What's going on with me?
Just can’t wait to get back on the road again
It is so great to be done with classes. I was so spazzed out this past week with trying to get all my projects and papers done that it didn’t even really sink in that once that final craze was over, it would mean that classes were OVER for two weeks. After the last critique, I knew I should just go home and crash but I had such a bizarre adrenaline-junky-freak thing going on that I really couldn’t fathom just doing nothing.
But anyway, I have two As that I know of, and one A/B that could go either way depending on the final paper. This is, of course, for the Crazed British Avenger’s class. I hope to god I did not make any more errors of nationality that would once again merit his red-pen-wrath.
I have decided that my main goals during my visit home shall be:
1. see Mom and stepdad
2. see friends
3. see Hirshhorn Museum and National Gallery
4. eat Cosi signature salad (possibly daily?), as they do not have Cosis here
5. eat Indian food from takeout shop near former apartment (possibly nightly?), as they do not have proper Indian food here (actually they do, but it is at a very fancy place that I should not enter, as cash flow is at red alert levels)
6. watch dramatically frightening amounts of cable tv, esp. Law & Order and South Park
7. read everyone’s blog on my blogroll
And if I feel like it:
8. figure out how to update my sidebar, as nod to Jake
9. take daily walks around nearby lake, so as not to resemble pregnant woman upon return to Sav
Am off to a fairly bad start on that last one, as this morning Manfriend and I went grocery shopping and then fixed a Breakfast Extravaganza! which included blueberry pancakes (with buckwheat flour so not too carby I think), scrambled eggs, and bacon (but low sodium so is okay). And then we passed out on the sofa, which last time I checked was not high on the calorie burning scale.
However now I will go home and clean up my nasty finals-week-neglected apartment a little, so that it’s not so depressing to return to after my trip. I think cleaning burns calories. That’s how all those 1950s housewives stayed so trim in their little poodle skirts, right?
Oh there is one other funny thing! Manfriend bought an Answer Me Jesus toy for his apartment. Have you seen these? They are Magic 8 balls in the form of a pink Jesus. Behold:
And the answer pops up on the bottom:
When he wasn’t in the room, I asked it whether we would get married (we being me and Manfriend, not me and Jesus), and it said “Yes My Child.” You can try it here, under Try a Demo. Glory be!
8.21.2006
I don’t think we’re supposed to use the phrase “freak show” anymore, so I didn’t. (Oops.)
I think it probably is a good idea to bring the comments on that paper to the attention of someone within the department. You know, once the term is over. Which it will be, in a week! Woo!
I have Big Fun Plans for fall break. They involve: 1. driving to see my mom’s side of the family, and 2. driving to see my dad’s side of the family. I can hardly contain myself! The first part of it will involve my first road trip ever, and certainly with my current car. I usually fly to DC, but due to a weird long story that involves a family wedding in Charlotte, I will be driving.
On the way up, I’ll be stopping off for a night and staying in some (probably, given my budget) roachy motel by myself. No matter, as long as it has cable! Housekeeping will have to throw me out bodily the next day, in fact, if the place has cable!
Ah, sweet sweet cable, it has been so long. (Two months.) The one crappy thing about living alone is not having anyone to split utilities with. I am going to watch Law & Order until the cows come home on this vacation. Also, I am going to force (even if bribery is necessary) my friends to go to the new Palace of Wonders club, which is basically a non-travelling carnival and medical oddities show. I am amazed that anything so macabre has sprung up in “Washington DC – grey suit capital of the world!", so I hope it survives. At least until I get there in a week.
I’ll be in the Suburban Vicinity for a week, and then back to Sav, with a stopover in Charlotte for that wedding. Then I will pick up Manfriend and we’ll be off to SmallTowne GA to visit my dad and stepmom. Yes, it’s the big “meet the parents” visit. I’ve never had one of these before, so the only thing I know to expect is the 1,854% chance that we’ll be staying in separate rooms.
