wrassling

last night, i drove down to westwood and stayed at the apartment because i worked both "slava's snowshow"s yesterday and am currently sitting in the phone room taking calls. a good thing about working yesterday, despite the fact that i lost an entire day of break to work only four hours, was that dustin hoffman and joseph gordon-levitt (from "third rock" and "brick") came by to pick up their tickets. that was exciting.

being at the apartment by myself was really sad and unfortunate. i don't know how dan did it for a week after finals. i ended up falling asleep on the futon in the front room after watching an episode of "what not to wear" and eating lots of strips of fruit leather.

i have a really limited range of motion in my left arm, and i'm beginning to feel like my grandma after her shoulder surgery. it feels like i'm trying to move my arm underwater. i think that after steve used some crazy wrestling submission move (which sounds way more sexual than it was) on me the other night, he broke my arm. such abuse. maybe i should stop wrestling people named steve, considering gilmore actually helped me break my toe on the beach the summer after graduation when i challenged him to wrassle me. i'm just a poor, helpless little girl, i guess.

the other day, i took a shower and saw myself in the mirror and was honestly so surprised at how i looked. my skin is so significantly improved, it's ridiculous. my face feels clean all the time, which is such a wonderful thing, because i felt disgusting and messy constantly before this medication. also, i only have two more days worth of accutane until i need to get my prescription refilled, so that means yet another blood test is in the near future. this coming month will be my last, though, and then i can celebrate.

ice box

i went shopping this morning, and discovered how much i enjoy spending money on things i actually like. also, i was way proud of the fact that i now feel ok with walking around places by myself, which was, sadly, something i hated doing for a long time.

i'm still insanely sore from the mountain climbing on tuesday, but it's really nice to hurt like this. it makes me feel like i've done something to combat the huge amounts of food i've been stuffing into my face since i got home.

sam's pissed at me because i told him i wanted the car today. that's hilarious to me because he's had it for the past week, and, because he's really considerate, has already spilled shit all over the interior. i really don't know when he became such a badass.(my dad gave us his "old" scion last week when he became daddy warbucks and bought himself a new car. sam must share the scion with me until i go back to westwood, and by "share" i mean let me use it for one day because i have things to do.)

last night, i watched this terrible jude law movie from 1997 called "music from another room," which i bought for five dollars out of a dvd bin at a wal-mart in la junta, colorado (the most terribly depressing place in the universe) when the entire family road tripped up there to my great-grandma's funeral. the acting in this movie is atrocious, and the soundtrack is basically savage garden cd. however, jude law looks amazing in it, so all is well.

i. am. so. cold. i have goosebumps and i'm just sitting in my room. i'm the only person in my house who thinks it's artic in here, and that sucks for me.

ouch

my lower body is so sore. originally, i was going to say, "my ass is so sore" or "my legs are so sore" and then i flexed my calf muscles and got off my bed and realized that every muscle in my lower body hurts and that i would be lying if i said it was only one body part. it was totally worth it, though - the top of that mountain was so beautiful.

it smells like peanut m&m's in my room right now, which makes no sense because, if anything, my room should smell like shimmering brillance. i cleaned tons of crap out of this place this afternoon. in fact, the only things of note i did all afternoon were cleaning this ex-shithole and talking to steve. i spent hours going through all the many nooks and crannies of my room, throwing everything into giant trash bags and then hauling them out to the dumpster my mom ordered just for this. i tend to be really sentimental, and for that reason, i have saved old purses and keychains and shoes and clothes, etc. for several years. i also threw out all the cases for my cds, because i don't have anywhere to put them and they are bulky and they were cramping my style. i found movie ticket stubs from 1999. that was seven, nearly eight, years ago. that's so stupid. i kinda surprised myself with how callous i was about some stuff, but it needed to be done.

shiza and i went to dinner tonight, by ourselves, to protest the fact that denis and weil bailed on us to watch a basketball game on tv, even though we've been trying to get everyone together for a long time.

