Well, I've finally gone and done it.

I'm still at my parents' home and I don't have a subject line. I spend the month taking an online course about American Pop Culture. I thought it would be really easy but it turned out not to be because I'm a snob and don't know a thing about Pop Culture. It's not my fault; Mom doesn't believe in television. And she does believe in Ballet, Opera, and Literature. So anyway, the class proved more difficult than I expected, and it was a fourteen week, 4 credit class compressed into 4 weeks. So yeah, super not fun January. But it's almost over, just a final and a research paper on Oprah to go.

But that's not what I came here to tell you. I came here to tell you that I walked into the study at around 11am this morning looking for Dad. The room smelled like burning. So I said to my mother:

"Hey mom, the back room smells like burning and where's dad?"

"He's welding."

"...?"

The last time Dad decided to go welding, he lit half a closet on fire. I rescued my laptop from potential disaster and am currently hiding out in Dad's office, where the internet's better.

Current Music: a conversation drifting in from the alley

pathos (bathos?). pirate ship format.
thursday:

sleep 3 hours. wake up at 6am.
8am: train to nyc
10am: bus to school
snowstorm: 3pm, ad infinitum
all day, all night: study for final

friday:

no sleepy.

8:25 am: sluge through uncleared snow to get to final.
9 am: final exam
noon: now! write paper. get hair cut. go to registrars.
7pm: flight, ithaca to jfk
9:45: flight, jfk to fla

Saturday:
1am, arrive in fla
sleep?
10am, drive to old people place to meet bf's ill grandma.
11am, lunch with grandma
7pm, wedding, and I don't even have shoes. introduce bf to entire family. (eek!)

Rest of My Life:
empty.

OMG CHRISTINE I KEEP MEANING TO CALL AND TELL YOU: MEGS GOT INTO DARTMOUTH will call and chat, i promise.

Current Music: snow melting, drip drip creeeeak

tmi
ok, you probably don't want to know this, but my toilet is posessed. seriously. it makes these random noises, and the chain is forever tangling itself up in impossible knots. it's flooded the bathroom twice in the past week. it's destroying my life.

Current Music: the bens- i touch myself

conversations with bf
Ok, this seemed really funny at the time.

Me: You're way too good for me, you know?

Andrew: Yeah. Eh, your looks make up for it.

Me: THAT WAS TOTALLY THE WRONG THING TO SAY!!!! Jerk.

Current Music: andrew on the phone, i'm multitasking

I cannot begin to describe my love & desire for the chicken tikka missala from the Indian restaurant half a block away. Right now there're leftovers in the fridge and I should save them for dinner but I cannot resist! I even washed the kitchen floor to put an obstacle between myself and the refrigerator. Yum yum yum.

Current Music: wind rattling the window panes

I've been neglecting you, blog dearest...
...and for that I am sorry.

I don't think anything interesting has happened lately. Hmmm, let's see.

-A bottle of gingerale exploded all over my laptop, and now the left-hand control key doesn't work.

-I'm dancing 6 days a week, two dance classes + rehearsals, which means that I'm getting enough exercise to allow me to eat whatever I want. This is kind of fun,

-but not when there's dressing on my "turkey club, no dressing please" sandwich, which there is. I'm chewing bacon as I type this, mmmmm BACON. But, eeeew, dressing.

-Andrew came to visit for Columbus Day weekend. It rained the whole time (surprise!) but we went to the applefest anyway. For a week there, I was eating apples with/for every meal.

-I kind of like the rain. It makes being inside more exciting, and I get to wear ugly, comfy clothes and drink lots of tea.

-Oh! the other day I dropped a Pill behind the damn dresser, and I had to move half the furniture in my room looking for the little fucker. I didn't find it, either. Blast!

-Blast!!!

-3-2-1 BLAST OFF!!!!

-Today I decided that I actually really do like Susan Howe's The Midnight, even if it is considered "Difficult" in that no-narrative, PoMo-crazy way. It grew on me in the way that Calvino's Invisible Cities did.

