Tuesday, April 24, 2012

look at this stuff, isn't it neat?

last week i came across this which led me to this which introduced me to book spine poetry. back in undergrad i took a course that had us trying out things like writing flarf, spoetry, and black out poems. it was one of my absolute favorite courses i have ever taken, and when i first heard of book spine poetry i felt like it was something that we would have covered in that class if we had the time. anyway, instead of procrastinating on ebay today, i decided to save my money for the smart phone i'm thinking about maybe possibly buying (though i probably won't) and tried my hand at book spine poetry with some of my books (which showed me that i need books with titles more suitable for making poems). here are some of the ones i came up with (and yes i do realize that some are completely awful. it was a lot of fun anyway):

Pride and prejudice never let me go outside the ordinary world.

The world according to Garp: stardust, darkness, a swiftly tilting planet.

Dear John,
By the time you read this, the stuff that never happened [will be] gone with the wind.
Love, Stargirl

Paper towns catching fire fade into the wild: a great and terrible beauty.

Suspicious characters looking for Alaska fear no evil, brave, new world.

Wake the book thief, prep the last tycoon. The mists of Avalon fade. 

The fault in our stars eclipse[s] the long fall home to Woefield.

An abundance of Katherines speak atonement, and only to deceive. 

Go ask Alice the perks of being a wallflower far from the madding crowd. 

The fault in our stars eclipse[s] the history of love. 

The stranger, the watcher, monster. You don't know me. 
as i said, it was a lot of fun. and since we're still in national poetry month, i think all of you should give it a try and link/write the poems you make in the comments. i would love to see them.

*Part of Your World - The Little Mermaid

i'd like to think i could control myself, but it isn't true

i noticed this morning that i haven't been on ebay in forever. i'm not exactly sure when the last time i signed into it was, but i'm certain i haven't been on it since i got married. and since that was almost a year ago now, that's a pretty long time. i used to go onto ebay whenever i was bored and bid on a bunch of random things (usually books) and then hope i lost the bids. i was introduced to some great books that way though, when three days later i would get an email congratulating me on winning the bid for (insert random title here). i guess this means that i spend my moments of boredom doing more financially appropriate things now? or maybe i'm not as bored anymore? or maybe it's just that since i changed my email account with them from my school one to one of my gmails that i don't check often and i'm not getting the daily reminders that they exist, i've forgotten about them. i dunno, but i have a final project to work on today and maybe some ebay browsing is just the thing i need to procrastinate with.

speaking of final projects, i can't wait for the summer, even if i'll be using the time to study for qualifying exams. i just... i'm so sick of sitting in classrooms. have i mentioned that already? yes. well, okay then. plus, i have a meeting with a professor early summer that will hopefully answer the question of what i will be doing my thesis on, an that's a relief because i was getting a little tired of floating around aimlessly and having people ask me what i was going to research only to respond with, "well... um... i'm not exactly sure, actually. something related to computer forensics i think, though." you get a lot of weird looks when you admit that you went into a phd program with no idea about what you wanted to do your thesis on. apparently that's just not the way things are done normally? who knew? 

*Can't Wait - Bob Dylan

Monday, April 23, 2012

my love has drifted out to sea

[one] the other day my mom, sisters, and i went out to watch titanic. when it first came out a million and seven years ago, my sisters and i weren't allowed to watch it (some parents just don't understand how unfair it is to deprive your nine year old daughter of seeing a movie that everyone else in her fourth grade class has seen). as i got older, i just didn't want to watch it as much as i originally had. i mean, i knew the story, had had all of the best parts reenacted for me countless times, and could probably quote half the movie already. i didn't actually get around to watching it until college when it was on sale at walmart and resulted in a spur of the moment buy. since then, i've watched it more times than is probably healthy. it's just such a great movie for when you're in a feel-like-laughing and a feel-like-crying mood.

