Head Bored

I’m bored. Being bored is not a good thing for me. Being bored means I don’t do the small amount of work that I actually have. It means I just want to curl up in a ball and sleep. Or watch tv. But instead I am being proactive (not really proactive, but at least mildly active) and writing a blog post instead.

So I had my first ever cavity filled. Yes, I proudly made it 25 years without a true cavity, only to be brought down by my “groovy teeth.” Seriously. That’s how one of my former dentists described them (he then looked a little annoyed when I laughed). I believe it was the same tooth that I had sealed several years ago, not because I had a cavity, but because it seemed probable that I’d get one. So my guess on the whole thing is that the filling fell out, allowing nasty bacteria and whatnot to creep inside and cause a wee cavity. I also totally blame my former coworker, who claimed the cheapest dental insurance we could get was one that would cost like $100 a month, and who, as it was discovered after I left, was completely wrong and off by two decimal points ($1.00 a month, not $100). So I didn’t get my teeth cleaned for a few years, and look what happened. It was, I’m assuming, one of the easiest, most painless cavity fillings ever, though, since I was literally out of there in under a half hour. Plus the dentist thanked me for being such a good patient. (I immediately thought “well-paying,” since he’s made lots of money off of me in the past month, but managed to keep my sarcastic mouth closed.) They are ridiculously nice there, which makes me feel less stupid for picking a dentist on the other end of town from my apartment.

I also started, or tried to start, a new knitting project last night. I cast on 3 (or maybe 4) times, and still got to the same point every time only to find that I somehow was one stitch short. I reread the pattern, thought there was an error, went online, was surprised no one else saw the error, reread the pattern again and realized that it somehow was just me. So the plan is to now not try to cast on a lace pattern while exhausted. Particularly not after drinking my sleepy tea, which contains valerian and has a warning against operating heavy machinery. Maybe they should have an expanded warning for knitters. After all, I could have gotten insanely frustrated and… I don’t know… collapsed in a ball on my bed, falling asleep on the knitting needles which then could somehow accidentally stab me, and the sleepy tea would keep me asleep while I slowly bled to death. Or not. Instead, I gave up, and moved back to my sweater, which will hopefully be done by the time it cools off enough to be able to wear it. It’s a cotton yarn, so that shouldn’t be TOO long away. I might try to finish it as a part of the knitting Olympics, but I might just be lazy and not do something. Or I could cast on another project I have in my mind and a timeline for…

Homelessness (or not)

So… yeah, it’s been a while. It’s not that I don’t love you, dear readers (all 5 of you…), it’s that most of the stuff I’ve been thinking about, I don’t particularly want to post about, for a wide variety of reasons ranging from I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings to putting all my insecurities on the internets for all to read makes me fell, well, insecure. Plus the other stuff, which would have been HIGHLY entertaining, let me tell you. Just takes too much energy to write.

BUT. The discovery of a Robin McKinley blog has reawakened me. I don’t know why. But it has. I adore Robin McKinley. Blue Sword=awesomeness. I was a tiny bit disappointed in Sunshine, but have high hopes for her new book. Plus her writing is entertaining AND we totally need to be bff’s and go horseback riding and everything. I’m adding her to my list of celebrities (to me) who are meant to be my soul mates and mentors and it shall happen!!! (Lauren Graham is the other. I wrote a post about that, but I’m too lazy to find the link. Deal.) I was abashed to discover that she wrote Beauty, her breakout novel, at 25. Which means I only have 8 months to write a book and get published in order to not feel inadequate. A GOOD book, unlike my other, craptastic and not worthy of ever seeing the light of day, NaNoWriMo book.

I also discovered one of my favorite people in my new knitting group has a blog, which seems highly entertaining. She somehow manages to write exactly how she talks. Even when I wasn’t sure it was her, I was pretty sure that it was her, just because of the writing style. I think she and Whitney would get along frighteningly well, mainly because of some of her comments on French men. They were wrong. Dirty and funny and wrong.

In more life news, I did sign on an apartment. As of yesterday, I officially will not be homeless for more than a day or so, depending on when the current people get out (I’m hoping to not be homeless at all, which probably will work out. Seriously, this whole having someone move out on the 31st when your lease ends on the 31st and therefore you can’t really wait to move in until the 1st? Messed up.). It’s a two-bedroom, pretty near work and campus and metro and a nice bike trail, and no longer up 1.5 miles (although I have gotten so I always make that hill. Not fast and not pretty, but I make it. ), and is not really sketchy, but five blocks away is sketchy, and it has a really random restaurant called Quarterdeck, which may or may not be affiliated with a Florida seafood chain. Now I only have to find a roommate, which shouldn’t be too hard given the location and whatnot, and the not that expensiveness of it, and move, which should be hard since SB is going out of country conveniently right about the time I’m moving (I think he planned it.). And then I can relax. If by relax, you mean plunge into school and thesis planning and whatnot. Because that totally is relaxing. Like a sauna or a massage… in hell!

Malaise-y

I am in a funk. A grey mood. A malaise if you will. (and you will.) Why? I don’t know. Everything is fine. And not the “I’m fine, but I’m really mad” type of fine, but the actually okay type of fine. But then…everything is fine. And that’s it. Nothing is great, nothing is stupendous. I feel trapped in a haze of mediocrity. Finding a new housing situation: going fine. Relationship with SB: going fine. Work: kind of boring, but going fine. Thesis planning: not really happening much, but what is is going fine.

