April 2004 archive

(60 entries)

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April 30, 2004

This just happened

*DING DONG!*

srah answers the door. There is a woman holding a multi-pack of paper towels. "Hello!" she gaily greets me, "Are you the lady of the house?"

"Well... I'm the one at home..." I respond. I think I don't deal well with answering doors.

"So you're not the lady of the house?"

"I guess not."

"Okay. Thanks. Bye!"

Paper towels? WTF? Why does this seem like a dream I would have?

Hope is the thing with feathers. No wait, that's a duck.

"I don't see why that shouldn't count for credit," my professor said when I described my summer internship to him. Prior to that, I had given up hope of a for-credit internship and was mostly just happy to have something to occupy me over the summer. "They're pretty accomodating." He suggested that they had been known to bend the rules in order to get people credit.

"We will get you credit for this," said the president of my organization. "Just let me know what I have to do."

This gave me hope. So I set up an appointment for today to talk to the person in charge of the I Practical Engagement Program (PEP) to see if my internship could count as a I Directed Field Experience (DFE) and therefore for credit.

I was running late this morning, so I forewent blow-drying my hair or putting my contacts in, dooming myself to a day of wet/limp hair and glasses, but assuring that I would not make a bad impression by being late. I further avoided lateness by parking in a pay lot near campus rather than parking for free and travelling closer. I headed up to her office.

"I wanted to talk to you about my internship and seeing if it could count as a DFE," I began, sitting down. "I, um, I'll be making websites for this study abroad center in Michigan and in France. The problem is, they have IT people and they have graphic designers who have been doing websites up until this point, but they don't actually have a webmaster. But the president of the company and the IT person are both willing to be considered my supervisor and to report on my progress."

The answer is no.

There is no webmaster, the SI student is the most knowledgeable person there in the field she'll be working in, so despite the valuable experience, there will be no credit. She suggested that it would work if I could convince the organization to hire a webmaster. Yeah, thanks for that. You're loads of help there.

I left her office and burst into tears*. Why did I bother setting up this appointment? Why did I bother trying so hard to be on time? I was limp-haired, bespectacled and now soggy-faced.

I managed to have this appointment, burst into tears, mop myself up, buy myself a bubble tea for comfort and get back to my car, all within the course of ten minutes. Why did I bother coming to campus in the first place?

It's quite possible that I could have gotten away with it by just having the president submit my proposal and not asking about it, but now I've gone and told her the truth and I won't be able to pull that one.

I really shouldn't be this upset, because I had resigned myself to doing two different non-credit projects this summer and having to do something totally lame for credit next semester while also taking classes. But every conversation I had presented a glimmer of hope. "They're not really that strict about it," I heard, every time I lamented my no-credit assumption. So why are they willing to bend the rules for others, but not for me?

–––––
* Is it just me, or does it seem like I am always bursting into tears? I hope it's, like, PMS or something and not a symptom of a deeper, more permanent psychological problem.

There are those who call me... Srah?

At my internship yesterday, the president of the organization called me into his office and we talked about who I would be reporting to and what my projects were going to be for the summer. While I was there, he mentioned another Sarah who works there and realized that there are now two of us.

"Everybody around here has a nickname," he explained, "Do you have a nickname?"

I don't know how much control I have over the bugginess of my eyes, so I'm not sure if they popped out of my head or not. Don't say Srah... don't say Srah...

I emitted my professional ho-ho-ho laugh, shaking my head. "No, not really."

"Well, we'll have to find you a nickname, then."

Faced with the threat of being found a nickname against my will, I admitted, "Well... some people call me Srah." I really didn't want to explain it and I thought it would be weird having people call me Srah at work.

"Srah? Like Que Sera Sera?"

"Exactly."

"Srah Srah Srah." He seemed amused. "Okay!"

We'll see if he remembers that by Tuesday. Why didn't I say SAM?

