3.29.2005

Dream fragment:
I discovered that my piano teacher had a prosthetic leg from the knee down. I remarked that I never would have guessed had I not seen it with my own eyes, because he walked very well.

3.28.2005

So! Apparently I don't have sleep apnea anymore (or I do, but it's at a very manageable level, meaning it doesn't have to be treated). But! I do have restless limb disorder, so I'm going to have to get treated for that. I think that basically means take a pill each day, which is doable.

3.27.2005

I'm up to a book a day. Yesterday it was Devil in the Details by Jennifer Traig. Today it was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. I'd recommend both. Just mentioning this for posterity: yesterday I also finished Sellevision by Augusten Burroughs.

It's funny how one day I can be in the worst goddeamn mood ever, the deepest pit of despair with no way to escape, and then the next day I can be all sunshine and rainbows. Kisses!

3.26.2005

What do I have waiting back at school for me? Tests. Papers. Obligations. Books. Abysmal grades. Frustration. Practicing. Pieces I can't play. Homework I don't understand. Tests I don't pass. Friends (she says with a hint of hope)?? Hardly. Alienation. Depression. Cliques I don't belong to. And for what? So I can get a worthless degree in French that will ensure that I'll be stuck in crummy retail jobs for the rest of my life, barely making above minimum wage. I'm not smart enough to get a degree in anything worthwhile--business, engineering... I'm not smart enough to go to grad school and get a higher degree. I have no skills.

My life wasn't supposed to turn out like this.

Steve and I saw Hotel Rwanda today. That was all kinds of depressing, mostly because it was true. Jeez.

I don't want to go back to school on Sunday.

I bought four books today, three of which are memoirs from girls that were pretty messed up growing up (one alcoholic from the age of 13, one obsessive-compulsive, and one clinically depressed). The other book is fiction, but it's about a guy with Asperger's. So I guess we see a trend of mental illness in my preferred reading (see also: Augusten Burroughs, David Sedaris). The fiction book that I picked up is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. My mom was listening to it on tape when she came to pick me up a few weeks ago, so I heard a good 2 hours of the middle of the story. We'll see how the rest is.

3.25.2005

Last night I started feeling nostalgic for music from the years 1996 through 1999. Those were the years that I was in middle school and ninth grade. I looked on several hit charts from those years just so I could remember all the awesomeness. And then I started remembering other stuff, like how I used to wash my hair with Herbal Essences, which has that distinct scent. Ahhh, I miss those years. I'm going to be looking at the local library to see if I can find any of those songs on CD. I'll post my list in a little bit so if anyone has those songs and would like to help me out...That'd be awesome.

3.23.2005

Our German exchange student left today. He was here for 2 weeks, but I only got to hang out with him for like 5 days or so. His English was pretty good; he'd spoken it for 8 years. I noticed that a lot of times he wouldn't know the exact verb that goes with a phrase (e.g. "to set a fire") so he used the word "make" a lot. He knew a lot of words that I wouldn't expect; my dad started to talk about an octopus, and Basti knew what that was. It was pretty cool. More stories to come later, when I feel like typing.

Dream:
Talia's sister moved to CU, and Talia and I went to visit her. Then I was telling Talia about that dream, and she was like, "Yeah, you're weird." Then I asked her to play a duet with me, because one of my French profs was defending a dissertation and she needed some music for when people were coming and going. We picked a duet by some guy named Companelli, and I was like, "It's hard to play his music because he's not very well-known, so you can't find recordings." I decided that I didn't play very well, so I recruited one of our friends, Justin, to play. He played even worse than me, but I didn't want to tell him. He decided at the very last minute that he wanted to quit, so I had to step in and it kind of sucked cause all of a sudden I couldn't count 8th notes. Talia was wearing a shirt that said Coca-Cola backwards, capris, and socks pulled up mid-calf. Heh. We played the duet, and afterwards my prof came up to thank us, but she never actually thanked us or said anything nice. And also, she called me Kristen.

3.18.2005

BLAH.

Only one test keeping me from spring break. I've studied my ass off. I think I know the material, but there's a little part of me that's really nervous. I have nothing to be nervous about, really. I just want to get this test over with. Arghghghahgghghg. It's warm here, like mid-50's, but word on the street is that it's cold back home. It snowed in Chicago yesterday morning. Happy spring break indeed.

3.17.2005

So on Tuesday I studied a lot for my Hinduism test on Wednesday. And damn if all that studying didn't pay off. My studying habits usually follow one of two patterns: 1) I don't study very much at all, and do well; or 2) I study a lot and don't do well. It was nice to have my work pay off, though.

I have my French Civ midterm tomorrow. Last time I really didn't study that much at all, but I got a 67/70. So you can imagine my incentive to study isn't very high.

