2002-09-30
Not entirely my idea
A woman here just commented that I look either sleepy or dreamy. I would have come up with some clever comment, but I was thinking about what a better world it would be if I could use butterscotch chips as a form of currency, and I couldn't get back to reality quite as quickly as was necessary.
2002-09-29
It was a cheap laugh
A couple of hours ago at the house meeting we had a lame icebreaker in which each of us had to say where we would most like to fly over in a balloon. I said, "Detroit, because it looks better from farther away," and now I feel bad about it.
2002-09-27
I wanted to be the little old lady in the commercials
Guess where I spent two and a half hours this afternoon?
That's right, Discount Tire Company!
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
(Yes mummy, I drove to Detroit last night on my spare. I know. It was a stupid thing to do. It's ok, though, we made it alright.)
So, I finally got the ol' flat taken care of, and now I can officially move on with the post-Cleveland era of my life. That dopey spare tire was a constant reminder of the pain of that evening (I mean, COME ON, I got a flat on a TOLL ROAD. I had to PAY for my tire to blow out. (oops, doesn't look like i'm quite ready to move on yet)).
Next time I go to Discount Tire Company I'm going to learn something about tires before I go. Either that or I'm just going to give in to the urge to say, "I want one just like the old one. But with air in it." And I'm going to make a point about asking someone what the hell the Michelin man is supposed to be.
Anyway, as if I already didn't appear stupid enough, the Discount Tire Man thought he'd be funny and made a joke that I totally missed. "What car are you waiting on," he asked, and I looked up from Charles Fillmore's Santa Cruz Lectures on Deixis (which I had been reading for two hours) and said, "The Civic." He said, "Yeah, the silver one? Here for the sunroof?" I blinked and thought and said, "Ummm. . ." "Well, you better tell me now, before they cut the hole," he said. And I still just blinked and looked confused.
COME ON (again), you can't just make jokes to someone who has been reading linguistic essays for TWO HOURS. Yeesh.
2002-09-27
My life is always the same
Tonight I was told that, although the city can be distracting with all its hubcaps and things, I should tell all you fine people about Enon. So, consider yourself told.
Go to rock shows, drink beer, and eat 66¢ worth of potato salad at 2 in the morning. Then get up tomorrow and go to work. Hal the towtruckman said it, you're only young once.
2002-09-26
Please stop
P.P.S. Yesterday I didn't mean that I'm actually a whore. I just thought 'accent whore' was funny. I apologize for any misunderstanding this may have caused.
2002-09-25
Working late rules!
There were such a lot of extremely cute people at the library tonight that it was hard to survive:
(1) A mom and her 4 or 5 year old daughter came in. They were guests, so I signed them up for a computer on a guest card. When you don't use the computer for a couple of minutes, the computer locks and the user has to reswipe the card before it will work again. Since they didn't have a card, I was going to swipe them in and the little girl looked at me and said, "Ooooh, can I swipe it!"
(2) I was sitting outside durng my break, and this little kid (again 4 years old, about) ran by me. Behind him, his mom said "[Name], come back here." The little boy stopped, and looked back but didn't move at all. She said, "Hey, [name], come back here! We're going to the library!" And the little boy beamed and said, "Well, I didn't know that," and ran back to his mom.
(3) Cute in a different way was a middle-school aged boy who came in to use the microfiche and had no idea about how to do it. He was so shy and nervous that I just wanted to say, "Kiddo, it's a library. We probably aren't going to hurt you."
(4) Another little girl came in with her mom and wanted to swipe her library card to use the internet (as opposed to her mom's). Later on she was heard to comment, "Hurry up, mommy, you're wasting my money!"
(5) There is a little old Spanish woman looking for a newspaper, and when I found it for her she said, "Gracias, señorita" and I wondered how I had gotten this far in life without having ever been called señorita before. She also later said, "This plant needs water, no?"
A bad thing that happened at work: they locked all of the stupid doors before I had a chance to go to the bathroom! Come on, people! I had to pee! Badly!