[two] for field day in high school, we would get some "extra cool" activity to go along with the usual relay races and water balloon tosses. one year we got a dunking tank. another year we got a giant titanic slide. when i watched titanic for the first time, it felt so wrong watching the people slide down the length of the ship into freezing water as it sank and knowing that we got a sinking ship to slide down for for fun. (granted, i never actually went down the slide, but it wasn't because of some moral sense that it was wrong. i just didn't feel like waiting in such a long line for a slide. even if it was really big and looked like a ship sinking into the grass.) watching the movie on a big screen where everyone is pretty much life size or bigger made the titanic guilt worse.

[three] to move on from the titanic, i've talked a few times on here about helping people (namely my dad) with their computers and how it can get frustrating at times. but i will never again complain about being roped into tech support the second i walk into my parents' house because now i know that it could be so much worse. my dad is in the desert at the moment, and the other day i let myself into the house to see my mom and suddenly found myself trying to fix his computer from halfway around the world using a faltering skype connection for communication. not fun. trust me. it is so much harder when i can't even see the screen and there's a three second lag in the conversation and i'm constantly being yelled at to speak slower.

*Where We Went Wrong - The Hush Sound 

Friday, April 20, 2012

if you could only see the beast you made of me

sometimes i think i know how frankenstein's monster must have felt. it's that indignant "but you made me this way" that just swells up inside of you, turning into bitter resentment at the injustice of it all. i'm sorry if i'm a walking reminder of your biggest mistakes, breathing proof of everything you failed to do, but it's not my fault. it isn't. what's done is done. it's too late to change anything now. so maybe before you stitched together fragments of your dying dreams, before you chose the biggest and shiniest opportunities you could find to sew onto the backs of my eyelids and wedge between my ribs, before you went digging through abandoned hope and got drunk off of your own sense of godlike superiority, you should have stopped to think for a moment about what you really wanted aside from the initial glory of accomplishment. because once that bolt of lightening strikes, it's all over. you may not be in control anymore, but you're still responsible. you can't just leave with a look of disgust and a shudder of horror. every mismatched hope, and each stretch where dreams blur with reality, and all the bolts of stubbornness and scars of determination, you put there. it was all you. i am what you made me.

so when you realize that you may have made a mistake, that maybe those weren't the best values to inject into my bloodstream or the best lenses to meld to my eyes or the best compass to guide me, you should also realize that it's too late. and if you can't accept that, well, maybe the monster had it right all along.

*Howl - Florence and the Machine

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

so the years move on

so, today's my birthday. cue the facebook birthday posts from people that i haven't spoken to in years and only have on my friend's list because i'm too lazy to get rid of them. for example, last night someone wrote on my wall, and i had no idea who she was. at all. after a bit of searching it turned out to be one of those friends of a friend of a friend that had changed her name. but anyway, for the first time since i started this blog i'm not going to dedicate this entire post to my birthday. i know, i know, crazy.

before i move on to non-birthday things, though, i'm kinda annoyed that after lunch with my mom, sister, and husband today i have to go sit in class for six hours. what kind of way to spend a birthday is that? oh, and i can't decide whether to get books or a phone for myself. hardest decision of my life. (i'm leaning towards books, though.) speaking of books, i finally made a goodreads account after talking about it for years, and i'm way too addicted to it. do you know how many hours i can sit looking through book titles and reading reviews and not getting bored? a lot. if you have a goodreads account, then add me as a friend.

while we're on the subject of addicting websites that really shouldn't be this addicting, i also finally started pottermore yesterday. i was sorted into ravenclaw, and even though i was kind of expecting it, i'm still not entirely sure how i feel about that. if you happen to be on pottermore, i'm PatronusKnight508. find me. oh, and because i'm already talking about harry potter, the other day i was reading something online that asked if fred and george had the marauder's map for years, why were they never concerned when they saw a supposed dead man sleeping in ron's bed with him every night? i hadn't even thought of that before they mentioned it, but seriously.

oh, and as a birthday present blogger forced me into using the new blogger interface which i was avoiding switching to. yay.

