PM RIM JOB HQ

I am not having a fun time.

I feel like I'm sleepwalking and have been for months. I can't wake up and no matter how long I sleep I can't feel rested. I can't muster energy to do anything and I can't drink enough coffee to keep me alert and I can't shake the idea that my life has no purpose and everything I do is arbitrary and dull and I'm not interesting or especially anything notable and I'm just kind of idling here worrying.

I got an email about the grant I applied for in December. I didn't get it. I got an Honorable Mention. And I can reapply this December. And all the faculty here are being encouraging and saying that it's a good sign blah blah must have been competitive, blah blah. But I don't give a shit. I dont' want something to put on my vita, I want the fat stipend that comes with the stupid thing. So this means, as expected, I'll be TAing next year, which I am dreading because of all the negative shit I hear about it. My friends who aren't on fellowship their first year are constantly worrying about their undergrads and it eats a lot of time and no one can say anything nice about it. It just eats time and doesn't even look good when you go on the job market. It just eats your time and you make less money than I make right now. So that's fabulous, but I'm not so stupid that I was counting on the grant money, thank god. And at least the waiting's over. That was killing me.

I have a meeting early tomorrow morning that I haven't prepared for that I'll have to work on after this. I'm not tired. I think the insomnia is coming back.

JD and I went to Disneyland today and I kept talking and came to the realization that my being in grad school is totally arbitrary. It's just something I decided I "should" do after college, mostly because grad school comes after college comes after high school. I dont' especially want a PhD, nor do I think it will open doors for me, as I have relatives with PhDs who do not seem able to find ANY sort of suitable employment. I don't want to teach. I don't want an academic job. I don't particularly want to be any sort of productive member of society, I want to live on a pirate ship and rob rich people and buy a castle in Scotland and an apartment in New Orleans or the north side of Chicago and a ranch in Montana and I want my job to be working in an antique book store or a chocolate shop or a construction paper design studio and I want to do nothing but have fun and sleep late and stay up all night and shop and travel and be around people I care about.

I'm starting to freak out worrying that my life will ultimately not be anything extraordinary, when I always thought I would do something important. I'm not entirely sure I want to be in school anymore. It's not because I didn't get the grant (though having gotten tons of money for three years would have given me reason to stick with it), it's because I'm not sure I like this whole thing. I like the components but not the whole, I have no higher goal, I don't know what the hell I would do with a PhD, and it's kind of just default because I don't have anything better to be doing instead. I don't have any skills, or talents, or interests, other than being book smart and doing well in school I don't know of anything I stand out in. And that's kind of depressing.

JD, on the other hand, has his shit figured out and has goals and steps to reach the goals and a promising 5-year plan that sounds like heaven to me. But other than being supportive I don't fit in it. It's not like I'm going to be useful if he starts his own company, and I don't know that I would feel completely fulfilled even if I was equally invested in it. But I don't know what to do with myself. I'm torn between wanting to do something lucrative (because the idea of being blue-collar for some reason terrifies me. I have no idea why...I think it's living here and realizing I would be totally content to sit around in a giant house spending money and playing with my pug and travelling endlessly) and wanting to do something meaningful. But I'm not sure I have the potential to do either one of those things. Research is great and I dorkily like it but I feel like I could like anything that challenged my brain to the same extent. And school's not a cakewalk but I haven't struggled with anything yet and this was supposed to be the "hardest quarter of all" and I didn't even blink. Not to be conceited there, but I was ready for it to be difficult.

I don't know what I want to do. I don't know why I'm here, and the longer I stay here arbitrarily doing this the less likely I am to up and leave it. And it would probably be stupid not to stick around until the end of next year and get the masters. But then the hard part's over and I won't see the point in leaving the PhD track. And I don't really have the balls to do something outside my comfort zone like "drop out" in the first place. Unless I had something better waiting. I'm really losing my mind, I think. I'm really happy here, I just feel like I don't have any direction or purpose. But maybe that's what grad school is about. But maybe I don't want this. It just sounds like a good thing. I might be a little burned out on southern California.

