i keep getting chills

ohhhhh dudes. i feel (physically) terrible and couldn't sleep last night ! what a terrible thing.

i did get a few things done yesterday- i updated 100 contacts in our database at work, did everything else on my work to-do list (minus one thing that i have to wait for a coworker's input on), and went and got q-tips and tokens ! i didn't have any time to go pick up my yarn, but i have a doctor's appointment later today and i might swing over and grab it then. buttttt i also feel cruddy so i may just go and come right home.

yesterday i met up with mouse and we went to green line, where i got a vegan chicken salad sandwich on a bagel and an iced coffee for dinner (i don't like coffee? but if i put like 53949034 sugars in an iced coffee it tastes like coffee ice cream ! i'm an adult !) and um, mostly talked about stephen king? i'm not sure why i brought it up, i think because my friend mentioned the dark tower and i remember mouse finishing the last books when they came out (since he started them at 14).



before i start talking about this, let's acknowledge that we all know stephen king is an awful writer. basically his books are like 2000 page dr. seuss books and are perfect for around age 11-12 when you have the stamina to read a long book but you don't yet understand adult language and themes. he comes up with stories that would make a good wikipedia entry and instead makes them thousands and thousands of pages.

anyway, mouse explained the plot of several stephen king books to me and they all sounded super interesting, and i know they aren't, so i'm actually going to read their wikis sometime soon ! i also found out that the stand is about everyone dying of the flu and since christina used to work in pandemic flu preparedness i have decided to bug her by asking her stuff about the stand like it is a real life thing ! she's going to love it !


look how scary stephen king is ! a coincidence since he writes horror novels.

after that, i came home and we raided. the icecrown buff is up to 10% now and everything was easier than usual- we downed putricide in 3 attempts and also killed the princes. it was our most successful night so far... exceppppppptttttttttt that i got in a fight with a normally cool dude who was ardently defending his right to use the word 'bitch' and another guy made a rape joke ! the second guy is just some random recruit so i wasn't surprised, but the first dude is normally a nice person who got realllllllllly hostile and weird when i tried to talk to him about it. i wonder why dudes think it is their place to tell women that misogyny isn't offensive?



or why some dudes are so adamant about using misogynistic language/terms as if it is a god-given right? i will never understand it. like, it's already a guild rule, how is it not even possible to reign it in for 4-8 hours a week? after the past week, it is a bummer that i have to put up with misogyny in a video game i play to have fun, but it was nice that there are some dudes (paul, gavin, jeff, ibrahim) who will speak up to other dudes about it rather than supporting you in private and not wanting to rock the boat publicly. our guild leader said he would talk to the dude but whatever.

annnnnnnnnnywayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy last night i was looking for masculine sock patterns on ravelry so i could make mouse a pair of socks, and i found these:



holy shit ! i want to make them ! they're pretty advanced for me because i haven't really done much colorwork or even made a sock yet but i'm pretty confident that i can teach myself to make them. the pattern won't be on sale til april 10 but i'm excited ! i don't wear socks and jeanne isn't like, a precious bird sock person, so i'm not sure what to DO with them, but i really want to try making them.

so, yeah, i had a dark spot in there and i don't feel well, but stephen king and complicated socks are balancing it out a little. i'm going to do some work from home before my appointment (and maybe burst out of my room right now to scare christina before she goes to work, since she probably thinks i already left for work ! why does this entry have two things about hassling christina? i'm turning into a problem child).

p.s. jeanne is getting vaccinations today for her trip to colombia and she thinks needles suck, so wish her luck !
p.p.s. tomorrow is vinegar the cat's cat birthday and i'm going to see if i can make it ! i'm scared of walking in some parts of south philly at night because it's so teenagery.

in the wise words of kristen willoughby

(in reference to a woman being attacked by a man during a show while being called a bitch and a dyke, and the general male response that they didn't understand how that was misogynistic and/or how rare and violent misogyny must be)

