07-31-04

I can complain all I want, but working weekends just means that I work less during the week.

There is a pen at my desk that says "Winners make dust, they don't eat dust" and "Winners are people like you!" It also has the name of an apartment complex on it. The Medical Court apartments are apparently popular among winners.

I am working today and tomorrow. And next Saturday and Sunday. And also the Saturday after that (but not Sunday). The weekend after that, though, I am free to frolic in the sunshine, assuming I have enough energy and time to frolic after moving all of my stuff into the new apartment.

It'll be the worst August ever!


np: work

1:05 p.m.

07-28-04

Do, re, mi, innocent.

Last night I dyed my hair red (well, the box says pomegranate) and then hacked a bunch of it off. Then my roommate hacked some more off, and even though she assured me many times that she used to cut her mom's hair all the time, she would very often make comments like, "hmm. I don't know why that's there. How did I miss that?" And she didn't hold on to the hair she was cutting; she would just stick the scissors out and cut.

So now I have purplish red hair of many varying lengths. In a couple of weeks I'll probably get a professional cut and dye that is as close as possible to my natural color, but I have to spend at least two weeks doing penance for making such a lot of obviously bad decisions (and all in a single night, even!). Although, to be fair, I wanted to get the black dye, because I am pale even during the height of summer, and with black hair I would've looked just like a goth! And that would probably have been a worse decision.

Today I made good decisions including signing a lease for that apartment, making couscous salad, buying raspberry yogurt covered pretzels*, and planning a fajita night for tomorrow!





*Although I did make the bad decision of leaving them in the car while I went to another store and they melted into one gigantic lump of pretzels and yogurt. However, it is an edible lump!


np: A. C. Newman-On the Table

7:04 p.m.

07-27-04

I'm like a rowboat; you're like the Queen Mary.

So the wedding was...I don't know...fine. Once a candle fell over and the preacher leapt out of his chair and saved us all from a fiery death. The candle falling over was a good thing, because it happened at the point in the sermon* when I was just starting to drift off and think about how things would be different if it was my wedding (rule #1: no yellow roses), and it brought me back enough to stand up and sit down and pray and clap when I was supposed to. Also, there was no kissing at all, during the ceremony or the reception*, which was just as well, because I don't know what would have happened if the bride's face had gotten any redder.

I have the obligatory "I'm bored so I took a picture of my feet" picture, and my uncle has one of me showing off my photography skillz by using two cameras at once. After we had been there for about five hours, I realized that I didn't have a single picture of the bride and groom, so I struggled my way to the front of the room (there were far too many tables and people in there) and took a picture in which someone is picking lint off of the bride and the groom's mother-in-law (my aunt) is speaking very seriously to him about something. As it turned out, I was standing right next to the cake and ice cream, so I took some of each and headed back to my table where I peeled the frosting off of the cake and offered it to my cousin who said something like, "Whoa, are you serious?" and ate it with much gusto.

Also, people kept commenting on my shoes, which was weird because they were exactly like these, and I didn't think that they were that interesting or scandalous.

The next day we skipped church (shh!) and went to visit my uncle that is in the hospital. He recently had his leg amputated due to diabetes complications. He had a stroke a few years ago that paralyzed the left side of his body, and it was his right leg that needed to be amputated, so he essentially has no legs at all now. He kept talking about his stump, and how the nurse had to put a dressing on his stump earlier because it was oozing. Then we headed north to my grandparents' house where we ate leftover wedding cake and listened to my cousin*** play the piano. My grandma commented on how they never get to hear me play the piano anymore, but honestly, at this point she probably doesn't want to hear me play (and also, I should make some attempt to actually play something once in a while (even though not having a piano in the house will make that extremely difficult), because 13 years of piano lessons shouldn't just be tossed out just like that). And that was my whole weekend.





*Do other weddings have sermons? because Mennonite weddings do. This one wasn't so bad: it was only about 15 minutes long and got right to the point, and I probably wouldn't have drifted off at all if the guy that did the introduction hadn't talked forever. My parents said that the sermon at their wedding was so long that they had to sit down.
**Actually, I heard the next day that there was a peck on the cheek at the reception, but I (and nearly everyone else) missed it.
***I seriously have about a million cousins. There are at least 20 on my mom's side of the family alone.
np: Yo La Tengo-Magnet

10:30 p.m.

