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.