(I did almost rethink my original concept yesterday when I saw that a girl last year wrote her thesis on Madeleine L’Engle and Philip Pullman. Genius. So then I was totally going to look at how post-colonialism came through in children’s literature, maybe focusing on the use of myths. Which still sounds interesting. I don’t know. But do I really want to spoil some of my favorite childhood novels by researching the crap out of them? I don’t want to be sick of them… that would just be sad. Plus I briefly glanced at research available and in the 20 seconds I looked, I didn’t see much. Which can be a good or a bad thing. It can be good in that you don’t have to struggle to find a spin no one else has before. Or it can be bad in that you have to write broader, because there isn’t the original research to allow you to go deeper. And I go through brief moments of excitement about either topic and then it pales.)

Knitting, well in knitting, I would bump fine up to well. I only have a few more inches on my sleeves of my sweater, and then I can start on the body. Which is good since my mom and I (my dad’s coming up too, but just for a few days) are having a relaxation retreat next week where much knitting shall be accomplished, and I need her help on getting started on the rest. It’s an interesting pattern. We shall see. Knitting may be my salvation.

With SB… I don’t know. He’s working all the time these days, which makes it hard to get things better. And what am I supposed to do about that one? I can’t tell him not to work. He doesn’t have much choice. About the only time he’ll get a break is when he is out of the country for work (working out of the country is still work, but it’s different), which doesn’t exactly help me or us any. I’d like for us to go do something fun somewhere, but he doesn’t have the time or the energy or, thanks to this glorious economy and his desire to buy a place, the money.

And, speaking of money, I have my first cavity. (It relates. You’ll see.) I don’t know if it’s a REAL cavity in that it doesn’t hurt any and therefore hasn’t really gone past the outer layer of my teeth (or so SB tells me), but it needs to be filled. I’m not afraid of having it filled; what I am afraid of is the bill. Getting X-rays and a cleaning was pretty much insane. Add to that a filling, in addition to car work I had to have done? I’m going to be broke. Or not really broke, since thanks to grad school I’m already in debt and how can you be broke when you are living on borrowed money, but more in debt, which still sucks.

Plus when I get stressed about all such things, I like to spend money. Which makes me more stressed, even if the amount I’m spending is tiny. (I don’t buy big ticket items. Ever.) Which makes me spend more. It is truly a viscous cycle.

And so it begins.

So the housing thing I was hoping would come through apparently has not come through. Which I’m rather okay with since the girl has not exactly been responsive and is that really something I want to deal with? I’m just annoyed because it would be easy and I’m lazy and moving was SUCH a pain last year. Or rather moving twice because I couldn’t find a place when I needed it was such a pain. Or the whole situation, which was just awful and even thinking about it makes me want to start hyperventilating.

But after I finish with the whole breathing into the paper bag routine… I’m in a better spot. I have more contacts, more people who can help me out. Plus I’m going about it differently. One of the girls I know gave me contact info for a realtor who gets paid by the apartment complexes (meaning she’s free to me) and I’ve contacted her. It’ll be so much easier to just find a place and then find a roommate. Preferably someone who knits. Or crochets. I know, it sounds ridiculous to want someone who knits or crochets, but in general, the type of people who are drawn to that pursuit are the type of people I think I’d get along with, particularly in a housing situation. Plus, if they are better than I am, they can show me stuff and inspire me to knit more. (Since the 1457234879 projects I have started are not going to finish themselves.) I know now what stuff is most important to me in a roommate, I know more about the system, and I hopefully am a bit better about working it. So we are crossing our fingers and hoping for an easier transition this time.

Stitching and Pitching

First of all, happy engagement to E!!

I’ve had the strangest getting sick experience this week. I was fine, FINE, until Sunday night. Sunday I did feel a bit tired, but more the “I stayed up too late, slept in too late” feeling than anything else. But all of a sudden, Sunday night, I was burning up with a fever. I was dizzy. I can’t remember the last time I was dizzy from a fever. SB felt my forehead, and was all like, “Have you been doing something? Cleaning or something?” Never mind that I had been sitting there quietly eating next to him for the past 20 minutes. He was trying hard to take care of me more, probably since I yelled at him recently for failing so miserably one summer during college. Seriously. I was really sick. He said later he thought I might have had appendicitis (my stomach REALLY hurt). But he still left and then didn’t call for nearly 24 hours. Whitney was on standby in case I actually decided to go to the hospital (which I was considering). One of his jerkier moments. But at least he is trying to be better.

Stitch ‘N’ Pitch was on Friday and was totally awesome. For those of you I don’t actually see in real life, and therefore couldn’t share my huge amounts of excitement, Stitch ‘N’ Pitch is a group that arranges fiber-related activities in combination with baseball watching. This past Friday was the one in DC, and my first time at both a Nationals game and the Nationals new stadium. It was surreal, sitting there watching the game and looking over and seeing people knitting or crocheting. I went with two friends in my program who also knit, one of whom I’m totally stealing an idea from. Misskateunderground is knitting an American blanket (not being from here), using a variation of red, white, and blue (her variation being no red-I think-, and the white being more gray) AND (here’s the part I’m totally stealing) doing each swatch in a different pattern. Which is a brilliant way to get familiar with lots of different stitches and whatnot, plus the small size of each swatch would give me the fast completion I don’t get from any other project. (Um… yeah... Totally took me 5 years to finish a scarf for SB. In my defense, I was knitting it on size 5 needles and it was ribbed and HUGE. But still. Although I never did see him wear it this winter… He’d better be careful, or no more knitting things for him.)