07-24-04

I need to go recharge my camera's batteries.

I just realized that the person that I would generally hang out with at family wedding receptions is actually the person getting married tomorrow, which leaves me pretty much on my own for the whole afternoon (on my own with 10,000 aunts, uncles and cousins nearby). If my teenaged cousins haven't yet reached their surly years I can sit with them. But otherwise I'll have to just sit in the corner by myself. Maybe I should bring a book.

Also, possibly in order to prove my statement that "I am a very good wrapper" (to which my roommate replied, "You are a very good rapper, as well. With an r, I mean."), I did a very fine job of wrapping my two irregularly shaped gifts. I took a picture of it and was going to post it here, but every time I change the size, the picture quality went way down. The poor quality distracted from my very fine job of wrapping. My mom wrapped her presents in towels.

And my aunt was waylaid in Chicago, so she isn't here yet. My parents are going to pick her up (um. at the bus station in Grand Rapids) sometime in the middle of the night, but unless it is closer to morning and there is the promise of going out for breakfast included, I am pretty sure that I will be staying here and sleeping.


np: blah.

12:09 a.m.

07-23-04

I remember pretending I wasn't looking.

I am at my parents' house in preparation for my journey to the south-west of Michigan for my cousin's wedding. And if you had told me while I was walking home from work this afternoon through the hot sun that I would end the day wrapped up in a fleece blanket and freezing to death, I would certainly not have believed you. I would've wanted to believed you, but I wouldn't have.

Also:

-We went out for dinner, where I saw an elderly man and woman enjoying a meal of applesauce and milkshakes.

-I went to the store and bought three shirts, three vanilla-scented votive candles (part of my cousin's wedding gift), two pints of Haagen-Dazs, and one bottle of conditioner. Altogether, it came to less than twenty dollars, which made me very happy.

-Oh, yeah, and we got that apartment that we looked at. We officially sign the lease next Wednesday. Of course, now that it is almost ours, I just feel bad about it, as I'm once again living in a town that I don't necessarily want to live in, but I don't know where else I'd go. And my rent next year will be almost $100 less than it was for this past year.

-My aunt from Colorado was planning on being here for the wedding, but yesterday (which was the day she was planning on leaving) her purse was stolen (which included her train tickets, phone, wallet), and since she was two busy cancelling some cards and getting other cards replaced and etcetera, she missed the train she had intended to take and decided that she should just skip the wedding. Then today we got a call from my grandma that said she had changed her mind and she WAS coming, and could we go the airport in Grand Rapids tomorrow night and pick her up? But when my mom called my aunt to tell her that we would be there and that she could stay over night here, my aunt said that she was going to be arriving at the train station in Kalamazoo. And it totally cracks me up to think of my mom and I waiting and waiting at the airport while my aunt is at a train station fifty miles away.

I mean, I know we'd all just be mad if it actually happened, but still.

-More wedding-related info: apparently the mother of the groom is insisting that all of the bridesmaid's wear two half-slips and (AND!) control top pantyhose because she has a terrible fear of the visible pantyline! It made me feel kind of bad, because wearing a slip at all had never crossed my mind, and I long ago decided that I do not wear pantyhose in any way, shape or form (well. possibly if i was robbing a bank) between the months of April and September.

-My mom was making a blueberry pie, and she told me to stir the pie filling while she made a phone call. So I was stirring and stirring and stirring, and since I'd never made pie filling before, I didn't know what was supposed to happen. So I kept stirring and stirring and stirring, and finally my mom came back and said, "Is that burner even on?" So, apparently heat is necessary in making pie filling. (And for the record, the burner WAS on, but there was something wrong with it. It's an electric stove and the power light was on, so I just assumed everything was fine, even though the pan wasn't getting hot.)

-I am using a computer that is running Windows 95! Maybe I really have gone back in time.


np: Yo La Tengo-Our Way to Fall

1:34 a.m.

