Three things I should have posted about my sister for her birthday last week:

• Instead of sucking her thumb, she sucked her first two fingers on her left hand. When she was sleeping (like in the car or in front of the tv or whatever), I would try to pull them out of her mouth. She would resist as much as possible. She was a strong 3-year-old when she was asleep.
  
• When she was around 5 or 6, she thought "Vomit" was a perfectly legitimate name for a Barbie dog.
  
• She's amazing at puzzles. When she was 7, she had a Rubik's cube. You'd tell her two colors, and a few minutes later she'd have those sides filled in completely. I don't think she had the patience to do the whole thing, although I bet she could have. She's also really good at those games where you have a square grid with tiles, and you have to move them around to get the picture or the sequence of numbers or whatever (like this).
  

What the fuck? This is my new favorite website.

There's this girl who's in like 3 of my classes and we're kind of friends, and I learned today that she works at the Settlement too. Weird!

I finished Everything Is Illuminated.

Today the carpet cleaning guy came unannounced, and he fucking opened the door to my bedroom without knocking. I was in bed, trying to nap. What a fucker. I hope one day he walks in on something really disturbing (like bukkake). That'll teach him to open doors without knocking. Seriously, what an assmonger.

I treated myself to Thai today. I also treated myself to knitting and reading for pleasure. I am currently knitting the Sesame cardigan from MagKnits, but in a different color scheme and a different stripe pattern. My color scheme is much more ugly 70s, which I think seems to fit for the style. I'm not saying the pattern is ugly 70s, but you know what I mean, right? It reminds me of something that my mom would have worn in college. I like this pattern.

I'm almost done with Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. I want to see the movie.

I only have 120 pages to read for tomorrow. Only! I was happy about this, and then I realized that relativity is such a bitch.

On a scale of one to Spanish, this weekend was muy bueno. (Thanks to Mike T. [I never know the rules about putting people's full names in here] for that, btw.)

The good:

• I saw Tom a lot.
  
• I went to Ikea.
  
• I knit some more fairisle stuff, namely hats for my cousin's babies, although I might have to rip it, because who knows how big the babies' heads are.
  
• I ate a lot of really good food with Tom.
  

The bad:

• My parents are apparently starting the Polley Family Collection Agency. I think my dad has ties to the Russian mafia.
  
• I didn't get any homework done.
  
• Rain makes for headaches.
  

Yesterday I went into homework lockdown, and I amazingly managed to get it all done. I'm done with my preliminary research on medicine during the Middle Ages/Renaissance, presentation on La Provence, quiz, busy work, and more busy work (of which I did the wrong chapter and had to re-do it). I'm going home later today. I hope my mom will take me to the Renegade Craft Fair tomorrow. I'm looking forward to getting a lot of reading (pleasure) done on the bus.

This is pretty much the stupidest thing I've read all week.

My brain feels like it's going to explode. That's not my way of saying that I did too much thinking or anything; my head really hurts, and it feels like my brain is getting really big and pressing against my skull. Ow.

Dream:
     I got a black cat. I named him Tickles. My mom came to my apartment and was putting groceries in my fridge and she was like, "Is it itchy in here, or just me?" For some reason, my allergic reaction to the cat was delayed by a day, but I had to return him. Talia had to drive me to the mall pet store, but first she wanted to stop at Barnes & Noble. Tickles peed all over the carpet, and some old lady bitched me out, even though I was cleaning it up. Serves them right for not having litterboxes available. Talia went to the cafe upstairs and was eating waffles. An hour later she wasn't ready to go, and I was like, "Dude, I'll just walk to the mall because I need to get there before they close," and her mouth was full of waffles and whipped cream so she just bugged her eyes and nodded at me.
     Then Nathan (piano teacher) and I talked a lot on AIM at really odd hours, like 4:30 am and stuff.
     Then I made plans to sponsor a child who was supposed to be born with her hand in her stomach. Dr. Cox (from Scrubs) was the one delivering the baby. After it was born, I saw it, except it was like a 7-year-old child who could talk and stuff. And her hand wasn't in her stomach. And her parents were suburban. I needed to go to the mall yet again so I could cancel my sponsorship. I wandered into a department store shoe clearance area, and was trying lots of pairs on, but didn't buy anything. Allen was one of the salespeople in the department store, and he was happy to see me. By the time I got everything straightened out, it was dark and I had to walk home all the way from the mall. I ran into Eve (lady from work) and she gave me a ride in her huge green Murano.

