Bonding



I've been taking care of my grandparents' place for the weekend. Friday, when I came up here, I was in a foul mood, completely unsuited for human consumption. The past week had been a torture, and I just wanted to be alone. My friend SW was coming up for the weekend as well, but not until Saturday morning. Thankfully, a night of 10 hours of sleep restored me enough that I awoke with a feeling of excitement that a fairly new friend was about to see one of the places I love dearly.



We had a fabulous time hiking around and playing with the dogs, going into town for lunch and groceries, talking about what we want to do after we make our millions and retire, the possibility of me visiting her hometown in California, when we could possibly go work on a goat farm in Chile together...her enthusiasm for embracing the uncomfortable and unfamiliar made me so glad that she had answered the craigslist ad that brought her into one of my circles of acquaintances.



Last night, we got silly over a bottle of wine and homemade brownies with vanilla ice cream, and I introduced her to my new favorite BBC America show, Robin Hood. I was pleased that she appreciated it for the same reasons I do: the Shakespearian seriousness blended with just the right touch of ridiculousness along with a heavy dose of sexy outlaw pouting. Everything I could want in an hour-long action/adventure historically based drama.

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Nice woodwork



Well, all sorts of people have been coming out of the woodwork lately, and it always seems to be the ones I least expect. A couple of old RAs (yeah, I lived in a dorm once...was THAT an experience...), high school friends I'd almost forgotten existed, other random persons I've met one way or another over the years...it's amazing what happens when you come out of four years of being more or less underground. I mean, for a lot of these people, I may as well have fallen off the face of the Earth. Now that I'm back on a track that more or less means I'm Doing Something Productive And Meaningful With My Life, I can have people come out of the woodwork without me cringing. It's kind of a nice feeling.



And I apologize if any of the above is completely incoherent and rambly; I am so sleep deprived at this point I described the Mexico City legalizatin of first trimester abortions as "third semester frabortions" in class today. My last final is next Wednesday afternoon. When that ends it will be happy hour, and I plan to go to everyone's favorite college bar and celebrate. (Have I mentioned how awesome it is to be an "over 21" college student sometimes?)

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Act I, Scene 5: The Meeting Cute Montage

-or-

I'll write anything to not write what I need to be doing



So if the movie that is my life is a romantic comedy (I have my doubts about this---I think it is more a comedy with the occasional flashes of romance), I am currently in the middle of Act I, Scene 5: The Meeting Cute Montage.



Cute guy and I keep meeting cute in the library: near the water fountain, by the reference desk, at the printing station. It's so adorable I almost threw up the last time it happened.



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My plans for 2008 are moving from the idea phase to the "let's get this show on the road" phase. In other words, I'm starting to do things like meet with advisers and fill out applications. All I know is, this time next year I'll either be gone from this city or packing my bags to leave, barrring some horrible, unforseeable event.



Now if I could just finish this ten-page paper...

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Like a movie



I've been accused of living my life like it was a movie---one ridiculous scene after another, each more ridiculous than the last. While I have a feeling the accusers intended it to be an insult, I take it as a bit of a compliment. Who wouldn't want to live their life like it was a movie? After all, I can't imagine anything more aspirational than an existence filled enitrely with colorful characters of above-average looks delivering snappy dialogue while effortlessly wearing stylish costumes in vibrant Technicolor.



I mean, really.



But if my life is a movie, this is the late-night studying/paper-writing montage: me with pencil between my teeth, typing furiously CUT TO coffee brewing CUT TO me pouring brewed coffee into mug CUT TO me at computer, pencil behind ear CUT TO me taking a determined sip of coffee CUT TO me going "ARGH!" and throwing down my pencil, jumping up from my chair, pacing furiously CUT TO...well, you get the general idea.



See, life as movie isn't all fun and games.

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"No one ever gets excited about a short weekend."

-CV, at brunch this morning



Yesterday I slept in soooo late and it felt soooo good. My allergies have really been awful this week; so bad, in fact, that I've only been able to put in my contacts a couple of times. (I prefer my contacts to my glasses, because I can see better with them, and also because I am slightly vain.)



Last night, CV and I met up with my friend Patrick, who was in town for a conference, for a drink, and then CV and I decided to go check out The Royal, which we've heard so much about but had not yet seen. The cab ride was very, very short, and we soon found ourselves standing outside The Royal. There was no line (a little surprising, considering it was Saturday night), although four guys and a cop were standing around the entrance (Standard Club Procedure---why have one or two guys standing around out front when you can have four or five guys? I mean, really.). CV & I flashed our IDs and our prettiest smiles, and we were soon walking through the front door triumphantly, having evaded the $10 cover.



The place was all but dead, with maybe fifteen or twenty people besides us. The bartenders were hott, the decor AMAZING, the music loud. CV and I got drinks and then bunkered down in one of the cozy banquettes.