"experiencing misogyny isn't always about getting physically abused. it's also about microinequities--"death by a thousand papercuts." it's like every day is december 31 and every person thinks it's funny and acceptable and original to make the "see you next year!!" joke except the joke also features something about how you are inadequate, ugly, public property, invisible, disposable, or otherwise unacceptable for being female. experiencing that on some level every day is just as wrong and hurtful and degrading as getting physically assaulted at a show, but in that case it happens all at once. it is terrible any way you slice it.

i just don't think people (esp. dudes) even stop to consider that one rape joke, one shitty comment about a woman's looks, any one little thing that may seem so small and insigificant to them is actually the 50000th message a woman has gotten like that on THAT DAY and it is like a slow, painful death. that's what misogyny is."

sweet happy life

my life has gone downhill since yesterday. two very terrible and weird things happened when i got home from work !

1) i took a nap, which i've been trying not to do !
and
2) i realized that torturing christina while she watches gossip girl has metamorphosized into me actually enjoying gossip girl



i still have not solved the mystery of gossip girl's true identity but i did come up with a pretty good plot idea for the show- if everyone just stops backstabbing each other, they would all be much happier. except maybe gossip guy's greedy uncle. the nerve of that guy !

today's going to be pretty dull. i have to enter updates in our database today, and go buy some tokens (and qtips !), and maybe make some time to go pick up my yarn order at loop (i probably will not have time to do that unless i take a long lunch). i'm even bored typing all of that out to you ! maybe if i enter all my updates before 1pm, i'll reward myself with yarn shopping.



i understand that rewarding yourself with material goods for handling things you are actually responsible for is unhealthy behavior, but the yarn i like is like $6 a skein and i already paid for it ! haha. cheapest consumer.

i'm sort of nervous about going back to school. i'm taking my first summer class starting at the end of may, and the application for employees for summer classes is basically like... "do u want to go here check yes or no" and i checked yes. for fall, the guidelines are still not that stringent (3.0 gpa from another school, letters of reference, etc.) but since my gpa in college was 2.95 (because i got a D in a humanities class taught by a baptist minister and kept taking these weird film classes where i got Cs cause i hate movies) i'm afraid i'll be rejected and have to take a bunch of community college classes. nothing wrong with community college, except it's downtown and i already work on penn's campus, and i don't really have the killer instinct where i do stuff that inconveniences me even slightly.



i guess i'll have to suck it up if i really want to do this, because it's dumb and selfish and spoiled of me to shrug off 100% tuition to a good school. i should also make an appointment with admissions, though my previous visits have been pretty unhelpful- i presented them with all of my transcripts and letters and they were like, "just apply and see what happens !!!!!(@()!@((#!#". thanks guys.

tonight i'm going to have an after dinner snack with mouse and then i have a raid. perhaps i'll also get to sing a song to christina with made up words about pubes, or the cat.

long ago

hello dogs. i'm sorta bummed to be at work because it's raining and i love sleeping while it's raining !

on friday, christina, mouse, and i went to vientiane to meet up with nate and anna. the wait was pretty long because the restaurant is super super tiny, but we ran into brian v. while we were waiting and it was really nice to see him ! i got tofu lad na (and will probably only get that there for the rest of my life) and everyone else got neat looking stuff including homemade beef jerky (which is apparently amazing, but i've only had real beef jerky once and it was nothing to write home about). mouse went home after dinner because the wait was so long and he had to work in the morning, so the rest of us got treats (percy jackson flavored airheads?) and went back to my house, where we watched beavis and butthead music videos



and um, that hbo documentary about magic johnson and larry bird? nate and i are both really into larry bird highlight reels and i think we were hoping the documentary would just be a 90 minute highlight reel but it was actually the touching story of their rivalry and friendship. oh also larry bird is autistic or something. what the hell.


larry bird's daughter who he DENIES IS HIS DAUGHTER. also it's hard to search for magic johnson and larry bird without finding pics of lady bird johnson

on saturday, christina and i went to green line and i got a delicious apple lemonade which gave me the idea for all these lemonades i didn't actually make ! we went to whole foods and trader joe's after that and both stuck to our lists and got a bunch of cool groceries. then we came home and christina defrosted our gross freezer (it was seriously like 50% ice since we moved in) and i finally sewed a button on the hat i made for mouse's nephew.



