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October 27th, 2009

05:05 pm Ack! How has it been so long since I've posted? Not since May, geez. Well, here goes. I managed to finish my last quarter at Western without too much procrastination. I actually stuck to a two-pages-a-day-for-a-week schedule for my psychology thesis-ish paper, so there was no horrible stress involved. Throughout finals stuff I also had to pack up all my stuff in my apartment. Monica, Kaylin, and I had a fun party to separate the kitchen stuff which culminated in Kaylin and I splitting a bottle of wine and playing Scrabble until we were too tipsy to stop chatting long enough to remember to play a word. It was fun. On graduation day my parents, my brother, and Michael came up to Bellingham in the morning. Graduation was sort of cool, I guess. Our commencement speaker was pretty lame, compared to others that I've seen. He did too much talking about himself. There were lots of pictures taken. As soon as it was over, we headed back to my apartment to move me out and down to Seattle into Michael's apartment. My mom was amazing and had brought a whole chicken and potato salad and such delicious lunch. On the way down from Bellingham we stopped off and bought my new desk from some guy off craigslist. We didn't get everything done and moved until 1 am or so. Such a long day. The apartment is cozy. I completely reorganized the kitchen shortly after I moved in so everything would fit. I'm still looking for a job. I miss having a steady income. I wish I had a better idea of what jobs are worth spending my time applying for and which ones are not. I've been spending most of my time experimenting in the kitchen with both cooking and baking. It was an amazing summer for fruit. Michael and I went and picked two flats of strawberries in Arlington, so I made strawberry jam, strawberry shortcake, froze a bunch, and nommed a bunch with a buttermilk chess pie. A friend of Michael's gave us access to his grandma's sour cherry tree, so I made and ate my first real cherry pie. We also were gifted some Yakima peaches, and made a beautiful lattice top peach pie. I picked blueberries at my dad's about five times. I made a pie, froze enough for a pie, made blueberry muffins, and gave a bunch to my mom. We picked blackberries around the neighborhood and made cobbler. I've been teaching myself how to make yeast breads. I'm still trying to make the perfect challah, but I think it'll happen the next time I make it. I just wish there wasn't so much waaaiting for the dough to rise with yeast breads. They're so tasty, and I like knowing there aren't chemicals in my bread, but they take so long from start to finish. I love my KitchenAid. It is full of amazing and wonderful when it comes to everything I've used it for so far. It's the present that keeps on giving! Thanks again, guys. I've also been trying to revive those days where I used to read novels for hours at a time. There's so much good literature out there I need to discover. One of the coolest things I did during the summer was go kayaking on Lake Union with Michael, my dad, and his friend. Kayaking is so fun. Just wanted to let you all know I'm still alive. mood: content music: KEXP

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May 19th, 2009

01:30 pm My birthday party celebrations on Saturday were some of the best I've ever had. I had so much fun and felt so loved. My friends are awesome. I hope we all end up in the same general vicinity eventually when everyone gets around to graduating. We started out with bowling, which is definitely one of my favorite activities ever. I'm really sad there aren't really any bowling alleys in Seattle anymore, so I'm pretty much never going to get to do it anymore. I did pretty poorly my first game (by my standards, anyway), but then Robert bought me beer and I did much better on the second one. Heheh. I swear, there's something about bowling and a couple beers that make for a higher incidence of bowling skill. Robert, Michelle, Ryan, Kaylin, Michael, Sophie, Dani, Erica, Bryce, Austin, Jeff, Eric, and myself were there for bowling, which was super awesome. We took up three lanes with our awesome. After bowling was dinner at Bob's Burgers and Brew, where Rowan joined the rest of us. There was more delicious beer to be had, as well as delicious burger. There are only a few restaurants in Bellingham that I'm going to miss, and Bob's is certainly one of them. Back at my apartment, I got presents! I never expect presents, especially not amazingly awesome ones. Everyone pooled together and got me a KitchenAid standing mixer! @____@ It was so exciting! I love you guys. You win hardcore--definitely the best present I've gotten in a looong time. I also got a set of corporate zombie figurines and a Barry White CD. Heehee. Josh, Steve, and Sam also showed up to join in the festivities. Rowan had made me a white cake to go along with the green tea ice cream Sophie made me, both of which were awesome and yummy. We played Twister and an epic game of Apples to Apples. To those of you who read my LJ, thank you for making my birthday so awesome. <3 I can hardly believe there is so little quarter left. I have a fair amount left to do, so hopefully I can get it all done without too much stressing. My schooling career is almost over, and it's very strange to think about that being the case. I am well into the advanced stages of senioritis at this point. I have no patience with doing anything for school. It all just seems so pointless, except that I have to pass these classes to get my degrees. I can't get motivated enough to sit down and really work on school stuff for any extended periods of time, which is kind of frustrating. It really doesn't help that Sasquatch (the three day outdoor music festival I also went to last year) is this weekend, because all I can think about is sitting in the sun and listening to music. I'm so excited! Must. Focus. Gah. mood: loved music: Band Of Horses-The Funeral