mountain climber part one

i'm about to climb this "mount" in the santa monica mountains with matt and his brother and their friend ryan (who i knew peripherally in high school). steve was supposed to come, but i guess getting up at 9 am to hike for many hours wasn't all that appealing to him. i'm so excited to finally do this, because that mountain has been looming over my house for eleven years and i've always wanted to get to the top.

i'll let you know how it goes. my dad told me it was hard about ten thousand times last night, so hopefully i'll be able to drag my way out of shape ass up there.

happy christmas eve

we got back from knotts fairly early tonight, and because this is the first time since i've been home that my family has mandated that i stay home and at least allow my presence to be felt in the house, i just spent an hour in my bathroom, straightening my hair and putting away all the crap i had out (to help my mom get ready for the christmas party we're having here tomorrow), all while rocking out to the last two songs on the rufus wainwright "poses" cd on repeat. wow, i'm a master at the run-on.

today was much better than i expected, but because i have the most delicate ear bones of anyone i know, i got really dizzy after riding one roller coaster twice in a row, and sat out the rest of the day - only an hour, and not hard to do when other people got tired of excessive "g-force," something sam loved talking about. the park was totally empty, and that's usually a good thing, but we basically did everything we wanted to really quickly and then got bored. leave it to a bunch of moody young adults to get bored at an amusement park. (i had to use the term "young adults," even though it's hardcore lame, because i am no longer a teenager, and refuse to refer to myself as such.)

i found out today that sam's pen-and-ink drawings, the ones a local clothing company printed on sweatshirts and t-shirts and marketed on their website as "samuel sweaters," made their way into the store revolution. my mom was able to go into this place and ask for night vision sweatshirts by "the artist sam" (which is hilarious) and actually buy my brother's work. i think that's so fabulous. i'm really proud of him, because he's fantastic.

my face is way dry again. thank you, accutane, for cursing me at the worst possible times.

clay won a bright pink knott's berry farm stuffed bear playing a stupid carnival game and gave it to me when we got home, which was very big of him considering i full-on slapped him in the face during the car ride back. i beat my much younger brother for the following reason: my dad came home yesterday with a new car. because, as i've discussed before, my parents have gone insane. today was the first day we'd taken the car anywhere far away (because i am not including the trip my grandparents' house ten minutes away last night). i drank two bottles of water and about fifteen glasses of iced tea at dinner, and even said, "wow, this medication is really dehydrating me," because i kept drinking liquids and hadn't felt the effects (to put it lightly) all day long. on the way back home, i suddenly felt like i was going to explode. i handled it silently for about ten minutes, because we were close to home, but then i realized that my dad was going 55 mph on the freeway and seemed content to cruise behind some semi truck in the right lane. i had all these terrible visions of me pissing myself in my dad's brand new car, sandwich'd between my two brothers. so, i started demanding that my dad stop driving like he was eighty years old, and once my family figured out how uncomfortable i was, they turned on me and became such assholes, making sounds and trying to make me laugh (we're all secretly five years old). clay kept telling me not to "relax" and i can't even remember what it was that made me hit him, but i think he may have tried to tickle me or something. it was almost like they wanted me to pee on them. god, it was awful. wonderful story, i know, and humiliating, but not any moreso than delivering my skin problems to the universe, so i think i can deal.

happy christmas eve!

p.s. i've tried to say only "happy christmas," because i'm pretending to be british. and i totally think i've tricked a few people.

knotts and the andes

i am freezing cold right now. i'm up and ready to go to knotts for christmas eve, as tradition dictates. i haven't been up this early in forever, and am now realizing why. it's so cold. i actually resorted to putting my clothes in the dryer so they'd be warm when i had to do a split-second costume change from pajamas (the sweater i wore yesterday) to the clothes i'm wearing right now.

i'm listening to george harrison's "brainwashed" album, which i love and hate at the same time. he wrote it right before he died of brain cancer, and you can hear how sick he is in his voice. every song on the album is incredibly sad, but it's beautiful, and i love harrison, so it's playing almost all the time.