Ok, that's it.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: rain

word of the day
i'm at the library, about to run to class. but i've just discovered:

zarf

A cup-shaped holder for a hot coffee-cup, used in the Levant, usually of metal and of ornamental design.

1836 LANE Mod. Egypt. I. 168 Zurf. 1854 R. CURZON Armenia 80 One brought coffee on a tray..and then came a man bringing to each of us a cup, well frothed up, and in a zarf, or outer cup. 1978 Times 2 May 13/3 (caption) A diamond and emerald zarf, mounted in gold and silver, 19th century, 6·5 cm high.

-OED

incredible word, isn't it? me and my zarf (my zarf and i) are off to class now.

Current Music: chimes

morning nonsense
i've got a busy day, but two quick things i gotta say:

1) dryel is perhaps the best invention ever. i realized i needed to dry clean my business casual clothes for the career fair, so i tried it out. it took half an hour, and my clothes are so fresh and so clean!

2) motherfucker, i accidently switched to decaf. i've been making myself decaf coffee for i don't even know how long b/c i bought the wrong coffee. only i've been switching, like every day or so, between decaf and regular. which might explain all the headaches and out-of-it days i've been having. or not.

s'all. gotta run. [notes to self: hist reading, poetry, resume, real coffee, bring change of shoes, sit at back of art h lecture. ]

also, it's ten to 9 and i've been up for two hours already. whoa.

also, a funny thing
i remembered what i wanted to tell you:

last weekend i hurt myself blowing bubbles.

andrew went to the supermarket with his friends to buy baking apples, because Sharon had promised Adam she'd make apple crisp. while the boys were buying apples, andrew picked me up a bottle of bubbles. he knows how much i love them. so after we peeled the apples, baked the apple crisp, and ate it with ice cream (delicious!!!), we went outside to blow bubbles on Sharon's front porch. it was going well, my long-neglected bubble-making skills were beginning to return. then i spilled a bit of the bubble solution, which was sad but not catastrophic as there was still enough to be going on with. more bubble blowing. we passed the bubbles around the circle, like a pipe. finally, we had to go inside because it was almost time for Trivia Night at the bar. so of course, as i'm walking towards the door, i step in the puddle of bubble solution. i was wearing my old flip flops that have very little grip. i proceeded to fall backwards in slo-mo, cartoon style. arms waving. mouth gaping. then, at the last minute, i was heroically saved by my boyfriend grabbing me around the waist! he let go.

and i pitched forward and fell flat on my face.

i hurt myself blowing bubbles. blowing bubbles! andrew said i could probably sue because the warning on the bubble bottle doesn't mention falling down. it just says that bubbles are not a suitable toy for children under the age of 3 and that bubbles should not be imbibed.

Current Music: you turn me on i'm a radio

i haven't brushed my hair today,
and i don't plan on doing it anytime soon.

however, in case you think me utterly slovenly, i did spend last friday afternoon scrubbing the apartment. i scrubbed so hard i got all sweaty. my ugly linoleum floor is now its original shade of yellow. i used half a bottle of neon mr. clean, and clearly the advertising is accurate because my floor is as shiny as mr. clean! mr. clean!'s bald pate.

today, ballet class was canceled, which i discovered when i ran into large gaggles of pink-legged girls walking up the hill i was racing down on my way to class. so i have this bit of spare time before dinner w/ a friend and i'm using it to blog!

only i don't really have anything to say. i'm taking a class on poetry and poetics and the professor is one of those geniuses who really wants to be able to effectively reach undergrads, and is very kind, only his huge brain keeps him from effectively engaging his class because we, or at least i, have not read every single work of important literary and social theory of the past century on three continents in their original languages. that's a terrible sentence, but, you know, it's boggling. still, i'm enjoying the class. today i read litcrit that said the essential distinction of poetry was it's potential for enjambment, hence the slightly skewed line/paragraph breaks in this post.

this past weekend i celebrated my one year anniversary with the bf. we has a romantic dinner of an XL pizza, medium wings, and california wine out on the fire escape. it was great. we had talked about going to all sorts of fancy places, but then we decided, ahfuckit, let's get a pizza and get drunk.

i am so proud of you girls for becoming teachers, you know. yay edumucation!