*The Years Move On - Kristian Leontiou

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

dressed up like a princess

[one] considering the facts that the majority of what i wear consists of jeans and hoodies and my go to shoes are flip flops, you may be surprised to learn that if i could, i would wear evening gowns all day every day. (more princessy than slinky because to be quite frank, i don't have the body for the latter.) i would get dressed up to fill my car up with gas. i would wear a full length ball gown to get taco bell and another one to go to the park with my brothers and nephews. i would wear pretty dresses to school, to hang out at a friend's house, and to pick up eggs and butter. i love them that much. (i guess because when i was four i never truly appreciated them and lost the only chance i had at this being acceptable?)

[two] i read this article yesterday entitled "the problem is not the books." it's countering a new york times article that, as is so often done, complains about how there are no books out there for boys which explains why there are fewer boy readers. this article puts the blame back on society which belittles boys who like "girl things" and consider books written by or about girls as "girl things" that a boy couldn't possibly relate to. as the article pointed out, in our society male is neutral and female is specific. i agree with the article. if i could get my brothers into books like ella enchanted and the secret garden then it just goes to show you that raising a reader is one thing, and raising someone who likes to read boy books is something entirely different. anyway, the article was interesting - nothing too earth-shatteringly ground-breaking, but still worth a read.

[three] last night my husband and i went to watch the three stooges. i wasn't one of the people super excited to watch the movie, but i also wasn't one of the people adamantly refusing to ever see it. i thought it was okay, not bad but not one of the best movies i've seen. pretty much what i expected going in. what was awesome about it was the soundtrack. they had some really good songs playing in it that i would not have expected to hear in a three stooges movie. oh, and a lot of the kids were really cute.

*Something in your Mouth - Nickelback (i mist confess that i've never heard this song before)

Sunday, April 15, 2012

i'm afraid that this complacency is something i can't shake

sometimes i'm afraid of happiness. when i feel it coming on i run back to hide behind the familiar skirts of sadness. i throw myself onto my bed and curl up under a quilt of depression. it's comfortable there. i know my way around even when it's dark and sight comes from my fingertips.

sometimes when i think i may be happy, i get angry instead. i stomp and rage and throw things. it's madness, but there's a method to it. my method. i can do what i want, when i want. it will all end when i decide it is time for it to. i'm in control even when control seems as far away as the moon.

my words come to me freely in the dark. they come when all my tears are spent and i need something more to spill over. they come when i'm trying not to peek under the bed, afraid of the monster's eyes i'll find staring back at me. they come when i'm pushing on my bruises and sucking on my aching teeth. phrases fly from my fingers when there are no more slippers within reach, when the clattering spoons lay silent in the sink, when there's an ink stain on the wall and a pile of pens on the floor.

they don't like to weather the glaring sunshine of happiness, float in the languid nothingness of content. i drag them out forcefully from between my smiling teeth, lay them bare on paper where they wither and die premature deaths. i search aimlessly for meanings that no longer exist, put fancy clothes on beggars and try to pass them off as royalty. it doesn't take long for them to desert me then. it's in the second before the last one leaves when the panic sets in. like a soldier thrown weaponless into the middle of a war, an addict who doesn't know where to get her next hit, a body slipping under the surface as water fills its lungs. 

and i run back to the familiar, too afraid to find out what the alternative might be. 

