hate me today, hate me tomorrow

[day five: something you wore]

we wore uniforms in my high school. white button up shirts, plaid skirts, black shoes, and, depending on who the principal was at the time and how strictly they enforced the uniform, green plaid ties. i didn't mind the uniform on the whole, but it instilled in me a hatred for tights so deep that i have never bought or worn a pair since i graduated almost six years ago.

we all wore black tights under our skirts, and words cannot even begin to describe how much i hated them. i hated putting them on. i hated taking them off for PE. i hated washing them. i hated how our bathroom was full of my sister's and my drying tights. i hated when they got runs in them. i hated when they weren't the perfect opaqueness. i just hated everything about them.

and i still do. i refuse to ever wear tights ever again in my life. ever.

*Hate Me - Blue October

mr. postman, look and see if there's a letter in your bag for me

[day four: your mailbox]

living in an apartment building, we have one of those big boxy mailboxes for the building that has twelve boxes in one. i live on the third floor and it's in the middle of the first, under the stairs. this makes it convenient to check the mail on my way back home before i go up.

i've mentioned it a million times on here before, but i don't get much mail even though i love getting it. our mailbox is usually filled with the week's coupons, ads, and super savers. then there are some credit card offers and bills. a lot of the mail we get is for my father-in-law (he moved overseas and has his mail forwarded to us) which makes me slightly jealous even if it is mostly junk mail.

i get the occasional card from my grandma and the announcement from mason, but there are two consistent pieces of mail that i get every month: my writer's digest and a spanish pork catalog. the writer's digest was expected, but i still have no idea why i'm getting the spanish pork one, seeing as i'm not spanish and don't eat pork. and it's not like some random junk catalog. it's an actual subscription. i think someone may have signed me up as a joke or something? i dunno. but they do have these stuffed olives that i kinda wanna try. they're stuffed with things like anchovies and peppers that i've never heard of and actually sound really good. i love olives. so, whoever subscribed me to spanish pork, thanks.

*Please Mr. Postman - The Marvelettes

i got my diploma for my master's today (on my mom's birthday). and i was thinking about it, and i realized that i got my undergrad diploma on my mom's birthday too. i dunno, i thought it was kinda cool. 

i'm never gonna leave this bed

[day 3: something you love]

there are so many different ways that i could approach this topic. i could go the easy route and change the something to a someone. i could go the predictable route and rave about my books for the millionth time. i could go the lazy route or the tongue-in-cheek route or the pedantic route. i'm not exactly sure what this route is, but i am going to talk about beds. namely, my beds, and how much i love them.

i love my beds. (you know, in case you were having doubts about how lazy i really am.) the bed that is still first in my heart is the bed i (not so) recently deserted after getting married: my high school bed. that bed is just the right amounts of comfort and torture (depending on the mattress situation), that not only was it a great place to do everything from sleeping to homework in to watching tv, but it also gave me something to talk about when i felt like the situation needed a story about sleeping on springs.

(my absolute favorite pillow, though is the one i used from elementary to ninth grade. it currently lives on my bed in the desert, and it is just amazing. summers are made that much better because i get to sleep on it for another three months.)

my current bed and i got off to a kind of rocky start. not that i didn't like it  or anything, i just couldn't love it. a month or so after sleeping in it, it got a bit annoying. the pillows were too high and wouldn't flatten out and gave me neck cramps. it squeaked too much. i suddenly felt springs. but just when i was starting to completely give up on it, it changed. and it was comfortable again. at first, unlike my old bed, the minute i woke up i would leave it, and i wouldn't go back until night fell and i was ready to sleep. but suddenly i found myself reading in bed. i had breakfast in it. i started to do my homework and watch movies and study in it. and, i think i'm beginning to love it. not to say that i spend all my time in bed, or even anywhere close to what i used to spend, though.

there was this book my sisters and i had when we were little, one of those silver/gold bound picture ones that i'm totally blanking on the name of, about a squirrel whose bed turns into a ship and he goes sailing around the world in it. i always felt like my bed would be the type that take me around the world, too. 

