you know what "epic" means?

drawstraws — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 23:19:46 GMT

I miss you.

(Yes, you.)

What's goin' on?

drawstraws — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 13:49:36 GMT

Wow. It’s really only been two weeks since I got here?

I spent my first few days meandering around the area near my apartment—and when I say “meandering” I actually mean “speed-walking for hours in terrible shoes until my back, knees, ankles, and feet were completely out of commission, oops.” My neighborhood is quite lovely: quiet, safe, peaceful; but I feel uncomfortable finding too much joy in these things, even, because of their racist and classist implications, however unintentional. Rob’s first impression of the area is probably the most accurate one: “It’s so…gentrified.” The politics of city growth, I am learning, are complicated.

Rob visited from Friday through Sunday, and we hit a bunch of places, including the Museum of Sex (not as impressive as its price tag might lead one to hope but worth it to learn about The Sex Lives of Robots) and the MoMA (my favorite exhibition was Rising Currents, which featured artists’ renderings of possible NYC solutions to climate change-induced rising sea levels). We also went to Prospect Park’s weekly farmer’s market, some vegetarian restaurants, and the NYC Build-a-Bear store where I bought my bear kimono. Additionally, we got to meet up with mutual friends from school and play tag on a Battery Park playground with Caroline.

I’d been looking for a part-time job, and for a little while, I thought I had a sandwich-making gig lined up with Vox Pop (a café I have seen described on the web as one of the most invigorating places around, and alternately, a “shiteous hipster outpost”). However, when I went in to train, I discovered that “training” was actually a six-hour uncompensated screening shift, and I was up against about a dozen other would-be baristas. Which would have been ok, had anyone informed me that this was going to happen, especially after I specifically asked about their hiring process.

The internship, on the other hand, is going phenomenally. I love the people, and I love what I do. I have my own cubicle where I hide, reading reading reading all day long. On my first day, Naomi handed me a stack of 60-some pages of copy for the upcoming magazine and told me to have fun. So I did! Well, mostly, apart from when I realized I do not understand comma usage and, to make matters worse, neither does anyone else in the world. :\

After my second day, my coworkers took me to a party hosted by Tablet, a prominent Jewish-interest web mag, in celebration of its first year up and running. I had the chance to meet a number of people who come up regularly in JBC conversation and who are names to know in the wonderful world of Jewish publishing. I made my first priority trying to make a dinner out of hors d’oeuvres without looking like a pig. I put this before my other priority—trying to mingle without looking dreadfully uncomfortable—because I always like to have my top goal be something I am capable of accomplishing.

Rob came back to visit again at the end of the week on his way home from seeing our friend Ashley in Pennsylvania (he brought me farm animal sprinkles from Amish country, which I will use on all my vegan cupcakes, and a shotglass that says “I ♥ INTERCOURSE PA"). We had a fancy Italian lunch with my bestest friend from my Japan program, Rachel, and her mom. Unfortunately, Rob wasn’t feeling as much better from the mysterious stomach sickness he’d had in PA as he’d thought, and walking 20 blocks to lunch may not have helped. He ended up spending the rest of his stay curled up in a ball in my bed, only able to manage the occasional sip of diluted orange juice, and running a fever. I accompanied him to New Haven via Amtrak to make sure he was all right till safely in the hands of his parents, which would have been a much less traumatic experience had our train not been two hours late leaving.

The stress of that compounded with all the stress I’ve been collecting from summer part-time job and fall for-real job hunting has put me in a bit of an icky place for the time being--though it's probably the typical one to end up in following graduation (see: "Oh, the Places You'll Actually Go")

I am trying to be optimistic and excited for the future, but I’m so, so scared. I can’t find part-time work to do alongside my internship, because, in the rare event a business is hiring, either I don’t have the right qualifications for the particular job, I’m generally too well-educated, or nobody likes seasonal employees. I also have no idea how to get into the sort of real work I want to do—even if I could find something that would put me closer to children’s publishing, I’m worried it will only be another unpaid internship, and I can’t afford that. And what if I get into the work I think I want to do and don’t like it? And what happens to my hopes of traveling and doing more adventurous and exciting things if I get tied to a full-time job? I’m most terrified of becoming boring. I want to meet people and go places and do things. If I come home too tired to do much of anything but read a little and sleep, when will I find the time to do my own creative projects and give anything back to the world?

