i just threw out the love of my dreams

i had a weekend of horrific tragedy !!!! well, maybe i'm being melodramatic, but lots of bad stuff happened !!! on friday, we had that work party, which wasn't soooo bad. i managed to avoid the tug-o-war, but they served lunch at 10:30am (i blurted out, "catered lunch at 10:30? i feel like a really rich kid whose PARENTS DIED !!!!" and my coworkers were like 'huh') and the food was kind of bad. they had veggie burgers without buns (veggie BURGERS dudes. they work just like BURGERS.), roasted vegetables with 290382903 bell peppers, and quinoa salad featuring bell peppers.



why do people think those things are food? why would they be so pretty if we were supposed to eat them? i left work around 1 (we got dismissed at 12 but i was playing scrabble with a few of my cooler coworkers) and took a nap and cleaned up my room before the phillies game. nate and anna very kindly gave us their tickets, and the thunderstorms stopped just in time ! unfortunately, the phillies played like shit for nine innings, giving up 7 runs and only scoring 1. we decided to leave early, which i've never done before, but it was hot and it seemed hopeless and we were sitting in like 2 inches of water from the storm (my feet were wrinkly when i got home !). by the time i got home (15 minutes?), the phillies had tied the game, and then as i watched on tv, cursing at christina (who understands because she lived in boston for 10 years), they won in the 10th.



i was so fucking pissed and had no one to blame but myself and mouse a little. i love the phillies.

on saturday, it was pouringgggg, so we rescheduled tubing for sunday and went to chinatown to eat lunch. we ended up going to new harmony, which is supposedly new again (it used to be 'harmony' but then it became 'new harmony' and the food got gross), and it was just okay but very cheap. i got general tso's chicken, a rarity for me, and it was mostly the friedest fried that ever fried and i couldn't finish it.


new harmony vegetarian rest stop

then we went to staples. i'm kind of trying to spend frugally this week, but i ended up buying a bunch of pens and a pencil case because i'm a school supply nerd. my favorite pen, the pentel RSVP, was on sale ! and so were certain colors of bic mark its !





my problem here is that i have a gigantic oversize tote bag FULL TO THE BRIM WITH PENS, including a full unopened set of mark its and at least a dozen pentel rsvps. and like... i never write anything down ! haha. and i do my schoolwork in pencil. it was only $8, but i should probably try to curb spending $5-8 here and there on stupid stuff !

i came home after that and hung out with christina, and then mouse came back over and we watched jurassic park. it's really weird to me that the dinosaurs in that movie look real and the cgi looks great even almost 20 years later, but the cgi scenes of people driving cars looks super fake?



and then diana came over ! it was great to see her as usual. she's seriously the funniest cutest person. she lightened christina's hair and cut my bangs and we watched tv and drank soda.

on sunnnnnday, mouse and i went to south philly to pick up jeanne and mike at b2, where i got a good iced coffee and a bagel that weirdly tasted like meat. we went up to point pleasant (near new hope) for an exciting day of tubing.



pennsylvania is so beautiful and it was pretty hot out, so i was super psyched to get in the river, except i forgot to wear shoes. i remembered not to wear flip flops (the current takes them away), but shoes are necessary cause the bank and riverbeds are just jagged rocks. everything went pretty well, dragonfly larva excluded, until we got to a really shallow patch. everyone else floated ahead while i gingerly walked my tube to deeper water, and when i tried to get back on it I LOST MY TUBE.

i had to walk like 400 miles back barefoot on jagged rocks and at one point slipped and twisted my ankle, and then finally got back in the water to swim when it was deep enough. jeanne came out to rescue me during the swimming part. it was embarrassing and stressful and frustrating, but it was totally my fault for not wearing shoes- the walk back would've taken like 20 minutes with shoes. i probably would've still twisted my ankle though.



i finally made it back, sore, bruised, scraped, and sunburned, but luckily no one was mad at me. we drove back and stopped for ice cream (this place had too many choices and i choked and just got a soft serve cone with magic shell, but it was still good) on the way. overalllll i had a really fun time with jeanne, mike b., and mouse despite my struggle and hardship and pain.

once i got home, i was so sore and miserable that i just put on aloe, put on a futurama movie, and got in bed. mouse brought me some advil too. i ended up going to bed at 11pm (the earliest i've ever gone to bed ever !) and now i'm at work, feeling sorer but slightly less miserable, because there's twizzlers here.



let's take a look at that weekend to-do list !

weekend to-do list
- clean ! (i only cleaned the bathroom and my room though)
- DROP MY LAUNDRY OFF (mouse actually dropped it off for me but whatev)
- finish my history homework
- do my reading for history next week
- post the german essay i wrote on our class site
- do the other german assignments i have
- go grocery shopping
- restore all the apps i lost on my phone, and also my ringtone

i'm going to do my history reading at lunch today and maybe some after work before german, but i have no idea when i can grocery shop. school is cramping my LIFE.

