woke up too late

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.

steve the popcorn

hey guys !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

on friday, i rushed home from work to do my german interview. basically the professor meets with you one on one and asks you 2309823 questions in german. i got 46 out of 50, and i have turned in all my work so far, so i think i'm doing pretty well ! immediately after, i met up with mouse, nate, and anna to go to a wilmington blue rocks game in delaware. kati and alan were also there, which was a pleasant surprise !!!!! i have to say, minor league baseball is a total mindfuck. the team looked like high school kids ! their mascot was a moose (um, rocky bluewinkle) but they also had a piece of celery who ran out when the team scored a run? and the kids in the stands had celery stalks?



in addition to that, they had two sherlock holmses, an eating contest, a contest for who had the dirtiest car in the parking lot, and a three year old setting off fireworks. i've never felt so sophisticated in my life, and i'm a florida swamp redneck ! i had a good time though because nate and anna are the best, i never get to see kati, and i'm glad i got to hang out with alan again because he is the nicest ! mouse, of course, was also pretty sharp. oh, and i coveted a stuffed celery so much that kati bought me one !!! haha. not proud !



on saaaaaturday, i spent six hours doing 45 minutes worth of homework. i wrote outlines for my essays on friday night, so i just needed to write them and submit them, but i dragged my feet forever and complained forever and basically wasted a whole day. it was okay, though, because i needed a little rest ! i'm concerned though that my history essay thing was wrong because my professor culls together the best answer from peoples' submissions and the best answer was nothing like mine.



after work, mouse and i went to whole foods, where we got stuff for dinner and some okay fruit, and came to my house with the intention of watching doctor who and baking brownies. while the brownies were in the oven, mouse got sick and started puking, and the doctor who discs started skipping ! we ended up watching futurama while mouse frowned on the couch, and then we... watched superbowl XXIII? it was on espn classic.



it always bothered me that i didn't understand football, but every time i try to learn i immediately forget what's going on. it doesn't help that the action stops constantly so i turn my head away from the tv and forget to look back. but basically: each team has four chances to advance their position (called 'downs'), like in world war I. if they make it 10 yards in one down, the number of downs starts over. the center hikes the ball to dan marino, and he passes it to someone else on his team who has to run with the ball as far as he can go. there are people on both teams trying to block each other and block the blockers. a touchdown is 6 points, if you kick it through the thing you get 1 more point. you can kick it through the thing at any time for 3 points (field goal).



we had a good time, though, and by the end mouse felt good enough to eat two brownies (i think the reason he stayed so late was that he wanted to make sure he got to eat a brownie !).

on sunnnnnday, christina and i (mostly christina) cleaned our apartment (which was a mess, our landlord's dudes fixed a leak in our livingroom and took everything off our walls/moved everything away from the walls) and i cleaned my bedroom. we also went grocery shopping and ran some errands. i kept MEANING to study, but instead did every possible thing other than that. mouse came over on the way home from his mom's, feeling well enough to have a warmed brownie with coconut milk ice cream, and watched a shark show on netflix with me. i'm glad i got to hang out with mouse a lot, because he's the best.



okay, i have two more things !!!! the first is that i'm going to try not to buy any pens anymore. i was looking for some highlighters yesterday, and found this in a bag:



i used to collect floaty pens, those pens that you tilt and a picture or object slides through water in the barrel- mixed in with those were a bunch of unopened and opened pen sets and random pens and markers. this probably represents 1/2 to 1/3 of the pens and markers and highlighters i have. i posted that picture on flickr to hold myself accountable, but when i was out on sunday i bought more highlighters. so, no more pens !

the other thing is that i finished reading the girl with the silver eyes.



it was pretty good, though not entirely fleshed out. it could've been even longer ! basically a weird girl with silver eyes who has telekinetic powers discovers that her mom worked at a pharmaceutical company while she was pregnant with her, on a drug that was discontinued because it was harmful. she has never fit in and been an outcast/weirdo her whole life because she can't/won't control her powers, so when she hears that her mom had three pregnant coworkers, she tries to find those kids to see if they are like her (they are !). additionally, a misunderstanding leads her to believe she's being investigated for using telekinesis to kill her grandma.

overall i liked the story, but something that struck me was that every single book i've read so far in this recent batch of purchases contains some form of fatphobia or fucked up comments about fat people. this one is the worst- she has a babysitter who is a big fat disgusting fat slob fatty fat slob who eats an incomprehensible amount of food (and i'm saying this as a person with an eating disorder) to show just how fat and slovenly and disgusting she is. in all of the books, there is a bad character who is fat, or a character who is described as nice DESPITE being fat and enormous and fat and ugly. re-reading some of my most beloved books from childhood sort of jolted me because so many books contain hateful shit about fat people and i wonder in what ways that subconsciously affected me and my peers? like, i don't even REMEMBER it from when i was little, and i was definitely always fat.

anyway, that's about it for now. i got a small amount of knitting done and i'm stressing a little. monday-tuesday-wednesday are the worst/busiest for me schoolwise so i'm not looking forward to the next three days.

p.s. wikipedia list of notable hutts

arbeiter der welt ! wereinigt euch !

