ok, that last entry supposedly went up, but it isn't loading. kthx, blogger.

all right, i skipped a whole day. god forbid. here now for your reading (dis)pleasure is an update on the goings-on in the life of me.

i realized last night that, if i did the math right, i could very easily graduate with my double major in psych and communications at the end of next summer. that would mean i would have completed my undergrad requirements in a little over three years. after this summer, i need to take three psych classes (a 400-level, a lab, and stats), and there are only six journalism classes i need to take. that's a full schedule for three terms, leaving over 11 credits of whatever i want to get up to the 180 required for graduation.

to most people, this might seem like a great thing. school sucks, right?

when i figured it out, i felt like i had just been diagnosed with a terminal illness and told i had a year to live. i suppose that's a bit dramatic, but considering i had definitely figured i'd be spending at least a full four years here, if not longer, especially with a double major, it was surprising. i actually -wanted- to relish the college experience for as long as possible. as it is, i could be out of here less than a year after i turn 21, which is the age i can actually fully enjoy the benefits this city has to offer. most of my friends are going to be here longer, i'm sure, even the ones who have already been here longer. it scares me to death to think that i have only about a year and a half to use what resources being an undergrad at this large institution has to offer me. it creeps me out. i haven't really thought about what i'd do when i finished, because i figured i'd have longer to think about it. at the very least, i'd have more time to do things like internships.

i often feel i walk too fast through life. i pass things i enjoy, and for a moment i take them in, but as soon as the moment passes, i keep right on going. much of my enjoyment of these things comes in memories and fantasies, which easily fit into whatever other task is at hand. at the same time, i don't know what i'd do if i just tried to slow down.

anyway. less general, more specific. i have a few options, i guess. i need to explore them further.

1. finish college, go to work. work at what? i don't know. if i am smart, i will get an internship this or next summer doing... journalism-y things, i guess, since that is my more technical major and doesn't require grad school or other training to really use, i think. i could go back to school later if i felt like it.

2. finish college, "travel" or whatever it is people like to say they will do when they are free from the confines of academia for a period of time. i like to travel. i don't know what i'd do with myself, though. it needs a higher purpose than just "traveling." but it's a thought.

3. go to grad school. i am not sure what i would study in grad school, but if i'm not bored to death of schooling at that point, it's a definite possibility. i will be looking into it. i didn't think i'd be going to grad school right away, but i also thought i'd be bored of school after five years! now school is just getting more and more exciting, and i realize i -won't- be here forever. what the...

4. spread out my credits so i end up taking a full four years. this is appealing on some levels, but at the same time, it doesn't make a *ton* of sense. i *could* be doing other things. also, my parents *could* be paying a lot less money if i finish school early! it seems unfair to burden them with more costs than necessary when they are already so generous as to pay for school.

those are the only options i am considering right now. junk ideas about dropping out or finishing school to move back in with my parents and wither away and bemoan my pathetic condition back in olympia are not even surfacing except as personal jokes. :)

if i finish school, i also have to consider whether i want to stay in seattle or move somewhere else. i've lately found myself increasingly drawn to the bay area or vancouver b.c., though i do enjoy seattle a lot. if i choose to work and can find a job here, i would definitely stay up here for awhile. i would consider uw for grad school. (if i do grad school, it would probably be in psych of some sort, anyway.) at the same time, i've never lived outside the northwest. (vancouver is *southwest* canada, so it would not be living in the northwest, it would be living abroad. heh.) i have friends in the bay area, and there is a crapload of stuff to do there. canada is lovely, too. there are a lot of good schools in the bay area, and i know of at least one major university in vancouver (ubc--in one of my favorite areas of the city, too). i don't know a lot about any of them or their grad school programs or anything, though. this requires research.

some things to think about on a saturday morning!

i need to go back to olympia and buy nice-smelling candles and soap after work. maybe i am treating my mom to lunch. tomorrow i am going to apollo's with becky. yay! olympia is fun in small doses...

stuck in my head: piebald - the monkey vs. the robot

oh yeah. i got into journalism. so i'm a crazy double major now. i have received 12 emails from the cmu advisor today alone. yeeeeesh. there are a fuckton of opportunities in that program, anyway, and that is neat.

and i might do a writing thing for SIFF.

and i've decided that i want to get an internship sometime. i'd kind of like to intern at the stranger. heh.

and i might not have my job anymore due to budget cuts! time will tell. feh.