Through college, I could maintain a feeling of direction because I really enjoyed what I was studying. Now, however, I have to face the realization of my own overwhelming responsibility. I’m the only one who can make my life what I want it to be. And that might be a hell of a lot easier if I had any clear sense of what I want.

tl;dr I do actually seem to ♥ New York, but our relationship status may be destined to remain “it’s complicated.”

drawstraws — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 02:46:29 GMT

Hello! Well, it’s certainly been ages, hasn’t it? It’s a wonder I remember how to post an entry.

I made it out of college alive! Things got a little sketchy toward the end: the powers that be hung a heap of strangulation hazards around my neck, put my name on the list of a couple mysterious societies (some with downright invasive handshakes), and said things about me behind my back in Latin (curses? I don’t know. Could have meant anything, really). But I made it, and it feels like far more of an accomplishment than I was expecting.

Because Skidmore has the most wonderfully unregimented graduation line-up I have ever heard of, I got to walk across the stage to receive my diploma between Rob and Scott, the two people who have meant the most to me in college. And we were part of string of everyone from my house and everyone from Rob’s house—pretty much the people I’ve known best at Skidmore. Somehow much more symbolic and satisfying than alphabetical order.

Before graduation, the seniors had a week of time left to their own devices--or more accurately, vices. For most, it meant getting drunk and staying drunk—probably to counteract the sobering realization that they will most likely rarely see any of the incredible (and even the not so incredible but still somehow important) friends they made over the past four years. It was this way for me, too, at least if you replace “getting drunk and staying drunk” with “playing videogames and then, um, playing more videogames.”

This week followed a semester of phenomenal classes that made me painfully conscious of how much I have to miss out in the real world. Even though they may have deprived me of much promise of a social life and kept me functioning at a stress level my mind and body couldn't quite withstand, I loved Queer Fictions, American Environmental History, and Children's Literature (education perspective, not literary). Part of me is glad to be done having classes all day and homework enough to last into the wee hours of the night with no time to take a breath (not if I’m going to get everything done as best I can, anyway), but part of me is uncertain that I want to be anything but a student in the most traditional, academic sense, ever.

I wrote my senior capstone paper on The Well of Loneliness, a novel my second-reader quite astutely described as “a hot mess.” By the end of the project, I swore I would never write a word of literary criticism again in my life, and I was fully convinced of that until about three days later when I got comments back from my professors, who thought my analysis was pure gold. As always, I am a whore for praise, particularly praise I’m sure I don’t deserve.

Grad school is a vague aspiration for the future since I discovered that master’s programs in children’s literature, children’s publishing, and children’s fiction-writing all exist. But for now it’s (hopefully) valuable real world career experience time!

Tomorrow (I can’t believe it’s so soon, but yes, really, tomorrow!) I’m moving to New York City for the summer. I have an internship in Manhattan doing editorial work for the Jewish Book Council. I keep getting raised eyebrows over this for some reason, and all right, maybe I am about as goy as you get, BUT the people are friendly, the work sounds great, I’ve been promised a plethora of helpful contacts, and I am beyond excited. Plus, a rabbi taught me how to make some might tasty vegan challah, so if all else fails and I’m forced to resort to bribery: culturally-specific baked goods!

I’m subletting a room in Brooklyn, and I’ll be sharing an apartment with two other twenty-something girls. I know very little about them except that 1) their wireless network is named “Valley Girls” AND 2) they seem very nice and put-together from our conversations, so perhaps 1) is meant to be ironic?