the past day and a half has been pretty eventful. i met steve, and that couldn't have gone better. i'm going to leave it at that for now (i'm sorry to the insanely curious). i had lunch with leah yesterday, and want to do it again immediately. i adore her. we sat at baja for a way long time just cracking up. i can't believe i lost people i really liked after high school. i should have keep in touch with leah so much better than i did.

last night was the family hanukkah party, and it was totally insane, which is as much of a tradition for my mom's side as knotts is for my dad's. my cousins michael and sara were there - i miss them. i decided i'm going to go see them in oregon over spring break. i hate that their kids have no idea who i am because i never see them. alanna fell asleep on me, which is the cutest thing ever. and, possibly the best part of the night, i learned that 85% of my adult family members go to see the same doctor in the valley. actually, the best part of that conversation was that my cousin jonathan came into the room, and after i told him how ridiculous it is that everyone goes to the same guy, he asked, "oh, you mean dr. ______?"

and then, last night, shiza and zoe came over for a few hours. zo is leaving in january for ecuador until july, and she planted a terrible, terrible seed in my head. she told me i should go down to south america after school ends to see manchu picchu and various other andean ruins with her and her brother. of all the things i've ever wanted to do, going to manchu picchu definitely tops the list. i'll have to think about that, and battle my parents, i'm sure, because even though i'm an adult and working and would be paying for it myself, i will still get a ton of shit for it, and that will be super awesome. this is going to sound really stupid, and i know that, but once i finish accutane and some of the scarring fades and i can start feeling comfortable in my own skin again (literally), i want to take advantage of a lot of traveling and experience that this crap has stopped me from doing/experiencing in the past. that sounds like a lame excuse, but when you only feel comfortable wearing layers of makeup and wearing parkas, traveling around staying in hostels and hiking the andes becomes much less alluring.


(this is why i want to go. because it's amazing.)

ok, i think it's time to head off for a day of being ignored by sam, and in turn, the rest of my likeminded male cousins. no one in my dad's family loves me enough to hang onto me until they fall asleep, that's for sure.

weep for me, yeah?

high class

this morning, i woke up to my own voice on my mom's answering machine, telling her that i was "heading down to westwood to have dinner with simon," and because of that, i woke up laughing. simon was such a long time ago, and was kinda a joke even then. i was an idiot^max.

my mom and i did more shopping this afternoon, and she almost bought herself a digital camera (because she had the approval of me, the super impulse-shopper). i say "almost" because they didn't have the one she wanted in stock, and we've actually learned not to settle simply to have instant gratification. she'll get it eventually.

my parents are hilarious to me these days. because my dad switched jobs, and is essentially doing the same job for more money, they've gotten way less consumed with how much things cost, as if we won the lottery (which, for the record, we did not). today, home depot delivered a new refrigerator and stovetop, and while those are both things we really needed, it's so funny to watch my mom be elated about it, like it was made of spun mayan gold. we're ballers now.



steve's coming home tonight, and i will finally get to see him. i told him i was nervous about hanging out with him because i'm so used to the internet/phone. i'm honestly afraid that we won't like each other in person. however, it'll be nice to be able to say i've seen him. wow, that sounds way ridiculous. i guess, then, it's fitting, considering all the other stories i have.

two days late

this was supposed to be posted two days ago, but the internet was being a bastard and then i forgot that i saved it in word. that being said, it's old and out of order and i sincerely hope it doesn't confuse you too much.


this afternoon, i saw "the pursuit of happYness" with my grandma. it was hardcore depressing and was basically a tribute to will smith's ability to run around the streets of san francisco. it was one of those movies that threw every shitty thing possible at the main characters and said, "deal." it was really frustrating.

i bought elle magazine today for the sole purpose of owning the jennifer garner cover, because i adore her.

i saw a high school counselor at the market, when i was trying to buy chapstick and french bread, and i didn't say hi, because i'm demonic. i don't think he saw me either, though, so that's ok.