p.s. there's a bunch of stuff i'm forgetting !
p.p.s. i'm hungry
p.p.p.s. poooooor roxy

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.

eating popcorn on a piano

ahhh, school. did you guys know school was a lot of work? my german class has kind of been light on homework so far (attending daily class, doing an interactive lesson on the deutsche welle site, recording answers to verbal questions, writing an introduction for myself on the class facebook... !!!) but the history class has been killer. i need to pace myself better as far as the reading goes- i need to do the reading over the weekend every week so tuesday and wednesday aren't super stressful.


the time management octopus or banana

i'm stressed out already ! buh ! and it's only day 3 of classes. i'm also already resentful that i'm missing out on fun social stuff, like anna's birthday ! and now i'm anxious that i won't finish my craft swap scarf by august, though i guess i could work on that reallllly hard on the weekends or something. i'm trying to be really reasponsible about obligations now, and since it's the first time i've done this particular craft swap, i don't want to be late or a deadbeat !


someone else's beautiful entrelac stuff

i also watched a few futuramas with ken last night, including the one where bender becomes human. favorite. i wish i could make that 'wooooo' noise my text message sound or something.



oh, speaking of text messages, i also restored my iphone to factory settings by accident so i lost all the apps i had and my most recent like, cat pictures and shit. and most of my better sexts ! just kidding. or am i?*

what else? oh, i just bought a used copy of resident evil 5 to play with a friend. it looks kind of stupid and weird (basically, killing zombies and monsters and a matrix guy in south africa- has caused some controversy because the zombies are mostly black), but also like it'll be fun since it requires a lot of cooperation.



some other suggestions for cool scary games where maybe i could kill monsters instead of zombies are also welcome.

tonight i have more class, which is already making for a boring blog. but !!! nate and anna can't use their phillies tickets for tomorrow so mouse and i are going to go ! and we might go tubing on the delaware on saturday? and then i'm going to spend a thousand hours reading and knitting and being miserable about having responsibilities i think.

p.s. what iphone apps did i have?
p.p.s. homework sucks

* yes

it's the bomb the bomb the bomb the bomb the bomb the bomb the bomb that will keep us together

is it possible for bug bites to activate? i got bug bites this saturday while in the woods that weren't really red or itchy, and suddenly today they are mega itchy. HUH !

okay, first thing's first ! yesterday i had lunch with christina and chrysta which means i finallyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy finally met chrysta ! chrysta is a friend i met on the internet who is incidentally good friends with my friend nate. she lives in michigan (and definitely says "pop") and was in town to see unrest. man, she is cool and also very funny and also very satisfyingly short (as a slightly above average height person i love having short friends because i think it enhances my height).



then i went back to work and managed to get some work done despite being so nervous about class. i actually found out something good about a boring project i do every summer (it may become automated !) so that was good newsssss.

anyyyywayyyyy i came home after work and got ready for my classes. i was like.. instantly tired cause i was in my underwear and directly next to my bed, but i resisted. my first class was american history through 1865 and honestly was just mostly other students acclimating to adobe connect. the professor seems really nice- she explained a bit about our assignments and stuff, and then let us go a half hour early to work out microphone issues with other students. haha.



my german class was a little more meaty. the professor had met with us previously to make sure we were able to use adobe connect so we only spent about 10 minutes on that, and we went right into our first lesson, which was just conversational introduction stuff in german. i'm not sure if it's because i've taken german or what, butttttttt no one but me seemed like they really knew what was going on? also i'm such an insufferable teacher's pet and answered every single question because no one else wanted to talk.

that's really about it- the history class seems like way more work than i expected (LOTS of reading !) but the german class maybe seems like a little less. i'm going to watch my history lecture today and do my german stuff and see if i can stay on top of it.


right: the hardened exterior i project to all of you. left: me in class

other than that, half a watermelon and a poor night's sleep.

p.s. the history professor said we had an open book 24 hour final and not one but two people thought that it meant that the test was 24 hours long.

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?

