Site Meter Lies, It Lies, When It Cries

Site Meter referral stats for butter knives are for the weak lead me to believe that Bruce Campbell loved me.

I knew something had to be wrong.

But seeing

Referring URL
1 http://freelove.blogspot.com
2 unknown
...
12 http://www.bruce-campbell.com/index.htm

made me go, "??!!"

Bruce Campbell, for those who do not know, is a modern B-movie star extraordinaire. You may recognize him best as Ash in the Evil Dead trilogy.

Of course, I was right that SM just fucked up some data. The referral was really to an Amazon.com page for Time Quest.

So anyway, I just had to share that. And maybe Josie won't read this before I see her next--she usually doesn't, I don't think--so I can tell her myself.

On the less amusing side of things, my favorite web boards, Three-Way Action, are shutting down in a couple weeks. Geez, create a community that thrives and provides fodder for intelligent discussion in nearly every topic area, and the damn servers get run over with a Mac truck of traffic, costing the benevolent hosts too much money to continue. Sad.

I must get back to the business of living, moving, and forgetting now.

listening: propellerheads - cominagetcha

Oh, Look! It Isn't Broken!

I just got a new IP! Maybe my cable DID go down overnight! This explains everything!

I swear this coffee contains soap.

Minor Frustrations

I've only been at work 20 minutes now and the coffee hasn't cooled enough to drink rapidly, so I'm still a bit hazy.

Little things lately have bugged. Little things always bug, of course, but there has been a rash of bugs lately. So here is a small list of collected petty bitches from the last few days:

-I can't use IRC right now. I don't know how to get through work without IRC unless there is a talkative person present, which doesn't seem to be the case right now, or I have, you know, work to do. Since I turned in the paper that tried to eat me (see next petty bitch) yesterday, I have a slight reprieve from work. So I'm bored.

-I was writing the paper that tried to eat me on Monday at work. I had five hours to compile six pages of APA-like analysis on five articles that used video games and measured kids' heart rates. I started at noon and wrote straight through to the results section, saving to the hard drive. Save, save, save. Then, the computer decided it was suddenly incapable of saving. It was having memory issues. I tried to pacify it by offering to close every other program running and deleting files (even though the hard drive was not actually full), but it was no use. Word had made its decision. Wisely, I chose to print the last page, which contained a table of averages and a chart compiled with them. Unwisely, I figured most, if not all, of the rest of the document would have been saved somewhere already, and closed the program and rebooted. Guess what? Paper alllll gone! At 3 p.m.!

-This prevented me from getting to Jana's birthday party until almost 8 p.m. My sister had gotten a ride with Chris and Margaret so she was all alone with people she doesn't know until then, which I think is okay with her. More or less. I brought veggie burgers, which would've been a nice addition to the feast...at 5 p.m. On the upside, I got to see friends, and my sister made friends with Margaret, much to my amusement and horror.

-Back to the IRC thing, my computer doesn't seem to like being connected to the internet anymore. I don't know why. I had to reboot it this morning when I discovered my connection died last night, even though the cable wasn't down and the cat5 wasn't out of place or anything. It worked fine on reboot, but now I can't ssh to it. What...the fuck. Maybe I need a new nic.

-When I took my sister to the airport, I had no problems until I got back to the U District to park. I have a parking spot. It's behind my house. It is always there for me. Except when city utility workers are doing some kind of work in the alley, effectively preventing me from reaching my parking spot. So I drove down to and around my apartment building, hoping a spot would open up so I could park for the duration of class and move it on my break. 15 minutes of frantic circling, and nothing. I went back to the house, and there it was: I could get to my spot. So, crisis averted, but it was still another stress level increase that I really did not need.

-Stupid things keep happening with the house, like the upstairs bathroom door falling off. Perhaps the most important door in the house, and it's all fucked up. Unless Chris can fix it, because he's a super fixer-upper man. And Qwest totally fucking up his phone number shit so besides that being stupid, DSL isn't working yet, either.

Hey, on the happy side of things, the most recent issue of While You Were Sleeping is awesome.

Carnivorous Plants!

That is what I was forgetting!

I have wanted to get some for a year or so now, and I've finally read up on the buggers. So I think I'll be checking out what the Indoor Sun Shoppe has in stock for sundews and butterworts. And other plants, because I want plants in the house. I can probably get herbs and a tomato plant at the market, and those would grow on the porch.

Yes, this is how I spend time that would be better spent on schoolwork.

I Do the Best Imitation of Myself

Yeah, so the title is fuckin' song lyrics. I like having a title in this layout, and I had nothing else to say, title-wise.

Housecleaning has officially begun. Last night, after Gilmore Girls and quesadillas with only half our usual group, Chris and I went to the house with buckets of random cleaning supplies. I washed the floor of my room and the banister upstairs with Murphy's wood soap, the windows and some walls with 409 and a piece of old t-shirt, and parts of the bathroom with Soft Scrub. There is still much to do.