Gotta do homework now.
P.S. I am an accent whore.
2002-09-25
I shouldn't be this tired all the time
Just for future reference, pre-lunch trips to the record store might be a bad idea. It went ok today, but it's sort of the same thing (for me) as going grocery shopping while I'm hungry. The chances are high that I'll buy lots more than I need.
I fell asleep at 11:30 last night. That was after I fell asleep when I got home from work at 5:30 and missed dinner. It's not like I did anything very strenuous yesterday. After I woke up, I ate a sandwich and went to Kmart where I bought diet Pepsi and diet Faygo, which were both on sale for cheap. I don't really know what I did after I got home. Tonight I have to work until 9, but after that it's homework all the way. Yay.
2002-09-24
Banned Books Week (go read something with bad words in it, everybody!)
Hey, did you know that it's Banned Books Week?
"I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another "Fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand, but it was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible."
Why was The Catcher in the Rye even banned? I guess by the time I read it (in 8th grade or so), I was already too cynical for it to make a difference.
2002-09-23
Cleveland, part 2
I don't really feel like finishing the Cleveland entry, so let's suffice to say that after stopping at a gas station, buying a map of Cleveland big enough to wallpaper my bedroom with, getting directional assistance from a woman who smoked a cigarette right into my car, driving down a scary warehouse lined street, and finally, by chance spotting a sign that said, "Waterloo Business District," we arrived at the show about half an hour before SFA played. The show was nearly the same as Detroit (only one song different, actually), but super-terrific all the same. I couldn't see as well and Detroit people are generally more hospitable than Cleveland people, as far as I can tell (but then, I'm biased). There were some other cool things that happened:
1. I got a piece of celery that the masked John Lennon man was chucking out into the crowd! Well, actually, the man next to me picked it up off the floor to see what it was, and I kind of looked over at it and he said, "Hmm. Celery." And I motioned that I'd like a closer look and then slyly slipped it into my bag when he handed it over. Since then I've been carrying it around with me, which gross, I know.
2. Gruff (he's, like, my best friend, so I can totally just refer to him by his first name like that) told this long story about how he lost his passport (or something. it was really hard to hear/understand) and didn't make it to America with the rest of the band. He arrived later, then said that they ". . .drove all over Michigan looking for the rest of the band. I finally found them in a bar outside Battle Creek auditioning female lead singers." And I thought, "MICHIGAN!! THAT'S WHERE I'M FROM." And also, "BATTLE CREEK! I KNOW WHERE THAT IS!! I'VE BEEN TO BATTLE CREEK." [The idea that the Super Furry Animals have been to Battle Creek (popularly called "The Armpit of Michigan" by my family) really throws off my entire view of the world. It just shouldn't happen.]
3. I saw all of them except Cian at ground level! Life-size, rather than onstage! Woooooo!
Then I got in my car at something like 1:30 (Jessica had left the map light on, but it hadn't drained the battery, thankfully, although that really seems like the way the night should've ended), was laughed at by some boys who walked by and saw me with my humongous map of Cleveland, than drove on home. The drive featured an uncharacteristically bipolar me periodically shouting "SCREW YOU, OHIO TURNPIKE" and singing a luvvly little song that I made up about the Ohio Turnpike (it goes like this: "oh. . . .hi. . . .oh, turnnnnnnnpike. . . ." etc.).
I called my parents the next day and my dad said, "Sometimes tires just blow out," which struck me as being very zen.
And today I only went to one of my classes and one of my jobs. I didn't take any notes in my class until 45 minutes had passed. The first thing I wrote was "I saw a sexy dead singer in Dominick's."
2002-09-22
I am dangerous
So, the stereo was left unattended and I took over and for the last few hours we've sounded more like a house with college kids in it and less like eighties night at the Cabana.
2002-09-22
Not the continuation
Aah, work holiday. The day I get to get up early and listen to shitty music. Yay.