April 27, 2004

Misattribution

Invent a memory of me and post it in the comments. It can be anything you want, so long as it's something that's never happened. Then, if you're so inclined, post this to your journal and see what people would like to remember of you, only the universe failed to cooperate in making it happen so they had to make it up instead.

[via threegoldfish]

Tuesday is Chooseday

Would you rather:

have the lifetime channel make a movie out of your life OR the playboy channel?
Yeah, no?
lick a cat's nose OR give it a proctology exam without gloves? (thanks nicole)
I would kiss a cat's nose. And I would probably unthinkingly lick my lips afterwards. So it's not a far stretch to lick the nose itself. Besides, cats' noses are soft and dry and cute and wee.
find a bag containing $20,000 and turn it in before you find out it belonged to an known mob boss OR not turn it in, spend it all, and find out it belonged to an orphange?
With that choice, I get to be a good person and maybe I will make a Mafia-friend. That's always a valuable thing to have!
find out your parents kidnapped you when you were a baby and raised you as their own OR find out you had a twin that died at birth that they never told you about?
This is a hard one, because both sound cool. Am I totally off base for thinking that? A little intrigue in the ol' life? No? Okay. Well, I guess I'll go for the latter, then because it doesn't involve my parents being carted off to jail and maybe my dead twin could haunt me.

Faith in the unknowing

I don't like to admit that I'm wrong or that I can't do things on my own, which is why I am always panicked on Tuesday afternoons. I believe until Tuesday afternoon that I can program Java on my own. That if I keep working at it for two days straight, it will eventually sort itself out. I think it happened once. But the faith is always there.

Well, it's Tuesday afternoon now. And I can't do it! This program has to work. And it doesn't. And I'm lost. And no amount of talking myself through it is helping.

It is very frustrating that I can't triumphantly count down the hours until I'm done with this semester, because I know that I'm not going to have my final project done by 4pm today and I'm going to have to continue working on it for some undetermined amount of time, until it's all over.

No amount of crying is helping either, but that doesn't mean I'm not trying that approach.

April showers that kill May flowers

When I looked yesterday at today's weather forecast, there was nothing out of the ordinary. It must have been in the 50s or 60s or so, because there was nothing there to make the top of my head blow off or to make me go "Oooooooooo!" in alarm and surprise.

It's snowing.

BOOM! Ouch. Oooooooooo!

April 26, 2004

I'd like to thank the other nominees, because I think that in a way, we all won

You know how it looks good on your resumé if you've won awards?

Well... are they going to, like, check on that?

Because I won Webmaster of the Year at work today.

From a vast pool of one (1) webmaster.

Rhythm is gonna get you... to dance?

This week's American Idol theme is the music of Gloria Estefan.

John Stevens, we hardly knew ya. Oh god, this is going to be painful.

Dream

I dreamt last night that Lewis (friend from Albion) picked me up to take me to school today, but I was running late. He said that was okay because he was still in his pyjamas too - but he'd brought along his clothes so he could change while I was in the shower.

Next I was at Bubble Island and an editorial or letter to the editor that Ursula had written was pinned up on the bulletin board. I pointed that out to the counter-guy, who had been hitting on me, and he got excited and made her go through and highlight every time her name appeared in the article. She did, but she didn't highlight my name when it appeared, so I got mad and went and sat at another table.

While I was sitting at the other table, a big group of people came in, lots of whom looked vaguely familiar and one of whom had on an Albion t-shirt. I asked them if they'd gone to Albion and they said they had. They seemed to be excited to see a fellow alum, then I said, "I'm Sarah M------! I graduated in 2002!" and their faces fell and they started ignoring me.

I never blogged the dream from earlier this weekend, where I was in a submarine that was taken over by terrorists. They were dressed all in black and had machine guns and they never said a word to us, but just handed us bright, multicolored flyers identifying themselves as the Clown Brigade or some equally ridiculous clown-related group that was in no way related to terrorism. This was just a cover, but we never found out what their real goal was. They didn't do anything bad to us - just held us hostage. And we were free to wander around on the level we were on, so really the extent of their terror was that they wouldn't let us on the elevator. I was still scared and wandered around our level, looking for people I knew. I finally found Matt and Alfie in the submarine's clinic, where a large group of hostages were huddled, discussing the most horrible sports injuries they had ever seen.