Today is my sister's birthday, so I will list some things about her:

• Before she was born, my brother and I had a bet whether the new baby would be a boy or girl. I won. My brother is famous for quipping, "You were right, I was wrong."
  
• She spit up a lot as a baby.
  
• When she was just learning how to stand up, my brother and I would shout, "Baby coming down the runway!" and push her down. She would laugh her little baby ass off.
  
• While she was in the playpen, we'd play this game where you put your hand on the mesh wall, and she'd put her hand against yours, and you'd move your hand and she'd move hers, and so on.
  
• My brother and I called her chubby all the time when she was little. Amazingly, she doesn't have any sort of complex about this (at least, so far as I can tell.)
  
• She used to tell people that she wanted to be a model, a realtor, and a mom when she grew up (she wanted to be all three of those at the same time).
  
• She had a buttload of hats when she was like 3.
  
• We used to call her Miss Win, and then Winnie. Now I just call her Win. My dad tells me not to, because "Erin is such a pretty name".
  
• She's the only one of the kids (I'm counting the dog as a kid, shut up) whose first name doesn't start with K. But her middle name starts with K, so I guess that's alright.
  
• If she had been born a boy, her name would have been Colin.
  
• My mom used to make a pun on "Erin go braugh" and say, "Erin go bra-less!"
  
• Erin's the most easygoing person I know. Growing up, she took so much shit from me and Kevin, and now she doesn't let anything bother her, which I think is a really admirable trait (and the exact opposite of me).
  
• She is 16 today, so she'll be getting her license any day now. Watch out for a black 1998 Accord.
  
• Erin's and my legs are about the same length, but she's 5'10" and I'm only 5'2".
  
• A couple years ago, Erin and I went to Best Buy. I was talking to Rob, and then one of Rob's co-workers came up. After Erin and I left, the co-worker told Rob that he thought Erin was hot. Rob replied that Erin was only 13/14 (I don't remember when this story occurred).
  
• She used to play The Sims. Haha, dork. Okay, I used to play it too.
  
• When she was little, she had a white stuffed dog that she named Dogga.
  
• There's a really hilarious home video taken around Christmastime, where I'm about 7 or 8, Kevin's 5ish, and Erin's 3. We're all dancing to the American Graffiti soundtrack, and then Erin gets right in front of the camera, lifts her shirt up to her neck, and starts hitting her stomach. We watched this a few months ago and she laughed so hard she was crying. I can't wait until she gets engaged/married so I can show that to her fiancé/husband.
  
• She obviously looks up to her older sister, because she's taking her second year of French in HS.
  
• She can draw and paint really well.
  

UPDATE: Erin said, "hahahhaha that made me laugh so hard. THANK YOU!!! i loved it"

Dream:
     I went to Talia's house for dinner. Their house was almost entirely underground. I even met her sister (who lives in a vortex). Erica (sister) made up a nickname for me that sounded rather babyish, like "Bibi" or something. Everyone started calling me that because Erica is very artistic (in many domains). Her mom took everyone's blood pressure in the middle of dinner, but she put the cuff around my wrist, and everyone got mad when I tried to move it. I made a joke that if Talia did such-and-such thing to annoy me, I'd cut off her hair, and she took that as serious advice that her hair would look better shorter. Her parents looked at me like I was insane, and I generally felt pretty unwelcome.
     Then I went on three blind dates, all with guys who were older and unattractive.
     Then I went back to Talia's house, and we were going to play a weird variety of poker where each person has 25 cards in his hand. I had 4 tens. Talia's grandma was supposed to be a poker pro. Talia's dad didn't look the way he normally did; he was taller and burlier. He had magical powers--he turned my 5 of spades into a pea, and then he laughed that he knew one of my cards. (Cheater.) Talia's grandpa came in from the pool, wearing a speedo, and sat down next to me. The grandpa had a 17-year-old girlfriend who rode a zebra. The zebra had striped wings and also magical powers pertaining to water. Talia and I wanted to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas but her parents made us play poker. Then her dad got into some digression about how he never said Talia's mom was skinny, but rather he had always thought she was curvy in all the right places. Talia's mom's eyes were welling up with tears, and Talia looked at me and mouthed, "I. KNOW." and gave me a frowl.