2002-09-22
My Cleveland fiasco
Two hours later, we were driving down the Ohio Turnpike, rain pouring down, and the car suddenly made a funny noise and lurched. I didn't think much about it; my car has done odd things in the past, but it seemed to be driving normally again so there was probably nothing to worry about. A little while later, the rain let up and I heard the noise. A bad noise. My first thoughts, of course, were of the Super Furry Animals, and how I would miss the show if my car was about to explode. We kept driving until a short while later when it suddenly dawned on my: a flat tire. I had a flat tire somewhere on the Ohio Turnpike in the pouring rain.
Not really knowing what to do, I drove on the tire until the next exit. While we were waiting in line at the tollbooth, a woman in the next lane yelled "YOU HAVE A FLAT TIRE" and I waved at her like, sure, I know, no big deal, while feeling like, "AAAAAH, I'm GOING TO MISS THE SHOW I ALREADY DROVE 200 MILES TO SEE."
I got out of the tire and made sure that the tire really was flat. Then I didn't know what to do. The embarrassing truth is that I don't know how to change a tire. I'd never had to before, so I'd never learned. I stood there, in the rain, and tried to call my parents on the pay phone, but no matter how many commercials I watch for making collect calls, when the time comes that I actually need to make a collect call, I can never remember any of those phone numbers that spell out catchy slogans. Eventually I did remember one, but my parents weren't home (a note: the actually did get a message from me (although I was never prompted to leave one on their answering machine). All they got was my name and my mom spent the rest of the night worrying about what might be wrong.).
We went back to the toll booth, and one of the guys there called for help for us. "It'll be about 40 minutes," he said. We went back to the car and sat. By this point it was about 7:30. Doors for the show were at 9:30, so it seemed like we'd still have time to make it. Although I had no real map with me, I figured that Cleveland couldn't be that far away and I made the best of a bad situation by putting on make up and cutting up my socks while we were waiting for the man to fix the car.
A while later, a tow truck showed up. A white-haired man (who I later found out is named Hal) jumped out of the truck, and as I was opening the door of my car he trotted up to my window and said, "Oh, you stay in there. It's raining out here. You can just stay right in the car." So I did. I popped open the hatchback for him and he said, "So, where are you girls headed this evening?" And I said, "Cleveland" with a note of exasperation in my voice. And, honest to God, Hal said, "Well, you're only young once," as if Cleveland is a hot destination for all young people. As he removed the spare tire from my trunk he said, "But you're not going to Cleveland now, right? You shouldn't drive anywhere on this tire. Just turn around and go home." And with that, he started going about the process of changing my tire.
Hal must not have caught the Michigan plates on my car, because by this point we were much closer to being in Cleveland than Michigan. After he finished changing my tire in the rain (I felt like I should have stood out there and held an umbrella for him or something), he came back with our bill and said, "Now, you girls are just going home now, right?" I explained to him that home was much farther away than Cleveland, and told a fib that I had relatives living there that we could spend the night with. Then Hal drove his tow truck out into the night.
Spare tire on car, we headed back to the turnpike. The rain was pouring again, and it was hard to see, and Hal's ominous warning made me a little nervous about driving on it in adverse conditions. We stopped and Jessica got some food (I was incredibly stressed out by this point and even though I hadn't eaten since breakfast, I couldn't bring myself to eat any more than a few onion rings), and I changed my clothes. We got back on the turnpike and promptly missed our exit.
Now, on a normal highway, missing an exit is not a big deal; there's always another one a couple of miles down the road. On the Ohio Turnpike, the exits are usually at least 25 miles apart. After stopping at another rest area and studying a map, it became obvious that we had to go back - I only had Yahoo!Driving Directions, and if we didn't go to the Beachland Ballroom in exactly the way that it had mapped out, the chances were good that we would be in Cleveland forever. We turned around and started back towards the proper exit. It was about 10pm by now, and I was getting more nervous about missing the show every single minute. I turned toward the sign that said "Cleveland" and hoped for the best.
to be continued. too sleepy now.