I’m also hoping (perhaps too optimistically considering the job market? We shall see…) to pick up additional part time work for pay somewhere closer to my apartment. So until I start the internship on the 7th, I’ll be dashing around to various small businesses, begging anyone who will listen to hire the overeducated likes of me for minimum wage, hurrah!

I’d like to be more internet-present over the summer, and I imagine I'll be more or less successful with that depending on how much of my mental capacity work and possibly more work end up demanding. I’m not sure, however, what form this presence should take. What are the cool kids doing these days, hmm?

drawstraws — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:27:46 GMT

I’ve been done doing that Japan thing over there for a month now, so I figured it was about time to wander back over to LJ and do the rough equivalent of barging in, waving my arms wildly, and retreating into the shadows of impending college doom. Great!

Some things that are new and exciting in my world (with pictures, when applicable):

-Family has a house! I have a room! Our fridge has an icemaker!

The interior is gorgeous, and so you should visit.

Featuring the best parts of my room: big, comfy, and most importantly, purple bed and odd nightstand as testament to a certain fixation.

-Splatter paint is so much fun and so easy, why didn't anyone ever tell me? I loved doing this, despite permanent damage to the garage floor, my skirt, and the previously white kitchen door. Thanks, impossible-to-remove yellow paint!

-Being back in the States means kitchen-access, means baking! I am happy. My family is happy as well, though they file frequent complaints regarding expanding waistlines. Not my concern, I protest.

- Did yoga for the first time a few days ago with Lori, and the experience was fantastic. My whole body felt like a jell-o jiggler afterward...by which I mean, jell-o-y and jiggly, not potentially full of crushed animal bones, or whatever. I am trying to remember that blissful feeling, rather than my subsequent transformation into a lifeless puddle of SORE the next day, because I’d like to convince myself that nothing will make me happier, fitness-wise, than doing yoga on a regular basis, in hopes that maybe if I believe it enough I will actually do yoga on a regular basis. Yah, we'll see.

- Got my cartilage pierced a couple weeks ago, which is not nearly as big a deal as my mother makes it out to be, I know. Even though it hides behind my hair all the time, I feel significantly more badass whenever I remember its existence. Laugh, whatever, it’s the honest to god truth: badass.

- Um, so, I love Rob tremendous amounts, and this is not new, but sometimes—especially after 7 months of not seeing him—it feels new, and also wonderfully familiar. And you are probably going “what is this, Dani doesn’t ever write about personal things like her relationship here, what’s going on?” (Unless of course you are going “who’s Dani?” which is also valid, considering!) But uh, yeah, you are right. I am stoic and also heartless and don’t you forget it,

-Driving up to Skids this Sunday, living in a house with 3 terrific people who will distract me at all hours with videogames and bake-offs. Taking these classes: Senior Seminar in Women’s Studies, Black Feminist Thought, Women Writers, Recent Fiction, a class with a long yet not particularly descriptive title on women in China over the course of history, and a library research independent study for my WS thesis. Switched a class last night, which dropped my required reading list from 40 books to 34, YES. I am all excitement and positive-thinking about it, though, except when it comes to the part with the dying!

drawstraws — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:11:24 GMT

Playing with Sculpey + Pushing Daisies

I made these a couple weeks ago and never got around to posting anything about them. They were a fun experiment...though I wish I'd gotten around to doing all the main characters. I started on a Chuck, too, but she is very bald.

Why I gave Olive enormous porn star ta-tas I am not altogether sure. It seemed like a good idea at the time!

drawstraws — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 03:17:30 GMT

Happy Pi Day!

Such a lovely holiday. The celebration at my house involved coconut cream...

...from a particularly special coconut.

In this case "groovy" meant "partially moldy," but we worked around that.

drawstraws — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:16:45 GMT

Blog for Japan is (mostly) set up!

http://danikins.wordpress.com/

drawstraws — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:00:54 GMT

Now that I'm back from West Virginia, there is about one thing I should be doing and it starts with a "p" and rhymes with "lacking," but hey, there's always tomorrow, until, of course, there's not! Rather than looking dolefully at the contents of my room and wishing they'd put themselves into suitcases and boxes, I've been baking. One might say doughfully.

