So I have another AIM name that I occasionally go on just so I can read the profiles of people who have blocked me. And sometimes their profiles are song lyrics, but I wonder if they chose those lyrics to be about me. And normally that would be so narcissistic, but I have a certain person and certain song lyrics in mind. But I can't ask, cause I'm not allowed to talk to this person anymore. So I wonder. Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing. But usually I end up deciding that I did.

Dream:
     Someone invited me to a Halloween party. I had nothing to wear, so Jeremy (a guy from work) told me to wear some settlement clothes, put some soot on my face, and say that I was a stowaway on a pirate ship. I did that and got to the party, and people were like, "How many Halloweens in a row are you going to wear that dress for?" And then I felt bad.
     Then Cassie invited me to a party, and Rob was there. And he was smoking. I kept making mean remarks about what an idiot he was to start smoking. He started to mention this philosophy class he wanted to take, and I said, "Is it for people who smoke? You know, they dumb it down? Cause anyone who smokes cigarettes has to be a moron." He got mad at me and yelled (cause I wasn't supposed to be talking to him, just like in real life) and I left.
     Then I wanted one of those popsicles with the cream in the middle. We didn't have any, and my mom got upset cause we had just eaten dinner but I was still hungry. I yelled at her, "You can't slop meat and vegetables on a plate and call it a meal!" (I really want one of those popsicles now)
     Then my mom was going to take me to the pool we used to swim at in West Lafayette. She said, "There are just a few people coming with," but it turned out that people kept filing out of the house to get into the car. There ended up being 25 people, and my mom said we could all fit if some people sat on the floor in the van. I was doing something in the garage, like cleaning something up, and one lady climbed into the driver's seat of the van. She was doing the standard 11-point turn that comes with turning my van around in the driveway, but she kept pulling into the garage. Each time, she kept pulling closer and closer--she was looking behind her, cause she was an idiot. Then she kind of tapped me. I got mad, because there was no reason that she should have hit me, so I started calling her a bitch. She started putting some water from her water bottle in her mouth and then spitting it on me. I started doing the same thing, except I had soda. She got mad, and my mom sent me to my room because I had ruined this lady's sweater. I was really upset and I wanted to call Andy to complain, but then I remembered I left my phone in the car, and they were probably gone by then. I was scared that the people would steal my phone and start making obscene calls on it. I ran downstairs to use my brother's or my sister's phone, but it turned out my mom was standing there with my beach bag. She offered to play catch with me (with a wiffle ball) to make me feel better.

Paris Hilton is engaged to marry a guy named Paris. That makes me think, would I ever marry a guy named Kerry? Like Kerry Wood? Probably not, it would freak me out too much.

Things that make me hate life:
-Naperville brats who depend on daddy to buy them everything
-Giving 21 tours at the settlement tomorrow even though that is not at all in my job description
-How my apartment lease starts A DAY BEFORE CLASS STARTS so I have no time to relax at all

Things that make me think that life isn't so bad:
-Knitting a DNA scarf
-The prospect of getting paid to live in France for a year
-The prospect of going to grad school in Madison, probably the awesomest town ever

Yesterday Cassie and I sang along to Newsies. Because we're just that cool. (Shut up. We are.) And then she introduced me to the greatness that is Gene Kelly's 40-year-old ass. English scientists use it to calibrate instruments! Mmm.

Today I went to Madison again and walked around campus. It's very nice. I think I want to go there for grad school. I also have been considering my spring semester abroad, and instead of that I'm thinking I want to just graduate a year early and then do this year-long teaching program in France where I teach English to kids.

The awesomeness of Andy, manifest in the English language:
Okay, so you know those names for groups of animals, like a murder of crows and whatnot? Andy came up with these two:
A flush of goldfish
A crack of plumbers
And that's why we love Andy!

Today at lunch I had a little bit of a honeydew melon, and my first thought was, "This tastes like a Starburst." In other words, when I eat fruit, my first thought is "mmm candy". Sad.

I messed up the hat with the decreases. I was just making stuff up as I went along, so it was inevitable that it got FUBARed. But it's a learning experience. I need to rip it out and start again, which will suck so bad, but I don't want to end up with a finished hat that sucks ass.