my mom is telling me to look into getting a studio at these places that basically sound like dorms, only they're single rooms and you don't have to go through hfs (meaning you can get a normal goddamned lease, i guess). but the set-up sounds otherwise rather similar. and they're like $600 a month. feh.

much with the "feh."

i think i need a floorgy.

christine might not be able to stay up here this summer. her parents have decided it's "not necessary" or something, and she's rather displeased with that, so she's trying to convince them otherwise. she -really- doesn't want to go home. i don't want her to go home, either! she's going to russia in september and we won't see her until next year! much sadness!

oh yeah. i need to put together that ten songs i'd play on the radio list and see if i can still get an interview for the new uw online radio station that may actually open up shop in the fall. they don't know yet! heh. i should check.

and i should read a book by tomorrow so i don't act like a complete silent dunce (just a silent listener) in history section tomorrow.

teetotalitarianists. hee. i heart nick cave.

listening: nick cave and the bad seeds - god is in the house

i think i could listen to unwound's "below the salt" on repeat all day. it's certainly been on repeat in my fucking head all day. it's quite lovely.

i came home all ready to write some stuff based on my psych lecture today, but it seems to be flying away... away... let's try, anyway.

starting out with the day. writing words helps create more words sometimes. i had french toast for breakfast and talked to my mom. it's always good to talk to my mom. i headed to the psych lab around 10, where i completed coding of the duo recalls in exactly the amount of time i had alotted for myself. then i walked to the "STAFF ONLY" part of the health sciences library and picked up a paycheck. then i walked from there all the way the fuck up to 47th and university, where my bank is, to make a deposit. this is a long, uphill walk, but my feet survived it admirably. after completing my banking business, i picked up a couple necessary items from bartell's and went to the university bookstore to meet chris. he was a few minutes late; i was a few minutes early. he had decided he didn't want to buy a book that day, so we walked to the continental and had lunch. there was a large lunch party, so our food--we both had the gyro platter, yummy--was a little slow. i determined that i needed to start walking south by 1:15 to make it to my 1:30 class in south campus, so we did. it's kind of a long walk, but i got to class exactly on time.

the lecture today was about depression and suicide. fun topics.

i've had at least one or two major depressive episodes. this is not exactly just self-diagnosis; i did see a therapist for awhile and my family physician told me i was depressed. i think i fit the diagnostic criteria. anyway, depression is not happy, right? heh. but it is goddamned interesting.

i started thinking about how i'm not depressed now, and how that happened, or why, and i'm not entirely sure there's a reason. i have definitely been feeling more confident lately; i guess i'm finally really settling in. at the same time, though, at least one of my episodes occurred while life seemed to be going well--there was some stress from imminent life changes which probably factored, but overall, life was good.

i thought about the people around me who have dealt with depression. friends... and my cousin, who just recently committed suicide. i don't know why. i am not sure it would be right of me to ask questions. dr. zoellner read us someone's suicide note... showed us film of people who had attempted suicide... all that stuff. and i couldn't imagine getting to that point of desperation.. my episodes were never that bad. they sucked, but i don't know. obviously, things are different for everyone who suffers.

i started thinking of things for which i am grateful. they're too numerous to list.

i know i had more thoughts, and they were a hell of a lot deeper than this.

but fuck it.

it's music time. this song is amazing. ...! ah! ah! no, it's fucking amazing. no contest.

listening: nick cave and the bad seeds - fifteen feet of pure white snow

nothing really happened today.

i went to the psych lab to meet with amanda and jane. i coded some. i picked up a library book. i went to class. i ate lunch. i went to work. i have spent a large portion of my day talking to chris and becky online. my shoulderblades are displeased. i am feeling pretty unproductive. yay for busy-ness.

listening: guster - airport song

let's see. today.

i'm only doing this because i feel somehow obligated.

woke up at 7:33. didn't want to. had to work at 9. busy, ugly day expected. (lated admitted my mistaken hasty judgment, but at 7:30, it was glum.) showered, dressed, realized, oh crap, it's 8:24 and i haven't eaten or brushed my teeth. did both in record time (yay for english muffins) and proceeded to fold my socks from yesterday's laundry to fill in the remaining minutes. still got to work about five minutes early.