2002-09-20
Sleepy
Really, what is there left for me to say about the show (to illustrate: I just typed the word "swoon" instead of "show")? Did I mention that they're my favorite band? Did I mention that they're Welsh? Did I mention that they're far cooler than I will ever be (on the way home I remarked that they exist on a totally separate plane of coolness that I will never know).
I bought a shirt and I stood in such a place that I could think, "Oh.My.God. Gruff looked RIGHT AT ME!" even though I was perfectly aware that that was not the case. I plan to do the same tomorrow in Cleveland. Because I am a loser and I have nothing better to do than to chase my favorite band around the country. I even bought a sexy new shirt so I can seduce unsuspecting boys from Ohio.
Right now, though, I have to go to bed. I can't do the night justice. I don't have the words.
2002-09-19
Unexpected
Tonight I went to see my favorite band. It was fun. When I returned home there were 8 emails about gay porn in my inbox.
xoxo
-kim.
ps. more about the total brilliance of the Super Furry Animals tomorrow (you know you can't wait).
2002-09-18
I am a wuss again/still
Well, I wussed out on the lecture. Surprise surprise.
Anyhoo, this extra two hours this afteroon gives me time to attend to the finer aspects of grooming, such as fingernail (and tonail) clipping, eyebrow plucking, showering, and washing clothes.
Also, it is rather warm today, which means my planned 'outfit' for the evening may have to be changed. And with only 3 hours before the show, I'm not really sure that I have time to properly deal with this situation.
2002-09-18
I [heart] my parking spot
The highlight of my day so far was this morning when I went to get my umbrella out of my car. A car coming up the street stopped behind me, turn signal on, waiting waiting waiting for my ultra-fabulous parking spot. I collected my umbrella, slammed the passenger side door of my car, and went on my merry way to class. By foot.
I am going to a lecture now called "Language and the Public Interest," unless I wuss out because I look like I'm going to be the only student aged person there. Which is very much more likely than it should be.
2002-09-18
D-day
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!*
(Kim spontaneously explodes.)
*Translation: Lessthan12hoursthisisgoingtobethelongestdayeveryiwishihad
somethingotherthanlecturestofillupmytimewithbecauselecturesjustaren't
goingtodoit.
2002-09-17
Day 13
I luv my metaphor book (Metaphor, by Zoltan Kovesces) because it contains this line: ". . . 'It will be a bitch to pull this boat out of the water.' In this instance, the term bitch denotes any difficult situation."
Oh, and did I mention that it's now less than 24 hours until the show? I didn't? Well, there you go.
2002-09-17
Being boring
I really hate it when my day is filled with nothing worth writing about. I walked a lot today and spent the $30 I saved by buying my books online when I bought a coursepack. I went to work and read a book about anthropological linguistics.
Sure, it's boring to read. But just imagine what it would have been like to have actually lived through a day like this.
One more thing: I don't want to eat with the people from my house. Like, not ever, and so far, I've managed to avoid it. Does that make me a bad person?
2002-09-16
At work, again, always
When I'm working in close proximity with someone else, I always wait until they go on break before I update my journal. I don't want anyone to know that I diaryland.
Unrelatedly, today I found out that I'm not behind in all of my work because I'm disorganized; this school is actually designed so that you can never be quite caught up with what you're supposed to do. If I had realized this sooner I probably would have dropped out.
2002-09-16
"Seymour, your teeth are so nice and yellow!"
Everytime I brush my teeth I am utterly amazed by the fact that my previously mentioned Crest Whitestrips did nothing to make my teeth any whiter. Indeed, my teeth seem yellower now than ever before.
The other day while I was waiting to get my hair cut, the hairstylist was talking to a guy about something, and he said, "Oh, that shouldn't really matter - no one should be looking that closely at my hair anyway." She replied, "You never know. Sometimes when I'm walking down the street I'll look at someone's hair and think, 'Whoa, that person needs to come and see me.'"