then we went up to mouse's mom's so i could meet his super small nephew, scott. holy crap, he's cool ! he's like six weeks old so he's not at the stage where he... does anything but he was a really cute tiny little loaf and he slept on me. mouse looooooooooves him



and scott obviously looooooooooooooves the hat i made him:



heh heh ! it was also nice to see mouse's family, because i haven't been up there in awhile. his grandma gives very good grandma arm hugs.

on sunday, i made sweet potato salad which i'm proud to say was pretty delicious. i roasted small/thin sweet potatoes cut in half (but cut unevenly so some pieces would be super soft and some would be firmer) with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then cubed the slices and mixed them with carrot ginger dressing and green onions.


it basically looked like this but i left the skins on, and um, those aren't green onions

i also got stuff to make delicious hoagies (tofurky slices, munster cheese, avocado spread with lime and garlic and salt, cucumbers, tomatoes, arugula) and jeanne and mouse came over to have lunch. we watched the bear, which was a very beautiful movie:



it's about a baby bear whose mom dies who is taken under the wing of a big male grizzly who is being pursued by hunters. it's notable because there's almost no dialogue and the actors are just like.. real bears and it's almost like watching it really happen in the wild (but with a few claymation dreams added to give insight into the bear's psyche). the story promotes kindness to all creatures and ends with the line, "the greatest thrill is not to kill but to let live". aw. also it's like 2 hours of a baby bear doing shit so if you like that, you should rent it !

what else ! oh, the third episode of the pacific. i really really hate to say it, but despite this being the best episode so far, it really hasn't grabbed me yet.



this episode found the marines in melbourne after guadalcanal and before peleliu. most of the episode was about robert leckie falling in love with a greek australian girl but the pacing and sense of time is so off that i have no idea if they knew each other 3 days or 3 months. the characterization was a little better, and the guy playing leckie is a legitimately good actor (and he was good at sex scenes ! but the unrealistic sex scenes where the lady is psyched that the guy comes in 30 seconds and then hops off after unprotected sex and doesn't need to take care of anything is so distracting !), but the dude playing basilone totally sucks. like, he was supposed to be anguished because his good friend died, and torn between excitement at getting to go home to sell war bonds and guilt over abandoning his fellow marines/his best friend, but he just seemed vaguely grumpy? he's just so so so wooden. i also think they're trying to cover up the fact that the show is not about one unit, and not about men who ever know each other? because the lines are super blurred and they even show the characters in the same rooms.

i don't know. i wish they could've found one unit with good stories and not just used the three famous stories/memoirs about the pacific theater.

oh, what else? i finally finished tender morsels.



so many people told me this book was good and i'm convinced that they were lying or the author paid them to tell me, because it was terrible in ways that i was totally unfamiliar with? the book starts with a father repeatedly raping and verbally abusing his daughter and violently forcing her to have abortions. once her father dies, the author moves on to a violent gang rape of the main character. then she's sent to a magical land where no one can hurt her (just like what happens to real rape victims...?) with her two babies and is totally psyched and happy, because having babies from rape is totally the best thing to ever happen to a woman (because women love babies).

had that been the last rape, it still would have been a little over the top, but next a man makes his way into their dream world (since he was wearing a bear costume in the real world, he's an actual bear in their world) and... sexually assaults one of her daughters as a bear and chases her with his bear dick out with the intent to rape her. at this point you may be saying, "there's no way this author could get more rape into this book !" but you'd be wrong, because one of the daughters uses magic to conjure up five men with HOT POKERS FOR DICKS to violently rape her mother's rapists almost to death in retribution. and at no point is anyone like, "that was totally not the right thing to do" or "this sends a really weird message about rape" or anything?