Other than that, I’ve no idea what he and I will be doing there for roughly seventy-two hours. Probably getting down on some barbecue, so that I can become even freaking porkier (pun!) than I am already. Gah!
(I just went on the pill – can that be blamed for at least part of this??? Other girls, please tell me that’s it.)
8.12.2006
The meanest comments ever
My art history teacher is English. On the first day, he made a big song-and-dance about how he “doesn’t believe in learning art history from a textbook,” and thinks “midterms and final exams are crap for gauging one’s skills,” but that since both of these are required by our school, here’s the textbook I “require,” wink wink. And so on like that. You know, “I’m such an iconoclast! In England we don’t have these crazy rules! I chafe at the bridle of the American higher educational system!” Etc etc.
I’m giving you this background info on him because he does, in general, have a sort of chip on his shoulder about the fact that he currently lives here, in the US. Each class begins with a screed about the Current International Situation That We Have Caused, which, yes, I fully agree with him, but theoretically he could leave the US at any time. Which most of us cannot.
Anyway, I recently got back a paper in which I mistakenly claimed that an artist (Gauguin) was American. (It turns out that he was French. D’oh!) I don’t know why I thought/typed this; I don’t remember writing this down anywhere in my notes or reading it anywhere, so I must have just had a weird senior moment or something. (And of course my preemptory proofreading let it slip by.)
Apparently my error triggered some kind of CRAZY IRRATIONAL BRITISH HATRED in my professor, because this is what he wrote on my paper:
“Are you SERIOUS? Is this really where you think he came from? Typical! USA wasn’t even on the radar for artists at this time! Come on!”
And on the next page, when I brought up Henri Matisse, he wrote “Was he American too?!?”
Finally, on the last page, in his final comments:
“Aside from…and a HUGE GLARING HISTORICAL ERROR (sadly quite common among US students) this is a very good piece of work….BUT REALLY, Gauguin was American?! My daughter once told a friend of a friend here in the US that she was from England, which prompted the question ‘So what language do you speak there?’ Any relation of yours!?”
Ummmmm…I do believe that the man all but called me stupid. Oddly enough, I got an 88 on the paper.
Frightening what my comments would have looked like had it been a C paper, eh?
I’m so ashamed of my stupid mistake that I can’t even look him in the eye in class now, and work extra hard to ask intelligent questions. So I guess he’s actually goading me into working harder, but DAMN. It’s not just me, right? That’s pretty mean? Anyway, I had to share. It’s good for a laugh at this point.
8.7.2006
Ignore this post, as I have pms.
Seeing as how I am a glutton for punishment, I have taken on a second job. Actually it is an unpaid internship, but I’m hoping it develops into an eventual “career” after school is all over, so I’m choosing to view it as a strategic move, long-term-wise. It is with this shop/gallery that was started by a graduate of my department, and it has fine art and fabrics and stationary and soaps and clothing and other assorted “shabby chic aesthetic” items.
I love it. I actually sold them some greeting cards a while back, which was when I got the idea that it was exactly the type of gallery that I would love to work in eventually. So I emailed and told them that I am really interested in owning a small business someday, and asked if I could come on as an intern and learn all the backround aspects of running a shop, like the marketing and finances. I’m only going to be there twice a week, because of school and waitressing, but I think it’ll be great. I love my coworkers. And it is such a pleasant atmosphere: we listen to cutesy French pop music all day and organize the jewelry displays and view prospective art to be sold.
I could totally do that long-term.
Things with my Manfriend are good. (It feels almost redundant to type that out; things are always good.) (Did I just jinx it? I take it back.) It’s the most relationshippy relationship I’ve ever experienced, and by that I mean that it’s the only time I’ve had a boyfriend who I felt was like my steadfast partner in some weird game of negotiating our respective lives. Like, we know all/most of the ins and outs of both each others’ day-to-day lives and our relatives and friends from home. We listen to each others’ stories and and gripes and actually care enough to be affected by them by proxy.