Then again, one might not, because she'd be A TERRIBLE PERSON.

Too bad, too late!

For once I made something that's not likely to lead to diabetes. Miraculous. :O

Oh bagels, my true carbohydrate love. The best part is boiling them. They bounce around like inner tubes on a crazy waterpark ride. Wheeee.

drawstraws — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 05:39:53 GMT

This was amazing: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2009/2009-03-02-03.asp

And a bit more critically: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1882700,00.html

Such a good weekend!

drawstraws — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:21:25 GMT

Armed with enough vegan snickerdoodles to feed +40 Skidmore activists...

I’M GOING TO POWER SHIFT!

drawstraws — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:39:27 GMT

Sound advice for the ride home.

drawstraws — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:29:43 GMT

So what's up? In notable news, I TURNED 21. Of course it was awesome, I was with Caroline. And we went to a steampunk party. Girly drinks, anachronisms, and curious facial hair-dos galore. Hooray!

We may not have been fancy, but fortunately one of our collective specialties is constructing passable costumes in a pinch.

Another delightful thing among many: holy heck, we got to see Carbon Leaf! Here's a bit from the encore.

Pardon the obnoxious zooming. My old camera couldn't do that! My new one probably shouldn't. :P

Spent most of the day after an uneventful two hours of work on the sofa with my head buried under a blanket. Weather is disgusting; I blame it. However, today marks something very good:

ONE MONTH TILL JAPAN!

I am anticipating being able to say, "THANK YOU FRIGGIN FINALLY I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO LOSE MY MIND." Now it's just a matter of more waiting and succeeding at not losing my mind so I can say that. All right!

drawstraws — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:49:40 GMT

drawstraws — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 03:06:44 GMT

One of my co-workers gave me a bag full of goop. First I said, "Uhh?" Then I said, "What?" Then she explained and I said, "COOL." And then I proceeded to spend the rest of my shift skiving off work to research Amish Friendship Bread.

A baking chain letter. And no one ever told me!

There are so many choices for tasty-sounding variations on the basic recipe, I'm not sure how I'll ever decide what to do with it. At least I have ten days to think about it?

If I do pass it on, as I'd like to, I might cheat and start fresh and make it vegan. :P

drawstraws — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 23:35:25 GMT

I love stuffed animals! I want to write about them extensively! Here we go.

As a child, I had tons of them, and I took good care of them (except for the ones I accidentally left in the playhouse in the doctor's office waiting room or under the circular clothing racks at the department store that made such good hideouts. But as the saying goes, we only absentmindedly misplace the ones we love.) On the weekends, after my dad cut out coupons from the newspaper inserts, I'd take what was left of the glossy ads and cut out the pictures of food (no doubt cursing my ineffective safety scissors the whole time--pooheaded things). I'd then line all my animals up on my bed and pass out dinner to each of them (taking into account certain sensitivites and dietary restrictions, of course; for example, I never would have fed Piglet bacon.) According to my mom, I spent a lot of time talking to them in a language of my own devising that sounded like Chinese, even after I'd conquered English. I had a dozen or so special ones that got to go to sleep with me. Each of them was assigned a specific place around the outline of my body so that I'd be completely covered in cuddly plush warmth.

There was a time, during later childhood, when my rejection of most things childish threatened my relationship with my stuffed animals. But that threat never developed into serious estrangement. I could stop loving them about as easily as I could stop using hyperbolic comparisons. (NEVAR.)

And so the love has continued. Although there's now a new cast of fluff-filled characters in my life, I've already grown ridiculously attached to them. They are lovely.

