2002-12-29
Entertain me
Not much going on. Christmas, pardon me, winter break is boring.
(1) Can someone please make the Dell Interns go away? I never thought I'd miss Stephen, but I do. I really really do.
(2) My dad has the annoying habit of carrying the portable phone into the very room you're trying to watch teevee in, and then staying there and talking loudly. "So, how do you like South Carolina?" Like, DAD, I'm trying to watch The Cosby Show for the twelfth time today!
(3) My grades should all be posted by now, but they're not. I have all of my grades except astronomy, which is the only one that really matters (the fact that I'm living in a world where an astronomy class dictates whether or not I will graduate at the end of the year is too bizarre to go into).
(4) Someone please offer me a job. I will have a bachelor of arts in linguistics and English in April. Please give me a job. Please.
(5) I am going to paint my door and my bookcase red as soon as I get back to school. I already have blue walls and silver spraypainted stars. When I move out, whoever moves in is going to have to work hard to remove all traces of my presence, and this fills me with glee.
(6) Do you remember those commercials that TV Land had where they redubbed old shows and ended with "Times Change. Great TV Doesn't." Those commercials were the best ever!!!!! I've been having my own Alfred Hitchcock Presents marathon from a bunch of old taped episodes from the time those commercials ran, and they are absolutely the greatest things ever.
(7) I need to stop watching television and read some books.
(8) My life was threatened by a preschooler yesterday. She told my mom she was going to go to her house and kill her daughter. Which is me. Later I saw her, though, and she is tiny and I think I could prevent her from killing me.
(9) I have to participate in the commencement festivities at school. My parents mentioned it to my grandparents (I hadn't yet told them that I planned not to take part in all of that), and my grandparents thought they'd come. My grandparents.
(10) Hip kids. Stay away from Goodwill. I go, but I've always gone. Go buy your 'vintage' t-shirts in the mall where the MTV guys buy them.
(11) The Volkswagen New Beetle Convertible commercial that I saw on tv actually has the car in the commercial. This is the Mr. Blue Sky commercial (not that one that's like, "Hey, if you smile at someone, you can change everyone's whole day!" That seems rather more like a McDonald's plotline, and the only thing that kept me from believing that that was what it was was the fact that there wasn't a clown in it) that I have seen numerous times in movie theaters and have raved about to everyone that I know. It is better without the car.
(11) Quote of the day goes, of course, to my mom: "He's got a pocketful of poo!"
2002-12-23
Cutesy snowmen are the reason for the season
Today one of the stores I was in had lots of signs that said, "30% OFF CHRISTMAS MERCHANDISE." In the back, there was a table of shepherd, Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, angel, &etc. figurines. This table had a sign that said, "THIS MERCHANDISE NOT INCLUDED IN CHRISTMAS SALE." And I thought that was funny.
2002-12-23
I am foolish and easily fooled
I went shopping today. It was crazy of course, and I don't mean crazeee in the wacky fun sense of the word. I mean crazy in the properly spelled, less fun, potentially frightening sense of the word.
I was, however, lucky enough to grab some pretty neat (and cheap!) stuff for my mom, and managed to buy nothing at all for myself (except cotton balls, which aren't fun so they don't count).
I also discovered that they have Invader Zim stuff at Meijer. . . .come on, I expect seeing Spongebob at all my neighborhood superstores, but Invader Zim? They also have glittery poinsettas, and while I am quite aware that they are just regular poinsetta plants with glitter sprayed on the leaves, I was totally taken in by them. "Wow! Glittery poinsettas! Wow!"
2002-12-21
Home
The exams are done, all of my belongings are stuffed into my closet so they can replace my ceiling while I'm gone, May went to her first rock show (and maybe her last, as she is going to France next semester and therefore, I will probably never see her again), I have two weeks off from work, and I am at home. Home: not only is it where the heart is, it is also where you don't have to wear shoes in the shower.
My mom got a bunch of Christmas presents from the kids in her daycare, and it makes me wonder about my chosen field of study. Who is going to give lots of candy, nice smelling lotion, and candles to a linguist? Nobody, that's who.
2002-12-19
When nothing is wrong, I complain about good things
I hate to be one of those people who complain about good weather, but has been the deal lately? I have certain clothes that I like to wear in the winter, but if it's 50 degrees and humid outside, I can't wear them. So you can see my dilemma. Also, the humidity makes my hair fuzzy. Let it snow already.
2002-12-18
In a pickle
Now, if there's one thing that life has taught me, it's that you don't get pickles for free. You have to earn them (or buy a sandwich). This fact makes the sudden appearance of a pickle in my mailbox all the more mysterious.
2002-12-14
5 more minutes and i would've been done
Wouldn't you think that it would be considerate to let people know if you were going to turn off the water in their house? Otherwise what might happen is that someone might get all the shampoo in her hair and then be totally unable to rinse it out. I'm very happy the ICC is fixing the shower in our basement, but COME ON PEOPLE! YOU CAN'T JUST TURN PEOPLE'S WATER OFF WITHOUT ANY WARNING! IS IT REALLY SO HARD TO SAY, "Ahem, at 11:30 on Saturday, we will be shutting off your water in order to repair the shower in your basement."