*Be My Escape - Relient K

Saturday, April 14, 2012

cause i'm sick of being treated like i have before

the other day, my professor said something along the lines of "terrorism is 99% political." i found that interesting. though bombings and senseless killing is very much a reality, for the most part we lose more people a year on the highways than on terrorist attacks, as he pointed out. but car accidents just don't instill the same fear as a bomb strapped to a terrorist does (how many of you instantly imagined that terrorist to be arab [likely bearded] when you read that sentence?), and fear is a very good emotion to stir up if you want a reaction. vote for me and i'll get rid of the terrorists sounds so much better than vote for me and i'll make stricter road rules. but when it comes right down to it, the latter would probably save more lives in the long run.

more than half of the projects i've done and scenarios i've worked with in class have centered around a band of terrorists - usually muslim, always with arab-sounding names - wanting to blow something or other up. we get their hard drives, find their plan, stop them, and save the day. according to my professor, this just doesn't happen as much in the real world as it does in our classrooms.

i'm not saying that terrorists don't exist or that we should just do nothing about terrorism, but what i'm trying to get at is that there are more important things to worry about, more likely things to happen. a while back i wrote about how sick i was of the arab = terrorist equation that society seems to have taken as fact, and i still am. every person that does not look or think like you does not want to kill you. getting them before they can get you does not work when they don't want to get you in the first place. i don't understand why that is so hard for some people to understand.

on a semi-related note, i thought that tarek mehanna's statement at his hearing was worth a read. and then you can read this article (that's super short) which seems to have missed the point of the statement entirely.

*Hands Held High - Linkin Park

Friday, April 13, 2012

are you a cat or a dog person?

my younger brother and a couple of his friends have semi-recently become obsessed with the book series warriors. i had never heard of the series before, but i'm always happy to see people still obsessing over books. on saturday we went to the mall and saw that erin hunter, the author of the series, would be doing a reading/signing thursday (yesterday). i've never been able to go to a book signing of any of the authors i like for various reasons, so i was excited for him when he got permission to go. she was actually a really entertaining speaker, and now i feel like i have to go and read all of the books (of which there are like a million and seventeen). apparently the series started in 2000? how have i not heard of it before is what i've been wondering. the thing started at seven and we didn't get his books signed until almost nine:thirty (worrying the whole time that she would get tired and leave before our turn), but we met a bunch of cool people in line and he was so excited to go show his friends his signed copies today that the three plus hours standing was totally worth it (we got there shortly after six).

here are some of the things i learned from/about erin last night:
*she hates cats (more of a dog person), but harper collins had asked her to do a series about cats and "a desperate artist will do anything for money."
*she didn't start liking the books or the characters until the third one when she realized that she could write whatever she wanted because "we all knew no one would buy the books anyway."
*her inspiration for the books: she loves thinking of ways to kill cats. for example, in her latest book she realized that she had never paralyzed a cat and then had it live out a slow and lingering death. so she threw a tree at one of them and had it break its back. around the same time, her cousin got drunk and dived into a river, breaking his neck in three spots and becoming paralyzed from the waste down. she let the cat live for him and believes that "when her cousin walks again, the cat will too."
*she lost her father while writing one of the books which inspired some of the character's feelings, and then she made a joke about how she didn't really lose him, he died. she loses a lot of things, but misplacing a parent is something even she couldn't do.
*she was an exotic dancer in college because she needed the money. before every book signing she hopes not to see anyone from that audience in this one.
*in the final book, she wanted to punish all of the happy couples because "there is nothing more boring than a good relationship."

anyway, let me know if you've read the books, and whenever i get a chance to start them i'll let you know if you should.

*I Never Knew You - Jason Mraz

Thursday, April 12, 2012

here's where it starts

monical leonelle is the author of three novels. i recently read her latest, socialpunk, and decided to help her spread the word about it in her blog tour. read the prologue of the book below and enter into her contest for things like ipads and kindle fires. my review of the book is in the previous post.

Prologue

After playing God for six years with the world he created, he couldn’t control any of his subjects, none at all. Over the years, he had watched them evolve and become the sum of their own choices rather than the sum of his; and for that, he regretted ever giving them life.

A small, blinking red light from just inside his eyelid reminded him of the news they sent him earlier that morning. The company had cancelled his funding and would shut down his project within three months. According to them, the project cost too much and took up too much space, and the inconclusive results couldn’t be published reputably, now or in the future.