We enlisted Kevin to drive us to Fred Meyer--after learning around 9:30 that all the hardware stores in town (two Home Depots and a Lowe's) close at 10. We picked up some tools, things like vinegar and turpentine, and lightbulbs. I decided the kind tapered to look like candle flames would be nice in the mini-chandelier in the dining room, and they do, if a bit bright due to no diffusing bulb cover on the fixture.

Oh, and we discovered that several of the outlets in the kitchen aren't working. Yeah, so, gotta fix that shit. Or Chris will try, and if he fails, we will have to get on the landlord's ass, cos having working outlets in the kitchen is important.

Many things remain on the to-buy list. We'll need a router so our network is tolerable (I guess so it doesn't have to go through my debian box or Chris's sucky xp box). We need to call some classified ads selling washer/dryer sets for under $200 who will also deliver. I've emailed someone selling a kitchen island "thingy" for $50 on craigslist, and am also interested in the rocking chair they're selling. We also need rugs--the hardwood floors are in terrible state; it'd be easier to cover parts of them up than to try to make them really nice--and window coverings. There are probably a lot of other things I'm forgetting, but I think those are the major purchases in our future.

My mom and sister are coming up Saturday morning to help, and my sister will stay on until I take her to the airport Tuesday morning. And the farmer's market is opening!

Monday is Jana's birthday party. It will be at Lindsay's house, and she requested that we bring food because she thinks Jana is trying to buy everything, and that sucks. I offered to get veggie burgers and multigrain buns, maybe some pineapple. She instructed Chris to bring soda and/or chips, or something. I don't know how Jana plans to buy food for everyone she hopes to come, so I hope everyone is helpful.

Speaking of buying food, Lindsay and Jesse brought tortillas and cheese last night and left me all the extra! That's like a dozen tortillas and two half blocks of Tillamook cheese, one pepper jack and one sharp cheddar! Hot damn.

...I'll have to share, of course.

But now, it's MY lunchtime. Then more class, then preparing materials for the group project, then meeting with the group to assemble our presentation materials. Tomorrow I need to get about half of my paper done so I can finish it for sure on Monday, although that will be hard because the coworker who is entertainingly chatty is there for most of the time I am on Fridays.

I probably have more to talk about, but it's not pressing.

listening: built to spill - happiness

Little Things

I am coming down off a little anger spat. Anyone who has spent a lot of time with me should know my propensity to get worked up and spittin' mad over stupid little things that frustrate me. When I was 10 or so, I had a screaming match with a babysitter who insisted there was no ground beef in the fridge we could use to make Hamburger Helper. I distinctly recall shrieking behind a slammed-shut bedroom door at this poor girl.

Today my anger is directed at laundry.

I spent most of my day yesterday in Olympia, drank too much coffee, and got home late with twitchy eyes and a strong need to pass out in bed. I didn't wake up until after 8, but I needed to do laundry soon thereafter. I have a lot of shit to do today, I'm meeting friends for a movie at noon (free tickets to Down With Love through Josie, Landmark Theaters Employee and Friend), and dammit, I think I'm out of clean underwear. Like hell they'd dry in a couple hours in MY poorly-ventilated and hairdryer-free apartment if I washed them in the sink, so don't hand me that suggestion.

So anyway, I get on the laundry attire--weird mauve paisley lounge pants, white cotton tank top, blue hoodie with pockets, and "OLYMPIAN" flip flops--and gather the necessities--bag o' quarters, wad o' keys, laundry detergent, and basket of filthy unmentionables and mentionables alike, only to discover both machines have just been filled by my upstairs neighbor. Who is very apologetic. I muttered something like, "Both of them? Crap, this is the only time I have to do laundry," which was a bit hyperbolic, but still. I'm going to have to wait until *after* the movie now, which will suck if I am, in fact, out of underwear.

Let me check. Oh, yay, there is one pair!

This still makes my day a bit on the stunted side in terms of productivity. I still want to hit up the street fair and if if maybe there are cool things that don't cost too much money I want. In the past, I've bought small photographic prints (of a crucifix half-submerged in snow somewhere in Eastern Europe) and maybe coffee-scented candles, but not much else. It's still fairly interesting. I might do that before the movie, though. But the larger problem of, oh, schoolwork remains.

So, how about some text that isn't me complaining?

I saw some Capitol Area Youth Symphony Concerts last night. The Junior String Philharmonic and the Youth Philharmonic, I think. The former group consisted more or less of people who'd only been playing a year or two, and consequently was painful to hear. In between were two soloists: a pianist (whom my mom says is also an amazing cellist) and my brother the bassist, with his long-time music teacher accompanying him on the Steinway. They were both wonderful.