April 25, 2004

t r teh surprised!!!1

Matt was really excited about coming over to watch The Princess Bride last night. He had worked out elaborate plans of dressing up marshmallow Peeps as characters from the movie. Unfortunately, it turned out the movie was just a cover for the surprise birthday party we threw him. Poor Matt.

The idea was actually inspired by this post, but I feared that he would think it was the other way around and catch on that something was in the air. But no - he showed up marshmallows in hand, jaw on floor* and out of breath as he tried to blow out what we hadn't realized were trick candles.

It's quite eggs-citing that we managed to keep the secret all that time and that it all came together so well. It egg-ceeded all of our egg-spectations, I think.

Unconscious Mutterings

t r going to read my free associations.

read extended entry... »

April 24, 2004

We could file in to the strains of 'Marian the Librarian'! Who's with me?

I think this year's SI first-year class should make a group effort to all (male and female) grow our hair long enough that it could be put into a bun by this time next year. Ours would be the best graduation ever!!!!1

I r lame.

Reader interaction!

Leave me a comment asking me three questions. Something silly, something serious, whatever floats your boat.
I will answer your questions to the best of my ability, at my earliest convenience.
Go back to your own bloggy house and implore five people to ask you three questions apiece. (I'm skipping the 5 asker limit.) (Watch nobody ask me.)
Kindly trackback and watch the questioning propagate.

[via swirlspice]

Or if you'd rather, go back here, leave a comment and I can ask you questions...

Q & A follows in the extension!

read extended entry... »

From katie:

Aliens come down and force you to pick 3 current celebrities with whom to start new society. Who do you choose?
What is your favorite family tradition from when you were a kid?
If you were Princess Leia, how would you have answered the question, "Where is the Rebel base?"

From tbone:

You know that place called "Mary's Fabulous Chicken" near your house, well...I'm just dying to know...is it really fabulous?

smell

From The Urstodian:

Can you come out and play?
When and how long are you going to be gone?
What....... is your favorite color?

From Justin:

What is your favorite J.Lo movie, and why?
Can I have a dollar? Please?
Ladies is pimps too, go and brush your shoulders off?

From ilgondo:

If you were a chicken, how would you like to be cooked?
If you automatically knew the answer to one question about every person you saw without even asking them, what would the question be?
Which Disney character would be your perfect husband?

From Erica:

English, French, or Spanish?
Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner?
Rock, Scissors, or Paper?

From Alfie:

If you could have any super power, what would it be?

suck

If you could meet any five people, dead or alive, who would they be?
Who is your favorite sibling?

your

« ... hide extended entry

April 22, 2004

Crap day not noticed as crap by sleep-deprived liver of it

"There is nothing sexier than the sight of a well-dressed woman eating chicken fingers."
- srah, to herself, while finishing her lunch in the car on the way home from work yesterday

You keep telling yourself that, girl! I think it should become an adage.

Today was really pretty crap. Luckily, I was too sleepy to recognize that fact at the time.

I had a take-home exam due at 5pm, but had to work at my internship from 1 to 5 and had to get to "Detroit" first. Which meant that my deadline was noon. Except really, my deadline had to be before noon, because I still had to get my hours to the secretary at my other job, eat something and get gas in the car.

So I had planned to work on the test through last night. If I got too tired to work, I would take a power nap and then get up and continue. I went to bed at 1:30am, set my cell phone alarm for 2, and set another alarm for 4am, because I knew that I wasn't going to get up after only half an hour, and 4am sounded like a good time to start my Thursday.

So my alarm went off at 2. I was sort of alert, but I knew that there was that second alarm, so I went back to sleep... and woke up at about 6:45. Apparently I had set the 4:00 alarm, but not turned it on. Luckily, I had enough notes that I was able to finish two more questions between 6:45 and 8:30, when I left to go to the 502 review session.

