The New England Society for Tea Fetishism

It is so not cool when you spend five bucks on a sandwich, take it back to work, and then find that it is completely run through with ham/bacon/some kind of pig grease.

In other news, we actually went to see a house today and if the two people who have priority over us don't take it, we could be in luck. It's on a canal that empties right around the corner into the bay. It's 2000 per month, but it'll have to do since every other place we find is always taken already.

Someone is systematically going through my archives. I would ask, "George, is that you?" if the location wasn't pegged as Brooklyn. So, umm . . . happy reading there, sir or madame, as the case may be.

"I had one of those, what you call 'ums--right--a FERRET in my ASS."

So, I haven't been feeling very well for the past two days. Not in an "Oh, whoa is me," kind of way, but in a "Goddamn, that's incredibly annoying!" kind of way. Certainly not as bad as when I had to bend down and pretend to tie my shoes because I was actually making an upright-fetal-position so I could get through a stomach cramp without soiling myself.

Other than that, I got nothin'.

Here's some advice for the novice drinker who might stumble across my blog: Don't drink the punch. No, really, stay away. Luckily, I'm not speaking from experience, although I did have some and it was quite tasty. This was Amber's birthday party over at her house where Jeff, Peter and Matt also live. They didn't have a punch bowl so they put a mixture of vodka, rum, pineapple juice and Juicy-Juice in a turkey pan. It was hunch punch, Thanksgiving style. The trick is to know when to stop, since so much sugar mixed with large amounts of alcohol is never a good thing. Just ask Seth, who managed to make some room all over the downstairs toilet tank, the toilet seat, and the top and bottom of the lid. However, I did partake in a shot of tequila, which gave me my very first drunk vs. toilet stare-down about three hours later back in the dorm. Fortunately, I won.

I spent most of the evening being chatted up by an affable young gentleman named Tim. I'd met him at the Tidewater as one of Marshall's friends (Marshall, if you remember, lived in the room next to mine last year and woke me up with the oddest movies and Led Zeppelin sing-alongs). He's also friends with touchy-feely Chris, who has been behaving very well lately. Maybe he reads my blog. Anyway, Army of Darkness was on the TV without any sound (Jake was trying to set up a karaoke machine and failing miserably) and Tim was quite impressed with my ability to insert the dialogue. So we talked for the rest of the night, played with a wind-up fishing game that Amber got for her birthday, and generally had a good time. He gave me his number (and signed it Timmmaaaaaah!, which I have to admit it so appropriate) and now I'm rather giddy.

Now, maybe it was the liquor talking, but while I was happy for the attention because I think Tim is a cool guy who also has the added bonus of being pretty easy on the eyes, he seemed just a bit too quick with the flattery. I'd like to get to know him better, but I think I might also try and talk to somebody who knows him so I can see what his deal is. In other words, I don't rush into this kind of thing all willy-nilly with my pants around my ankles. I tried to tell that to George who, back at the dorm, talked to me at length about how he doesn't want to see me get hurt, and that I should be careful, and all those things that an overly protective male relative would say, including the bit about the shotgun. I guess I didn't realize the kind of intimacy that playing the fishing game projects.

Remember from about two posts below (way back when) that I was almost made to weep by a Sylvan Learning Center commercial? Last night I went to Duke lecture hall to watch a movie called "Peaceable Kingdom" on factory farming and a farm sanctuary. I can't stand to watch men cry, especially when it's because the love of a cow made them realize that they had been dead inside. Seriously, me [/in tears]. And the veal calves. And the thousands of discarded chicks in a dumpster behind the hatchery--sorry, Tracy, still no chicken for me. I'm going to try my best to abstain from things eggy until I get the funds to buy free range. Organic milk would be nice, too.

Okay, I gots to do the meme too because I have a serious lack of work today and would like to stretch my brain for a bit thinking of songs with significance.

1. Airbag, Radiohead--reminds me of my old electric razor since the beginning is fairly buzzy-sounding and I would play it really loud in my room freshman year when I was shaving so people outside couldn't here me shaving. I have definite "hygiene sounds" issues.