The pianist did a piece called "At Sea" by Ernest something which was quite riveting. She just sat down and massaged the piece out of the keys. Maybe shiatsu or something, cos she was really fucking fast. I love watching people play piano when they know what they're doing, so I really enjoyed it. The girl was actually involved in a small ensemble with my brothers a few years back, doing a Shostakovich piece. My brother also did a lovely piece, but I don't have as much to say about that as I do the next group. He's my brother; he's usually very good. He works hard at it. I don't know how to judge.

The Youth Phil, I think, was a much better group than my brother made them out to be. He said they sucked. They were responsible for premiering a piece CAYSA commissioned him to write for them, because they are missing several key instruments but have some odd ones. They included the only male harpist I've ever seen. The piece, Nachtlied, Op. 8, was an opera, with lyrics by his girlfriend--and was introduced as such by the conductor. His girlfriend is a self-proclaimed Holocaust expert. At age 15. The lyrics are very "dark," to say the least. They had a baritone sing it. Honestly, the only weaknesses I could detect were that the singing often overpowered the music, at least in volume, and the cellist didn't seem particularly strong.

A large group of Paul Boosters (and a few Sarah Boosters, i.e., her parents) were seated among the sparse audience. Besides my immediate family, including my just-arrived-home-for-a-week sister, my only living grandparents, one of mom's brothers, Koko, my dad's sister and her youngest son and his wife, my brother Sua and his wife, daughter, and mother-in-law, and two old family friends who stopped by on their way home from Portland. Before the concert was a big party with lots of good food for this group of family, which can be fun.

It reminded me of a scene in The Addams Family movie where Wednesday and Pugsley perform a swordfighting death scene and spray tons of very red stage blood all over an audience of normals, all of whom react with stunned silence. The Addamses, of course, stand up and applaud voraciously. In this case, of course, everyone *did* applaud and no actual stage blood was spewed, but I'm not sure everyone else thought it was too great. But we sure did!

Paul and Sarah took the comparison to the Addams Family as a compliment.

More Upcoming Concerts!

Whoa, dudes. I just read in the Stranger today that Tori Amos is touring with Ben Folds and they're playing some venue in Redmond at the end of July. I dig Ben Folds, and Kevin loves them both, so we're so there.

Also, Wilco is opening for R.E.M. on Monday at this year's Bumbershoot, which is way cool.

My concert tastes sound very tame these days, don't they?

I really need to get out more.

Maybe I can convince someone to go see Xiu Xiu and the Dead Science at CoCA with me at the end of the month. I really wanna see Xiu Xiu for some reason.

Today we signed the lease. The adventure begins. We have the keys now, but we can't move in until the walk-through with the leasing agent on Tuesday afternoon. Chris says there are four large bedrooms on the second floor, so that's absolutely perfect. No one gets banished to the basement! It can be all fun and games.

I have some reservations about living with Margaret, but I'm sure it'll be fine. She seemed upset that I would reject dogs in the house entirely because she's a dog person. I am so not. She is also much more stylish and hip than I am, I think, but we are both into cooking, so maybe we can find a common ground there. Or we'll have kitchen wars. Time will tell.

As soon as I finish this bowl of black beans and rice, I am off to check out the inside of the house (finally). I am driving, because I am so tired of walking. I have been up all frickin' day.

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

Where Sunny Skies Are Gray

It may be mid-May, but today was the the first day of real spring for Seattle. The quad was littered with backpacks, abandoned by students who preferred sunbathing and frisbee to studying. Who could blame them? It was warm and wonderful.

In class, I learned more about children--and how frightening the prospect of someday having to raise my own is--and the kinds of privacy suits people try to bring against media organizations but usually fail to win. It ain't private if you're acting like a moron in public.

We're signing the lease for the house on Thursday afternoon. It'll be Chris, his sister Margaret, and I, plus Jen for the summer. I'm excited, even though my mom was terribly unimpressed with the house. It should be fun, and if it's not, it's only a six-month lease, so I can move.

I have projects I need to get going on. I went to Suzzallo and photocopied three articles for my psych paper, and I have two others (I think) in .pdf format on my computer somewhere, so that should meet the requirements.

I lost steam somewhere here, but there's an update. Maybe I'll have more to say later.

Blogger Monster, Uhm-Num-Num!

Love to Russia, particularly Petersburg on Sunday, 'cause that's where and when my dear friend Christine celebrates her 21st birthday. Not that the occasion matters in Russia the same way it does here, but I'm sure we'll take her out when she gets home.

Blogger ate my last version of this post. Every time this happens, I think for a split second that I will reform my haphazard ways and type every entry in a separate program and paste it into the Blogger entry form... yeah, but no. This happens so seldom that it is a passing annoyance. I have dozens of ways to phrase the same boring entry! Who needs the original!

What was particularly vexing about this screw-up was that it not only ate the post, it crashed my browser. I run Mozilla with about a million tabs because I find it easier to switch between tabs than windows, so I lost a number of open sites that may or may not have contained information I'll eventually want again but can't find.