*Never Gonna Leave This Bed - Maroon 5

made the toast, burned the eggs

[day two: your breakfast]

i have found that if i go into the kitchen for breakfast when i'm hungry before actually deciding what i want to eat, i will shove everything i see down my throat and then spend the next hour regretting it and feeling really, really gross. so if i can't decide between fruit yogurt, toast, cereal, or oatmeal with brown sugar and blueberries, i sit in the living room getting hungrier and hungrier until my mind decides to make itself up. some days, though, i'm just not hungry before lunch and skip breakfast altogether.

today, i had an omelet. and not just any omelet, but a pepper jack and salmon omelet made with salmon leftovers from the other day.  i also had a cup of raspberry ice crystal light to drink.

(i've had fish three times in the past four days. this is a lot of fish.)

because i don't want to have a post dedicated entirely to what i ate for breakfast, here are some awesome facts that you can use to make yourself look extra smart today: the earth gets 100kg heavier every day because of cosmic dust accumulation, chips are super flammable and can work as well as bark to start a fire and burn long enough to ignite damp wood, researchers with brain scanners found that it takes 1/5 seconds and twelve parts of your brain to fall in love, only about 2 percent of the world's population has green eyes, and finally, the color red is scientifically proven to make you hungry.

*Pitiful - Sick Puppies

could you tell me what to say?

i have been having trouble blogging recently: finding the time to do it, finding things to write about, finding the correct words to use. it's all hard for me. so i was thinking about those thirty day challenges that are all over the internet like weeds, and i thought, maybe that's what i need. a thirty day challenge to tell me exactly what to write about every day. so i googled thirty day challenge, and picked the first thing that popped up. i'm pretty sure it's supposed to be a picture challenge, but whatever. for the next thirty days (hopefully) i will write a post about exactly what it tells me to write. ready? let's go.

[day one: you]

this is one where taking a picture would be so much easier. i'm not exactly sure if i should do looks or personality so, here's both.

i look and dress like the kind of person that blends into the crowd, and i'm happy with that. after getting married this summer, i gained weight and people assume i'm pregnant. i'm working on that. i'm almost twenty four years old (eek) with absolutely no idea where i want my life to go aside from the vague dreams that i can't bring myself to really work towards. i like books more than most people, and sadness is my default emotion. i like to read out loud but don't do it very often. i like burt's bees chapstick, nostalgia, and music. i have dreams to travel the world, and all the laziness and procrastination to make sure it never happens. i can't remember a time in my life without little kids around. i'm too practical to be cool and probably wear jeans and hoodies far too often. i'm not a picky eater. i lack motivation and the ability to see things through to the end. the last nail polish color i had on was papaya.

*Tell Me What to Say - John Mayer

you do what you must and you do it well

so i'm sitting here trying to study, and it feels weird. i'm getting flashbacks from undergrad and getting distracted by the air. and then it hits me: i haven't studied in over a year. i haven't had to. last semester i had one class with one take home exam. the semester before i had three classes: one open book exam, one take home, and one final paper. the semester before that: two take homes and one final paper. i can't even remember when i had to study for a test in class. i was bad at studying before, but now i'm just completely awful at it.

anyway, today was long. it started at six and i won't be home until at least ten:thirty. i was at mason at seven:thirty this morning when i bought coffee and then promptly spilled some of it all over my hand and jacket while walking down the stairs. don't ask me how. and aside from the problem of it being really, really hot, i had nothing to wipe it off with. i finally got a napkin, and when going to throw it away, i threw away my phone instead.

and then there were geese reenacting every us vs them movie in history right next to me. there was one flock on one patch of grass and another on the other side of the sidewalk. they were sitting honking at each other like they were getting paid. then two geese start fighting out of nowhere, flapping their wings at each other and biting necks and stuff. let me tell you, the hitting of goose wings is loud. the rest of the geese surrounded them honking like crazy. eventually one of the geese flew off to the lake and all the ones left behind just sat on the grass together. the lone geese was honking and honking at them, but he was ignored. lesson learned: geese have no sense of loyalty.

watching my brother in his spelling bee later in the morning was fun. and my mom dropped me back off at home and we listened to bob dylan and that was fun. (perks of being carless.) but after studying i have class, and i just want to go home.

