Who the fuck uses Netscape, anyway?

Nobody should use Netscape.

Netscape sucks.

Goddamn motherfucking piece of shit makes my page look like crap doesn't work on different computers nonbackward compatible nonsustainable computing assholes.

I have a headache. I want to bash my head continously into my monitor until NOTHING HURTS ANYMORE.

Christ. I just fought with tables for the last hour, trying to get my images to line up with the backgrounds, and it seemed no matter what I said they just refused to line up. I got so frustrated I about tore my face off.

Finally, I'm wandering around webmonkey and I happen to click a random link and realize that because I typed this:

<td>

  <img src="url">

</td>

instead of this:

<td><img src="url"></td>

it was fucking up the whole works. GAAAAAH.

I hate computers.

Whoo! Happy post-Christian celebration. ;)

My Christmas wasn't exactly loaded this year. I got a few CDs, some ugly-ass but probably comfortable pajamas (which is all that really counts anyway), a set of nice glasses to replace the ones broken in the Beeler house, a silver wine bottle opener (in the off chance I ever end up opening that bottle I bought in July) and random stocking-stuffer things. Good Christmas, though. And Mom & Grammy are giving me a $300 Visa card so I can buy work clothes for whatever job I'm going to get. Sweet, I needed that. All I have are 2 pairs of jeans and various blue, green, and off-white long-sleeved shirts/sweaters.

So I'm back working on my portfolio, listening to my Puddle of Mudd CD (I got my Rage CD, too.) No cookbook, though. Or a winter-car kit. Guess I'm on my own for those.

If I can get a JOB! I really hope I become self-sufficient quickly. Before that, I suppose, I'll go visit Ayako, though. Still need to book those tickets, damn.

Anyhoot. Hope all is well everywhere and everyone cleaned UP.

Hate it. Hate it hate it!

No, not the puppy. Mom came home and has taken over the watch. No, I hate coding webpages. More specifically, I hate that the webpage I spent the past 3 months working on in my spare time is not compatible in Netscape and looks like doodie on screens with small resolutions (like my parent's monitor. Can't even go any higher. Bah).

I refuse to do 3 different versions of my portfolio and figure out browser detection. I don't want to use plugins. So I have to redo the whole damn thing so that it works in Nutscrape and cheap-ass old monitors. Goddamn.

Can't they all just get along?

Oooh, Chex Mix creation is occuring in the kitchen. I'll go... stir.

Stupid Emma. She woke up from her nap because I opened a bottle of soda, and refused to go to bed, or the bathroom when I took her outside. She seemed all right being outside for quite some time, but I eventually brought her in because I don't know what she's doing out there and I have to work upstairs on the computer to get my portfolio ready so I can get a J-O-B, as mom puts it (quite emphatically).

So I brought her upstairs on a leash, short enough that she wouldn't go nosediving through the railing into the empty space above the foyer, but she couldn't handle that and freaked out because she couldn't go in my bathroom (when I had the door shut). Then, THEN, she peed on the carpet right in front of me, after she'd been outside for at least half an hour. That was it.

I took her downstairs and put her in the crate, where she now screams at me with all the fury contained in her 3 pound puppy body. She hates being crated. Mom finally got rest last night, because our vet, Dr. Tom, suggested she can't stand being away from her Mommy, and to put her in a box in her bedroom at night instead of a crate, being more open. It worked, she slept for hours and only had to get up to pee once.

I hate causing such obvious pain to a cute little puppy like Emma, but I did not come home to be a 24 hour petsitter. I know she's a baby and she needs constant attention lest she ruin something or hurt herself, but I also can't stand Mom yelling at me to get my shit together and send it out to firms, and to stop reading and watching TV, when I am doing so because I am chained to that puppy, and Mom gets to go out and get her fucking nails done. It's not my goddamn puppy.

I hate hearing her scream like this and scratch at the cage, but she needs to deal. If she's going to be spoiled enough that being leashed with a 5 foot radius next to me is torturous enough to make her growl and bark and pee the carpet, she needs to endure the 'hardship' of being in a carpeted puppy carrier with her food dish. Christ.

Yes, I am not pleased with this situation. Particularly the fact that Mom feels the need to treat me like I'm a teenager again and yell at me for sleeping in until the ungodly hour of 10 am. Oh fuck, I was supposed to do something with the dishwasher. This doesn't help my case.

This is why I do not want to move home. How long until January 3rd again?

By the way, I thought I'd relate something I found really funny:

My mom was out shopping in her new car, and when she came back to the parking lot, there was a handwritten note on her windshield that said, "Who would buy a purple car? What a waste of $50,000."

Mom was fuming for a couple hours, really upset and pissed as all hell. After a while, she got a call from my older sister, Sarah, who asked, laughing, "Didja get my note?"

My sisters are evil.

There's a good discussion on misc.market right now about 'girl' vs. 'woman' (spawned from some idiot asking why there aren't any hot babes on campus. duh. hot babes go where the hot guys are. like Pitt.) I'm too chicken-shit to contribute, so I'll vent here.

Anyway, all these male-types are professing their utter confusion over why female-types get offended when referred to as 'girls'. As in, "I go to a women's school, not a girl's school". Guys, of course, are all talking out of their asses about how the term is perceived in society and blah blah.

Don't they know by now, women don't care about anyone's opinion, except other women? If you went to junior high as a female, you'd freaking know why, too. To a woman, a girl can and will mean any of the following:
-childish (as in pre-pubescent)
-dependent, relying on others to survive
-pink-tutu-giggles-in-malls feminine
-out of touch with reality
-naive, vulnerable, sitting duck, street-stupid, idealistic

Only when used in advertising does it mean 'fresh, young, beautiful, willowy-thin, satin-soft, etc.'

Example taken from real life:
(Caron talks about her cousin's college laundry allowance, where she's given enough to do 3 loads a week, and how it's often not enough)
(I exclaim that I only do 2 loads every 2 weeks, how many fucking clothes does she wear in one day)
Caron replies: "Yeah, Wendy, but you're not a girl."

In this context, girl means overtly feminine, frets about fashion, carries around lipgloss and lives at the mall.

If someone called me a girl in that context, or any of the above, I'd get pretty pissed. But of course, it's all in the usage. The term cannot be used between strangers or in such a way that either party may possibly take it seriously. For instance, when I don't answer my phone, Caron leaves a voicemail: "You're a dirty whore. Call me back." I don't take it seriously, because there's no reason for me to think that I may, in fact, be a dirty whore, or that Caron believes me to be so.

If Caron walked up to some skank in a bar who was glued to Caron's boyfriend and called her a dirty whore, that would probably start a fight.

Women are crazy. Men are dumb. I'll alert you when I believe otherwise.

Oh... my... god...

I can't believe this kid went to CMU, however briefly. UGH! I had heard buzz about him and various compliments and detriments to his talents, so while strolling around buy.com trying to figure out what CD I want to for Christmas, I noticed his name over on the 'top 20' and decided to see what he sounded like.

Ass, that's what he sounds like. Some horrific, brain-melting combination between Andrea Bocelli and Michael Bolton. Jeeezus. How embarassing.

Anyway, I'm home now, hanging out with kitty and puppy alike. Emma is just the cutest thing. She's like an animated toy, who's warm and furry and shakes a little. Especially when she's happy and that little mini tail goes wagging a mile a minute. Her little legs go whispering over the floor when she's in a hurry (which is always) - tikki takki tikki takki.

I'll put pictures up on here soon.

I really want to figure out a way to take the cat up with me, now. He's being treated pretty shittily here. He's ignored, yelled at, tortured by the dog (who doesn't understand that the cat's not down with playing, and chases him everywhere at full speed. She loves to charge him) - he's been sleeping up in my room because mom thought he kept waking Emma up during the night, so she'd start yipping constantly (really loudly) because she hates being locked up. The problem actually is that she can't sleep through the night yet, and she wakes up having to pee, and she tries not to pee, but then she pees, and she barks the whole time. Then she goes back to sleep and wakes up every hour, starting at 3/4 am and continuing until my mom finally gets up. So I don't think the cat is actually the problem, although he gets pretty pissy around dawn and cries until he gets let out of my room.

So I'd probably have to find an actual apartment that would be cat friendly so he could run around at night. He's such a bastard, though, I don't think he'd like roommates (or vice versa). I don't think I can afford a single, either. Difficulties.

I don't know what I want for Christmas... just big huge things I know I won't get (a really nice computer with a really nice printer and a decent scanner). I'm trying to figure out what CD I want... I was leaning towards Moulin Rouge! but I listened to the track samples and changed my mind. Now I'm leaning towards Puddle of Mudd or an early Rage CD. Maybe also Queens of the Stone Age? I just don't know what type of music I want, but CDs are so easy to ship.

I just would prefer not to ask Bruce + Kathy to pick up something that looks really scary. Maybe a Beethoven? Hmm.

Mom just came back from exercise. I suppose I should do something today as well.

Ah, the memories.

Looking at these pictures takes me back.

...and reminds me that probably the reason why Ayako seems to be collecting dirty old men is because she looks like she's NINE YEARS OLD. It's only because I haven't seen her in a while that I can see her objectively and realize that.

So freakin' much to do today, and I want to start a tofudesign blog. Probably be more successful once Ayako gets DSL.

Countdown:
33 hours until the Panther Hollow Exhibit (yipe!)
53 hours until the Commuting Studio Crit
77 hours until the Green Visions, Gray Infrastructure presentation
6 days until I fly home
8 days until my history paper is due
10 days until I am officially graduated
159 days until the ceremony

Current theme song: The Smiths - How Soon Is Now.

Never actually listened to the lyrics until recently. Seriously. I know exactly what he means.

I saw "The Importance of Being Earnest" last night ($1 McConomy movie offering). I enjoyed it, but not as much as I could have, I think. It's obvious that they were having fun, which is nice, but it was a bit too... well, silly. Personally, I think Oscar Wilde can stand on his own without adding any extra humor (albeit from my extremely limited experience with his work). But it was still good, I wasn't really disappointed, just surprised.