As for the game itself, it was a baseball game. Kind of slow. I missed the only homerun while in line for a helmet sundae that I walked really far for before realizing that there was a stand a few feet the opposite way than I walked. I finally saw a bobble head race, although the first time (that’s right. Apparently, if the game is 14 innings, they do TWO races), Teddy didn’t even show. He apparently was hitting on random girls at this beach-type place in the stadium. The fireworks were cancelled since the game lasted until 11:40 or so. We started yelling randomly at players. “Score! We want to go HOME!” and yelling with some girl who was trying to get someone else’s attention (Karen, I think?). All in all, a satisfying first Nats game (they did win, btw), with lovely company. I did completely fail to get the name of this girl who was sitting behind us and with whom I chatted quite a bit. I’m figuring I’ll run into her again eventually. DC is big, but knitting communities are relatively small. Plus I got SWAG, which I always enjoy, and pilfered some of my friends’ swag, as they didn’t want everything they got. What can I say, I’m a sucker for free stuff.

I also have begun my first crochet garment. I’m using cheap yarn, but the pattern calls for cheap yarn, and I already had it. I have a few inches done, but have discovered that casting on for crocheting sucks so much more than knitting. The book did warn me, though…

One is silver and the other gold

I’ve been thinking a lot about friends lately, probably due to the several catching up sessions I’ve had lately. This past weekend I went to visit A., who has been one of my best friends for 15 years now (she did the math, but it seems to work out), which was fun but always a little weird. Not weird because that connection is gone, but weird because it’s not. It seems like no matter how much time passes, we still manage to pick up at about the same relationship level we’ve always had. We joke that we are like family, but really, we kind of are. We mock, we get annoyed at each other. She knows things about me that I had forgotten. Like I apparently bruise like a peach. If you had asked me before this weekend if I bruised like a peach, I probably would have said no. But thinking about it, I do bruise rather easily. How did she know that and I didn’t?

At the same time, though, that we have all this history, we also have very different outlooks on life. We always have, really. She’s trying to get me to wear uncomfortable pointy shoes, because they are “hot.” I say they are uncomfortable and make me want to cry and I have to walk a fair amount, so no. She’s more concerned with her appearance than I have ever been. We’re both insanely stubborn, although I’m more argumentative. Yet despite our differences, despite our varying perspectives and any arguments, the relationship has stayed basically the same.

Then last night I talked to E.. Which had a different feel, and I'm not sure if it's because we have only been friends for 8 years (seriously?!?! 8 years since I was a freshman? That's nuts.) or because A. and I had learned how to stay close while not talking really while we were in different colleges or because growing up together automatically affects things. Not to say that I don't love E. and that talking to her wasn't a blast, because I do and it was. But the distance seems more obvious. It took us a good 15 minutes to get into the conversation. It's strange how little we know about each other's lives. Which is also true for A. but it doesn't feel as true and I don't know why. Of course I also haven't seen E. in real life in three years, which might play into it. Though we were talking a fair amount like a year ago, and there was none of this feeling. Which means it might just me overthinking things too much and feeling all emotional because bunches of friends are engaged or nearly engaged and I remember having the same conversations they are like four years ago which makes me sad.

Either way, I feel like there are so many awesome people who have been a part of my life that I don't get to stay in near enough touch with. Even CW, who lives in the same city as I do, and I don't get together or talk that much, mainly because we are both busy and live in different parts of the city. I wonder if this whole moving constantly and meeting new people is changing how we as a society manage relationships. How many friends can one actually stay close to, particularly when everyone is scattered across the country? How can you choose?

In less depressing news, though, my weaving project is going beautifully and is going to be STUNNING.

Epiphanies and whatnot

This past week has been a strange one for me. Full of ups and downs, aided by the spawn of a bad cold and allergies taking up residence in my nose/chest/head/body. Actually, this whole month has been weird. Started insanely stressed out, to the point that I could hardly think, breathe, rest, knit, or anything else. No panic attacks, though, or the return of the horrible stomach problems that give me a weird taste in my mouth that peppered stressful times at my last job, or the stomach stabbing pains from England. I think that deserves a pat on the back for me. Maybe, just maybe, I’m learning to deal with my stress. Starting to, anyhow.

Then I thought I would be happy to be done. I was relieved, but at the same time, didn’t know what to do with myself. I hadn’t had free time in SO long. And I don’t mean like hours free time, I mean any. Practically every minute had been planned, leaving me completely exhausted and mentally drained by eight or nine or so. (Later if I had to work on papers. Which I did. Constantly. In which case I was still mentally exhausted, but plodding onward.) When I did all of a sudden get minor free time, my mind had stopped working, I was still remnant stressed out, and I could hardly stand to move. And then, unsurprisingly, I got the aforementioned beast of an illness. And discovered I had not gotten the grades I felt I had earned. In either class.

Which has been good for me. I know, why would something like that be good for me? It’s a strange phenomenon. Except. Except school has always been easy for me. Toss off a paper the night before it’s due, get an a minus. Put a tiny bit more effort into, get an a. When I graduated from undergrad, SB told me I needed to figure out who I was outside of school. Which I did relatively well, although it was a somewhat traumatic experience. Now I’m figuring out how to base my self esteem on myself, rather than outside accolades I never had to really strive for. Why do I need a grade to tell me how smart I am? I know how smart I am. I live with it and its effects every day. I know I can never get my mind to shut up, that I’m constantly analyzing and writing and rewriting things in my head. I know my ideas, my papers were pretty damn good. Not perfect, no, but why should they be? Given more time to focus on them, more guidance, they might get that way, but not the way school is set up. Plus, I’ve also come to realize that different universities teach different writing styles. And it is HARD to change that basic part of your writing to fit another. I don’t mean styles in how the sentences are formed or how the paper is structured. All English majors do that for nearly every class they have. I mean style as as basic as how you go about writing a paper, the way you form your thesis, the items you focus on in that paper. The nucleus of the paper, not the protons or neutrons. And that is what grad school is trying to change.