2. The Safety Dance, Men Without Hats--yeah, so, ummm, Tracy and I really liked the movie Biodome (and both Weekend At Bernie's movies, so it just goes to show that we have like, a fifth grader's taste in comdies) and there's a cleaning-up montage to this song, and after that, whenever we heard the song (like in the middle of a family game of Pictionary ferinstance) we dropped everything and actually did The Safety Dance.

3. Joyful Girl, Ani--I was listening to a burned copy of Dilate (Thanks Amy!) way too much right before graduation and this song just reminds of how much I loved everyone at college and how much I miss all those crazy Hoodlums.

4. Superman, Five For Fighting--when I hear this song it immediately makes me think of Sept. 11th, because it was on the radio in the gym all. the. fucking. time. in the weeks afterward. Also, songs with flying themes and mentions of airplanes---so not cool to be in the top forty during that time. I hate that guy.

5. Anything by Abba or Tracy Chapman--the hell that was my living situation freshman year of college. Also under this category: Amazed by Lonestar, Unpretty by TLC, the Garth Brooks album where he pretended to be an alternative rocker and had his chins airbrushed from the cover of the CD.

6. Closing Time, Semisonic--the summer right after I turned seventeen. I am sitting in the driver's ed car outside of Instructor Bob's house which is quite near the Salem Commons, which is hell to drive around because none of the lanes are marked and it's tourist season. This song is playing while I wait for him to get whatever he needs and then come back down to tell me that if I hit a tourist downtown I get twenty points. What do these points count for? I don't know. I liked Bob.

7. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, AC/DC--this song will forever remind me of my mom driving in the car and singing along to the chorus in the lowest, graveliest voice she can muster.

8. The Grasshopper (I think), We're About Nine--the We're About 9/ilyAMY show in the second floor of that tiny coffee house in Ellicott City. Other than the tininess of the place, what I remember most is the lead singer kneeling down on the floor during the chorus of this song and the other two band members standing around/behind him, and Rob from ilyAMY scoffing at the theatricality of it all. Great night. Too bad they had to close that place down.

9. I Saw an Angel With Your Hair, John Gorka--the first song off of Amy's mix tapes that I really loved, and makes me think of all the hours I spent in Amy's car being taught the wonders of folk music.

10. Any Raffi music--remember the North Shore Music Theatre, Tracy? Of course you do. Tracy's mom had season tickets or something because we were there every Friday, with breakfast at Brothers' Deli before and lunch at Friendly's after. I can't remember any of the shows we saw, but I do remember sitting in the darkened theatre (it was theatre in the round, to boot) with children's music, mostly Raffi, playing through the speakers.

Much like at Hood, it took me two years to get to the gym, but now that I've gone I'm going every day. Eight hours a day I'm sitting on my ass here! Not good. My booty does not need to spread out any wider. It's fine the way it is. Well, maybe it could be a little firmer. Okay, heading into TMI Territory. I did the stairmaster (or The Booty Machine, as I called it) for ten minutes, which made my quads spontaneously combust, and then I moved on to the eliptical runner for half an hour. Afterwards I was sweaty and tired and quite happy to have actually raised my heart rate for more than the ten seconds it takes me to climb the stairs to this office every day.

The gym here is quite long, in the basement (meaning no windows), and without a radio or television. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing yet because while the audio/visual stimulation does tend to make the time go by faster, I also don't have to listen to Sean Paul and other bad pop music in an endless loop. It's mostly gigantic weight machines with a few scattered exercise bikes, two stair climbers, one eliptical runner, one rowing machine, and two treadmills, one of which is so old it looks like it would probably short circuit and slam you into a wall. But I'm going every day now, so I guess I'll just have to get used to it. It's amazing the way buying a bikini can motivate you.

when one finds oneself choked up while watching a commercial for Sylvan Learning Center. Sylvan Learning Center! Why not a Hallmark commercial? Strangely enough, it brightened my day if only because when I felt my throat get tight I had to laugh at myself for being such a sap.

So here's the essay I wrote for my personal essay class after Bush won the election. It's long, I know.