I'm less stressed about work than bored, now. And I really want to find a subletter and move, and get a job.

I don't really want to go home. I love seeing my family and all, but I guess 3 weeks seems a little long. I want to go ahead and start my life, and I feel like I'm about to spend 3 weeks in traction or something.

Anyway, I have some research to do.

Holy shit.


Mwahahahhahaha. I love it when Charlotte's weather is worse than Pittsburgh's. Neener neener.

Possibly found a place I want to live next semester - two angry punk hippie veg-heads have a cheap-ass place in Oakland. Purrfect. The only problem is they're 2 guys, straight, I'm guessing. Jenny said to make sure they wouldn't rape me or anything, and to let them know that she has people that would kill them if they did. She wasn't being facetious, either. I'm guessing Caron would be able to supply some people of that ilk, as well, regardless of any negative past relationship I may have had with them.

It's a little scary knowing people could be killed on my behalf, but reassuring.

Mom's boyfriend Ronnie will meet our family friends of ~20 years, Bob and Connie. This is big. Especially given the timing... I wonder if she's aware of that. Probably. She decorated the Christmas tree by herself recently and felt pretty depressed.

It's still a little hard for me to remember that she's still feeling affected... that she's not forgetting him, or replacing him. I *know* she isn't, but I get confused sometimes about why she started dating so quickly. I don't think one really has to do with the other. It's probably my lack of experience with relationships. I get it, don't worry, I just have to mentally smack myself sometimes.

Presentation #1 tomorrow morning. Sheeit.

it is SO COLD.

17 degrees, but feels like 9. Jeezus H Christ on a fucking raft, why did people decide to live here? I can understand moving here in the summer, but why did they stay after the first winter? I'm opting to stay here in lieu of living at home, but at least we have things like central heating now. 300 years ago, what the fuck were people thinking?

Random thoughts from a tired person:
I don't care if it makes me look like a giant walking hand grenade, I am so glad right now I have my down-filled bubble jacket.

Designers do the weirdest things. I was just out on Forbes at 9 o'clock at night, in the freezing cold, surreptiously measuring a bus stop.

2 weeks from today I will officially be a graduate. 2 weeks and one day from today will be the first anniversary of my father's death. Life is strange.

It's 27 degrees out right now, wind chill 16. It's supposed to start snowing tonight around 6 am - who wants to bet I'll still be here to see it?

Josh and I went to Home Depot to pick up supplies for the exhibit, and I dropped a whopping $130 on my credit card. I hope we get reimbursed big time. Or that we're able to lie and return everything in two weeks. :)

On our way back, we stopped in Squill and Josh picked up coffee from Coffee Tree Roasters (love the White Mocha) while I scuttled carefully up the street to How Lee's for a quart of veggie lo-mein. Driving back to campus, Ayako called from NAPA VALLEY, where she's touring the countryside and doing wine-tastings with Rick. Well, she's doing sake-tasting, he's doing wine-tasting. Anyway, the point is, she's in Napa Valley, where it's 50 degrees. I, on the other hand, went home to shower and walked back to campus so thoroughly wrapped up I felt like the little brother from A Christmas Story. One more layer of clothing and I wouldn't have been able to put my arms down.

I don't know how the hell I'm going to get everything done in the next week. Jeeeezus. Ayako wants me to move to the Bay Area... I said if she can either find me a job that pays enough to offset the cost of living, or an apartment as cheap as one here in Pittsburgh, I'd move out there. She just laughed.

Sigh.

One of the best things about being in studio late at night is that the girl's bathroom has this motion-sensing light switch that turns off the lights when no one's in the bathroom for, oh, half an hour or so. It instantly switches them back on when someone walks in the door.

You can tell from the door outline whether or not the lights are on, so one of my great joys, when the lights are off, is to make a grand entrance into the bathroom, coordinating some dramatic movement with the lights turning on. For instance: pulling the door open, jumping into the room, throwing open my arms and shouting 'Ta Daaa!' right as I hear the *click* of the light switch.

Some things are way more fun than they should be at 2:30 in the morning.

Where the hell is Josh?

Well, so far it's taken me, oh, 6 hours or so to do one sketch. But damn if it isn't a good sketch.

I'm getting my wish for copious amounts of snow to gather on the ground. Well, not a whole lot, but it's a nice, even blanket, even on paved surfaces. And it's still coming down.

In related news, Josh is supposed to show up soon, work for an hour or two, and drive me home. He was actually supposed to show up an hour+ ago. He'd better fucking come work. I don't want to take Escort home tonight. I would have left earlier if he hadn't said he was working tonight. I suppose I could wait until daybreak and work, it's going pretty well so far. But I'd rather not screw up my schedule that much... hell, what am I thinking. I'll probably be pulling nothing but all or half-nighters all next week anyway, it's not like I'll *have* a schedule. Eh. I'll call him at two and see what the hell is going on.

He's got senioritis worse than I do, and that's something, let me tell ya. What a pair.

I love snow. Lay it on! Give me more! MORE! I want it up to my KNEES! YEeeahhh!

I just switched the blog over to my new website! Well, it's not actually that new. It's about damn time I switched, actually.

There is white outside - rain or snow or 'winter mix' or something, coming down by the bucketful and blowing almost sideways at times. Craziness. I guess Josh and I aren't going shopping today, after all. I'm so behind on all my work. Two days, completely wasted. Yech.

Aight, I'm outie.

I'm finally back in studio. No matter how much I try, I can't seem to make it back here before noon, even though I leave at decent hours of 10 or 11 at night. Dammit, how hard is it to get here at 7 or 8 am, really? Ugh.

And then I spend an hour reading blogs. Useful. When I have SO MUCH TO DO.

On the other hand, I am pleased because I finally found a stream of Queens of the Stone Age's 'No One Knows' on one of the desktops in studio. Schweet. Happiness. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my headphones and there are other people present, so I can't blast it as I would dearly like to. Probably for the best, my ears are sore from the cold & wet I got from riding Terror over here. (Yes, the bike's name is still Terror, because although the seat no longer bruises my nether regions, I still ride as quickly as possible down Beeler, to Forbes, to Maggie Mo, killing my leg muscles and panting like a bull in a rodeo. Cars are scary.)

I figured out recently, before I passed out after two days of non-sleep, that I could specify ring tones for certain callers on my cell phone. Wanting to hear from my uncle, but not from a certain obsessive-compulsive repeat caller, I set the ID for her as 'none', and 'siren' for my uncle. Thus, I slept blissfully through repeated calls from others but woke up in time to talk to my uncle, unfortunately in a nearly complete stupor from my hour-long nap. The really nice part is, I haven't changed the ringer since. I was at the computer yesterday and noticed that my phone was flashing at me, saying I had a call... but it was making NO NOISE. Automatically I still hit the 'clear' button to silence the ringer, as I usually do, but of course there was no change, because it was already silent! Brilliant.

My mom really wants me to take the cat when I come back from break. She's, like, desperate. I'm a little pissed at her - taking the cat would be a HUGE deal for me. Agreements from roommates, hiding it with my landlord, keeping the cat indoors with 4 other people coming and going at all hours. Locking him up in my room - my tiny, tiny little room, because there are no doors blocking off the upper floor. Moving all the accoutrements up, and probably getting him sedated for the 8 hour drive, or flying him up, meaning I'd have to drive to the airport (probably in the snow) and leave my car there for 3 weeks. Or, having to find a pet-friendly apartment, and move everything I own into it, which would *really* require a subletter. I'd probably have to do that anyway, I think Laura has allergies. I mean, I love my kitty, but he honestly prefers my mom and gets along much better with her. Now she wants me to take him because she couldn't wait to get a frickin spoiled purebred puppy so she could dress her up with sweaters and bows. So the puppy tortures the cat, the cat wakes up the puppy who won't shut up at night... and she's upset that I'm not taking the cat away? It was fine before the got the damn dog. I never envisioned taking the cat, I always assumed he would stay there. It would just be a huge pain in the ass for me, and I don't think it's nearly as difficult for her. Ah well, bitching from both sides. But if she bugs me about it over break, I'm going off.

I should start thinking about my Christmas list, I suppose. And finish making presents. Hrm. But first, WORK!

Well, it did snow, some, but not 6 inches. More like 2-3, which has been melting ever since. It snowed on and off for a while but never accumulated. :~( I'm sure I'll have more chances.

So I took the PAT bus up to Uncle Bruce's for Thanksgiving - many thanks to the very nice 28x driver who let me sit on the warm bus and then told me he could take me directly to my stop, even though it wasn't really on his schedule, since it wasn't too busy. Then more thanks to the 12A driver for having no idea where he was going but being a really nice sport anyway, and telling me to call my aunt while I was still on the bus to make sure we were in the right place, just in case he had to take me further down the road.

After a few misadventures I arrived at Bruce and Kathy's a little before noon. Kathy's sister Leeanne (sp) and her husband Pat were there - funny, funny couple. They also had their two kids, Jennifer, 15, and Marcus, 11. They matched up perfectly with the cousins, of course, although Jennifer was on the quieter side and hung out near her mom a lot and was generally embarassed by her antics.

Leeanne reminds me of a combination of Beth, Jennifer (was Gonzalez but got married), and Karen from 'Will & Grace'. Hilarious, hyperactive, prone to teasing. Kathy was hyped up trying to have everything perfect and Leeanne was having a fine time messing with her. Kathy and Leeanne's grandmother came over, picked up by Pat and Jonathan from the nursing home. She was in pretty good shape for being 92 - a lot of talking loud and lost memories but she was with it most of the time and had some great comments. "Leeanne, look at those lovely fingernails. Don't you do any housework?"