The crash, however, allows me to start off writing about something other than my original entry, which began with a recap of housing-related events. I'm sure you're all tired of my housing woes. I know I am. But anyway, here's a rundown of the news as I know it: Graylan's out, Chris' sister Margaret is possibly in, and the U-District house is almost ours. Chris is the chief correspondant in this case, so everything I know is second hand. We shall know more as events unfold.

Beyond that and school--what school? what midterm?--I am making summer plans. Blur is playing Seattle in June, Bjork is playing the Gorge in August (and I am so excited), and Winnie the Malaysian might be dropping by for a week or so.

Actually, I just realized Bjork's concert is scheduled for the one-year anniversary of my father's death, at least if I'm remembering dates right. These things become blurry because that was such a weird time. Hmm. I don't know what that means. I can't miss Bjork; she never comes to this country. Is that selfish? I am trying to think if there would be some kind of Bjork-dad connection, but I'm hard pressed.

Oh, dammit. Less elated. Must get more elated. Need elation!

Today is dad's birthday. He would've been 53.

Hmm.

My mom is coming up today and I'm going back to Olympia for the night. Just for the hell of it, I guess. I think I'm taking her to lunch. Koko is supposed to cook dinner, which will be cool. I might go see Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, at OFS tomorrow. I should stop by Becky's sometime, too. I need to study for my psych midterm, and fall registration is Monday at 6 a.m.

I'm stealing the Civic and will pick up Margot from the airport next Saturday. We talked last night and I promised to bring takeout teriyaki for her. She was excited. It made me happy. It will even be worth waiting for the inevitably long time that it will take to get takeout from Tokyo Garden in the middle of the U-District Street Fair.

I should be studying, or at least catching up on my reading. It can be hard to care.

listening: r.e.m. - star me kitten

Something I want to have is answers.

I don't like this, indecision. I like to have an answer and I like things to work out. I don't like things up in the air.

It doesn't sound like possibility to me. It sounds like stress.

So I'm trying to find answers. When life poses a question, I'd rather not contemplate the existential meaning. I to decide.

It's hard to commit, true. But once I do I tend to feel much better. Cognitive dissonance worked for me!

So we're in the middle of things, in between decisions. I hate it. It's making me crazy and it runs my life. I know I shouldn't let it, but I do. I'll drop anything to get this decision made. I keep dropping things but the decision doesn't happen.

Here's where things stand, or don't:

--Chris and I faxed an application for a "funky" old house in the U-District. It's five bedrooms--only two of which aren't in the basement--and $1300. We are afraid it's going to be snatched up before they even look at our application, or something. It leaves us with many options.

--Graylan has one foot out the door. He said he'd email us tomorrow about whether he's in our out. I think he's out.

--We have offered Kevin the position as Third. He would take at least some of the basement, but he must see the rooms first to see if one would be acceptable for all his music equipment. The rent would be cheap for him and he'd be a better roommate than our other possibilities, but there are obviously some possible problems on all fronts. But then, when *aren't* there problems where roommates are concerned?

--If all else fails, I hope and pray we still have Jen for summer. If she wants to live alone in the basement. Or something. I am waiting for something to settle before I confront her with the issues.

--Some other people expressed limited interest, but they are people I'm not absolutely certain I'd want to live with.

On other fronts, Jenny, my current roommate, is flipping channels between 48 Hours Investigates a 15-year-old male babysitter accused of sexually assaulting and killing a baby girl and Extreme Makeover's coverage of people getting various types of cosmetic surgery, which is revolting. The newsmagazine show is pretty gross, too, since it completely bastardizes the process of law and justice and everything. It dramatizes everything and just gives these sad people a place on national television to say terrible things.

Oh, and I have a media law midterm tomorrow. I should have been studying today, but I have been busy overthinking about house stuff. Fucking house stuff. I want it all to be over.

Bleh.

Uncertainty makes me want to cry. Househunting makes me want to beat the shit out of things.

Third entry today about fucking living situations. I am really upset about the whole thing. Everyone is telling me we'll find something, don't worry, don't stress, but it is like staring into a dark tunnel. It's just starting to creep up and scare me and I don't like it. And I want to cry and smash plates. Or babies.

That Wasn't Enough Luck You Wished!

Mr. Sunshine Flu must've taken one look at us and driven away. In fact, we think we saw him do it. He took off in his fucking Jaguar after walking away from us in the alley before he could even introduce himself. Just left. I guess we didn't look trashy enough.

His tenant looked like a heroin addict and had a dog named Jello. She wore a skimpy, black pleather outfit--stringy straps and miniskirt--and had a pair of handcuffs hung across her ass.

It's fine, really. That house looked like shit. If by "charmer" he meant "dump," I guess the ad would be accurate. We got the wrong address in our earlier drive-by--it was the second house in, not the corner. The huge, two-toned monstrosity with asbestos siding and a trash bin full of empty wine bottles. The back looked even worse: at least six cars in various states of disrepair littered the gravel parking area by a rickety-looking deck off the alley.