*Buckets of Rain - Bob Dylan

it's just my luck to end up getting stuck to everything

after installing and updating a new virtual machine on junior, fitting it with an operating system i have never used before, and continuing with this semester's murder of the free memory space on my computer, the programs and plugins i need to do my labs are finally downloading right. i spend the time they are downloading alternating between watching the orange bar tell me how much progress has been made and doodling words and song lyrics in the notebook open next to me. i'm sprawled out across my bed on my stomach, the sunlight glares off my computer screen, and the hum of a soccer game on the tv reaches me from the living room. i rest my head on the back of my hand, my wrist bent, and i can smell the ink in my black pen - taken from mason's parking services a couple years back. it's almost sweet, and it tugs at a memory in the back of my mind.

and suddenly i'm in a different room, lying on my stomach on the carpeted floor, bathed in the sunlight of early spring. i'm scribbling furiously into a red binder, desperate to get this thought out before i forget how to word it perfectly. i could smell the ink then too, sweet with a hint of something else i couldn't take the time to pinpoint. my mind is lost in a world of magic and cocky teenage guys with perfect hair and rolled up sleeves. my sister pulls me out of the story to tell me i'm pathetic. i ignore her, thinking instead of the reaction my part will get tomorrow at school, at how my friend will continue where i left off. i put my pen down and flip back over the pages i had just written, my handwriting covering both sides. the stack of written pages is thick, we'll soon need another binder. i add the page number at the top outside corner of each page, circling it, amazed at how much we've already written. the thoughts that there are only a couple months left of school, that the story would have to end, that i wouldn't experience the thrill of seeing my friend walk in with the binder in the morning for much longer, that i would probably rarely see my friend at all anymore are pushed out of my head. there's still enough time left that i can ignore them for now. and i am happy.

*All Hail the Heartbreaker - The Spill Canvas

making the same mistakes again

the other day in class we were talking about how apple is like that obnoxious kid who grows up to be that obnoxious adult that thinks he is the best thing since juice boxes and can do no wrong, even when his mistakes are staring him right in the face. now, i have nothing against apple. i think it makes cool products, even though the only apple thing i own is my ipod. but my god, apple, do you not learn?

quick history lesson: when computers first started being the big thing there were two main forerunners: apple and microsoft. apple seemed to have a head start, but windows thought about the bigger picture. with a few smart ideas, they eventually took over the market. one of its main smart ideas: don't tie the software to the hardware. windows operating system could be used on a gazillion machines. apple was exclusively for apple.

more recent history: the dawn of the smart phone. we, again, have two main forerunners: iphones and android phones. iphones came out strong, but they made the exact same mistake they made before. iOS is for the iPhone. only. android's os is for a whole bunch of phones. we saw what happened last time this mistake was made.

and surprise of all surprises, it is happening again. the iphone hold on the market is shaky. androids have almost caught up to them. and now, when basically all conceivable new features have been made and the changes to new phones will be more along the line of storage space and processor speed instead of super cool never before seen things, iphones will start to fade.

in a few years there will be the group of apple die hards and hipsters that are using iphones and claiming superiority, but the majority of the people will be using android phones. and apple will have no one to blame but themselves.

of course, i'll still be using my crappy little dumb phone that has fallen more times than i can count, has a camera that's not even measured in megapixels, and a memory that's worse than pathetic. holding on to it is starting to be done out of pure spite now.

*Falling Away With You - Muse

you always make me smile

gah it feels like my whole life is being taken over by this os security class. aside from the actual three hours a week assigned to this class, there are the extra meet up times, the office appointments, the time [that will be] spent doing crazy group projects, hours and hours trying to get stuff downloaded on my computer (that won't download) to do the million labs and homework and assignments, actually doing them, and then of course all the time i spend just panicking over everything. twelve weeks. well, thirteen if i count spring break. i cannot wait.

also, the next two months are crazy full of events and special occasions. there are bridal showers and weddings and lots and lots of birthdays. and then after that comes all the graduations. and then there's the summer which includes new babies and more weddings and family gatherings. and this is with me being  a social recluse. i can only imagine what it would be like if i still had friends. (i actually am excited about a bunch of these, even though it sounds like i'm not.)

things that are keeping me sane through all the stress: my brothers, my nephew calling me this morning to tell me that he liked the brave little toaster which i had bought for him because i loved it as a kid, laughing at wedding registries (is that mean?), getting wedding invitations in the mail, my other nephew switching his real stitches for butterfly stitches (i'd take an open wound over stitches any day. they make me so queasy), finally getting my financial guarantee letter so mason can stop harassing me for money, and books that have nothing to do with school (though i don't have much time to read them these days :/).