I was in marching band for all four years of high school and the band secretary during my senior year. For those of you who can’t control yourselves, insert band-geek joke here ________. One of our most repeated mottos was, “Hope for the best, but expect the worst.” In other words, hope for a gold medal rating, but don’t expect anything better than a “Hey, at least you showed up!” award. Hope for mild weather for the Beverly Santa Parade, but expect it to be so cold that the condensation from your breath freezes your bottom lip to your piccolo. It’s a philosophy that I’ve applied to everything from cafeteria dinners to my father’s fourth tour in rehab. So, on the morning after Election Day, I sat in my tiny, overheated, windowless office, hoping hard for a victory for the Massachusetts Liberal, but fully expecting four more years of the Born-Again-Christian-Cowboy from Texas.
The thing about marching band is that after four years of weekend practices, frigid football games, sweltering three-mile parades, last place rankings, and bronze and silver medal ratings, at my very last competition we earned the first gold medal rating in the fifteen year history of the Salem High School Marching Band. However, after four years of an administration that ignored important environmental policies, endorsed writing discrimination into the Constitution, and mismanaged a war that has left over one thousand Americans dead, I was faced with Kerry’s concession speech from Faneuil Hall.
Maybe I was too exhausted at the time to have much of a reaction. I went to a friend’s house the night before to watch the election results, lost track of time, and ended up leaving at 3:30 in the morning while the battle for Ohio continued. On Wednesday morning, not showered, my bed-mangled hair pulled back in a careless ponytail, I trudged into work ready to sleepwalk through my nine-to-five day on less than four hours of sleep, not yet knowing who would be president for the next four years. None of the major networks had an answer for me. The talking heads on Fox News Channel seemed pretty sure of themselves, but they’d been putting Bush farther ahead the night before than any other network, so that wasn’t any big revelation. I was exhausted, very close to election burnout, and dreaded that the results wouldn’t be final for weeks to come. When Kerry conceded before my lunch break I could only manage a disappointed sigh and muster feelings that didn’t amount to much more than, “Well. Same shit, different . . . Uhh, just the same shit then, I guess.”
It's not that I'm ambivalent about politics. On the day that this Massachusetts Liberal received her absentee ballot in the mail she raced back to her office, marked all the ovals for the local elections (choosing women and Democrats when she wasn't familiar with either candidate), and made sure the oval next to Kerry's name was dark and evenly filled. Ten minutes later I was back at the campus post office shoving the manila envelope through the outgoing mail slot even though it was a Friday and I knew that the last mail pick-up of the week had already come and gone. It gave me such a sense of accomplishment, a pride in doing my civic duty that was so ebullient I suspected myself of being deluded while I practically skipped back up the hill to the Pratt Center and my cramped little office. My inner cynic laughed at my belief that my one vote, an absentee vote in a state that would undeniably go to Kerry by a landslide, meant anything at all. The part of me with the huge smile and the dancing feet believed that I had just changed the world by putting pen to paper.
For the past few months one of my favorite activities has been bitching about Bush. It's actually been a hobby since the first time I heard him say "subliminable" at a campaign rally in 2000, but when the Democratic Primaries began this year one would think I was trying to turn pro. I was tired of waiting through reports on what your bathing suit says about your personality and sick of hearing Laci Peterson updates on television news outlets before they got to what I wanted to hear. Then I was tired of hearing every single talking head on every single network repeat the same three talking points over and over again. I started relying on left-leaning Internet news sources for my political information. That was where I learned about the Bush Administration's disastrous inability to fund their own No Child Left Behind Act, their eagerness to take sexual orientation out of anti-discrimination guidelines for federal jobs, and their efforts to stop programs that promote condom use instead of abstinence in AIDS-ravaged Sub-Saharan Africa, among many, many other things. I read Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, which, along with making me absolutely furious for an entire week, gave me ammunition to use against those who complain that the liberal media controls the political discourse in this country. I read Lt. General Romeo Dallaire's heartbreaking Shake Hands With the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda with Bush's promise of "Not on my watch" in mind while genocide began in the Darfur region of Sudan.