So we turned our attentions to Greenlake. Graylan approved of the $1500 place we'd sent him earlier--let's call it #4. It's a nice, old, brown house with a finished basement nested in a hilltop neighborhood five blocks from Green Lake Park and three from the freeway. It's hard to describe how truly lovely it was, especially for the price. We went up there and wandered around, astounded that such a place could honestly rent for so little. We had to make some calls to get the phone number for the place, and when we did... we learned it was already rented. Today was the first date of publication for the ad and it's already fucking rented. Drat.

We're left with no options. We planned an attack over Thai food, but the attack consisted of trying to find a place that would convince Graylan to stay with us and not join Anna's group at a five-bedroom place in Wallingford he already loves. There is ONE ad that fits our qualifications, in Greenlake. Chris tried to call already today and it just rang.

Sigh.

The House-Hunting Saga Continues

Since my last post, wherein I mentioned Chris and I wanting to jump on #2 due to lack of seemingly available options, several things have developed.

8:20 p.m. Sent email to group suggesting said jump and implying reasons.

Evening passes. Kevin and I watch some Monty Python; I sleep the night away, go to class, come home for lunch after sending off a book sold on Half.com and paying more for shipping than my alotted reimbursement due to packaging cost.

12:38 p.m. Graylan emails all of us saying no, he'd prefer not to, but if we're set on it, we'll have until September to find him a replacement. He says he will be exploring other options.

12:44 p.m. Panicked, I write back. We're not set on it! I cry. We just feel we're left with few options and a looming deadline of lease expiration. I urge him to keep us in the loop.

12:54 p.m. Chris and I begin searching Greenlake for new alternatives. We find one with pictures that looks nice and email the url to Graylan and co., asking Jen if $450 is too much for her to bear. This place is $1500, our absolute limit.

I go to class, still stressed about the whole house-thing.

2:23 p.m. The "sunshine flu" landlord from #1 calls Chris, backassedly apologizing for being difficult the day before and offering to show us the place at our convenience. Chris urges us to step on it.

3:43 p.m. I get home from class, and, elated by Chris' email, talk to Chris. He gets me to send way too many emails to Graylan about going to catch a bus to see it as soon as humanly possible. Chris then gets me to wake Kevin up so we don't have to bus and get there even sooner.

4:19 p.m. Kevin should be here any goddamn second. No word from Graylan, whom I think has gone to the Harem, where we will try to pick him up before heading to the place.

Wish us luck!

OR NOT.

Good lord. The asshole who owns the place we were going to see has "sunshine flu" and won't be around after 4. Nope, not even to show us the house which he agreed to show us. Nope, not even if we are completely unavailable before 4 any day of the week. So fuck you, bub.

I am angry.

Anyway, Chris and I are thinking we should talk to Graylan and just pick #2. The only real drawback is size, and it would still be functional. Must get on that.

Garsh. So hungry. And still 20 minutes left to go. Then I can walk home, eating my Clif bar and making angry faces at the sidewalk. I'm good at that.

So I have a lot of things going on. It's not making for the best of emotional or physical states, but it is what it is and it could be a lot worse. I guess I'm not actively complaining.

Even though I'm down to two classes, both classes have fairly sizeable projects due in the coming month. Guess who's done very little work so far?

Need a hint?

Yeah.

I've started researching what the hell I can do my psych paper on--it's a meta-analysis or something--and it requires at least five papers with something that measures the same dependent variable somewhere, even if it's not the main point of the study. After skimming some of my initial research, I've determined that heart rate is the DV I'd like to look at. Heart rate and children playing video games. Maybe I'll even come up with a hypothesis one of these days. There will be nothing groundbreaking here. The papers I've found in PsycINFO are all available from UW-Seattle libraries, but nearly all of them are in different libraries. Enough are in Suzzallo that I can probably get away with not bothering with the other locations, but still.

The papers do look interesting, I must admit. The ones I've read so far do things like make kids play Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or Tetris and ask them questions or hook them up to machines to measure breathing and other physiological effects. There was another study published in a book on gender differences that had kids design their own games. Kind of cool stuff. It's good to know that not ALL the studies look upon video games in a negative light. In my first search, I ignored anything related to the effects of violence and aggression, figuring that would be the bulk of the research. Mortal Kombat makes little killers, dontchaknow.

I don't play video games hardly at all, but they are pretty interesting. I just suck at them. I haven't the hand-eye coordination or something. I have tried to play some games and really can't get into them for more than 20 minutes of death. I just hit buttons at random; if I actually try to do it right, it's frustrating. And who really needs to pick up another time-wasting habit?