I'm the kind of girl that, if you were to compliment me on my looks, you'd say I was cute. Never pretty, never gorgeous, never sexy, never beautiful. Cute. Which depresses me. I don't want to be cute. I'd rather be plain than cute. Cute to me is the antithesis of sexy; I associate cute with children and girly-girl stuff.

Well, here's another clue for you all
The walrus was Tal ...ia

Four days at the Settlement and already I'm crazy. I finished the four panels of my bag, and I have to wait for my mom to do the lining before I can sew it together and finish it up. So I started making my very own Team Zissou cap on double-pointed needles. This is my first foray into knitting in the round, and being the stubborn person I am, I had to do DPNs instead of circulars, which would be easier. I futzed up one part, but mostly it's going pretty well. Normally I would have fixed that one part, but it took me for-ev-er to cast on, so I didn't want to rip it out. Hooray for me.

I feel like I want to retire from everything. I just want to start over and have a good job and do well in school and have friends who aren't too busy for me. I hate being left alone to my thoughts every day. I don't know what's up with any of my friends; most of them I haven't talked to in a while. Who knows if we're even still friends. I want someone to distract me from all of the terrible things that I think about myself when I'm stuck at home every night.

My cousin's going to have twins in November. She's getting married in June. At first I was all judgmental, but I've been thinking it over. She had some serious medical conditions where the doctors told her that she was probably never going to have kids. And she was on the pill, but I guess that failed--probably one of her other medications negated its effects. So I guess I'm happy for her, even though we haven't talked in at least 7 or 8 years.

I got more yarn today! Wheeeeee! And my bag is like halfway done.

I have a bitch of a canker sore right on that little flap of skin that connects my bottom lip to my gums. It hurts so bad. It hurts to brush my teeth. It hurts to eat. It hurts to smile. It's so ugly and disgusting. I have been swishing hydrogen peroxide (or H2O2 as it's called on the streets) like mad. Note: Don't confuse canker sores and cold sores.

I go back to the Settlement tomorrow (officially today, but I still have a period of sleep before I go back). I'm not looking forward to it. I won't have to deal with rugrats for a few weeks, but they're looming on the horizon. They can smell fear. And exhaustion. And they show no mercy. I just have to keep telling myself: this is my last summer of camp. There's no way in hell I'm going back next year.

Dream:
Allie got pregnant. Talia and I were horrified but we giggled our asses off.

Revelation: I've been doing psso (pass slipped stitch over) wrong this entire time. No wonder my lace patterns don't work out. I'm an idiot.

My parents and I went to Madison today. I've never been there, or at least not when I've been old enough to remember. I went there as a baby, but that doesn't count. It's gorgeous. If I had been familiar with that town before I applied to college, I definitely would have applied there. I want to go to grad school there. I like how it's a decent-sized town; I'm sick of how Champaign-Urbana is in the middle of nowhere. I went to Urban Outfitters and got this awesome batik hoodie, and it was on sale because the print was messed up or something--there was supposed to be a flower on the upper left side but there wasn't, but I didn't care. I also got a gorgeous suede messenger bag. It's so soft. And then my family stopped at a Cracker Barrel on the way home, and I got a shirt that said, "Good things sprout in small packages" and has Sprout (the Jolly Green Giant's nephew or whatever) on it. It's awesome. Stuff is awesome.

Life is frustrating when you think you have plans with someone, so you don't make plans with someone else, so that someone else makes plans, and then that first person breaks plans with you, so you sit at home on Friday night and watch a terrible movie with your dad.

This semester I got my best college GPA to date. And that was even with the crises, the repeated trips home for doctor appointments, and the major slacking. Yay for me.

I watched Meet the Fockers today with my dad. I hated Meet the Parents, so I didn't want to see this. But my dad really wanted someone to watch it with, so I took pity on him and watched it. I didn't crack a smile once. It was such a terrible movie. I really hate crap like that. But on the up side, I'm 1/4 of the way done with my bag.

I bought some yarn to make this bag. I'm going to be stuck in the car a lot for the next few days, and I wanted something to occupy myself. I'm excited. I'm going to do two strands at a time, one of the sari yarn, and one of a 2-ply shetland wool yarn in bright awesome turquoise. The sari yarn was such a pain in the ass to wind. I had one knot that I spent over an hour on (I kept time by tv shows). It was only after that that I developed a good method for keeping my yarn untangled as I wind it. I rule.