Being the honorary white girls, it didn't take long before a dude stopped by and introduced himself. We joked around with him some, and CV even danced with him for a song. Later, when we were standing around outside waiting for our cab to take us home, we ended up talking some more to dude and his buddy. Hilarious. Tons of fun. We were having so much fun, in fact, that I forgot to watch the meter on the cab ride home. It wasn't until we were about to pay and the cabbie said "$10" that I realized he hadn't been running the meter. Damnit, we'd been fleeced! (The cab ride to the club was $6.50). At that point, it was too late to argue, so we payed the jacked up fare without comment.



CV and I definitely want to go back to The Royal sometime when there is an event with more people.



In other news, the semester is almost over. YAY!

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How to get all the glory in an online class group project



Step 1: Learn how to write. I mean, really write. Really, really write. Learn how to write so well that it hurts so good. (NOTE: This step takes the longest.)



Step 2: Ask the professor if one person is supposed to combine everyone's message board thoughts into a single essay. Find out that that is the general way of doing things, and that the person who crafts the single essay automatically gets a higher grade.



Step 3: Decide that you are the right woman for the combining---and higher-grade getting---job. Keep this information to yourself.



Step 4: Do nothing involving this group project for five days. I mean, nothing. I cannot emphasize this enough--NOTHING. Do not read the course material. Do not participate in the ramblings of your groupmates on the appropriate message board. Do not so much as log onto the course's website. You will be too busy doing fun and amusing things like watching the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie for free opening night and drinking pinot grigio on your friends' deck Saturday afternoon.



Step 5: The day before the project is due, at the height of your groupmates' panic over organizing everything into a single essay, offer to do it.



Step 6: While absorbing everyone's gushy gratitude, try and make sense of the message board postings the past five days have wrought. Your job is to create structure where there is none. Craft a really knock-out introduction, with an airtight thesis, and the rest will fall easily into place.



Step 7: Post the finished essay.



Step 8: Enjoy your A.

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House lust



It's true, spending a Saturday hanging out with your friends who are renovating their 1919 Queen Anne-style house will totally give you a bad case of house lust. Flipping through magazines featuring dream bathrooms and kitchens while drinking rum & tonics and eating Bubba burgers fresh off the Char-Broil gas grill...those actions don't help quell the house lust, either. I went home and dreamt about dry wall, hardwood floors, and PVC pipe.

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Crispy





One of my journalism professor's first language is not English, and god bless him, but he instructed us to write "short, crispy sentences" for our broadcast news story due tomorrow. I'm wondering if I should use a cornmeal- or flour-based batter.



Meanwhile, remember the cute guy I mentioned a while back? I hadn't seen him in class since that post. Yes, that's right, I hadn't seen him in nearly two months, and I had drawn the conclusion that he had dropped the class. Well, he turned up today, and I was glad that I had remembered to put on more lip gloss just before class. He was looking extra cute, and his comments were insightful and rather intelligent. He also let drop that he was a (sigh) philosophy major. (Yes, that sigh was equal parts wistful lust and head-shaking exasperation.) So off course I did the only sensible thing a girl could do. I found him on facebook.





Facebook graciously confirmed that he likes the ladies (not that there was ever any doubt, but it is nice to see it in writing) and that he is single. And also, as I suspected, that he is well into his twenties, and not 19 like the other cutie in the class. I also found out his frat (sigh) and saw photos of him from Spring Break 2004. (One has to wonder about Spring Break 2005-2007, and why they were absent...) I now know his birthday, and his favorite music, and his political leanings.





Of course, what the hell am I supposed to do with all this new-found knowledge, exactly? Go up to him next class and say, "Hey, I see you've got a birthday in about a month. And that you like The Killers. Um, well, yes, I have been internet stalking, but I swear that's not creepy! Really!" See, the thing about internet stalking is you have to be quiet about it, and never let on that you do it.





(Well, clearly after all this my cover's blown...)

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Exciting decisions



My god, it's time to start seriously considering what I'm going to do post-graduation. So many options: Master's degree programs (both here and abroad), getting a job and returning to the wonderful world of 'just' working and partying (I know a lot of you think school and partying go together better than work and partying, but honestly, I prefer work and partying---work pays you money, versus you paying money, and I am more inclined to get out of bed to get paid than get out of bed to be bored. But that's just me), taking out an extra loan my last semester of school so I can finance a few vagabond months of traveling (I do have about a dozen states to see before my 25th birthday---I have a self-imposed goal of visiting all 50 states by the time I turn 25), plus a few more secret options I have up my sleeve.

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"Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something--an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever."