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May 13th, 2009

11:53 pm So I'm another year older, officially, and it doesn't feel like it (as per usual). I graduate exactly a month from today. I'm terrified. I'm excited. I don't know what I am. My birthday was mostly really good. I wore a brand new Threadless shirt I've been waiting over a year to wear, and that made me happy every time I saw it. I met up with the other girl who's interning at the same place I am, and got a solid two hours of productive work in. I went to class. I met up with a guy who's considering subletting my apartment this summer, which would be reeeally helpful from a financial standpoint, but he's deciding between two places. Wish me luck! I got lots of phone calls and texts and Facebook messages wishing me a happy birthday, which was full of happy. Then Sophie, Dani, and Robert came over and Sophie had made me a green tea bundt cake of deliciousness! Last night Robert made me a chocolate cake! Saturday Rowan is making me a white or yellow cake and Sophie is making green tea ice cream! I feel so loved with sugar. Thanks, guys. <3 I've never had three amazingly delicious cakes for one birthday before. Unfortunately, my roommate Monica had also invited over a horde of people to watch Rocky Horror Picture Show, which we ended up joining. I...didn't really enjoy it much at all. It kind of killed my birthday happy. Oh well. It was good while it lasted because I've been getting pretty depressed lately. All the upcoming changes in my life are really freaking me out. All said, all I really want to do right now is cuddle with Michael. I'm lonely and grumpy. Saturday I'm doing a big birthday shindig with bowling and dinner out and partying in. I'm looking forward to it. It's really hitting me that I'm leaving a bunch of really awesome friends in Bellingham who aren't graduating right now, and I'm going to miss them. My birthday is an exciting excuse to get everyone together, so yay. Why can't everything stay the same and change drastically at the same time? mood: sleepy music: Taylor Swift-Breathe

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April 13th, 2009

05:58 pm I finally got to spend a weekend with Michael in Seattle this past weekend, thanks to a ride from Erica on her way down to SakuraCon. It was a really wonderful weekend. I honestly can't think of anything much better than cuddling up with Michael and doing whatever. I'm so lucky. We watched various Futurama episodes and a couple movies, which were both new to me (The Graduate and The Wackness)--yes Simon, I have finally seen The Graduate now, so you can stop giving me that incredulous look every time it comes up in conversation. :P We also went to Michael's parents' place for a Passover/Seder dinner on Saturday, where there were something like 19 people, some of whom have been attending this event for 17 years(!). It was cool because the only other Seder I've been to I was pretty young and don't remember it that well. I've been struggling since the quarter started with a lot of questions about identity and purpose, since it suddenly decided to hit me really hard that graduating from college is going to change a whole lot of things for me. It didn't help that all three of my classes were all discussions about either identity or the big philosophical questions like "what is consciousness?" and "do we have free will?" I hate trying to answer philosophical questions because sometimes I really just would rather not think about what each sort of answer could mean. That little voice of failure keeps popping up and scaring the shit out of me, but I'm trying to fight it down. School has always been one of the main purposes of my life, and I'm feeling a little bit lost as to what my purpose is once school is over. I just need to keep reminding myself that everything is going to work out, and probably sooner than I think. My life is amazing, and I can't let myself forget that. I'm glad the quarter is finally ramping up a bit, so I have other stuff to think about now. Oy. mood: thoughtful music: Donavon Frankenreiter-Hit The Ground Running

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April 4th, 2009

03:35 pm Seriously, how did I used to have time to post in this thing every single day? I'm pretty sure this is the longest lapse in posting I've had yet. So much has happened, and I don't feel like I can do any of it justice, but I shall try. First off, thank you all for your kind comments about my grandpa. The trip out to Michigan for the funeral was a whirlwind weekend. My brother and I got to Michigan at nine-something in the morning, and more or less had to be shipped directly from the airport to the funeral place. I have a really hard time sleeping on planes, so I was exhausted, but it was one of those sort of days where you just have to make the best of it. There was a viewing in the morning, a couple hour break, and then a viewing and service in the early evening. I got to talk to a lot of really cool people who were related to my grandpa or knew him, so I was really glad I went, just like I knew I would be. My grandpa was 97-years-old, and so I thought it was pretty incredible that an estimated number of 250-350 people came during the day to pay their respects. He worked at the post office for 38 years, retiring at the age of 86, and was known as the "sweetheart of the post office," so a lot of his old coworkers came. He came from a family with 12 children, and there are a surprisingly large amount of relatives out there, a lot that I'd never met. I can hardly believe he's still survived by two of his siblings (his younger brother is 87 and his older sister is 101). Clearly, I have some old-age genes in me somewhere. I flew back to Seattle by myself, and got in almost an hour late because the plane I transferred to in Detroit had to be deiced. My brother's girlfriend picked me up at the airport and took me to Kirkland, where I transferred to the van and drove up to Bellingham. I didn't get back until midnight, and was fighting sleep the entire way. Of course, when I got back to Bellingham I was about to embark upon what can only be defined as the hardest month of school I've ever experienced. Somehow I managed, though I hardly know how. If I complained at you about it, you helped, and I thank you for listening. Michael came up the weekend before finals and was amazing at keeping me on track while I wrote a large paper and he also helped me bounce ideas around and glue stuff for my ABC book for my children's literature class. Love. So much love. Grades-- Children's Literature: A, Structure of English: A, Social Psychology Seminar: A, and 16th/17th Century Renaissance Epics: B+ (which is like an A for that professor). It just about killed me, but I did well anyway. I'm really proud of myself. It was a very helpful thing I had my trip to Hawaii for spring break to look forward to. I don't know if I even mentioned that ever in here. My friend Sophie's extended family has a property there, and she invited a bunch of us there for spring break. Sophie, Erica, Dani, Kaylin, Carol, Robert, and I went, as did Sophie's mom. It was a whole ton of fun. The place we stayed was called Kikila, and it was right across the street from the ocean. It was even a beautiful sandy beach! I was so excited for real sand, cause I didn't get that on my last trip to Hawaii. We went swimming in the ocean almost everyday. The place where we first got to the ocean had 2-6 foot waves crashing onto the beach, but if we walked down the beach a ways, there was a lagoon type area where there were rocks a hundred or so feet out in the water that most of the waves would break on, so it was a perfect swimming area. I also managed to not get sunburned at all, which I am quite proud of. I almost have something that could be called a tan, even. It is very strange. We spent most of our time sitting around reading (for fun! hooray!) and chatting, which was exactly what I wanted. We took two trips up to the North Shore for wandering and shopping, and we took one day trip into Honolulu and went to Waikiki to go to the beach and the aquarium. There was a pool table in the main living room we spent most of our time in, and Robert and I played a ton; I may have improved slightly, if I'm lucky. We took a trip to Costco right when we got to Hawaii, and over the course of the trip I fell in love with these lightly salted, roasted edamame things they had, and I was lucky enough to bring a container of them home, cause they don't carry them in the Costcos in Washington. There will be pictures up on Facebook at some point, but for now most of my pictures are stuck on Robert's non-functioning laptop. He thinks the RAM fried, so the pictures should be okay, it might just be a bit before I get them. I'm graduating in June, and I can hardly believe it. It's about equally terrifying as it is exciting to me. All I've ever done is school, and I'm about to not be doing it anymore. Hoooly crap. I hope I can find a job without too much trouble. Getting a job will alleviate so much stress, as money is getting to be a big stressor for me right now. I'm about to run out, and I'm going to have to borrow from my dad in order to pay rent and bills and such until I can start earning money. He's already short on money himself, so I'd rather do as little borrowing as I can. This quarter is quite a change from last quarter. I'm only taking three classes, and one of them is very non-traditional. I'm taking Psychology 411 - Seminar in Cognitive Psychology, Psychology 481 - Seminar in History and Systems of Psychology, and English 461 - Interns in English: Professional Identity. The last of the three is the odd one; everyone in the class finds an internship, and the seminar is paired with all of them to help learn how to take an English degree out into the real world. We only meet for one two hour session a week (even though it's a five credit class) because we're expected to intern at least six hours a week, and our second day is an optional workshop class. I've never had a quarter where I was in class so few hours a week. Both my Psychology classes aren't five credit classes, so I'm only in class 10 hours a week plus the workshop if I want. The internship doesn't really count as class time. Okay, that's probably enough of an info dump for now. I feel bad for not posting more often so that I could remember all the little details about things that I know I've forgotten now, but life got in the way. mood: happy music: James Blunt-Annie