The highlight of the evening was when we all sat down to dinner. Kathy had a basketfull of small rolls of various kinds in those little muffin paper cups. She passed them around the table and then set them on the floor to make room. A few minutes later, someone asked for a roll, but when Kathy went down to pick up the basket it was completely empty. Ruby, their black lab, was laying under the table surrounded by empty muffin wrappers. Kathy freaked out and everybody cracked up. Usually Ruby is quite well behaved and doesn't go after food unless it's offered to her, but, as everyone said, she is a dog, and food was placed on the ground in a bowl right next to her. The rest of the evening was spent teasing Kathy and making jokes about what would happen when the rolls came out, one way or the other. ;)

Eventually, dinner wrapped up, some extra cousins/uncles came over for dessert, we talked for a while, and then Elizabeth drove me home with Bruce in the passenger's seat (she's 16 and working on her graduated license). She did well but was a little loose, but how could you not be, driving a boat like that. It's some huge old Caddy or Lincoln or Buick or something like that, a waterbed with wheels.

I learned a few interesting things about my mom's side of the family, from Bruce:

• The American University in Beirut sits on Bliss street, named after one of my forefathers who went there as a missionary and founded the University.
  
• A great uncle-in-law of mine, won an Oscar for screenwriting - Robert Lord. Bruce said it was for "The High Wall". (Actually, when I looked it up, he won for One Way Passage.) Bruce went out to visit him when he was a kid and noticed the Oscar on his mantelpiece, and it got passed around to all the kids. Apprently he was married to Martha Bliss, who was, I think, my great aunt.
  
• My great-grandmother was valedictorian at Wellesley, just like Hillary Clinton, apparently.
  
• There's also a line of Hastings and a doctor named Little in there somewhere. Apparently this one line of my family was rich-as-crap upper crust Englishmen. Who knew?

Yesterday I finally fixed my bike - lowered the seat and added the nice, new, gushy, wide-ass seat. Sooo comfortable. Now it is no longer 'the crotch-destroyer'. I stripped the hex nuts a little bit in the process but that's okay. Fixed the dining room table, too.

I rode my bike to school today, anticipating the possibility of a late return tonight. I must have looked quite the sight. Me, in my huge down-filled bubble jacket, white helmet strapped on, purse cutting across diagonally, bouncing along on my gushy comfy seat at about 3 miles an hour on my tiny little bike (it's small-frame mountain-bike type). Hilarious.

Where is Josh? We should be working.

It's supposed to start snowing tonight and not stop until sometime Wednesday. There's a possibility of getting 6 inches in that time.

I want it to snow SO BAD. I'm so excited, I feel giddy. Of course, that could just be because it's quarter to six in the morning and I got up about 22 hours ago.

drawings done: 4
drawings left: 1
boards done: 0
boards left: 4

slowly but surely.

slowly.



but surely.

Oh, and by the way, our dryer broke last week (not a big surprise).

I'm trying to borrow the neighbor's before they leave for Thanksgiving, but I am severely short on clothing.

Example:
I'm wearing one navy blue trouser sock and one white gym sock. Oi.

I told this story to one of the other girls here working all night with us...

I had set my alarm for 4:30 am the other day, intending to get up, do work, and head to studio at dawn. I ended up hitting snooze for about an hour and a half, but still got to studio around 7:30 or so. I had a long day working in studio, straight through. We went to Ellen's party (20 minutes turned into 2 hours) and hung out at her uber-chic apartment. I did my anti-social thing, first cowering in the galley kitchen, then sitting cross-legged on the floor next to the couch and getting in everyone's way.

We went back to studio, worked for a couple hours, decided the deadline was, well, flexible, and went home. I got home at 4 am, went to set my alarm for 9 am. When I pressed the 'set alarm' button, the clock only changed by 20 minutes -- I had been up for 24 hours.

Ugh.

But, good news! I'm staying in Pittsburgh until I find a subletter. Will it be December? February? May? Who knows???

Whew. Now I don't have to pack, and I can hang out here and do stuff. With people. And maybe work, too.

Back to work.

Time: 3:15 am
Cups of coffee: 2
Drawings completed: 2
Drawings left: 3
Boards completed: 0
Boards left: 4

I just took out my contacts... I'm hoping the glasses will keep my eyes open. I don't know why.

Christ it's been a long day. And it's just gonna get longer...

By the way, everyone should stream WRCT, especially on Sunday and Monday nights, when my friends are on. :)

It's cold as almighty fuck outside. I really wish my gloves still covered my thumbs. Damn fingernails.

I moved into studio today. I'm serious, I brought toiletries. I'm a week or more behind on all 3 of my projects. One of them was supposed to be fully designed this past Thursday and I'm not even close. Another one has a ton of stuff done by tomorrow afternoon so it can get to the printer in time.

Here's a list of what I packed up this morning:
toiletry bag
mentholatum (my hands are chapped)
painkillers
toothbrush
toothpaste
deoderant
contact solution
glasses (for when the contacts rebel against being overworked)
homemade hummus
crackers
soynuts
vitamins
two travel coffee mugs
dish sponge
latex gloves
dremel tool
staple gun + staples
multi-tool
cell-phone charger
headphones
40 CDs

Mind, this is in addition to the huge mound of crap that's already taken over two desks.

I'll be here for a while.

I love ReadMe, CMU's satiristic ... newspaper, I guess you could call it It's 6 sides of black and white paper. Close enough.

Highlights this week:

• An interview with the freshman ECE major who pulled down his pants in class, walked up to the lecturer, and shook his hand - all caught on video.
  
• A fantastic mullet photo listed in the crime and incident report as 'scary'.
  

Good stuff.

Okay, now that I've told you the good news...

I'm really starting to freak out about current events. I wasn't really before, it was just kind of like, piled on to all the other things I was dissatisfied about in the world.

But now I'm really starting to get scared.

It's probably a combination of a number of things. There's a big debate tomorrow in McConomy Auditorium about the War on Iraq, with opinions from both sides. The philosophy department in Baker Hall has a big poster on their door that says 'No War Against Iraq' (big surprise there), which I see every time I go to my Environmental History class. This week we've been learning about environmental disasters that have spurred protests in the past 30 or so years... yesterday was the Love Canal, today was Three Mile Island. I never had a clear idea of what had happened there until I saw the documentary today in class. I can't believe my uncle was only a few minutes away at the time, desperately trying to hitchhike his way out of there. 50% core meltdown. Radioactive gas clouds. Evacuating children and pregnant women. Possible China Syndrome. Holy shit.

After class, I grab the Tartan on my way down to studio and read that the US is on high alert of a major terrorist strike, particularly aviation, petroleum and nuclear plants.

Fucking great.

For those of you who don't know, Duke Power has four nuclear cooling towers about 30 miles north of Charlotte (50 miles from my house). They were giving out free potassium iodide pills a few months ago to residents in the area - protection against radiation, particularly the thyroid gland, I believe, in case of terrorist attack. There's another reactor about 30 miles from my house, to the south.

The world is insane.

First of all, yay!

We're beating Penn State! Only Swarthmore is ahead of us! I never thought we'd do this well!

Wh00t! Go CMU! We're kicking ass everywhere. (Go Jara!)

Well, almost everywhere. Ouch.

Ha! This site is really funny.

Go do the ESP Experiment, where Clifford Pickover READS YOUR MIND THROUGH THE COMPUTER!!!

Then go here to laugh about it.

I wonder if I'll get sued....

Googlism! The latest craze that's sweeping the nation!

It does a search on google for your name and... something, and gives you a wacky list describing you! (Warning: some of these links list quotes were obviously pulled off of porn sites)

Some highlights for wendy:

wendy is an asian elephant and was born on a logging camp in thailand
wendy is the voice of the nerdy guys and an expert at using and creating software tips
wendy is not for you
wendy is provided after you sign up and receive your pin
wendy is trendy <=Yes, that is my new slogan.
wendy is staring at me
wendy is a cute evil genius
wendy is not a dolphin

friends! Friends are fun.
ayako is beating me over the head with a large mallet
willy is then shocked back to reality and he laments how many people he meets just do not like him very much
jeff is a cheater and is gay
joel is visited by a man in a devil suit who demands candy
caron is a monster

and, I don't know her that well, but Dorothy has some great hits, though most are about the Wizard of Oz...
dorothy is supposed to resemble human beings only in appearance
dorothy is a big green dinosaur with yellow spots
dorothy is a crazy psycho

Family!
sarah is good for soup
jenny is queen of earth
nancy is about as spritual as a toaster

I could go on for hours. But I won't. Such fun, though! :D

yay.

From sugar.

Oh, I forgot to mention. I got all the way to Jeff's place over in ... wherever the hell that area is, Lawrenceville, I think. I swear, every 2 blocks there's a different friggin municipality. Anyway, I drove over there, at night, by myself, and parked, and everything. All good. So proud. *blush* On my way home, I did a bajillion point turn to get back on to Butler Street, drove up to Foodland and crossed the Bloomfield bridge. Halfway across I realized I should get into the left lane so I could get on Craig St., and that's when I realized that my driver's side mirror was still folded in towards the car, from when I had parked at Jeff's. I had to 'roll' (what the hell do you call it when you push the little button and the window comes down? It's not rolling, but I don't know what it is) the window down and flip out the mirror while going 35 across a concrete bridge. Dumbass. Luckily there was no one around.

Is it weird that I talk to my car? Is it weird that I named her Leeloo? Is it weird that I refer to my car in gender-specific pronouns? I don't think it is, but I feel a little weird when I comfort her after making mistakes. I hope people think I'm singing along, or talking on a hands-free or something.

(Jamie) Did I just say hands-free? Ugh, *really*, as if I'm on a first-name basis with the latest technology. Please. (/Jamie)

Awww... I was looking at Harry Potter for showtimes this weekend, and I found out about this. So sad!

Jeff and I watched HP1 this past Wednesday over at his place. Nice apartment, great furniture. We're trying to see HP2 this Saturday, but the nearest theatre showing it is the Loew's at Homestead. Yech.

Tons busy. Working on this, this, and the Panther Hollow Lake exhibit next month. Can't believe I'm graduating. Haven't even finished my portfolio. Where will I live? What will I do? How will I SURVIVE?!