aside from that, the writing was pretty bad. the whole thing reads like snow white rape fan fiction. it takes place in Ye Olden Tymes and the Olde Tymey writing is super inconsistent and tedious, and the author also introduces 293920832 characters whose stories go nowhere and barely spends any time on the characterization of the main characters. and then the ending is like, "having daughters is great". cool message...? anyway, terrible book.

aside from that, um, i'm going to try my hand at making a sock.



this is the sweet socks pattern from knit picks, and i'm going to make it in those colors (the yarn is stroll sock yarn). it should be fun, despite the fact that i don't wear socks. anyway, back to work !

p.s. i also happened to watch part of kristie alley's reality show and it was equal parts boring, depressing, and funny (maybe slightly skewed toward boring). i think i'd really like her if she wasn't a scientologist and asshole who owns exotic pets.

Hooray

Apple lemonade at the green line

girl fuckin friend

dudes ! i had so much stuff i want to talk about but we have two events at work today and i've been, uh, hustling to get some stuff done !

yesterday i worked a little late, and then mouse and i went on a walk in clark park.



clark park is the park in our neighborhood where they have farmer's markets, a little kid's larp, some outdoor fests, and big flea markets. plus, it has the world's only statue of charles dickens is- dickens made it very clear in his will that he never wanted a state or monument to him erected, and someone made this as a gift for his family without knowing that and his son got PISSED, so it sorta got lost in shipping crates for years until it made its way here and apparently we don't give a fuck about the last wishes of charles dickens



we were going to SIT in the park but we got started late so we just did a few laps and i explained some urban dictionary type gross sex stuff to mouse (when i was in california i kept saying 'carl's jr' sounded like a gross urban dictionary chest-pooping thing, so i looked up "hot carl" and um. it's like one of the worst things my brain knows now. don't look it up !) and he told me about a no-grunting gym in south philly. also he told me about his gimmick suggestion for the uh, dodgeball team he's on- the baseball furries.



+



this is gonna be a neat weekend, maybe. i'm sort of bummed because there's a cool thing at laurel hill cemetery that jeanne is going to, but it's tomorrow and not sunday like i thought ! which means mouse can't go, and also i have a car reserved to do my grocery shopping and errands and stuff and it's important that i stick to that junk for ED stuff.



but saturday night i'm going to mouse's mom's with him to meet his new nephew, scott the baby, and on sunday i think jeanne is coming over and we're going to try to make sweet potato salad (we got the idea yesterday and were like, 'oooooooo'-ing at each other. roasted sweet potatoes, green onions, and maybe some kind of honey mustard vinaigrette? something with lemon? not sure what herbs would go with that).

oh yeah. hey. how do you wear stockings without getting a run in them? i wore them today to dress KIND OF nice for work and i ripped the knee on my way in and now i basically look like ramona quimby. i will end this entry with some important facts about me..

important facts about me
- i made it through the 90s without ever hearing "send me on my way" by rusted root or "laid" by james
- i don't have stereoscopic vision
- in the late 90s, i was interviewed by planned parenthood for their teen website about ONLINE JOURNALS (because i've been doing this since 1997 before "blogging" was invented !). that isn't interesting, but the guy who interested me did production and electrical work on the phantasm movies !
- i have eaten rattlesnake before. it's sort of like turkey neck, but it tastes like a snake smells. D:

p.s. big ups to the ladies in my community whose efforts to get the band drunkdriver to stop touring with a rapist were successful, and the dudes who supported us. despite seeing a bunch of men say a bunch of vile shit about rape and rape victims in the process, i was extremely heartened that the ladies never backed down and that some dudes actually are vocal feminist allies (and not the type who agree with us in private but won't stand up for us in public because he doesn't want to upset his bros).

wazzzaaaaaaaaaaa

i'm gonna be up front, this entry is mostly going to be about crocheting and yogurt.