The session was only marginally useful, because information was swimming around in my brain and wriggling and refusing to be caught, but it did serve the purpose of making me panic and realize I know nothing about this class and I hadn't started studying for Friday's exam. So it made me realize that I should study, but that I had no time to do so before our study group at 6:02*. Grr.

After that, I was able to hit the SHEEPDIP and get trucking on problem #2, which I hadn't really even looked at before. Luckily it turned out to be easyish (although probably wrong and full of graphs that needed to be redrawn with a pencil). I finished and got all of my shiznit printed and handed in at... 11:45.

So I booked it - or "booked it" as fast as I could, being dressed up for work in my lovely belovèd new shoes that make me walk feminine-professionally and daintily and therefore at a speed of about .003 miles per hour everywhere I go - across campus, got my stuff, grabbed some Wendy's to eat in the car, and prayed that I had enough gas as I minced my way back to my car.

As I left the Union, I realized that I didn't have my trusty driving directions and I was going to have to do the trip on my own. I was already running late and was not looking forward to having to call the office and tell them that I was going to be late because I got lost.

Surprisingly enough, I made it and took the correct Telegraph Road exit this time - a mistake I'd made last week even with directions. Driving without directions made me feel like a grown-up - like I just travel this route all the time because I have important things to do at the other end.

I ran inside, worked and actually had a good time at it, then left at 5 for study group, remembering that the reason I was starving was that I hadn't managed to eat all of my Wendy's while trying to navigate to "Detroit." So I finished them and they were cold and horrible and delicious.

Traffic traffic traffic. Traffic traffic GO! GO! 60 miles an hour! GO-- Traffic. Traffic. SEVENTY-FIVE! SIXTY! FIFTY! Traffic.

I got to study group only about ten minutes late and was not even the last to arrive. We put off studying for a long time in favour of choosing pizza toppings, put it off some more in favour of eating pizza, and some of us never really did get much done, because we were mostly asleep.

I came home and thought about getting directly into bed, but made the mistake of getting on AIM and having about seven conversations, which took me almost until midnight. Now is the time to rest the "leetle grey cells" for the exam, which is almost more important than studying, anyway.

–––––
* We are teh suck.

Oh, English, you kooky language!

What is the past tense of "forego"? "I forewent" sounds funny, so I usually just skip to the pluperfect - "I have forgone."

Not that anyone cares. Blah. Sleeping time!

April 20, 2004

Tuesday is Chooseday

Would you rather...

eat pickled herring with every meal for the next year OR eat just one live monkey's brain?
How much pickled herring? I've never had pickled herring, so I'll go with that, because I refuse to eat living food.
assuming they paid the same, clean up elephant poop at the circus for a living OR be a senator's aid?
Depends on the senator! Ha ha, no, not really. If it were someone I liked and agreed with, I could probably have a good time. And if it weren't... well, I could slowly poison them until they died. :)
have every joint on your body be double-jointed OR be able to jump 6 feet straight up from standing?
Jump! I don't know what I would do with all of those double-joints. I don't actually know how double-jointedness works. Couldn't your knee just suddenly slip out of joint and you'd fall over? Better to jump high, I should think.
choke the very life out of a cute, little bunny rabbit OR sleep in a vat of maggots for a month? (thanks nicole)
Bunny! Maggots are gross. As much as I love bunnies, I would rather strangle one than be covered in wriggling all night long. And then I'd eat the rabbit.

April 19, 2004

Attention world:

I am not "dressed up." Wearing a skirt is my normal state - it's just that I "dress down" about 90% of the time. This makes sense in my head, but then I am in the middle of finals and I hate the world and I would kind of like to burninate Sun Microsystems for inventing Java.

Last semester, I was somewhat nocturnal, as I couldn't really get working until the sun went down. It's the same this semester, except that I don't do any work all day, then I sleep at night.