Then all of a sudden this week, I was spontaneously happy. I don’t know why, except maybe I feel like I am finally clicking with people (mostly the people in my program who are leaving, but whatever…). That and the whole previously described epiphany. It’s been nice.

Except that every day, I realize more and more that I want to live by myself. Not a slight to my current roommates, with whom I have many things in common except for personalities, which has made sharing a very tiny house interesting. But all that analyzing and rewriting and stuff? The thing that nearly shuts it up is being alone. I like, no, love to be alone. Not all the time, but I need to feel like I can shut myself away for a while, no interruptions, no judging. The more stressed out I get, the more I need that. And right now, that need is what I’m focused on. It makes it very hard for me to care about anything in relation to the house, but getting out. I need a change. Since I can’t afford my own place, I at least need new people to avoid.

Let them eat... Cupcakes!

When trying to decide what to do with all my free time, now that my first year of grad school is over, CW suggested to update here. Well, her first suggestion was to drink, but I quickly decided both for my health and my wallet, that wasn’t quite a feasible way to eat up the time.

So here I am, talking about cupcake wars. Yes, cupcake wars. Those of you who frequent the Georgetown area may have come across a new, always busy locale called Georgetown Cupcakes. It has been featured in various write-ups, received rave reviews, and pretty much constantly had a line of some sort since it opened on Valentine’s Day. Now, previous to Georgetown Cupcakes, there was Baked and Wired, a place down M Street a bit. Baked and Wired has been around for while, and has also been known for their baked goods, particularly cupcakes.

Now people in Georgetown have too much disposable income or are students or students with too much disposable income (the most hated of the groups), all people who are willing to pay for an amazing sweet rush. The battle lines have been drawn, although I’m not sure Georgetown Cupcakes really is aware of Baked and Wired. I’m assuming when they did their market analysis, they noted B and W’s existence, but they have been completely overwhelmed by their success, and every time I’m in there, seem a bit frantic just trying to stay on top of things.

As that last statement might suggest, I’m in the GC camp. One, they are more convenient. Close to my work, not so far down M Street from campus, and close to one of the bus stops I hit. Two, their mocha cupcakes are to die for, in my opinion. With amazing frosting, the kind that is crunchy on the very outside and oozy when your teeth puncture that surface. Moist cake, a delicious little chocolate espresso bean on top… Makes me drool just thinking about it.

I will admit, I’ve only had one B and W cupcake, and I enjoyed it well enough. I wouldn’t go out of my way to get another, and probably won’t dream about it (as I have with GC’s), but it was delightful enough. The cake portion might actually have been a bit richer and moister than GC’s, but the frosting was too thick and too gooey. (Gooey loses to oozy in this case.) And the woman in front of me professed that their cupcakes were SO much better than GC’s. She’s not alone; I’ve heard other people say similar things (not as many as have raved about GC, but GC is new). You could tell, though, that they are quite aware of GC’s existence.

And really. This is the type of war where everybody wins (except maybe B and W’s bottom-line, assuming GC is cutting into it). Maybe we should fly over hundreds of each store’s to Iraq or Lebanon or some other war-torn country, and let them fight it out. At least it would change the terms of engagement for a while. And who can be THAT angry while enjoying delicious cupcakes?

Random Musings

I think I actually have a topic for one of my final papers. This is a quasi-exciting deal, as by this time last semester, I was burnt out and had nothing to say. Of course, I had Awful Professor, who seemed to want to crush us all, especially anyone who challenged her in any way. Jerk. (I’m not bitter still. Letting it go, letting it go…) And in my other class last semester, I picked a ridiculously complicated topic that I still can hardly wrap my head around. You try and define intelligence. Just do it. How do you? Do you include outside skills? Cognitive science? Should it be defined differently depending on circumstance? Can you be dumb and skilled? Yeah, try writing a 20 page paper with all those comments. It was slippery, very slippery. Of course, I am a bit worried, since this professor has been a hard grader and I’m not 100% sure I know exactly what he wants, but he also is ridiculously nice and will bend over backwards to help me figure it all out.

I am a bit bored at work, mainly because I apparently work too fast. I did have a HORRIBLE dream last night that I was volunteering at my old place of employment. Ugh. About half-way through the dream, I realized I didn’t have to volunteer. They weren’t paying me. And I could quit. Quitting again was rather nice. And CEO was of course being a snot, as always. I probably somewhat dreamed about it because I was trying to decide if I could go to Vegas with CW and her friends. Sadly, I don’t think I can. I want to, I really do. But I’m trying so hard to keep my debt not only under my original goal, but $15,000 under. Whee!! Which is so much more manageable. More like an expensive car-splurge than a “dear God, was it all worth it and can I pay it all back?” experience. Or basically, a little less than one year’s salary. Or considerably less, depending on what kind of job I get. [crosses fingers]. But anyways, spending a whole paycheck on a long weekend trip just seemed a bit exorbitant. I could probably swing it, but I’d spend the whole time feeling guilty and trying not to whine about money. And I didn’t want to hold them back from doing exciting things they could afford and I can’t.