-last paragraph of Chapter VI of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitgerald


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Of little or no consequence



I have sunk to an all-time new low: typing a blog entry in class. I have no idea what is going on up at the front of the room on the white board, and I can only read so much up-to-the-minute internet news. Plus, I have ideas and thoughts going on in my head, thoughts that I think may amuse you, at least a little bit. So here I am.



Of course, now that I've gone ahead and sunk so low as to begin typing this, I can't seem to remember any of the somewhat amusing thoughts that filled my head just a moment ago. I think they (the amusing thoughts) had something to do with the Creative Loafing cover story about The Black Lips, the character of Forrest Gump, and not wasting the stuff of life (specifically time). How I linked the three in an amusing and lucid manner is, I must admit, something of a mystery at this point in my mind's processes, but I swear it was a really great thought when I had it.

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Created, realized, and inevitably disappointing



I'm reading The Great Gatsby right now, which I haven't touched since I was 17. It's one of the books I read in my American literature class the very first semester of my very first attempt at college (which was a lot longer ago than I like to remember sometimes). I liked it at the time, mostly for the beautiful way Fitzgerald put together every word in every sentence in every paragraph. Reading it was like reading a really long, slightly melancholy poem. (At the time, I was very drawn to the slightly melancholy, as I was feeling more than a little melancholy myself.)



But now...now I get it on a whole other level. The American Dream: created, realized, and inevitably disappointing. American destiny as a self-made non-destiny, a grabbing of the bull by the proverbial horns. As to the overall mood of the novel, rather than slight melancholy, I now sense instead Nick Carraway's head-shaking cynical detachment as he recalls the summer he knew Gatsby. Amazing.



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On a completely unrelated note, we drove through SNOW Friday night on the way to my grandparents' house. Needless to say, Georgia broke all kinds of low temperature records the past few days. Brrr.

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April showers



It's been storming here and there for the past five days. The temperature's been dropping this afternoon and into the evening. I have been invited over for dinner, and just in time, too, for the phone call came as I was preparing to go wander the streets listlessly and try to stir up a little motivation for school work. I've stayed up late the past few nights; not studying, as all good school girls should, but writing all sorts of grandiose (and occasionally depraved) things into a notebook (or at the very least scribbling onto an extra-sticky post-it note). I'd been doing alright on such little sleep, but this morning I seemd to hit a wall, and couldn't get out of bed.



Thankfully the phone rang before the morning was all spent, with word that CV had taken to her bed with a horrible, nasty stomach virus, and would I be so kind as to pick up and drop off some papers for her, and perhaps procure a Gatoraid? (Considering the hordes of Gator fans we ran across Monday evening while attempting to go to our favorite bar for dinner and air hockey, I had to snicker a bit at the last request, but I am a good friend in need and quickly agreed to all requests.)



One of the papers I had to drop off was for an English class, and as I walked through the door that led into the Hall of Tenured English Faculty I was disgusted to find the stench of patchouli wafting heavily around me. The patchouli stench was an unsubtle reminder of why I declined to continue on the English major path when I returned to university after my hiatus. I can assure you that respectable journalists never, and public relations professionals absolutely never, reak of patchouli.



And if I have offended anyone with my patchouli-bashing, well, you knew I was difficult from the start.

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The Elephant's Child



A few weeks ago the Limpopo River came up in conversation with my father (in a conversation regarding Botswana, naturally), and I suddenly remembered the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, specifically the one entitled "The Elephant's Child." This was perhaps my most favoritest story as a child. (While I also adored The Little Prince, Peter Pan and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, these were entire books, and not stories which could be read in a single sitting just before bed.)



If you're going to read and enjoy "The Elephant's Child," you have to forget for a moment the Rudyard Kipling who wrote (cringe) "The White Man's Burden" (although you really should look up the history behind this poem. The Spanish-American War is something hardly ever taught in U.S. history classes, because it doesn't exactly showcase U.S. foreign policy in the nicest of lights. And in case you thought American imperialism purely a thing of the past, do remember, O Best Beloved, that the citizens of Puerto Rico are still unable to vote for president, nor for a single representative in Congress. But I digress.)



Anyway, forget for a moment all you know about Rudyard Kipling, Champion of Imperialism, British or otherwise. Forget that you ever heard of the man. Imagine, instead, that you are being told a delightful tale from a gifted storyteller, a storyteller who revels in the sounds of language, and the joy of the English language. In fact, it is best if you read the story out loud, or, best of all, have someone read it to you. This should be done after you've had an unhurried, warm bath, and are all snuggled up in your comfiest jammies under a quilt your grandma made (if you don't have a quilt your grandma made a regular blankie will do, but really, a quilt your grandma made is ideal). Then rest your head in the lap of the reader (or on a fluffy pillow, if you are your own reader) and let the delightful rhythm of "The Elephant's Child" make you long to visit the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out what the Crocodile has for dinner.

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