Six years of his work, tens of thousands of lives at stake—and he could do nothing to save any of it. He bowed his head, letting his chin rest on the rim of his breakfast smoothie. The smoothie reeked of powder—crushed pills—but he supposed he had better get used to it. He wouldn’t be able to afford the luxury of real food after they canned him.

He closed his eyes and called up the camera view of one of his favorites, number 3281. She fascinated him; he couldn’t deny it. When he had designed her, her pre-teen rebelliousness lit fire in her eyes. A survivor, he’d thought. He’d meant for her to have it all—to grow up, to get married to the love of her life, and to have a beautiful family of her own someday.

But he had only given her sadness so far. Instead of creating a strict father, he had given her an abusive one. Instead of creating a loving boyfriend, he had given her a friend who could never love her. And instead of creating a strong, proud mother, he had given her a meek one, who watched the whole thing unfold and did nothing about it.

He looked at his last and final creation sitting in the chair across from him—his own son, not awakened yet. The law forbade him to have any children of his own, so this boy would substitute.

But he had done the unthinkable with this creation—he had bestowed on it his own thoughts, emotions, and decision-making processes. He’d given the boy his own mind, his own physical characteristics, his own wants and desires.

He had never done so with any of the others because of the dangers of investing too heavily in any one of his subjects. But who could he kid? He had not stayed objective thus far, watching some of his subjects more closely than others, wishing for the happiness of some at the expense of others. He had become an abomination, a monster of his own doing, who had created subjects only to watch them suffer.

He couldn’t forgive himself; not now, not ever. His eyes lingered on the vial that sat next to his breakfast smoothie, that he’d stowed away for the day when they destroyed all his work, his entire world. He would save it, tuck it away for now, for as long as he could protect them. When things spun out of his control, he would drink it and end himself the way he had ended them.

In the ancient stories, gods frequently gave their sons as gifts. Now, he would give his son as a gift to her, number 3281. So she could be happy in her last months on earth, before they destroyed her with the rest of them.

the future is coming on

monica leonelle, from over at prose on fire, is the author of three books. i recently read the latest one, Socialpunk and decided to take part in her blog tour. If you read to the very end of this post (which will include an excerpt and review) there's a contest you can enter for cool prizes, like an ipad or kindle fire.  now on to more important things: the book.

socialpunk is the first book in a young adult dystopian trilogy which involves time travel (kind of), virtual realities, bionic eyes, and the ability to transfer money by touching someone's wrist. i'm going to try my best to keep this spoiler free, so i'll leave the plot describing to the blurb on the back of the book.

"Ima would give anything to escape The Dome and learn what’s beyond its barriers, but the Chicago government has kept all its citizens on lockdown ever since the Scorched Years left most of the world a desert wasteland. When a mysterious group of hooded figures enters the city unexpectedly, Ima uncovers a plot to destroy The Dome and is given the choice between escaping to a new, dangerous city or staying behind and fighting a battle she can never win."

the book moves between a couple of different time periods, but since neither of them are ours, there's no sense of the familiar vs the new. it's all new, but not entirely unbelievable. some of the new technology looks like future versions of things google is already working on. so if by the twenty second century we have google goggles embedded into our heads, well, i wouldn't be too shocked. and if we're living off shakes made from nutritional pills, isn't that what dieting is leading us to anyway? the book is a fast and easy read, and i suggest you read it in one sitting. getting it in a particularly crazy week, i was reading snippets whenever i got the chance, which is never a good way to lose yourself in a book. i'm planning on reading it again early summer when i'll have a good chunk of time to devote to it. though i wasn't a fan of many of the characters at first, a few of them did grow on me and the story pulls you in whether you like the characters or not. you read because you want to know what happens next. i felt that the main character, ima, was unrealistically slow at times and ready to risk her life for someone who seemed like a complete jerk to me, making her a bit hard to swallow at times. there were also a few times that the pacing felt rushed, though i'm sure i'd notice this less if i got to sit down and read more than a page or two at a time. there were some similarities to that justin timberlake movie that came out this year (the one i find myself constantly comparing things to and yet still can't remember the name of). for example, in the future, no one ages past twenty five and the whole transfer of currency by touch thing. if you like reading young adult, have any interest in futuristic worlds (did i mention that this one was filled with tech-savvy artists? right up my alley), and are looking for a quick but enjoyable read, you can get socialpunk at amazon or barnes and noble.

