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...