throw every last care away

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


it actually hurts right about where the skeleton is hurt

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

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


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

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

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



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



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

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



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

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

roxy christina barcelona

woooooo busy weekend ! on friday, kristen came down from new york so she and christina could go to maryland sheep and wool. it was great to finally meet her after occupying the same space on the internet as her for like ten years ! it was everything i thought it would be and more. we met up with christina's coworker kathleen, got beer, and went to vientiane, where i once again had tofu lad na because i'm super unadventurous ! i also had an ephemere with dinner and it was a surprisingly good combination.


appley beer

after dinner we got snacks- i had um, v8 and a tastyklair pie?



while everyone else opted for ice cream (and chocolate covered nuts for kathleen !). then we went back to our house and watched the most pbs show ever, "sandwiches that you will like". it was pretty weird- the sandwiches mostly looked disgusting and the footage all seemed to be from the mid-90s. the grossest was the "st. paul sandwich":


"The sandwich consists of a deep fried egg foo young patty (made with egg, bean sprouts, and minced white onions) served with dill pickle slices, white onion, mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato between two slices of white bread."

ahhhhh ! st. paul is probably rolling over in his damn grave over that thing. i seriously can't stop thinking about it and doing like, a soft gag.

on saturday, the ladies woke up early to go to maryland, and i got up around 9 and tried to do some stuff. i uh, tried to watch some DVR'd stuff (i have like 500 episodes of "what not to wear" and "the king of queens" DVR'd because... i have bad taste in television !) and tried to read the evolution of calpurnia tate but i found it to be pretty annoying and obnoxious so i ended up shelving it for awhile (not literally, it's still cluttering up the livingroom !). i also leveled my priest a little bit !

when the girls got back from maryland (exhausted but with tales of how sheep vaginas look like people vaginas) we met up with mouse and nate and diana (!!!! so many people) and went to bobby flay's hamburger restaurant. well, *i* didn't go- mouse and i went to capo giro because he already ate and i wasn't hungry, and i had gelato for dinner.


why have most of my pictures been food so far?

we all met up at capo giro and i had a really good iced coffee. after a few hours i started to get hungry, so i uh, bought a quiche?


MORE FOOD

and then we came back to my house and met up with anna, who was coming back from like, a weekend long bachelorette party. after christina and kristen went to bed, and nate, anna, and mouse went home, nnamdi stopped by and we hung out for awhile ! that is like the most people i've ever seen in one day.

on sunday, kristen, christina, and i went to green line and had iced mochas and breakfast burritos with hot sauce. kristen left to go hang out with some other philadelphia friends, and diana went to her first haircut appointment. THEN ! mouse and i went over to jeanne's to hang out with jeanne and mike and wait for diana to come give us haircuts. we got burritos and watched the david tennant hamlet



david tennant was super over the top as per usual, but the dude playing laertes made david tennant look subdued. it was uncomfortable to watch this dude, he basically acted like when someone is trying to loudly let a person hiding in a closet know that someone is about to open the closet door.

oh, the most important part ! jeanne was kittensitting a kitten she found in the alley when he was a super super newborn. he's like three weeks old now maybe and she and her friend hannah are sharing his care. he's like, the best? i got to be assistant kittensitter while she got her hair cut !



little wolfman ! he purrs already and plays and is super cute and funny but he weighs like 8 oz and he has trouble pooping by himself (he gets lots of belly massages and wet washcloths and vet visits so i think he's okay). i love him !

jeanne, mouse, and i all got haircuts. jeanne and i just got updated versions of our current haircuts, but we watched the special features of band of brothers to pick out a world war II haircut for mouse. he ended up getting the nixon:



it looks pretty good ! i think my hair looks good too because for the first time ever, people at work are actually noticing and complimenting my hair. it's weird though because i can barely tell the difference. i had to get 2 inches of gross split ends cut off but my hair is still like two feet long.

after we left, we went to whole foods and i missed another friend opportunity. i was wearing this shirt:



and the girl at the hot bar counter was like, "oh, that shirt is awesome, it reminds me that i wanted to call my girlfriends to play d&d". whatttttt that's exactly what i want to do ! i've even made like, craigslist ads looking for girls to play with ! and for some reason i didn't say anything and was just like, "cool story bro" and left. mouse was like, "maybe we'll see her again next time you're here" and i said i'd never seen him before but he pointed out that it was unlikely that a person was making a one-time guest appearance working at a store or something.

when i got home, it was a billion zillion degrees in my apartment. christina was dutifully cataloging all of her beautiful yarn. i watched part of treme with her, which i really like


check out this cool treme photoshop someone made

i'm really bummed that the pacific is a total stinking pile of shit and garbage and puke and garbage and farts, but treme fills the void a little. oddly though, i really like it but i don't know why i like it. i don't feel any pressure to watch it on time every week but i'm enjoying it a lot.

thennnnn i leveled my new priest with paul's warrior for awhile. we got to level 10 and probably could've gotten to 20 pretty quickly, but i was really tired. leveling with paul is fun because he's very methodical and focused and i can zone out and smite stuff.

i'm going to go do work now. these are my busiest two weeks of the year and so far everyone is being annoying. my updates may be spotty and complainy until after may 16 !

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.