buhhhh. tgif i guess. i'm anxious and bummed out and feel really overwhelmed. yesterday i came home from work for history class, which was okay- the class is online (as i mentioned) and by the fourth class meeting people still haven't gotten their shit together. peoples' microphones don't work, everyone is like, "CAN YOU HEAR ME?????" before they talk, one girl's microphone was basically in her sinus. it was an interesting class though, except for the part where we were discussing a chapter we read from a book (american slavery, american freedom by edmund morgan) and everyone got into a huge stupid debate about it. the debate was stupid because it was 1/2 people being like, "I DIDN'T LIKE IT" (who cares) and 1/2 people saying that it sounded like edmund morgan loves slavery? the book is a study of the contradictory nature of slavery and the commitment of virginia colonists to liberty and equality.



german class after that, where i had trouble paying attention. i have an essay to write this weekend, and tonight i have a one-on-one interview in german with my professor. i still have to CRAM for that at some point during the day today.

after my classes were over, i finished up some homework and read another YA book- this time wonder by rachel vail.



this is actually one of the worst books i've ever read. the protagonist/narrator, jessica, was popular in elementary school, but then her best friend went to camp with a bunch of other girls and they excluded her, and also she wore a dress to school that looked like a wonder bread bag and everyone called her 'wonder'. or something. the entire book is jessica being a spoiled, spiteful, miserable, angry brat. like seriously, she rages at everyone, calls people disgusting and ugly and fat, talks about how much life sucks and how much everything sucks, etc. despite the fact that her lifelong crush asks her out and the popular girls start trying to be her friend? there's zero analysis or lesson and no real plot or resolution. also, her mother is a shrink (and her dad owns a company that makes fat lady pantyhose? rachel vail's words), and she randomly has a little brother who obviously has tourette's syndrome, and i thought that a plot point in the book might be that he gets diagnosed with tourette's, but... no, he just throws stuff around and curses randomly and then disappears. terrible book ! not worth the 1 cent i paid for it.



after that, i gave up on studying and ken and i watched stuff from shark week on netflix. we were both hoping to see sharks biting a bunch of shit so we put on something called TOP 5 EATEN ALIVE, but it turned out to be 99% re-enactments of people getting attacked by sharks, with their sad amputations and scars. grim ! so we put on the episode of survivorman about sharks and that was much better. i'm going to interject and say that i want to marry every survival dude ever (also tied to my attraction to eagle scouts) and les stroud is awesome:


i know, he looks like such a stepdad

anyway, he did cool stuff like fed sharks from spears and got bitten by sharks (wearing chainmail) and fed sharks a bunch of hams and turkeys !!!!! that last part was so funny, sharks HATE hams and turkeys.



i actually thought this was weird until i just looked at that picture. i have the utmost respect for sharks, that picture makes me want to slam dunk a ham into its throat. swish !



i also drew this supplemental picture of a shark eating a ham. this shark is literally the only thing i can draw. as you can see, i can't even draw a ham. like 75% of the drawings i've ever done in my life are that shark. the other 25% is carebears and ladies in high heels.

tonight i'm going to a wilmington blue rocks (minor league baseball game) with mouse, nate, and anna. while i love baseball games, i'm going to have to bring my knitting because i don't know when else i'm going to finish this craft swap project. sorryyyyy blue rocks ! tomorrow i'm maybe going to trader joe's and probably hanging out with mouse, depending. sunday, homework ! ugh.

weekend to-do list
- ACE german interview
- finish german essay
- finish history essay
- start history reading for next week
- work on craft swap project
- clean my rooooooooom (my hamper fell over and i've just been dumping clothes into a corner)
- do some house cleaning

hold me to it, guys !

p.s. i'm slightly behind at work because i've been having trouble managing school/work/life ! stress !
p.p.s. hopefully i can fix that today

this is dedicated to the one i love

mannn. okay, so to distract myself from academic reading yesterday, i read the first of those young adult novels, daphne's book.



i tried not to read the descriptions too closely for any of the books i bought, so based on the title and cover i thought it would be a story about someone getting their diary stolen. it turns out that it's a pretty realistic portrayal of a girl being forced to work on a project (writing a children's book) with daphne, the most unpopular weirdest person in school. of course they become friends, and the main character (cannot remember her name !) has to deal with being embarrassed about daphne in front of her popular friends, and keeping daphne's big secret, which is that she lives in abject poverty with an increasingly senile grandmother. it's a huge bummer- daphne basically has to take care of her little sister and stops going to school so she won't have to leave her sister alone with her grandmother, whose senility is pretty scary and depressing. it gets to a point where they have no electricity, heat, or food in the winter and the protagonist finally has to tell her mom, which gets daphne and her sister sent to a group home, which is also described pretty accurately and therefore depressingly.

it ends with a ray of hope (second cousins of their mother taking them in in maine) but not a really happy ending, which is also the way daphne suggests the book they're writing for class ends. daphne's desperation and loneliness and distrustfulness are super realistic, as is the protagonist's (what the fuck was her name !) mixed feelings about genuinely liking daphne and wanting to be liked by the popular kids. overall it was a total bummer and i cried a little at the end !