Dream:
Christopher Meloni was only a couple years older than me. He and Andy and I were all in a class together. We were supposed to be watching a movie, but "Chris" (as I called him) kept telling us a story. Andy tried to shush him so we wouldn't get in trouble, but Chris continued. The professor got mad and went to talk to him. He told her that a girl we know (Susan S. from HS) targets people and hurts them emotionally. The professor forcibly dragged him out of the room. Andy kept trying to put his arm around my waist and pull me closer, but I wouldn't let him.
Then Rob and his friends came to my dorm room to do their homework. They tried to act all surprised that it was my room, but they knew ahead of time. It was some plot by Rob but I don't know what it was supposed to accomplish. I was mad at them.
I had a crush on Christopher Meloni, so I looked up his phone number. I was about to call him, with the excuse being that I wanted to know what happened after the professor dragged him out of the room. I was going to ask him out. Then Richard Belzer came downstairs and made me do some leg stretches with him in the kitchen. He said it would improve my eyesight.
Then there was some weird thing where I was in an orchestral setting. I had to help one girl change the strings on her viola--she had switched the D and the A. I started pizzicatoing Verdi's Requiem, and I got one or two notes slightly out of tune because I'm not used to the viola's longer neck. Talia kind of winced when I played the out-of-tune note(s) and was like, "Well, it's cute that she tries to make music."
I need to stop watching 4 episodes of SVU a night. But I do wish that Christopher Meloni was only a couple years older than me and that he was a friend of mine. Mmmmhmmmm. He's only a few years younger than my parents, so I'll stop now.

I started a new scarf today. The stitch pattern goes quickly, but the yarn twists a lot and is therefore a bitch. But it's so soft; it feels like a t-shirt. I think I need to get more of it.

I went with Cassie on an expedition to find Adidas Rom Classics to make Team Zissou shoes. The Adidas outlet didn't have any; they had something close, a style called Dragon, but they only had one shoe in my size. They had no clue where the right shoe went. Because they are awesome.

Thursday: I have to go to the doctor to see if I need another shockwave therapy for my kidney stone. Hooray? Also: more x-rays. Also: maybe Ikea?

Friday: I'm going back to C-U to see my advisor to discuss going abroad.

Saturday: On to Madison to attend a taping of Prairie Home Companion

Sunday: Downtown Chicago with my mom to find fabric.

Monday and every weekday until I go back to school: Work. Blah.

I finished my first ever scarf today. That's funny, cause I've known how to knit for seriously 5 years now. I just never finish anything I start, I suppose. But I finished this! And now I have like a zillion other projects in mind. We'll see what I accomplish this summer.

I watched 90 minutes of The Twilight Zone and 90 minutes of Kids in the Hall today. That's how you know it's a good day. And they were good KITH too--Thirty Helens Agree, These Are the Daves I Know, I Have a Good Attitude Towards Menstruation... I miss KITH. There was a time when I didn't appreciate good Canadian humor, but now I'd like to think that I'm a little more cultured than before. DAVE FOLEY I LOVE YOU! That just slipped out. (I love Mark McKinney too!)

Dream:
Talia and I were somewhere, like a stadium or something. We both had to go to the bathroom, but I didn't want to go because I didn't want to be peeing in the stall next to her where I could hear her and she could hear me.

Dear Talia,
Why do I keep dreaming about you? This is getting weird.

I learned an important lesson today: Caesar dressing is made with anchovies. Eyyyyyyyyyewwwwww. I just about retched when my mom told me that.

My mom and I went out shopping yet again. We went to another yarn store, and I got the most amazing soft stuff. I'm going to start that scarf tomorrow. I enjoy the scarf as a fashion accessory; I never really got into jewelry, but a scarf I can get behind.

I also got two awesome sweaters on clearance. And we went to Trader Joe's! So everyone was happy.

Shit shit shit. I didn't keep track of the money I spent, and I overdrew from my checking account. Good thing I have my IRS refund check. But damn. I'm going to have to conserve money like whoa this summer.

me: i've come to the conclusion that boys are dumb
Kristin: you JUST came to that conclusion?
me: i'm a slow learner

My sister and I both had nothing to do this evening, and my parents went out for dinner with some of their friends, so my dad gave us money and we ate at Bennigan's. It was nice to catch up with her and see what the kids are up to these days. When I'm out with her, I wonder sometimes if people think we're friends instead of sisters. One time I went to Best Buy with her, and I was talking to Rob, and one of Rob's co-workers came up and was like, "Your girlfriend's friend is hot," and Rob was like, "That's her sister...her 13-year-old sister." Haha.