April 18, 2004

'Is there a canopy in store for me?'

Dear srah,

You are in a computer lab, not at home. You have lots of nice musicals in your CD player, but you oughtn't sing along, lip-sync or dance or you will start to draw attention. You haven't done it yet, but I forsee it in the near future.

- Starving in the SHEEPDIP

P.S. to other readers: Come and see the show! Bring food!
P.P.S.: Or just bring food!

'You kids are soft! You lack discipline!'

I just wanted all of you to know that I'm really knuckling down and getting into Full-On Study Mode for finals. I even made up a strict schedule for myself, so that I would know, at every minute of the waking day, where I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to be doing.

Ha ha!

And this worked for almost six hours, which really impressed me! Then I had to eat ice cream and watch Labyrinth with Rachel and Mr B------. But it was perfectly justifiable because we... uh... we... found lots of examples of 503 terms at Stucchi's and in the movie.

Ahem.

See, like, Sarah couldn't find her way to the Goblin King's castle because there was no navigational residue at the entrance, so she could go very deep down one path and would have to go back up the stack to go back to the original level and try a broader search and...

Okay, no, I'm just a slacker.

Unconscious Mutterings

If you change your mind, I'm the first in line
Honey I'm still free (associations), take a chance on me...

(This is the lamest Unconscious Mutterings intro I've ever done and I apologize.)

read extended entry... »

April 17, 2004

'So would we need to do a giant queue then?'

For those of you following The Continuing Saga of Why Data Structures Are Dirty, in our last lecture yesterday we learned that certain types of searches "require a queue ~~as wide~~ as big as the width of a tree" and studied iterative deepening. And Matt said it was boring!

I'm glad to know that A. and I have poisoned the minds of enough of our classmates that the sniggering was at least double what it was last time.

April 16, 2004

Oh, how the mighty (sucky) have fallen

Sometimes you wonder what motivates people to go on American Idol. Clearly it is the allure of singing in really large, important venues.

April 15, 2004

I mostly look like hippies, tramps and sleaze

According to this, the stars I most resemble are Sherilyn Fenn and Alyssa Milano. Another picture returned Cher (!!!) and Isabelle Adjani. I tried again and got Maria Callas, Patricia Arquette and Jenny McCarthy.

Who do you look like?

[via little.yellow.different]

'Oh no, Ohio!/ I can hardly wait to say goodbye-oh!'

If tbone isn't going to blog about this herself...

It is highly recommended that you go here, watch "Uniform" and then click on the Playbill.

Unless you are one of those mad hippies who doesn't like songs that get into your head and drive you insane. But we don't have any of those around here, do we?

'Knees weak, palms are sweaty'

I live about an hour from the Detroit area. I say "the Detroit area" because I've always considered anywhere covered by Detroit radio stations' traffic coverage to be "Detroit." It always annoyed my Shelby Township-native college roommate that I said she was from Detroit and couldn't see any difference between where she lived, St. Clair Shores or Dearborn, so I have since expanded to calling that whole fuzzy Eastern region "the Detroit area" instead of "Detroit."

I have no family over here and very little reason to come to the Detroit area, so I've never learned my way around or bothered to learn to distinguish one area from another. Wyandotte? Greektown? Royal Oak? 8 Mile? It's all Greece to me.

Well, the first month and a half of my internship will be spent in my employer's Bingham Farms office. I have to make the 40-minute drive each way, once a week through April and thrice a week through May.

It's an interesting drive for someone whose freeway experience consists almost exclusively of the strip of I-94 between Ann Arbor and Albion. "There's a three car pileup on I-696," I remember hearing on Detroit radio stations. "Traffic is at a standstill on I-275." "The southbound Lodge Freeway is backed up to 12 Mile."

I have sometimes ridden on these famous roads, but have never driven them myself. I will finally drive them! With their massive traffic problems! In rush hour!

Great.

April 13, 2004

'The world is full of a number of things I know we should be as happy as'*

The Internet is full of a number of things... one of which is Subservient Chicken.