By the way, Aya found a permanent nest in San Francisco, right on the beach! Holy crap am I jealous. I wonder if I should do the same thing and just move out there and pay her rent to sleep on her couch, and then try my hardest to steal her future jobs. Yeah. She'd love that.

I made yuppie food today. Actually, vegan yuppie food.

What, you may ask, is vegan yuppie food?

Fancy cheese and crackers. Classic yuppie food. Must include overpriced mustard and some sort of meat that you'd get in a gift basket. Vegan yuppie food is all that, but with the magic goodness of SOY.

Crackers with fake cheddar, a smear of Grey Poupon Dijon mustard (the kind where you can see the seeds, not that creamy yellow crap), with a slice of Boca smoked sausage to top it off. I was tempted to complement it with the wine I bought months ago but never opened, but I thought that 1 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon was a bit much. So I contented myself with apple cider.

That, coupled with my newfound tendency to yell and curse at stupid drivers in front of me, convinces me that I am, in fact, my father's daughter.

And, AND, I can barely contain my excitement. One week until Hogwarts is back in session. I am way too into this stuff. It's a little bit sobering, as always, because I distinctly recall driving to the movies at the Aboretum with my mom and dad last fall to catch the first one.

Don't go here, unless you want to become gay.

(Note! This does include sound, so if you're in a public place, like work, turn it down or put on your headphones. Or wait till you get home and you're not on the company dime, you slackass.)

Good horoscope just arrived for tomorrow. I don't know if it'll actually be relevant (I severely doubt it, they rarely are), but it's good advice regardless:

"You may find that family just doesn't understand what you're doing with your life. Don't explain your actions. Remember you are the only one who can make yourself happy."

Anyway, it's better than that day when I got a blank horoscope. I was afraid it was an omen of death.

I'm debating whether or not to go to Joel's birthday party tonight... I'm thinking no, because I'm pretty frickin' tired. I got about 5 hours of sleep last night, which isn't bad but is still less than normal. Plus I spent 3+ hours walking to and from Schenley Park and helping plant trees, cut up brush and pull vines off of bushes. I'm beat. I think I'll go home and nap or something. Weeooo.

Oh, check out Jeff's new page! I especially love the flash part. Yay interaction!

Woohoo! Go green design @ cmu.

My car arrived this morning! Mom and Sarah stopped by, dropped off stuff and money, peed, took a tour of my house, and left in mom's new convertible (which looks very nice, by the way. It's much more blue than purple. The trunk is laughingly small.)

Mom was sure to tell me emphatically that I should not drive any more than I have to. At the time, I'm like, 'Yeah, I know, but still, now I can go places! By myself! Woohoo!'

However, now I have to go get my parking permit from the Parking Authority downtown. I got driving directions on Yahoo and realized:
a) I have very little driving experience, period.
b) I have no idea where anything is in Pittsburgh.
c) I have only driven by myself twice.
d) Pittsburgh streets are old, narrow, badly paved, horribly designed, and give you pretty much no sight distance or acceleration lane when entering highways (or 'boulevards' which are actually highways).
e) I have no money for parking, and am I to expect that the Parking Authority will have free parking downtown?

So, frightened little coward that I am, I'm going to go wait down in the cold for the 61 A, B, or C to truck my juvenile ass downtown to get a parking permit for my very first car, which I am too scared to drive anywhere.

Speaking of frightening, good design party last night. No, not the social-activity one, where people talk and dance and drink and all that stuff. The one with the pinata, and the pumpkin painting, and the scary dessert contest, sponsored by the Student Design Forum. In a flash of brilliance I came up with a costume - an artist. I used my old paint smock from this summer, smeared some acrylic on my face and hands, put a paper towel in the loop of my jeans, and carried around a pallette and paintbrush. Voila. However, any pride I may have felt at the last-minute, low-cost creation of a decent costume vanished over a course of 4 of the stupidest hours of my life spent in the woodshop. I realized I have no idea how to build things. I don't know the best way to do anything, and I choose the most complicated route first, screw everything up with incorrect measurements or bad craft, waste lots of people's time trying to help me, waste lots of materials that don't end up working, and then realize the easy, simple way to do everything I needed to do, but not before the shop is closed and my time has been completely wasted. I usually end up becoming injured in the process.

I think I'm better at ideas, and planning, and other non-physical things. I should not be allowed near power tools. Or large machinery, I suppose, since the thought of driving for 20 minutes leaves me quivering in fear. It sucks being stupid. I wish there were drugs for confidence and competence in different areas... even if they were temporary, and you could only take them during certain times. That would be nice. That would help a lot, I think. Oi.

I guess it's only fair. I'm good at stuff like reading comprehension and writing, and taking tests. Still, it'd be nice to be good at, you know, my major. I don't want to be an English student for the rest of my life. I want to be a designer! *sniff*

Ohhhhhhhh.... drool....

X-Men 2

Well, I'm off to a panel about pagan spirtuality led by local Wiccans. Later.

Oh yeah, and I passed my driver's license test, and my car will be here within a few days. Two, to be exact.

Can't believe I'll be driving. How scary is that.

Oh, and go State!

And I just wanted to say that in the past few weeks my mom has purchased or finally had delivered:

1. A fake Christmas tree with pre-strung lights and fiber optics. Yep, the little clear wands of flowing pretty colors that adorn everything at the entrance to the CVS or Rite-Aid nowadays.
2. A purple 2003 Mercedes CLK320 Convertible with a navy blue top. Yes, purple.
3. A 7 week old Yorkshire Terrier puppy named Emma. Who, I'm sure, will have a pink bow at some time in her life. The idea is that she'll fit in a purse.

Yep. She's having fun.

(Pretend this post was put up here Sunday afternoon. Blogger was down. Blegh.)

Goddamit. Blogger ate my post.

So I just wanted to say that I'm a complete fucking idiot, because I had a ticket to Ben Folds and Duncan Sheik, one of the highly-coveted FREE ones that people have been scalping online here at school for weeks, and I didn't go because I FORGOT the concert was last night. Instead, I stayed at home and watched Backdraft again, knitted, and did laundry. How fucking lame am I.

There's something wrong with me. Seriously. I know I've never been high on the motivation/energy scale, especially when there aren't any projects or anything due, but this is getting ridiculous. I went to bed at 7 pm Friday night, got out of bed at 4pm on Saturday, went to bed at 11:30 that night and got up today at 2:30pm. That's 21+15 hours in bed. 36 hours in bed in one weekend. And I've been getting plenty of sleep this whole week.

I need to get out of here. I need more things to force me to get out of bed. Like volunteer work, or... something, god. Hunger didn't work, thirst didn't work, guilt didn't work, having things I should do didn't work. It was only disgust, finally, and a meeting today. Ugh. ugh ugh ugh. Maybe I'll take up cocaine.

Okay, so not cocaine. But some other way to get me hyped up and out of the house, even if it's to feed an addiction. Gah.

I'm so bad about updating this thing, leaving my depessing bad-birthday post on here for weeks. Here's something new, then.

I just love random e-mail subjects and how e-mail clients attempt to make them sound so professional, adding 'as regards' or 'concerning' before the subject line.

I was in my Sent Mail mailbox while sending e-mail to Caron, and got a neat little alert: 'Mail saved to folder regarding SpongeBob's sexuality'. Lovely.

And I really enjoy my Environmental History class. It helps so much having young teachers - screw experience. The title of our lecture today was 'Andrew Carnegie Burns Dinosaurs for Fun and Profit'. We watched a movie and talked about how going to Target and Bloodbath and Beyond on the site of the former infamous Homestead steel mill is just plain wrong.

I had a good cry and I'm feeling fabulously better. I shall do my best to start talking, not worry so much, and really stop trying so hard because it's not getting me anywhere. I shall indulge some of my inherent slackness and disinterest, as that is what makes me the wonderul vanilla person I am.

Whee!

I forget that I haven't posted in so long. I'm too depressed to do homework and Sylvia has people over downstairs, so I've resorted to wasting time on the computer again.

Ayako left for San Francisco last week, Tuesday morningish. She's on the road somewhere past Chicago... her phone has no service but she's been checking e-mail because she sent me a happy b-day note last night. Yep, that's right, today's my *special day*. Pardon the bitter sarcasm, I'm in a shitty mood.

Not because no one remembered, or anything. Caron called last night, Jenny called this morning looking for my home number so she could call me tonight (I'm waiting to cheer up before I call her), Joanne and Mom sent me e-mails. Even a girl in the EARTH club said Happy Birthday to me after the meeting, since I had mentioned it in the e-mail last week.

I'm just so lonely I can't stand it. It's not like I don't know people that live here in the city, it's that I don't know them *well*. Well enough to say hi, chat about things, whatever, but not well enough that they remember my birthday, that they take me out to dinner or anything like that. So, no presents, no party, no cards. I mean, sure, I could have publicized it more or something, but who wants that? That's not what I'm talking about, not the attention. It's what it symbolizes. The fact that you have people near you who know you and care. I had that, and now they're gone.

Eh, I'm just in a self-pitying whiny mood right now. I've been kind of pissy all week, actually. At least I'm not very stressed out, but just.. things keep going wrong, you know? Things break, or don't work, food goes rotten early or is bad when you bring it home from the store, the store doesn't have what you need so you buy what you don't really want, whatever. I just want to curl up and wallow in my misery, or at least do something completely unproductive like have a movie fest and gorge on popcorn or something. I keep thinking I'll open up that bottle of wine I bought months ago for the party, but I'm not really that interested. I don't want to drink to console myself and I'm not in the mood to celebrate, so there's no real point.

What else can I say? Blah blah blah. I'm in a funk. I'm trying desperately to pull myself out of it but I think tonight I'm going to have to succumb. There's certainly enough stuff I can think about to rid myself of this extra sodium, but I don't want to end up with a sore throat and a headache.

Maybe I'll just write this one-page proposal for my commuting studio and go to bed. Give up on the day, and call my sister tomorrow. By then I'll have had kickboxing and gotten some anger out of my system.