I should be excited about Sunday, what with the whole Easter and being able to have sweets thing. But I didn’t miss sweets nearly as much this year. Of course, I did cheat, kind of. See, you’re supposed to be able to eat what you gave up on Sundays, which I didn’t. I did, however, take the number of Sundays and called them cheat days, which I then sprinkled in. But no desert on Valentine’s Day? That just seems sad. The other cheat days, I probably could have done without, but whatever. I think I may try and keep up this whole approach to sweets, though. I mean, if I haven’t missed having them more than a few times in several weeks, why not always eat like that? Though I did already by myself a Cadbury egg… SB is supposed to give me an Easter basket (I’m making him one, too), but we’ll see. I’d rather have at least back-up on that.

Pro-Hill: Or why I refuse to jump on the Barack Bandwagon

I have a confession to make. I [deep breath] am a twenty-something, educated person who is pro-Hillary. I know, I’m breaking with so many demographic studies in this admission, but I don’t care. I really like Hillary. I’m really uneasy about Barack.

Now, some might be wondering how I could possibly be uneasy about Barack. “He is such an amazing public speaker,” you say. “His message of change is SOOOoooo inspiring.” First of all, I don’t care. I don’t need a president to give me goose bumps, I need a president to give me real policies. Public speaking is a useful skill. I, as my mother so frequently reminds me (at least a couple of times a year), have been known to bring tears to my listeners’ eyes. Does that mean I should be president? I would think not. For one, that’s not even legal, due to my young age. Second, public speaking just means you can work a crowd. We have a president who can work a crowd and I don’t like him. He’s been awful.

As for the message of hope, here’s why it doesn’t work on me. The system is in place. It has been for 200 years. Yes, there are things about it that I’m not fond of. There are flaws. But a good portion of those flaws and things that annoy me (minus things this administration has done, which can’t be blamed on the system but only on their assedness) are flaws within the Congressional system. How is he going to change those? He’s in an entirely different system (executive versus legislative, for those of you who don’t remember social studies well). He can try, but I don’t think it’ll work, and really, his energy should be elsewhere.

Then there is the dearth of experience. Foreign experience is hugely important to me right now. The world hates us. I’d like to change that. Navigating the treacherous waters of foreign politics is hard and takes practice and knowledge. He listed living abroad as part of his foreign experience (I mean, seriously. Another reason I should be president. I too have lived abroad. Twice. TWICE.)

Add to all this that I genuinely like Hillary, and it’s not surprising I hope she overcomes the numerical odds and gets the nomination. She makes me feel safe. She’s experienced. She’s tough. She’s proven herself willing to take on challenges, willing to try hard even when failing is likely. And for the argument of how divisive she is and how Congress won’t work with her. She has managed to get a remarkable number of bills through for a junior senator. Conservatives in New York love her. And she has worked her butt off for her constituents. What more do we need? Change? Hah. Call me bitter, but you can’t change the system. We vote on a message of change and we will be disappointed.

Of course, according to the History Channel, the world is ending in 2012, so I guess it doesn’t hugely matter anyways.

Where are the weirdos?

Victoria’s Secret apparently is attempting to rebrand itself, as the CEO says they’ve gotten “too sexy,” and people have stopped shopping there. Which I think is somewhat true. I’m tired of commercials and ads screaming “IF ONLY YOU LOOKED LIKE US,” with the quiet, subliminal text “too bad you don’t.” I mean, it’s not like VS’s stuff is cheap. If I’m going to spend that much money on a flimsy piece of gauze, I want to do it in a place that makes me feel good about myself, not self-conscious and judged. Besides, three-fourths of the stuff is impractical. I don’t have money to waste on stuff I can’t wear on a regular basis. So my advice to VS is brand yourself to all women, not just tiny 17 year olds, stop with the sickeningly pink design scheme, practical it up, and try to make women feel better about themselves, not worse.

Not that I buy anything there anyways. Like I said, they are too rich for my blood. Plus nothing there fits me right. And I don’t like the cashiers.

Of course, that doesn’t seem unusual as I seem to be liking people less and less these days. Which I’d be okay with (after all, people in large clumps ARE insanely annoying, and teenage girls giggling loudly are a bit ear-piercing), except it all seems to be accompanied by a loss of my weirdness. Not that I’m not still strange, but I used to find the strangest things funny. I’d smirk walking around the streets, all by myself. Now… I just walk. And I’m not okay with this. I mean, you can say it’s just a part of growing older, but I don’t believe that. I think it’s just that the people who brought out that side of me are all spread out over the country. (You quirkies know who you are… J) I’m tired of talking about serious stuff, like politics and global warming and budgets and taxes. I want to be giddy, to say things and have people look at me oddly (I know that’s a strange thing to want, but that’s a part of my point). I want to hang out with a bunch of people and wind up making a hat out of a knife and a napkin again. Basically, I need to find the weird people here who can make me laugh and remind me about that part of myself. You’d think my program could do it, but no… we’re all shockingly normal, besides the whole being completely nerdy thing. (I mean, really. I would hate to come to our parties as an outsider. Three fourths of the conversation is literature or class related, and the other quarter leads back to classes or literature.) I wonder where they are all hiding….