also, i have been to approximately zero holiday parties thus far and have already eaten my weight in sugar cookies. i had been prepping my body for this onslaught for a few weeks before coming home (i stopped eating sugar), but i'm still going way overboard. i actually thought that to myself as i stuffed frosted cookie number five into my piehole. i thought, "wow, dude, you are out of control." and then i went to the market, as i mentioned above, and looked at all the candy and was really tempted to buy lots of chocolate and pour it into my mouth. that is exactly why i periodically stop that shit cold turkey. refined sugar is crack.

razr

i spent last night at the beach house with denis and weil. they made me play beer pong and then laughed about how horrible i was. i fell asleep watching the first five minutes of E.T. and woke up this morning to denis playing video games.

tonight, i went to a neighbor's christmas party, and saw these three little kids i used to babysit all the time, and who i absolutely adore. i also talked to kelly for a way long time, and i hadn't seen her in months. we used to hang out constantly when we were younger, so it was nice to see her and catch up and discover that we're actually a lot alike.

my one christmas present from my family (with the exception of the apple corer i forced my mom to buy me to facilitate my apple and peanut butter addiction) is a new phone, which i'm already using because verizon de-activated my old one (the phone that refused to stay charged and that was selective about which messages it allowed me to receive). i feel like a spy or something with this new phone, because it's a silver "razr" and looks should be in an episode of "alias" or something and not in my pocket. i told my parents not to get me anything (the phone was spur-of-the-moment) because there's nothing i really need, except for maybe some clothes to counter how insanely cold it's been here the last few weeks. i think i'll be sad when clay opens all his many gifts, but that will be better than getting a whole slew of crap i don't need and can't fit in my room.

cookie monster

maybe it would be a good idea to rename this blog "celebrities i don't look like" because i'm about to present you with another celebrity i don't look like. her name is kate middleton and she's prince william's girlfriend. and for the record, mom, i don't look like her.



also, being home is way awesome. i didn't get out of bed until 1:45 this afternoon. in my defense, i was out until 3 am hanging out with matt and dan and norton, who i hadn't seen since graduation. i went out with my mom and my brothers to get some holiday presents, and when we got back, there was a plate of cookies on our doorstep. who would just leave a plate of cookies outside someone's house, you ask? our neighbors would, apparently, and even though my mom and clay told sam and i were disgusting for eating the cookies that had been exposed to the elements, we ate them and they were delicious.

my grandpa went back into the hospital this morning, and i still don't know how he is. my dad's family runs very, very differently from my mom's. i could never imagine my mom's parents keeping an illness secret. ever. my mom's dad has known all my doctors since i was born, and has therefore never figured out that there are some medical issues i have that i do not want to share with my grandfather. that being said, it's incredibly bizarre for me to know that my dad's father is in the hospital, and to be stonewalled for information. i hope my grandpa is ok for christmas. i was really looking forward to having everyone on that side of the family together, for the first time in years.

ridic

i'm home now, and told clay about this blog, at which point he said, "and who the hell would care about reading that?"

clay also told me tonight that he thought a good fox tv show would be "humans versus midgets," and then i had to remind him that midgets are, in fact, humans, and he got really embarrassed.

i slept for 12 hours last night, and woke up exhausted. i'm looking forward to getting rid of the incredible eyebags i've created over the quarter.

a funny thing happened at work last night. everyone was buzzing about how meg white (from the white stripes) had put tickets at will call (and the higher-ups had her tickets upgraded), and my boss kept coming out to where we'd set up the tables to see if she'd come yet and hoping that he'd catch her as she came by. about five minutes after the performance started, i turned to the girls who were working with me and said, "wouldn't it be hilarious if she never came?" and then, five seconds later, this student walked up to the table and said, "hi, i'm megan elizabeth white. do you have my tickets?" i haven't laughed so hard in a really long time.

i'm so excited for this winter break.

oh, and my dad thinks i look like elizabeth hurley in this picture, which is just about the most ridic thing anyone has ever said to me in my entire ridiculous life.