Her statement worried me because every day there's at least one thing about my appearance that I just ignore, thinking, "Oh well. Nobody's looking at me anyway." However, if most people are like this hairstylist, there are legions of people who are noticing just the things that I assume no one cares about. Dentist see my yellow teeth and shudder. Manicurists are horrified by my short fingernails (and then even more horrified when they realize that I use those nails to pick at the skin on my fingers, usually causing them to bleed at least once a day). Shoe salesmen cringe when they see my Sauconys that are undeniably past their prime. And even with my new haircut, I'm sure my hair causes the stomach of every hairstylist in America to twist and turn and bend.
Knowing (or at least thinking) these things doesn't really make me want to go about changing anything, though. It makes me want to make everything worse, so that if on the off-chance that I am actually horrifying someone, they actually have a reason to be bothered.
2002-09-15
Dinosaurs, light bulbs, and super furry animals (of course)
So, my computer spontaneously decided that it was going to stop being on the internet, which upsets me because I paid $60 for a wireless network card. I had hoped that it would start working again on its own, but as it has been out of service since Friday night, I have to assume that that's not happening. That's not such a bad thing, really, it just means that I have to ask one of the so-called computer guys in my house to fix it. I feel bad asking them, though, because I feel like I never talk to them when I don't need them to fix my computer. I should work more on formulating relationships with these people so I don't feel like I'm imposing on them so much when asking them to do something that any one of them will probably be able to fix in 4 minutes or less.
I had to come to the computer lab to get the conversions that I need to do my astronomy homework, and for some reason, finding a table of metric conversions was rather difficult. I did, however, find out that dinosaurs are living in the Congo, and I totally believe that's true because this highly believable video footage.
Last night I got home at 2:30am and three light bulbs burnt out within 2 minutes of my putting them in. One of them was a brand new clear one that I bought Friday when I decided that white light was the answer.
Today I studied in a coffee shop because I'm way trendy and enjoy being places where one can see and be seen. I sat there and thought up a plan to make a coffee shop that actually plays good music (meaning, anything that I listen to), but after I'd thought about it a while I decided that it'd be easier just to stay home and listen to cds. Staying home has the added bonus of my being able to always get the couch.
So, I'm down to about 71.5 hours until the Super Furry Animals show. It works out well that I'm extremely busy this week because I don't spend as much time sitting around saying things like, "So, this is my new Super Furry haircut." The bad part of being busy is that I can't concentrate at all. I'll be reading from my coursepack, and it will say something about how Welsh has voiceless nasals*, and I'll think, "Aah, Welsh." May said something about how she couldn't use the bathroom at the coffee shop because there was no key(meaning, somebody else was using it), and I said something about how she could just use the men's room (which was also full), and then thought, "The last time I saw the Super Furry Animals I used the men's bathroom at the 7th House." It's all connected, which makes me a very annoying person to be around. Even more annoying than usually.
It is cold in the computer lab, and I am going to leave as soon as I figure out how much I should bid on this auction.
*If anyone can explain to me how a voiceless nasal is possible, I'd really appreciate it.
2002-09-13
A close call and something stupid I said today
Yesterday when I got my hair cut, the woman zig-zagged my part when she was done. I thought, "WOW!! That is the coolest thing ever!" but this morning when I tried it myself, the comb got pretty badly stuck in my hair.
Then I went to the doctor and almost left my hoodie in the office. I was sitting in the waiting room at the lab, waiting for them to draw my blood, and I noticed that the girl sitting across from me had a really nice hooded sweatshirt. I reached over to pick up my purple one, and it wasn't there. After explaining my situation to the woman at the desk, I sprinted up the stairs and rescued my hoodie from it's sad fate on the floor at UHS.
Also, there was a full page story on the Super Furry Animals in this week's Metro Times. I hung it on my door and said, "I'm like Martin Luther. But with the Super Furry Animals."
