12.31.2005

That's my dad

12.30.2005

This morning I went to the DMV. It was actually not a bad experience. I was there for only 50 minutes, and the employees were joking around with me. My new photo is actually one of the better recent pictures of me.

Last night I dreamt that I had to explain sound symbolism and its relevance to French. I have no idea what the context was.

I am up early so I can go to the DMV and get my license renewed. This means a new picture, for which I am somewhat excited. I had a bad hair day 5 years ago, and I've been forced to remember it ever since.

I went out yesterday evening and got these pants. I got them for a lot less than $130, and they look better on my butt than on the mannequin's. I win.

12.29.2005

Dream:
     There was an old C-list movie actor named Elwood Jablomey (brother of Haywood, I guess). He resented pretty much everyone, because practically no one saw his movies and consequently he wasn't as famous as he thought he deserved to be. He had a gun and started taking people out on the quad. He had terrible teeth and a crazy look in his eye.
     Kristin found a loophole in the Settlement information on insurance that said we could get benefits if we were a couple, so we started dating.
     A girl from work was getting married. She had a processional, but it was very informal; there was no order (except she was first) and we picked up whoever along the way. We just walked around some mountains. Her dress was strapless. The bodice part was a boned corset. It was very pretty, except for the fact that the white satin dress had a layer of black tulle.
     I was made to go to church. Elijah Wood had also been so forced. We skipped out on the service and made out. After a few weeks of this, he took me home, and his parents praised me for getting him to be so religious. They also said I was pretty.

12.28.2005

1, 2, 3 I WIN. Ahhh, what a good game. I played it today and I won. Specifically, I found out that Fucking Steve quit his job at the newspaper this summer, and has been unemployed and living at home ever since. What a loser. He's been out of school for 19 months, and he's been employed for less than 12. This isn't because finding jobs is hard or anything like that. He just doesn't want to work. He wants to wake up in the morning and sit outside and work on his motorcycle. He has absolutely no ambition. He doesn't want to face the harsh reality that he's 25 years old, living with his parents, and doing nothing with his life except bitching about how poor he is. Poor indeed--poor baby.

And, for fun, here's a picture of me wearing a sweater I made:

Please ignore the "I'm trying to be a model" pose.

Dream:
     I used mascara to dye my hair dark brown. Everyone thought it looked really good.

12.27.2005

Tonight Tom and I watched Happiness. I've wanted to see it for a while, and it was actually less disturbing than I thought it would be. I had to leave right after the movie, though, cause I started feeling really sick. I was positive I was going to throw up, and I spent the next 75 minutes locked in the bathroom. Turned out I just burped a bunch of times. I don't normally drink soda, but today I had a lot--a can and two small-sized cups from restaurants. I also had a third of a beer. I think it was just the carbonation. Ever since this past summer, carbonation has made me feel really sick. For the rest of this week, I'm sticking to water. I'm feeling a lot better right now, but SHIT do I hate that feeling. You just want to vomit and get it over with so you can lay your head on your cool pillow and feel better.

To hopefully take some of the grossness away from this post, here's my dream from last night:
     Sara and I were working at Walgreens. I was back at my cosmetics counter, and she was doing customer service. Whenever she got a caller who was being a jerk, she'd roll her eyes at me and we'd laugh.
There was more, but I forgot it since I woke up 16 hours ago.

12.24.2005

Ugh. I got an A- in my conversation class, the most blowoff of all my classes. I'm actually really disappointed. GPA for this semester: 3.9. It's no good to say now, and probably a bit disgusting, but I could have done better.

12.23.2005

Dream:
     Talia and I signed up for another Judaism class, this one on the traditions surrounding Sukkot. We found out somehow that Nathan was signed up for the same class, so we went to his office to tell him. He said, "Don't talk. You look like a dork when you talk." I started doing a little Ashley-Simpson-esque dance, as if that would help anything.

12.19.2005

I got an A in Judaism. I'm so glad I did that last minute paper. And I'm really glad that I didn't spend that much time on it, because I got a 93% (Dear Professor: that was the shittiest paper I've ever written. I didn't even write about all the stuff you put in the prompt. Joke's on you!)

Grade tally so far:
French civ - A-
Judaism - A

I was going to register for Arabic, but they're not offering the first semester of it. Same for Polish, Russian, and Ukranian. I ended up adding intensive Catalan, which I've been thinking about for a while. I have 18 credit hours, including 2 graduate sections, but I had 17 credit hours this past semester and I kicked ass. I'm not too concerned. I have 3 film classes, which shouldn't be bad--I'm a pimp when it comes to film.

12.18.2005

Home now.

