ode on a bowl of cereal.

o basic 4, with your flakes so good,
your puffed rice so pure and raisins so sweet,
cranberries and figs and apples aplenty,
almond slivers and magnificent nut clusters,
you turn the milk a sweet shade of nutrition
and remind me that beyond this pale, dark dungeon
lies a world of sunshine
and a day that's spread out before me.
i can almost even begin to forget
the fda's semi-recent revisions of the food pyramid
which place fruit and vegetables in separate categories,
thus the existence of 5, not 4, basic food groups.

freeze-dried broccoli would not moisten well in milk.

listening: cat power - nude as the news

i'm worried about money and time.

money shouldn't worry me as much as it does...i think i'm ok in that department, but still. i had to write a pair of checks monday morning for a substantial sum (deposit + screening fees), and jenny still owes me cash for her half of that. i think i have a paycheck to pick up tomorrow, too. yay. but still, i have to eat and there will be money spent in california next month, to be sure, not to mention expenditures for all the stuff the apartment will need. this means i must curb the desires of my heart when it leaps at cds, vinyl, movies, shows (beside the three already scheduled) or better-than-dirt-cheap meals out. most things can wait, right? i HAVE to buy textbooks soon, i HAVE to pay part of the last month's rent when i move in, i HAVE to get some other things for the apartment. since i am going to california and webley has a new cd, it will be relatively necessary to spend money there, too. i just need to curb my spending and try to write things down, so i remember what i want to buy next time i actually have the available cash. or maybe this is the beginning of the end of those days. sigh.

time...well, it burps a lot these days. i have big pockets i can't seem to make myself do anything productive with, then i have stretches that are crammed so full of stuff i feel asthmatic and lightheaded. i will get everything done, but i am always trying to plan ahead and be prepared, which often serves me surprisingly well, but if i am unable to do it, i become very anxious. obviously, anxiety isn't especially healthy for long stretches. on the other hand, if i manage not to work on it at all, i miss out on things. i don't know. things are so strange! organizing thoughts is difficult at times, especially when you have to coordinate them with multiple conflicting events. and so on and so forth.

i am looking forward to california, though. i'll get to see kevin and sammy and go see webley and luna with them! :)

listening: the beatles - i feel fine

today, state of being.

i am 20 years old, female, brown hair, hazel eyes, glasses, freckles. i am employed as a student assistant in a computer lab in a library on the campus where i presently attend classes related to psychology and journalism. two years from now, i will most likely be out of school, and possibly out of this city.

i live with five other girls. two girls are new this quarter; two others lived with us before, but are now in london for the spring. the original six were like family. now things are still pleasant, if not the same. i'm moving in a little over a month to an apartment a few blocks from here, where i will live with only one other girl.

this entry was going nowhere. i had more to it in my head, but it sucks.

i'm in that rut again where the words come at inconvenient times and fail to flow when an outlet is available. fucking wonderful.

back to the laziness of late morning thursday.

listening: rem - belong

what a completely fucking crazy day!

i had work first thing in the morning, as usual for tuesday. then i had a cookie in the rotunda and read the daily. then i went to my history lecture. pretty standard stuff. the prof talked about hippies today. i love hippies.

then i had to run up about 4.5 flights of stairs (spread over a couple blocks) to meet with amanda and jane about psych lab stuff, which took about 45 minutes, leaving me 15 minutes to run back to south campus (3 flights of stairs) for my class. i had five minutes to eat lunch, which ended up being one half of the turkey sandwich i made this morning shoved in my face before going into class. i had to leave class a little under an hour early and haul ass back to north campus and to the third floor (3.5 flights of stairs) of the communications building for the new editorial journalism majors meeting, which was MANDATORY. yip. it was informative, etc. i turned in a job application at the gateway center undergrad advising, too. yay.

then i came home and vegged for awhile. then i made spaghetti squash for dinner. after i ate it, i vegged a little more before heading to the psych lab to do some teleform scanning stuff, but when i got there, the packets i needed were...disorganized, confusing, and i couldn't find the ones that fucked up on me last friday, so i went home. also, the door to the lab *shocks* me, which is a mild irritation. sometimes i can't help but wonder if these shocking properties are on purpose, and i'm being filmed for a psych experiment. heh.