Current Music: urge for going - joni m

quick
i'm in the jetblue terminal in Long Beach, Cali and my flight boards in 5 min. so this'll be quick and sloppy.

just spent a week in cali. spent most of my time vegging out. got a wicked sunburn. also, went to a cool bar/restaurant/performance space and a red sox/angels game (sox won in the 10th, 4 to 3) and went to the Getty Museum, which is an awesome space with a rather meager collection. also, introduced the bf to the concept of bootleg jeans and buying clothes that are the correct size, not a size too big. he also learned that you have to try clothes on and that you can ask the fitting room attendants to bring you different sizes , which was a revelation.

so all in a all a nice way to end the summer. also, i was totally convinced that classes started on wednesday, so i'm taking this sunday night red-eye. i have just discovered that lo! they start Thursday, as they always do. i am a stupid-head who could have purchased the significantly cheaper monday night flight. ok, i'm going to fly away now. i have 14 hours worth of traveling ahead of me. BLURGH. and there was a strong-armed robery the other night on my block. why am i leaving?

Current Mood: apprehensive
Current Music: background airport noises

i wrote this entry v. this entry was written
Ok, so within the past 12 hours I've found two very very scary bugs in my apartment. They were these centipede like things, only one had a tail and different length feelers. I'm so totally skeeved out. The problem with living by myself is that there's no one to kill the scary bugs for me.

Yesterday I went to a crazy hippy music festival. There were many people wearing conflicting paisley patterned pareos, old VW vans, a school bus that had a tiki-torch-lined roof deck, a tee pee, marijuana rice krispie treats, half-naked children with stilts and glowsticks, a gbzillion guitars, assorted banjos and dulcimers, and a tin tub-broomstick bass. It was very fun. My ticket was good until 7am Sunday, and I considered camping out in a friend's tent. But another of my friends got quite tired early, so we left. It was very fun -- lots of good music and dance and food and drinks. It made me want to quit school, buy myself a hippy van, paint it purple, and just drive around.

Classes are ok. I'm reading King Lear. Choreography is proving a challenge, mainly because I have not yet managed to get all my dancers together at once, and my work is being performed in two weeks.

Also, I wrote a whole paper without using the passive voice once. I'm very proud.

Current Mood: blah
Current Music: belleville rendez-vous

OMFG IT IS SO DAMN HOT IN THIS APARTMENT I AM ON FIRE FIRE!FIRE! and not in a good way in a death-by-smoke-inhalation way.

back in ithaca, where it is hot.

cali was fun. I LOVE SAN FRANCISCO. even though it's really gay.

mucho traveling in the past week. San Fran, LA, NY, Ithaca. There was a smelly man on the plane, it was horrible.

I have class tomorrow morning at 10am and i'm still very much on west coast time.

for a while, there was a band practicing across the street and they were quite good and it was like a free concert.

see, these paragraphs are small and spread out because it's too hot for them to stand close together in one paragraph.

Current Mood: hot
Current Music: three fans whirring & "ice cream"

no news is good news
it's 8:30 am in cali, and i'm going to write the update now and post it when i get
out of work.

"work!" you might say?

i got a job temping through a connection, one of andrew's friends. i moved out here
(Los Angeles) 2 weeks ago, 6/2, interviewed monday, was at work by tuesday. it's
just boring administrative stuff at DirecTV.
the assignment was only supposed to be 4 days long, but they liked me so i get to
stay. i get to stay and make $17/hour.

i'm only in cali until the 25th, then i go back to bumblefuck to take a shakespeare
class and a choreography class. tough summer, huh?

so i was totally freaking out about living with andrew. (note the hysteric emails
in chris's inbox.) but it's just fine and dandy. my biggest problem has been
waking up early and finding california-suitable office clothes. i own way too much
wool clothing. so i've been shopping! yesterday i got a skirt on sale for $7.
otherwise, things are kinda boring. i get up, i go to work. sometimes i meet
andrew for lunch. my office is a 10 minute drive from the apartment, and andrew
works across the street from the apartment. then after work we go to the gym, or
take a walk, or run errands. so, in short, i feel really really ridiculously grown
up, but it's reassuring to know there's a 3 week statute of limitations on it. it's
like playing house. andrew even cooks dinner and sews the rips in my discount
clothing.

congrats chris on graduating!!! i suppose i should have said that first.

well, that's all that's new. back to data entry and answering the phones.