I finally have my digital camera in my hot little hands. It's fun. I need a bigger memory card, cause right now the one that came with can only hold 12 photos. I've been playing around with it, and hopefully soon I'll get a decent picture of me ("Not bloody likely!" --Seinfeld)

I saw Syriana tonight. It made me feel really ignorant. I was able to follow most of Matt Damon's and George Cloony's storylines, but I couldn't figure out what that lawyer (Bennett Holiday) was doing.

I left my computer's AC power cord at school. Whoops. I'll need to go back later this week to get it.

I think I want to learn Arabic. I want to study French linguistics, and there's a large Muslim population in France; French is also spoken in northern Africa. It might be cool to study the effects of Arabic and French on each other. I dunno. Just a thought.

I'll leave you with this thought: My dad? Got a picture? Of my dog? WITH SANTA.

12.16.2005

Today I handed in my last paper and took my last final. I'm officially done with Fall 05. The worst part, worse than taking the finals, worse than writing the papers, is waiting for my grades. Jeez. I hate waiting for my grades. Especially since this semester I'm going for all As (save that A- in my civ class).

12.15.2005

Dream (this is a trippy one):
     I had just woken up, and I had missed my piano lesson. I called my teacher and he said to come in right then to make it up. So I did. But then it turned out that was just a dream, and I woke up and I really had missed my lesson. Nathan was pissed. [I woke up for real from this dream at 1pm, and was relieved to find that I had not in fact missed my lesson.]
     Talia and I were supposed to go out for dinner after my lesson (just like in real life), but that got screwed up and she was mad at me. And then she turned into a 3-year-old. We went with two other people to a Thai restaurant, but 3-year-old Talia threw a tantrum because she wanted to go to "sipotle" (she couldn't pronounce the ch). We ended up going to Chipotle, where she spit lettuce all over the restaurant.

12.14.2005

Today I went to the Urbana library to get an application. I figure if I can get a job there, it would be better than working at this crappy store. The lady at the reference desk said she didn't know if they had any job openings, but that's fine. I don't need a job. It's just nice to have one.

I went into work today and after a few hours my boss told me, "You're doing a really great job today," almost condescendingly. Yesterday and today I kind of ignored her, so I think she got the point that I was upset. I can't be bought that easily, though. I'm still upset. I'm still thinking of quitting, especially if I can get this library job.

Today I had a really good sandwich. It was turkey, provolone, advocado, tomato, lettuce, and onions on pesto bread. Amazing. I might have to go back to Espresso tomorrow to see if they have more.

I got an A- in my French Civ course. I should have done better, but I was lazy.

12.13.2005

A somewhat long story that explains why I'm frustrated right now:

At work, closing out the register is not part of our basic training. I had to go in one night specifically to learn how to close it out. I've worked with girls who didn't know how to do it (and it's a somewhat complicated process). Last week, my boss scheduled two girls to close, and neither of them knew how to close out the register. They called me, and I went in and showed them. I figured it was better to err on the side of caution.

A few days later, I went into work and my boss wanted to talk to me. She wanted to know what that was all about. I told her that they didn't know what they were doing, and I didn't feel comfortable letting them do it with only the book. (We have a book that gives vague instructions on how to do it. Several things are missing--how to open the register, for instance. It also doesn't list solutions for any contingencies.) My boss said she was disappointed in the two girls who called me, but I wasn't in trouble.

Today, I went into work, and my boss said that I got "written up", because there was no reason I should have clocked in unauthorized.

I honestly thought I was being helpful by going in and showing them how to do it. I'm really frustrated because this makes no sense. There was money involved; I erred on the side of caution.

I sent my boss an e-mail asking what the other infractions are that one could get written up for. It's ridiculous that I'm in trouble. Also, I don't know why learning how to close out the register isn't part of the standard training.

ETA: The two girls who called me are also in trouble.

12.12.2005

So tonight Talia and I went out to the Chinese buffet. As we were putting on our coats to leave, our waitress came up and grabbed Talia's arm and started asking her where she got her coat. And then...she HUGGED TALIA. FROM BEHIND. I don't understand it either.

So I'm in the middle of this big take-home final, and I'm supposed to have a word count for each part (there are 10 different parts, which actually makes it easier, but I digress). In French, you put a space on either side of a quotation mark, a semicolon, a colon, a question mark, and an exclamation point, so my automatic word count is counting each of those as one word. It's also counting page citations and [...] as words. Normally this would be good, cause it means free words with less content. But I have a max word limit imposed on each part, and I'm having trouble staying under the limit while still building a strong case. I have to go through and count each word by hand. French is full of little words that have only a few letters, so it's a pain in the ass to count those. The one good thing is that French words contract fairly often, so that means I get two words for the price of one.

This take-home final is due today. I hope I can get it done. 12.5 hours left...

UPDATE: I'm done. I did a shitty job, and I'll probably get a C, but I'm done. I can breathe. I can eat. I can do stuff without feeling guilty that I'm not spending every second on that soul-crushing paper. Talia and I are going to have a much-needed celebration.