so tired, but so worth it

part of the reason i was up until 3:30 last night:


me and lina, who is gorgeous and all the more fabulous for being able to make that face.


me and mad, looking pretty goddamn crazed.

we had the first "get together" of many in our apartment last night, to celebrate that we were all done with finals. apparently, i was so exhausted at 4 am that when dan called me to ask me to unlock the front door (i'd accidentally locked him out when i'd gone to sleep), that i had a seventeen second phone conversation with him and opened the door for him, and have absolutely no recollection of that happening at all.

why i am wearing the same clothes

ok, so good story. this morning, i went to LAX with andy so that i could drive his car back here after dropping him off. i went to sleep at 3:30 am and woke up at 6:15. i told myself my goal was getting back here by 8:15 so that i could sleep for an hour before having to leave to go to work at 9:45 (if i used too many "tos" it's because i barely focus my eyes right now). i got home at exactly 8:15. however, instead of sleeping, i've decided i need to document my journey home.

in honor of finals, a quiz:

"this morning, driving back from LAX, i:

a) got stuck in terrible traffic."

b) wanted to punch several people who did not use their blinkers and yet were still able to sneak their way in front of me (however, this bloodlust did not begin or end with them, specifically)."

c) started to really think about all family-owned businesses that had trucks on the freeway, especially the mini-blind one. my thoughts were centered mostly on who would give enough of a shit about something like mini-blinds to build an entire business based on the "cleaning, selling, and repairing" of them. i also thought to myself, "i wonder what they think about drapes."

d) saw, on the back of a truck carrying large wooden posts i was sure would kill me through the windshield should an accident occur, a livestrong bracelet sticker, which, for clarity's sake, was a sticker shaped like a yellow livestrong bracelet."

e) noticed i had the angriest resting face ever, but had neither the energy nor the desire to try to move my face muscles at all."

f) eventually decided to take an active role in the whole driving thing and get out of the slow lane, prompted only by the merging of one santa monica blue bus and three small u-hauls right in front of me."

g) broke 40 miles per hour at one point and thought, "wow, i'm really flying now."

h) got really angry with the total beast in the white toyota "yaris" who refused to let me over, and who may have even been enjoying trapping me. i wanted to bitchslap her. and i don't even know if people actually do that."

i) was leered at by two idiots in a cornflower blue datsun who thought they were hysterical, and who could apparently not glean from the aforementioned perma-grimace on my face that i was so not in the mood."

j) decided that i was going to wear to work the same clothes i wore yesterday, which, incidentally, are the same clothes i slept in last night."

k) all of the above.

(the answer is k).

i'm gonna go eat a torilla (the only food i have left) and try to regroup before i have to further destroy my voice on the phones for six hours.

"why are we wearing the same clothes?"

me and andy, after discovering last night that we were more or less wearing the exact same "outfit." i'm also wearing blue p.e. shorts (from middle school), but because andy the artiste insisted we take the picture sitting down, they weren't documented. sad.

candy canes and puberty

my voice officially left the building this morning. i had to call in "sick" to work, even though i feel fine, because there was no way i'd be able to answer phones. steve called today and told me i sound like a seventh grade, pre-pubescent boy. andy told me that i sound just like this girl who has a really unflattering, terrible voice, but i can't physically attack him because he's the one making me dinner tonight. basically, my voice is disgusting and i can't wait to sound normal again.

i have my last final tomorrow, and i think i'm ready. i'm pretty much just trying to make it to 2:30 tomorrow afternoon, when i should be done with everything, and then mad and i will have a party at the apartment (even if no one shows up and it's just us). i'm driving andy to the airport (in his car, which i'm allowed to drive, just this once) at 6 am friday morning, though, so i guess i can't have too much fun.

i didn't leave the apartment at all today. not once. i wore my pajamas all day and ate candy canes because i'm over cough drops and listened to the jazz version of "oh, holy night" that udeitha told me about on or around fifteen hundred times, and drank tons of hot water. i also committed the cardinal sin of wearing shorts and ugg boots, but, as i said, i never left my apartment, so it doesn't really count.