I am going to see One Hour Photo now and later I'm going to make wontons.
2002-09-13
Anna Nicole Smith
I have five words for you: The Anna Nicole Smith Show.
Seriously.
2002-09-11
Tea
I'm totally drinking a bowl of Zingerman's tea. A BOWL OF TEA.
Yay.
2002-09-11
Today is day 7 of "A Super Furry Fortnight"
Today when I got home from work, I ate a fabulous chicken schwarma from Jerusalem Garden and watched Spongebob Squarepants and part of The Wedding Singer because they were some of the few programs on my television that didn't have footage of plans crashing into skyskrapers.
The 9/11 Anniversary, by the fine jounalists at The Onion.
2002-09-11
Grade ain't nothin but a number
Today in class we split up into small groups, and after we had finished discussing what we were supposed to be discussing, my group went through introductions. You know, the usual, "My name's Kim. I'm a senior and I study linguistics." As it turned out, everyone in my group was either a senior or a junior except for one guy that was a sophomore. The only other guy in my group immediately said something like, "If you want an easier class, you should take anthro 283."
Now, this wouldn't have bothered me if the class was hard, or if the sophomore had somehow indicated that he was having touble with it. He didn't though, and I can only guess that Mr. Senior Anthropology Major thought that a 300-level class was bound to be much too difficult for a wee sophomore.
2002-09-11
I've got a golden ticket
So, I just opened up a package of Shocktarts that I bought at the dollar store the other day, and guess what? I Won. I WON! I never win. Of course, all I won was a free package of Wonka candy, and I have to send in the package to the company and a stamp costs more than the Wonka candy at the dollar store, but still. I won, and that's all that matters.
2002-09-10
Not into the swing
Somebody -
Please please PLEASE hit me with a brick or something and say, "Kim, you are in SCHOOL. You have HOMEWORK to do. Your evenings are no longer yours. READ something. STUDY. Now is not the time to try to remove those unsightly Coke stains from your bag. Now is not the time to finish up that Rolling Rock. Now is the time to learn, Kimberly. LEARN!"
2002-09-10
More proof that I was paying attention
Also, my metaphor professor said that most liquor ads in magazines contain glasses with ice in them, and in those glasses of ice, there is always a skull airbrushed into the photo somehow. I am going to spend my 3 remaining hours here reading magazines like Vogue and Vanity Fair to find out if this is actually true. Y'know, fer science.
2002-09-10
I was paying attention in class and people suck
The first rule of metaphors is:
YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT METAPHORS.
Oh wait, that was fight club. The first rule of metaphors is actually
(1) All metaphors are lies
The second rule of metaphors is
(2) But sometimes they're true
Pet peeve of the day:
People who do hours and hours of work in a computer lab (like, say, in the public library), don't save their work to a disk, and then blame ME when they lose it. Also, people who scan millions and millions of pages from the microfilm reader to the printer before they actually try to just print one page and see if they know how to do it right. 'Cos people, it's not my fault if you spent three hours scanning three dozen different newspapers and then lost it when you rebooted the computer without telling/asking a highly knowledgable staff person about what the consequences would be.
2002-09-09
Our elevator is really slow
Quote o'the day from work: "I would have been here 10 minutes ago, but I took the elevator."
2002-09-09
Give me something to look forward to
My 2 o'clock lecture was cancelled because my professor had jury duty, which begs the question, why have I never been called to jury duty? And if I ever get called, do I get to skip class? If I do, I hope it's during my astronomy lecture because it's pretty dull. Today the most exciting thing that happened was that I got to listen a frat boy complain about his MIP.
Anyway, a lack of class caused me to trek back to my house in the midafternoon sun, and now I am sitting in my messy room eating Sweetarts and listening to Spoon. I have to be at work in 40 minutes.
2002-09-09
We are the goon squad and we're coming to town
Dear Fashion-Conscious:
Those in the know this fall are ditching the whole idea of wearing clean clothes every day. That's right - next time you get dressed, put on loads of good-smelling body lotion and dig something out of your dirty clothes hamper.