P.S. Added added at 6:49pm -- going on a bike ride along the ocean! haven't ridden a bike in 8 years, should be interesting, but it's like riding a bike.

Current Music: andrew telling me about his day

required reading?
I just spent an hour and a half with my transcript and the College of Arts and Sciences' myriad requirements, counting credits. I am now more confused than when I started.

It all seemed so easy when I sat in the advisor's office chair and said: "I'd like to apply for accelerated graduation."

And she said, "OK, you have the 60 credits needed to apply. Here's the form."

"So I'll be able to graduate a semester early?"

"If you meet the requirements, yes." And that right there is the booby trap. There are so many rules, and I'm no good at this sort of thing. University Requirements, College Requirements, Distribution Requirements (Groups I, II, III, and IV), PE Requirements, Major Requiremnts, Concentration within the Major Requirements, Concentration Requirments, Number of Credits, Number of Credits in the College, Number of Courses, Number of Courses at the 300 level or above, Foreign Language Requirements, Required Course to explain the Requirements...

Current Mood: a bit overwhelmed
Current Music: dylan - a hard rains a-gonna fall, bootleg version

warm fuzzies
Today I got flowers and watched a big fireworks display from the balcony. Hooray!

Current Mood: content

no title, too stressed
Lara-- so sorry I didn't say this sooner: Happy Belated Birthday! I hope you're enjoying all your excellent music. There's a little present headed your way. Sorry it's late, but I am in the throes of finals week.

I don't actually have any written exams. However, my brain is not up to snuff, and the papers are taxing it. Right now, I'm half-way through a ten page paper. And it sucks. It's total wank. I outlined it forever ago, but the outline isn't going to make it 10 pages, so I'm stretching things. Is this: ... an ellipse? Ellipse, singular? Plural, ellipses? or Ellipsis? Is Ellipsis (rhetorical device) different from ellise(s) (punctuation mark)? And I find it really difficult to seriously lit crit satire without coming off as a total loser with no sense of humor. Fuck.

After this paper is done, I must study for my 45 minute oral final exam, to be taken tomorrow morning. That should be fun. I'm going to bomb it. She's going to make me TALK. Never, ever have I wanted to write an exam or paper so badly. Talking? Talking?! And that class had so much reading, and I didn't do a good chunk of it, and AGHH!

Also, my advisor/professor is cutting out of town on Saturday. There's still another full week of finals left. I need to talk to her before she leaves, but I didn't know she was leaving and. Fuck.

Ok, there's a lot more complaining where that came from. But I'm going to sum it all up with one giant FUCKFUCKFUCK, and then go back to writing my paper. Then I'll study for my final. Then I'll write another paper. And so on.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Music: grumblings in my tummy

!#@$^$##$!! & madness
GRRRRR. That's all I'm going to say about my workload over the next two days. RE: the past three days: I have slept a total of 6 hours, and 2 of those were on two library chairs shoved together from 6am-8am this morning. I am not happy. If I put anymore caffeine in my system, the coffee will burn right through my stomach and assorted innards and come pouring out my belly button.

On to more interesting things.

This morning, around 9am or so, I looked out the window of the library coffee shop to see a large group of people dressed in black battling with long spears and shields. They were rolling around and doing crazy flips and shit.

I thought I had finally lost it.

But it turns out they were really there, not products of a sleep deprived mind, as I asked the girl sitting next to me, "Do you see the people fighting with spears over there?" And she said, "yup."

This ninja incident follows the great disco ball incident. Someone climbed the library tower, which is very tall and is the institutionally-declared symbol of our campus. They left their climbing shoes on the roof, along with a two-foot diameter disco ball. A huge disco ball, on the tippy top of the tower looking over two libraries, the arts quad, the student union, etc. The police had to rope off the surrounding area, lest the disco ball fall and crush passerby. Round the clock surveillance. Then they wheeled a huge crane up to the tower, and took it down. The removal process was interrupted by a hailstorm. In honor of the whole affair, the chimesmasters (the people in charge of ringing the goddamn bells and giving twice daily chimes concerts) played YMCA.