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February 17th, 2009

07:15 pm I am not okay. I'm stressed beyond belief with school. I have too much to do and not enough time to do it. And on top of that, my grandpa died Saturday night. So now, in addition to the stress I already had, I'm dealing with this. I'm flying out to Michigan Friday at 1 am and arriving back in Seattle at 9 pm on Sunday, after which I will have to drive back to Bellingham to make my Monday class because I'm already skipping it on Friday. I really don't have the time to be doing this, from a school standpoint, but I know I would regret not going. I am not having a good day, and I am having a terrible week. I really hope I can do it all. I don't feel like doing anything. mood: depressed music: Dixie Chicks-There's Your Trouble

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February 1st, 2009

01:00 pm I'm really terrible at this updating thing. So much has happened since I last posted, but I'm sure I'll forget to mention a lot of it. This quarter is as stressful as I was expecting, and perhaps more so. I feel like I'm doing either classes or homework from the time I get up to the time I go to sleep. It's rather tiring. Michael and I celebrated our one year anniversary of dating on the 19th of January. He was able to come up for an extra long weekend, which was wonderful. Love. I also hosted a girly night at my apartment a couple weeks ago. We painted each others fingernails and toenails, did facemasks, tarot cards, giggled endlessly, ate a ton of sugary delicious things, and watched When Harry Met Sally. It was a whole lot of fun, except now I have the desire to paint my fingernails again and had to go out and buy some fingernail polish. I can't wait until this quarter is over, because next quarter shouldn't be nearly as difficult. I also am going to Hawaii for spring break with all the girls I watch CSI with, which should be a whole ton of fun. I'm really looking forward to it, because I've never really had a proper spring break vacation, and this is my last chance at it. I already have my ticket and everything, even though I don't really have the money for it. Speaking of money, it's a pretty major stressor in my life right now. My school load my senior year is just too much to keep working at the same time, so I'm out a reliable income. Thus, my money is diminishing at a rather distressing rate. I'm about due to run out in a couple months at the most, when I take rent, bills, and food into account. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do, exactly. My dad has said he's going to help me as much as he can, but I feel bad taking his money because this whole divorce thing hasn't really been settled financially, even though it has been two years, so he doesn't really have much either. It's going to be interesting. And with that, it's back to the masses of reading and homework for me. *sigh* mood: stressed music: Jim Sturgess-All My Loving