I feel like, if something really good happens to me, he’s happy for me, but he’s also happy just within himself, because it’s almost like the good thing happened to both of us. Is that ridiculous?
I had observed this dynamic in some friends’ relationships in recent years; never in college or just after, but only now that we’re in our late twenties and are (supposedly) becoming more astute in our boyfriend choices. I envied it. I envied the fact that I had the ability to recognize this facet of their interactions, but for whatever reason wasn’t lucky (if that’s the word) enough to be experiencing it as well.
Now I realize that I have it, and that we’re sort of creating it more and more every day. I feel overwhelmed by all the momentum; things are too good, and they’re too solid, and he likes me too much, and it’s all going to fall apart spectacularly and then I will really be shattered. Any day now, he’s going to realize that I am all take take take, and that I have weird conflicting feelings about sex, and sometimes I say mean things about my closest friends.
And that I’m really sad deep down and a big drag, and he won’t want to be around that, because why would anybody? I don’t even want to be around it, and it’s me.
I sort of can’t believe he’s stuck around this long.
8.3.2006
Life without the internet is, like, not a very good life
Is it just me, or has there been a huge explosion in the amount of spam messages coming from Israel lately? My entire spam folder this week was full of such illuminating offers as this:
פטנט חדשני!!! מבצע ייחודי!!! ישירות מהייבואן עד אליך הביתה
And, this:
ייבוא ושיווק בלעדי רק ישירות מהיי
Who knows? Maybe I just posted an offer for penis pills or blow-up dolls, and now I will come up on thousands of Israeli teenaged boys’ google search results. Ah, success.
(I do like how, in that first line, there are the same exclamation points that we use. I guess joy knows no language barriers!)
Lately it is 4.1 million degrees in Savannah. As a concession, I went to Old Navy and bought a mini(ish) skirt. By that I mean that it hits above my knee. I generally wear knee-length skirts all summer long (except when riding my bike, because the whole town has not yet seen my cooter, and I would like to keep it that way), and for this I take a lot of ribbing from my female peers. The word “matronly” has been thrown around a good bit.
I don’t mind, though; I just laugh along. But all the while I think: “Whore.”
So can I tell you the most annoying thing someone can do to a waitress? They can come out to eat with six of their friends and sit at a large table, eat their meal, receive their bill, pay, and then continue to sit for three hours. Oh wait, they can ALSO bring up RELIGION to their waitress, since they are missionaries, which they remind her every time she fills their goddamn sweet tea glasses, and are having their big US reunion. Wait wait wait! After having taken up her (one large) table for three hours, they can leave TEN FREAKING DOLLARS extra on their group grat (which was $24). After having told their waitress repeatedly that they were also DOCTORS.
%&#(!!!!*^%$%#&**#**((*( freaking missionaries %(@^$#)!_)_)&@@@ shit tuition due and also rent %@#!%#*( fuck
Douchebags. I would have made about $80 on that table throughout the rest of the shift.
Can I also tell you guys one more thing? I am very fat right now. I have been eating Ben & Jerry’s nonstop with my new Manfriend. It turns out that ice cream is his favorite food ever, and as I enjoy a tiny scoop now and then, we have taken to buying pints every few days. He eats more than me, but I hold my own! Oh, ho ho! Don’t you worry about that!
The thing is, though…he is 6′3″. I am 5′4″. I am beginning to think that his metabolism might be able to handle this a little better than mine. Possibly because I now bear a striking resemblance to this guy:
Behold, I am on FIRE!
(Is he farting into the crowd?)
We buy so much ice cream, in fact, that every time either of us goes to the Kroger’s lately and the machine spits out coupons based on your frequent buyer’s club history, we always get offers for Ben & Jerry’s. $1 off two pints, or $1.50 off three pints.
Now THAT is some corporate snooping that’s actually useful.