My mom and I went to a specialty yarn shop today. I love yarn. I love expensive yarn. I got this really awesome yarn that's like mohair and cotton and metallic, and it's multicolored and really awesome. It was expensive, so I only got ~90 yards' worth, which is just enough to make a skinny scarf. I might go back later and get more. Then my mom had to go to Michael's, and I ended up getting more yarn there. They had this great stuff that's just exactly the ugly green and ugly pink of my plaid wool coat. Plus it had teal and gold accents, so that's awesome. A few days ago my mom got me some self-patterning yarn, so I've been knitting like a fiend to make that into a scarf. I'm a little more than halfway done. I just sit in front of the TV and knit all day. Part of me feels like I should be doing something, but then I realize that in just over a week I'll be working 8-5 M-F with no lunch break for the entire summer. So I'm entitled to be a bum for a week and a half.

Dream:
I had to take the AP Physics test again, which was scary as hell cause I haven't touched physics in 2 years. Stuart Davis was shipped in a big wooden crate to play a concert for us as a post-AP test prize. Talia was off practicing, and I was hoping she'd come back soon because I know she lurves Stuart Davis. He was about 5'4" and pale and had blond hair. He played a mandolin. I had my mandolin with me, but one of the E strings was broken (like it is in real life). Talia came back and I all but ran her over trying to tell her that Stuart Davis was playing. She was so not excited. She was like, "You almost knocked me over for that?!" She had gotten a haircut and her hair wasn't any longer than the bottom of her earlobe. When Stuart Davis was done playing, he rode a bigwheel up a ramp back into his crate to be shipped back to wherever he came from. Then Talia and I went to eat at a huge buffet and I got a milk shake. When I went to sit down, I found that she had run away and I couldn't find her. So I went and sat with a bunch of Hispanic truckers.
I just checked Stuart Davis' website to see what he looks like. I clicked on some of the show dates and under "Information" they say, "Leave your pants at home." Odd, that.

Last night I dreamt that I was dating Jimmy Fallon. Ew. That's...really gross. And the sad thing is, 5 years ago it wouldn't have been gross. Hell, three years ago it wouldn't have been gross. But Jimmy Fallon went the way of the gross and I don't forsee a return to normalcy anytime in the near future. So I offer a warning to Jimmy Fallon: don't date me.

Today my dad and I went to eat at Bobak's, this Polish buffet. And they were playing Radiohead's OK Computer. Which marks the second time I've been out to eat with my father and heard strains of this album over a PA system. The first time was at Espresso Royale a few years ago, and they were playing a string quartet cover album, which...you haven't heard "Paranoid Android" until you've heard a string quartet cover it. It makes me want to keep playing violin, just so I can do awesome stuff like that.

Then my mom asked me if I've lost weight, 'cause I look "trimmer". I haven't. I've maintained. I've actually gained weight since I graduated HS, I think. But within the past year, I've maintained. I can pretty much eat anything, or not eat anything, and I'll stay within a couple of pounds of my weight.

Things that I'll never have to do again:
-Regularly share showers with 40 of the grossest girls in the world
-Use 0.5-ply sand-/toiletpaper
-Eat terrible food at early-ass hours
-Listen to stupid people yelling in the hallway at all hours

I woke up this morning by biting the inside of my lip. But I didn't just bite it, a tiny part got wedged in between like my overbite. So that really sucked. But it's never a good sign when you wake up at 6:30 by biting your lip.

Talia: "...Yeah, I've met him a few times but I haven't really experienced the full Steve package."
Me: "You haven't experienced Steve's package."
Talia: "Shut up!"
We're 12.

I go home tomorrow. All semester long I've been waiting to go home for the summer. And now I don't want to. I have nothing for me here. I have nothing for me at home. But I kind of like the isolation I can find here. There are always a million people around but I know very few and am friends with even less, so I don't feel like I have to constantly be happy and smiling and fake. What do I care if total strangers hate me?

I saw this picture tonight. I wish I were more like that. I wish I were more impulsive and could seize the moments as they happened. I spend too much time in the past, going over and over experiences I've had that might have gone differently. If I get rejected, I'll spend the rest of my life berating myself for not handling the situation differently. I always end up deciding that the costs outweight the potential benefits, so I never do crap like this. But I should.