i came back home and watched vh1 with jana for awhile. jana is fun to hang out and watch tv and listen to music with. then gilmore girls was on, so i was watching that, although i have no idea why i still watch the show. the witty dialogue is increasingly sparse and the plot takes over and just barrels along obnoxiously. feh.

then some weird stuff happened and i was talking to a bajillion people and all of a sudden i'm having a Talk with mike about important issues relating to our friendship and such and kevin is splitting the cost of a plane ticket to california with me for june 7-11 so i can go see webley and luna with him and sammy which is just so INDESCRIBABLY cool that i feel there must be some catch i'm neglecting. this summer is going to be wild, i can feel it already.

and now i'm warm and have been sitting A LONG TIME and need to pee! so off i go. and there is your update on the life of me.

listening: x-press 2 with david byrne - lazy

mm, such a tiring, exhaustive, productive, good day.

at work, i did job application stuff for three jobs. heh. is there anything wrong with printing resumes (for free) at my current job? i don't think it's a big deal, but i have no sense of etiquette. heh.

after work, i ate some quick lunch--leftover veggie soup that i made last night after a lovely early evening uwajimaya run--and ran up to lander to meet jenny and begin the great apartment hunt. we collected information for awhile, then caught a bus up to 52nd to check out some place up there on 15th. this place was...eh, all right. she knew the people living across the hall, which turned out to be Not a good thing, since they just got moved to a month-to-month lease for one of the guys smoking in the specifically nonsmoking unit. the place itself seemed in fairly good repair, if outdated (and f'ugly), and the manager was cool enough, but he made it a point to tell us he hated the landlord. this was not a good sign, but we took copies of the application, anyway, and went to check out the other places.

the next place was on 16th, smack dab across the street from north campus and in the middle of greek row. i had actually seen the place before when chris, josie, and i were looking for 3-bedroom units last year, and was unimpressed. they are overpriced for what they are, and the bedrooms are closet-sized. also, greek row makes me nervous, but that is a minor detail. we ended up leaving because the current residents of the unit he wanted to show us weren't home to approve, and it was out of our price range, anyway.

then we trekked down to the office of a bunch of places on 8th and 43rd. this turned out well. they showed us floorplans and made recommendations and got us into a couple units to give us an idea. we liked. we liked a lot. they were reasonably priced. the location was good. we left only to check out the last place on our list, which was kind of a bust because the girl in the office was inundated with people debating signing leases, ready to sign leases, confusing prices, people wanting to see random apartments, etc. it was crazy. the location was a little better (12th and 42nd), but this was nuts. we ended up seeing a couple of the units and decided we really didn't like them at all. jenny made a few calls to the other place and we went back to the office and got to see the unit we would be renting right at closing. they're closed on sunday, and we told the guy we'd be back monday morning around the time he officially opens to give him a deposit check. so that's the plan, stan. we've (almost) got a place!

anyway, the place is kind of exciting. i am not sure yet when we will be able to move in or how money stuff works out, but i'm sure it will. it has to. it always has before. the living room is really big and there are two large windows, one of which is a garden window. it's a corner unit on the first floor. the bedrooms are about equal in size. the only drawback, i can see, is that the kitchen is miniscule and hides behind the front door like a closet of shame and 1950s motherly filth. i will just have to expand my preparation area into the living space, which shouldn't be a problem. it'll be fun fixing the place up to be our rockin' pad. jenny stipulated at first that there would be NO THRIFT STORE COUCHES, but i convinced her we shouldn't completely avoid them. i even offered to smell the couches so she didn't have to. anyway. enough.

today has been sooooo cold. i think it was under 50 degrees officially, but there was such an awful wind that it felt like winter. my hands began to feel arthritic after clutching a notebook in such elements. uf.

graylan and i also disappeared for two hours to wallingford to eat, when we told chris we'd gone to agua verde (about two blocks from here). hee. it was good, though. lots of fun. but COLD.

i also saw a streetcar named desire for the first time. i was sleepy, though, so i don't think i took it in with full effect. it was still very good, though. it's easy to forget that marlon brando was once considered sexy when you know him best in apocalypse now and the godfather.

listening: piebald - grace kelly with wings