The New England Society for Tea Fetishism

I really like eggnog. I mean, I really like it. I wish they made it all year long, although if they did I'd probably be ten pounds heavier.

My mom keeps buying what I can only describe as lounging socks. They are thick and made of various soft and squishy materials. And she keeps buying a pair for me, too. I now have four pairs and I love them. I'm running the risk of getting a soft-and-squishy-sock fetish.

I'm back on the pill. This semester I started missing classes because of my cramps, so I decided it was either time to get off my butt and get some exercise or time to get back on the pill. I have not gotten off of my butt, therefore, the chemical assistance. Maybe my skin will finally clear up, too. It's much better than when I went off the pill the last time, but I'm still not happy with it.

Yeah, I know it's been a while since I blogged, but I've been pretty freakin' sick and when I first get home I'm never very eager to waste time on the internet. Not like I do at work, at any rate. Also, I got the last two Dark Tower books for Christmas. I spent Christmas day and the day after reading one and now I'm about two-hundred pages into the other, with around five-hundred to go. I'm being kind of obsessive, I know, but I started the series when I was in the eighth grade, so I've been waiting a really long time for Stephen King to wrap this up. Almost as long, in fact, as I've been waiting for Christopher Pike to write the promised sequel to The Cold One, and if Tracy weren't in Florida she would read that and know exactly what I'm talking about.

Christmas was good. I spent a quiet day at home with my mom and Brian, eating candy and watching the new extended version of The Return of the King for around four hours. Oh, along with the books I also got, among other things, The Royal Tenenbaums, the third season of Angel, and the third season of Futurama, which wasn't on my list but somehow I had this really weird feeling that Brian would get a Futurama season for me. Must be my woman's intuition. Still, I have to say, I was very pleasantly surprised. He also got my mother an Alfred Hitchcock collection, and so far we've watched Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Family Plot, which was unexpectedly (and intentionally) hilarious. Who knew that a brakeless car careening down a mountainside could be so funny?

My poor mum pulled a muscle in her back while she was outside with the snowblower the other day--what a load of snow we got! When we went grocery shopping I had to get everything off of the shelves for her and also grab the lunchmeat off of the deli counter. I felt so bad for her, but she's feeling much better today now that she has some Ben-Gay. She also had a weird run-in with Blockbuster after she returned Return of the King. It came in two cases, two discs to a case. Some guy called her up later that afternoon and tried to tell her that it was supposed to be eight discs, and where were the other four discs? She kept saying that that was how she rented it, just four discs, but he wouldn't believe her. He even asked if she had any small kids at home who might have put them somewhere. She must have been on the phone for a good five minutes going back and forth with this guy. I was getting so pissed off at whoever was talking to her that I wanted to grab phone and tell him that he was fucking crazy and to stop harrassing my mother. He finally hung up after she yelled at him that she wasn't going to pay for any missing discs since that was the way they gave it to her. The really crazy thing is that right on the Blockbuster website (Brian's so smart; he got right on the computer to check it out) it says that there are only four discs to the extended version of the movie that they were renting out. Someone called back later on and said not to worry because they called the people who had the movie before we did and apparently they only had four discs as well. The girl didn't apologize for implying that my mother is a thief, though. I just don't understand it. I mean, couldn't they walk over to the freakin' wall of Return of the King dvds that they have and see that behind each display box there are only two cases with four discs in them?

This damned cold just won't let go. I wake up every morning hoping that I will be able to breathe again, but no such luck. I've probably been spending too much time Christmas shopping at the mall and not enough time curled up on the couch, bemoaning my plugged sinuses.

I finally saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind the other day. I highly recommend it to everyone. Beyond the wacky timeline and the odd (sometimes creepy) visuals, it was a really beautiful love story. And Elijah Wood was quite good playing a non-hobbit. I also saw I, Robot, which was a lot better than it should have been considering that it employed a whole host of Hollywood cliches including Will Smith.

Here's a little rant for you: I was watching a Boston area program the other day and the people on it were talking about the genocide in Sudan and about all the people who are starving there. That they were talking about it is, of course, a good thing, because it's not very publicized and people need to know what's going on in the world. I don't remember exactly how it came about, but they were talking about how in a famine you eat what you can get, and the female host made a comment about lactose intolerance and how it's such a yuppie disease. Yes, intestinal cramping and diarrhea are such yuppie problems to have. Because no one in Africa is lactose intolerant. Because only rich people who have so much food they don't know what to do with it can have a food allergy or intolerance. It just seemed like such an incredibly ignorant comment to make. Also, if I remember my Discover Magazine correctly, lactose intolerance is actually the norm world-wide and not the exception. You know why? Because it's unnatural to drink milk after you've been weened from your mother. It goes against the order of things to drink milk as an adult. I mean, if you're starving and you're lactose intolerant and the only thing to eat is a piece of cheese, you're probably going to eat it, but it's still going to wreak havoc on your intestinal tract.

I'm home, have been since Friday when the lovely Ms. Thompson dropped me off at the Burlington Mall. I have to say that it was so very good to see you Amy, and I'll figure out when I can get up there as soon as possible. Would you like some company for New Year's?