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January 10th, 2009

07:00 pm So, I've been back in Bellingham for almost a week now. It's been a hard time adjusting back into school mode from break mode, but I'm slowly getting there. I'm still pretty lonely, though--I'm not used to being by myself for long periods of time. It didn't help that I got sick the instant I got back. Being sick the first week of class is just not fun, and it hasn't been helping me sleep. I keep waking up coughing and then being unable to fall back asleep. This quarter is going to be ridiculously hard. First impressions of classes: Psychology 442--Seminar in Social Psychology I can't decide whether I'm going to like this class or not. I like the professor (and I've had her before), but I was unaware that the focus of the class was going to be legal psychology, with an even more specific focus on juries. My textbook is about juries, and not even written from a psychology standpoint, so I feel like I'm having a law class shoved upon me when I wasn't looking for one. The class involves a 5-6 page paper about a courtroom observation we have to do AND the typical 10+ page seminar research paper, plus daily homework and graded participation. There are only nine people in the class, which is the smallest I've had in college so far. English 441--Children's Literature for the Elementary and Middle School Teacher I'm going to love this class. I've had this professor before, too, and she's amazing. She's spending the first part of class everyday reading aloud to us from a novel. Books on the reading list include Charlotte's Web and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. We have to read a ton, but I'm excited about reading children's books from an adult's perspective. I'm also vaguely exploring the idea of teaching someday. English 308--16th/17th Century Renaissance Epics This class may kill me. The professor spent the first twenty minutes of the first day of class telling us how hard it is going to be, and how he's excited because we're an experimental class he's always wanted to teach. We're reading on average 300 pages a week and are liable to receive pop quizzes on the reading any day. In addition, there is going to be an essay test on each of the three epics we're reading, and based on the class so far I do not expect them to be easy. We also have a "short critical paper," but again I don't have much faith in this particular professor's definition of short. English 436--The Structure of English I'm going to really like this class. It's basically an upper level grammar class that looks at grammar descriptively (how it is used) instead of prescriptively (how it is "supposed" to be used). This is the sort of class that geek in me is totally turned on by. The four tests are all take home/collaborative, and the only other requirement of the class seems to be a group presentation, which shouldn't be too bad. This is going to be my easiest class by far. I'm doing my best to try and stay on top of if not ahead of my homework, because I have LOT of it. I basically have something due on top of reading for every single class except the epics class. It's also hard because three of my classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I have a lot due--I spent seven hours doing reading/homework for last Thursday's classes. Oy. Wish me luck. Christmas was good. Even though we agreed no presents, my dad still gave me and my brother $200, which was a help. We made prime rib, garlic mashed potatoes, and asparagus for dinner. I made from scratch a three layered devil's food cake with homemade vanilla butter frosting. I messed up big time and ended up having to throw away the first attempt and start all over, which was very frustrating. Thankfully Michael was there to help me feel better about it. New Year's Eve was fun as well. We went to Rayna's again, like last year. My friend from high school David just got his bartending license, so he had a pretty extensive bar set up in the kitchen with unlimited drinks for a fee. Somehow I got talked into playing team shot checkers with Michael against some other people. It was fun at the time, but throwing up later that night was not so much. I think my real downfall was the champagne at midnight in addition to all the hard liquor. Ah well. We spent the night there on the sofa bed, and I wasn't even hungover the next day, thankfully. And that is the latest in the life of me. mood: lonely music: Rascal Flatts-Holes

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December 22nd, 2008

02:15 pm Seattle has been hit with a harder winter than has been seen in a large number of years. On Thursday we got 4-6 inches of snow, and then it snowed almost constantly from Saturday evening through Sunday night, which left another 10+ inches of snow. By Seattle standards, this is almost unheard of. See, the thing about Seattle is that when it snows, everything shuts down. Roads don't get cleared and no one knows how to drive. I actually kind of like it, but granted that's a large part due to the fact that I haven't had anywhere to be what with it being my winter break. The whole world becomes a snowy wonderland, and it's beautiful. It gets everyone into a good mood. Everyone bundles up and wanders around, and it's one of those occasions where everyone greets every random person that they come to when they're walking down the street with a big smile and hellos. On Thursday, Michael and I went over by one of his friend's places and went sledding on a pretty darn steep street. It was fun but kind of terrifying because both times I went we ended up going backwards and it was kind of icy and hard to stop at the bottom of the hill. Yesterday was Hannukah, and there was so much snow that Michael's parents put chains on their SUV and drove over and picked us up. We had matzo ball soup and latkes and hung out for awhile before they drove us to the grocery store and back home again because they had another party to go to. After we got back we bundled up again and hiked across Magnolia in the snow to go snow intertubing with some other friends of Michael's. We went to some park first, but I didn't do any intertubing there. It wasn't until we got back to Dravus, which is a really big (blocks and blocks long) street hill that runs through Magnolia, that I tried it out. Oh man, most fun I've had in snow in a very long time. It was super awesome. There were so many people out, and it was fun to see all the different sorts of things people found to use as sled-like objects. It was also cool because the block that Michael's apartment is on is essentially at the bottom of the sled path. When we got cold and hungry we went to pub at the corner, and then we were just half a block away from home. It has been a really good break so far. A week ago yesterday was a Girlyman show at a bar in Ballard, and my dad jokingly suggested that I make dinner and he and his friend Carol who were also going to the show could come over before the concert. I showed him right and made delicious chicken tikka masala from scratch, which everyone was duly impressed with. The show was great, and even had a great opener. They played a bunch of new songs, which was fun. They're doing this new thing where you can pre-order a live recorded CD of that night's show, and Michael ordered one of those--hooray! Afterward, we all stopped at another bar in Fremont that has 50+ types of unusual beers on tap and we all split four or five, so we could try new ones. We also went to Costco for food and supplies and picked up a pumpkin pie and a half gallon of heavy whipping cream because I did not get my fill of pie at Thanksgiving. It was so tasty, especially with the candied pecans Carol brought us on the Girlyman night. Next quarter is going to be my hardest one yet. I'll be taking 18 credits, which consist of three 400-level classes and one 300-level class. My brain is going to hurt a lot. I'll be taking English 308--16th/17th Century Renaissance Epics, English 436--The Structure of English, English 441--Children's Literature for the Elementary and Middle School Teacher, and Psychology 442--Seminar in Social Psychology. It ought to be an adventure. I got my grades back from last quarter--two As and an A-. If I get nothing but As until I graduate, I might be able to pull off graduating magna cum laude, which would be kind of cool. I am now vehicle-less. My brother and father came over on Wednesday (right before all this snow nonsense) and took back the van my brother has been letting me drive for the past year. I'm so sad. It's going to be really lame to not have guaranteed transportation for the first time in my life, but I'm too poor to buy even a crappy used car. Technically, I'm too poor to pay for the rest of my college through graduation in June. I'm due to run out of money completely right about March. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do, yet; I'll probably end up getting a loan of some sort. Hopefully I'll be able to find a job fairly quickly after I graduate so that I don't go into too much debt. Apologies for the long and scattered post, but these are all the random tidbits worth mentioning from the past few weeks. mood: happy