Yesterday I got a lot of stuff done--laundry, cleaning, organizing crap to be donated to Goodwill, copying psych notes, reviewing for my media law midterm. I was in a bad mood still. I went to Burger Hut and got a veggie burger and fries. The veggie burger was good--I don't know what's in it, but it has a kick, maybe cayenne--and the fries, while not amazing, were starchy, salty, fatty-fried goodness, a rare treat for me. I originally wanted to be "bad" and get meat, but I couldn't bring myself to eat hamburger and chicken on a burger is unappealing. I will probably get teriyaki when my sister's up.

Kevin came over in the evening and ate a couple vegan trail mix cookies dipped in jasmine tea. He said it was really good, but he wouldn't have thought to try it unless I had accused him of plotting such weirdness before his first bite of cookie. Doh. On an unrelated note, he gave me a hickey on my shoulder. I haven't had a hickey for a long time! At least it's covered by my t-shirt.

What a stupid word, "hickey." I remember there was someone who went to my school when I was in seventh and eighth grade whose last name was Hickey. I always snickered quietly when her name was called over the PA. Also, I swear I went to grade school with a kid named Justin Case.

I need to read the full Supreme Court decision on ALCU v. Reno (1996) by Thursday evening. That's the one where the court totally overturned Congress' stupid Communications Decency Act, saying it violated First Amendment rights an' stuff! Ha, ha! Ohh, that's a good one. Man, Congress passes a lot of stupid shit and it takes a long time for it to work its way to the high court to get overturned. That is lame. Even lamer is that a lot of cases end up settled or something because it's the little guy versus the big guy, and the little guy just can't afford to keep playing. Oversimplified, yes; still wrong, definitely.

Right after work--hey, an hour from now! Woo!--Chris, Graylan, and I are hopping in Kevin's car and speeding over to this house we want to see in Wallingford, #1. If we like it, we're gonna take it. We're gonna dominate. If we don't, I think we will settle for #2. If not that... we must keep looking. Looking is a bitch when you're out of lease in a month.

I'm in a bad fuckin' mood, and I've been mostly wasting my time all fuckin' day. This is mostly due to my boyfriend, or fairly, my insistence upon spending time with him.

I crashed at his house last night. We were watching some episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus on DVD 'cos he owns the whole frickin' series. The show doesn't put me to sleep; only the movies. Anyway, I was tired (yes, at 10 p.m.) and fell asleep partway through the second episode. After they finished, we were both tired and went to bed.

We both woke up around 7ish, but I was still sleepy, so I fell back to sleep. So did he, despite claiming to be unsleepy. MInd you, he'd only gotten up around 5 on Friday. I woke up again, finally, around 9:30, and he was still fast asleep. So I read the latest issue of The Nation. Then I read more of On Writing Well. I got to the chapter on travel writing and memoirs and read several passages of people who did things in life, saw new places, met people, and wrote about them. I wanted to know someone, specifically my boyfriend. In the biblical sense. But he was asleep, so this was unlikely to occur.

It was then that I realized it was, oh, about quarter to one in the afternoon. Fuck! I put on my dirty clothes and headed for the door. I mean, why bother sticking around when he's going to sleep all fucking day and I do, in fact, have other things I could be doing? So I left, feeling disgruntled.

I did things at home, like grocery shopping and talking to my mom, who has kindly half-offered me the Civic if I can handle insurance. It all depends on what makes the most sense for all of us. I don't need a car right now, but I probably will within the year, and the Civic is a nice car. It would be such a sweet deal to get a car I could never afford on whatever salary I'm likely to receive straight out of college.

At 6, I met Chris and Graylan and we checked out #2 again. It was nicer on the second viewing, and we were shown the backyard and asked several more questions. The house has a lot of pluses--gas heat, big yard, good rent, close to everything, dishwasher and washer/dryer--but it still feels small and a bit cramped, so it isn't our ideal house. It'd work. Then we walked to Taco Del Mar and ate a bite and talked of housey things before I crossed the street to catch the 44 westbound and they stayed behind for the 44 eastbound.

It was in Ballard that my troubles resurfaced. I called Kevin and asked him to meet me at the parking lot by the bus stop so I didn't have to walk the 10 blocks to his house--it was windy and chilly and I was tired. I got there, but there was no sign of his car. I walked around. I waited a bit, watching traffic. No sign. I called him. He said that his car stalled in the driveway, out of gas, so he was walking my way to get a gas container and gas so he could move it.

The first station we went to had their gas containers marked at $60, so we tried Safeway and Walgreen's, neither of which carried any gas containers, before going to another gas station further up the main road which had them for $4. Then we walked back to his house.

Upon arriving, I asked him to think of something to do. He came up blank. I made my usual suggestions that are almost always vetoed; he remained silent. I said I should just go home, then. He offered me a ride. I thought about it and said I might as well just walk. He countered that was silly since I'd called and asked him to pick me up earlier to avoid all the walking, which I had to do doubly anyway. So I took the ride. And it was a good thing, because it was raining and I'm wearing my red satin jacket that doesn't like moisture.