(since this post is already so long, i'm going to post the excerpt and contest in another one.)

*Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz

Monday, April 9, 2012

it's a nice day for a white wedding

so last night i went to my friend's wedding and i think that's really all i can say about it without spewing sappiness all over your screens. seriously. suffice it to say that she was a beautiful bride and it was a super fun night. except for the fact that i borrowed my sister's shoes at the last minute which were the perfect height heel and the perfect color but didn't fit quite right and left me with feet still hurting as i type this. but totally worth it. also, when my husband came to pick me up afterwards, he had flip flops with him which was awesome.

oh, and he and i had this conversation about my (sister's) clutch afterwards:
him: how do you fit anything in here? (i had everything from my lipstick and mirror to my phone and excedrin.)
me: magic.
him: it is magic. it's like hermione's bag.
(harry potter references are also awesome.)

but back to the wedding. um... there's really nothing i can say about it that doesn't start with my first impression of her in fifth grade and go on for pages and pages until it ends up at last night. it's one of those times when words fail me because there's just too much to say with too many emotions tangled up in it and too many secrets and inside jokes and too little time and space. and at the end of it, some of you might have missed the point completely, sigh about wasted hours, and move on with your life without understanding the magnitude of last night.

which of course brings to mind the question of: if i had nothing to say about the wedding then why did i mention it in the first place? because i felt that it should be commemorated in this ongoing virtual recording of my life so that years from now i can look back and know that i was there and it meant something.

*White Wedding - Billy Idol

Saturday, April 7, 2012

so you take it down, another pill to swallow

i'm never sure whether to take the surprised comments about my "great language" as the compliments they are meant to be, or to take offense at the stereotypical ignorance that they mask. when you tell me, "wow, you have a great grasp of the english language. i wasn't expecting that because... um... *cough cough* never mind. i have no idea what i was going to say." don't worry, i know. you were going to say that because you saw me wearing a headscarf you assumed that i wouldn't be able to speak english without an accent, know how to read, have any interests outside of cleaning my house, or really have any commendable level of intelligence. but as you were saying that, you realized that i might just take it the wrong way, so you stopped yourself. right?

being female in the male-dominated field of IT, i get backhanded compliments a lot. remember when the dean chose to give me a thousand dollars just because he was so surprised that a girl could do so well? that was fun. being arab-muslim doesn't get me any sexism (for them most part), but i get a whole lot of racism. i mean, i could understand - or at least tolerate - the surprise on people's faces when i showed them that wearing a scarf on my head did not interfere with any brainwaves back in undergrad. but now that i'm a phd student, could you please not act so surprised? i mean, how do you think i made it all the way here without having at least a little bit of smartness in me? i mean, honestly.

so for now i'll just continue to smile sweetly and say thank you (and then come rant in my blog), but for the love of god people, please try not to be so ignorant. my cheeks are starting to hurt.