Amy got to meet my suitemate, Tracy, her boyfriend, George, and our friend Shawn, who was very happy to sit and chat in the suite for a good hour and a half. She also met Jeff, Peter, and Amber, who were all quite high at the time, so god only knows if they'll remember her. But at least now she can put faces to names.

She gave me lots of good gossip from Frederick, but my favorite story comes from her dinner with her lovely former bosses, Dick and Mimi. Apparently they like me. Anyway, they asked how I was doing and Amy told them that I was sorta kinda seeing this boy and Mimi said, "Well, I guess people can change, then," or something to that effect. I'm not gay. No, really.

I came down with a nice little cold yesterday, and while it isn't making me feel completely miserable, it is severely disrupting my sleeping pattern. I don't think I slept for more than half an hour at a time last night. Mom brought home NyQuil. I'm hoping that that will do the trick.

Amy's coming today! I cleaned my room and everything.

Last night I went out with Amber and Jeff and Seth, just over to the Tidewater for a few drinks. Seth played his weekly dart tournament while Jeff and Amber and I stood around and chatted. And Amber and I laughed when the bartender tried to flirt with us. At the end of the night we played foosball and I finally won a game when I paired up with Seth. Seth is the foosball master. Amber was being a terrible goalie, as usual, when she suddenly said that she had to sit down or else she was going to hurl. She had one too many, I suppose.

The thing about the Tidewater is that it looks like a house. At the front door there is a deck and about four steps down to the parking lot. Jeff and Seth were off walking to their cars while I had Amber by the arm, trying to get her to take the steps slowly and one at a time. We were doing fine until the last step. I'm a terrible judge of weight, but I think Amber and I are pretty much equal, and I'm just not that strong since I stopped power-lifting. She took the last step before I was ready to counter-balance her and we both ended up on the ground, Amber more than me because I let go of her so I could break my own fall. Seth and Jeff came over and looked at her for a moment before helping her up and all I could think was, "big strong Jeff, why weren't you the one carrying her out?" Boys are oblivious.

And I'm not the one stealing things this time. I had robots in the ovaries all day Friday, and I was still pretty exhausted from three late nights in a row, so I konked out around 8:30. I woke up at 3:51 am and got up to go to the bathroom. I also heard some voices that sounded like they were coming from the laundry across the way. As I made my way over to the suite door to see what was going on (because I'm a nosy bitch), I realized that our couch was missing. It was there at 8:30 when I went to bed. I thought that perhap George and Tracy, tired of sharing the tiny bed, had pulled it into Tracy's room for George to sleep on. Saturday morning I talked to Tracy and found out that she didn't have it. She said she saw it out there at 1:30 am. So between 1:30 and 3:51, two or more people came into our suite and stole our couch.

Saturday afternoon I called security. An older gentleman came by, reminded me to lock the suite door before I went to bed, and helped me get a couch from the uninhabited suite next door. He also told me that the undergrads are searching for furniture to replace furniture that they've damaged so they won't get fined. Our door is locked 24 hours a day now.

The thing is that my bed is against a wall and right on the other side of that wall is the couch. I have no idea how those kids got the couch out without waking me up. They must be extremely sneaky little buggers.

This morning I turned on TV Land to find MacGyver brawling with Bigfoot. Seriously, it was Richard Dean Anderson in the woods battling it out with Sasquatch and all I could do was stand in front of the television and think "what the fuck?" I was totally hypnotized. And to top it all off, Bigfoot had a mop of hair hanging in his face, like Cousin It from the Addams Family. As it turns out, it was just a big guy in a suit with some kind of voice box manipulator, but I was convinced that it was really Bigfoot. They did all kinds of weird shit in the 80s, so I thought it could be a possible story line.

Then, this afternoon, as I crouched down to get my orange juice out of the fridge I heard, with an electric guitar and back-up singers instead of a cute jangly acoustic, "Every thing I need, is right here in my hands, right here in my hands, right here in my hands," coming from the television behind me. It was an HBO commercial. How totally unexpected.

I gotta stop partying like it's 1999, but at least I was in bed last night by two.

The big thing in my life right now is trying to decide who I want as my thesis advisor. I was going to pick Clark Blaise, but he's retiring. Indira Ganesan isn't here anymore. I thought about asking Reeves, but I don't know, he's a busy guy. Reeves suggested I ask Roberson. I've had two of his classes and I really like him, but he's a literature professor and I'm not sure that he's been a thesis advisor before (although that may actually work to my advantage). I feel like I'm asking someone on a date, you know. It's that, "I really like and you and respect you and I want to spend some time together" thing. But instead of dinner and a movie he'll be tearing my manuscript apart.

Last night I sat down to read an application essay tht one of the work study kids in my office gave me to look over. Before I could read a full sentence, Amber, one of my suitemates, came in my room and asked if I wanted to go watch a dart tournament at the Tidewater. So I was at the Tide last night until around 12:30-1am, with Amber, Seth (who was in the tournament), and eventually Jeff after he left work. Jeff was beat. I was ready to go home and go to sleep when we were invited to Frank and Jess's house. They're a couple that live just down the road from Jeff, so I thought, what the hell, we'll only be there for a little while. 2:30 rolled around and I was falling asleep on their couch.

