reunited blah blah blah blah goooood

hey guyssss i'm back at work. today our new website launches anddddd it's move-in day for penn students. today is going to be really, really cool.

my mom is still here until tomorrow- i initially thought that she was leaving september 5, but she's leaving the 2nd ! it's been great having her here, though i have lost my patience a few times. like, the #1 thing that stresses me out is people asking me questions and making me repeat stuff and she is like... a constant stream of repetitive questions. she told me that i was being mean on monday though and i'm proud to say that i've been the nicest daughter ever since. yesterday she asked me some iteration of "what are we doing today" 13 times in 2 hours and i didn't even get mad !


this is my mom's favorite painting cause it looks like me and her

we've done all kinds of stuff this week, but most of it has been shopping. when my mom visits, we end up shopping a lot, but like... shopping at ross and the dollar store and stuff. it's hard for me to post about this stuff because the least interesting conversations and blogs are all about the stuff people bought, but at the same time finding cheap plus size clothing is pretty exciting. i always forget that ross is a decent option for plus size stuff (well, shirts and dresses- they had a single pair of pants in my size and it was a pair of old lady peach elastic waist pleated pants). i got two neat stuffy society lady dresses and a bunch of shirts with puffy sleeves and a shrug by my favorite company, candy rain.



i wonder where ross gets their plus size stock from? like, i've never seen any of these brands in stores or anything ever. if i knew what stores carried like, candy rain and leena jeans and steves of new york and stuff (that last one is made up) i'd definitely go there and get work clothes ! though i guess getting everything for like $7 each is a plus.

we also went to famous footwear, where i got... two pairs of shoes made by fergie. i don't really know anything about fergie except she peed herself in public and didn't give a shit (cool) and she's in the black-eyed peas (not cool) (also i think EVERYONE is in the black eyed peas, but especially wyclef and ?uestlove), butttttt her shoe line is called FERGALICIOUS? she has to know how disgusting that sounds. it sounds like putting your tongue on a moldy piece of cheese. i hate it ! they were $30 and buy one/get one, so it was a pretty good deal. they also fit my advanced ankles (though i don't really have comparatively big ankles)



so, what else did we do? we've hung out with mouse a few times, mike, and diana, and of course christina. we've watched a few movies, walked around, and eaten a lot of food. i love my mom, but it'll be exciting to get back to (relatively) normal eating once she's gone because my bowels are in turmoil.

oh, i also finished reading mockingjay. i can't really get too in depth with a review because a bunch of people i know haven't read it yet :(



i'll try to not ruin the book for you guys. overall, it was much better than catching fire and a good ending for the series, buttttt

- katniss became the most unlikable character ever by the end of the books (and suzanne collins kind of went nuts with the EVERYONE LOVES KATNISS AND ALWAYS HAS AND THINKS SHE'S SO SPECIAL AND LOVES HERRRR thing)
- i do not agree with the resolution of the team gale/team peeta thing
- some major characters died and there was like no reaction or emotion or even proper death scenes for them?
- muttations are the dumbest

okay, i guess i'm going to go. i should be able to write a better entry tomorrow when i don't have 10,000 people breathing down my neck !

p.s. please remind me to post about adult mutant ninja turtles (a series of texts mouse sent me).

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

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 !

i don't give a damn about my reputation

okay the most exciting thing that happened yesterday was that i cut down the yarn trip wires all over my bedroom. i am working on this cowl for jeanne, which i'm double stranding, and the two balls of yarn fell off of my bed and got progressively more tangled as the weeks went on. like, pizza tried to run away with one of the balls and left it across the room, and it got tangled around my chair. the other one got tangled around my computer cords and my phone cord (yes, i have a landline, and yes, my phone has a cord !). i've sort of been gingerly stepping over it and getting tangled in it, but last night i cut it down !


last year i won a "garfie" for laziness !

i really thought that this whole thing would end with me tripping over the yarn and breaking my laptop, but i actually took care of it before that happened ! i'm super proud of myself, like i always am when i do the bare minimum to function on earth.

really, i got nothing. last night was a raid night. we've had a problem lately with raid attendance, since it's nice out, and our recruiting was kind of a disaster because a few guild chumps invited other chumps who love rape jokes and ardently defend their right to use them, etc., but my friend ibrahim invited a big group of cool people who are also good players (the rape dudes were not good players). so we formed the raid on time and made good progress with no wipes because of the 15% buff in icc !



being a girl who plays a video game is weird, especially playing an mmorpg. because of the nature of the game, i have to constantly interact with a mostly male population who are not the type of people i hang out with in real life, which can be both awesome and terrible. i play with a lot of friends and friends of friends who are all mostly old punk dudes, but since 25-man raids take 25 people, there's still a mishmash of random people in every raid.

my experience has been pretty weird. i've been on the receiving end of both extremes of sexism- getting special treatment and attention and opportunities for being female, and at the receiving end of extreme ire and unfair double standards and pretty vicious misogynist language (slut, bitch, cunt, insults to my appearance, worth based on who wants to fuck me, implications that i'm a bad player cause i'm a girl, rape jokes, etc.) for being female. the guys that know i know act normal and never disappoint me as far as being allies, making me do my own shit, etc. goes and they make the game worth playing for me. the other dudes are a mixed bag. i meant to write some kind of analysis of this but the best i can come up with is, "a lot of dudes are sexist and oblivious to their sexism."

also i just tried to find an image to put here but every single search related to women and video games was

1) naked or half naked women
2) naked or half naked female video game characters
3) motivational posters about how women suck at video games

here is the one with the smallest amount of nudity:



i have to work a little late tonight (and probably like, every night forever until after my event) but after that i think i'm going to get coffee with mouse. this weekend should also be exciting because kristen is coming to visit christina and diana is coming to visit us and i'll probably do something with mouse and/or mike ! everyone ! how can i get jeanne in on this !