i've been so busy reading books from when i was a kid over again that i don't really keep up with new YA fiction- do people still write books that deal with poverty, foster care, unfit or mentally ill parents, etc.? or is it all vampires and werewolves and harry potters?

after i was done reading, i went to german class, where we learned how to ask people about their families. this will come in handy in case i'm ever in germany and am ordering food and suddenly have to know my waiter's grandparents' names, i guess. i had an opportunity to give feedback on the format of the class, and i tried to be gentle, but i think it's going too fast. he just blasts through powerpoints full of stuff and then has us look at them later, but there's a new powerpoint for every class and we have class 4 days a week. i'm doing okay- my blog essay only had one correction and everyone else's had like 10-15.



my big worry is my history class. we aren't getting much personal feedback or any graded material, and the whole thing makes me feel stupid. i know i'm not stupid, and expressing this is kind of frustrating because everyone is like DON'T WORRY YOU'RE REALLY SMART #)(@)*#)(*)(# but smartness and doing well in school don't have that much to do with each other. going to school seems to be like 10% intelligence and 90% knowing how to go to school. it's frustrating because some of the reading she's giving us is like the world's most jargony jargon (one article i read yesterday was like a cartoon of a stuffy history professor?). i feel like there's so much information for me to try to read and synthesize, more than i've ever had for a class before, and i keep missing stuff. 99% of it is that it's a short summer class so we have to cram a whole semester into 6 weeks, but it's super super super stressful for me so far and i'm really worried about it.



blehhh. i have a meeting now, and then i have to try really hard to do all the work i have to do and then go home and have more excruciating classes and feel stupid and want to go to sleep forever.

wish in one hand

blehhh. so at the end of our fiscal year, we have a staff appreciation day. usually it's a really low-key morning with breakfast and mimosas, then we play board games if we want (last year it was at the circa centre and we had a playstation !), then we have a really good catered bbq for lunch, and then we get "surprise" dismissed early at 12 or 1. i'm totally cool with this format ! i feel appreciated ! however.



this year some people on the committee opted to make it a field day type thing so now instead of actually relaxing after a stressful end of the fiscal year, there is a rigid schedule of "fun" including tug-o-war and something called like pass the grape, which sounds like a weird sex thing. i will not be playing pass the grape with my coworkers. i do not need to have elementary school activities assigned to me to have fun. i'm not 8, or from south philly.

i had both of my classes last night. history class was kind of a bummer because i have a lot of academic insecurity and i feel like everyone is so far ahead of me- not in knowledge of the subject, but as far as having the tools and language to discuss it. and i shouldn't compare myself to them, because they're mostly very young and have been going to school for 17 years straight at this point. i also got something wrong in one of my essay questions and i'm wayyyy too embarrassed about it. the added bonus of posting our homework online for everyone to see instead of just handing it in is a bummer, though i understand why it's useful !



german class is fine, but it's weird that the class is being taught in german by the third lesson? like i took german for years but i can't imagine how the people who have never taken it are doing. like, he just keeps saying things loud in german instead of saying it once in english? i mean, it's working, but it's weird.

after class, i did some homework (including writing a german essay and making notes for a history project) and then did the argent dailies with paul. i'm sort of bummed that everyone (including me !) quit wow, but i decided to do those dailies every day to get the three mounts i don't have.



then i had a rousing conversation about merkins and celebrity nudes with mouse (not arousing, rousing), and a little about possible poisoning at jamestown. i tried to talk a little bit about stuff i'm learning to help me remember it, because mouse is the only person on earth who wouldn't be bored by it ! did you guys know that the colonists named "virginia" after their virgin queen and because it was "virgin land", but the name the indians had for it, which i totally forgot (tsenecomaka?), means "densely populated land"?

what else? something less grumpy. there was a thread on my all ladies feminist messageboard about books we read when we were kids, and i ended up picking up used copies of all the books i hadn't read. because i was a nerdy, library-frequenting child, that was only five books. i got:


the ghost next door by wylly folk st. john


wonder by rachel vail


the girl with the silver eyes by willo davis roberts


stranger with my face by lois duncan


daphne's book by mary downing hahn

the majority of those are supernatural thrillers, and i'm really surprised i hadn't read them- especially that i've never heard of wylly folk st. john. honestly i'm surprised i haven't read the other ones either because i also liked books about girls doing stuff (any stuff). haha. have you guys read any of those?

i guess i'm going to get ready to go- the work party starts at 10, and the closing ceremony (aka we get to go home?) is at 1, so i'm going to go home and work on my history homework and maybe eat a big sandwich? then mouse and i are going to the phillies game and tomorrow we're possibly tubing if it isn't raining???

weekend to-do list
- clean ! there's so much grossness that is my fault that i'm oblivious to !
- DROP MY LAUNDRY OFF (this is important, all my cool clothes are dirty)
- finish my history homework (hopefully i'll do that this afternoon)
- do my reading for history next week
- post the german essay i wrote on our class site
- do the other german assignments i have (which is just using this interactive website)
- go grocery shopping

all of that is a pretty tall order but i want to try to be responsible !!!! wish me luck.