I was fired up, often working myself into a lather repeating what I learned only hours before from a newspaper article or one of my internet sources. The words tumbled out of my mouth almost faster than I could form them and I felt my face grow red and hot every time politics came up during meals or before classes. There was a thrill to being so informed, to having an actual opinion, to sharing facts that might change a person's opinion about something important. I'm also an incurable gossip, so there was also the satisfaction of telling my friends all the little semi-secret things that Bush and his cronies do that the mainstream media neglect to report to the public because they're too busy telling us how Martha Stewart feels about the food in prison. As with gossip, there's a feeling of power that goes along with being the one with the information, no matter what that information might be.
The problem is that while I lived in Liberal Democrat Land I neglected to learn the geography of Bush Country. Almost all of my friends are other than Republican, and of those several are what even I consider to be a bit too liberal in their views. All of my news outlets had a left-biased slant or certain contributors that were blatantly anti-Bush, and even when there wasn't a slant I would invariably add my own. When I raged against Bush's offense of the day I did it with others who shared my point of view. Preaching to the choir is fun, but when no one was there to challenge my beliefs I was lulled into a false sense of security. When I screamed and hollered about my anger, I thought to myself, "That John Ashcroft. What a card!" and, "The American people aren't buying this shit." Seriously, the people on the internet totally agreed with me, so what did I have to worry about in this election? Apparently a hell of a lot, according to approximately 51% of Americans who voted on November 2nd.
I really had no idea what I was up against until I took advantage of a new feature on Blogger called "Next Blog." Blogs, or Web Logs, are essentially public online journals, and Blogger is a service that provides basic templates to users for free. Blogs are such a masturbatory exercise. It doesn't matter what you say is your purpose for keeping one—it’s all about you. It's all about the excitement and self-satisfaction of knowing that people read your opinions and know that you exist. If I keep a blog simply to stay in touch with my friends from college, which is what I tell everyone, then why did I sign up for Statcounter, another free web-service that lets me know the geographical location of every visitor to my web-page, how long they stayed, how many times they've returned, and if they got to my page directly or through a search-engine?
But enough of my metaphorical self-abuse and back to the "Next Blog" feature. There is now a button at the top of my blog that, when clicked, will pull up a random blog. On Election Day I figured that most politically-minded bloggers would be posting like crazy, and I wasn’t disappointed. Actually, I was disappointed. Disgusted might be more appropriate. Person after person wrote about how much they hate Kerry and how much they love Bush. A couple people were absolutely ridiculous—a middle-aged, Mid-Western woman who extolled the manliness of Bush as contrasted with Kerry’s supposed metrosexuality comes to mind—but most of them seemed quite lucid. For the first time I saw Bush supporters not as some faceless mass of ignorant country bumpkins, but as actual people. And there were so many of them.
In the words of William Safire, “Nobody ‘blew’ it.” Voters turned out in record numbers. There were just more of them than there were of us. Whether or not the majority were misinformed about the war in Iraq, or homophobes, or religious zealots intent on creating an American theocracy can be debated. But they won. Maureen Dowd says . . . well, Maureen Dowd can go lie down in traffic for all I care. She complains about how Bush “got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance, and religious rule,” when she is guilty of fabricating quotes and twisting events to make Kerry seem like the stiff, elitist buffoon that the Right wanted him to be, and she has yet to print a retraction on any of it.
The conclusion to this election should have had me fuming. There should have been much tearing of garments and gnashing of teeth. I should have been crushed. Instead I felt mildly annoyed and then walked over to Wood Hall to buy my lunch. The majority of the American voting public, no matter how wrong I think they are, made their choice and now I have to live with it just as I have for the past four years—that’s all there is to it. After such an intense campaign season I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of hating millions of people I’ve never even met. I hoped for the best and expected the worst and I got exactly what I expected. Half the country is not living in my reality. As I have said several times before about many different people and organizations, “Their logic is not our logic.” Of course, I haven’t given up my anger completely. Fifteen days later, as the stress of the election cools down, I find that the fires are flaming up again. Most of that heat is now directed at the press, and more so at the liberal press than the more conservative factions. It’s hard for me to get mad at the regular American voter when there are hacks like Maureen Dowd, a journalist whose job is to tell us the truth, bringing down the guy she’s supposed to be rooting for by making things up. “Who among us doesn’t like NASCAR?” indeed.