p.s. yesterday i didn't even get to see christina because i took a laziness nap and when i woke up she was taking an allergy nap (though i think that was actually bedtime so that was allergy sleep), but she did make something that made the whole house smell fucking good !

does a bear shit in the woods?

ahhh we have our bimonthly meeting at ten so writing this is A RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK !!!!

christina came home yesterday !!!!! it was pretty hilarious cause she was so wiped out from traveling and was acting so ridiculous. at some point she decided to start doing a donald trump impression and kept firing pizza. in 2010. pretty sure she's never actually seen that show?



i made vegetarian meatballs with noodles and gravy (sort of like lazy swedish meatballs) for dinner, but like.. it was totally gross? like, the gravy was good because i make good gravy


thank you, it's just brown and water

but the meatballs tasted weird and smoky- they're nate's meatless meatballs- and i overcooked the noodles cause i was horsing off with christina so it was kind of like a big bowl of mush with gross meatballs and delicious gravy.

after i ate, i finally finished the explosionist. this book came highly recommended to me and like... it was kind of a stinker?



it's an alternate history book about what the world would have been like in 1930s scotland if napoleon had won at waterloo. i will cop to the fact that maybe i don't really know enough about european history to be riveted or amazed by some of the stuff in the book, i guess, but i also assume that most 11-17 year old girls know even less than i do, so that can't be the problem.

- first and foremost, the book is set up to have a sequel, or else it's glaringly incomplete with about 200 loose ends. i don't appreciate a book in a series that can't stand alone, and this definitely can't. they wrapped up maybe two of like 40 plot lines and plot twists introduced
- the author includes tons and tons of extraneous details that are written in a way that make you assume they'll come back later or be a part of the story, and they don't?
- i guess this is expected in alternate history but all of the stuff like, "aleksandr tolstoy bell" inventing the telephone and "famed irish obstetrician oscar wilde" inventing the incubator zzzzzz
- the book relies entirely on coincidence to move the plot forward. want to take pictures of dead peoples' memories? well, the guy at the camera shop happens to be a guy who BUILT A CAMERA THAT CAN DO THAT and he desperately wants to help you for free. bad guy is going to kill everyone? a random person comes in and like, stops him.
- main character is clearly special in some way (and the author keeps telling you that !) even though nothing she thinks, says, or does is particularly compelling or interesting.
- good guys are identified as good and bad guys as bad immediately so it's like a matter of time before things get worked out.

overall i really wanted to like it, but it couldn't even keep me interested. it wasn't as big a chore as tender morsels, and a few of the plot points were genuinely interesting, but every time i was excited to see where something went, it just didn't go anywhere. poorly written, poorly paced, poorly edited, but i will not stop you from trying to read it if you want to !

after that, i took a shower because my hair smelled like meatballs and shaved my legs and painted my nails and toenails. i've been like obsessed with painting my nails since middle school and it's probably the only like, stereotypically feminine thing i do besides... shaving my legs (but my legs get dry and get gross pus-y ingrowns if i don't !). i don't care about painting my toenails but i have toenail fungus and it covers it up ! haha. the treatment for it takes a year or more and destroys your liver so i'd rather just paint my toenails a beautiful color. full disclosure !

speaking of not toenail fungus anymore, christina and i watched up in the air, finally. i've had it from netflix for like one month, but was worried that it was like a stupid grownuppy midlife crisis movie like sideways. not that i've SEEN sideways, but i have an aversion to lowell from wings because i think he played a law & order rapist or something. ANYWAY



i didn't know much about the plot of the movie before seeing it- it's about a lone wolf type dude whose job is to fly around the country and fire people and offer them a severance package that includes career counseling through his company. i was reticent at first because like, i don't really care about lone wolf dudes being afraid of commitment and blah blah blah, but i totally loved it.

good
- george clooney. i don't even understand. i think he's a great actor, but like... how is one dude so handsome and charming and funny and hot and handsome and endearing and hot and ugalsddjlkg? every time he'd smile and his eyes would crease christina and i would start cursing at the television.
- vera farmiga was excellent as well and like, her butt. i mean, her acting, but also, her butt. she made the role seem effortless, like she was this real amazing woman who accidentally wandered onto the set. aside from the fact that she is stunningly beautiful, she was just such a huge presence and almost upstaged clooney even though i want to do stuff to him that he has never heard of cause he probably hasn't seen urban dictionary cause he's old.
- every single interaction in the movie was believable
- the heartbreaking reveal was so perfect and jolting (i hadn't read anything about the movie beforehand) that it made my heart hurt a little.
- i loved his interactions with his sisters and his attempts to prove to the people around him that he isn't a ghost or a stranger while sort of still acting like one.
- random sam elliott !

bad
- i'm not really sold on anna kendrick, who plays a recent college grad whose strategy to cut costs at clooney's company fucks up his life. her acting was very high school play.
- i found clooney's interactions with her a little paternalistic and it was hard to take, though i get the point.
- everyone in the movie was "on" all the time and witty and quick and it was a little hard to take, but uh... the director also directed juno, so maybe he's still working some of that bile out of his system.

overall i highly recommend it, even if you are a creepy adult child who hates hearing about adult problems and a dour feminist who doesn't care about men's midlife crises.


it really takes talent to look so unreal in that totally whack shirt

i have a meeting now, so i have to go. i'm going to be kind of busy at work today and tomorrow cause we have an event tomorrow ! tonight i'm supposed to go to jeanne's after work and i'm psyched ! diana is going to be there and we'll get to hang out and i think i'll get a cool haircut.

p.s. the only thing more annoying than knitting a sock with tiny needles is unknitting a sock with tiny needles