Also in this season:
Wearing wrinkly skirts
Pimples
Being late for class
Wearing beat up red Sauconys with everything
2002-09-09
FYI: love is NOT all around, as stated in pop songs
If Doug Martsch is saying "Love isn't everywhere," in the background of the Halo Benders "Magic Carpet Rider," then I'm on his side, rather than Sonny Curtis's, who wrote the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme song, "Love is All Around." Or The Troggs', who also wrote a song called "Love is All Around." Because it's just not.
2002-09-08
Silence is golden?
Has anyone else noticed how much diaryland sucks lately? If I had a friend with a livejournal, I'd be over there so fast. . .
Also, more and more I notice that I sit around in my room without listening to any music at all. This is from someone who used to turn on the stereo before turning on the lights. I don't know what this means, exactly, but I do know that the fact that I'm horribly sick of every cd that I own probably has something to do with it.
2002-09-08
Sundays really don't work out for me
A cute boy has been walking/riding his bike back and forth in front of my house all day (sometimes with what looks like a bag of laundry). If I was smart I'd get prettied up and go sit on my porch.
I am not smart.
2002-09-08
Wait a minute - this looks like rock and/or roll
I enjoy the half hour or so after a shower when my skin feels clean and soft and refreshed. And when it smells so good that I just can't refrain from smelling my arm.
This is the first time all day that I've wanted to smell my arm. I soaked up a ton of grime in Detroit today. I feel much better.
Dally in the Alley was the most fun that one can have in a single afternoon in Detroit. I'm surprised that I never even heard of it until this year. Music! (The Sights! The Hentchmen! Ko and the Knockouts! Saturday Looks Good to Me! And lots of other bands that I missed because it was hot and I went to eat somewhere air conditioned! Food! (I didn't actually buy anything but beer, but I enjoyed the smells.) Detroit t-shirts galore! Neat little thingies to buy!
The only thing that seemed to thwart my happiness all day was the search for a restroom. At first it was ok - when we got there, we parked by the public library and just used the one there (the Detroit Public Library is hott. Makes the Ann Arbor Public Library look like a pile of puke). But then we left and went to the 'burbs (I know. Cop out. Someone who talks about loving Detroit as much as I do should've eaten somewhere in the city. But I wanted to go to Big Boy.) to eat, and the toilet didn't flush and the paper towel thingy didn't provide paper towels (even though they were totally in there). Another time we went into a Burger King: it's toilet didn't flush either, and the sink was clogged and full of water. After we returned to the Dally and parked again, we thought we'd go in to a Subway to use one, since all we'd seen at the actual festival site was a line of portapotties. We bought three cookies in order to look like we weren't just trying to use their bathroom and then - taa-daa - there was no bathroom at all! After unsuccessfully trying to enter several university buildings, we resigned ourselves to the port-a-potties.
During the day this row of transportable toilets had seemed bad enough. At night, however, they were completely pitch black. There wasn't even a streetlight for at least half a block in any direction. Now on one hand this was kind of a relief: after locking myself into the dark, foul-smelling closet I thought, "phew, I don't know what's in here."
But on the other hand, I thought, "EEEEEW, I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S IN HERE!"
I did get to have some interesting conversations with other people who were in line. They had never used a port-a-pottie in the dark before either.
Here are some un-toilet-related things:
Eddie from the Sights is a tremendously tiny person. He's shorter than me, skinnier than me, and yet at the same time he contains way way way more rock and roll than me and most of the other big/fat/normal sized people that I know.
Motor City Pale Ale is good.
I bought a red canvas bag with the Detroit Tigers' "D" on it. I own many bags, but this is the best one yet.
I decided who I'm going to marry. He doesn't know about it yet. I wonder if he'll be surprised.