I might be a little burned out on myself, come to think of it.

Even If Things Get Heavy We'll All Float On Alright

No energy for paragraphs. Make my apologies to the readers for me, blog. thanks, blog. what a good blog you are.

*I want a kitten. Bad. there'll be no stopping me once I find out what the apt. complex would have me do.
*I won a free song from iTunes yesterday. Whee Modest Mouse singles. Wheee free music legally. Brilliant, Apple. Best promotion EVER.
*Marlena is a cracked-out witch.
*I ordered a parking permit yesterday, that officially makes me a lazy sonofawhore
*I almost bought a gym membership yesterday too, which would have conteracted the lazy sonofawhore thing. I'll get around to that shortly.
*My apartment feels acutely devoid of life with just me in it. Not even soap operas help relieve the lonesomeness. Calllllll me this week and next week, I'll be soooooo bored.
*Darci I don't know if you read this but there's a new pet store that just opened in Fashion Island here and they had TONS of cute-as-shit doxies. Come baaaaaack visitors
*I'm broke. where the crap is my check for april? usually it's here by now.
*also annoying: my sunglasses that accidentally went back to IN havent' come back to me yet.
*jenny and levi stayed an extra day so they could get free plane tix. awesome.
*in that extra day we:

-tried to see dame edna, who was so predictable and boring that i whined until we left at intermission
-played trivial pursuit, davises versus non-davises, you can all guess how that went (meaning, you can guess how immediately bitchy and smug and awful I am when I play that game). Jenny and I won. By a nose hair. But that's still winning.

*in the days before that we:

-went to santa barbara. gorgeous. mountains running right into the ocean. cute little shopping center. ate at ruby's for the thirteenth time while they were here.
-went to la jolla. gorgeous. even more so than santa barbara. there's a beach where seals sleep in droves and there are babies and you can get real close to them. ate delicious mexican food. went to the ucsd aquarium. awesome.
-went to fashion island, irvine spectrum, south coast, etc.
-bought shoes.
-ate at ruby's, martin yan's, in and out burger multiple times.
-went to the beaches.
-watched a lot of VH1 classic.
-hung out and laughed my ass off a lot.

today i took a stats final which i whallopped soundly. i also got my huge project back and we don't need to rewrite it in order for us both to have As, so we aren't going to. that makes us super-awesome, as we were told we would almost ALL have to rewrite them. smugggggle

i'm in a retarded mood. i'm going out to dinner with some friends tongiht for one of their birhtdays. wheee indian food. wheeee quarter being more or less over. booo being bored for the next two weeks.

Love, A Higher Law

So. I am already bored and I dropped them off at the airport about 20 minutes ago. Waaah. Hopefully I did such a good job of getting them there late that they'll miss their plane and I'll have to go get them again in a minute.

Unbelievably, the weather here was horrible the whole week. Overcast and hazy so bad you couldn't even see the mountains that are about ten miles north of here....and you certainly couldn't see all the hills rolling off into the distance, or the islands off the coast, and you could barely stand to lay out in a swimsuit on the beach because it was so gross. I think they managed it a couple days, but I went with them once and I was so cold I just sat on my towel complaining instead of soaking up the hazerays

It's supposed to clear, finally, tomorrow morning. Unfuckingbelievable.
Sorry to those of you I put off talking to/replying to while they were here. I'll get around to at least writing stuff later today. I have no plans for the rest of my life, waaaaaah. I'm so sad that the last of the month-long visitors have gone now. All's that's left to do is clean the house and it'll be like no one was ever here.

So we did some fun stuff, we made them eat at In N Out Burger a couple times, I just got my favorite strawberry iced tea earlier today, we all decided to change our career paths to be better pirate-oriented (Chris? How's that boat idea coming? I'm tired of school) and Jenny's going to be a marine biologist now instead of a journallist, which is cool. We drove down to La Jolla (in San Diego) yesterday and it was unreal....so cute and so pretty. And the


whoa, jenny just called from the airport. hilarious. they're taking a standby deal where they're staying till tomorrow, getting put up in a hotel and fed, plus getting round trip tickets. I have to go get them momentarily. hell fucking yes, that's awesome. GTG.