I feel like I'm in tenth grade again.

I'm in Charlotte for Labor Day weekend, thanks to specials at US Air.

I got home Friday night (after having spent a good two hours sitting on the 28x airport flyer, luckily still getting to the gate 10 minutes early because something inside me told me that I absolutely *had* to take the 4:20 shuttle), had a Boca bratwurst (don't carry those in Pittsburgh, unfortunately), watched some US Open, talked to Caron and went to bed.

Saturday Caron and I went out to 'breakfast' at Monterrey's - La Fiesta in Oakland is okay, but just not *quite* as good as the Mexican down here. Especially the chips. Mmmm. After running some errands that I will not go into for fear of incrimination (only 3 people know what I'm talking about), we went to dinner at Midtown Sundries. The Mississippi State game was on (lost to Oregon) and a huge table of fans was next to us loudly watching the many big-screen TVs. I got a 'fried shrimp ceasar pita' without the shrimp, to the confusion of the waitress, stole some Captain's Wafers, and called Ayako on the way to pick up LaTarsha.

The Smelly Cat cafe in NoDa was closed early for the holiday weekend, and Cafe Bijoux on Central is apparently long gone and replaced with a bakery of some kind. So we drove back across town to my house, picked up Trivial Pursuit (took a tour of the completed bathroom, ala Lisa and Mom, very nice), and hit Starbucks at Carmel Commons. There we were locked in battle for an untold number of hours, until I finally won on a question I can't even remember. LaTarsha and I were chasing each other around the hub for quite a while and Caron wasn't far behind. LaTarsha really should have won on the Worcestershire Sauce question, though.

Today I've been doing laundry, preventing an ant invasion and wasting time on the computer. We plan to see the Bourne Identity today, possibly go bra/jean shopping at the sales, then find someplace that we can all eat for dinner (four diets: small portions high protein, vegetarian, low-carb, and generally picky).

Apparently everyone has lost weight except me. Well, okay, so I'm down 3-5 pounds, but still. All summer. Vegan. Kickboxing. Ugh. Mom's down 10 pounds on her no flour, no sugar diet. LaTarsha dropped a whopping 50+ in Germany, apparently just by walking everywhere (you'd think that would work, wouldn't you?). Caron's scale says she's lost 25 but she doesn't think it shows, Sarah's maybe only 50 pounds overweight once she has the excess skin removed (which is frightening, as I am *more* than 50 pounds overweight). I'm not sure about Jenny, I guess no news means no change.

I didn't get a chance to take pictures of the necklaces/bracelets I made for the sisters. Lapis Lazuli, garnets, and blue/black glass beads for Jenny, garnets, red jasper, and pearlescent glass for Sarah. Sarah's came out better because the garnets are a more standard size, and Jenny's materials were all just too dark and hard to see. Hopefully they'll both be happy. Beading is addictive, but satisfying, like knitting. The scarves are temporarily on hold.

I'm off to shower and search for my art bin. Oh, and vacuum up the ant corpses...

Check it out! New webspace, updated homepage. Because I should have been doing this, instead of 3 classes worth of homework. Yep.

By the way, I found out that the possible job opening in Australia is not gonna happen, at least in that hemisphere. They're full down there.

So they sent it along to their US branch to see if they had an opening there. I was happy about that, until I found out that it's in Houston, Texas. Texas. Dubya country.

That's like the only place on Earth that I *don't* want to go. I think I'd rather be in the Gaza strip right now. Ugh. (shudder) Well, maybe the Lone Star office will be full up, too, and they'll ship me off to Britain (!!). Hey, not that I don't appreciate that Michael's dad is going the extra mile for me when we only talked for like an hour. It's so nice of him.

Maybe I can convince them to recycle paper...

Yeah, that was a good post to leave on there for a week.

So I just dropped my Art History class (hours, of course, after I bought the book for it online. :P) because it looks incredibly boring. And I replaced it with Green Visions/Gray Infrastructure. It's an interdisciplinary course about the environment interacting with business and academia (I think). Includes team project work and research.

So it's 12 units instead of 6, which means I'm taking the maximum 54 units. Blagh. Plus, I just figured out if I want to get Honors, I have to get a 3.83 this semester (HA!), which means I have to get 'A's in this course, both studios (HA! HA!), and at least one other course, either business of design or american environmental history. I can get a B in the other course.

Gahhh. No honors for me, unless I suddenly morph into a time-managing overachiever. Which is a possibility, since all of my friends are leaving. I'll be like Willy was the first 2 years... nothing to do but work. Yeah. (snort)

I hate this stupid squeaky chair.

My hands are freezing.

My ass is numb.

Not a good day for the cluster.

Ah, the rush that comes from sending off your resume. Part exhileration, part pure terror. Cross your fingers, there's a slim chance I may be moving to Australia.

In other news, I was sitting at a computer in the Baker cluster when I either got the feeling that someone was watching me or saw something mildly terrifying out of the corner of my eye. I turned my head and saw a face framed in one of the glass bricks in the wall 3 feet away from me. My first shot of fear dissipated when I realized that it was a very tiny, pudgy little face, staring at me curiously. Kids can be scary sometimes.

Sorry to post again so quickly, but I'm making an effort to make my blog more readable, now that people are actually reading it.

So... how am I feeling right now? It's strange. On one hand, I'm glad I'm doing so well. I feel very responsible and independent. I'm working full-time, getting things accomplished, doing my job (mostly). I'm even the self-elected bill-payer for my household. Spreadsheeted them and everything.

On the other hand, I feel like I'm being set afloat and I still have no idea what the hell I'm doing. Which, of course, is how everyone secretly feels most of the time. That realization a few years ago both frightened and comforted me. If everyone is as clueless as I am, who am I trusting with things like the military, and driving.... but if no one else knows what they're doing, it's okay if I don't either.

That's why that thing with the 9 miners was so uplifting, I think. The fact that against all odds, 9 guys managed to survive down there was miraculous, sure, but in my opinion the fact that so many different groups of people managed to work together and actually achieve something successfully, for the most part, was the most amazing thing. I've worked with similar groups, and the fact that they did something, anything, without bickering, second guessing, holding back too long or miscommunicating just boggles the mind. It's either luck or divine intervention.

But I digress. Along with feeling confidently responsible, and youthfully insecure, I also feel like I'm behind the rest of my age group. I can see where I've progressed a great deal since high school, but there are still a number of things, either experience or personality defects that really haven't changed at all. Things that you would expect to have changed between the ages of 14 and 21. For example: relationships, particularly of the romantic nature. Still not a one, nothing even close (I'm not counting the stupid thing with the loser on the train, that was just boredom).

How much is it going to affect me when I get out there in the big bad world? For the most part I figured it would only affect my personal life, but now, too late, I see it might make a difference in my professional life as well. For instance, I was talking with Bronwen about various things when I happened to bump into her during lunch. We were talking about the whole ultra-liberal save the world movement happening in the design school and elsewhere, and she mentioned that a group had recently contacted her looking for a female designer to help develop birth control options for women in third-world countries.

Alarms went off in my head. She had just described my ideal job, the job I had made up a few years ago as the hypothetical be-all end-all of dream jobs. (Think of where a well-designed product could make the most difference. Think of female empowerment, not to mention AIDS and other STDs, reducing the global population and therefore the strain on a country's education, food supply, economy, etc.) And here I am, five months or so from graduation with my job, MY job, blowing raspberries at me from afar. The thing is, though, even if I *had* graduated in May, I would still have absolutely no experience with prophylactics of any kind. I don't know the mindset of someone frantically reaching for birth control. I mean, I can guess. I took sex ed, I have friends, I can use common sense, I know the basics, but ... would it hinder me? Would I even feel comfortable working on a project like that? How do you user test??

So I'm in a weird state of feeling confident, scared, and ignorant, all at the same time, and about to be pushed out of the womb of education and parental dependence. I suppose every change is like this, but I just feel particularly ill-prepared for this one, as opposed to most people. Especially considering that I don't feel like I have time to hang around, clean up loose ends and figure out my path like, um, most people around me. There's this urgent need in me to get the hell out there before I lose my momentum, spend all of my mom's money or end up in a less-than-ideal job in a place I don't want to live, and be stuck there forever.

Yeah, so that's how I'm feeling now.

I think I'm going to crank up my music, sing off key and dance horrifically. Catch you later.

I left campus earlier than usual today, at 5 pm. They're updating software on most of the clusters so I got kicked out with no where else to go, which I figured was a good excuse to just go the hell home and enjoy a gorgeous day. Unfortunately, that meant skipping yoga, but I wasn't in the mood anyway.

I went home and kept working on Jenny's scarf, which unfortunately I screwed up at the start by second-guessing myself. I made it too wide and it looks like an old-woman's scarf now, instead of the young with-it fashion scarf that I had originally intended it to be. Well, I'm still learning. I'm working faster, if not better. ;)

I had the uncontrollable and rare urge to be creative in some fashion today. I think it's because of all the 'designing' I've done recently. I'm teaching myself Illustrator, finally. It has so much cool stuff, and everything looks so clean and pretty on it. I always hate software that I don't know how to use because it scares me. That is, until I see what it can do. That's why I've never learned to hate Director, although I barely know how to do anything with it, because it is one of the absolute coolest programs. Ditto with 3dsMax.

I'm such a geek.

I just made white chocolate peanut butter rice krispie squares. Yes, you read that right. I should come up with another name for them, like 'Crunchy Joy' or 'Peanut Ecstasy' or something like that. And.... AND... they're vegan. Yep.

It's actually an old recipe that we used to make for Christmas years and years ago, but we stopped at one point. I don't know why. They're the best thing on this earth, I shit you not. I just happened to find vegan white chocolate at Murray Avenue Kosher up in Squirrel Hill. That's gonna suck when I move to a place with a smaller Jewish contingent. Kosher grocery stores are the bomb for non-dairy stuff. The chips I found were called Oppenheimer, imported from Israel.