*You Always Make Me Smile - Kyle Andrews

i can do whatever pleases me

who was it who decided to make the cursor blink? i'm sitting here trying to remember how to be unsulky, unwhiny, and at least mildly entertaining, and there's a stupid vertical line on a white background just blinking at me. it's like a silent, almost dance-like rendition of the jeopardy theme song, but a lot more mocking. it's funny how i can type things for like a million and seven hours every day, and i never notice the blinking cursor anymore. but the second i pause to think all i can see is the flashing. now you see me. now you don't.

there are a million things that i wanted to do that i pushed to the side when school started out of the blue. but i have decided that two days of classes, even if they do remain stressful, does not mean that i have to waste my entire week. right? so, after this week, i will be back to my to-do list that contains the things that were not important enough to make it to my other to-do list of important things. the fact that neither of these lists actually exists outside of my head matters very little.

now, i'm not going to bore you with the contents of both lists. i'm only going to mention one item from the not-so-important-but-doing-first-anyway list. a few years ago i decided that i was going to get back into ceramics. after years of annoying my parents, they built a quasi studio in the backyard. i spent one or two days relearning how to throw pots on a wheel (and failing miserably) and then never really made it out there again. and then i left the house. for a while now i have wanted a cookie jar, and one morning i had the brilliant idea that i would just make it myself. but i never did.

last week i got a block of clay from my mom, brought it home to the kitchen so i couldn't ignore its existence, and decided to make my cookie jar. problem is (aside from being lazy to the point of disability) that i can't decide on a cookie jar shape in my head. i've been flip flopping between ideas for too long, and now i don't trust my judgement. everything that pops into my head is getting progressively worse. should i do a normal jar shape similar to winnie the pooh's honey pots? should i do a bear jar (the show i'm currently watching has one)? should i make it look like a cookie? give me ideas people, because i am all out of them.

*Guess I'm Doing Fine - Beck

steal away into that way back when

when i was in kindergarten, my friends and i would sometimes play aladdin during recess. i don't remember actually playing the game much, but i do remember the five minutes or so before when we would choose characters pretty well. i would always choose to play raja. for those of you not fully educated in disney characters, that's jasmine's pet tiger. i'm not sure why i was so pressed to play an animal, but i was the tiger every. single. time.

when i was in second grade, my friends and i made a teddy bear picnic kind of club where, once a week, we would each bring a teddy bear to school to play with at recess. i would always bring a small white bear i got with a pair of pajamas. he wore a matching pair. his name is stuffy. he still sits in the toy box in the playroom at my parent's house. i have this distinct memory of us all letting our teddy bears climb up the jungle gym. stuffy was the smallest one there.

when we were all much, much younger, my sisters and i would play this game about witches and small children. the details are a little foggy, but i remember two of us being witches (usually me and my younger sister) and we would catch a little girl (my older sister) and we always ended up turning her into a cat. we would play this while wearing our footsie pajamas which were fuzzy like fur. we would also play whatever my older sister was learning at school. i remember playing ancient egypt (my younger sister and i were slaves and whipped with a jump rope) and reenacting the experiences of chinese immigrants coming to san francisco.

my younger sister and i would also play these long, elaborate games that would last for weeks with little figures (rainbow brite and these small dogs and cats come to my mind) and the boxes from those hickory farms cheese and meat gifts. every night we would shove everything under my bed to be pulled out and continued the next day. the figures went on wild adventures, had little song and dance numbers, and even suffered through the mundane things like cleaning their houses/cars (the boxes).

one time, my sisters, a neighbor girl, and i all played doctor to a tree that had a root that was sticking up. another time my sisters and i made a lemonade/lemon stand (the only business we had was the neighbor girl and a lady who took some lemons, said she had to get the money from her house, and never came back. every saturday was filled with softball and soccer games, and whoever wasn't the one playing would hang out at the snack shack and playgrounds.

sometimes, i look back on my childhood and see all of the stuff that we had that kids these days don't, and what we didn't have that they do, and i'm just so grateful for everything. i had a great childhood, especially those california days. sometimes i think about how different i would be without that.