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December 2nd, 2008

07:30 pm I had a wonderful Thanksgiving break this year. Due to my brother's last minute planning, however, I ended up driving both him and his girlfriend Rachel over to Eastern Washington along with Michael and me. This is noteworthy only because the 1987 Chevy Astro van that I currently drive only has two seats/seatbelts. My brother took extra seats out of his other cars and they just sat on those, which naturally were unattached to anything. I was really worried about getting pulled over or getting into a crash or something, but it ended up okay. We were all going to go to my cousin Andy's house for a big shindig with my grandpa, aunts and uncles and such, but we spent the early afternoon cooking at my mom's house. I made a pecan pie, which everyone ended up really liking (hooray!). We didn't get to Andy's until around four, I think--the turkey was just coming out of the oven, but dinner ended up not being for a few more hours after that. Helped in the kitchen for awhile to fulfill my woman-of-the-family cooking duty (seriously, every female there was in the kitchen). While I like cooking, I wanted to hang out with the rest of the family too, so I headed down to the basement, which is fully decked out with a rather complete bar, a foosball table, and a Wii. Played a bunch of Wii bowling, made some excellent spares, and celebrated every time someone got a turkey. Heehee. At some point someone brought up chocolate cakes (as in the shot--you take the shot and then you bite on a sugared lemon wedge and it tastes like chocolate cake batter). Andy pulled out a bunch of shotglasses and all of a sudden there were like seven of us taking a shot together. It was actually the first shot I've ever managed to take all at once, so I was proud. Of course, the people upstairs caught wind of the shot taking, and started coming down to try them. Naturally, no one wanted to do it alone, so there were lots of shots going around. I took four altogether...and this was after a cosmopolitan and before a chocolatini and a glass of wine. I got kind of drunk, actually. Oops. At least it was really fun. The food was all tasty. I'm just sad I didn't get to bring any leftovers home with me. I didn't get my fill of it all. On Friday Nick, Rachel, Michael, and I went to the old fashioned soda fountain before we started playing dominoes with my mom. We took a break to meet up with all the aunts and uncles again to get dinner together. Before I turned 21, Andy told me that I was not allowed to try Guinness until he could buy it for me somewhere that carried it on tap, and he finally came through on it after I reminded him on Thanksgiving. After dinner we played more dominoes for a couple hours before bed. Saturday was Rachel's birthday, so we tried to get a somewhat early start back over the mountains. Dropped Nick and Rachel off at my dad's place and hung out with him for awhile before we headed back to Michael's. I managed to finish drawing and inking my comic. Unfortunately, both Michael and I managed to catch a cold over the break, so now I'm dealing with that during dead week/finals week. At least it wasn't the flu--I could not have done that. So speaking of dead week/finals week, here's what I have left: Psych 303 group presentation tomorrow (12/3) Psych 303 final group paper due Friday (12/3) - just finished this afternoon Psych 303 final exam Tuesday (12/9) - haven't studied a bit English 311 comic project - turned in this morning English 311 4-6 page paper due next Friday (12/12) - haven't even thought of a topic yet English 418 draft of final paper due Friday (12/3) - 3 out of 12-15 pages done (ugh.) English 418 final paper due next Wednesday (12/10) at 12 pm I'm sick of this stuff. I just can't get myself going on my Shakespeare paper, for whatever reason. I also just accidentally agreed to take a catering shift from someone tomorrow from 4-10 pm because I thought it was actually next Wednesday. This is no good, but it's too late to back out. I need those six hours to work on my papers. *sigh* I'm sick of the computer labs. I want to go home. mood: lonely music: Zero 7-Polaris

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November 23rd, 2008

10:15 pm Well, that was quite the weekend. Michael came up, which was happy. It got me to not think about school for a couple days, which was a nice mental break that I probably needed to last through the rest of the quarter. On Friday night I got a call from my roommate Monica asking if it was okay if she brought about ten people over to the apartment. Yeah, that turned out to be rather interesting. It was a bunch of people from the Jewish group on campus, plus about five or six Israeli guys who just got to Washington. They immediately started begging Michael and me to let them play Wii bowling. Some of them ran off to buy a case of Budweiser. This one girl started super hitting on one of the guys--they wound up in Monica/Kaylin's bathroom and knocked over the above-the-toilet rack thingie while they were making out or whatever (though she swears no sex was involved). Samesaid girl was double-fisting Budweiser and wound up sitting on the couch on Saturday morning puking into a trashcan. All of the girls spent the night, which was like six or something. I was mostly fine with everything until I went into my bathroom Saturday morning to find that someone had used my shower without asking...this alone would have been annoying, but fine. But then I realized they'd also rifled through my drawer and used my hairbrush, toothpaste, and sunscreen (and more perhaps?). They'd also gone into a different drawer and helped themself to one of my extra towels (that has my name embroidered on it, no less). Arg. I do not appreciate people who do not ask before taking. I confronted Monica about it today, and she said that she had no idea someone had done that, so they hadn't even asked her who was their host in my apartment. *sigh* Saturday we slept in and I made whole wheat pancakes. Omnomnom. I haven't made this particular recipe for years, and they were just as good as I remember. I'm going to be making them more often now. They're hardly even more work than store bought pancake mix. Then we watched the very first Bond movie, Dr. No, which was also my very first Bond movie. We took a walk in the woods by my apartment and then we played video games. Finally, I've made more progress in Okami. We watched the first half of the second Bond movie, but got too sleepy to finish. This morning we finished Bond and ate this apple oatmeal stuff I made in Kaylin's slowcooker overnight. It wasn't as tasty as I was hoping for, but not too bad. Then we made a successful trip to the mall to get Michael new pants because his had ripped. I found a pair of pants for me, too, and got more disposable tea bags because I was almost out. I take an insulated mug of tea to school every morning now. I need to get my brain back into school mode now. I only have three days before Thanksgiving break. Wednesday I'm driving a random person from my school I found on the new WWU rideshare forum topic down to Seattle on my way down (hooray company and gas money!). Then Michael and I are headed over to my mom's in Eastern Washington for Thanksgiving. Almost all the aunts and uncles and cousins are getting together for foodage. I'm going to make a pecan pie. Okay brain, time to work really hard. mood: busy music: Zero 7-Crosses