"Starman" covered by Seu Jorge. Ever since the trailers for "The Life Aquatic" came out, more than anything I'd wanted to know what that song was. I couldn't find it anywhere. I got the soundtrack, hoping for it to be on there. I was disappointed that it wasn't. A couple days ago, I actually listened to the soundtrack all the way through and finally found it. Now I play it all the time. It has such an innocent feel to it.

Talia's right. This environment is so much better than last year's, because I can discover for myself new music and new artists and judge them solely how on they make me feel. With the dorms, and especially with the type of people who were in my dorm last year, you couldn't suggest any new music to anyone, because by default they had been aware of this artist since the beginning, and had already deemed them "meh" or "the most amazing band ever". Why does that matter to me, what other people thought of my new discovery? I thought it wouldn't. Maybe it was just the fact that these people (some of whom were my friends) thought I was less cool for not knowing about such-and-such whatever band in 1997. It made me want to make up band names to see if they pretended to be know-it-alls on everything just to appear cool.

New favorite song: Arm Over Denver - "Sleeping Next to You"

I slept pretty well last night, but I think I took an Ambien. I'm really groggy right now, and debated for a zillion minutes whether or not I should even go to class. I really don't want to. 5 hours in FLB with an hour for a break. Not my idea of a good time. Usually, once I'm in class, I don't mind being there. I hate getting there, and the thought of being there. How is it 8:27 already? I want to crawl back into bed and go to sleep. I can't wait until 3pm so I can do that.

I have 8 new freckles on my upper arm that all radiate out from a bugbite of some sort. Odd.

So earlier I took the garbage bag out of the garbage can, but I just set it next to the can because I didn't have time to take it all downstairs. Some vaguely yellowish liquid seeped out all over the kitchen floor. It smelled like dirty diapers and vinegar, and it was probably about 15 minutes before I could clean it up--the smell made me that sick to my stomach. So I Fantastiked the hell out of the kitchen and took the garbage downstairs. I also used some air freshener, but it still smells terrible. For like half a second I wondered if Jessie had a cat that she wasn't telling me about, because I've heard that cat piss is the most vile thing you'll ever smell. But she's had her door open and I haven't seen a cat wandering around or anything, plus my allergies have not been too incredibly terrible. I wonder what the hell that smell/liquid was and where it came from.

Meijer was having a sale on orange juice and raspberry lemonade, so now I have all the beverages I could ever want. It's good until the end of October, so maybe I'll save some until I can buy some vodka, and then I'll have screwdrivers galore. I love screwdrivers.

Tom will be here in 2 hours and 15 minutes.

I just re-read this entry, and I use the word "so" a lot.

I slept pretty much like a normal person last night. I guess the secret to halfway decent sleep is to not sleep at all the night before. Good plan.

Talia and I are going to get Potbelly's and watch Best in Show in roughly 5 hours. I can't wait. "We could talk or not talk forever...and still find things to not talk about."

I slept for a grand total of 45 minutes last night. That makes me hate life. But I had another dream about Zach Braff. That makes me think life is not so bad.

I am so fucking stressed out right now. But that's okay; I didn't really need to sleep tonight anyway...

I realized that I'm not one of those sympathetic people that solves everything with hugs. I mean, I'll be sympathetic (kind of), but absolutely no platonic hugs. Ever. I'm also opposed to, "I'll always be here for you," or, "You mean so much to me," or other platonic shows of emotion. I don't do the whole platonic-love thing. This makes me feel like a bad friend sometimes, when I see other people doing the platonic-love thing, but really it's not my style. And I couldn't do it well. And it would just kind of weird me out.

Talia and I bitched about our respective sucky Mondays, and then we watched 2 episodes of Arrested Development. Ahhh stress relief. To bastardize an already-dumb phrase: Arrested Development, Scrubs, and Curb Your Enthusiasm are proof that there is a God, and He wants us to be happy.