Not really, though. It's just that nothing says that vacation is over like coming back to a stinking hot dorm room, opening a drawer, and having a centipede jump out at you. I forgot to pack my alarm clock, which would explain the extra room I had in my duffel bag to stuff in my toothpaste refills, so my mom bought me one in the CVS in Copley Plaza. Not only did she ride the subway with me, she sat at the bus stop until the jitney came. I have the feeling that she thought she was saying goodbye to me for a really long time, what with me trying to move down here for a while.

I think I might have to call res. life about the heat in my dorm, because I was also stinking hot last night. It made it even harder to get back to sleep after I had my zombie nightmare. I guess I'm not as over that fear as I thought.

I went to breakfast at Brothers Deli with Tracy and we both ate three gigantic slices of French toast, a side of homefries, and then went bikini shopping. If that's not the way to do it, I don't know what is. Thank god we're testing at Salem State tomorrow morning because I spent way too much money on clothes this vacation and I sure as hell could use a paycheck. Not that I didn't need new clothes--I feel like I wear the same five outfits week after week and I don't have any fancy shmancy dress-up duds--it's just that it's money that can't be replaced until I find a job. My mom keeps asking me what I want for graduation and I'm tempted just to ask "Do you have $1,000 bucks lying around? $500? How about first and last month's rent? That would be great." I need to find a place to live.

My dad finally took me to see Nana up at Hammersmith last night, and then we went to Spud's for a little food and a couple drinks. Nana is not doing well. Her back isn't hurting her quite so much, but she barely knew who my dad was and she didn't remember me at all. She didn't remember most of her grandkids but there are at least fifteen of us so that's not too surprising. She's still pretty much with it, she just can't remember anything, and it's really sad because she knows that she should remember the things and the people we were talking about. She just can't. So it was nice to get a bartender at Spud's who never made a cosmopolitan before and put in way too much vodka because I was in need of a good stiff drink.

Creepy puppet

Speaking of creepy, I really never learn my lesson, do I? I watched an online clip from The Ring Two the other day and nearly jumped out of my skin, and then watched the trailer on On Demand. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Guess what I was thinking about when I went to bed last night?

We're at the flower show no more than ten minutes when I notice that a pond in a nearby exhibition is undulating like there's something alive in it and what do we see when we walk over but two Australian black swans making lots of rotten little baby swans. The male is riding on the female's back making thrusting motions with his tail-end while there is nothing visible of the female except her head and neck (which he is vigorously biting) coming up out of the water below him. Diana is busy filming, my mom is trying not to completely bust out laughing, and the lady next to me is holding a little boy and telling him that the swans are "playing." File that one under "bawdy stories to tell at the bar."

And even after that the flower show was still a good time, with lots of beautiful gardens--some with live turtles--design competitions, and a gigantic shopping area. I think that last time we may have made it to a fifth of the vendor stalls. This time, with Diana, we probably saw about 90% of them. My feet hurt, my eyes ache, but it was delicious to see green trees and thousands of flowers after such a cold and stormy winter. I think I can make it to spring, now.

Last night I stuffed myself on garlic bread and butterneut squash ravioli at Vinny T's and then today I went up to Kittery with Tracy and had scallops and haddock for breakfast. Broiled haddock and scallops--I forgot to mention the vast amount of fried calamari I ate last night as well. Brian always gets us at least two appetizers at Vinny's. We went to the Old Navy outlet store which is pretty much exactly like the Old Navy we have at the mall at home except that in Maine they tax clothes. One of Tracy's co-workers was telling her how ridiculous it is for us to drive all the way to Kittery with gas prices so high just to eat lunch and shop at a store that isn't any cheaper than it is at home. I guess he doesn't understand the definition of "road trip." Anyway, I bought a little cotton dress and two tank tops that will help transition my wardrobe to spring.

I'm going to the flower show at the Bayside Expo Center tomorrow with my mom and Tracy's mom. It was amazing two years ago, so it should be a good time.

And full of pizza. The ride up was fine, even though it snowed the whole way and we had to switch buses about thirty minutes into the trip because the wipers were funky. That's all for now. I'm just happy to be here.