Sheeee(eeeee)p is the biggest, softest, squishiest stuffed animal I have ever had the pleasure of burying my face in. It is decidedly gender-free and it likes better than anything to be kissed on the nose. Sheeeep came into my life at Otakon via Squishable. Sheeeep's name became further elongated when my housemate Eric held it hostage and all I could do was wail its name until I made Eric feel guilty enough to return it to me.

Sheep, not to be confused with Sheeeep, was free with a Bath & Body Works purchase. She's a sweetie, but we haven't gotten to know each other that well yet. I'm working on changing this lamentable fact, but sometimes divvying up my time is difficult.

Oh, the Lonely Dollop. XD From Scott, who is marvelous and has a terrific sense of what will amuse me to no end.

It's a cat. In a cake. Need I say more?

My name-twin Dani sent this guy to me toward the end of the summer in a package of really wonderful, thoughtful gifts. I am still trying to settle on a name for him, using this amazing list as reference.

One of my favorite things about him--and this might be weird, but don't you be judging--is that his shirt comes off. When I was young, I hated it when my stuffed animals had clothes that were sewn to their bodies. How restrictive! In most cases, I would cut the strings so I could undress them. I firmly believe that a life without nakedness is no life at all.

Mercutio. I love him very much. He is way too cool for me, and I know he knows it, but he humors me anyway. He'll watch movies and read books with me when I need the company. Even when my tastes don't agree with him, he's a good sport about it. This may be because he is perpetually intoxicated, and he's an agreeable drunk.

Christmas present from Rob, eee. I was so excited to finally have a giant microbe, after they'd been cool on campus for the past couple years. I spent a good long while feeling left out not having any and would gladly blame all my problems adjusting to college on this sad fact. Nothing was so bad as when Health Services hid them around campus, teasing me with the prospect of chancing across one in a library windowseat or the bathroom near the sociology office or the dining hall stirfry pans. Unfortunately, I only found the normal-sized ones. Disappointment all around!

I feel that the black death is particularly appropriate for me, but not quite as appropriate as it is for wordslikemoths.

Hedgehog! This one's actually a dog toy that squeaks when you squeeze it. Rob's mom, who is the cutest woman in the world (she'd put a Japanese stationary store to shame, really), sent it to me at school a little before Thanksgiving. Consequently, Rob has a more masculine to mathc it. However, I contend that mine is not a girl. Do you see that make-up? Drag queen written all over it.

This is Soufflé, and he's my favorite, but please please please don't tell the others. They might suspect already; we do a lot of cuddling. I lost him once in my dorm room (I think he was under some pants), and it was highly traumatic (though not quite bad enough to compell me to keep the place any neater). He'll be accompanying me to Japan to make sure I stay out of serious trouble. I'm hoping he'll learn some Japanese, because right now he only speaks French, so we don't do much talking.

Soufflé was given to me as a gift toward the end of the summer. There was a wonderfully nice woman who hung around and helped out while her daughter did pottery camp. One day we got to talking and she asked me what I missed most from my house. Out of the blue I said, "Right now, my stuffed animals." She and her daughter surprised me with Soufflé on the last day.

I should also probably take his tag off, but he's made by Ty and old habits die hard.

There is also Mickey Mouse, who is unpictured because uhhh I actually forgot about him till just now, since he's stuffed in my closet. :x Oops. He was given to me by the kind old ladies from the Red Cross, and while I appreciate him, I am happy not to have to rely on him anymore!

I'm interested in sharing and spreading the stuffed animal love. Who are your favorites? What are their stories? Do tell, do tell!

drawstraws — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 04:37:09 GMT

Coming back from Baltimore late last night, when I got to the light where I needed to turn to go home and go to bed, I turned the other way and drove over to my old/new/real/half-constructed house.

I knew what I'd do when I got there; I had it all planned out in my head. I'd climb the newly-built stairs to the second floor and have some time alone in the skeleton of my room. I'd sit for a while, I'd think about the great big things like life and the universe, I'd sort through my feelings, and maybe I'd achieve some temporary peace of mind. It seemed like the proper emotionally symbolic act. If my life were a movie, I was certain, it's what I would do. But of course, without the slightly mournful indie soundtrack and the dramatic camera-panning, nothing could go like imagined it.

