hi! it's not that wretched year 2002 anymore! yay!

so i wanted to write on some sort of year-in-review/good-bad/what's new since a year ago theme that is so...common. but fuck it, common is fine since no one but those who love and respect me in the morning read this thing anyway. (if you are not one of these people, please leave a comment! i wanna know who y'all are, seriously. it's not like i get a hundred hits from strangers every day.)

anyway.

a year ago, i was living in the harem with all original members. mike was visiting for a week or so. my dad was alive. i hadn't met chris or gone ga-ga over kevin. i had only recently acquired a turntable, and it was a cool old stereo setup, belt driven.

this year, i fell asleep before midnight on new year's eve (what, i only got about five hours of scattered sleep the night before!) at kevin's seattle apartment. my dad passed away in august. i'm living in an off-campus apartment with one roommate, a girl i knew from my first year in the dorms. the harem has grown immensely and most of its members no longer live in the apartment known as the harem. i currently own three turntables, one of which is the one i had a year ago that no longer works.

so, to sum up: 2002 sucked because it was long and stressful and my dad died. 2002 wasn't all bad because i made one very good new friend (chris) and several more related friends with the harem and i fell in love with a really cute and lovely boy who moved here to be with me.

on the music front, and i think i did this last year, there were some artists i discovered that i don't know how i wasn't into them before, or they were new. these include: wilco, neil young, 764-hero, beth orton, fugazi (well, it wasn't my first introduction or anything, but i actually got into them), the gossip, talking heads (similar to fugazi), and...surely there were others.

thanks to chris, i got even more obsessed with movies. this year featured a lot of movie-going and movie-renting (ahhh, scarecrow is LOVE), a fair amount of it with chris. i also embarked on an internship with imdb which made me feel like i had a teensy-tiny part in the works of the movie promotional machine and film-lovin' in general. very cool.

i also learned a lot this year. i think i've learned a lot about other people, in general...i'm not sure how to be less vague about that, but perhaps i'll expand at another time. i have learned about dealing with pressure and stress, which, for me, reached new heights multiple times this year. i have begun learning proper newswriting. i've learned a lot about music, movies, cooking, and media. i learned how to drive in seattle without freaking out, which also entailed learned how to drive to seattle. i have learned about the joys of insomnia and working a job with regular hours before classes start (7 and 7:30am). i have learned seattle geography and lore much more. i have learned about paying bills and filing tax returns. i would say i have learned how to drink, but i didn't really, i just learned how to drink a couple beverages a couple times and don't really intend to make a habit of it. i learned about silly airport security from flying to and from the bay area four times in the past year. i learned about growing plants and i learned about me and the world around me.

rah, rah.

now i've got 40 more minutes before worktime is over, and i have a bunch of things that need doing.

so, happy new year, may the coming year be less suck-filled than the last.

my new stuff has been temporarily assembled on the dining table. i need to buy a folding table for it so we can use the dining table for its intended purpose--and so it can be arranged in such a way that wires aren't stretched uncomfortably across the room--but hardwick's is closed on sundays and i don't feel the urge to make a goodwill run. i have a fantastic parking spot and don't wish to push my luck. i could walk home with a folding table from hardwick's. it would be kind of a sucky walk, but brief enough, considering it's two blocks from here. anyway, it's pretty neat, but i still have very little idea what i'm doing. that's why i have it: so i can learn. hee.

it's december 29, but i'm already working on my new year's resolution. in fact, i've probably been working on it for a few years now. it's not so much a resolution as a gradual lifestyle improvement. i am trying to be healthier, more aware, more deliberate, more responsible, etc. today i made the leap from buying regular milk to organic, which i've been avoiding because organic milk costs almost $1 more per half gallon. i also bought a thing of soymilk for some reason. i tried it alone; it tasted oddly ricey and not like something i'd drink straight. i tried it in coffee, and it failed to make it appear as milky as i like, but it satisfied. i should probably use vanilla instead of plain in coffee, but whatever. next time i buy coffee, i am supposed to try to get the fair trade certified variety, though i suspect the kind i already have isn't as evil as some kinds. it's from italy, not the rainforests of south america or something. but what the fuck do i know. i don't get too bogged down in the details as to why.

while my shopping trip this morning included no junk food purchases (unless snacking on eggplant hummus or raisins counts as junk food), i have eaten nearly an entire small pan of homemade brownies since last night's strange brownies-and-rear window binge. but good fucking lord, they are amazing. i mean, i love no pudge brownies, but they're no goddamn homemade butter 'n' eggs brownies, y'know? i just had a wedge with my soymilked coffee and nearly had an orgasm.