But you know what? They had dogs, two golden retreivers, one of which was as big as a bear and belonged to Frank's dad, and they were both aggressively affectionate. I usually love animals who like attention, but this was too much even for me, especially since they were both sooooo needy. They remined me of your Fuzzy, Amy, although these guys weigh at least fifty pound a piece. But they still want to sit in your lap. And there were bongos. Four of them, being played along with various songs that sounded like world music. It didn't stop me from going to sleep.

Eventually we all got up and thanked Frank and Jess for letting us come and got out of there. They are very cool people and I hope we'll hang out again. But last night I was so tired I could only managed a pitiful little, "thanks" and then walked out the door. As we pulled out of their driveway we saw a deer walk across the street in front of us. It was pretty, and kind of fat, and its friend followed right behind it a second later.

Okay, I probably shouldn't be writing about this on the internet, but it's the big thing of the day for me, so here goes.

There is a guy in one of my classes who wrote an e-mail to my suitemate (also in the class), basically telling her that he thinks she's fucked up. His exact wording was something like "there is something definitely not right about you." After a few days and another e-mail, she wrote him back telling him that she didn't want him to talk to her anymore or e-mail her anymore and to just leave her alone.

The thing is, he doesn't understand why she is mad at him. He doesn't see anything hurtful in what he wrote in the first e-mail or in subsequent e-mails in which he says he thought she was "anti-social." He also wrote her an apology in which he doesn't apologize but instead tells her that he thinks he didn't do anything that should have made her mad in the first place. Now almost every time I see him outside of class he asks me why she hates him and why she's so fucked up. I told him that she isn't fucked up and that she doesn't like him because of the e-mail.

Today I got an e-mail from him, once again asking why she's mad and why she's fucking insane, with the extra-added bonus of an accusation that we made the whole thing up because he looked over the emails he sent her and can't find anything that would have made her so angry, least of all anyplace where he called her fucked up. He went so far as to include all of his e-mails to her and her one e-mail to him as evidence.

I tried to tell him in very direct English why his e-mails made her mad, why she is not fucked up, and why he should examine why this whole thing bothers him so much. I also told him never to talk to me about it again.

So that's how I spent my morning, instead of typing up my reading log and going over my final paper for American Novel.

Last night I was supposed to go to the Wednesday reading, go straight home after the Proteus meeting, and write my last personal essay of the year for several hours. Instead, I went to the Tidewater, made myself hoarse screaming "Yankees suck!" at Peter while we played fooseball, and carried Tracy out of the bar at the end of the night. I don't know what she had to drink (other than a screwdriver) but she was in rough shape. She's not used to hard liquor. I had a dream that her boyfriend, George, told me that she had two shots of something and seven bottles of something else, which is absolutely ridiculous. Speaking of Absolut, I found a new drink--Absolut Citron and cranberry juice. It's not icky like regular Absolut and the citrus takes away the sting of the vodka. Also, on Wednesday nights there's an MFA special so I get my mised drinks for four bucks a pop (technically five since I always leave a dollar for the bartender).

I got home at 1:40am, felt bad about not writing, put my laundry in the wash, and wrote until 3:30. I really had nothing clean to wear in the way of pants so it was kind of necessary. Also, I came up with a topic for my essay. Now, a topic for my final paper in American Novel is something can continues to elude me, but I better figure it out fast since it's due on Monday at 6pm.

I actually did make a long post on Monday, but blogger saw fit to give me a big fat error message instead of actually publishing it.

Thanksgiving was great, as usual. My cousin Holly's son, Nicholas, is two and he runs around like crazy. He had me chasing him up and down the hall all day. He'd point down the hall and say, "You go!" and I would run and he'd run after me. There was no point to this game. No one was supposed to catch someone else. We were just supposed to run. And I was a very tired Sarah at the end of the day. He is such a good little kid. He didn't cry or whine once the entire day, and he's always smiling. It's a stark contrast to my cousin Stephen. When he was a baby he would scream if his mom left his sight, and some of his first words were swears. Now he's sixteen and has facial hair. And a girlfriend. Where does the time go.

On Monday night I ate a cricket. It was a rather small cricket, and it had been baked and salted, making it taste kind of like a pumpkin seed. I was over Jeff and Peter's house with Tracy, George, Amber, and Seth, and for some reason Seth had a baggy full of roasted crickets. He really wanted us all to try them. I wasn't going to eat one until Seth pressed one into my hand as I walked by him. So, without looking at it, I shoved in my mouth and chewed. It didn't taste terrible. It wasn't especially crunchy. The thing that made it hard to swallow was the knowledge that I had a cricket in my mouth. Jeff and Peter, the two smart people in the house, didn't try one. I think I grossed Jeff out a bit because I chewed the cricket up and showed it to him (see-food diet) and then I kept talking about how I had cricket stuck in my teeth all night.