I pulled into my neighbors’ driveway, since ours was occupied by a dumpster and piles of wood planks. I killed the lights and stepped out of the car, almost slipping on the sheet of ice under my feet. I picked my way carefully across the yard and walked into the garage.

It was dark. The weak light from the neighbors’ porch lights didn’t do much to make the space look any less creepy and cavernous. I stopped and stood and stared out through the glassy window panels at the back of the house, where the family room would be. It would have been stupid to go in any further. There were too many dangers: things to trip over, nails to step on, ways to fall into the basement. There wasn’t anything I could do here worth breaking my neck over. How long would I last before sitting and thinking got old? I’d already over-thought the idea beyond spontaneity and my teeth were chattering. I didn’t want to go in, and I also didn’t need to. I’d already reached emotional resolution bawling my eyes out at the idea of it on the ride over.

I left feeling a little defeated and a little silly and a little numb from the cold. But the moon was huge and bright and low in the sky, and maybe half empty but probably half full.

I’ll take my symbolism where I can get it, thank you very much.

In any case, this morning my mom took me over to the house to check out my room in the happy sunlit hours. I spun around in circles in the big open spaces and walked through where the walls would be. And I took pictures! At this point, there's not much to look at, but it's definitely progress.

My room! Beautiful, right?

The most recent part of the project, underway.

I tried to be artsy with little success. This would be the view of a dumpster through the hole in the front door where the doorknob will be. Uh?

Innuendo~

drawstraws — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:26:23 GMT

"Something came for you in the mail," my mom called up the stairs to me all of two minutes ago. My favorite words in the world. I love mail, and I was especially eager to love mail today, since I was hoping that the new Franz Ferdinand album would arrive for my happy-dancing pleasure. The CD had been shipped. It was a distinct possibility.

But the new Franz Ferdinand album this was not.

Instead, what awaited me was a padded envelope from a seller I had tried to order a book from through ebay at the end of December (so I might FINALLY have a Christmas present for Rob). After it didn't show up for two weeks, I realized that I'd been an idiot and given them my school address by accident. But it turned out it didn't matter, since they hadn't shipped the book...since they didn't actually have it available. Great. So, I had my money refunded and I found said book elsewhere, ordered it, and received it just yesterday. All good.

At least, all good ntil the arrival of this mystery package, which upon closer inspection (ie, being torn open), contains a first edition copy of Rose O'Paradise--a book I had not even heard of before today. Uh...huh. It seems someone got very confused.

None of that really matters, though. I've e-mailed the seller, and this small mishap will get sorted out.

What really matters is why not Franz Ferdinand?

drawstraws — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:53:48 GMT

I highly recommend that anyone who likes delightfully cute, handmade jewelry check out Paperelle.

This is my pair. I love 'em.

On the offchance anyone's going to Katsucon (is anyone going to Katsucon?), it's especially worth a look.

More from me later. Work soon. In the meantime, must figure out what to do with this z and a severe lack of accomodating board space. Grr, Facebook Scrabble. Grr.

drawstraws — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 05:14:40 GMT

It's awesome when my baking wins me stuff!

This evening I went to the EarthSave vegetarian dinner, where I feasted on a whole lot of excellent food and liberal-minded conversation. Om nom nom? I think so! This month's speaker talked about the connection between vegetarianism and physical health--specifically colon health. So I learned a lot about POOP. And the ways in which vegetarian POOP is better than other POOP.

I feel quite empowered. And mature.

I typed "manure" by accident. Ahahaha aaaagh.

Also, a Hare Krishna with wicked crazy facial hair hit on me.

BUT ANYWAY, best part of all was that the dish I brought was voted the best at the dinner! This was especially exciting because there was a great turnout (upwards of 50 people), and my berry bars were up against thirty or so other dishes.