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November 17th, 2008

12:45 am So speaking of complaining about school...stress has hit. The ratio of breadth of assignments to amount of time before the end of the quarter is becoming unfavorable. Tomorrow (11/17) I have an evaluative annotated bibliography due for my senior seminar Shakespeare class--I've been working on it ALL weekend, and I still have one more entry to do. It has been a bitch and a half. It's basically like writing a seven page paper in preparation to start from scratch and write a twelve to fifteen page paper. On Friday (11/21) I have the analysis of the data gathered in my Psych experiment due, plus a written results and discussion section due. And of course, because it's the crappy professor she didn't even assign this until two days ago Friday. Next Monday (11/24) I need to have a two page rough draft of that Shakespeare paper. The Tuesday after Thanksgiving break (12/2) I have a project due in my graphic novels class where I have to write, design, and draw a 3-4 page comic. I can't even recall the last time I drew anything... That Wednesday (12/3) I have a full draft (12-15 pages) due of of my Shakespeare paper AND the final draft (likely another 12+ pages) of my Psych group paper PLUS a group presentation due. The Tuesday (12/9) after that I have a presentation of my comic project AND my Psych 303 final exam AND my Shakespeare final exam AND the final draft of my Shakespeare paper is due. The Friday (12/12) after that, I have a critical paper (4-6 pages) for my graphic novels class due. I think I might curl up in a ball and cry at least once before the quarter is over...I'm trying to figure out where the time to do all this stuff is going to come from. x_x On a bright note, registration for Winter quarter is on Wednesday, and I should be all set for that. I'm planning on registering for four classes, which comes to 18 credits, which means that I'll only be able to register for three of those classes when Phase I starts. It's okay, though, cause I emailed a professor I had my freshman year, and she's going to hold me a spot in one of her classes until Phase II, so I can register for it without worrying. Phew. Tonight was fun, at least. Robert, Sophie, and I went downtown to the Grand for trivia night. Drank beers and attempted to answer trivia questions versus other groups of people. Our group name was "1 + 7^3" and we didn't get last place, so it was a success! Bedtime. We'll see how much I can get done tomorrow. One day at a time. *sigh* mood: stressed music: Sick Puppies-All The Same

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November 12th, 2008

11:55 pm I'm so happy. Really, truly happy. Yeah, I'm still complaining about school stuff, but really I love school too. All the times in my life where I was truly unhappy are just put into a different perspective now. I don't think I would be able to honestly and fully appreciate how happy I am right now if I had not gone through those rough times that made me question everything. I feel comfortable with myself in a way I never have been before, and I'm not really sure how to try and describe it. I feel self-confident. I feel accepted. I feel loved. I feel so lucky. I feel so grateful. All I want to do is whatever I can to assist other people to reach this state of happiness. mood: happy music: Pinback-Non-Photo Blue

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November 4th, 2008

11:30 pm Obama! Hooray! Between McCain's losing speech and Obama's winning speech, my roommates and I ran to the store to buy brownie mix and ice cream so we could make celebratory brownies. We got back quite literally thirty seconds before Obama walked onstage. It was exhilarating. I haven't been this excited about politics probably ever. This nation needed a change. I voted. I feel like I just lived through history. Hope. It is a wonderful feeling. mood: jubilant music: John Mayer-Waiting On The World To Change