the fact that i get to see zo and shiza and denis and everyone in a few days makes me so giddy.

north or south?

me: are you coming from the 405 north or south?
customer: yes.

awesome. this is when i stop wanting to be at work. i'm also losing my voice, which makes me sound like a tired old crackwhore on the phone.

also, dan was so crazed last night i almost don't know where to begin. he was way stressed about a final he had today, and ended up going out and buying christmas lights, candy canes, and a tranquility fountain, complete with tealights. he did all that (and assorted other crazy things) holding on tightly to his homemade flashcards that carefully detailed all the potential essay questions for his test.

coincidentally, mad and i tried to teach dan how to say "north" and "mirth" because he insists that he's unable to make the "rth" sound. he can, we discovered, but i guess he's lazy. yes, dan, you're lazy.

laziness: 1, me: 0

i am officially one final away from being home.

i seriously cannot wait to be back at my house with absolutely nothing to think about other than how i'm going to hang out with everyone i want to see. i think being so sick the other night was the breaking point for this quarter. i'm just over it. i'm tired and i need a break.

i'm also excited for hanukah at my grandma's, and knott's on chrismas eve, and for my jewish mom to throw my dad's protestant family's christmas party (my born-again aunt wants a menorah for christmas). that is the kind of insanity i want in my life right now.

my anthro final is thursday, and i have plenty of time to study and be really uber-prepared for it, but i'm having a really hard time caring right now.

i'm also having a really hard time dealing with these goddamn bangs that need to just grow out already.

it sucks having zero motivation when you know you've still gotta do shit.

"peggy lee"

i was so sick last night. i don't think i've felt so shitty since i was eight years old, and able to stay home from school and lay in my parents' bed and watch crappy talk shows all day long. i've had a sore throat since friday, and was anticipating getting a cold, but last night, the world rained chaos down upon me and i had the worst fever i've had in a long time. it felt like my just being alive was taking a huge toll on my body. i ended up deciding to go to bed at 8:30 pm, because i'd had the foresight to finish my psych research methods paper early (when i'd first developed the sore throat and figured i'd be getting sick - this entire apartment has been diseased for about three weeks). andy wouldn't let me sleep until i'd taken some sort of medication, and even though we battled over my refusal to take dayquil at night (who does that?), i thought it was cute that he was taking care of me, even though i looked like a crazy person and was pretty frightening to be around. he eventually forced me to sit with him and drink theraflu, because he didn't trust me to take it on my own. i went to bed at 9:15, and fell into a fitful quasi-sleep until around 10:45, when mad came home, and then i called my mom in the dark in my room and cried to her for ten minutes about how miserable i was. i really just wanted to sleep, and absolutely couldn't because i felt like my skin was on fire. after the phone call, during which my mom told me to wrap myself in bags of ice and drink lots of cold water (i love mommies), i left my bed and went to follow her command that i keep drinking fluids. then, andy fed me some ibuprofen, mad took some super flattering pictures of me as i tried using her thermometer to see how high my temperature was (96.6* was the highest reading, and that, my dears, was bullshit) and i was finally able to sleep.

i woke up this morning fever-free, and am hoping to stay that way.

p.s. andy refers to fevers as "peggy lees." it must be a minnesota thing.

statistically insignificant

i'm starting to feel ok about my life. this is how midterms and finals are for me: i get really worked up and nervous about them, and then i get something done and i relax, and then something else comes to mind and i freak out again. last night, i was on the freak-out stage of the roller coaster of emotion (and, leah, i think i stole that from your blog, so feel free to slap me when we hang out, ok?). last night was also hard emotionally because i'm having a really hard time figuring out what i should do about a particular situation. that is my way of saying that i have no idea how to "go with the flow."

i didn't go to my last anthro lecture this morning. i slept instead, and had a lot of crazy, really realistic, symbolic dreams that i can't remember anymore, of course.