And yet happiness abounds

I am seriously getting SO excited about this weekend. It really is all that is keeping me awake right now (lack of sleep? Just a bit.). I mean, I’m stupidly tired, as in couldn’t really figure out how to run the mail machine and had to ask our office manager person like 6 questions about it. It’s not like I’ve not used it before. Okay, maybe only once and that was several months ago. But still. And I used the meter at my old office a ton before we moved. I knew how to work that thing. Up until you had to put in codes or zones or something. But not today.

Plus having whined to several people in my program about how it’s “making me doubt myself” and all that other crap like that, I feel better. It helps that my boss used a draft I threw together for her in a couple of hours nearly word for word. The other draft I rewrote seems to have been made messy, but a good portion of my work is still there. I don’t entirely agree with the changes, since it’s made it all confused and not crisp, but not my decision. And I was told that I’m too fast of a worker (as in they can’t keep up with giving me assignments to do, not in that my work is shoddy) and my former supervisor now coworker keeps telling me that not having me as an intern and working with the others makes her realize again how wonderful an intern I was. Not that I want to be a superb intern my whole life; I’d much rather be a superb upper level, well-paid and trusted employee, but it’s a start. A salve, if you will, after crap last job.

Which I actually kind of find myself missing. Not the job itself and DEFINITELY not some of the people. But CW and J and occasionally T. CW and J and I spent a lot of time chatting, particularly about politics and whatnot. I can hear J’s responses to some of the things going on now. They’d be pretty entertaining. T I worked with less, and working with her could be difficult, but she’s still a good egg.

ALSO EXCITING. My brother’s sister-in-law just had her first baby!!! Who is healthy and cute and a girl. I’m so happy for the couple. She was a big baby, too. Eight pounds 13 or so ounces, 21 inches.

Help, I'm trapped in a malaise

I need next weekend to be here now. Seriously. Next weekend will be loads of fun, as I'm going to see Whitney. But I may explode before then.

See, here's the problem. I never expected grad school to be so hard. I knew it would be a lot of work, but I didn't know it would screw up your head. Maybe I should have. But every single professor wants you to write in a different style, with a different focus on a different type of criticism. Not only do you have to write in a different style, you have to excel at it nearly immediately. You don't get to find your own voice, because the base of what you're writing is constantly shifting.

And, even more fun, this is apparently effecting my work skills, since when I write stuff there, the whole style confusion comes through. It just is exhausting, mentally, physically, and emotionally. I'm tired of being told that I have the ideas, but the style or voice just isn't quite right. All the training I got in undergrad, all the writing skills I learned still just aren't up to snuff.

Plus SB seems to be having some sort of "I'm getting old" crisis, so he's all not helpful and creating other stresses. Add to that the fact that he hated grad school, so all my whining tends to get a very bitter response... And I just found out an old flirtation is engaged. I'm happy for him, but I really wish I hadn't found out now.

Renter's Rights? What renter's rights?

So yeah. My house has no heat. Which is just INSANE, especially since our landlord and his assistant have absolutely no interest in actually caring about us. The heat went out Tuesday afternoon, when the furnace nearly blew up. J, one housemate, immediately called our landlord, his assistant, and the furnace guy. She could get the furnace guy’s number because rather than our landlord actually DOING his job, he’s been trying to get us to organize switching furnaces. Which has led to T, another housemate, spending hours upon hours calling back and forth between the oil company to get them to drain the oil they stupidly put into the tank after we told them not to, our landlord to try and make sure this lack of heat didn’t happen, and the furnace guy when what our landlord said made no sense.

But yes. Furnace nearly blows up, heat gets shut off. Now by Virginia landlord tenant laws, the heat going out in the winter is an emergency situation and the landlord has to either fix the heat or provide some kind of amenable situation within 24 hours. Ha. See, the problem is that all the laws have been set up to protect the landlord. There is no kind of emergency, “my landlord is an ass” type service where you can call them and they will force him to do something. No. Instead what you get is a bunch of rigamoral, no grand collection of information, no list of “here’s what you can do if your heat goes out and your landlord doesn’t care.” Instead, after much research, you find out that you can go to court, file a complaint (at the charge of $50), and try to get something done. You can also terminate the lease, but who wants to move right now?

Our landlord is in California. His assistant cares mostly about only working part-time and covering her butt. Over the course of many phone calls over the past two days, we have been blamed for a. not scheduling the changing of the furnace (um. Not our job.) b. not calling her back when the one person she actually deigned to call didn’t have time to get back to her, c. being mean and cranky about the fact that WE. HAVE. NO. HEAT. And d. not informing landlord about my cat, when we did, he’s seen her, she’s on the application… We were also told, when we brought up that it was going to be pretty freaking cold, that we could a. leave on the lights all the time and b. buy ONE space heater for the whole house.

The thing that really sucks is that they are going to completely get away with this shoddy treatment of us. We’re all tempted to bring in our parents and let them yell at him, mainly for the satisfaction of him getting yelled at by someone he may actually respect, but beyond that? The system is stacked against us. It’s ridiculous that we can be treated so shoddily with no real recourse. This guy keeps on taking advantage of us and there isn’t a huge amount we can do. Big stinking jerk.

Culture Shock

It's kind of sad, but the one thing going home showed me is that I really want to move. It has very little do to with my housemates, who are perfectly fine, and more to do with the small space. Especially since I would rather be living by myself. There just is no where I can go to escape people in general. I can hear EVERYTHING, so even with my door closed, I might as well be a part of the conversation. It makes it very hard to get my work done when any one is home. It would be hard even if I got along splendidly with them and was like bff's or whatever. But I'm not, and while they are nice people, the lack of my own space makes me cranky and I don't like who I am in this house. Alas, I've signed a contract and am lazy, so it makes it unlikely that I'll move before August. I'm hoping that some of it is just culture shock and that I'll get used to it again.