You know, this is just another reason for me not to be pro-co-op.
2002-12-14
My Christmas bonus?
Yesterday the best thing that happened was that I spotted a copy of The National Enquirer in the recycling bin at work and after everyone was gone (i thought the security guard was never going to leave!), I dug it out and took it home with me. Unfortunately, The National Enquirer is totally inferior to Weekly World News unless you care about celebrities. I don't. I prefer my tabloid headlines to be more along the lines of "Bat Boy and 2,000 Year Old Mummy Have Love Child" and Not "Bill Clinton Caught With Demi." Because, like, who cares?
2002-12-12
My parents are genetically obligated to like me
I just sent an instant message to my offline parents that went like this:
what did you find out at the doctor yesterday? i have a cold (:| (that is how i think i sort of look) so i am going to go drink tea and sneeze a lot and maybe read or watch tv. our meals ended yesterday, so i had half a cucumber and some cheese for dinner. it doesn't matter, though, because i can't taste anything anyway.
Guilt, people, is what will make my parents come and take me out for dinner. At least that's what I'm hoping.
2002-12-12
A UPS truck parked outside of my window
Do you ever wonder if, when the UPS man approaches a house with a stack of boxes this close to Christmas, that he feels just a little bit like Santa Claus? Does he ever let out a hearty "Ho ho ho" when a door is opened in front of him?
Really, being a UPS man must be enormously rewarding because everyone loves getting a package in the mail. Maybe that's what I should do next year.
2002-12-11
I am getting soft in my old age
What with all that helpdeskman drama, I forgot to mention that today was my last day of school! Wooooo!
At the end of the semester we have to fill out evaluations for all of our classes. Every time I fill them out, I get nostalgic and tenderhearted. Therefore, even if I spent the entire semester thinking, "This class has got to be the worst 160 minutes of my week," when they hand around those scantron sheets and number 2 pencils, I feel bad about thinking about how boring someone was ("Oh, just think, he's probably someone's grandfather") or how I felt totally unprepared to write all of the papers for the class. I very rarely fill out anything lower than 3(neutral).
2002-12-11
I have (dare i say it?) an enemy
So, here at the public library we have a thing called the helpdesk. If you have a problem you call the helpdesk and they come and save you. It's usually just that simple.
The problem is this: there is a man who works for the helpdesk who has, for some reason, taken a strong dislike to me. Whenever I call and he is there (or in today's case, when someone else calls and I happen to be sitting at the desk when he gets here), he takes the occasion to treat me as though I am totally incompetant.
Today we called him because the public internet stations were being very slow. He came down to check them about 15 minutes after we called (most helpdesk people respond within 2), and by that time, most of the people that had been waiting had left (because, really, 15 minutes is an outrageously long time to have to wait to check your email in a public library). He sat at the desk for a long time, and finally said something like, "Well, it says here that it's working." I pointed to a computer station and showed him that, even though a patron had been assigned the station 13 minutes ago, the computer had still not began working.
He continued working on something for a while. Some people that had been waiting before came back and swiped a card through the machine that assigns computers. After he had swiped his card, the man asked, "Do I have to press ok?" (a little 'ok' button comes up on the screen after a card is swiped). I said, "You can, but it really doesn't matter" while the man from the helpdesk said, "Yes, you have to."
After the patron walked away, the man from the helpdesk looked at me and said, "Well, maybe the problems we're having are coming from the fact that people aren't signing in correctly."
I looked at him blankly. "It doesn't matter if they press ok."
"Well, I, would have told them the right way to sign in."
"It doesn't matter if they press ok," I said again, and turned back to A Wild Sheep Chase which I had tried to focus on the entire time he was at the desk in hopes that it would keep me occupied enough not to get into a huge argument (which happened last time he tried to fix something while i was at the desk - lemme tell you, bickering information desk people at the public library is really not a pretty sight).
Happily, a coworker overheard this exchange. I worried that the entire situation was only in my head. I asked her if the man from the help desk treats everyone this way. He doesn't (my coworker did admit, though, to not being a very big fan of him).
I really don't know why he singled me out.
Why would anyone dislike me?
a postcript: a little while after all the trouble we were having, the library's resident computer guy called and wondered if we had been having any problems. there had been a server problem at precisely the time things had been so messy here. so, the problem wasn't due to the fact that i hadn't enforced the pressing of the 'ok' button that doesn't really do anything. just so you know.
2002-12-10
Things included in my paper
1 reference to Homer Simpson
2 references to the Irish
1 paragraph likening food/recipe magazines to pornography
1 poem by a little known Haitian poet
1 quote in old English
2 uses of the word 'sourness' even though Microsoft Word insists that it is not a real word
1 extremely brief reference to umami
If this paper doesn't sound like a winner, I don't know what does!