08-20-04

Mr. Ft. Lauderdale Flowers.

Have I ever mentioned that I hate Orlando Bloom?

And it's not really his fault. I have no feelings toward him one way or the other as an actor or heartthrob, or whatever he is. And I'm sure he's very nice and all. I just think he has a really stupid name. If it is his real name, I guess I applaud him for standing by it when actors can easily change their names (where would Carmen Electra be today if she had remained Tara Leigh Patrick? more importantly, why have I committed Carmen Electra's real name to memory?). If it isn't his real name, then I have to wonder why he would name himself after a city in Florida (or the worst Virginia Woolf novel ever).

To the point: this is affixed to the ends of one of the stacks, and stares right at me every time I work at the fiction and media desk.


np: work

8:03 p.m.

08-20-04

A fine line.

roommate: I love art fair week. You're mad all the time . . .

me: Yeah, like I'm not mad all the time anyway.



Things that made me angry today before 9:45am:

  1. I almost got hit by a golf cart on the sidewalk.
  2. My book on cd started skipping halfway through my walk.
  3. Drivers have no interest at all in looking out for pedestrians. They will stop over your crosswalks and try to make right turns on red over you all the time.
  4. The lid on my new face wash is broken (it was broken when I bought it, but I couldn't tell because it was shrinkwrapped together with a free sample of foundation). It's in one of those bottles that sits on the lid (like this. actually, not so much 'like' that as that is exactly what I have), but if I actually leave it sitting on the lid, or laying down on its side, it leaks. I have to leave it balancing on its skinny end between the bars of our wire shower caddy.
  5. My Honey Bunches of Oats would more accurately be called Honey Bunch of Oats, because I am pretty sure that there was only one oat cluster in the whole box.
  6. My toaster takes forever to make toast.

Things that made me happy today after 9:45am:

  1. I might have found an apartment. And while it's not exactly what I had in mind (small, two bedrooms (=roommate), no pets, on the other side of town (my last three houses have all been within a block of each other), on the ground floor of the building), my standards have been somewhat lowered in that now I am just looking for something I can afford and that doesn't totally disgust me for some reason (and I'm very interested in just signing a lease and being done with the whole mess). And the apartment did have some strong points: it was semifurnished (the only furniture I have is a bed), had a patio (although, on the second or third floor, that patio would be a balcony, which would be much cooler), big closets, a garbage disposal (life without a garbage disposal has been bleak), a much nicer bathroom than the one in my current house, and an adorable wee stove (although I know that if I were to ever actually cook something on that stove, the smallness would just annoy. but looking at it reminds me of a little dollhouse stove.). My roommate called them a little while ago to say that we were interested in renting it and wondered when we could hand in our applications, but she got a machine and left a message and no one has called back yet.

    I hope our applications don't get rejected. Or that someone else hasn't already rented the apartment in the last several hours. But neither of those things would surprise me at all.

  2. We were doing our weekly cheese sampling at Whole Food, and while we were pretending to shop (so that it didn't look like we had just gone in to eat their cheese samples) we found ginger ale cologne! I sprayed some on my wrist, and have since been raising my wrist to my nose and inhaling deeply every 10 minutes or so. The gin and tonic cologne was kind of a let down, though.
  3. The person who was working before me wanted to get rid of her shift Thursday morning, so I took it. Extra hours are the best!
  4. The people that currently live in the apartment we looked at are total slobs. I always think that I'm terribly messy, but then I see places like that and I feel ten times better about myself. i take back what I said about extra hours - smug superiority is the best!


np: work

6:13 p.m.

07-20-04

More! Because I can't sleep.

I am feeling very brave about something right now, but I know that tomorrow I will feel less brave. Less brave to the point of absolute wussitude, actually.

Also, I need to start buying some sort of painkiller whose name is followed by PM (or at least something without caffeine in it), so that in the case of late night headaches I don't have to wait out the inevitible caffeine rush that occurs after taking Excedrin. Because I'd rather not feel brave at night when I know that I'm not going to feel brave at all in the morning.


np: WDET (right now they are playing the Schneider TM cover of "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" (i'm always so pleased when i can identify a song on the radio), which is called "The Light 3000," and is downloadable from their website, if you wish. (it's under '3's,' which presumably means 'mp3s.'))