I woke up this morning totally unable to face the day and seriously thought about resetting my alarm for nine and then calling in to work and saying that I forgot to set my alarm. I hate 8am. But I got up anyway and made a bowl of oatmeal. While stirring it I got the idea to call the snow emergency line and lo and behold, school wasn't opening until 10am, so I put my oatmeal in the fridge, set my alarm for 9:03, and hopped back into bed. It was like a miracle. God bless one-hour delays.

ETA: The age of this building combined with the high winds outside make it sound like there are monkeys banging on the window. Monkeys, I tell you, banging on the window with their little monkey fists, trying to get inside so they can eat all the candy and poop on my keyboard. Monkeys!

ETA again: The Fametracker forums are closing on March 14th. Imagine me running around in circles waggling my hands and making little eh, eh, eh, noises like a panicked schnauser. You have no idea how catastrophic this is.

Oh my god with the nastiness last night. It was raining ice, little bits of ice in high winds that stung my face and coated the sidewalks and the roads. After dinner Shawn gave me and Peter(not huggy Peter) a ride back to our dorms. We ended up sitting in his car for about ten minutes waiting for the ice to melt off the windshield. And the wind kept blowing in the cracks between the suite door and the doorjamb, and the lights were flickering, and it would have been a good night to bundle up with a cup of tea and a huge piece of carrot cake.

Every so often I get a little proof of the existence of my ESP, or at least my ability to recognize patterns. I walked by the cash machine on Monday afternoon and thought, "That thing is going to break down again any minute." Last night, on the way out the door to Shawn's car, I looked at the little screen and it said, "This machine is currently being serviced. Sorry for the inconvenience." At least this time I'm not totally out of cash.

I'm going home on Friday! Tracy and I are going to eat ridiculous amounts of fried seafood and spend money at Old Navy. I can't wait.

Well guess what? I got no class! Today Southampton College closes at 3pm, due to an incoming storm. My class starts at 3:30. And I may or may not try to improve my paper. It's worth a shot, but I doubt it can happen.

Yikes, man, yikes.

The paper is done. It is terrible, but done is far better than done well.

But, Sarah, you say, you're blogging right now. And to that I say, uhhhh . . . I don't got no idea what you talking about. I have to work on a paper I should have done over the weekend but I was too relaxed and too engrossed in the macabre movie-a-thon that Sci-Fi and USA and TNT had going on Sunday to get up and crack a book. The paper is due today at 3:30--only three pages in 14 point font, but I have absolutely no idea where to start. With any luck the coming snow will panic the administration and school will be cancelled at 4pm. I'm beginning to think that I should have taken the Edgar Allen Poe class, thirty-minute presentation and all.

Instead of watching Battlestar Galactica and going to bed on Friday night, I spent three hours in Borders listening to CDs and telling Shawn the wonders of Terry Pratchett. I've started him off with Small Gods since they didn't have the first Discworld novel (which isn't that good anyway) and it works well as a stand-alone. So perhaps sometime soon I will have someone to talk with about Terry Pratchett books, and my life will be that much closer to being complete.

If you haven't been in the Borders music section lately, they have a new system where you scan any CD into a little machine and it'll play you 30 second excerpts from each song. I now have on my list the London Philharmonic version of Handel's Messiah, Rufus Wainwright , possibly Pete Yorn, and a live Dar Williams CD. I did buy the Muse CD, which was not a disappointment, since it's like the second coming of Jeff Buckley mixed with a little Bends-era Radiohead. Very pretty and slightly bombastic.

We tried to go out to eat at Paul's on Saturday night, which is a little Italian place in Southampton, but as we drove by we found that the windows were entirely covered in plywood. So we drove over to Pumperknickel's, a little bar/restaurant that George wanted to try. After the very nice hostess converted us a table for two into a table for four, we sat down, looked at the menu and found a whole bunch of high-priced German food. Wienershnitzel, anyone? Too expensive and nothing for Shawn, who is totally vegetarian, to eat. After debating on how to make an exit with our dignity we got up and I apologized to the hostess for leaving since she was so nice to find us a table, but we have two vegetarians with us and you know how that is. Then, onto the Edgewater, where we were seated immediately and had a reasonably priced meal and lots of yummy free bread. I may have to take my mom there when she comes for graduation.