The recipe goes as follows: 2 pounds white chocolate chips or shaved almond bark
1/4 to 1/2 cup of peanut butter (creamy is best, chunky works too)
4 cups crispy rice cereal (beware, I believe Rice Krispies are not vegan, get the cheap imitation)
1 cup peanuts

Combine cereal and nuts in a large bowl. In a double boiler on very very low heat, melt together white chocolate and peanut butter. Pour chocolate mixture over cereal, stir thoroughly. Spread 1/4" thick onto wax paper (at least 18" long). Let sit or refrigerate until solid, cut into squares with butcher knife. Makes way too much for one person. Note: rubber spatulas and metal mixing bowls are good tools for the job.

It was much easier than I remember, probably because it's currently 82 degrees in our dining room. It's usually hotter in the kitchen, so the chips actually started melting because I put hot water (not boiling, mind you, just hot out of the tap) in the pot and put the metal bowl filled with chocolate on top. I used so little flame it made popping noises. Worked perfectly. It's messy, but the best stuff in the world to clean up. Yummmmm.

Party tomorrow, gotta clean. Gotta go to sleep, too. It's funny to see my last posting - 'Your Song' came on the radio today and I went into a happy fuzzy dreamland of Ewan-ness. Then I got a haircut from a very strange man, who in addition to trimming and shampooing also does ouija readings and phrenology. He may also be slightly psychic. Craig Street, can't remember his name but he's in a shop over History's bead basement thing. $14.

Anyhoo. G'night...

Happiness currently comes from two soundtracks which I don't have.

1: Pleasantville, Fiona Apple's cover of 'Across the Universe'. It was on last night, so we watched it again. 3rd time this month. Love that movie.
2: Moulin Rouge!, Ewan MacGregor doing such a wonderful job of covering 'Your Song'. As if he wasn't perfect enough, the boy can sing.

Hm. Maybe I'll go CD-shopping with the money that housemate Darga is sending me for the security deposit.... music makes me happier than jeans...

This must be the catch-22 of blogging. If I have a life, I have no time to post about it. If I don't have a life, I have nothing to post *about*.

About to go shopping, so gotta keep it short. I've been swimming in Lake Arthur twice in the past week and sailing yesterday on Jeff's cute little catamaran with a rainbow sail. We talked about what's going on in the future and getting a domain name for me, Ayako, Jeff, Willy, and maybe Dave or Alexys (that's the group that's been going everywhere lately). Had a cookout last night and charred all the fake meat and buns. Went to Krispy Kreme last week in Cranberry on the way back from the Lake and got a dozen donuts, some of which are still downstairs taunting us. (Trying to go low-carb AND vegan, not working. Didn't eat a lot yesterday and ended up getting cold sweats right after dinner. Blah.)

Watched Office Space, good movie. Ayako's little brother was here last week, we watched some movies between the 3 of us - splash and shrek. (He's 17, btw... better than blood n guts tho).

Uh... getting Earth revived again, looks like I'll be a co-pres but I found someone to carry on the struggle. Also found a bunch of people for Barb to take over my job and some others. Sent an e-mail to Pam's friend Michael today to ask him for his dad's e-mail address- very cool guy, spiritual, wise, makes excellent chai from scratch. Works in New Zealand, has a possible job prospect for me in Canberra!!!!!!! So I've got to update my resume (or CV as they call it down there - curriculum vitae, vital courses, I think...) and send it down under. Whoooo!

Yeah, gotta get going. Too bad I don't know anyone with money or am trustworthy enough to do a blogathon... good luck to everyone else though!! I'd help but I'm broke too. :(

It's amazing how easy it is to make something look frighteningly powerful and important, just by capitalizing it. Bonus points for putting 'the' in front of it. Extra super bonus points for putting 'The' (with a capital T) in front of it.

And, of course, any reference to expansion, blind faith and/or world domination in the same sentence as The Noun increases Its importance exponentially.

Heh. Somebody found my blog by searching for 'Tom Cruise is an ass'.

Late for work. Bye.

Oh, and one last thing. There are two men in my office with baseball songs as their cell phone ringer. Perhaps it's one man with two different ring tones, I don't know. One is that organ song that they use to try to get people keyed up - the one where everyone yells 'Charge!' at the end. The other one is 'Take me out the ballgame'.

Apparently this man is very popular. And he often leaves his cell phone on his desk.

Grr.

It's vaguely terrifying when you're absorbed in a project and you do something disgusting without really realizing it.

Especially if you're in public.

You wonder... wait, was anyone watching when I did that? Are there cameras?

Paranoia.

Well, it's been quite some time, hasn't it? Two and a half weeks or so, should be, since that's the last time I was home. It's taken me that long to get online. :P Finally, though, after moving my computer up 3 flights, getting an ethernet cord delivered from Albany (courtesy of housemate Pam's parents), screwing up Ayako's computer getting the software I need put on a Zip disk, contacting Laura to get the password and a few more days of random troubleshooting ending with the discovery that our router has a bum plug, I am finally world wide again. Of course, I haven't found a chair for my computer table yet, so I'm sitting on the floor and reaching up to my Ikea desk to type. Ouch.

Much has happened since I last wrote. I guess I'll take it one day at a time and try to break it up so that a lazy ass like me might actually read it.

Day 1 - I drive up. We leave late, it's rainy, the highway downtown is crowded with traffic, and I'm driving without the use of my rear-view mirror due to massive amounts of stuff hovering behind our seats. We stay in the Holiday Inn in Beckley. Whoo.
Day 2 - We get here. I drive some, mom drives some, we stop in Wexford to figure out how to get to Oakland without the use of the tunnels, which are under construction. Say hi to Bruce, Kathy, and Jonathan, then take off to go move in. Get all my stuff out of the car and pile the vast majority in the dining room. Thankfully my bed is here and installed, and I actually get to sleep on it before working the next day. Mom takes off to go back to Bruce and Kathy's around dinnertime.
Day 3 - First day of work. Alexys and I begin our recycling odyssey joined at the hip in an empty cubicle and start on the Campus Recycling Master Plan, a term which thenceforth becomes annoyingly overused.
The rest of the week is basically this - wake up at 8, dress, grab a Slim Fast and make a peanut-butter pita sandwich and throw a bottle of flavored water into my backpack. Walk 20 minutes to the FMS building, sweating like hell because it's HOT. Work until noon, eat lunch with Alexys and sometimes Jeff (her sweetie boyfriend). Go back to work, quit at 5, go home, eat something before I pass out, take some stuff upstairs or downstairs, waste time, shower, go to bed.

Now the interesting parts. Wednesday night it is discovered that not only is the Cirque du Soleil in town, but they're leaving on Sunday. We all agree to buy tickets, groaning, and Jeff gets them online. Thursday night we meet up and fork over 62 dollars each and head downtown to PNC park (the tents are in the parking lot). It is so worth the money. Magnificent artistry, talented people, beautiful colors and textures, live music that can only be described as sublime (not the band), funny clowns, wonderful wonderful. Staggeringly overpriced food and a 'VIP' tent (you know I hate those). Those attending: Ayako, Me, Pam, Alexys, Jeff, and Dave. I rode with Jeff and Dave in Dave's car, the 3 girls rode with Alexys. On the way out, Alexys turned right and Dave turned left, for the hell of it. We were to meet at La Fiesta (1/2 price Mexican food after 11 pm) - they got there with no problem, we were 20 minutes late because we were wandering around downtown. Dave followed some of Jeff's directions, but not all of them. Zooming down alleyways, making left turns because the last one was right, going around in circles, laughing hilariously - good times. We ended up taking the bridge across the river over to Southside, because we at least could get home from Carson street. Ayako called to find out where the hell we were about the time I spotted Philthy McNasty's (a restaurant) and I knew we were set.

Hm, what next. Goodwill shopping for work clothes one day (all I have are cheap t-shirts with printing on them, not quite work attire although no one's said anything), lots of grocery shopping and hummus consumption, eating out various places, cooking various meals.

This past weekend was very social - Friday night I went to yoga with Ayako (ouch), then went back home to bake a vegan spiced date and walnut cake (although I substituted every ingredient except dates and sugar, but only because I didn't have them, not cuz they weren't vegan) which turned out good but scone-like. We hauled ass over to Edleen's dessert party and had a very multi-cultural evening. There was me and Ayako, a Korean designer friend of Edleens, Edleen herself who I found out is Haitian, Rodolfo the Chem-E from Chile, a Mech-E and her boyfriend, and two Pitt students from Brazil and Romania. Or was it Bulgaria? Somewhere. Everyone was very cool and we had lots of good wholesome discussion, and lots of dessert.

Next day we joined Alexys, Jeff and Dave, along with Chris (Doulgeris) Blue (looking fabulous in his mini-fro and navy and white jogging suit, by the way) and Edleen and went to the 'Strawberry Festival' at the ... something house off of Highway 28 (no idea). The Festival was strawberry shortcake for 3 bucks a pop under the porch, plus a 2 dollar entrance fee. I of course had no cash, so Ayako was my sugar mama, albeit begrudgingly. The house was hand built in the 1820s and looks better than the room I'm currently in. Filled with old stuff and agressive volunteers. We got hijacked upstairs by a woman in period dress discussing the history of the railroad in the Pittsburgh Area, then managed to escape outside (Ayako remained trapped within discussing career options). Alexys and I wandered into the tool shed to examine old settlers and Native American tools, only to be hijacked ourselves by a knowledgable old man explaining the various displays. Explaining the leather warrior weapons, he progressed to stories of inhumane treatment of Indians, especially in the Florida trailer parks, where they should be educated and given a decent house like everyone else (good intentions, didn't quite get the picture, sweet man). Discussing the atrocities of Custer, he branched off into good old fashioned Christian preaching and held us, um, spellbound for a good half hour, mostly looking at me while telling me to accept Jesus into my heart before the world ends. Finally he said he had to close up, but as we were leaving invited us back in for prayer. Interesting guy. Ahem.