Class has officially started and so far, I'm very pleased with one of my classes. The other I'll have to see about. I like the professor, who is hideously cheesy and entertaining, but it seems like an immense amount of work. He has no qualms about assigning 5 pages of writing per class, and doubling the assignment for this week because he messed up in writing his syllabus and assigned homework for the class last week when we didn't actually get the syllabus until the class itself. So we have both for this week. I wish I could tell more about how he was going to be as a professor. Luckily the reading isn't incredibly page heavy, since it's a poetry class. The class I got shut out of I'm actually thinking might have been too much reading.

I What?

So, my New Year's resolution is to write more outside of school. Since it has now Jan 3 and this is the longest thing I've written, and since I discovered one of my classes requires 3 7-page papers throughout the semester, ending with a 20-page paper, it might not happen. In my own defense, I do write lots of blog entries. The only problem is that they are all in my mind. When we can post directly from our mind, you'll get lots of entries, I promise.

I've been thinking a lot about people getting married/engaged. Not me. God knows, the last thing I need right now is a major change in my life. But the marriage of friends and people in general. Partly because I've decided that so many people around me are potentially setting themselves up for a failed marriage. Not that I really have a huge amount of right to say anything. But first of all. 18 year old? You don't know everything. You think you do. And I think that's a little sad and boring, and I hope you are wrong. I know many 18-year olds think they know everything (strangely, not a delusion I ever suffered from, aided probably by the fact that I haven't known what I want to do with my life since I was 9), which is in and of itself boring. Then one of my friends may or may not be expecting a proposal, which I disagree with for a number of reasons but which I won't go into here. Not because I can't nicely outline them, but because they didn't choose to put their life online, so I won't do that to them.

Also, I REALLY don't like people asking me when I'm going to get engaged. Yes, I know SB and I have been dating for forever, and most people do it because they care, but still. I am okay with the question from friends. Particularly good friends who are more asking about the status of my life. But adults with whom I have a fond, non-substantial relationship, not so much. I mean, what am I supposed to say? "Are you going to marry him?" If I say yes, then it's as if they are proposing for him and no one asks if someone loves someone else randomly and I just am not comfortable answering that personal of a question. I'm going to start asking married people if they are going to divorce their spouse.

I do have a theory about getting engaged. See, I think you can either get engaged before you enter the "we have issues and crap to work through" stage, or after you have worked through a good portion of said crap. And I don't want to be talked down to or pitied by those around me who are still in that obnoxious honeymoon stage of having dated for only a few months. Listen, we went through that, too, and you are going to have problems and you will have to deal with them, so stop acting like your relationship is better than mine because you don't know each other that well yet.

Take that, stupid hill!

As CW reminded me the other day, it has been forever since I've updated. What can I say? It's a lot more effort to update when I'm not being forced to sit at a computer for 37ish hours a week with very little real work to do. But, as today is a day of celebration, I figured I'd write.

And why is it a day of celebration? Well, for those of you who know me in real life, you know that my commute home is a bit difficult. I try and bike at least 3 of the 4 days a week I have to go in to DC (for either work or class). Going is a breeze. Under 15 minutes total biking time, all downhill except for the last tiny bit. Coming back, though... Coming back is over a mile of hillness. And not like intermittent hills where you go up for a while, and then you get a break going down. No. This is 1.2ish straight hill, where the only breaks you get are smaller inclines. There is like a 2 foot long incline, but really. That hardly counts. I have been unable to make it up this hill without at least 20 or so feet of walking. That is... until today. That's right. Today I made it from work all the way home without stopping (except for once at a stoplight, but since I'd rather not die getting hit by quickly moving cars, I hardly think that counts). I have conquered the hill. Next step, being one of the people who can ride all the way up relatively quickly, as opposed to my pathetic, here I am riding the bike at nearly walking pace and if I were going any slower, I'd fall. Of course, I can't guarantee that even making it all the way up the hill without stopping will be a regular thing for a while. But hey. You have to start somewhere.

As for the rest of things. Well school is insane. Mainly because I have paper proposals due soon, which means that on top of the usual crazy amounts of reading, I also have to do research for the proposals. I have one topic in mind, but the other... well I have the text picked out for the other and I know what I'd really like to write on, but I'm sure the prof won't go for it (Medieval myths as translated into modern culture, but I'm sure she wants us to focus on medieval myths in medieval times), so I must come up with something else.

Also, I am deeply upset. SB has gotten me watching Dr. Who, the new version. I enjoy the show. After all, it's a cute, nerdy British man leading a sci-fi life. BUT. SB recently informed me of something that is deeply disturbing. See, a whole premise of the show is that Dr. Who has helpers who travel with him, usually but not always female. They are human, they grow old, he does not. Therefore, he can't let himself fall in love with them. If he does, he has to let them go because he can't allow himself that emotional attachment. Very sad, I know. It's a part of his intrigue. But now SB informs me that he DID fall in love with one of his helpers. And was it the incredibly smart, well-educated black woman who is my favorite of all his helpers? Of course not. Is it the brunette with a penchant for technology? No. He freaking falls in love with the dumb blond. I mean, come on. If I see one more tv thing where the guys all fall for the dumb blond, I'll go nuts. I'd be fine with a smart blond, though I might still be a teensy bit bitter. It just makes me mad. Stupid tv writers. I'll go along with your raise when you stop making every love interest a Barbie doll. Oh! I thought of proof of me being okay with a smart blond. Chloe on Smallville. I adored Chloe and thought Clark was a moron for not being with her. Whereas Lana...not stupid, but not the brightest bulb either. So really. I think my problem is that I'm tired of being shown guys constantly falling for the dumb girls. I think weak men fall for dumb girls because they can't stand being challenged by a woman. Well, women writers, force them to be challenged! It's about time for the smart girls to step up and step out.