yesterday christina and i met up and walked home from work together and it was delightful ! having someone to talk to made the walk go by a lot faster. i mean, it's like... a 15 minute walk, but it's a boring one with very little to look at now that those men's underwear that were stuck on the powerlines are gone. the urge to nap after work is incredibly strong since i got into that shitty pattern of napping after work and staying up super late, but i resisted- unfortunately i'm still staying up super late though ! i was like, basically catatonic after work because i was so tired, but i stayed up and started a new chewbacca since i got my dk yarn from knit picks.



doesn't it look like bigfoot's ghost right now? its eyes plaintively staring at me was a total mindfuck, too !

i know it's boring when people talk about what they eat but to work on ED stuff i'm trying to generally eat the same exact things at every meal, because it's much easier for me to control what i'm eating with a routine than when i try to be spontaneous or, you know, enjoy food. i have a feeling that i won't be able to enjoy food for like 10 years, or ever? anyway, i've been eating:

breakfast
- yogurt
- fruit (pears !)

snack
- almonds
- pretzels

lunch
- quorn patty (or veggie burger) on a wheat roll with spinach/artichoke cream cheese
- baby carrots

dinner
- red beans and rice and peas
or
- soup with spinach and pasta and white beans and olive oil
or
- some kind of fake meat thing, sweet potatoes, and a vegetable

when i write that out, it doesn't really sound like a lot of food, but i tend to eat larger meals at dinner time (and i've had trouble sticking to the dinner options this week) because that's kind of the uh, danger zone for me as far as disordered eating. anyway, the point of me telling you all that is that i deviated from my usual dannon all natural vanilla



and instead got stonyfield organic french vanilla



i really love greek yogurt texture (but never the taste? i'm american, i want really sweet yogurt, spiro) so i um... usually leave my tubs of yogurt sitting out for a night so most of the whey separates out and the yogurt gets thick. but this stonyfield yogurt is totally weird and every morning when i open the container there's like two inches of whey on top and the texture now is basically like noxema? it's really weird and tomorrow's breakfast is going to be grim !

i did just remember that i have an ice cream maker though:



so i think this weekend i'm going to get stuff to make dark chocolate cherry froyo for me and christina.

i really truly have nothing to talk about. now that i'm not napping i don't even have cool night sweats and stuff to write about !

p.s. i'm kind of busy at work today and it blows

all dressed up

i think i probably start every entry with 'hey dudes' so i'm not going to today ! p.s. hey dudes !!!!!!

yesterday was a weird day of trying stuff for me- i'm working on some cool interesting eating disorder stuff that totally sucks for me, and had to try to eat normally and be normal for a whole day. it basically felt like when the golden girls dressed up like men and went into the men's locker room at the country club- i felt super antsy and weird all day. eating normal food and not doing anything... well, disordered for a whole day made me feel like i accidentally left 100 stoves on- like, something was nagging at me all day like i forgot something important.


my favorite meal is a hoagie and a pamphlet

it's really hard to work on and think about this stuff, needless to say. after my last entry, i am trying really hard not to get ahead of myself and worry about how i'm going to deal with peoples' reactions to me losing weight (an unfortunate consequence of eating disorder recovery for me). like, i WILL have to deal with it when it happens, but it won't be noticeable for months.

i also did not take a nap when i got home from work. my weird period of like, winter malaise got me into the habit of going home after work, taking a nap, and then going to bed super super late (like 2-3am), so i'd be tired the next day and take another nap etc. etc. etc. i've already felt more energetic and positive and um, into the idea of hanging out and leaving my house lately so i think that's a positive change. let's hang out everybody !

i worked on my chewbacca last night- unfortunately because i used worsted weight yarn instead of dk, it's huge and misshapen so from here on out i'm just going to call it a bigfoot. the arms took about 10 minutes each to crochet:



oddly the pattern required me to stuff them and then brush them and of course the stuffing got pulled through:



i'm going to re-do them since it's so fast. by the way, brushing patches of bigfoot fur with a brush is warping me further because i love doing it and it's so relaxing.

oh. yeah. one last thing ! i'm even more bummed by 'the pacific' now because there was an extended night combat scene where john basilone repairs a machine gun or something, and he burnt his arm, and he killed some japanese people, and it was really vague and hard to tell what was happening, and this is what it was supposed to portray:



On October 24, 1942 his unit engaged the Japanese in the Lunga area when their position came under attack by a regiment of approximately 3000 soldiers. The Japanese forces began a frontal attack using machine-guns, grenades and mortars against the American heavy machine-guns. The American forces fought for the next 48 hours until only Basilone and two other men from his squad were still able to continue fighting. Basilone moved an extra gun into position and maintained continual fire against the incoming Japanese forces. He repaired another machine-gun and personally manned it, holding the defensive line until replacements arrived. With the continuous fighting, ammunition became critically low and supply lines were cut off. Basilone fought through hostile lines and returned with urgently needed ammunition for his gunners. By the end of the battle, the Japanese regiment was virtually annihilated.

i know that won't mean anything to most of you, but they did such a piss poor job of conveying ANY of that that it doesn't give me high hopes for the rest of the series. maybe i'll just watch band of brothers again.

p.s. mouse might come meet me for lunch ! i'm gonna get a fruit salad though cause i have a veggie burger for lunch.
p.p.s. having regular poops is weird.

it's pearfection

i just ate the best pear in the universe, fyi.

heyyyy dudes. what's happening? my weekend was pretty good overall- on friday, i tried to go buy pants and jeans after work but that wasn't in the cards. i went to lane bryant (one of like... three fat people clothing stores? but this one is expensive and mostly has mom clothes) and their system of sizing jeans is baffling. like, there's three colors representing three body types, and within each color there's sizes 1-8? with 1 being a 14/16 and 8 being a 28/30 maybe? the girl working there was busy intently flirting with the security guard and wouldn't actually explain the sizes to me so i gave up. i did try on a few pairs and every pair of jeans on earth is low rise, which is a bummer for me.



then i came home and farted around and crap. on saturday, christina went to nyc, so i had to drive by myself ! it wasn't too bad- my only real problem was parking and unparking. also, on the way there, i was surprised to see a guy actually doing appropriate traffic signals with his arm (the likes of which i haven't seen since driver's ed), only to discover he was actually just fucking around with his arm in a way that turned out to mean something. i went to trader joe's and whole foods to pick up some groceries, including the trader joe's dark chocolate sea salt almonds



on saturday night, mouse and i went to our friend lauren's birthday party in ambler. we got to see bj, helen, and james, and uh... lauren, obviously ! haha. i haven't seen her in a million years and she was a very gracious host. also, our friend jessica who i haven't seen in like four years (who is very nice !) was there with her baby and i got to hug him and hold him and give him a bottle and he pulled my hair ! p.s. sorry to embarrass lauren but her mother was there and told us that when lauren was 2 or so, her mom was changing her baby brother's diaper and lauren pointed to his junk and asked what it was, so her mom told her, and she was like, "oh, i love peanuts"



mouse's spring allergies (and reaction to claritin) are totally nuts this year, so we went home pretty early. i had insane queasiness and stomach pain so i ended up staying up until 6am (last night i discovered that i forgot to take my birth control for like three days !). on sunday i woke up early and... well, i did some heroics with paul and ibrahim, but then i made pasta salad for a picnic in clark park !



my um, signature pasta salad is just avocados, tomatoes, and pasta (i'd put red onions too but mouse doesn't like them) with dressing- i like drew's smoked tomato dressing, but this time i used trader joe's tuscan italian and it was pretty good ! i also got some fake oreos (joe-joe's !) and pretzels and uh, capri suns, and we went to fairmount park and ate at an area mouse and i refer to as "the affair park" cause we saw two people definitely having an affair there once !


mouse enjoys some unappetizing-looking pasta salad


mike follows suit

then we went to old navy so i could return something and i got four of the same skirt:



in black, blue, green, and this print:



i say "skirt" but it's actually a tube dress. i tend to wear my pants and skirts up at my fucking armpits so these fall to the knee- their regular summer skirts like, reveal my vagina.

