Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Good News/Bad News
- Yay! I finally fixed my old tattoo! (If you want to see pictures, you can search for Space Kitty on myspace.com,
but they're being a bitch AGAIN, which is why I'm not providing a direct link.) Keep your fingers crossed, we may have linkage! - My ballet teacher let us all out early today (with credit!), so I have an extra hour to study for my philosophy quiz. When I'm done blogging, of course.
- The governator was apparently on campus today, and I missed my chance to protest. (Nobody ever tells me anything!)
- My phone up and died, so if anybody needs me before I can get it dealt with tonight, it's email or comments here.
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Times have changed!
Typing up my class notes, I almost used "<>" instead of clicking the italics button in Word. Hee!
/geek
Friday, September 23, 2005
Hee!!!!
So, clearly I'm the last person on the planet to be aware of this, but I'm linking it anyway because it makes me ridiculously happy.
Hint: Zoom in.
I have no idea. Seriously, I just don't know.
So I dreamed last night that I went with a large group of friends to an Eddie Izzard show. Unfortunately, I missed most of it because I spent the evening in the bathroom adjusting the elaborate ball gown I wore, which included an actual hoop-skirt, worn deliberately on the outside of the dress. It seemed to be quite the fashion because most of the women, and some of the men, were wearing some version of that new style.
With the putting on of makeup and the fiddling of clothes, everyone was already leaving the concert by the time I finally walked out of the bathroom. There was chaos trying to reunite with the group I came in with, and then I ran into Eddie himself. We had a lovely, relaxed chat and I asked him to give me his email address so we could keep in touch. As all this was going on, my sister came up and told me the everyone was leaving without me, and good luck getting home. So Eddie quickly made a fabric card with white glue and netting which was my invitation to his home for the holidays. He finished just in time for me to catch a ride back to where everyone was meeting up.
I ended up going to some relatives house where there was a huge fight. Someone had peeled the top layer of Eddie's card off to see how it was constructed, and they simply couldn't understand why I'd be so upset that they'd ruined it. The dream ended when I stormed out of the house while hordes of relatives screamed at me because I was leaving instead of joining the work crew and cleaning up their house.
I'm beginning to wonder if I wasn't better off when I couldn't remember any of my dreams. Oh, well - at least there were no rogue body parts this time...
Thursday, September 22, 2005
*insert exasperated noise.... here*
The Ass of the Day award goes to.... (envelope please!)
Old Navy!
... for inexplicably discontinuing every single pair of pants that even remotely fits my ass.
While I never could feel entirely comfortable shopping there - due to the widespread allegations of sweatshop conditions in their factories - the fact is they made pants I could afford, and that managed to fit in the waist, hips and length, all at the very same time! The fact that this is a rare and unusual commodity in womens' clothing is a long rant for another day, but feel free to think evil thoughts about the fashion industry... now.
In the old days, medium-sized yoga capri pants were a staple for my casual wardrobe. Today? The extra-small sized yoga capri pants* (Stay with me now, I'm not an extra-small, but I vainly assumed a smaller size would have a shorter inseam) pooled onto the floor a good six inches below my feet. Combined with a vortex inducing camel-toe my gynecologist would have been embarassed to see, I have to wonder exactly who the hell these pants were meant to fit?! The answer is not Five-Foot-Tall-In-My-Stocking-Feet me. All the ankle-length jeans that used to break just so on the shoe seem to have been cut from the same overly elongated pattern - or at least, that's what I can tell from the few pairs I can pull up past my thighs.
*For the uninitiated, capri-length pants are meant to end between the ankle and the knee.
So, after years of not having to think about where to buy casual clothes, it's back to the drawing board. Anybody know where I can get jeans and yoga pants without a) putting a tailor on retainer b) dedicating all my free time to shopping or c) giving up and never leaving the house again?
PS - If I can find someone who delivers chocolate, option C is looking mighty fine right about now....
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
*Yoink*
I'm never shy about stealing a great idea when I see one, so today I'm ganking "It's Lurker Day!" straight from the pages of Creek Running North.
My site meter tells me that people are stopping by* from literally all over the world: China, The United Kingdom, Taiwan, Sweden, Germany, New Zealand - you can't all be looking for Saint Berdoodle pictures?
(*That I have visitors at all is thanks mostly to links from Creek Running North, the_bone, and squoogy)
So take a second and leave a comment - Who are you? What brought you here? Did you find what you were looking for? Are all the inside jokes funny (as I fear) only to me? Don't forget, if no comments are forthcoming, I'll turn this internet right around and we'll go straight home!
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
The hell?
I realize this isn't news anywhere else on the planet, but we've been having thunderstorms since last night.
In September?! Buh?
Monday, September 19, 2005
Ramen!