also, eggs are tasty. i can "feel better" buying free range organic eggs (which i am also somewhat convinced taste better), but mm. eggs. plain ol' scrambled eggs with a bit of salt and pepper.

having jana over for dinner tonight. she's offered to bring spinach, and i think i'm going to sautee the spinach with copious amounts of garlic, then mix it with some pasta (i don't remember what i got, but it was kind of like shells only not, very fancy-lookin') and pesto. i am positive this will go over well. i think she's also bringing bread and a beverage. anyway, this dish will, i suspect, hit on nearly all of jana's hot spots that don't clash with my own dietary restrictions, which is to say there will be no beef nor absurd quantities of salt.

i had a little dress-up fest last night that ended with a dress i should've worn to a wedding last august getting its zipper completely fucked. the saga of the dress is a sordid one. i bought it for my cousin ben's wedding, which took place two days after dad died. obviously, i didn't go to the wedding, but even before that, there were problems. first, i had to buy a stupid bra. i'm pretty well-endowed (D-cup) and the dress has a halter top, so i needed to get a special bra from a special store for big girls. they don't sell halter bras for anything larger than a C at the bon. this bra sucks, but it serves its purpose.

the dress also has issues with its zipper that drive me crazy. at first, we couldn't get the damn thing to ever zip up when it was on me, and it wasn't because i was too damn fat to get into it or anything. there was slack, dammit, the zipper just didn't like getting past this one seam. it was badly sewn.

fast forward to now, having given up on the stupid thing, i recently tried it on again and managed to zip it up. it fit wonderfully. it is a sexy motherfucking dress. i played dress up for a couple hours, posing for the bathroom mirror and ignoring upper arm flab and unshaven underarms. later, when i tried to remove it, the zipper wouldn't go down all the way. it got just past the evil seam and stopped. it wouldn't zip up, either. i had to pull it over my head, which wasn't very pretty because the thing is somewhat fitted, and my torso, believe it or not, is narrower than my shoulders.

so the dress is now, once again, relegated to the "evil clothes" pile. not many items reside in the "evil clothes" pile--there are a white blouse that shows nice cleavage but buckles between the buttons, my lovely old pimp coat that has a ripped-up old lining, and a silk blouse from a vintage shop with a print of photos and autographs of old movie stars that is too big and doesn't stay buttoned well. somewhere is also a bag of undergarments that i have deemed "evil" for their uselessness and crappiness, but they're not quite in the same league of evil.

i've been in a bit of a cleaning frenzy since coming home. things are in a state of disarray, which bothers me deeply. i am sure i inherited this from my mother. so, in addition to trying to keep the living room straightened up despite the temporary turntable setup, i tried to scrub the bathroom. the bathroom is disgusting. all the caulking in the bathtub is mildewey. it bothers me every day. it was also dusty, but that was easily cleaned. two applications of ajax and a hearty squirting of all-purpose cleaner later, the scum remains. surely i'm using the wrong products, but DAMMIT. even my ceiling is gross. i have no idea how, but it has yellowy gunk in the recesses of the spackling. there was gray stuff on the walls just above the shower that seemed to disappear slightly. this may also have just been shadows, but it looked gunky to me since i first noticed it. the red dye stains that had collected near the tub drain easily cleaned, but the more forboding grayish-bluish... stuff staining more of the tub floor remains. at least i will be able to keep the toilet clean, since it's brand spanking new and i have ajax and a toilet brush handy. i also cleaned the mirror, which is always satisfying.

i also mostly killed my plants while i was gone for a week. this doesn't surprise me at all. i'm a bad plant owner.

mom gave me a shiitake mushroom log for my birthday, so i must start that soon. i wonder what jenny will think about me growing mushrooms. hee.

there was a bottle of jones fufu berry soda sitting on my windowsill for the longest time. it was hidden from my view by the crappy broken blinds, but i knew it was there. kk gave it to me over a year ago and told me not to drink it until we were together again. for some reason, i kept it, unopened, until now. today, i finally dumped it all down the drain. now an empty bottle lives on the shelf.

supposed to go see two towers tomorrow after work with chris. yayay.

i think i shall go fuck around with stereo equipment some more and wait for jana to arrive. i love jana!

listening: sloan - bells on