So tomorrow I will get around to catching up on email/phone calls/stats finals/school stuff.

Late Gate

Beware The Ides Of March

Ok, even though I am super busy I couldn't resist updating on one of my very favorite days of the year....ahhh, ides of march, how I love to reminisce about you and all the pranks I always pulled as a scampy little high schooler. Maybe JD will grace us with one of his stories about his childhood pal Griff. It seems appropriate.

In other, more splendiferous news, I am having a fun time with Jenny and Levi. I have dragged them all over the fricking area and am today entrusting them to not crash my car into anything or drive into the ocean or anything like that. I am not too worried. JD and I have gotten to eat at just about every restaurant we have ever driven by and said, "ooh, we should eat there," in the last month or so, which is a definite perk (but there is a whole list of perks) to having visitors.

Our fat fucking lameo neighbors threw a kegger the other night, for Jenny and Levi's benefit, because they sensed that we had guests who would be sleeping right by the windows facing their apartments. It got busted by the cops in the middle of the night, which is hilarious. That was their first attempt at a real party, and it didn't go so hot. I wonder if it's because there is a fmaily with kids right above them. Dipshits.

I have to work on a stats lab. And then a project. But things are coming along nicely and I think I'll finish this quarter without too much stress. I'll probably be really sad and lonely when I'm on spring break and everyone has come and gone and JD's at work all the time. Piss.

There's A Flaming Red Horizon That Screams Our Names

apartment cleaned? check
talked to stacey, mom, keith, jenny, ashleigh, pseudo raedy? check
vowed for nth time never to let JD hang around my grad school friends? check
unless I feel like being embarrassed in front of them? check
just kidding baby? check
all projects headstarted to increase sister hang out time? check
legs shaved? check
sister-proofed apartment? check
listened to stacey spew racial slurs? check
oreo mudslide cheesecake enjoyed? check
giggled self to hysterics during stats lab? check
agreed to cat sit? check


ok, think i'm good for today

YEAH VISITORS

I Need You To Share The View

Yesterday I caught myself text-messaging Ashleigh on my camera phone while I listened to songs on my mini ipod and typed on my powerbook. I felt appropriately dorky. Then, ashleigh texted, "I miss you like candy," and then, "I miss you like the desert misses the rain." And I stopped feeling so dorky. Gotta pass the torch when it's necessary, I guess.

Also, my neighbors on the other side have started loud fucking, with the windows open, at 9pm. There are still kids awake at 9pm! So I pointedly slammed all the windows facing their apartment and bit my tongue to keep from screaming profanity at them. It's the girl with the cute puppy, too, which sucks. Didn't want to hate her yet.

I'll Never Sail Back To The Time But I'll Always Pretend That You're Mine

Do you ever wonder where the fuck people get their titles? Sometimes they're obvious but sometimes I'll be wondering where they got it and then I'll be listening to a song while I'm wondering and I'll thusly have the answer. Neat.

I'm watching Forever Eden and procrastinating on a big lame write up of a totally hypothetical project that needs to be validated in ideality and then expounded upon for 15 pages. Sometimes, I'm finding, it's even harder to write this crap when you're working with a partner, no matter how much you happen to like your partner as a person. it's not due until next Wednesday, but I'm starting to feel the panicky crushing deadline thing that I'm so un-fond of these days setting in. I guess mainly it's because I want to have it more or less finished before Jenny and Levi get here Friday morning.