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October 26th, 2008

10:10 pm I had a slightly disturbing phone conversation with my mother this afternoon. I asked her if she'd voted yet, and it turned into a very long discussion about politics and issues and voting. She told me that she'd just read a book all about how "good Catholics" should vote in elections. That a book like this exists saddens and angers me. Basically, if candidates believe in policies surrounding the "five intrinsic evils (pro-choice on abortion, etc)," in order to be a good Catholic you should not vote for them. If all candidates have ideas against those "evils," you should pick the one with the least. What angers me is that this book basically tells Catholics who they should vote for, regardless of any other ideals unrelated to those "evils." First of all, none of those issues are black and white. Second of all, I believe you can still be a good Catholic and support things like pro-choice. You can be pro-choice and still choose to not have an abortion yourself. Yet, this book now has my mother confused. She doesn't like McCain and had been planning on voting for Obama prior to reading this book, but McCain is the "Catholic choice." Now she's questioning her own beliefs because she's very religious and doesn't want to be a "bad Catholic." I tried telling her my side of it, that this book really should not change the way she was already planning on voting, and has voted in the past. It's books like this that prevent change in the world. I don't think anyone (or any religion) has the right to tell anyone else how they should vote. Each person needs to reflect and come to their own decisions. In my opinion, it is amoral to have laws that prohibit people to make personal choices based on their own situations. Issues like choosing abortion or assisted suicide are civil liberties, and the government should not presume to regulate them. I understand people feeling like these things are not moral and should not be done, but I don't understand when those same people can't understand that not everyone feels the way they do. That's what America is all about, right? Freedom to form your own opinions and not to foist them onto others at the return of not having others' ideas foisted onto you. I'm not normally one to be vocal about politics, and I hope this hasn't offended anyone, but it's the way I feel about it. I also had a nightmare of sorts last night. I was on a trip in an airport trying to get home, but stuff kept going all wrong. When I finally got home, I had missed a midterm and the professor wouldn't let me make it up, even though it wasn't my fault I missed it. Damn you, school, stressing me to the point of dreaming about you. My dad came up to visit me this weekend. We went to a play on Friday night, and then I took him to my favorite bar for delicious beer and live music. Saturday we went the the open house stuff on campus, and he bought me my first piece of clothing that is Western related (a blue sweatshirt with "WWU" on the front). I'm so proud. I had a really engaging conversation with some guy in the library about how my majors tie together and how he thinks I'm "on the cutting edge" for picking them. My dad kind of listened in awe (so he told me). We also had a really interesting time talking to a professor in the biochemistry lab. After the open house was over, we went to Costco and he stocked me up. Hooray. My brother came up tonight and we did the same thing as two weekends ago--brother, his girlfriend, and girlfriend's little sister went to Jalapenos for dinner and Mallards for ice cream. I had apple pie ice cream--it had chunks of apple in it and everything. Omnomnom. I need to work on my paper. Fail. I'm just having a hard time caring. I want to be done with school. Seven more months seems like a lifetime until I can finally go back to Seattle for good. mood: discontent music: Dar Williams-When I Was A Boy

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October 22nd, 2008

11:50 pm I've decided that group papers are one of the worst ideas anyone ever devised. I've become unofficial group leader, it seems, merely because no one else came up with ideas when we were figuring out what our experiment is going to be. I'm also the one who seems to be coordinating everything, and I'm the group typist. I have to admit that the last point there is because if I wasn't the one typing I would go crazy and possibly kill someone. I have ridiculously high self-standards for things like papers, and I'm not willing to compromise them just because it's a group thing. Of course, this puts me in a position where I'm struggling not to feel like I'm doing more work than other people in my group. Part of it is on me and wanting to quality control the project, but it's not everything. The people in my group are benefiting from my extensive paper writing experience as both a Psych and English major. I don't want to sound like a know-it-all or that I'm full of myself, but I work hard and I do get good grades. I'm also trying really hard to not come off as bossy, because that's certainly not my goal. I'm not sure at what point in my life I suddenly became okay with being a project manager, because when I was a kid I was way more likely to be a follower of a more dominant personality. I guess I still always see myself as shy, but when I really think about it I have to admit that I've become a lot more extroverted in situations where I'm in my element. I'm doing my best to try and find a balance within my group so that everybody's ideas are heard and included, and so that I'm not doing all the work. This is a hard project for me, and I don't even know if I've done a good job of explaining why. Like I said in my last entry, I'm frustrated at my Psych 303 professor. She assigned us this paper last Friday, and we only have a week to do it. She is one of the most unprepared professors I have ever had, and it is driving me crazy. There is no reason she could not have given us this assignment two or even three weeks ago, so we would have sufficient time to work on it and spread out the work. As it is, my group has gotten together to work three times this week, for a total of almost eight hours. Technically, we're not even done, but none of us can meet between now and the due date. I certainly don't have the time to do this, and my other groupmates feel the same. We have other classes with other assignments, dammit! Yet, these group sessions leave me exhausted and reluctant to work on my other assignments for other classes. This particular professor is also almost completely ineffective at actually teaching us anything in a clear way. I feel like I'm going to have to pull out my notes from Psych 302 and study them instead of the ones from the class I'm actually in because that professor actually made things make sense. My professor now has a habit of starting a sentence and then progressively getting quieter and quieter and eventually fading off into nothingness without ever completing the thought. She's horrible at answering student questions, so people seem to have stopped asking. Going to that class feels like a waste of my time and money. I don't appreciate paying for something I'm not benefiting from. I have to go to campus early tomorrow, so I can finish up my topic paragraph for English 418. I want to email it to my professor so he can check it and offer suggestions before it's actually due on Friday. See, he's an amazing professor. He's practically begging us to utilize him as a resource to help us create an amazing paper over the course of this quarter. I think I finally know what I'm doing, but I'm not sure if I have it narrowed down enough yet. We shall see what he says. I also have decided upon my topic for my first critical paper for English 311, which is due Tuesday. I was originally planning on writing about Watchmen, but I ended up having a flash of insight about Maus, so I'm going to write about that instead. I'm actually kind of excited to delve into this paper--it's been awhile since I've written an English paper (as opposed to Psychology papers, which I've had a ton of lately), and I like my topic idea. I just need the time to write it; I've been too busy with this big Psych group thing. Okay, giant school related rant is over. Is it June yet? mood: aggravated music: Pink Floyd-Wish You Were Here