I just gave a presentation to my senior seminar on J.Lo's Ass. It went terribly, and was the reason I was at the library all night. Well no, the reason I was at the library was that the local ISP shut down internet service in the area from 1am until 7am.

On Friday, when this is all over, I am going to start drinking as soon as I wake up and not stop, ever.

Sunday evening is for avoidance
Yes yes Christine, I know I should be doing work but my brain is goo. goo i tell u. All of my work is starting to smush together in my smushy brain, so that I'm thinking about post-colonial themes and third space feminism while reading Modernist literature and and trying to find then blur the boundary between the virtual and the real in chicana queer literature and when I see an image, any picture, I think about Marx's commodity fetishism and sometimes Descartes and sometimes, randomly, "Nixon eats lettuce." I am very confused. So, avoidance, out of confusion. Through poetry! (Also, a packet of Swedish Fish, excluding the orange and green ones, and half a box of Wheat Thins. Munch, munch.) I put my poetry books on the top shelf so that if I want to read them, I first have to climb up on my shakey red plastic stool. However, I misshelved one of my favorite anthologies and I opened it up and this is what I found:

( Spring Rain )

See now, that poem isn't actually that good. I especially dislike the fourth stanza. And the second to last stanza, while lovely, is (1) not supported by the rest of the poem and (2) too much of a give-away. Also, poppies? Poppies as a symbol have been wrung out and squeezed dry and generally made generic. But I liked it when I read it, and it's rainy out.

Furthermore, April is poetry month. The rest of the year is for prose, obviously. ( Spring Rain )

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: Famous Last Words, Billy Joel

go tell it on the mountain
I was just faffing about on the internet in lieu of writing one of sixish papers, and I took this matchmaking quiz on biography.com. Yes, yes, I am a huge dork. And so are you, so here's the link so you can join with me in dorkitude: http://www.biography.com/soulmate/

So who'd I get as my soulmate?

James Baldwin Who was GAY, thankyouverymuch. I find this somewhat depressing, really.

It also makes me want to read Go Tell it on the Mountain, which I have never read. Speaking of James Baldwin, I have a funny story 'bout him.

My parents were going to one of those silly Democratic Party parties, with special guest (or perhaps host?) Alec Baldwin. So they pull into the parking lot...(and they were probably late because my mom is never ready in time for big events even though she usually blames someone else for this)...and who should pull up next to them, but Alec Baldwin & unremarkable though famous blonde date. So my dad nudges my mom and winks at her and generally does other weird things to get her to notice that they're walking right next to Mr. Baldwin. And my mother thinks my dad's just being his usual strange self, as well as misbehaving in public. So, he pulls her aside and says, "That's Alec Baldwin!"

"Where?" says mom. Then followed an extended period of whispered "where?"/"there!"s.

My mother finally understands that my dad is indicating Alec Baldwin and says, with that perfect mix of disdain and surety she's infamous for, "That's not Alec Baldwin. Alec Baldwin is BLACK."

And we never let her forget it.

A postscript: she wouldn't believe my father that Alec Baldwin was Alec Baldwin, the actor, and not James Baldwin, the writer. When she finally realized that Alec Baldwin couldn't be James Baldwin because James Baldwin was dead, she refused to be impressed with Alec Baldwin, because she had no idea who he was.

So I suppose that it could be worse, and biography.com could have soulmated me with Alec Baldwin. That would have been greasy and gross. Moreover, isn't it progressive of biography.com to resist the heterosexual norm?

Speaking of greasy and gross, I need to shower. I've done a lot of rolling around on the floor during rehearsal today. I've got a show on Thursday. I have yet to rehearse with my partner for one of the pieces I'm in, which is vaguely nerve-wracking as he has a history of dropping me. Ok, this post is way too long and rambly, I'm off to shower.

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