I suggest "sleep," "lay an egg," and "fly."

[via Bobby]

–––––
* Identify the quote?

Tuesday is Chooseday

Would you rather:

live in a place with the constant threat of volcano eruptions OR the constant threat of tidal waves?
Drowning seems more lingering than burning, somehow, and maybe I could get knocked out by flying hardened lava before I burned. Of course, I could also just suffocate from the gases and ash or be buried alive like at Pompeii. But it still seems like there's something totally lame about tidal waves.
go through an operation that would make you absolutely gorgeous, able to win any beauty contest OR one that would make you able to run faster than anybody on the planet?
I think this is the hardest of the week. Attract suitors or run away from them? Hmmm. Exactly how fast can I run? Will it make a significant difference in my daily transportation? Will I have super endurance too, or will I only be able to win the 5-yard dash? Will I be beautiful or fast when I'm old? I think I'll go with fast, because otherwise people might compliment me all the time and that would annoy me. This way I would be superior in a measurable, objective way.
have warts on your face OR on your genitals?
It's probably best to be upfront about things like warts. Right? I dunno. How many warts?
scream in pain everytime you comb your hair OR cry like a baby when you brush your teeth?
How loud is the screaming? Does "combing" include "brushing"? I cry too much anyway, so I guess I'll just do that, because I'm more likely to comb my hair than brush my teeth outside the privacy of my own home.

'Soundtrack to end all Soundtracks' CD Swap

"Everyone has brought at lease one movie soundtrack in their lifetime. (or downloaded a few). Admit it. You may not be a fan of the movie, but you bought the soundtrack. To hear that one song. Maybe it was the one that played to death on radio... or maybe it a little song that no one noticed, but you feel in love with. Sometimes.. the movie soundtrack can be a melting pot of undiscovered tunes..
......So what a great cd swap this would make! To make a cd mix of your personal favorite songs from the movies."

I ♥ movie music. Sign-up information is here!

Karaoke bus... of DOOM!

This morning on the way to work, I was treated to a musical delight! Our bus driver is some kind of aspiring singer and spent the entire voyage singing along with the radio.

I couldn't decide whether to be annoyed or amused and proud that he sang with such force and abandon throughout the trip. Part of me was happy that he could sing and sing and sing and enjoy himself while driving.

Another part of me realized that he was trying to harmonize and not always succeeding and that he didn't know all of the words and that he was singing so loudly that he drowned out the song he was trying to harmonize with and that I was trapped in the bus against my will with nowhere to go while he sang along with Nelly Furtado - or the words that he remembered - so that it sounded something like "... LIFE... SHORT... JUST FOR YOU... FEEL... POWERLESS... GONNA DO?"

And yet, in the end, I think that first part of me won out. I'm glad he enjoyed himself and I kind of enjoyed along with him.

April 12, 2004

Which is it?

I got an email earlier today that started "THERE HERE!! THERE HERE!!" and now I have a sore neck.

'The world forgetting, by the world forgot'

I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this weekend with Young Matthew and the Urstodian. It was as good as everyone says it is, which is very. I highly recommend it! It's sweet but at the same time, quite thought-provoking and visually interesting*.

In case anyone wondered and didn't have their Bartlett's on hand, the Alexander Pope poem quoted in the movie is "Eloisa to Abelard".

–––––
* My movie reviews are always totally lame and sound like I'm only pretending to know what I'm talking about. This is probably because I am. Go see it for yourself.

You've come a long way, bloggy

It's a few weeks away, but I'll probably forget by then. I have been blogging for almost two and a half years. How do I still have things to talk about? How can one person have so many pointless memories and experiences that she doesn't eventually run out of things to talk about or just start telling the same story over and over again?

And more importantly, why are you people still here? The end will come some day, won't it? Is there a limit to memory and human experience? Do you want to be there when it all starts to go downhill?

(Starts? comes the worldwide snort of derision.)

Supplies!