Talia and I went to Steak & Shake tonight, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I feel like 10 lbs heavier and generally unhealthy. I've eaten healthy like all this week, like seriously salads every day. So this shouldn't be too bad, but still.

You know those Five Star notebooks, and how their covers aren't paper or cardboard, but plastic? Imagine slicing your finger on one of those. I did it, and it went deep. So I wore a band-aid all last night and most of today and now my finger is white and wrinkly and smells funny.

3.16.2005

So Talia reported that she saw someone crying...this particular someone would be a person I used to be friends with, but lately she's been acting like I don't exist. I can't bring myself to feel sympathetic at all for this girl. She and her boyfriend are attached at the hip, yet last month she told me that their relationship was meh and he was nothing special. Which explains why she's with him all the time? And she can't come down to a meal with me and not be with him for 15 minutes...she needs to wait those 15 minutes for him to get back so they can walk down the stairs together. And only then will they come eat with me, sometimes, but they'll ignore me and talk to each other and be cutesy and stupid and boring. Awesome. This same someone asked if I'd like to live with her next year, and when I said I needed 24 hours to ask my parents about getting an apartment, she took that to mean that she should sign a lease without me and not tell me until after the fact. This same someone only ever talks to me when she complains about her roommates. And these aren't legitimate gripes, either. She gets so uptight about the stupidest things. So maybe I'm glad that an uptight self-serving bitch isn't my friend. But why do I feel like crap?

Here are a few songs I like by the band StillLine: Charlotte and Run. I think one of my friends is in that band but I don't know for sure. Heh. Some friend I am. Anyway... Listen!

3.15.2005

Cramps like hell. Pain medication does nothing. Birth control is apparently doing nothing. I don't want to do anything but curl up in a ball and sleep for 12 hours, but I have to make myself go on.

3.14.2005

So in addition to all the other crap I've had to put up with in the past few days, my mom bitched at me because I happened to call her while she was in heavy traffic and she decided to pick up the phone, and I found out that I've grown up too fast, I'm too neurotic, and I'm going to miss not having a childhood. Awesome. Keep piling it on; I think we have enough room for a little more self-loathing.

I got three hours of sleep last night. Not for lack of trying, though. I was in bed by 12:30, but I couldn't fall asleep 'til 4. Blah.

It occurred to me last night that I'd be a prime candidate for one of those women who stays with an abusive partner because "He's not really that bad." Actually, that was pretty much how I was in my last relationship. It wasn't physically abusive, but it was somewhat psychologically abusive (for reasons I'd rather not enumerate). I'm definitely not as secure anymore, and I now have a predilection to believe that everything that goes wrong is my fault. I'm glad I got out. But I see this behavior with friends now--they treat me poorly, but I keep going back because it's my fault, I'm oversensitive and making something out of nothing. Besides, they have a reason to do what they do to me, and it must be the result of something I've done wrong, right? Blah. Now to pick up the pieces of my shattered self-esteem. ...Ooh, how emo was that?

People suck. Talia and I are going to start our own country where people don't suck, and in order to become a citizen you'll have to pass a personality test and a comprehensive "what would you do in this situation" test like employers often give prospective employees at crappy retail places. The test will be readministered every two years, just to make sure the citizens are holding up to the standard of nonsuckitude.

3.13.2005

It was a busier weekend than most--I made two people mad at me. Awesome. Let's alienate some more people, Kerry. Okay, sounds good. Let's go.

This week will be hellish in terms of what I have to do, but I don't want to be one of those people who constantly whines about how much she has to do. In my experience, things like that always look worse on paper, and they're not really so bad in real life. Especially if you detach yourself from the entire process. Also, I don't expect to do anything besides work and sleep, so it's not like I'm missing out on anything. So right now I'm going to do some work, and then I'm going to sleep. And then I'll wake up and do more week, and then sleep. Repeat until spring break, when I do work for preparation for summer camp, and subject myself to more doctor's appointments. Work, sleep, be poked and prodded. What a glorious existence.

3.12.2005

Dream:
I went to a pet store and bought a few pets: a guinea pig the size of a small (~10 lb) dog that I named "Honey", and some fish. I accidentally put one of the fish in freshwater, instead of saltwater. He was in the same container as a bar of soap. I just happened to look towards the container, and I saw a black spot about the size of a quarter on the soap. I was too scared to look at it, so I made Talia look at it. She confirmed that it was a fish. I felt really sick and upset with myself--how could I have killed a living thing??