I'm glad to know that even the most health-conscious people I've met in my life can be won over by sugar. :D

For winning I received this Vegan Handbook, which is full of recipes, nutritional info, meal-planning tips, important moments in vegetarian/vegan history (?!), poems (???), and all sorts of other nifty stuff. I also got Food Revolution on cassette tape, which...would be way better if I had anything that plays tapes.

Check out the recipe?

drawstraws — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:21:59 GMT

Oh spontaneous emotional exploding, how you make my head pound and my eyes burn. Argh. On the bright side: I made a very Lord of the Rings-esque clay monster at work, my too-long hair is no longer a tangled and unruly weight on my shoulders, and I received an awesome package full of knitting goodness courtesy of roserevolution. I've also been reading Death Note like a fiend--not entirely sure what brought on this sudden resurgence of manga interest, but I'm just gonna go with it.

Anyway. I'm mostly posting because I wanted to share this guy!

I kind of tried to smoosh this design with this one. Hopefully my brief acquaintance with polymer clay will someday blossom into a beautiful friendship. :x

drawstraws — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:50:34 GMT

Last night, I dreamed about owl punching.

I was taking a physical activity class and we all had to pair off and go out into this big field. The instructor gave each pair a big burlap sack full of owls. One person would pull an owl out of the bag by its legs and fling it into the air in front of their partner. The partner would try to land a punch before the owl could right itself and fly away.

The class had an odd number of students, and I wasn't feeling much like punching owls, so I just watched. It didn't occur to me till later, when I was trying to steal a miniature school bus for an epic road trip (even though I knew the gas mileage was going to be really, really bad), that owl punching was probably cruelty toward animals and I should've raised a fuss about it.

This dream was strange in a much better way than the previous night's in which I had to have sex with an eighty-year-old hermaphrodite.

Whyyyy, brain, why? ;____;

Ah well. At least I was getting paid.

drawstraws — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:54:30 GMT

So, last night I went to see Doubt. This was a very good thing, since Doubt is a very good movie. What was not so good is this: sometime between when I arrived at the theater and when I returned home, I lost my favorite hat. Not only was it my favorite hat, it was my only hat. (Actually, I'd received another one a couple weeks ago from my aunt...but it is no longer in the picture, as I lost it the first time I wore it! No clue where it went. It was a beautiful hat--knit and sparkly--and I do miss it, but we hadn't had the chance to develop the kind of strong bond I'd had with my earflap-y pom-pom hat. Point being: ummmmm, I LOSE EVERYTHING.)

Because I friggin' love this hat, my mom and I drove back to the theater this morning to see if we could find it. In our eagerness to save the hat from certain demise on the sticky movie theater floor, we got there before the theater opened, and even though I beat on the door, since it was an EMERGENCY, for some reason I was not let in. So we decided to kill some time at the mall. Unfortunatly, by the time we went back over there, a movie had begun in the particular theater in which I lost my hat. A kind employee, after searching through a strange assortment of scarves, neck supports, and Mickey Mouse ears in the lost-and-found bin, allowed me to go in anyway, as long as I didn't disturb anyone.

So I went into the theater and stared balefully at the old man sitting where I had the night before and wondered if crawling around under his feet would really count as "disturbing" him. Under better circumstances I would have waited till the movie finished and then looked, but I had a work schedule to keep. Defeated, I retreated.

But I wasn't ready to give up quite yet! Later on, I called the place, and after battling a treacherous phone menu, I begged a man named James to search for my hat for me. After keeping me on hold for so long that I was beginning to worry that either my phone battery would die or I would snap from having to listen to garbled pop music, James informed me that there was no hat to be found.