So anyway, I'm grumpy because I'm in the same damn place I would've been two hours ago if I'd just gone home in the first place, but with the added disappointment of trying and failing to do something enjoyable. So now I just have nothing enjoyable to do.

Fuck it. I'm going to watch mindless shit on TV and eat junk food like I always do.

Stupid weekends have a way of leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

I should've just gone to Olympia.

I'm useless on Fridays.

I can talk and talk and talk all the live-long day and get absolutely zero work done. It's brilliant, really. I love Fridays. I skip a class, I attend another class, I work for five hours and chat with my coworkers. Today I learned about the preparation of various seafoods, including tuna, geoduck, and periwinkle, from a coworker whose parents own a restaurant.

The house-hunt continues. There are currently three places in the running:

#1 is a place we have yet to see, but based on the description Chris received over the phone ("three-bedroom charmer") and the location squarely within the bounds of south Wallingford, it sounds like our best bet so far. The listing is new, so I doubt many others have jumped on it; the price is all right--$1400. So we'll have to wait and see.

#2 is another Wallingford dwelling, right by McDonald's on the west side of Stone Way and right off the bus route. It's a nice house, but it feels cramped. The ceilings are low--bad for my 6'+ roomies--but the yard is expansive for in-city. It's also pretty inexpensive, a mere $1350. Chris and I saw it last night, along with half a dozen others, and honestly, we didn't like it that much. It would work, though.

Which brings us to #3, which is a little chateau in the wilds of Fremont a block west of Aurora. It looks fairly spacious, but the outside looks fairly run-down. There is no off-street parking, which I guess isn't that big a deal for us, but there also doesn't appear to be a washer/dryer hooked up where they ought to be. Oh, and also, it's attached to a two-story apartment building in the back. Weird, no? It's only still in the running at all because it's dirt cheap--$1250.

So. Them's the options. We're taking another look at #2 tomorrow evening with Graylan in tow, and Chris has a call-in to #1 and #3 for potential showings, too.

Here's hoping #1 rocks our socks.

I'm off work now. Must find something interesting to do with eggplant. I think I'm just going to fry slices of it. Nummy.

Woke up this mornin'...

Last time Aja made an entry, she spoke of hamsters boxing in her uterus. I remember it now not only because I click that link daily and end up seeing the same thing over and over again, but also I feel her pain.

No, really. Right now, I think they're having some kind of major hamster boxing competition in there. The grape-crushers have gone home because the boxing hamsters are too scary. And soon the casualties will arrive. It may be a welcome respite if the fighting has stopped.

For those of you who have never experienced pre-menstrual cramping, I'd like you to take a moment and imagine a time when you had to pee so bad that you could feel your urethra almost buzzing with the need to let go. Combine that with some unpleasant lower-abdomen cramping after a meal that just didn't settle right but got partially digested anyway, and now maybe there's some gas. Multiply by at least two, and you've got menstrual cramping. Only here, there is no amount of peeing or anything else to facilitate uncramping. The pain just sits there, defiant. Arrogant sonuvabitch.

There is Advil. And water. And believe me, I'm consuming both at this early hour.

I must not have slept well. I was resting mostly on unsheathed mattress when I woke up, and I couldn't sleep past 7:30. I need new sheets. I was having a long and somewhat weird dream with many parts that some people might find boring, and to you, I suggest tuning out the next couple paragraphs.

First was a thing at work. I was given a task that required me to learn some new software and make a thing for my boss with it. It looked like some kind of flow chart. I returned to work on a weekend to work on it, but the lab was overrun by some elderly people who had rented the place out for some kind of exercise function. All the computers had been moved to the basement, and that's where everyone had gone. I got down there, and every computer was being used by lab patrons. I was very frustrated until this group of kids stopped playing a stupid game and gave me a computer. Except that computer didn't have the program I needed, so I just wrote an email to my boss saying I couldn't do it.

Next, I was in class on the first day. Kevin was teaching the class. It occurred to me that I should've told some of the lab patrons to move since I was the person working there and I had the position of power. Then a door opened in the back of the classroom and it was my boss. His office was in the classroom. He gestured to me, trying to get me to come in, but I gestured back that I was in class. I was kind of amused at the prospect of my boyfriend meeting my boss in this way. Kevin was walking around the room, lecturing about blah blah first day things, so I motioned to him that I was leaving for just a sec and darted over there. He was frustrated that I hadn't done the project already, but understood my predicament. I promised to do it at the next opportunity.

My next class was so small, there were only three students and a female teacher. I don't know what the class was about, but we were discussing the meaning of cardinal directions. The other two were perfect blue-eyed, blond-hair, Aryan kids, a boy and a girl, and clearly good friends. They had in-depth answers for everything. They were discussing the Southern Cross of the room and how it was evil. The teacher was saying approving things, but I think the dream moved on or I woke up before it was my turn to explain anything.

Also, for some reason, I woke up with the song "Pearly" by Radiohead stuck in my head.