100th post !

hey dudes, i'm totally not posting my to-do list today because i didn't do anyyyyyything !



i have been going to bed too late lately and totally f'd up my sleep schedule. i can't fall asleep before 2:30-3:00am anymore ! on the one hand, it's pretty cool because i can bother my friends on the west coast, but on the other hand... i wake up at 7:30? anyway, because of that i usually doze off while trying to do something after work, and i ended up dozing off on my history book



i woke up and decided it was too late to read books, so i logged on to wow to update my mods and crap and ended up doing blackwing lair with paul, gavin, and jeff. i started playing wow too late to ever go to BWL, and 4-manning a level 60 40-man dungeon is a different experience from the actual raid, so i had no idea what was going on. we were looking for some dragon's head for jeff and a goblin for paul but we ended up not getting either because it was super buggy.



boy, i already forgot how to play my character ! i couldn't remember my rotation at first or how to walk around, and we gave up just when i started to get the hang of it. paul, gavin, and jeff are three of my favorite people to play with though so it was nice to talk to them, albeit briefly and angrily (we um, kept wiping).

after that i farted around for awhile and watched some king of the hill on netflix. isn't it weird that mike judge made this great show with a tender, loving, realistic, respectful portrayal of working class texans and then went on to make the horrible classist shitshow idiocracy? anyway, i determined last night that joseph gribble creeps me out. he totally seems like a future serial killer or something. i'm uh, glad he's fake !



wooo, weekend. i get out of work at 2pm today, and i'm going to hang out with biz in center city (biz being my middle/high school best friend who happens to live in philly now too !). i'm going to stop by and catsit a little, and then biz and i are going to eat italian food and look for crappy necklaces.


not this ugly though

then after i get home, mouse is coming over so we can plan for our trip tomorrow. we're going to nockamixon state park to ride bikes and swim (with like, 10000 other people cause it's 4th of july weekend, which i forgot !). i'm a little nervous cause i haven't been on my bike in awhile but i'm sure it's just like riding a bike. i will take the opportunity of mouse coming over to grease everything and check my tires also.



the rest of the weekend will be spent on like, doing schoolwork and farting around the house and maybe hanging out with mouse again?

there's some other stuff i wanted to talk about but we just had a meeting and our director told us to go home ! haha. we hit our fundraising goal and participation goal (not that this has much to do with me, i'm not a fundraiser, but i'm on a fundraising team) so we get to leave. remind me to talk about young adult books next week !!!

we gotta get out of this place

okay ! let's look at the to-do list ! it's slightly augmented !

- 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
-work on craft swap project
- straighten up the kitchen and living room
- go back to trader joe's for some frozen crap
- catsit hoolie !
- brush my own cat and clip her toenails

last night was a good night ! i came home from work and minimally straightened up the living room and took the garbage out (luckily the living room wasn't too messy cause.. i haven't been in it for awhile !) and then christina came home (i haven't seen her in foreverrrrr cause her class was ending) and jeanne and mike came over. i was really excited because jeanne is the coolest person and mike is also extremely cool, and he'd never been to my house before !



jeanne had me get this russian movie from netflix called wolfhunter. actually, it's called wolfHOUND, but it's cemented in my brain as wolfhunter (why would something be called wolfhound? that's redundant. doghound. wolfcanine. wolfdog.). basically it is a ye olde tymey story about a child whose parents are killed by an evil dude and who is forced into slavery who mysteriously becomes good at fighting and saves/avenges slaves. he also wolfhunts for the guy who killed his parents.



the movie is billed as conan the barbarian meets lord of the rings and i can't say it's really wrong? like, it's as shitty as any conan movie and as pretty as any LOTR movie ! the story was a little bit confusing because my brain kept refusing to pay attention but like, some cool wind happened and maybe some stabbing? the best part of everything, though, was that there were capable female warriors and it wasn't a big deal or odd that they were there, and the conqueror of the black bear (the like... chieftan of a weird little group of druids) was a tough fat lady ! and the princess was very tough and beautiful (and of course falls in love with wolfhunter)


that guy? not wolfhunter. just this other guy who is identical to him !

mike also brushed pizza for me so i could take it off my chore list ! i really appreciate it, and it was also exciting to show him the majesty of the furminator. i think he was really impressed.



after the movie was over, mouse stopped by and we watched some futuramas and mike drew some cool monsters (which you can see on his blog here) and jeanne paged through christina's art history book looking for a dragon (and came up empty). everyone went home and i got some quality time and cuddling with christina (her class is really cramping our style !!!) before going to bed.

also, remember my plan to get mouse to buy me a watermelon?

"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."

it backfired when my power went out and we had to eat watermelon at his house? it actually backfired again, per his flickr.


This is for Roxy. Her plan to scam me out of my watermelon backfired and I ended up eating it with my family. In your face.


This is for Roxy. Her plan to scam me out of my watermelon backfired and I ended up eating it with my family. In your face.

there was a third picture where he got his family members to eat watermelon but i'm not posting it, because it hurts too much (and i don't know if it would be weird for them). suffice to say, i'm disappointed that what was supposed to be my watermelon became his baby nephew's first solid food.

okay guys, tonight's the night ! i have to do my history homework tonight, and i have to check out my bike, because i'll be in center city tomorrow and can get tubes or whatever if i need them. wish me luck !