i have had entirely too many talking-tos with my body lately, each of which contained a line resembling the following:

"yeeahhh, hi, body! you don't have to hurt randomly there. or there. please?"

at 4:25 this january afternoon, dusk has already settled in. everything is kind of a hazy shade of orange--oh, you thought i was going to make the obvious simon and garfunkel reference, didn't you!--and i suspect there is a gorgeous sunset somewhere behind me that i should inspect.

ah, yes, it is a lovely golden sunset. warming the whole goddamned sky with its radiance.

i'm doing kind-of-homework by coloring some drawings of bits and pieces of the nervous system in a vague effort to learn this anatomy stuff--i will be able to understand it, sure, but memorization takes more time--and listening to ben folds five, the unauthorized biography of reinhold messner, thinkin'. i can't seem to force my mind off the woman i helped earlier today at work, who later came to the desk to ask me to go to church with her. this was not a pedro situation so much; i actually felt kind of bad and not violated from the encounter. simply... awkward. it's hard to tell people "no" when they're not actively harming you or when you want to prevent uncomfortable situations in the future, you know? she's very nice, comes into the library often, and i've helped her out before. so she came over and talked to me for a bit. asked me the usual stuff, what year am i, what's my major, that sort of thing. then she asked if i went to church, and inside, i groaned. "uhmm... no..." she was just reaching out, i know she meant well, and when she realized i was not really into it, she seemed embarrassed. so i feel bad. i wasn't outwardly rude, i don't think; i told her i appreciated the offer and it sounded nice and all that, but it wasn't really my bag presently.

i should... really... just get "do not convert" tattooed on my forehead or something. it's not that i hate christians or anything, i don't; it's just that i don't want to get into a conversation about my philosophies, religious history, and current personal beliefs when i'm at work or trying to get home. that seems fair enough to me. i don't go up to people and say, "hey, you know... friday nights, i hang out in my apartment and watch videos. sometimes i'll even break out the vinyl and sit on the couch so it doesn't skip. and it's really fun. by the way, are you sure you believe in jesus? cos i'm not sure i do, and it's great."

what can i say, evangelism in its popular form is beyond me. even when it comes from perfectly nice people.

yesterday, friday, was the last day of classes for the first week of winter quarter. the first week was tiring and busy, but i realized that i had no plans for the weekend beyond going to work and doing homework and quickly got mildly depressed. i read the stranger for inspiration; no help. there are a couple good shows going on this week, but they are 21+, those age-discriminating bastards. i'm a mere 11 months short of this lofty age restriction, and all i want to do is see pink martini and/or dub narcotic sound system... again, yes, but still. good concerts that i can't go to are bad. and there are no good movies coming out this weekend. so i got whiny for awhile.

fortunately, my whininess did not really last. i remembered josie and anna's plan to watch the 6-hour a&e miniseries pride and prejudice that evening and regained some semblance of joy. mm, jane austen and colin firth. mm. such prettiness to behold. such building tension. such girly joy. like an amazing orgasm, slow to build, almost to the point of frustration, and then... such blissful release.

i made myself some dinner, but while i was eating it, josie informed me that they were going to order pizza. an hour later, i chipped in $4, and after the pizza came, i willingly ate a few slices. how weird of me.

they also started making margaritas. they asked if i wanted one, i said sure. they asked if i wanted it virgin, i said i didn't care, because i didn't, for some reason, last night. so they made this lime stuff that was very pretty and asked me to try it. i obliged. blleeschhh. lime plus salt is yummy, but throw copious amounts of nasty-tasting alcohol into the equation and ew. so they made a blenderful of supposedly virgin strawberry daquiris, but informed me that anna had "forgotten" to make it virgin--not that i doubt her forgetfulness, but it seems more appropriate in quotes--though she promised there was only a little tiny amount in there that i wouldn't even taste. so i had a couple small glasses, and it was tasty. i didn't taste alcohol, but i do think i was a little tipsy. at any rate, i felt weird for about an hour. i'm not sure if that was psychological, or an actual effect of drinking an amount of alcohol probably equal to a dose of nyquil (but, y'know, without nyquil's added sedatives and such).