12.11.2005

Someone from the Netherlands read my blog! And someone from Sweden! And a couple people from California (Malibu & LA), and someone from Washington, and someone from Indy, and someone from Oregon, and Carbondale, and Nebraska... And someone from Oak Park really likes reading my blog, apparently. I swear, this StatCounter.com account was not a smart idea; now I'm just paranoid. Why are you people reading this?! I'm not interesting! I don't write well! I don't have anything funny to say! ...Not that you should stop reading...I'm just confused, but happy that people are reading this. Although 80% of people who come here stay for less than 5 seconds. That's funny.

This post brought to you by paranoid personality disorder.

12.10.2005

So of course with the success of LOTR and HP in holiday seasons past, we are moving on to Narnia as our fantasy epic moneymaker. In preparation, I started rereading the books. When I was young, I only got through The Magician's Nephew; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; and part of The Horse and his Boy. Last night I finished The Magician's Nephew, and I'm starting to remember why I didn't finish the series. The books are interesting, I suppose, but the characters are kind of boring. The characterization of Polly was pretty funny, how she's jealous and all that, but Digory? The cabby? Jadis? Etc.? Meh. They also don't seem to react to things in the way that real people do; "Oh, a talking lion? What will they think of next?" They just react to things in the way that stoic, static book characters react. I'll continue to read the series in case it gets any better (because, honestly, I don't remember anything about it besides the wardrobe and Turkish Delights), and I'll definitely at least read LWW because I kind of want to see the movie.

12.09.2005

So if I'm reading my blog stats thingy correctly, 9 different people besides me visited my blog today. That strikes me as almost absurd. I know Cassie and Talia read it, and Kristin does from time to time, and I think maybe Rob does...but who else? This is crazy! Show yourself, people who are reading my blog.

Finished paper. Did oral (shut up). Did exam. I'm giving myself a short break before I start the next paper.

I just realized that I probably fuck up people's stat counters for their blogs. I click around my bookmarks every few hours, searching for updates. Whoops. I'm not an obsessive blog-stalker. Except I probably am. Dammit.

Also, I'm a dork because I really liked this brief photo essay of the union of TWOP and Chicago.

I'm writing a paper, and I've hit a brick wall. This paper is on humanism and medicine during the Renaissance. I have 2.5 pages. It's supposed to be 5-7. I've read everything I can find on the topic. I can probably get another half page out of the closing paragraph, but then I still need two more pages. I'm supposed to hand this in by 5pm tomorrow. I really want to get this done ASAP so I can start on my huge take-home final for lit that I probably should have started a week ago. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh.

Tomorrow:
-oral
-test
-paper!
-start new paper

12.08.2005

Dream:
     I was brushing my teeth, and while I was brushing, half of them fell out. I was panicking, but my mother just put them in a bowl of chili (instead of milk) and said that we would be able to put them back in.
     Then I was working camp again, but none of the brats would listen to me. I said, "If none of you turds understand English...Alors! Nous parlons le français!" And that got their attention. And they giggled. But then they stopped paying attention to me again.

12.07.2005

I don't have to work at all this weekend, which is great. Also great: I bypassed the second level of screening for Language Stars, so it's looking less and less like I'd have to go back to the Settlement this summer. Still working with kids, but I get new faces, a new gossip mill (where no one talks to my mom), and the ability to practice French all summer long. I'm excited.

12.06.2005

I got someone to take my hours on Friday and Saturday, so maybe I can actually have time to write papers and get a couple As!

In news that one one but me cares about...

I got my 3rd Judaism paper back today. It is entirely possible for me to get an A in the course! These next several days are so busy for me, but I have complete faith that I'll be able to get everything done and still keep my sanity.

My mom just sent me an e-mail about Goldendoodles. Do a Google Image Search right now. You will not be disappointed. I want one.

12.05.2005

I'm trying out new things with the layout.

I have specifically in the coding that the background attachment is fixed, and yet it keeps moving around on me! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa I wish I knew HTML.

Update: I fixed it! Yay for life, yay for me!

Today I am wearing a pair of underwear that says "Monday". The pair of underwear is black. Old Navy knows the truth.

12.03.2005

Dream (this one's for Cassie & Talia):
     Eddie Izzard had a son named Tad who looked just like him, except he had breast implants. He was a transvestite as well. He wanted to make out with me, so I did.

12.01.2005

So today I wasn't feeling well, so I called my mom to feel better. No matter how bad I feel, sympathy from her always makes me feel a little bit better. My mom said she still calls her mom when she feels sick. Hee.

I finished knitting a sweater today. It's blocking. Hopefully it'll be done by this weekend.

I just had what was probably one of the worst nightmares I've ever had, thanks to this headache. Dammit.