at work, i studied for psych like a crazy motherfucker. like i had an anxiety disorder (since that was part of the test). it was rigorous, but i think i was starting to smart and stress for no good reason. after work, i spent 20 minutes clearing my head in the rotunda with a copy of the daily. good, mindless "journalism." then it was time for history class, where the lecture on suburbanization and culture in the 50s concluded with dr. maeda having a "ginsberg was so brilliant" spazz. not that i dislike ginsberg or anything; i thought it was cute. i made a short list of annoying verbal quirks in the margins of my notes.

i spent lunch at south campus center. i treated myself to one of the oodles salads with the lime ginger dressing.. ooohhh. those are yummy little bastards. i just wish they wouldn't put a fucking HANDFUL of fried wonton wrappers on top of them. i have to set half of them aside (and they fall off my plate) because i just don't need all that crunchy fattiness. oh, yeah, and i studied for psych some more.

then i went to psych! it was thrilling. my ta put on a cd and we listened to "land down under" or whatever it's called (yeah, i know, i'm a music snob, i should know this, but i don't, fuck me) before they passed out the exams. it took me around a half an hour to answer the 40 questions. i think i did all right. yay.

i came home and did stuff. i wrote like...part of a page of fiction, which is a first for me in quite awhile. it isn't really going anywhere yet, though, so it was just an exercise, i guess. whatever. i called the SIFF volunteer person and she decided i should come in on friday afternoon and talk to someone from this other department about doing writing for them, pre-festival. and then, of course, i could do ushering and whatnot during the festival. anyway, that is cool. volunteering was mad fun last year, though i didn't do anything pre-festival, this sounds like it will be good experience if they want me.

i have been up to other things, but otherwise, it's been mostly uneventful.

i think i'll go to olympia this weekend. wouldn't that be a party?

listening: terrene - rise and shine

as if i needed more things to add to the list of music i want to buy... terrene. one of the two guys involved in this used to post to alt.music.smash-pumpkins. i used to listen to his stuff (when he called it kimaira). i saw some guy with the same name posting to portal of evil, and bam. there he is again, still making cool music. so i should buy some shit, eventually. they have downloads! i love bands with downloads. they make me want to spend so goddamned much money.

listening: tom waits - eggs and sausage (in a cadillac with susan michelson)

wow, yay for being productive. i just did all the coding i have to do for now in less than an hour. i sat in the office/lab without another human being in the building for all i know and hummed to myself. i was humming cat stevens, because at goodwill the other day, i picked up cat stevens' teaser and the firecat lp (99 cents! thrifting has been kind to my cat stevens collection) (another side note: the picture of cat stevens on the liners for the album looks remarkably like jeremy sisto as brenda's brother, billy, on six feet under) and this morning i listened to it. ooooooh. i love me some cat stevens sometimes. anyway, yeah, i hummed my way to superproductivity this afternoon.

now just to do something productive at a home setting, like reading my psych text. that would be cool. it's interesting, too, i just need to sit still and DO it. it can be hard sometimes. :)

listening: cat stevens - changes iv

hello!

i have just enjoyed a breakfastgasm in the form of trader joe's french toast (low fat, frozen, AND delicious! of course!) with mashed raspberries and honey. it is my favorite breakfast lately, although not appropriate for daily consumption. that would be a lot of boxes of french toast. sometimes i just need to come down from that cloud and eat a bowl of delicious breakfast cereal with raspberries on top or a delicious whole wheat english muffin with raspberry preserves. hmm. i think the pattern is grain product + raspberry product = in my mouth.*

i have a sixth roommate once again. christine's friend jen was living in a triple and jumped at the chance to have her own bedroom, even if it is only for seven weeks, so she moved in last night. in an email, she mentioned that her boyfriend would be helping her move in. her boyfriend, it turned out, is a guy i know from high school, jeff. i see him at webley shows. they're gonna come with us to MAYDAY. at any rate, it was amusing and cool to catch up or whatever you want to call it. we didn't really know each other, but we did know a lot of the same people. chris was also over yesterday, and a whole bunch of us at the harem played balderdash last night. i had never played balderdash before, but i kicked fucking ass because people kept voting for my silly-but-untrue answers. haha, suckers. also, that the person who collects all the false answers and has to read them to the group without laughing is referred to as "the dasher" is really stupid.

my writing lately sucks. i'm sorry. it hasn't exactly been my focus.

speaking of which, i should, you know, study for psych or go to the psych lab for an hour or so or do psych in some other fashion. or just discover my inner child, who enjoys sitting on her ass watching sesame street.

* "in my mouth" (tm) mike

listening: frequency db - reliance