*Stay Gold - Stevie Wonder

makes me forget the things i never said

i am sitting here in the mason library trying to teach myself how to be unstupid and suffering from the tortuously slow internet connection that, for some reason, keeps disconnecting and being generally uncooperative. what i really want to do is to smash junior against the wall and scream at the top of my lungs and tell anyone who will listen that i give up, but, being in a library and in public, that behavior is pretty much frowned upon. grr. instead, i decided to blog out my frustrations. it was at that moment that i realized that i haven't blogged from mason in like forever. not that it makes a difference, really, but i found it significant because, despite the passing of months, i can't quite seem to shake this identity crisis, and at the moment i'm very caught up in things that i used to do but don't do anymore. no matter how stupid and seemingly meaningless they are.

but anyway, somewhere between that realization and writing this post, i wandered into the land of unposted blog posts. i have one hundred and six drafted "posts" for this blog. i find that kind of ridiculous. sure, some of them are not actual blog posts. there are notes, reminders, songs to listen to, videos to watch, and what have you. but then there are a lot of posts that i left to search for a title lyric and just never posted. there are notes on things to write when i have the time that i have never written. there are song lyrics that must have inspired a post once upon a time, but i have no idea where i was going with it. i don't even remember all of these things that i once wanted to say but never did. there is just so much half-started stuff that i'm starting to think it means more than it does. i've been rewriting an email to a friend for three years. i've been thinking about remodeling my blog for a year. i only washed half of the dishes in the sink. i am getting a phd because i refuse to finish studying. it's known in my family that i will never eat the last of anything. i am incapable of finishing things.

of course, i may just be incapable of teaching myself to be unstupid and this is my brain's way to stop trying. procrastination and psychobabble: my two favorite things to do.

*Things I Never Said - Deep Purple

i hate feeling stupid. i really do. and i feel like, once you reach a certain point in your education, it is no longer designed to educate you. it is just there to make you feel stupid.

like, you'll be learning how to add and subtract numbers your whole life, and then suddenly one day they come and tell you that from now on, you will be adding and subtracting letters and the answers will be fruit and if you mix the answer with a certain chemical that you have to basically invent with the help of the fairies and then send it to china using only the idea of pixels and the theory behind time travel, then you'll have what you need to start your assignment and you have three minutes to finish everything. and you're just like, "wait... what? how are you supposed to perform mathematical functions on nonnumbers? and i don't know the theory behind time travel. and why china?" and then the person standing in the front of the room looks down their nose at you and says something like "you should know this" in a deep and foreboding voice laced with ridicule and just a hint of disappointment. and all you can think is, why should i know this? how should i know this? you know what i know? i know everything that your system has taught me so far. if you didn't teach me to do this then why exactly do you expect me to know how to do it? does knowledge of random things i have no interest to just float around in the air getting inhaled by people and lodging itself in our brains? am i not sniffing the right air? should i be drinking some special water? what do you want from me?

gah. 

time goes by so slowly

yesterday was the longest friday. which i guess was an appropriate way to end what i'm pretty sure was the longest week of my adult life. maybe even the longest week of my entire life. actually, weeks have definitely not been this long since the invention of the internet. maybe not even since the invention of the car. but after i finish the million assignments to do today the week will be officially over.

it is taking all of my will-power to sit here and do my work (i'm waiting for a program to finish installing on my computer so this is not really procrastinating) instead of getting my book from the bedroom and finishing it. i couldn't even bring it with me to the living room because i knew if it was within reach i wouldn't do any work. and seeing as this is the one class that i think i'm really screwed in, i probably should put in the effort. right? right.