And oh my god, I am so excited. Sis, we are going to have so much FUN, wheeeee!!!! I did laundry tonight so you and the Levester will have nice fluffy towels and bedding. Two house rules, though: No doing it and no touching JD's instruments. You can do it on the balcony or the beach or something, just not in my apartment. Ain't no one else christening this apartment but us. Oh sisface, I was at all the shopping areas this past weekend and the spring stuff is sosososososo cuuute. heeee. Also, it was fucking HOT today, like baking delicious non-humid sunny 85 degree weather. It's supposed to get back down to high 70s for you guys and the rest of the week, but it was unfuckingbelievable and gorgeous and clear and awesome. Bring your flip flops tank tops and flouncy short skirts. If you want to fit in, I mean. Tell Levi to bring his flouncy skirts too.

So that's something to look forward to. Until then, though, I am busting it to get as much done as humanly possible that needs to happen between now and the end of the quarter. And good golly there's a lot to get done. So clearly me tiptiptyping now is a diversion. I figure I can't get shit done here at home, I need to work on campus, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow. Which is so so fine. I started it, at least that, but my mind's too foggy to get anything done.

this weekend Andy and Darci came down and it was radtastic. Saw LotR on Imax, that was cool, I heart that movie. Darci is super cool and looks and reminds me lots of Stacey, which added to her coolness. Also she likes shoes. And had an exhausting interview today, hope that went really well.

I decided finally to notice that I've gained like 80 pounds since November. This has to stop. Bally's has some fantastic special here and those commercials just loko so enticing I can't NOT want to join. So we'll see. Also I really want to get a cat. And a parking permit, as abusing my friend's visitor pass has reduced my stress levels immensely just in getting to and from campus everyday. I really could use some excess spending money right about now, in light of how fricking broke I am and my sis is coming this weekend. Dick. I'll just scrimp on a bill or two. Hahaha.

OK. Time to go do something different.

I Got It In One

Today I got a phone call from the apartment complex office to let me know that we won the March drawing for a random gift basket because we paid our rent on or before the due date. Excuse me, that's awesome. I can't believe they rewarded us for paying the rent. I love this complex. The basket contained a shitload of festively St.Patricky candy, sparkling passionfruit drink, cocoa, crackers, chocolates, etc. Damn. The best part was me going into the office to claim it and the other tenant in there talking to the leasing guy's face when I was like, "yeah, hi. I won that," was priceless. Straight out of a cartoon

JD saw a commercial for citibank or something where this guy is trying to get a hamster out of this woman's shirt and he said (JD said), "and then, and then he was reaching and it looked like he was going to go up that lady's shirt"

He actually said go up her shirt
I haven't heard it expressed like that since, oh, seventh grade. Hilarious.

I was talking to Keith online earlier and he was talking about such nasty stuff that I threatened to copy/paste it onto here to make him stop, which didn't work, so here's what I can remember:

K: blah blah blah anal sex, anal sex blah
Me: i dont' want to hear about it
K: anal sex, teehee, I bet that would be nasty
Me: gross
K: i think that would be stinky
Me: (vomiting) Barfffff
K: and i bet it would sound nasty too
Me: i'm seriously spewing puke everywhere
K: I bet it would be like smelly little puff farts
Me: goddamit
K: i'm giggling
Me: i'm not, all I can think about when you talk about anal sex is your girlfriend getting porked in the ass
K: that's funny, all I can think about is Ashleigh

YEAH. What?!?!

So because I thought the photo of my sister's ass might be inspiring this, I changed my buddy icon, unwittingly to a photo of ashleigh's gaping mouth (showing off her newly removed tonsils). This inspired him to talk about oral sex:

K:something something blah blah wendi was down on me
Me: oh gross! dont' talk about this!
K: more about oral sex

to retaliate, i changed my buddy icon again, this time to a picture of me licking JD's crotch. then, when that had the desired effect, I changed it to a closeup of JD sticking his tongue out.

K: God, what IS that, do you have one of his balls entirely in your mouth?
Me: that's not ME, and no. You cannot possibly fit one of JD's balls completely in your mouth.

then he accused me of having a boring life to write a "bibliography" about and then he misspelled five thousand 6th-grade-level words. Which I called him on.

then I changed the photo to one of me and Ashleigh humping at a karaoke party and the conversation took a turn for the unnecessarily graphic that I will not be repeating here.

this blog has had a weird fucking day.