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October 21st, 2008

01:30 pm Life update time! I just turned in both my degree applications for graduating spring quarter. Scary. @_@ I'm looking forward to graduation, but it is kind of intimidating the amount of school stress I'm going to live through between now and June. Even now, I'm procrastinating on current school stresses. I need to come up with a more detailed, coherent topic for my English 418 senior seminar 12-15 page paper and turn in a paragraph detailing it by Friday. In a half hour I'm meeting again with my Psych 303 group to work on our 8-9 page group paper that's due Friday that only got assigned last Friday. Super pissed off at that professor--she originally was going to have it due Wednesday (as in tomorrow), but the class as much as rioted. Even a week to do it is ridiculous enough. We basically have to have everything entirely ready for our experiment to be done by Friday, which is not very feasible. I despise professors that hold the my-class-is-your-only-class mentality. She's so unprepared and last minute with everything, which makes our lives more stressful than they need to be--she could have given us the rubric for this assignment three weeks ago, so we would have had ample time to work on it. I also have a critical paper due Monday for my graphic novels class. Must not let myself get overwhelmed and end up doing nothing at all. *sigh* I spent six hours two weekends ago figuring out what to register for for Winter AND Spring quarters, such that I can fit in all my requirements to graduate in, and to get all the time slots of those classes to work together. It was not easy, let me tell you, but I found something that will hopefully work. I'm planning on taking 18 credits Winter quarter and 12 credits Spring quarter. Taking four classes in Winter is going to be hard. But really, neither quarter is going to be easy, because all I have left are six 400-level classes and one 300-level class. I also went and got myself sick this past week, and I'm still recovering from congestion and the like. At least it was just a cold, and nothing to do with 103 degree fevers this time, like almost every other sickness I've had since starting college. Last week was a whole lot of fun, though. My friend Caitlin turned 21 last Monday, and so a group of us went downtown to the gay bar to go to the drag show. I was excited to buy Caitlin a drink, because not many of my friends have turned 21 since I have. I also helped my friend Robert bottle homemade beer...omnomnom. Can't wait to try it once it's finished becoming beer. On Friday night I went down to Seattle and went to a Dar Williams concert with my dad at the Moore theatre, which was cool especially because I actually ended up knowing (sort of) the opening act (Shawn Mullins). I spent the rest of the weekend with Michael, and went to see the Broadway musical Spring Awakening with his family on Sunday night. Needless to say, not much homework got done last week. I'm paying for it, now. My dad is coming up to visit me this weekend, so it's going to be hard to do homework then, too. Must to be balancing my time better between now and then. mood: busy

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October 11th, 2008

11:55 pm Rock on. Today was awesome. I slept in until 11:30 am, which was nice considering I have to get up at 8:30 am every morning during the week to get to class on time. Then I spent my afternoon washing my sheets and towels, cleaning my bathroom, putting my supersoft winter sheets on my bed, and cleaning the mildew off my windowsill. I'm especially excited about that last one--I've been neglecting that one for awhile. It's just one of those chores that my dad always did when I was a kid, so I was pretty proud I did it for myself. Then my brother and his girlfriend came up to visit me and her little sister who just started as a freshman at WWU this year. We went out to eat at the Mexican restaurant that everyone in Bellingham goes to to get the "Big Mama" margarita. Basically, it's a legend of this city--no one knows exactly how much alcohol is in it, but it must be a fair amount, and it's decently priced especially during happy hour. My brother really wanted to go, cause he's heard so much about it from my parents going there with me when they visited. After that we went to Mallards, which is another Bellingham special. They have super tasty, off-the-wall flavors of ice cream. I've been wanting to go there since I got back up here, and kept not having time, so going there was happy. Omnomnom, green tea ice cream. After they left, Kaylin, Monica, and I had a roommate night and went to a bar downtown to hear a spiffy alternative jazz band called Das Vibenbass, and they were groovy. It's the sort of bar that has lots of NW beer on tap and two inch drifts of peanut shells on the floor. I like it. Homework tomorrow. mood: happy music: Sublime-Garden Grove

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October 9th, 2008

03:40 pm So...I quit, sort of. I talked to Tim, and went from being catering staff to being on call. This is actually a good compromise for me. I won't have to deal with all these crappy hour-long shifts, and I'll be able to say "no" if I'm too busy when they want me to work. But this way, I'll still hopefully be able to make a little money every so often. I told Tim I would pretty much be willing to work as long as I was available and the length of the shifts was worth my time and effort. He seemed pretty understanding about it all. It's a big relief that I can stop worrying about it now. P.S. Toasted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are just as good as I remember them being when I was a kid. Craving satisfied, for the win. There is almost nothing as good as eating exactly the food you have a craving for. mood: relieved music: Rod Stewart-Have I Told You Lately

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12:25 am So I'm seriously considering quitting my job at catering. It's just becoming more hassle than it's worth. I've been back in Bellingham for two weeks now, and I've only been scheduled for three hour-ish long shifts. The thing about catering is that we don't get our schedule more than a week in advance, at best. It makes it very hard to plan the rest of my life, sometimes. The shifts I've been getting have been at inconvenient times, too. Like my next one is on Monday from 6-7 pm--I'm done with classes at 2:30 pm, which means I have to either find something to do on campus for that long, or go home to almost immediately come back. All that for an hour of pay just isn't cutting it. They also hired a ton of new people--too many. Sure, we'll have enough for people to not be overworked when we have a lot of hours, but that leaves us with no hours for anyone when business is slow. I would prefer to work a normal amount of hours regularly, and just have to work more when it's busy. That's how it used to be, so it was worth my time. I talked to my dad about it, and he says that he would support my quitting. It's not like it's exactly providing me with an income right now, anyway. It would just be one less stress in my life, and I could focus more on school. I'm really short on money right now, though. I got a lot fewer hours at my summer job than I did the previous summers. With the economy as it is, it would be hard to find a different job, especially in a college town. And for that matter, I don't think I have time to work right now, with how intense my senior year is going to be. I also just...don't like quitting things. Even though it makes sense to do so in this case, it's a hard choice for me. I haven't really not had a job since I got this catering job back when I was a freshman. I don't want to end up wasting my time when I could be working. I mean, I know what I should do, and that's probably to quit, but it's hard to actually DO it. Mrmph. mood: anxious

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