2002-09-07
I went shopping
I spent $12 at the dollar store yesterday. 12 dollars!. Most of it, though, was actually stuff that I needed (except for possibly the six rolls of Sweetarts), rather than random crap I saw and thought, "Well, golly, this is only a dollar? I might as well buy it!" At Target I bought one of the Muppet Show dvds, and then I spent 12 more dollars at Meijer buying things like "beauty" lotion and egg rolls.
Then we got back and watched The Talented Mr Ripley, which was, y'know, ok, but all I really wanted to do was watch "The Muppet Show." Then we did.
This morning a weed wacker woke me up and I thought, "Neighbors and their damn weedwackers." But, of course, it was one of my housemates. He's been out there since 9. We don't even have a lawn.
Later I'm going to The Dally in the Alley. And I think it is a football Saturday. Not that I'm going or that I care or that, when the day is over, I will even know who won. I'm just not totally uninformed, is what I'm saying.
2002-09-06
Nothing good to say
Hah! I am going to the dollar store! Right NOW!
2002-09-05
Int'l bands
Yesterday I went to a rock show on a school night. I have publicly stated that I'm not going to let school getin the way of anything fun that I want to do this year.
Anyway, at said rock show, The Frames covered a song by my favorite Flemish band, dEUS. It was very surreal: first, I had never heard any of dEUS's songs in any sort of live context before. Secondly, earlier in the evening, Jessica mentioned that her mom had started getting packages from people that she met online. I said something like, "The only online people that I've actually received real mail from were people that I met on the dEUS list." It was, as Diane Rheme once said, ". . a wooo wooo moment."
Yesterday was also important in that it marked the beginning of "A Super Furry Fortnight", meaning, of course, that for the next two weeks nothing else will be on my mind. One could argue, though, that nothing else has been on my mind for quite some time.
Exhibit 1: Everytime I get a syllabus, I check it to see if there are any major assignments due on September 19. If I ever find one, my plan is to drop the class.
Exhibit 2: I have already requested September 18 and 20 off from work. Twice. (September 20 is the Cleveland show.)
Exhibit 3: I already know what I'm going to wear to both shows. Comparatively, I didn't know what I was going to wear this morning until 8:06am and I have class at 8:30am.
Exhibit 4: I'm thinking of reviving my "Learn Welsh or Die" project, reasoning that since I didn't have time during the summer, I'll definitely have time now that classes have started.
"A Super Furry Fortnight" has given rise to a new segment (and, sadly, I mean in my life, not in this diary), "The SFA Quote of the Day" (SFAQOTD). And, since I need to go to eat lunch and go to work, here it is:
"Everytime I look around me everything seems so stationary."
2002-09-03
Grape tomatoes
I got to my Jewish American literature class already being pretty sure that I was going to drop it. I sat near the back and figured that I could just slip out when it became obvious that this wasn't something that I wanted to do two days a week for the rest of the semester. The professor, though, thought that it would be a good idea to make everyone draw their desks up in a semi-circle close to the front, comfortably cramming 30 people into 1/3 of the room. The sudden closeness of everyone made it terribly obvious that I was never going to be able to slip quietly out of the room - I could stumble over desks, of course, knocking them over and very possibly breaking my neck along the way, but there was no way that I was getting out of that classroom unnoticed. So I just sat there for an hour and a half and thought about grape tomatoes.
Oh, and after I returned home from my 8:30 class that wasn't, I discovered that a class email had been sent - at 8:23am, when everyone would have been already on their way to class, probably.
2002-09-03
Email is a good way to spread important news
OK, so, even better than having an 8:30 class on the first day of school (and getting a check) is getting up, going to that class, and finding out that it has been cancelled!
As the girl in the elevator said, "Of course, this is the way that senior year would start."
2002-09-03
First day
So, what beats having an early class on the very first day? Why, discovering that you have forgotten your deoderant and will have to spend the whole day worrying about being stinky!
What would make this better? Getting an unexpected check in the mail from the university.
Paranoia sets in: but why did the university send me this check?
Navigation
Credits