I had actually forgotten that I'd had a surprise 21st birthday party until I was paging through one of my photo albums last night. This is mostly because it wasn't a very big surprise.

I was an orientation leader for incoming international students my senior year at Albion. One of my orientees asked me earlier in the day what time the party was, not knowing that it was a surprise party.I told him I didn't know anything about a party and while it confused me at first, it planted the seeds of suspicion so I pretty much knew what I was I was walking into when I did.

It was a great party, but not an enormous surprise. How about you? Have you ever had/thrown a surprise party? Tell 's about it.

RESOLVED:

That thigh-high stockings are very sexy and that knee-high stockings are very not.

This resolution was decided in the highest court of the land*. The question is now open to public debate.

–––––
* or... last night in an AIM conversation

Is this a kissing movie?

In a conversation this weekend with a friend who shall remain nameless, it was revealed that he had never seen The Princess Bride.

At first, I didn't believe him. But he insisted. This information slowly sunk into my mind and the top of my head has now healed quite nicely, thank you very much, from when it blew right off.

There are people out there who have never seen The Princess Bride? There are nerds out there who have never seen The Princess Bride? I have been associating with people who haven't seen The Princess Bride?

It is so important to know these important things about the people that you are friends with, so that they won't lead you down the path of the Un-PBed - a path that will only lead to sorrow and eternal damnation!

If you have a friend who is on the wrong path, it is your duty to instill in them the teachings of the One True Film!

Yea, though I walk through the Fire Swamp, lead me not into lightning sand, but deliver me from ROUSes, for thou art the something or other blah blah blah AS YOU WISH.

April 11, 2004

Unconscious Mutterings

Free associations in the extension!

read extended entry... »

April 10, 2004

Everyone sweats

Although there are many rumours going around about the aluminum in deodorants and anti-perspirants causing Alzheimer's Disease or breast cancer, WebMD says that these are false.

So much for that excuse. Forgetting to put deodorant on yesterday morning can no longer be chalked up to a hippie-ish preventive approach and doing something about my health. Instead, I must admit that in my hurry to be on time to pick tbone up for school, I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off, got out of my normal ~~routine~~ habit and somehow skipped a step.

I don't know what triggered my memory, but somehow, sitting in class, I realized that I had no memory of putting deodorant on. This didn't necessarily mean that I hadn't, but it did mean that I suddenly became quite conscious of it and imagined that I was sweating profusely, which made me nervous and therefore made me sweat. It was a vicious cycle that could only be broken by the application of deodorant.

Unfortunately, I had a full day of Take Your Professor to Lunch-ing, class and work until 5 and Ladies' Night Out plans directly after, so I wasn't going to be able to get home. Instead, I had to explain the situation to my lunch mates and drag them to the drugstore with me to make an emergency purchase.

I couldn't decide, the whole time, whether I should have been embarassed or not.

чорнобиль

"My dad used to say that people are afraid of a deadly thing which they can not see, can not feel and can not smell. Maybe that is because those words are a good description of death itself."

Most interesting thing I've read today: Ghost Town, the photo journal of a Ukrainian motorcyclist driving through the abandoned town of Chernobyl.

"Perhaps future archeologists will compare this Ghost Town to Pompeii. The Soviet era is forever preserved here - in the deadly radiation that will last for many centuries."

[via Seat of the Revolution; English-Ukrainian translation found here]

srah | 2:15 PM | TrackBack | Tags: discovered |

April 9, 2004

I'm a little tea-snot

I have always been a snob and am no less snobby when it comes to tea. As a tea-drinker, I like to think that I have something over all of the coffee-drinkers out there. I like to imagine that I am in some way more sophisticated than the java-guzzling proles*.

I imagine that one day, scientists will find out that - like cigarettes - coffee is really bad for you, but all of the evidence has been hidden for years. Meanwhile, millions of people will be addicted to caffeine and I, who have only tasted coffee once or twice and declared it undrinkable, will laugh through my long life.