A mini tantrum

Well, I just sent my professor a "come to Jesus" email. Not really, but it feels like that. Basically, I sent her an email saying that I don't like my grades, but don't have any idea how to improve them. Which is completely true. I spend so much time and effort on that class, and it doesn't seem to matter. And I don't even know what she wants from me. I spend 12 hours on a stupid presentation, and my texts, based off the bibliography she gave us, were not related closely enough to the text and to women in general. My classmates thought the presentation was informative and helpful, yet somehow it yet again was not good enough for her. Yes, I could be a big girl and go in and talk to her, but I have NO desire to do this face-to-fact. Plus this way, I can do it now, stop thinking about it for the weekend, and hopefully escape from it all for a while. I am utterly disheartened about my ability to give her what she wants and I hate that the whole situation is making me doubt myself. The only saving grace is that it seems like all of my class feels this way. That and my whole program is lovely and some of my friends said some very nice things about me last week. I'll just hold on to those. Although one of the guys is not exactly my favorite person right now. It's not even that the grades matter that much to me, though. I mean, I'm not going on in the system, so I won't be applying to doctoral programs. The real world won't care. It's just what it represents. And I've had hard graders before. But they always showed you how to do better, and they made sure you knew that that was their goal. I'm just not going to think about it any more.

Instead I'll concentrate on the fact that two of my best friends from high school will be up here this weekend. They are so low key and fun and funny and great. They might just save my sanity.

Foodless

I am officially declaring Into the Wild to be the most depressing movie ever. Exceedingly well done. But it's been five days, and it still makes me shudder.

The first reason it is so sad and yet so good is that it completely plays into the societal and age-determined desire to just wander. To not have any kind of responsibilities, to just take off and experience life. It definitely has its appeal. Not that I in any way, shape, or form have the kind of personality that could deal well with being homeless, moneyless, and constantly dirty and hungry. But still. It's like On the Road. When we read that in my class in undergrad, everyone in the class wanted to take a road trip. Beyond that, I didn't particularly enjoy the book. But I wanted to hop on a train and eat nothing but apple pie for three months and sleeping on the floors of random people's apartments. Kind of. And there was something admirable in Alex Supertramp. He really didn't want to be materialistic. Or rather, he wasn't materialistic. He didn't want anything tying him down, and he managed to do some pretty cool stuff in the two years he was wandering around the country.

But then. There is apparently an ongoing debate on whether he was ill-prepared, wanted to die, what. No one really knows. But if he wanted to survive, and it seemed like he did at least from the portrayal in the movie, he was insanely unprepared. It seemed cocky. I mean, you don't go up into the wilds of Alaska with a small gun, a bag of rice, and a tent. I don't know much (although I think Survivor Man has definitely better equipped me for these kind of things.), but I'd have more than that. And he didn't think about the river rising, he didn't have a map, he didn't try and find another way out when the river blocked him off from the way he came. It's like he just gave up. Whether or not he wound up eating poisonous berries accidentally, he had time before that happened to try and get out. And why would you only take a single tiny book on vegetation when you are planning to live off the land? And you might want to do more than talk to a couple of people about hunting and how to skin and prepare animals. Because, as Survivorman has showed me, you can eat some pretty disgusting meat, as long as you have a fire to heat the crap out of it. Man Vs. Wild (who, as we know, is DEAD TO ME) has eaten maggots. It just frustrates me. It seems like such a waste for someone to die because of what? Because they were ill-prepared or cocky or... I don't know. There seem to be so many other things he could have done to save himself, pre-berry eating.

Also, the movie shows you him starving to death. It's pretty gruesome.

Which reminds me. I saw an even scarier "scary anorexic girl." She was awful. Her veins stuck out SO much. It was disgusting. And she was all sauntering when she walked, like she thought she looked so hot. I really wanted to stop her and be like, "PLEASE EAT SOMETHING. You don't look good so skinny." But I don't think that would work, since anorexia is horribly complicated. But still. Why would you want to do that to yourself?

Farewell, Oreo

So yesterday morning, my mom took my childhood cat, Oreo, to the vet's to be put to sleep. Oreo was old, and dying, and no longer enjoying any real quality of life, so no one get all defensive or anything. I am simultaneously more and less upset than I thought I would be. On the one hand, she was really old. When I went home last time, I pretty much knew she wasn't going to make it to Christmas. So it's not like a surprise or anything. And I've only seen her like once or twice a year anyways, so she hasn't really played a major role in my life for the past like 7 years.

On the other hand, she was a good cat. I remember going to pick her up. We were in our old Subaru and she ran under the seats. I remember trying to name her (it was between Oreo and Socks; yes, we weren't very creative.), and her playing with wrapping paper at Christmas and her sleeping on my bed or giving my brother fleas... It won't quite be the same going home and not seeing her. Not hearing her and Felix fight. I wonder if Felix will be lonely now? So Oreo, I hope you are in kitty heaven (I'm not Catholic, I can believe in pet heaven if I want to), with lots of tuna fish and comfy chairs.