*Mr. Know It All - Kelly Clarkson

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

i can tell that we're going to be friends

yesterday i got pulled over by the cops for the very first time in my entire life. i've never even been with someone who's been pulled over before. but there i was, eleven thirty at night, just leaving mason's campus to drive my sister home, and i see the flashing lights come on behind me. my first thought was, "wait... he can't be pulling me over, can he? no of course not." a couple of seconds later, after the realization that we were the only two cars on the road hit, i pulled over. i was tired, cut me some slack. anyway, he comes over to my sister's side of the car, and she rolls down her window. this is how our conversation started:

sister: ooh it's cold.
cop: yeah, the weather's changing again.
sister: i know. it's crazy! i mean, you don't know what kind of shoes you'll need when you wake up in the morning.
cop: *slightly confused laugh* is that the problem with the weather changing, then?
sister: of course!

then he proceeds to tell me that i rolled through a stop sign, and a few minutes later he said that since i had a good record he would let me off with a warning. we then all said bye and good night like we were good friends and i forced myself to wake up for the rest of the drive.

my sister is weird like that, making friends with the randomest of people at the randomest of times. i remember when she called to activate her credit card, she was on the phone forever. when she hung up she started telling me the life story of the dude that was activating her card (i forgot his name), including where how was going for spring break, how long he would stay there, and who he was going with. she was sad that she'd never get to talk to him again because, "he was really cool."

*We're Going to be Friends - The White Stripes

Monday, April 2, 2012

it's kinda funny how life can change, can flip 180 in a matter of days

i still remember what it felt like when my family and i first moved to virginia from california. i was only around ten years old, but i remember feeling like everything was just... weird. the way the schools were all indoor. (my schools in california had classrooms that opened directly to the outside. hallways, for the most part, were under the sky.) the weather was weird. (the few times i had seen snow before moving here were on trips where we drove to see it. it got so much colder and so much hotter here.) the people were weird. (definitely more arabs than i was used to.) i remember the sheer panic that came over me when we heard that we had gotten into isa. i remember that i thought the school was huge (by the time i graduated it was tiny to the point of suffocation). the only way i could find my class in the mornings was by looking for the pink ice skates with our names on them that were outside the door. every morning i would have a few heart stopping seconds when i would think they were taken down and i would never find my classroom, i would be late, i would get in trouble, and someone would probably talk to me in arabic. i remember waiting in dread the entire day as i counted down the minutes for the arabic lesson to come and pass. the days where we had double arabic still fill me with a horrified sense of panic.

but now i've lived in virginia for more than half of my life. the kids in my class that i felt so apart from have become my oldest friends. fifth grade was a long time ago. there's a feeling of being home associated with these familiar streets, with the greenery that drips from some places and is absent from others, with the diversity of people that live here. a feeling that my ten year old self would never have felt was possible. i haven't been back to california since the move, but sometimes i wonder if any feelings of home still linger there. it's funny how much time can change things. i've known some of my friends for thirteen years. thirteen. my younger self changed schools so often that i never thought i'd be one of those people with friendships that spanned decades, but here i am years later, counting down the days to the wedding of the girl that i remember as wearing headbands and glasses and not really liking when i first met.

*One Love - Blue

Sunday, April 1, 2012

So I just whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, all the f***in' time

every time i start to feel like i'm getting things under control, the world decides to flip upside down and completely throw me. and i am always caught off guard, no matter how many times it happens. so now things that seemed pretty small and manageable just a week or so ago now feel like the proverbial world making itself comfortable on my shoulder.

for example, one of my oldest friends is getting married next sunday. most (read: all) weddings i go to are in the desert which means i just leave all my wedding guest things over there: dresses, shoes, bags. everything. i need to get an outfit for the wedding, which in and of itself may not seem like a very big deal, but along with projects (two) and midterms (one) and spring break sleepovers (three nights, four days) and classes (three) i just don't know when i'll be able to go shopping. plus, i'm not the biggest fan of shopping. so blech. it's time like these when i wish harry and his friends had been more prudent in the department of mysteries and not smashed all of the time turners. i feel like i may need one to make it through the week. 

on a happier note, my carpet has vacuum streaks everywhere which makes me happy. and i feel myself slipping into another one of my periodic decisions to try my luck at my writing dreams which is always fun (though i always let life pull me back away from them after a while). 

have i mentioned that i'm just really sick of school? yes? well there it is again. 

*Self-Pity - AFI