2:59 a.m.

07-20-04

Also:

Yesterday I saw a commercial that said The Fellowship of the Ring was coming to theaters this Wednesday. Today I saw someone in the library who was in one of my classes three years ago, and who looked exactly the same as they had then.

I am a little worried that I have accidentally traveled backwards through time.


np: WDET

2:15 a.m.

07-20-04

This entry contains spoilers concerning How to Deal. Not that that would possibly matter to anyone.

As part of an ongoing effort to watch more crap (although, honestly, after all ten hours of I Love the 90s last week, we should probably be trying to cut back), tonight my roommate and I watched How to Deal. It was kind of like a parody of every teen movie (it had divorce! and teen pregnancy! and a cute boy who sweeps the lead character off her feet, but then they have a falling out, but then they get back together! and mandy moore sneaked out of her house while she was grounded and got in a car accident so her mom found out that she had sneaked out! it had a wedding! and a funeral*! and a dog that appears out of nowhere and makes sweet love to Mandy Moore's mom's leg**!) ever made, but I'm pretty sure that it was, in fact, NOT a parody.

The movie did have one redeeming quality, though: my car was in it. I'd never seen a car like mine in a movie before, and I rewound and paused and said, "That's my car!" in disbelief. If my car is running off to California to appear in movies during its spare time, it's going to have to start buying its own gas.

Also, Mandy Moore's love interest drove a car that was just like mine but red (and actually, my parents used to have a red car just like mine). Oh, except his also had a sunroof, because he was a free spirit. I am more of an uptight, 'there shall be nothing but solid metal over my head, thankyouverymuch' type.

Early nineties Honda Civic hatchbacks were apparently very hot around the time this movie was made. It's too bad that I'm only finding out about that now.





*Incidentally, is it wrong to laugh when a character that has had zero development dies (first we saw him scrambling to get dressed after Mandy Moore walked in on him and his girlfriend during an intimate moment. then we saw him buying a greeting card. then he died.) ? Furthermore, is it wrong to laugh harder when the voiceover says, "I thought things were bad when my parents got divorce, but when Michael died of a heart defect. . ." and the rest of the quote was obscured by me asking if the movie could get any worse. It could.
**The dog jumped in an open window, and everyone just stood around and looked at it, as if dogs are constantly jumping into open windows and there is nothing one can do about it except stand around and giggle.


np: WDET

1:35 a.m.

07-19-04

I caught you a delicious bass.

I saw Napoleon Dynamite today (I know it opened a month ago, or something, but I live in the middle of the country and they have to bring in movies by stagecoach (or mule or possibly carrier pigeon. something slow, anyway), so it only got here yesterday), and it was so good! And I almost didn't go, because I read a review that said it was like a bad Wes Anderson cover band, and the idea of something being Wes Andersonesque AND bad made me sad. However, while I can definitely see the Wes Anderson similarities (the least of which being that it and Rushmore each featured an absolutely terrific suit), I can't see the bad part. It was funny and kind of painful and sweet at the same time (it actually reminded me more of Freaks and Geeks than Rushmore (which is the movie that I've seen ND compared to most often), just because Napoleon was much more similar to Bill Haverchuck than Max Fischer, and I could give you 100 reasons why this is the case, but I'm pretty sure that that would bore even me.), and it had the best opening credit sequence that I've ever seen.

Also, I am always sort of confused at the way people jump up and sprint out of the movie theater as soon as the credits start. Did they make plans to be somewhere as soon as the movie ended? Many people missed important Anchorman outtakes due to fleeing the theater prematurely. Almost as confusing, though, are the people that study the end credits of a movie as though they hold the meaning of life. Do they really need to know who catered the movie? Do they later impress people with their knowledge of obscure caterers? I doubt that people will ever start making sense to me.