Another going away party and another cake. People are beginning to leave for their new jobs in droves. Alice, the head of advising, will be working at a satellite NYU campus a couple days a week starting in April. The new secretary will also be out for a chunk of April. And I will be alone. A lot, I think. I'm going to need more cake.

I realize that for the past few weeks my Fridays have been spent sleepwalking through work, eating dinner, then going back to my room and trying not to nod off before Battlestar Galactica comes on at 10pm. And all because I have to have a wild evening of poetry reading and darts on Thursday night.

I have nothing to blog about except that the rosters are coming back in which means that now I get to send out ridiculous amounts of "Hey, you're failing/excessively absent/MIA," e-mails. Also, I kicked ass at darts last night. It was almost like a religious experience. So, because I'm completely unoriginal, I'm stealing Amy's "10 things I've done that you probably haven't" list. In no particular order:

10. Sang "The Star Spangled Banner" in Camden Yards before an Orioles game
9. Smelled whale breath
8. Touched a red nurse shark
7. Ate a roasted cricket
6. Read most of The Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English
5. Been to an X-Files convention in an airplane hanger on a de-commissioned Naval air base (and my nerd quotient goes through the roof!)
4. Been asked out by a Hood College security guard
3. Went to two junior proms and three senior proms
2. Slapped a guy's ass for a dollar
1. Ate frog legs and liked them

It's amazing the things that can get me practically foaming at the mouth. I went from happily full of cake to completely bent out of shape in 2.6 seconds. A student came in and said that her folder went missing from the art department and could I make a replacement for her? This is in no way the student's fault, but I know that I've had to make her a replacement folder at least twice already. So I went downstairs, got her original admissions folder from enrollment services, made photocopies downstairs because our machine has some kind of electronic Munchausen Syndrome in which it claims to have a "paper jam" in the document feeder, with no physical evidence of said paper jam (I think it just likes to be prodded by the xerox man--and I have to tell Amy that John Mayer's "Daughters" is on the radio right now because I want to share my pain), and then went to grab a label from the file holder on the desk. But no labels. Where there used to be page after page of labels there were none.

My vision literally blurred. I screamed (in my head, of course) WHERE THE HELL ARE THE LABELS?!?! The first thing that popped into my head was that Alice's replacement threw them out--she threw out a perfectly good jar of hard candy, why wouldn't she toss out the labels as well? Cut to me prowling around the room like a bloodthirsty . . . I don't know, but whatever it was, it was bloodthirsty and quite possibly afflicted with ADD. I must have checked that folder ten times before I descended upon Susan's desk and grabbed a sheet of labels. Of course, after I got the label typed up and stuck on the folder, I went through the file holder and found a whole folder full of the damned things.

I'd blame it on pms, but it would be really, really early pms. Is there such a thing as post-menstrual syndrome? Batshit menstrual syndrome? I don't know. I feel like I had some kind of lycanthropic episode there for a minute. My heart is still pounding.

And on another note: Hey there, Norbizness. Thanks for dropping by.

Actually, it's more like, "The birds! The birds!" I woke up this morning at 7:30 to a sparrow orgy right outside my window. Why are they so loud? There's a nest in the corner where the balcony connects to the side of the dorm and it's right outside my room. I banged on the window which only stopped them for a minute. Then I put on my robe and stood under the nest until they all flew away. Next time I'm throwing snowballs.

The search for a house out here goes on. We're checking out a two bedroom place this weekend. It's only 1,400 per month. If they'll allow us to have four people living there, and there's a way to convert another room to a bedroom, we're good to go. Of course, we have other options.

I'm reading at the MFA reading tonight that starts off the lecture series. Wish me luck.

Edited because apparently I really like the word "tonight"

And so little to do. Strike that, reverse it. This will be my last blog appearance this morning, and no IM (sorry Tracy). We got a bunch of snow and all I got was this lousy one-hour delay. I have to edit three stories for Proteus and I have to finish a four page essay for Modern Poetry. Thank goodness Hullot-Kentor wants everything in 14 point font. And then there's all the random office stuff that must be done. So here I go.