I checked out a new magazine yesterday. I don't know why; it looked trashy as hell. I think it was the combination of several buzzwords that made me think it might not suck, but then I also thought it would be populated by the kinds of articles that appear in Rolling Stone after all the pictures of celebrities and long, unreadable interviews with them. If only I had realized this was the same rag Monty reviewed a few days ago, finding little positive to accentuate. I must concur. There was an article about 2004 Democratic candidate Howard Dean that I liked (and I think Monty skipped), but otherwise, it was pretty... well, it thought rather highly of itself without the content or photography to back it up. It was *trying,* see, but it failed, I think.

Also, I really do not care what Bret Easton Ellis has to say about anime, even if it is negative. I don't care for anime, sure, but uh. Ripping apart Miyazaki? I like Miyazaki. It's pretty and has a somewhat positive slant, which is something Mr. Ellis might not be capable of. I mean, if you're going to watch some crazy animated film, it might as well be one of his. And if you're going to read a book, it might as well NOT be one of Bret Easton Ellis'.

The previous paragraph featured me, talking out of my ass. I haven't read any Bret Easton Ellis, but based on the majority opinion, it doesn't sound like something I *want* to read. A few years ago, a friend tried to convince me to read Less Than Zero, but the used bookstore price was always too high for me. I read another of his recommendations, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, instead, which was quite good. So maybe I'm wrong. As for Spirited Away, I haven't seen it yet, but I am pretty sure I will like it. And I did see Princess Mononoke a couple times, which is also cool and pretty. And with that, I end my ass-talking justification.

Oh! I just remembered that there was a commercial for a television airing of The Big Lebowski in my dream! It showed a scene that doesn't really exist! The Dude and Walter were involved in some kind of gang war on the streets of LA at dusk. It was this great, swooping crane shot with lots of perspective and high contrast light and shadows. The Dude was telling Walter how he's a pacifist and Walter was doing something cuhrazy with his gun. I think that's where the "Pearly" thing came from. Anyway, bonus BL scene in my dream. Yeah!

Hello.

This isn't much of an entry. I just figured the two lines of text below hardly counted as enough content to leave sitting on the front page between now and whenever I make the time to write another proper entry.

It's just another day. I had calzone for dinner with Chris. The Calzone King on 53rd and Roosevelt. I got the Sicilian--spinach and sliced egg--and a glass of iced tea. Yum.

We're still looking for houses. I've called some places, much to my amazement because I am seriously phone-phobic, but the bastards are having a hard time getting back to me. I will have to try again tomorrow. One called me today while I was in class, didn't leave a message, and wasn't around an hour and a half later when I tried to call back. Argh! Another place Chris called claims to be in Fremont, but defines Fremont as the other side of the bridge, i.e., Queen Anne a mile east of Seattle Pacific University. Bzzzz, wrong answer! So anyway, this week is officially dedicated to getting in touch with rental people and checking places out.

I have been watching the last hour or so of Manor House the past two days on PBS. That show is super cool for being reality TV, which I hate on principle and experience. Well, technically, I imagine there are exceptions to that rule--if you count trashy dating shows like Blind Date, which is pure quality, ruthlessly mocking Star Search, or shows like Trading Spaces, which I have enjoyed in the past, as reality TV. I never got into the Road Rules/Real World shit on MTV and I don't think anything on now is tolerable, either.

Anyway, the cool thing about Manor House, I think, is that it's not based on a presumption of equality like other shows. It's based on a society that was basically UNequal, so the show features people dealing with this sudden sense of inequality when they've been raised in a culture that purports to view all persons as equal, no matter how untrue that is in practice. This is formalized inequality, and it's maddening to many of the participants. That, and while I understand there is somehow a "winner" or set of winners at the end of the miniseries, it's not an outright competition. Except maybe in the sense that they will nitpick each others' lack or praise the exhibition of "Edwardian" behavior.

It's making me want to re-read Pride and Prejudice or see Gosford Park again.

The weather these past few days has been fantastic. The breeze has been a bit heavy, but it's otherwise warm and sunny and lovely spring weather. I've been wearing my sandals, which has resulted in a small sore on a middle toe where the straps rub against the joint when I walk. This will eventually go away as my feet become accustomed to the footwear.

I filled out the form for a Newslab addcode for summer and have figured out my plan of attack for fall. I *think* I should have graduating senior priority registration for fall, but that means I have to go talk to an advisor in one of my departments. It seems almost presumptuous to think I could be finishing college, even if it's later than I'd planned. I have 25 credits to spread out over three quarters. I need to take at least 12 credits or they'll push my status from full-time to part-time student. Then they'll give me a swirlie, 'cause that's what happens. It's the swirlie of college screwing you over. At least I am lucky enough to have parents who could pay for the whole mess so I'm not stuck with the loans.

Anyway. Blah, blah blah blah, blah! Blah? You don't say!

I'm fucking tired. Goodnight.