Anyhoo, after our escape we proceeded to the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church in Mt. Lebanon for the Greek Food festival. Overpriced but good, rainy unfortunately. Ayako and Edleen were the only non-white non-Greek attendees. Ayako said she was getting 'Oh, so *that's* what they look like' looks. There was dancing and a live band in the gym, and Edleen and Chris (remember, Doulgeris) joined the circle and danced pretty well. Then the ameteurs left and the professionals took the stage in full costume and did some incredible dancing. Hot greek men doing traditional dance is very.. um, pleasing to watch. Mmmm.

At about 9 we took off and went back to campus, and Ayako and I rented 'Pleasantville'. I watched it all, Ayako passed out about halfway. Next day, it was GORGEOUS. 70 something degrees, bright blue skies and fluffy white clouds, and of course everything is super green. After a mexican breakfast to get rid of my avacado, I went out on the deck and used oil sticks to paint in my sketchbook. Ayako came out and drew me in pastels. I knitted a little, then we went to yoga (ouch) with Edleen and Lori. After yoga and a shower, we met at Aladdins for good cheap Middle Eastern food, then to the Coffee Tree Roasters for some goood coffee (white mocha, mmmm).

Today I got back from a harrowing day at work (we're behind already!), made Tofu Pad Thai and watched part of Goldfinger (Lisa had never seen a Bond movie). Ayako's downstairs catching what she missed of Pleasantville (love that Tobey Maguire, and Reese Witherspoon is the best) and I plodded upstairs to solve my DSL dilemma.

Expect more updates whenever I find a decent chair.

Yeehaw. I spent $400.00 of my mom's money today on various college things. The first of which was, of course, my new twin mattress, box spring, and frame, from the Original Mattress Company for a total of $208.00 including delivery. They'll even carry it up the 2 flights and install it. Wh00.

Then we hit BJ's and bought another 200 bucks worth of junk. A rug for 10 bucks. Ridiculous amounts of detergent, softener, dishwasher tabs, boxed pasta meals, spaghetti sauce, bottled water, paper products and assorted edibles and toiletries. Oh, and a quart of minced garlic for $2.50. Ha!

Watched the Weakest Link today at 4 because Mom left the tennis on when she went to get her nails done. Don't usually watch that show, but it was the college edition and a girl from my alma mater was on there. She did pretty well but got kicked off because she didn't bank. It ended up that some guy from Queens College (!!!) ended up winning almost $18,000 and the audience's favor. He beat the guy from Yale in the final round, quite soundly. Go QC! Charlotte in tha house. ;)

We also stopped by the Peaceful Dragon over in McMullen Creek. I've driven by it for years and never actually gone in - I thought it was just a tai-chi place, but they have a whole vegetarian cafe with the best veggie burger in Charlotte (as voted by Creative Loafing, we ended up eating at Cluckers so I don't have any personal confirmation). They also sell incense and tea stuff, which is why we were there. Apparently Japanese incense doesn't have bamboo sticks on one end, so they don't fit in the holder I made for Jenny. I picked up some other type (Indian? Thai?) of incense for her instead - it was cheaper and they had vanilla scented. I'm regretting never having gone in there- it's a very cool place.

I got my ceramics projects today, too - everything melted either too much or not enough. ;) My sculptural thing turned out okay but not quite as well as I'd hoped, and the electric blue only showed up in the drips at the base. More importantly, though, my watering can... doesn't water. Amazingly, it's all in one piece, but there's some glaze blockage in the base of the tube, and I can't get in there with anything except a hanger. Maybe I can get someone's dremel with the pencil/snake attachment on it and drill through that puppy. The glaze didn't come out as aged or translucent as I had expected, either, and I lost the white slip-leaf design. :( My 3-legged alien insect incense/candle holder turned out... interesting. It melted, too, but in a weird twisty-way. If you look at it from the top it looks like a hazardous waste symbol. I like it, though, it has a lot of movement and personality.

I'm in the middle of so many projects - pack my iMac, finish painting the mural so we can put a top coat on, booking a hotel in West Virginia (a tip - when comparing hotels, go to Yahoo travel to compare them. Then go straight to that hotel's website to book a room - if I had gone through Yahoo, the base price is 80 bucks a night at Holiday Inn. Going through their website, I get an internet price of 63.75/night for the same room) - and I have to pay the online bills for my mom and I. Both platinum cards, coincidentally. ;) Starting to get excited about going up there... I can taste the freedom! I just have to get my ass in gear to get up there with everything I need. Blegh.

Damn!!! I was all ready to celebrate my java-fu, and I realized my code has a minor bug somewhere that I'm unsure of how to fix.

I've been messing with rollovers and making them extraordinarily complicated (for someone who's learning java as I go) - basic rollover, okay. Basic image swap onClick, okay. But how... how do I include both a rollover *and* an image swap? Basically, you have 3 pictures - off, over, and click. when you mouseover the image, it switches from blah.off to blah.over. when you mouseoff, it goes back to blah.off. But I wanted it so that when you clicked on the link, you got blah.click instead of blah.off. Oh, and it should stay that way, even after you take the mouse off the link. Oh yeah, and still switch to blah.over when you mouseover, but after it's been clicked once, it should go back to blah.click when you mouseoff. If that made any sense, good for you.

So I managed to do this, over a period of 3 or so hours, between trial and error, looking up help websites that totally confused me, and learning more java. Oh, and crashing my computer. But I got it done! Then I realized I wanted to do it 8 times on the same page, and had to find a way to reset it. Figured that out too.... almost. Almost. Mouseovers fine. Click makes the images swap, and they still mouseover fine. Both of 'em so far. However, if you click on one, then mouseover the next one, it switches to blah.click.

Damn. I can't get it. I can't figure it out now. Eh, it's 2:30 in the morning. Even geek wannabes like me need sleep. Blah.

Grrr.. finding a restaurant shouldn't be this hard. I want patio dining, serving affordable Sunday dinner, within 5-10 miles of my house. citysearch does a decent job of organizing, but their search function needs some help.

Doesn't anybody *eat* on Sundays?? Is that against the Sabbath too? splllltth! Fucking Christians. ;) And don't get me started on NASCAR fans.

I'll see how Sir Edmond Halley's goes with the fam - Sarah'll probably like it cuz we can swing by and look at the house she's under contract on.

Mom spent yesterday at Alan (or Allen?) Simonini's house on Lake Norman. 6000 square feet. Every water accessory you can think of except a yacht (including a private beach). Apparently Ann's maiden name is Simonini. I had no idea... For non-Charlotteans, Simonini builders (his company) are winning awards right and left and are *the* up and coming builder for the ridiculously wealthy. Mr S. himself was fishing somewhere tropical. Mom and Ann are planning a sleepover with friends when they house-sit this summer. That should be... interesting.

Sigh... I should paint.

This is the best worst movie ever.

"Where's Dorcas?!"

My day thus far has been unbearably exciting, as usual. I sold some books on Amazon, sent out a couple of emails, chatted with Ayako and let the eastern-european or russian fix-it guys in to take up our broken kitchen floor tiles. I was supposed to start painting 4 hours ago. I think loriloo knows dan kuo. How, I'm not sure, but I don't feel like going through the archives to find out. Much.

Last night Caron came over - I was slightly disappointed because two minutes after she called from the road (there's a race on Sunday, plus Memorial day weekend, so it took her almost twice as long as usual to get here), Joanne called to say she was coming home this weekend and wanted to know if I wished to join her and Andrew at a piano bar later that evening. How cool does that sound?? But Caron's pathetically sick due to tonsil removal, and coming home just to see me. And apparently Andrew has issues with Caron, so my groups of friends can't mix. So I had to turn her down - hopefully I'll be able to see her sometime in the next couple of days, but I haven't heard back from her since.... and it's nearly 2:30, so Caron should be waking up or calling sometime soon.

We went to Champps Americana to grab dinner, since her parent's new house is right down the road, and tried to find her little brother's copy of Ocean's 11. Mmmm..... yummy. However, he wasn't back from his groundskeeping job yet, so we went through his room looking for it. Found 2 porn tapes, a family-size bottle of hand lotion, 2 Britney Spears posters and 2 cans of Skoal in his sock drawer (apparently he neither chews *nor* smokes pot. Yeah right). Eventually he came home and made us feel stupid, by pointing out that they had been in his tape rack, underneath his VCR and TV. Uh... yeah.

I hooked up her parents TV and VCR (at one point the VCR crashed onto the hardwood floor, but it's a robust little thing) and we watched the movie and a couple of Cosby Show reruns.

Mom's at the lake with Ann. Before she left, she told me to give directions to the lake to any single guys that might call. Not sure if she gave the recently-aquainted 33 year old her number or not... so glad I'm leaving next week. So glad. I've been looking at summer classes - at CPCC, all of the online classes are full. All of them. They cost about $100/class. Everywhere else is at least $500/class, and at CMU it's $2000/class. I'm a moron.

Should I make some hummus, or just have pitas & peanut butter?

Oh, one last thing before I forget (and while I'm waiting for 'life during wartime' to download from limewire)

More proof that I am the center of the universe:

I was reading says me, who I think lives in Texas, and wandered through her link on over to loriloo, who I have read off and on in the past. I think she was a blog of note at one point. Anyhoo, I happen to see that loriloo, in korea, is reading fuzzy squid. I recognize fuzzy squid from the CMU design class of 2001 website, besigner, and wander over *there* to see what the fuss is about. Turns out, fuzzy squid is Dan Kuo's website. I took an HTML class from Dan Kuo before he graduated from CMU last year. Of course, fuzzy squid links to besigner, which has a link back to my website. Follow the circle: charlotte -> texas -> korea -> new york city -> pittsburgh -> charlotte. Weirdness.

You'd think, being the center of the universe and all, that more people would be finding my blog. You'd think.

Yeah - sorry about those long-ass posts. This is my diary, remember? I'm excited when things actually happen.