And We Fell Into It Like A Daydream Or A Fever

You can now buy "jellies," the coolest 80s little girl shoes I ever owned and wore everyday when I was six, in reputably "fashionable" stores and online. Awesome.

My hair actually turned out pretty kick ass. Thank God. I got a bunch of compliments on it yesterday at school. Last night JD noticed some more blonde streaks in the back underside area of my hair, visible only when in a ponytail. Sheesh.

I rocked my stats test so hard, I can't remember why I'm freaking out about the rest of the quarter oh yeah that other project that hasn't gotten started yet. Shit.

I met with a prof today and we spent some time fucking around with this ancient data that I never thought could be coaxed into working in SPSS, but we eventually managed it. She became extremely giddy and exclaimed, "this is SO MUCH better than sex!!! Isn't it?!" and sadly, that's not something I've never heard her say before. In fact, it's become a secret joke between me and one of her other students. Sucks to be her, or her husband, or both...hmmm.

Andy and Darci are comingto visit this weekend. Yippppeee!

Can anyone figure out how to view all possible results of that test StaceFace posted on her blog? It alludes to all these interesting possibilities but never lets you read about other people. Plus, someone used my email address to take the test and is "the manchild" and I think if I could read about that it would clue me into who sent it. Not that I don't already know. It's so so apt.

Oh, as you may have gathered from my whining and pretend hating JD, I bought an iPod and I bought him an iPod too. By this I mean mini iPods. Yeah yeah I know credit debt blah blha get off my fucking dick naysayers I'll figure something out. Hopefully it starts raining money sometime soon
I took my new toy to school today and it rocked my socks off.

If you keep saying you're going to call me (this applies to like six of you) try me tomorrow night or Thursday night. Or, lick a dick. Whichever.

P.S. Raedy I can't get either of your movies to work. And it makes me super sad:(

And I Think He Knew That

Sweet God I am tired. However, I cannot yet go to bed because i am waiting for my hair dye to develop. Which I am doing tonight kind og out of necessity, because we had a little "incident" this weekend with me and Jess and an at-home highlighting kit. Let this be a warning to the rest of you: DO NOT ever ever ever do at-home highlighting. My hair, which got initially dyed a dark brown, looked really cool with the reddish brownish highlights. But then, for some unknown reason, the chunks of highlight on and around my pseudo bangs didn't turn pretty reddish brown, they turned orangey blond. I am not the kind of person who can pull off that black hair with blond highlights look. Nor do I ever want to be. So I lived with them all day today but couldn't stand it anymore tonight and am in the middle of what will HOPEFULLY repair all the color damage I did this weekend by stripping just my bangs and now dyeing the whole of my hair a more-typically Liz color. Fuck I hope this works. What I am afraid will happen, but will be preferable to the blond, is that I will have shockingly red highlights in the front. Oh well, it will still be better than what was there a few hours ago.

But christ I want to go to bed so much. Not wait and hope this takes and then wash my hair and then dry it and THEN go to bed. I am learning a valuable lesson. And I have a bad feeling this week is going to be all about learning valuable lessons, starting with this weekend's:

*dont' buy your boyfriend presents. he doesn't love you and won't appreciate them, plus you don't have any money

*dont' put off all your work while people are visiting. you are so going to be fucked tomorrow

*dont' ever go to disneyland on a ssaturday unless you like being pissed off all the time

*don't ever go into an apple store with someone who's intent on buying something cool unless you have the cash to bankroll another one for you, and one for another person, and maybe something else cool for this other person as well

*don't ever eat as much and as badly as I have in recent memory, my teeth hurt from all the sugar and my body is in diabetic shock continually

*don't put yourself in a situation where you have to dye your hair fifteen times in the span of two days; my guess is that this is not good for your hair.

*oop, my watch just beeped. the moment of truth is upon us