Finally (and completely unrelatedly. and i know that you aren't supposed to introduce new information in a conclusion paragraph, thanks to a middle school english teacher who used to write comments like 'gutwrenching' on our papers when we would do just that (and we would always do it, just to see what she would write. we also called her 'bloody mary.' but in a nice way.) but i don't care), it is improbable, but this weekend I actually asked the question, "Are there two ls AND two ns in willennium?" And no, it wasn't because I saw I, Robot or have plans to see it or anything like that. I was just curious.


np: Madeleine Peyroux-Between the Bars

1:05 a.m.

07-16-04

Who's to say the way we look at him is truly love?

Also, I went to Target today to try to find a present for my cousin (they apparently don't have a gift registry anywhere, which just seems inconsiderate), and I almost bought her a cow pitcher kind of like this one (but the ones at target were just solid colors, which makes the ebay one about 10 times better). My logic was, if I was getting married, I would definitely want a cow pitcher. I would make a gift registry and put a cow pitcher on it, and I would include the matching cow salt and pepper shakers AND the cow creamer (even though I don't drink coffee).

I finally decided that cow pitchers aren't for everyone. I don't know what I'm going to get for her, though. I always stress out over gifts. And this has added stress, because my cousin was one of my best friends until I was thirteen or fourteen (I'm not sure what happened after that), so I feel like I should get her something great (even though now there is just tense awkwardness between us - except last time I saw her we were able to converse with some degree of normalcy, but that might have been because her fiance was around, and I didn't want to look like a freak (and, in my family, if you aren't talking constantly (and loudly) to someone, you stick out like a sore thumb), and there was Dutch Blitz involved (and who can remain awkward during that 'vonderful goot game?' not me!)).

Also, my cousins don't have a very high rate of staying married (right now I think they're one for four). But I expect good things of this marriage! So I feel like I should get a present that indicates my hopefulness (it gets tiresome going to weddings for people who break up within six months).


np: Blanche-Who's To Say?

6:30 p.m.

07-16-04

You hardly see me lately, if at all.

The library director sent an email the other day saying that we're not supposed to read for pleasure at the public desks anymore, which was pretty much all I did at work. But since getting the email, I actually haven't (except on Saturday, when I just pretended I hadn't seen it and read the last 150 pages of The Once and Future King and all of The Bad Beginning (which, in retrospect, I think I'd already read)). Instead, I have:

  1. updated my diaryland diary.
  2. checked my email. a lot.
  3. perused eBay for a skirt to wear to my cousin's wedding (which is silly, because even if I found the best skirt ever, the wedding is next Saturday and it wouldn't get here in time for me to wear it)*
  4. stared blankly
It has indeed been quite a week.



*I've been looking for a new skirt to wear since the middle of May, but I haven't found anything that is an inoffensive enough color (I have a couple of bright pink skirts that I would like to wear, but I think that my grandpa would disapprove), at least knee length, and something that I will actually wear again. I guess that I don't really need a new skirt to wear, and I can just wear my old green ruffly skirt with a white shirt that will undoubtedly end up with cake or something on it before the day is over.**

**Except that I don't actually eat wedding cake. I like the cake, but there are only about two kinds of frosting in the world that I like (and neither of those kinds are ever on wedding cakes). I used to scrape off the frosting and give it to my little cousins, but I think all of my little cousins are getting too old to happily accept someone else's unwanted frosting.


np: Sloan-Nothing Lasts Forever Anymore

5:51 p.m.

07-14-04

Why can't my feet and I be friends?

I have blisters (or callouses from former blisters) covering the soles of my feet. It is painful and confusing, because:

I've acquired a ride home, though, which is good news, as the walk here almost killed me (and I was much slower than usual, as I had to develop a method of walking that didn't use my left heel, which is where the biggest and most painful blister lives). My ride can't be here until 9:30, though, so I'll have to sit around outside for half an hour. I hope it's not raining.

Also, they act like this is a joke, but everything in the story seems pretty factual to me.


np: work

7:47 p.m.

07-12-04

Fruit not war in 2004.