i've also been drinking hot water all day because i have a sore throat (and i don't dare drink tea, lest it completely undo all that i struggled to accomplish when i used those hideous white strips last month). i ran out of airborne last night, and literally did a dance this morning when mad told me i could have some of hers.

this not having a debit card thing is really, really difficult. joel called me and wanted to hang out tonight, and i wanted to and want to and totally would have had that not meant that i would have had to walk to the bank and actually withdraw money. i was also working on the research methods paper i have due on monday, though, so i'm going to blame the no hang out on productivity rather than my extreme laziness and inability to lift myself off of the couch and over to the bank.

i don't know what happened to my parents, but in the entirety of my life they've gone to about two social parties with real adult friends. friends who are not the parents of my or my brother's friends. and now, all of a sudden, they are little party animals. i called my mom last friday night to ask her to do something for me (probably to bring my accutane to me), and she said, "oh, i am soooo drunk right now," which is my line, and i don't appreciate her stealing it from me. (no, i don't call my mother when i'm drunk - i just really like to announce it to people around me). my mom works at my old high school (which is hers too, incidentally), and she'd gone to a local restaurant with all my former teachers and had margaritas with them. awesome. tonight, my parents are going to a holiday party that one of my dad's new lawyer buddies is throwing. i had to help my mom, over the phone, pick out an outfit to wear that, per my rules: did not have christmas appliques (snowmen, lights, santas, etc.), was not an elastic-waisted shapeless skirt, and was not something that immediately screams "grandmother." my mom is a beautiful person, but tends to want to hide that in way bizarre clothing that isn't flattering or understandable. so, because she came to me, the sultana of all things fashionable, so that i would save her from wearing something crazy to this "real people" party, i felt it was my place to be harsh. i was, but she's really happy with what she's wearing.

as if anyone cares.

basically, my parents are out on the town, clay is at alanna's birthday party with the rest of my wonderous family, and i'm sitting in the apartment alone, wondering how i'm going to stretch "neither our main effects nor our interaction were statistically significant" into four pages of a research paper discussion.

on the eve of finals

i'm tired and crazed and stressed and worried and eating apples with way too much peanut butter. i eat when i've got a lot to think about. i did not inherit from my mom's side of the family the "stop eating when stressed" gene that has served my great-aunt so well.

i'll have more to say tomorrow, i'm sure, when i hopefully get some things resolved and can stop thinking about them on heavy rotation.

wishful drinking

at work, this man railed on me for a really long time about something over which i had no control, and kept at it despite my many attempts to tell him i couldn't help him (and i was being way nice). after about ten minutes (which, although it doesn't sound very long, is much, much longer than the average call in the phone room), i turned off the microphone on my headset so i could tell my co-worker how insane the whole situation was. i could still hear the caller going on and on about how sending out emails and not physical announcements through the mail was a terrible, terrible offense and how dare i and all this other bullshit that would have made me feel really bad for him if he wasn't being a demon to me for no reason, but he couldn't hear me. i eventually stopped laughing with my co-worker and started saying leading things like "yeah, i know," and "i understand," and "uh huh," and then he hung up on me way abruptly, with one those statement-making, "you should definitely rethink how you conduct business." it was only after that that i realized i had forgotten to turn my microphone back on, and that he had been talking to himself, and not hearing my responses, for at least four minutes before hanging up. it was amazing.

i'm not at all a fan of bureaucracy (in fact, if last week was any indication, ridiculous run-arounds are the easiest way to make me burst into tears), but i don't shoot the messenger. i have never in my life tried to pointedly degrade a salesperson or anyone else who was helping me do something because i was frustrated or angry. and being on the receiving end of that frustration is really sad and upsetting sometimes. i sat there listening to this dude just chew me apart for fifteen minutes, and was really tempted to just curtly tell him i couldn't help him and hang up, because nothing was being accomplished and it's not really my job to be a victim of some dude's need to vent.