speaking of this class (OS security), i took it because i didn't want to take a malware engineering course. since i registered so late, there wasn't much to pick from (plus, i took everything i actually wanted/semi-wanted to take in my last degree). i get into class at seven on wednesday, bored to death from my four:thirty class, and guess what he decides we should learn this semester? malware engineering on computers and phones. which is basically harder than the class i had opted out of to take this one that was easier in the catalog description. stupid professors. stupid luck.

anyway, to take a short break from my school complaints which i'm sure will resume eventually, here are a few links to look at. first, check out these inappropriate answers to test questions/assignments. they're pretty amusing, and most of them are not the cliched "find x. here it is." ones. next, the world's population is expected to hit 7 billion pretty soon. this link shows where you fit in among all the other people. it's pretty cool. i was the 5,106,445,605th person alive on earth, and the 80,068,484,098th person to have lived since history began (i'm not quite sure where these people in history lived before earth). it also shows information about the population growth of the country you live in, what you can expect to see in your lifetime, and other interesting facts. it's definitely worth a look. finally, here's a link to a short story that was written by a college friend of mine way back in my undergrad days. (it's a 99 cent ebook.) i haven't had the chance to read it yet, and haven't read anything he's written in forever, but i'm extremely jealous of him so i thought i'd share.

*Hung Up - Madonna

let's go, time's a wastin'

this morning, as i checked four of my email accounts, my blackboard account to see when an assignment was due, my patriotweb to see if my bill was paid, my bank account to make sure i had enough money to buy all the text books i suddenly need, my amazon account to track a package, my facebook, and my blog, i realized that i spend a lot of time signing in to things.

i must have spent a year at least just typing in my mason id and password into all of the different mason sites a million and three times a day for the past six years. none of them let you stay signed in when you leave the page, secure but annoying. and then when there are conflicting sites (like my two gmail accounts or my mason mail and hotmail) i have to keep signing out of one and into another throughout the day. there's another nine months gone. and when i go from joe to junior to a school computer, i have to sign into everything all over again. i've spent at least three months doing that. 

and then i wondered, if i spent less time signing into things, would i actually be more productive? ignoring all the time i waste on the sites themselves, am i using precious moments to type and retype variations of 'skabli' and my password? let's say i spend fifteen minutes a day signing in. in those fifteen minutes, i could have written or edited a page or two of a novel. with a page everyday, i could have a publishable book done in a year. if i spent those fifteen minutes teaching myself how to program, i could write my own malware and infect the worlds' computers thereby guaranteeing myself a job with the us government after i get out of jail. if i spent the time exercising, people wouldn't constantly congratulate me on being pregnant. if i spent it doing something religious, i could work my way towards heaven. if i even just spent it playing online games (flood-it on google + is my obsession) or watching netflix i would at least be having fun.

but i'm not. i'm just inputting a username and password. i'm wasting time waiting to do things to waste more time. there has to be a more efficient way to do this. 

*Tine's A Wastin' - Johnny and June Cash

i can't help but to hear an exchanging of words

in class yesterday we were discussing tapping (as in bugging phones/computers/etc, not the dance). my professor kept saying things like "when an average person is overheard," "when a politician is overheard," "depending on what we overhear." it reminded me of the common phrase that i'm sure everyone's heard/used/read/watched. "i couldn't help but overhear..." when, in all likelihood, you very well could have helped it.

overhearing is passive. when you overhear something, you are not trying to listen. you are just sitting minding your own business when the sound waves wander upon your ear uninvited and unannounced. tapping a phone is about as far from passive as you can get. you are not just strategically drinking your coffee near the couple having an argument to get a good story to tell at lunch, you are being way more invasive. you are taking active measures to ensure that you hear everything that is said through that phone. you are listening to conversations thought to be private. you are not just "overhearing" anything.

i dunno why it annoyed me so much, but it just seemed like they were rationalizing. you mainly only rationalize things you feel guilty about or know you shouldn't be doing. i'm not saying that tapping is inherently a bad thing. in some cases, it is needed. but the wording used to describe it just rubbed me the wrong way.

*I Write Sins Not Tragedies - Panic! at the Disco