Some people are dependent on coffee and meander zombie-like through days that have not begun with a cup, drinking more to keep awake through the day. And yet, I'm beginning to find that I'm just as dependent on tea. My average 4 cups of tea a day has just as much caffeine as 2 cups of coffee. Any day that I'm running late and skip my tea is pretty lost, as I prop my eyes open with toothpicks and loll around all day.

It's not better at all!

–––––
* Which would be a good band name. Yes, I am Dave Barry.

The Friday Five

1. What do you do for a living?
My current part-time job doesn't (and couldn't) support me in the style to which I have become accustomed. So for a "living" I am a student, in that I am doing this so that I can one day earn a living.

2. What do you like most about your job?
I enjoy learning and being around similar-minded people. I like thinking that I will one day have a job in this field and figuring out how I will be able to apply what I'm learning.

3. What do you like least about your job?
Bureaucracy and lack of direction or clear structure. I never feel like I really know what's going on in the school and I always find myself wishing people had told me things sooner.

4. When you have a bad day at work it's usually because _____...

I'm tired

I can't see any relation between what I'm learning and my own life

I feel like I'm wasting my time by being there.

5. What other career(s) are you interested in?
I want to be a lion tamer! ... no, I think the other thing that would appeal to me is some sort of international relations - foreign service/diplomacy or international education.

srah | 4:12 PM | TrackBack | Tags: friday five, memes |

Dream

I dreamt last night that we moved to the house across the street, which was bigger and had a finished basement, but just had empty wall behind all of the closet doors and had no doorbell.

I also dreamt that John Stevens' next performance involved him a) wearing a ponytail, b) wailing on the banjo and c) wearing a Utilikilt.

Remember what I said about being psychic? Yeah, now I'm praying doubly.

April 8, 2004

Directory assistance

I like that whenever I've buried my cell phone under the piles of books and papers on my floor or left it in the pocket of a forgotten jacket, I can just give it a call to find out where it is.

I find myself wishing I could call everything in my life. My room is messy enough that my phone bills would be astronomical as I telephoned my keys, my day planner, my 502 coursepack and my spare change.

What the hell is the number for my tweezers?

Cinq femmes

A bit of publicity for an old friend:

"The Tenth Anniversary Season of Broadway Onstage Live Theatre concludes with FIVE WOMEN WEARING THE SAME DRESS, a truly funny comedy written by "SIX FEET UNDER" creator Alan Ball. The production opens on Friday, April 16 and runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm and Select Sundays at 2pm through Saturday, May 15... Broadway Onstage Live Theatre is located at 21517 Kelly Rd. at Toepfer (8 1/2 Mile Rd.) in Eastpointe."

The dresses do look terribly awful...

April 7, 2004

Tuesday is Chooseday

I knew I was forgetting something...

Would you rather:

go through 5 years of poverty and get $10,000,000 OR go through 1 year of poverty and get $100,000?
$100,000 is plenty for me.
date someone who is fabulous looking but has unmaskable, horrible breath OR someone who is simply average but has great breath all the time?
Yuck!
hand wash the poopy cloth diapers for 50 babies for a day OR hand wash the poopy cloth diapers for 5 babies for a week?
It seems like a simple multiplication problem, but I think I'd rather get it over with. Once you're messy, might as well stay so, rather than getting messy over and over again.
be fat, dumb, and happy OR in excellent shape, sharp as a whip, but melancholy or depressed all the time?
Ignorance and bliss for me, please. Smarts are important, but being melancholy and depressed is horribly unpleasant.

We'll collect the moments one by one/ I guess that's how the future's done - Feist, 'Mushaboom'

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April 2004 archive

April 30, 2004

April 27, 2004

April 26, 2004

April 25, 2004

April 24, 2004

April 22, 2004

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April 16, 2004

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April 13, 2004

April 12, 2004

April 11, 2004

April 10, 2004

April 9, 2004

April 8, 2004

April 7, 2004

We'll collect the moments one by one/ I guess that's how the future's done
- Feist, 'Mushaboom'