Holy mackerel. Last night I had forgotten that phenazopyridine turns your urine BRIGHT ORANGE-RED, and this morning I had forgotten that I had taken phenazopyridine. That'll wake you up. Jeez.

I had a dream about my French lit prof (who's also the head of the department), but I don't really remember the specifics.

Last night Talia and I watched an MST3K with Joel. I used to really prefer Joel, but then I hadn't seen an episode with him in a long time. And we watched like 8 million episodes with Mike. And now I think Mike's better. But Joel looks kind of like Thom Yourke so I don't know where I stand.

But then like right after the movie I started to get this really terrible cramp in my right side. And I was like, what the hell? 'Cause I just sat around all day and didn't exert myself physically at all. But then I started to get that familiar pain when I passed a kidney stone fragment back in March. So I took phenazopyridine and Vicodin and I was able to get some rest.

I had yet another dream about camp. Scary.

I also dreamt that I saw this movie that I thought was LOTR:ROTK but it wasn't actually. I got confused 'cause it had Viggo Mortensen in it and they were wearing vaguely medieval costumes. Shania Twain was also in it--I think she was leftover in my unconscious from when I watched I ♥ Huckabees the other day.

Things I bought today:
-little girl makeup (Smackers, Bonne Bell, Wet 'N Wild), 'cause I'm awesome.
-really cute black flats (like these but a bit different)
-books!!!!! I have no willpower when it comes to books. Somebody please stop me. What's a library?
-lotion. whoo!

Here's what Talia said in the car:
"I'm just going to go around and pretend I have all these different diseases. 'I have STDS!!' Because I totally have STDs and everyone knows it."
Me: "It's true, hahahaha. 'I'm Talia and I have random promiscuous sex!'"
Talia: "It's true."

Last night I finished Sock by Penn Jillette. It's a murder mystery told from the point of view of a sock monkey. I'll give you a second to let that sink in.

...

...

I almost didn't read it based on the gimmick. It seemed too much like something people who like Janet Evanovich would read. But then I remembered that Penn Jillette's a pretty brash guy, and very entertaining, and so I read it. And it was pretty good. It wasn't read-it-all-in-one-day good like Invisible Monsters, but it was good. Lots of pop culture references. Lots of intriguing ideas. I really liked it.

Dream (I took another nap):
I was reading a book about a woman whose husband was cheating on her. The woman decided to wear a blindfold for a year (every day, every hour, every second) so she could see what it was like to live in total blindness. While she was depriving herself of her sight, she was going to take that year to decide if she was a lesbian or not.
Damn, sounds like an interesting books. I'd read that.

I took a nap after I finished my final today. Here's my dream:
Justin (Allen Hall Justin, not NVHS Justin) asked if I wanted to go to a Badly Drawn Boy concert with him. I accepted. Christopher Walken drove the bus that took us to the venue. When we got there, Justin started crying, but he wouldn't say why. And then he took off his shoes and socks and was putting his bare feet all over my face. His feet smelled bad. He was still crying. We never saw the show.

I dreamt that people were calling Steve "Brandon" (the cellist of the Pacifica Quartet) because they got confused by the curly hair.

Talia got the latest CD of the Pacifica Quartet and she's letting me burn it. This is our university's resident quartet. Her teacher is Brandon, the curly-haired guy with the intense blue eyes. My favorite member is Sibbi, the blond guy. He looks like MST3K's Mike Nelson. So right now I'm currently geeking out over Pacifica. Sez Talia: "And you haven't even met them yet!" Which implies that there is much more geeking out to be done. GLAVIN!

So way back in October, Talia and I had a bluegrass jam session which I subsequently purged from my memory for unknown reasons until she showed me these pictures today. You can ...enjoy.


We're having a real hootenanny now!


Talia sez: I'm going to tell you a secret...and then cut your head off!
Kerry sez: Listen to her! She means it!


And now for our famous bluegrass version of "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite". Letters K and T assure the public their production will be second to none!

Tonight I had my very own recital wherein I played my Nocturne for Talia. And then we turned it into our own Lotta Pianos tour when she played "Martha My Dear" for me. I was able to make her listen to my piece cause I gave her a dollar so she could buy a cookie. Ahhh bribery.