2002-12-09
We're serious about apathy
I realized just now that I've been considering the fact that I'm not too stressed out about my paper to be a good thing, when in actuality it's just proof that I don't care.
Once during high school choir the whole class opted not to vote on something. My friend's brother aptly shouted out something like, "WOOO! APATHY RULES!"
Which sums everything up pretty nicely, I think.
(In actuality, I am now only 4 pages and some editing away from being done. So, really, things aren't that bad.)
2002-12-09
Food metaphors
I'd like to say that when push comes to shove, I really get down and start working, but that would be a fib.
Perhaps tonight after work I will be suddenly inspired to write 13 pages of garbage, but I can't say that I'm too optimistic. (But I'm still not really worried either.)
This class looked like it was going to be problematic right from the start. I should have dropped it right then.
2002-12-09
Peter piper had a peck of paper pressure (but i don't)
OK, so I really didn't work on my paper at all this weekend. And yet I don't have that nauseating feeling of total failure that I usually have when I've been unneccessarily lazy.
The way my work has been going:
Write a sentence, read a sentence from book, delete most of previously written sentence, stare blankly out window, turn on tv, turn off tv, get up and turn record over*, (repeat in entirety)
Whatever.
I'm not sure what the absence of stress means, but it is indeed nice to not have that sense of defeat gnawing at my soul.
I am going to bed now in order to get up at a decent time tomorrow (I'm skipping class and one of the jobs) and really get cracking on the paper. Pray for the pressure to set in.
*Records are bad to listen to while doing homework because you have to get up and manually turn them over every 15 minutes of so, which gets you away from the computer and the work that you are allegedly doing. On the other hand, it does keep you from getting sucked into a timewarp that might occur after listening to that 6-song Pas/Cal EP on repeat for six hours straight.
2002-12-07
You know who I am and I love what you wear
Hello.
I love Pas/Cal.
Good night.
2002-12-06
There's always Saturday
When I was walking home from work, the lights in the bank were on and I looked inside and saw a group of people polishing the fake gold bases of the the dividers that they use to keep everyone in a tidy line.
It made me very sad because it never before occurred to me that that is how some people have to spend their Friday nights.
2002-12-06
I am going to have a good weekend.
As one might guess, on Friday night the public library is NOT where the action is. However, when I got here there was a creepy man standing behind the desk and even though I would've liked to have asked Kate what exactly was going on, I couldn't think of a tactful way to do it:
"Hey Kate, why is this creepy man standing over you?"
A little while later, the security guy came downstairs and asked me if I had called him. I said, "No," because I hadn't, but now that I think about it, Kate might have due to the creepiness of the guy behind the desk. But again, how was I supposed to tell this to security when the man was still back there:
"Well, I have only just now arrived so I didn't call you, but perhaps Kate did. Have you noticed the creepy man behind my desk?"
After he left, I spent the night trying to decided what to make for dinner and sending emails to myself since I have been excessively paranoid lately about my email not working. One email went like this:
I AM ANOTHER PRACTICE EMAIL BECAUSE KIM IS BORED AND AT WORK AND ALSO KIM IS
YOU SO WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT THIS WHOLE SORRY SITUATION? WELL? WHAT?
Which is obviously pure gold.
2002-12-04
Lunch
OK, so the question is, salsa: vegetable or not?
2002-12-03
Lack of communication
I was walking home from class just now and while I was waiting for a light to change I saw a flyer advertising a show of one of this city's masses of unwashed hippie troubadors. The flyer design wasn't great (indeed the only reason anyone would probably bother turning their head to look at it is because they were waiting to cross the street), but something about it struck me as being strange. Then it dawned on me: that was my address. The unwashed hippie troubador's show is at my house.
And while this doesn't necessarily bother me, I just feel like there should have been a better way for me to find out. That's all.
2002-12-02
Snowfall
It had stopped snowing by 9pm when I was done at work. My route home, which is usually fairly busy with people and cars, was almost deserted. It gave me the eerie feeling that I had survived some sort of huge disaster when all that happened was that we got a couple of inches of snow.
2002-12-02
For some reason i just always assume that things will work out
I have the absolute worst work ethic of anyone on the planet.
Who has a presentation to do in Old English tomorrow? I do!
Who has a 20 page paper due next Tuesday? I do!
Who has a constellation quiz and 33 problems of astronomy homework for Thursday? I do!
Who spent the last hour of her workday (I worked a shift and a half again) perusing eBay? I did!
2002-12-02
Telnet, why hast thou forsaken me
I can't get my email to open, and therefore I am absolutely certain that I'm missing something really really good. This is in spite of the fact that I checked it not very long ago and there was nothing particularly great. By now, though, there must be something.
2002-12-01
I've been away
So, yes, my holiday weekend went swimmingly. It was the first Thanksgiving that I ever heard my mom say 'arse.'
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