Computer is finally fixed. It's been broken since the beginning of September.

Last night I took an Ambien (prescribed by my Dr here) and it didn't work. I was in bed by midnight, but I was still awake at 5:30. That sucked really bad.

My newest favorite album ever: Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs by Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire

Dream:
     Zach Braff, and not Zachary Ty Bryan, was the actor who played the oldest son on "Home Improvement." Zach Braff and I were sitting in the back of a blue Toyota (an old one), and he was just wearing boxers and emo glasses, and I was sitting on his lap.

Last night I read more of Everything is Illuminated instead of doing homework. Here are some good lines to make you want to read it:
"I have an aristocratic smile and like to punch people." (This reminds me of the Real Ultimate Power site.)
"In truth I was manufacturing a brick wall of shits."
"Grandfather kicked the stop pedal, and my face gave a high-five to the front window."
Those were all spoken by Alex, one of the narrators. He's a translator living in Ukraine.

Today I finished A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. It was so amazingly good, and I'm kind of embarrassed that it took me a month and a half to read. So good. I started Everything is Illuminated tonight by Jonathan Safran Foer, and the preface is really funny. Everyone should read it. I haven't read much past that because I have a buttload of other stuff to read for class. Reading is my life.

I am disappointed to find out that in the new film Green Street Hooligans, Elijah Wood plays an American character. I wanted to see him do an accent. The EW-bad-accent quota was actually not met during a screening of all three LOTR films, contrary to popular belief. Now that I think about it, I would love to watch Elijah Wood doing a balls-to-the-wall Scottish accent. Like, I-can't-understand-the-first-20-minutes-of-Trainspotting Scottish accent. That would be funny.

The UPS in this town must employ the stupidest delivery men ever. Apparently the guy came 5 times to my building to deliver some computer parts, and each time he buzzed 501 (I'm 401). FedEx, which was ordered at the same time by Toshiba, had no problem finding my place. Today we got a UPS guy buzzing our apartment looking for someone named Tristan. Dear UPS: It might help if your delivery people can identify Arabic numerals.

Let's just make sure I blog 18 times today. Not 16, not 17. 18.

Anyway, the inspiration: Christopher Guest's new movie.

So I woke up at 5 am to leave at 5:30 (as posted previously), and I definitely forgot to eat anything until 11 pm. All I had to eat today? Were some of those chocolate-covered PB pretzels. But now I am eating pasta so all is good.

An incomplete list of things I got at Trader Joe's (a.k.a. an incomplete list of things that would make Talia jealous if she hadn't gone to TJ's last week)
-chocolate-covered peanut butter pretzels
-gummy fruit wedges
-citrus shampoo and conditioner
-onion soup
-gruyère
-marinated fresh mozzarella

Edited to add: My mom made me a loaf of pumpkin bread.

I left this morning at 5:30 am to drive from home to school. It was not awesome. I got 2 hours of sleep. I can't wait until after 3:30ish so I can take a nap. Stupid class.

I was told today that I have "old school movie star" lips. Cool.

Dream:
     I met Stee of TWOP's Pamie & Stee fame. I had long hair.

I dropped my cinema studies course and added a linguistics course. I think I'm going to stay for the full four years (instead of just 3 like I was planning) and be a linguistics/French double major. Talia: next year let's either 1) be flatmates, or 2) get singles in the same building (like the one you are living in now).

Destiny?

Dream:
     I was still in high school. Some fashion magazine sponsored a contest to find the prettiest girl in school. My name was one of five on the ballot. I won. My prize was that everyone who voted for me had to pay me $1. Sam Williams voted for someone on the basis of "best handwriting". I was acquaintances with Beck, although I wanted to be friends with him. This one ugly and socially awkward guy kept trying to set up dates with me and finally I said, "I don't find even one part of you attractive in the slightest."

Dream:
     Nathan (piano teacher) played violin for me, and he was more proficient than I am/was. I also had the opportunity to pet a bunny.

My motherboard is fried, apparently. It was replaced in February. Toshiba sucks; don't ever buy a Toshiba. The Satellite Pro series overheats way too easily, I've found (this has been supported by others). I can't wait until I get enough money to buy a new computer.