Pastafarians, rejoice! It's Talk Like a Pirate Day! Local celebrations are scheduled to begin after sundown.
Aaargh, Matey!
Survey says? Still funny.
(Edited to add - here ya go, Kimberly!)
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Two and half weeks? That's it?! How can it only be two and a half weeks into the semester?!
It seems like years since I made the decision to bite the bullet and return to school full-time. FSM knows it's been All School All the Time (well, except for brief forays into the dank subconscious) since then - if I haven't been preparing for school, I've been worried about school, or actively avoiding homework from school, to the point where I'm sick to death of stressing about the whole thing. (...and looking for synonyms for the word 'school' because I'm sick of typing it, too.)
All in all, you'd think I was the first person in the history of the world ever to pursue higher education.
Which leads me tangentially to my point. What with all my worrying and overthinking and deer-in-the-headlights panic and getting so wrapped up in the details that I miss the entire POINT - I've managed to put myself so far behind in French class that I got a D- on my first test and ended up dropping the class, rather than further risking my GPA.
Somewhere along the way I got the idea that - if I'm not completely in over my head and freaking out - that I'm just not doing enough. That my efforts aren't worthwhile, and the work isn't meaningful. So I have a history of completely over-committing myself, then not doing anything well and ending up feeling overwhelmed and ineffectual.
I don't know where that idea came from, but it's time to banish it. It's enough that I'm learning how to be a student again, after being absent from the academic world since 1983. Over-achieving is all fine and good, but I'd rather take 11 credits and *really learn something* than take 16 and spend the entire semester playing catch-up and pummeling my esteem into the ground.
It may sound an awful lot like justification, but I choose to see it as taking care of myself. And isn't that why I started this whole adventure to begin with?
Sunday, September 11, 2005
...beat the living hell out of me last night. And I haven't even started the chapter on Freud! (Or would that be Jung?)
After a fitful night involving a horrifying dream about a tongue-ectomy- and the subsequent trauma of trying to retrieve my tongue*
while it crawled away from me on the floor (!)
::faints::
I woke up with a stiff neck so wretched I can hardly turn my head to the left, and mental imagery so foul that it'll take
hours of Playstation 2 to erase.
I think the worst part was that it all seemed ... merely inconvenient in the dream. Don't ask me what I thought I was going to
do after I caught the damn thing - and only now, in waking life, does the full horror of it come to me.
(*By the way, did you know that in dreams, retrieved tongue tastes faintly of crunchy, oniony coleslaw? Yeah, I hate me too.)
Saturday, September 10, 2005
I drink, therefore I am!
The second in a series of homework-related posts.
Every Tuesday and Thursday around 1 pm, if you listen very carefully, you'll hear me hum this. If that gets old before December, I surrender.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Not Safe for... Well - you decide.
I've often said of The Onion that each issue reads more and more like the regular news. The line between satire and reality is hauntingly thin this time. Now more than ever, I don't know whether to (try to) laugh or (continue to) cry.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Before I get started, I'm fully aware that - under the current circumstances - this is a nauseatingly self-involved post. I apologize in advance.
Panic seems to be a continuing theme here, so I'd like to take this opportunity to exorcise that demon once and for all. All the drama over homework: the utter lack of comprehension in my French class, the body issues involved with dance, the art history professor who behaves as if hers is the only class on the schedule, the performance anxiety inherent in voice class, the philosophy teacher with the epic lack of focus, and even the history paper that sounded like a treat just last week are all simply concrete examples of what it is that I'm here to learn.
The lesson is to be open to new information and the process of learning.
It's not about competition or letter grades. I have enormous resources available to me, the financial freedom to focus only on my education and support systems most of the students here would probably kill for.
So the next time I come here whining about how school is hard, please pat me on the head and send me back to this thread. I promise to get a grip and accept my beginning freshman status with renewed grace and charm.
(Also, the long weekend included one hell of a birthday party. An update will follow when I'm caught up on my philosophy reading.)
Monday, September 05, 2005
...et aussi un autre doigt.
Voilá des doigts. For my french professor. And I think you know what I mean.
What?! This is homework!
Friday, September 02, 2005
Random updates
In no particular order -
- It looks like they're restricting access at the school's computer lab, so I may have to revisit the idea of a laptop.
- My transition into geekitude continues apace - tonight I plan nothing more strenuous than learning a few games on my new birthday present.
- My family situation continues to strongly resemble an elaborate, passive-aggressive game of Poke the Penguin. (Guess who's playing the role of penguin?)
- I can't even think about New Orleans. Because I don't know what else to do, I'm donating to the Red Cross. Please consider doing the same - some other organizations that could use your help are listed here.
Everybody have a great holiday weekend.