A Tale of French Deficiency, and French Supremacy:
Today we had an extracurricular phonetics class, since we needed to be in a classroom with computers. We're working on the difference between the vowels [y] (like in lu) and [u] (like in loup). We had to record those words (lu, loup) in isolation, and then in a sentence, where the computer would analyze them. This one dumbbbbbbb girl was sitting behind me, and she couldn't get the pronunciation--that's fine, the difference between them is very subtle. Except she pronouncd loup like l'eau, which has the vowel sound [o]. It doesn't take a native speaker of French to hear that [u] and [o] are very different. Her sentence was, "J'ai lu le loup dans la forĂȘt." That means, "I read the wolf in the forest." Hmmm, verily. Anyway I had a good chuckle and then called my friend Andy and had another good chuckle. Yeah, I'm a jerk for laughing at someone who's dumber than me, but I need to feel superior somehow. To hear the difference between loup and lu, go here, type them in, and select Alain or Juliette.

3.10.2005

I finished my first cryptoquote ever! You can do it here and see if you are as awesome as me.

What I do when I'm bored in class...

...I work on my drawing skills.

My Hinduism prof




French poet Arthur Rimbaud

I passed a fragment of my kidney stone this morning at 5 am. It sucked. But I stayed home from all my classes and got some pills that turn my urine bright orange. My lit prof sent me this awesome e-mail that was so zen:

Yikes, kidney stone!
Sorry to hear of it.
Drink lots of water?

3.09.2005

I just watched the trailer for a documentary called God Spelled Backwards and I definitely started missing my dog.

3.08.2005

I hate how my body sucks so I have to take hormones that make me incredibly emotional.

Tales from Kerry's Past
In 5th grade, we were learning about WWII. We had to divide into groups and write plays. My group wanted to write ours about a Jewish family in the US that got sent to a concentration camp. Apparently that wasn't absurd enough because we also wanted to make them Japanese so that they would get sent to an internment camp as well. Our teacher told us that was a little much, and we were upset.

3.06.2005

Source of frustration for the day:
Our room is right next to the bathroom. There is a radio in the bathroom. Sometimes, for inexplicable reasons, people turn up the volume on the radio as loud as it will go. That means that we hear the radio in our room. In cases such as these, I usually brave the deafening music and turn down the volume. However, today there was some source of music pervading my room that ended up not being under my control (my CD player, the bathroom radio). So I had to sit there and counterattack with my own music, which made for a gross mix of good stuff and crap. (Good stuff = my music)

Today Steve and I were on the bus, and we heard this guy ask his friends, "Do you know where the phrase 'Your mom goes to college' is from?" At first I thought it was a joke, but he kept going on. "I've heard it so much these past several months, but I have no idea where people got it. And the weird thing is, my mom does go to college, so it always freaks me out for a second." One of his friends replies, "Probably from some movie or something." The other friend adds, "Yeah, and the thing is, it's probably a really shitty movie because like everyone has seen it." That's so strange to me, that like three college-aged people haven't seen Napoleon Dynamite. But what's really pathetic is that one kid's attitude. It's really stupid to avoid stuff just because it's supposedly really cool and popular, in the same way that it's really stupid to like stuff just because it's really cool and popular. Either way, you're letting the media make choices for you, when you should be making those choices yourself. You should be the one to decide what you like and what you don't like, instead of going with or against the flow just beacuse it's the flow.

What am I doing up so late, you ask? Well, I'm currently having breathing problems and I'm scared to go to sleep until it's all subsided.

3.03.2005

Dream:
I bought a set of Spongebob underwear to turn Steve on. He loved it. He was wearing a pair of American flag boxers, but underneath he had on a thong. I told him it was sexy even though in my mind I said "EW" because thongs on men are gross. Then I put on a pair of American flag boxers, and we had a good laugh because we were wearing matching boxers.
Then Kirstin and I went to this party. It was kind of like a celebration or recognition of something, so it wasn't like a college house party. She looked 21, and was able to get us alcohol (there was an open bar). My ear/nose/throat doctor was at the party, and he lectured me about drinking. Every time he turned his head, I took a drink, but he immediately caught me and made me feel guilty each time. After that, I had to drive back to school. I had a Segway scooter and I promised my parents that I could make it back on that. I only made it halfway, and I was immediately transported back to my house, where my parents were a little miffed that they had to drive me back.

3.01.2005

Jeez, Scrubs has been depressing me these past few weeks because Turk & Carla are like the one fictional couple that I actually like, and I don't want to see them split up.

Dream:
Steve had a twin brother that he had never told me about. His twin brother came back from wherever he had been, and was hanging out with Steve. I was in class, and they came and sat next to me, and they looked exactly alike (except one had marginally longer hair) and I didn't even notice there were two of them. Steve never told me the twin's name, so I just called him "Multi-Steve", which they both got a kick out of. We all went back to their house, where they disappeared into another room. At first I just hung out and played with their dog, but then I got bored, so I searched them out. They were laying on a couch, facing each other and hugging. I decided that was kind of weird, so I didn't interrupt them. I left.