i treat alcohol as if i were 12 and it were a scary weird thing. except i'm 20, and it still is a scary weird thing. what the...

ok, small rant time: i have my reasons for not drinking, for not even wanting to really try it. and it annoys me when people tell me that they think i should try it at least once because they think everyone should, just to know what it's like. i dunno, if i'm going to drink, i want a pretty fucking good, preferably culinary, reason for doing so. i don't want it to be something that's just omnipresent, an easy out for a fun time on saturday night, a fucking waste of my time. because i know myself, and i am pretty goddamned sure that's what it'd turn into if i let my little principle go. so i can make excuses--i don't like it (true to a certain extent), whatever. but still it's there, all the time. it just seems stupid for me. i'm not trying to get up on a prohibitionist soapbox or anything, i'm simply saying that, for me, personally, drinking should not be an option, and i have to expend a lot of energy and forego a lot of potentially fun experiences to keep it that way. and that's ok, that's the way i want it to be, the way it has to be. just... kind of frustrating. but then, what in life isn't, eh?

so now it's saturday morning, 11am, and i'm at work. i've been here an hour. someone from downstairs was just up here, showing some other guy how to fix copier jams and put paper in the printers. i don't know why; this lab is our jurisdiction, and people from downstairs have equipment they deal with on their own. so that's a little weird.

i've been listening to cat stevens since last night. mm. makes me want to watch harold and maude again. and again and again.

i don't think anything going on tonight, at least nothing i know is planned. maybe i'll just watch my video after i go to trader joe's. maybe i'll swing by second time around and see if they have any tom waits vinyl. maybe i'll be good and do some writing or something. heh. blah.

these long lists of maybes that my head devises when i know i have little intention of doing any of them are very dull to read, no?

sometimes i'm very tempted to write the things my head says i should never write in any place someone else would ever see them. someday i'll probably write a whole novel that includes these things, but they're the sort of things i wouldn't, say, post on my blog here. it just occurs to me that my head dreams up some pretty bizarre little twists of phrase and i'm never allowing them to be written, for the greater good or whatever.

for example, what would you do if you started reading my blog and all of a sudden i'm talking about what i think when i'm having an orgasm? i mean, would that freak you out, intrigue you further but make you wish i wasn't doing site statistics so i couldn't tell you read it so much, or probably creep me out if i knew what you were thinking?

meh. i need to make myself work on a writing project that isn't just stupid blog postings. damn you, english major, for being lame about writing classes! or maybe i'd be writing right now!!

oh, wait. i am writing.

i turned in my application for the psych major today, but i still need colored pencils. (the two are not really related, but they are the main events of my day besides going to class.)

it's time for more me-time before my last class. yay.

"web... browser?" the law student said, obviously confused.

that's beautiful.

murrrr.. it's 7:40am, my back hurts, i have to get to class in a few minutes, mail.com decided to start charging $9.95 a year for the "premium service" of mail forwarding (and that's the low low introductory rate!!), and now blogger *still* won't let me publish. it was down all evening for such services, too, and we were adding quotes to the harem like madwomen. ah well, free is what you pay for, free is what you get, i suppose.

it's my first day back to work after break. work is good. i picked up a paycheck that i should've picked up before break started after paul reminded me, "i want to make sure you're not working for free!" i'm so bad about that. i should be good and set up direct deposit, but, oh, so lazy.