And while I can't help but feel James's searching skills might be suspect, I don't think I have much other choice but to leave it alone now. I am trying to make myself feel better by considering the positive outcomes of this fiasco. They are as follows:

1. in the Grand Scheme of Stuff-Having, I replaced the hat with an awesome vegetarian cookbook and an adorable shirt/dress thing (why is it that clothing articles are so hard to define these days?)
2. I found a larger pair of the soft, fuzzy Hello Kitty pajama pants I'd received for Christmas and had returned due to tightness 'round the butt region (last pair in the store, yessss)
3. also, got to dance around in a store that was playing Lucid Dreams REALLY LOUD (sdjakjsFRAAAANZivemissedyousomuch)
4. coconut bubble tea ♥

Lovely things, all of them. But. But. Try as I might to convince myself that all is well, my cold ears question the adequacy of these solutions.

drawstraws — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 06:38:56 GMT

The Enigma machine.

I got to play with one.

SO COOL.

Also, taped to the checkout computer in the National Security Agency giftshop at the National Cryptologic Museum there is a picture of a bug-eyed squirrel with its possessive paws clinging to a coffee cup. The text under it reads SQUIRREL + COFFEE Dear God, please help us.

Our nation's most serious threat, maybe?

drawstraws — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:09:07 GMT

The week of Rob's visiting is over and I am full of wistful sighs.

Our amazing adventures were many and diverse, but perhaps most post-worthy: Build-a-Bear! My mom gave us gift certificates for Christmas. Even for someone who's all about embracing her inner child, that place is pretty terrifying at first. Way too much pink, Hannah Montana, and High School Musical for my tastes. But we did our best with the available resources and turned our droopy bear husks into snuggly bundles of sunshine and happiness.

Under his guitar, my bear is wearing tighty-whities. :D

Also, Cooking Llama is updated with the latest baking.

Fortunately, there's not much time for feeling lonely. Erin's coming down from New York tonight to spend a few days with me around her job interview at the Fort Meade Museum. I've decided to work my butt off in January (six days a week, whoo!) and stop altogether by mid-February so I can make trips to visit people without requesting days off. Future looks good. Mmm, contentment.

drawstraws — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 04:36:39 GMT

A couple days before Christmas I went with the family to look at the progress that's been made on the house. It's not much yet, and the holidays didn't help speed anything up. But hopefully there'll be a second floor soon. I thought it was way cooler when I visited at Thanksgiving and there was still just the foundation. I wanted to fill it up with water and turn it into a giant swimming pool! Even though, uh, brrrr.

The beautiful Port-o-Pot in the front yard! Our neighbors threatened to decorate it with lights. X3

This had me baffled. Advertise your business...on the side of my house?

I've already settled on new furniture and bought a comforter set for my room. My mom's having me decorate it, even though I'm hoping I won't be making use of it for too much longer. (Must move out so I can have finally have my kitten!) My ideas involve lots of purple and black and shimmery, shiny silver.

Since I got home from school, it's pretty much all been work work work. The bookstore rehired me to do inventory. (Joy of joys!) I've also been picking up hours here and there at the pottery place. I was supposed to teach pottery camp, but since only one person signed up and she was a no-show, I have instead been dusting, sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing. It's all right, I guess. I know I'm lucky to have work at all, times being what they are...(Indifferent. Bad? Wicked.) But sometimes I wish I could do something that would tax my intellectual faculties a little bit more. (I'll admit, my super awesome job at school helping Vasugi Ganeshananthan do research for her next novel has spoiled me.)

On the happiest of notes, Rob's coming to visit for New Year's. (YAY.) Our plans: bake and play Pokemon together. :D It's the last time I'll see him until I get back from Japan in August, which is kind of heartrending and tragic, but meh. We'll be cool.

I wish I didn't have quite so much time to wait to go abroad. Mid-March seems impossibly far away, and every day I feel the faint tickle of what limited knowledge I have of Japanese creeping its stealthy way out of my brain on tip-toes. (My promise to myself that I would study on a regular schedule hasn't worked out so well. But I'll try to do better. I will.)

And that's about what's up. Now I'm gonna try to get some more reading in before bed. (I'm working on The Hunger Games and loving it.)