Where Will You Go?

What's UP with my goddamned legs? They have been sore as fuck for a couple days now. Stiff and sore and uncomfortable to walk on--though not unbearably painful--all the time. I don't know what I did to them. I haven't done anything to overexert myself. I just do the normal thing I've been doing daily for the past year at least: walking fucking everywhere.

I was doing a little yoga-like activities awhile ago to try to alleviate some pain. I put my legs up the wall and did random stretchy-things. It felt all right, but I don't think it helped that much. Well, that, and some ibuprofen, which has dulled the pain slightly, but not enough.

Boys are always asleep when you want them to come over and rub you down and push your buttons like a video game console controller.

The convenience store in the Husky Den has an employee who doesn't want to charge me for the coffee in my reusable mug. Twice now I've gone up there with my items--once a burrito, once a small package of Red Vines--resting atop the mug. I specifically mentioned that there is coffee in the mug, but she's not listening. She's shouting at another coworker. She rang me up for the item on top but never the coffee. Not that I'd complain. Hey, free coffee.

But they are whining about lower-than-expected profits for that cafeteria, and maybe underselling drip coffee is part of the problem. I mean, if you want to make money, you ought to get paid for everything you're selling.

I am getting a little swamped. It's the seventh week of the quarter, so due dates are coming up fast. I've photocopied some articles for my psych paper, found some possibly appropriate law review articles for my section of the group paper on the Supreme Court's decision to overturn some particularly bullshitty passages of the CDA, and tomorrow my group is meeting again to work on the project. We present next Friday. Eeeee. As a groupmate said, this really lights a fire under our asses, which I find a particularly unpleasant thought. Fire doesn't belong under my ass! Deadlines are deadly enough without bringing severely burned buttocks into the picture!

So. On top of this, tomorrow we're signing a lease on a house, then we'll get to start working on it. We gotta fix it up a bit before starting to move in. It's a little run down. Chris is excited to fix things up. He suggested we have a work party and bribe our friends to do manual labor in exchange for pizza and beer. Oh, and I need to run down to Olympia Saturday afternoon and pick up my sister from the airport on the way.

I need to plan summer a little more. I haven't heard from Winnie about whether or not she's planning to come out here, and my mom wants me to go to New York with her, my brother, and Koko sometime. The federal district courts are likely to call me to jury duty in September, not to mention there are a few concert dates I plan to be around for in August and September (Bjork and Bumbershoot). Oh, and class. And I'm working. And I'd like to get some writing published. I haven't even had anything in the fucking Daily, but that's all lack of effort on my part. The Daily is not a goal. The Daily is a last minute crutch for people who need something published, quick, so other people will hire them. Sadly, I think the Daily would actually be better if more people who disdained the damn paper put their stories in there for that reason.

This is an awfully disjointed entry. So what else is new.

It's still Student Appreciation Week at the libraries on campus, when they shower student workers with such gifts as mini candy bars and single-serving packages of Oreos. For past appreciations, all the goodies were kept in another room, and I, for one, never partook, so maybe I wasn't the only one. They gave us the goodies in bags with our names on them. There was some kind of group [adult] staff outing to Archie McPhee, where they picked up paper airplanes for us all. Mine is shaped like a winged ant.

After the goodie bag giveaway Monday, Kevin picked me up to go to Carkeek . On the way we hit up Ballard Market for some dinner. I spent too much on a Naked smoothie, a cup of lentil soup, and some random gourmet salad bar things. We ate at a shaded picnic table to avoid the sunny glare, then went down to the beach.

The first thing we noticed was hundreds of tent caterpillars on the wild roses along the railroad track. They were fascinating; I'd never seen them before. Then, as the sun slowly set, we caught three trains from different places. First we sat at the bottom of the steps to the pedestrian bridge for a northbound train, which is on the far set of tracks. Then we wandered along the installed rocks north of the bridge, finding some nice nooks and crannies to sit where the wind wasn't so strong. A southbound train whizzed past mere feet from our heads.

Kevin started freezing and we headed back to the car when we saw another southbound train on its way. I wanted to stand on the bridge, which is by far the most thrilling way to watch the trains. The train approached slowly. A handful of families with small children were perched on the bridge, watching and waiting. It was moving really slowly as it passed; not as much of a rush. My knees weren't weak afterwards, but it was still good. When the taller cars approached, one dad would exclaim that it was going to hit us. It always looks that close.

One little girl cried. "No one else is crying!" her mother chided, but her tears didn't relent.

I'm tired. I think I'll go back to re-reading Pride and Prejudice before I sleep now.

listening: the breeders - invisible man