i skipped my first class this morning, the lovely and potentially interesting 8:30-in-the-frickin'-a.m. zoology 118, a.k.a. elementary human physiology, because as i prepared to leave, my back went out. well, i'm not sure that that's the most accurate portrayal, but it fucked the fuck up, basically. i leaned over to grab my shoes or backpack or something and bam! world of pain. hurt to move anything in my body kind of pain; hurt to breathe. i made my way to christine's door and said, "hey, what do you do when your back is killing you and it hurts to move?" all the while reflexively muttering obscenities under my breath to denote the amount of pain. both she and anna gasped and rushed to insist that i skip class and lie down. i managed to get a small glass of water and down some ibuprofen and did just that, figuring, after some self-debate, that missing the second day of class should not be extremely detrimental in the long run when death was on the line. so i lay down in my bed, trying to get comfortable, too stiff to change my position much. i tried doing a little yoga--legs up the wall!--which helped some, then some reading--about ten to 15 more pages in anais nin's (forgive the lack of umlaat) a spy in the house of love--before giving up to sleep for twenty minutes. much of the time, my head felt clouded with random princess bride quotes and ween's song "spinal meningitis (got me down)." yeah, bad.

i did make it to my first section of poli sci, which got out early. i checked out the new husky den, which is now pretty and more flowing and has a freaking pagliacci's--i lose--and got two cups of hot water for my lunch. mm, thai kitchen mushroom medley soup bowl! ready in three minutes! better than ramen! but oh, how the pizza called. i resisted, for now. and here i am at work again. whee.

the only thing that really gets me about people right now is their hard-headed insistence that floppy disks are some kind of indestructable data archival format. no, it's never that their precious brand-new floppy that they swear worked in their home machine just this morning is crappy due to its naturally throwaway, unreliable state; it's the operating system on our lab computers, or, better yet, the drives themselves! they want this data on this floppy, gosh darn it, and it must be in there somewhere. these things are flawless, you know. it makes me really happy.

almost as happy as falling on the stairs the second time i came home yesterday. that was great.

i'm starving again, but i'm off work in just over an hour and can have, umm... yay, a chocolate mint balance bar! surely that will tide me over for at least an hour. surely. truly. respectfully.

i filled out my application for the psych major last night, and tonight or tomorrow i should swing by schmitz for an unofficial copy of my transcript so i can turn it in. by the sixth week of the quarter, i should have a letter stating my admission to the department, and then i will be a spiffy ol' psych major. neat.

but for now, i think i will return to staring, glass-eyed, at the many pages of my anatomy text, wondering if i will indeed bother to pick up that coloring book becky recommends that now seems entirely too useful to me.

now that i'm fed and listening to some music (lucinda williams, which can more or less be rightly classified as country, yes, but you can shut the fuck up because it's good), i think i can properly blog.

i'm so open-minded that my brains are falling out, by the way. (tm a letter to the editor that appeared in the olympian over the summer)

the new year seems to be settling into a pleasant, bland grayness. everyone seems tired of the erratic insanity--how insanity could not be erratic, i don't know; but i suppose 2001's insanity was especially erratic--and wishes things would maybe just calm down and be okay for awhile. not great, we know that's too much to ask, but, you know, just ok, that would be sweet, thanks. talking to whatever higher power they believe or disbelieve with that glimmer of fading hope.

at the same time, maybe we're just making last year out to be some kind of bad guy that it isn't. calling it what most felt it was, "a year like none other," seems to give the year itself too much power. what good would that do?

i'm sure you're enjoying my half-baked thoughts about the past year, but now i'm going to make a WILD TRANSITION to events that recently occurred because i goddamned want to.

maybe not so wild. i was going to talk about new years eve.

my roommates threw a party. everyone was there. we hid in my room and watched harold and maude, which is quite possibly my most favorite movie ever. i think my little brother is trying to emulate harold's style now, but anyway. there were so many people here, all drunk. in the morning, the kitchen counters were lined with myriad varieties of half-empty alcohol bottles, trash was strewn on the floor, five people were asleep on the dirty living room floor, and even the bathroom contained two bottles of corona. there were puke stains in christine's sink and reid's furry tiger bathbat had been dragged into one of the toilet stalls. they were loud all fucking night long. i was, of course, a snob as soon as more than a few people had arrived, claiming claustrophobia, and in the morning refusing to assist in clean-up. i guess the affinity for large, loud, drunken parties is simply not within me. ah well. and i could've been such a lush.