While I was walking to work, I saw ajobs not war in 2004 sign that had been ripped up into six or seven pieces. I wondered if whoever did it really prefers wars to jobs? Or maybe it doesn't have anything to do with war at all. Maybe they just hate jobs. I'm not sure I'm a fan of jobs, but I am a fan of money, possessions and food, so I guess I have to at least be tolerant of jobs.

Speaking of food, yesterday I was buying some groceries, and watched a woman poke, smell, pick up, toss up in the air and catch, and knock on cantaloupes. It was very fascinating, and the antropological documentary narrator in my head explained, "This dance is how the white suburban housewife selects the most desirable melon."

I just grabbed a cantaloupe that was nearby and wouldn't cause all of the rest of them to fall. I could throw melons around for the rest of my life and never figure out which one is the best. I will be doomed to live out the rest of my life eating second tier fruit.


np: work

1:12 p.m.

07-11-04

Letter to an earwig.

Dear Mr. or Ms. Earwig who has been racing back and forth across my ceiling for the last 45 minutes:

Seriously, just chill out. I'm getting exhausted just watching you. I honestly don't mind if you're in here, which is something you might not believe if you've been talking to the mice that formerly resided here (although, you'd probably have to be speaking to them from beyond the grave, and if that is the case, o magical earwig, please grant me some wishes or something). The mice probably didn't tell you the whole story, though. For example, did they tell you about how they kept eating my lentils? I don't even think they enjoyed them. I think they were just eating them to irritate me. Did they tell you about how they used our stove like a gigantic mouse toilet? Did they tell you how they infiltrated my roommate's thoughts and dreams, causing her to be nearly unable to open any cupboards in the kitchen for fear that one of them would jump out and eat her face? I bet they didn't tell you any of that.

For a more accurate version of my benevolence towards creatures with more than two legs that don't pay rent to live here, you should talk to the big yellow spiders. Every time that I see one of those big yellow spiders I think, 'Ah! Big yellow spider!" but I've never done anything to harm a single one of them. Or better than that, even, you should talk to the ants. Although some of them may have been lost due to carelessness (I have gigantic, clodhopping feet which thud down wherever they please, without paying much attention to what is underneath), thousands upon thousands more have survived and are living quite contentedly within these four walls. I even gave them that bag of sugar after they revealed such a huge fondness for it. I mean, there was quite a lot of sugar left in it, and I could've just as easily plucked each and every ant out of the bag and kept the sugar for myself. But I didn't. I said, "No, if you want it so much, you can have it. Free of charge."

In conclusion, Mr./Ms. Earwig, take a seat, grab a book, watch some tv, or have a cigarette on the porch. Just stop running back and forth across my ceiling. It is making me feel lazy.

Love,

Kim


np: the Decemberists-July, July!

1:00 p.m.

07-09-04

Hooray for when movies sort of vaguely resemble something that happened in my life!

Last night I went to see Mean Girls at the cheap theater, where there was no air conditioning (not that it mattered, since it was cold yesterday anyway), and where during the movie, a man walked down to the front of the theater to retrieve a ladder so that he could change the sign with the movie names on it.

Mean Girls was pretty good, but everybody already knows that. What's important, though, is that it happened to me! Except not to me personally and there weren't only mean girls involved. In sixth grade, my class was very cliqueish and the cool thing to do at recess was to stand around near the basketball courts in little groups. Inevitably, one of the groups had some sort of altercation with another group, and my teacher sat us all down and told us to get along. And while that worked very well in the movie and they all became best friends (or something), in real life all that happened was that we tried to stand around the basketball courts in less compact groups so that it wasn't quite as obvious that that was what we were doing. The next year, we joined the rest of the school district at the middle school and the groups disappeared into a sea of seventh graders. Of course, they all reappeared a few months later when everyone had made new friends, but by then they were super-cliques that spread across the whole county, rather than puny cliques that only existed within the 500 person metropolis that is Clarksville.

Unrelatedly (or possibly very relatedly), during my seventh grade year, my friends and I ate lunch outside at the picnic tables every single day. There is a picture of us in the yearbook, sitting in coats and hats with our bag lunches, snow drifts all around. In fact, I think that it is the only 'candid' photograph that exists of me in any yearbook that I have ever been a part of (although I don't think I have the ones from my freshman or sophomore years in high school, so maybe those are full of me. yeah, probably).


np: work

12:22 p.m.

