maggie smith and dame judi dench. i have to say, it is not quite as exciting as it sounds.


they're all... wearing lavender

what the fuck ! what the FUCK ! why am i watching this shit ! my celebrity crushes (though i don't get them frequently) rarely make sense and usually involve me watching a bunch of movies the person was in and then resenting them because i had to do that- my biggest celebrity crush ever was BILL PAXTON, and this was all wayyyyyy before he was on big love. for every aliens and near dark he made, there's like 20 boxing helenas and twisters. he wears a MESH SHIRT in boxing helena and utters the line, "hasta whatever." that's what i had to put up with ! god.

what? anyway, i unfortunately could not make it through ladies in lavender. i think i was supposed to feel for the old ladies, who were clearly hopelessly in love with their young guest, but as a young person it made me uncomfortable? like the dude obviously thinks of them like grandmothers and they let him rest his head on their shoulders and get grandma hugs and stuff while wanting to fuck him? that's weird, right? unfortunately the plot had not become apparent an hour and 20 minutes in so i am not actually sure what the story was.



there's bill paxton at his best to cleanse our palates.

after giving up on that, i did another left 4 dead 2 campaign with ken. this one was in a swamp, and it was sort of comforting because it looked like the black hammock (the area i grew up in).



i did half as well as ken which i've deduced as promising because he's MORE than twice as good as me. not sure how i worked that out, but whatever. this is only the second time i've played and i think i actually did worse this time. i definitely need a bigger tv, but that's going to have to wait until i'm very rich which is never going to happen because i have no ambition and i hate money, and i'm also not going to buy a tv just for video games.

or am i?

(no)

tonight mouse is coming over to eat spaghetti. i'm going to try to get him to bring a watermelon too but i'm not entirely sure how that's going to go. my plan is that he and i can both have some watermelon and then WHO WANTS TO CARRY A CUT WATERMELON HOME?? so i get to eat the rest of the watermelon.


mouse gets that little piece !

i gotta go, i have a meeting. BYE

i think i can i think i can i think i can

what's up dogs ! i stayed home yesterday because of double ear aches and general malaise. my ears hurt and i still feel shitty, buttttttttttttttt unfortunately doctors treating fat people like shit has given me pretty bad anxiety about going to see them.

on a lighter note, i spent most of yesterday sleeping and playing video games, with a brief yoga interlude because i realized that not moving around all day was turning me to stone. i gave diana my fat yoga dvd because i thought i'd moved past it and basically memorized it, buttttttt i need to get it back from her and make a copy. i think i have stockholm syndrome with the smug asshole who hosts it. i haaaaaaaated her calling me a sassy diva and strong confident woman and stuff when i was just trying to get my downward dog on, but now i find that it's hard to do it without her stupid encouragement.


namaste, jerk

also, i have no concept of time so i'll be like "i just held that pose for THREE HOURS !!!" and it was actually 15 seconds, so i think having an instructional video helps.

on monday night i played borderlands with perry for a few hours. the game is okayso far, though i have absolutely no clue what is going on or what the objective of the game is. i think one of the problems is that i can't read quest text on my tiny tv (not that i ever read quest text anyway) and that i'm playing with someone who knows what we need to do.



maybe my goal for today will be to make perry tell me what the game is about.

yessssssterday night i played left 4 dead 2 with ken (and were later joined by a couple of other dudes who i kinda know !). THAT was a lot of fun. i guess i don't know what this game is about either, besides killing a lot of zombies and trying to escape from them. i think the factors that led me to believe that it was more fun is that it seems a lot easier. there's tons of stuff to kill at close range and you don't have to even aim your gun (and it manually reloads), whereas in borderlands there's usually a bunch of dudes shooting at you and ducking behind stuff for cover (because they are alive and not dead).



the game itself looks pretty cool, though there's not a lot of variation in the zombies (and one zombie was wearing the exact outfit i was wearing yesterday and i had to kill her over and over D:). the zombies' movements are fast and jerky and scary. we finished two of five possible campaigns, and there doesn't seem to be much variation- waves of zombies, the same 4-5 special zombies showing up occasionally, and then some kind of gimmicky objective. there is a marked difference between each of the skill levels though- we did everything on normal, switching to 'easy' for the tougher parts (the first campaign was just me and ken with two computer players, before two of his friends joined us) so at least there's some variation there. overall it was really fun and seems like an easier beginner game to get used to using the controller. unfortunately i did the worst out of everyone every time !

what else? i took a german placement test (required of all people taking the summer german I class who have previous experience) and i was super worried i'd place out of the class and mess up my schedule. guess what ! i totally didn't need to worry because i forgot like all the german i know. when people are talking to me or i have to read something in german, i can understand like 85% of it, but i don't remember tenses and genders and pronouns at all.



one part of the test was writing a personal essay and mine seriously was like, "my name is roxy, i live in philadelphia, i'm 28 years old, i love fanta and potato salad, my favorite singer is nena hagen" (basically like, all stuff from the laughably outdated neue freunde textbook, which was mostly about the scorpions, falco, and piranha 2).

what else did i want to talk about? oh, i wanted to talk about monster high, mattel's attempt to capitalize on the success of both bratz and twilight. it's basically a line of toys where the characters are descended from monsters but are run of the mill misogynist stereotype airhead bimbo shopaholics !



so like, can anything marketed toward young girls be cool? ever? bratz are fucked up weird dolls that promote materialism, competition between women, sexualization of children (one of their lines was... babies... in diapers... with makeup and heels), and unhealthy body images. twilight is a fucked up book that promotes abusive relationships as romance, a stereotype of female weakness and incompetence, sexual assault and stalking as romance, and uses monsters as a thinly veiled excuse for men to do whatever they want to women because it's their NATURE. why would you then COMBINE these two things to sell to female children? oh, because money is and has always been more important than the health, future, and well-being of women.

the dolls don't come along with books, or comics, or even a tv show. they are just dolls, with a "fun website" that you can log on to, a la those pet toys for babies. the website is full of riveting information like that the werewolf's biggest pet peeve is not being able to wear platform heels in gym and that she spends hours plucking her excess hair to be fabulous. wouldn't a werewolf's biggest pet peeve be that she goes fucking berserk and kills humans during the full moon? the vampire is vegan, which means she's not a vampire. one of the characters isn't even a mummy, she's just egyptian. is "egyptian" a monster now? like, the characters essentially have nothing to do with monsters and their monsterness is only presented as a slight setback in their quest to be hot sexy fashionistas who love boys, gossip, and shopping. plus, to compensate for their monster features, i guess they wear even less clothing than bratz !



get that message, little girls? you're a thing. if you don't look like these dolls, you're ugly. if you're ugly, you're worthless. oh, and instead of having actual interests you should only care about shopping, makeup, gossip, and boys. i just wanted to state that in case the message mattel has been sending us since the 1960s was too subtle.

soooo basically i'm going to blow up the planet.

p.s. i haven't even played red dead redemption yet. word is that it is going to suck on my crappy CRT tv in my bedroom !
p.p.s. i already watched everything good on netflix