when i got home, i started crocheting my chewbacca. dudes, crocheting is easy? just look at youtube ! it took me 30 minutes tops to teach myself well enough to follow an amigurumi pattern ! unfortunately though, i used worsted weight yarn instead of dk, like suggested, and it's fucking huge ! i ordered some dk from knit picks to make some reasonably small ones, but i also ordered some larger eyes from 6060 so i can complete this chewbacca.


pre-brushing


post-brushing

so far it looks pretty good, but i have to attach the eyes before i finish it, and they haven't come yet (because um, i just ordered them at like 8pm last night). i may make the arms tonight !

aaaaaaaand, finally, the second episode of the pacific aired last night, and i say with regret that it hasn't really pulled me in yet.



- i hate the tom hanks narration. i guess it's necessary, but i really don't like it. he has the WORST VOICE.
- the title sequence is beautiful but it's like, 400 minutes long.
- the episode was only 50 minutes long !
- it felt rushed and weirdly paced just like the first episode
- they keep TELLING INSTEAD OF SHOWING. like, they're being super heavy handed with the characterization of the main characters- like, "LECKIE, YOU REALLY KNOW HOW TO KEEP EVERYONE'S SPIRITS UP, YOU REALLY HAVE A WAY WITH WORDS, YOU'RE A BARD" and "BASILONE, YOU'LL GET A MEDAL FOR THIS ! YOU'RE A HERO !!!"
- it's just so clumsy trying to cover 3 years of time between 3 separate units (well, 2 right now) who don't interact with each other.

overall i'm cautiously optimistic. i also have to say that i keep comparing it to band of brothers, which it will never live up to, and that when band of brothers aired, i didn't know ANYTHING about what was going on so it was all novel and a surprise to me, but i've learned all about this stuff in the past 9 years, so knowing what's going to happen and to whom might kill it a little for me.

phewwwww that took forever. i'm gonna go have a ginger ale.

p.s. i bought a bunch of healthy food for lunch and brought everything but my veggie burgers to work
p.p.s. as i try to work on eating disorder stuff, my brain has shut down and no food seems appetizing to me anymore. i keep coming up with creative menus each week and i don't want any of the stuff i buy or make. ugh.
p.p.p.s. i registered for my first class for summer 2010 and i start in may !

braveheart of the rodeo

did i mention that pizza acts like a fucking freak when you give her catnip? she never reacted much to toys and scratching posts with catnip, so i never bothered to buy any for her to eat. i got a tub on wednesday and fed her a few pinches and she stayed stock still doing owl ears for a minute and then jumped onto christina's craft table and started obsessively licking some wool roving. like, wouldn't let me push her away from it and her muscles were totally locked so i couldn't even push her head away !


some other cat eating some other catnip

last night, i raided and taught myself to crochet. we had a lot of downtime because we were wiping on valithria:



since we were missing a few key dps and healers. we do have some new recruits, but i don't think anyone briefed them on the no talking like a neanderthal policy so i'm sure i'll be able to report some awesome rape jokes to you guys soon. anyway, in my downtime, i watched knit witch videos on youtube and taught myself three crochet stitches.


from the bottom: single crochet, double crochet, half double crochet

i still need to work on tension and stuff but i think i've pretty much got it down. it probably took like a half hour? as you guys probably know, the #1 most annoying thing you can say to a knitter/crocheter (besides "make me something lololol") is "i wish i could do that" because... no one's brain comes with that stuff already inside it- we learned how to do it. and there is nothing stopping you from learning besides laziness, so why bother to comment? anyway, as a reaction to that i've become super unrealistically confident about my abilities and just decided i was going to learn to crochet, and i'm doing it.

big ups to christina for checking my work, though.