07-08-04

It is okay to snicker at tragic things you find in old newspapers because all of those people are dead by now anyway.

Today an old woman and her husband came into the library looking for a newspaper article about someone who was hit by a train in 1885 ("No, it was a car." "No, George, it was a train!"). We eventually did find one sentence about it, buried in the middle of the paper within one of those columns that tells who is visiting whom and who bought some land and, apparently, who died after being 'run over by the cars' ("I told you it was a car!" "No, George, train cars!"). On the front page, though, there was a whole paragraph about a very valuable cow that had passed away.

A couple of weeks ago, I looked through some old newspaper microfilm for someone else, and came across a death notice that went something like this: "[some guy] hanged himself in his kitchen on [some day]. He had not been feeling well for quite some time."


np: Love Spit Love-Am I Wrong

8:54 p.m.

07-07-04

Blah times infinity.

Well. All I can say is, it's a good thing Anchorman* opens Friday, because otherwise the highlight of my week would be that there are four episodes of ALF on TV Land tonight.

And, as it turns out, I really WAS in a bad mood last week. It became undeniably evident when I went for a walk in the arboretum. There was a bench there that totally pissed me off. A bench. It was the way it was angled and and cemented to the ground. It was like it was saying, "When you sit on me, you WILL look at the river!" and it just made me mad. Because no bench is going to tell me what to look at.

On the other hand, I spent the weekend eating lots of fresh fruit (watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, blueberries and black raspberries (which I picked by the side of the road, and I have the scratches and mosquito bites and burrs** in my socks and shoelaces to prove it. Those plants do NOT want you to have their berries, and they call in all of their little woodland buddies to help with their defense). And I drove most of the way to Clarksville on 55 mph roads, which made me happy. Highway driving gets me down, as I seem to drive the slowest and smallest car on the road, and every time I look in my rear view mirror there is something large and menacing approaching at an alarming speed. And my dad said that it looks like I've been losing weight, which would've been nicer if he hadn't said it just as I was about to take a bite out of a sandwich that was the size of my head.

Also, I was glad that John Kerry picked John Edwards as his runningmate, but I don't remember why. It was probably just because they're both named John***. I feel like there is some clever way that they could incorporate that into their campaign, but all I can come up with is "John Kerdwards in 2004," which isn't clever or funny or even memorable.



*Remember when I hated Will Ferrell? Probably not, but I really did! And now, every time I see that tv spot where he looks at the dog and says, "You know I don't speak Spanish," I laugh for at least two hours. At least.
**burs? even after looking it up i'm not sure which is the correct spelling. i just want to make sure that no one mistakenly thinks that i had raymond burr stuck in my shoelaces.
***Actually, there was some reason that I liked John Edwards, but that was long ago during the primaries and I can't remember what that reason was. In any case, I will just remember that I did like him, so in November I'll actually be voting FOR someone (well, for the vice president) rather than merely voting AGAINST someone. (here ends the first and last mention of politics you will ever find in this diary.)


np: A. C. Newman-Drink To Me, Babe, Then

9:45 p.m.

07-01-04

And magic comes, just not today.

I was trying to figure out why my computer was refusing to record one certain mp3 onto a cd (it would record every song except the one that I wanted the most), and since I actually knew where the guide for the software was, I got it out and looked at it. However, in the troubleshooting section under "You cannot record on a CD-R/RW," all of the possible problems are things like, "Is a CD-R/RW inserted in the CD-R/RW drive?" and "Is the CD-R/RW inserted upside down?"

It made me really mad, because would anyone wonder why they were having trouble recording if they didn't have a cd in the drive? Would the actually have to go so far as to look in the book to realize that that was a problem? Would the space in the book possibly have been better used on slightly more complex problems?

I think I might be in a bad mood, but it's so hard to tell with me.


np: Gorky's Zygotic Mynci-Happiness

1:00 a.m.

previous | next