jesus, i'm such a fucking snob. someone give me a bloody nose.

prior to the party, becky visited and hung out with mike and i. they played nintendo and we all watched the addams family while no one else was home, eerily enough. it was fun. becky and mike didn't get on each other's nerves, and it's always a plus when the best friend doesn't hate the boy. she has a tendency to do that. :)

mike's last night in town, we planned to see beethoven's 9th performed at benaroya hall for the student rush price of $10, but when we got there, the show was sold out, so the student rate wasn't valid. we could've gotten into two seats, one behind the other, with a partially obstruced view, for the low-low half price of $22.50! so no. mike wanted more donuts from the little donut booth in the market, but i assured him it was closed. we walked to the market, anyway, and it was, indeed, closed. i then goaded him into taking the monorail to the seattle center for the hell of it, and there we walked around. the center, when nothing else is actually happening, is a very strange place. i'm used to it at bumbershoot, when there are thousands of people crammed into every possible space and all kinds of noise and stimulation. now there were a handful of people scattered about the grounds, so at the fountain, in the dark, we were alone but for the white christmas lights on the rows of trees and the booming voice of the key arena's general announcements. it was especially surreal.

yay, blogger's publishing is temporarily unavailable, and i have to go now.

i was thinking about blogging a little earlier, but then i went into the kitchen to make some lunch and christine destroyed my thoughts with her chorus of zip-a-dee doo dah.

it's been two hours since i left michael in the security line at seatac, and i'm still settling and collecting my thoughts on the past week and a half. well, first of all, it was great: we hung out, we watched a ton of great movies, we saw my friends, we ate good food, we saw seattle, and we, uh... jesus, i don't know why i have a mental block that makes me dance around the matter, but... we were intimate, and that was incredibly super nice. and now i'm sad that he's gone, because i miss him and what we had in that space that was not reality, but ten times nicer and more impossible and unbelievable. too good to be true, because it was, i guess. or at least too good to last.

it wasn't reality, but it was a nice place to be for awhile. to put it mildly.

tomorrow i'll wake up around 7:15, stumble out of bed and into the shower, prepare a breakfast for myself--probably my first bowl of cereal in over a week--maybe read the paper and talk to my other roommates who are up that early, and run off to a class. then come home for two hours, another class, lather, rinse, repeat. i will try not to get too distracted by the memory of what was only a day before.

of course, reality has its benefits. the whole twin bed to myself, all the music i like, solitude, etc. they're little things, but important. sitting at the computer can feel less like wasting time than it would if he were here--maybe that's not such a good thing. my leg hair will get unruly once again. i'll watch tv and irk endlessly. i'll go to work. things will just... go back to normal.

i can't help but think in mournful tones of my poetic bullshit; there's nothing like focusing on what is to come or what has passed so much that you forget how to enjoy the present.

i got hit on by a large old man named pedro today in pioneer square. he said we should get married and go to heaven together, then urged me to go to church and call him. he gave me fliers: one to write his number, apartment number, and a bible verse he wanted me to read, and another to post in a communal area. i told him my name was amy, that i didn't have an 'icebox' or a phone (while fingering my cel in the left pocket of my sweatshirt), and that, no, even if he gave me his number he wouldn't call. but he gave it to me anyway, and i wrote it down on the fliers that said in large letters 'JESUS SAVES' just to appease him and hope he went away. he moved a little, telling me to visit him and we could go to heaven together, then handed me another flier to pass to the quiet guy in the wheelchair next to me. i was never so grateful to see my bus pull up to the curb.

but damn, do i miss mike. it isn't wise and it isn't fair, but that's how it is. we decided to leave it open--if the opportunity arises to see each other again, then so be it... but we're not going to plan on it. long distance is bad, no matter how wonderful the visits to unreality can be.