i was going to make a list of stuff i need to do this weekend (clean my room, PUT MY SHELF TOGETHER, grocery shop, make a chewbacca) but instead i'm going to do this one:

list of things you shouldn't say to fat people who are losing weight:
- "you look great !" - there is a judgment in this, and that judgment is "when you are more fat, you do not look great". this is a total motherfucking mindfuck, so don't say it. even if you just want to say it because they look happier/"healthier"/whatever, don't say it. if you have to compliment them, why not be a normal person and not compliment their body?
- "i'm glad you're finally doing something about your weight" - again, there is a judgment here, and that judgment is, "i have been waiting for you to do something about your weight". no fat person wants to hear that someone close to them is thinking about their body or weight and waiting for them to lose weight.
- "what's your secret?" - there is no secret to weight loss. you lose weight if you eat well and exercise, which most people find boring. what you also may not realize is that their "secret" is all of the struggle and mental turmoil and weird feelings that come along with trying to change the way you eat and exercise and live and LOOK, and dealing with other peoples' reactions to those changes as your value increases to other people as your weight decreases, and you probably don't want to hear that because that isn't fun for you.
- "aren't you on a diet? can you eat that?" - the fat person is keenly aware what they "can" eat. they don't need your help (and guess what- there is ALSO a judgment in there !)

these are just guidelines for people you're close to, by the way. if an acquaintance or someone you don't know very well is losing a lot of weight, do not say shit to them ever. in 2007 i lost 75 lbs and had to deal with the comments above from people i was close to (imagine the mindfuck of embarrassment and shame that happens from hearing people you NEVER would have guessed judged you based on your weight say stuff like that ! and imagine how you feel when you gain it back, like i did), but i also had to deal with coworkers saying that they could see that my BACK was skinnier and coworkers saying that my boobs were getting smaller and all kinds of shit !

sorry, this is on my mind lately as i work on eating disorder stuff. it sucks that to work on that, my appearance will have to change and i'll have to go crazy again from people commenting on it. whatever, here's a turtle:



have a good weekend !

your love is a river running soul deep

i had the best time with jeanne yesterday ! she asked me to hang out because it was so nice out ! while i waited for her, i went to mariposa co-op and bought some fake chicken broth and a dark chocolate bar with whole cherries.



then we walked to clark park and petted a billion dogs (well, two. but we saw some other dogs ! including a neapolitan mastiff right next to a chihuahua, an australian shepherd mutt, some pitbulls, a fox terrier). thennnn we stopped at a pet supply store on baltimore and went in because they had a kitten for adoption in the window from a local shelter. i bought pizza some catnip just so we could pet the kitten !





she was super cute and suuuuper tiny and super chirpy and talkative. we're trying to get everyone we know to adopt her. she was reaching through the bars and batting our noses and hands !!

after cat petting, we walked down to vientiane, a thai/laosian restaurant. i really love vientiane but i basically always forget it's there. i had the tofu lad na (which is tofu, wide rice noodles, and this like... amazing thinly sliced broccoli) and it was awesome



by the way, is anything more unappetizing than camera phone pictures of peoples' food? i've never seen one that looked less than disgusting. i don't know why i take them.

we went back to my house after that and hung out with christina, and (sort of) true to my word, i practiced crocheting. i did a bunch of rows of single crochet to work on my tension (though i used this sort of weird thick/thin tweed yarn which made it impossible to tell how i was doing !) and feel confident enough to start youtubing double and half double crochet. christina has also graciously offered to show me if i can't get it since she taught crocheting forever.

once jeanne left, christina and i watched the terminator



and i have to say- you know the scene where the terminator is killing all the sarah connors he can find, and one sarah connor just made an awesome looking sandwich and he kills her before she can eat it? that bummed me out, so i ordered a sandwich even though i'd gone out to dinner 5 hours earlier. i got a little bit of indigestion but i basically never want to miss a sandwich opportunity before i get terminated.

i'm going to go forage for breakfast food. i'm getting good texts from mouse today because he's super high on allergy medicine.

oh, yeah, i got accepted for penn's summer session ! that isn't a huge deal because uh, all employees really have to do is 1) have graduated high school and 2) give them $35 (and believe me, i understand that both things are a huge hardship for most people, so i'm not saying that like LOL ITZ EAZY !!!!), but i'm excited to register for a class on monday !