in other news, i'm going to see carrie fisher (of "star wars" fame) perform her one-woman show "wishful drinking" in westwood tonight with udeitha. it's almost finals week, but i'm allowing myself two hours of class-less entertainment because i got an A on my second anthro paper and it's kinda awesome how much that has restored my confidence in my ability to succeed in school. i didn't realize how much my lack of motivation was tied to the fact that i'd gotten a shitty grade on the first paper. that's how i function, as ridiculous as that is, and that is also why i systematically screwed myself in calculus in high school. if i don't perform well, i get all crazy with self-doubt and i start to think that lots of things are way overwhelming or impossible. it's so amazing to me how much more confident about studying for finals i am.

dramatique

so i know i've written about this before, but i've been thinking about it a lot recently, because certain events have prompted me to be really introspective. that sounds way dramatique, and it's not really all that intense, but i have been doing a lot of pondering. also, this is not a reaction to anything anyone has explicitly said or done to me - it's just all part of a wonderful drama i have created in my own brain.

i refuse to believe that when you're in a relationship, you need to end all your friendships with people of the opposite sex. i've heard from a lot of people that when you have a significant other, that person is supposed to fill every void and become your sole contact with that gender and you're supposed to be ok with this. however, i don't really think it's all that possible for one person to satisfy every faucet of my being. i'm not talking sexual satisfication here - i'm a firm believer in monogamy in romantic relationships, and think that cheating is disgusting. what i mean is that i don't think i can get the same social support from one person that i get from the many guy friends i've collected over the years. plus, i love them and i'm not gonna give them up.

i'm going to read this the next time i have a fat crisis of conscience about the way i handle certain situations.

p.s. it's hilarious that i'm creating all this nonsense about twenty minutes after i bragged to steve about how "drama-free" my life is now. incidentally, steve is one of the people i don't want to have to lose.

banana pancakes

after class today, i walked all the way home to the beat of "banana pancakes" by jack johnson. i listened to it lots of times and felt like a badass.

i also lost my debit card last thursday, and only discovered this late last night. this afternoon, i went to the bank to get a new one sent to me, and apparently, that takes many, many days. the only good thing about that is that i'll spend less money when faced with the prospect of having to walk all the way to the bank to withdraw money from an actual person.

on saturday, my parents and clay came down to drop off my medication, and we all ended up going to lunch and to whole foods, where my dad got all excited because he saw halle berry. things like that always make me really happy/validated. i'll readily admit that i'm addicted (kinda) to trashy celebrity magazines and snipey websites. some people, however, mock me for this and make me feel like i'm a big dumbass for reading what i call "brain candy." so, it's always nice for me when i discover that even my dad gets giddy when he sees a famous person, or that andy does secretly read the people magazines when i leave them on the coffee table (i figured this out when he asked me the other day if i minded that he had torn some recipes out of said periodical).

tonight, i'm supposed to do something with lina. it'll probably just be coffee, but it'll be grand to see her regardless.

mate hunt

a brief review of my chance encounter with my friend nate:

nate: so, how's the mate search going?

me: actually, i'm not all that interested in hunting right now. i'm happy with my life.

nate: what happened to you?

i also got into a bizarre conversation about animal rights and my near-veganism with some people in my psych research methods lab. every time someone asks me a question about why i've outlawed meat, eggs, milk and cheese from my diet, i express my opinions, and then suddenly feel like i'm preaching to everyone (something i can't stand when i'm the preachee). today, i brought it upon myself, because i mentioned the assigned reading, which was all about animal research in psychology experiments, and was the most biased, bitchy, pointed thing i've ever read in a textbook. the guy was such an asshole about animal rights. and then, i basically had the entire lab up in arms about how i don't think animals should be exploited at all, for food or otherwise (with the exception of udeitha, who a) wasn't listening and b) is also a vegetarian, and would have stuck up for me if she had been paying attention).

i did, however, give bill pullman (the actor in "independence day" and "the grudge" and lots of other crazy movies) his will call tickets tonight. that makes me practically famous.