Been spending the last few days figuring out the money situation with the Pittsburgh house. Laura moved home for the summer and took her bed so I have to find a new one. I get the feeling I may be sleeping on the couch before my first day of work. Apparently Mom is scheduled to work June 1st so we have to drive up (8 hrs) the 2nd, and unpack. Remember, now, that a) my room is on the 3rd floor, and b) that it's completely filled with junk. Some of it's mine, most of it's not. Yeah, it should be fun.

Trying to finish off the bathroom with Lisa - we worked, oh, 5 or 6 hours today. Finished almost all of the rocks, she started on the seascape, put greenery and wrought iron over the shower. I get the feeling it won't be *completely* done tomorrow, but it'll be pretty damn close.

Spent the last couple of hours putting random javascript on my website, although some of it you won't see because once I got everything working, I realized two of my commands are mutually exclusive and don't make sense anyway. Looks like I'll either give up on that part being interactive (except maybe a rollover), or go all out and make an imagemap. Yech.

I should shower. And start making a list of all the stuff I need to do while I'm home, during the first few days I'm up there, and random things I'd like to accomplish this summer. I keep forgetting about the CPCC classes - they're probably all cut or full. I'll check again tomorrow sometime and call around. Somehow I always end up trying to call places on Friday afternoons. I don't know why.

Today I ate: slim fast protein (powdered chocolate) mixed with soymilk for breakfast. diet coke with lemon for lunch. leftover tofu pad thai, one low-fat spinach-herb tortilla with picante sauce, and freeze & bake roll with light butter for dinner. 1/2 liter of diet flavored sparkling water.

See? If I keep busy, it prevents me from eating. I'm hoping this summer will bring a smaller ass, cuz god knows I need one.

I don:t even know how to express my emotions about today - or at least, how to do so without crying.

Yesterday we went to the honors ceremony, and I recognized a bunch of names. Ayako was doubly recognized for getting honors in both design and modern languages. After that, we went to the design picnic and I saw a bunch of people and their families. Tons of food leftover. It was great seeing everyone:s parents and siblings for the first time - a lot of them we could pick out at a glance, sometimes looking so much like the face we know that we did doubletakes. I wandered around, saw everyone:s kickass projects (the studio is TRASHED), said hi to everyone. We went back to Ayako:s and watched the senior slide show (which Ayako had missed) on CD Rom with Laura. I so wanted to cry - especially when it was just a conglomeration of various snapshots throughout the years (the other sections had themes, like white trash party, spring break, studio, etc.) and Tom Petty:s :Time to move on: played in the background.

We all sat around for a while, thinking, and I regretted how little I:d participated in the social stuff. True, I would make an appearance at one party or another, and I missed the whole past year where a whole lot of bonding went on. But I was only in like 3 pictures in the entire slide show, and that disappointed me. Especially because I love all these people so much - sure, I know some better than others, but still. Each one is so individually cool and nifty and interesting, and we all have common experiences and knowledge and interest. They:re just an amazing bunch of people, and I:m going to miss them like hell. I do already, thinking about working late in studio with people I don:t know. It:s almost inconceivable.

Last night Laura and I went to dinner with Ayako and her family, her family friend Mrs. Ishitobi, and her teacher, Sufumi So. (yes, that makes Laura and I the only non-Japanese speakers, the only caucasians and the two tallest of the group.) We went to the fish market restaurant in the Westin Convention center hotel downtown. Really good food - unfortunately no vegetarian entrees, so Ayako and I split a really good clam chowder, an excellent spinach and goat cheese salad, and an entree of basil salmon with wild mushroom pasta. Then the two of us and Laura split a Mocha Cappuchino creme brulee (holy crap was that good) with biscotti and a apple something tart (also good). Ayako:s parents paid, then we went to the waterfront to see Spiderman. I had always thought when they said the theatre name that it was Lowe:s theatre, like Verizon ampitheatre or PNC park (Charlotte has Lowe:s motor speedway, you can understand my thinking) but no, it was Loew:s theatre.

It:s huge, to start, and the architecture is Aladdin-like, with fat gold pillars. There was no student discount, and the two showings were sold out, so we paid 8 bucks a pop and hung around for an hour until the 11:30 showing. We went into the theatre, which the map said was 2 stories, so I was expecting huge- not so. Nice stadium seating, and on the :second floor:, which was more of a division than another level, there was :first class: - leather seats, hardwood floors, padded armrests with wood paneled cupholders. We couldn:t see anything that said it was reserved, and took over most of a row. Then some guy came along and said, :I have seats A1-A6, these are my seats, get up:, or something rude along those lines. We wandered around the theatre for a while and then settled just to the right of first class in the little 2 seat rows.

Spiderman was enjoyable, but not as much as I was expecting. I dunno, the :slow parts: were good, I really liked the character development. And I liked Mary Jane, that she was pretty but not perfect, that she was popular but still nice. She wasn:t the cold personality-less beauty that most :heroines: are, although I guess she could have used a little more.... individuality, I suppose. A reason for loving her besides beauty, I guess, although she had more than say, Kate Beckinsdale in Pearl Harbor, or Julia Roberts in Notting Hill (um... why are you in love with these women again?). I dunno, it was a weird mix of ultra-comic book pace, personality, and editing, and reality. Like, the villain was way over the top (and I hated his mask/costume), Aunt Mae was too perfect and flat, Uncle Ben gave me the creeps, Osbourne was mostly normal but then the newspaper guy was totally crazy. It was just like, wait, is this serious or goofy? Like, Batman was dark but over the top - but it was all the same percentage over the top, yknow? This one kind of went back and forth. I was disappointed, and it:s hard to do that. I guess it:s possibly the hype. I think Tobey did a great job, Kirsten was good but somehow needed more character (dunno if that was her fault at all tho), Dafoe was pretty good... it was just... stuff. It didn:t congeal, it was like it was just thrown together and it hadn:t set long enough for the flavors to mix together and they just randomly appeared next to each other, not neccesarily in complement. Hmm.

Yeah, then we left Loew:s by way of the club lounge, and I realized that there was a special gold membership or whatever that:s probably ridiculously expensive, and they get all this fancy shit like the private lounge and the first class seating. I just didn:t like the place at all, it gave me a horrible sense of overcaptalism - indulgence and class distinction, and way way too much of everything. Glitzy, tawdry, snooty - no good feelings. Then walking to the parking lot we were trying to figure something out in the part that connects all the parking lots - not enough to call it a street. We were about 50 feet down from a stopsign, and this redneck in a decorated pickup truck speeds past like he:s drag racing and yell:s :get out of the road!!!: What the hell? You:re stopping soon and we:re only in part of the road, with nobody coming the other way. Hick. But the whole place was like that - indulgent over the top glitz populated by rude rednecks. I:m going to try to avoid that place as much as possible.

Anyway. We got home at 2:30, got up at 7, and left by 8 to go to Ayako:s modern languages graduation ceremony by 8:30. There were less than 2 dozen people getting their degrees (including postgrad) so it was very personalized ceremony. Nice, indoors, small. The teachers from each department talked about what made the student special, gave them a gift and everything. Professor Hayes talked a lot about Ayako and obviously felt very close to her, and looked on the verge of tears, telling her very seriously to come visit and talk with them. Ayako got her certificate and stuff and bowed to both of her teachers a few times (back and forth), which I love. I don:t want to trivialize it by saying it:s cute, but it:s such a nice custom - respectful, graceful, and something only a native can do.

After that Laura and I went to the bleachers for the main commencement ceremony - it started raining and they passed out ponchos (chucked them into the stands, pegging Laura right in the chest at least once). It was a good ceremony, not blindingly long, pretty casual. Gov. Tom Ridge was the keynote speaker (he got an honorary doctorate) and did some long winded political speech with a few personal things thrown in. I think most people ignored him, except the three protesters on the field with a huge :what price :security:?: sign, chanting :homeland security equals racial purity: and screaming that tom ridge is a murderer. The bleacher folk enjoyed it, anyway. ;)

After commencement, which was really weird watching from the stands when for more than 3 years I expected to be on the field, I headed over to the design commencement. Laura took off to get pain relievers for a headache and I never saw her again - I think she:s in her room napping. The design commencement was short and sweet- Mickey gave a good solid speech, everyone got their name read (often incorrectly) by Dr. Dick, and that was it. Food was good, everyone mingled, I saw Erika and Kelly Rae and Amanda for the first time in a while, chatted with some teachers, wandered around a lot with Ayako. Kept singing :and you say he:s just a friend:, our class song, until Ayako:s family left. Aya and I sat down at one of the outside tables and got our butts wet, watched everyone getting pictures with their families and giving each other huge hugs, thinking about how this is it, this is the end of everything, and never ever ever will we get to feel anything like this. I was crying because I:d missed it, because I had to continue without them, because I wished I:d had more time to spend with them. Ayako was crying because of the first reason, and we sat in the corner in our wet seats, wiping our tears and laughing sheepishly. Then the sun went away and the temperature dropped again, so we went home. And here I am.

I can:t believe I:m going to have to go on without these people around me, that I wasted the chance to get to know them better, to hang out with them. I was seriously considering the other day seeing someone at the counseling center (hey, get it while it:s free) to talk about my shyness and absolute awkwardness and rigidity when it comes to social situations. I:d like to think that if I ever gained more confidence in my physical appearance that I:d be better socially, but I:m afraid that I won:t, and that would really suck. I:d so like to enjoy myself, to just talk with people without worrying about things, because I know these people, and they:re sweethearts, and they:re such great people, but I still find myself not meeting their gaze, or trying desperately to think of something to say while we stand near each other without talking. It happens to almost everyone. Arghhh... It:s such a frustrating thing to have to deal with, and it affects so much of my life. I:m not sure how to deal with it, and I really regret that it put a damper on the past 3/4 years, which could have been better. They:re still the best time of my life thus far, but the fact that I could have enjoyed it more, taken advantage of it more, and I didn:t not because of choice but because of something that maybe could be changed -- I hope I can end that.