umm... masturbate for peace.

any little thing i can do to help, eh?

...

listening: 764-hero - you were a party

this is the geekiest song i have heard in awhile. heh.

i am feeling very uninspired and unexcited by life. i want something cool to look forward to, but there isn't really anything. oh well.

i can't listen to ben folds five's "regrets" without beating myself up, either.

need somethign to do. don't want to do anything.

also, heh. people are odd. at least this time in a cute way. (thanks, aja!)

hi. i am bored. bored, bored, bored.

it's kind of nice to be bored, but unemotionally so--the past few times i've been bored on a friday night it resulted in massive depression, which is less than fun! so! now i'm just tired and bored. and cold. because apparently, the heater in my room is incapable of heating beyond that foot of air next to it. it's cold when my hands are in my lap or on the keyboard, but warm when i cross over into mouse territory. go figure.

i was *this close* to an exciting, spontaneous weekend adventure. last night, i was talking to my mom and sister in an aim chat room, trying to get mom to see margaret cho with me in may. the date was all wrong for her (and, if i am a good sister, me as well; paul's piece is premiering that night), so we began seeking other dates in nearby cities. we soon learned that she was to play saturday night in vancouver. vancouver! saturday! we're all free! mom lamented that margot was not here. she found airfare that wasn't obscene for friday night! koko wanted to come, too! girls' roadtrip to canadia! spontaneous! seeing margaret fucking cho! yeah!!

but then mom discovered tickets were, of course, all sold out for the shows, so. roadtrip giddiness was killed.

picture me with the face of the saddest panda ever imagined. yes. yes. tragedy. i know.

so now my plans for the weekend include hoping to fuck my damn motivational science textbook deigns to make my acquaintance via media mail so i don't look like an ass *yet again* on tuesday in class, reading other required texts that are presently available to me, and thinking about seeing a movie. i'm behind on my movie-watching. "talk to her" has made it to the u-dist, so i have no excuse on that one. "laurel canyon," though, is taking its sweet time. things playing the harvard exit always take forever to get to the varsity or the metro, which is where they end up after a long and successful harvard exit run. i have paid way too much attention to landmark theaters' screening patterns over the past few years.

tonight, mom and paul were in town for paul's lesson. we went to ballard and checked out archie mcphee briefly (i'd never been to the physical store) before finally settling on dinner at anthony's homeport on the waterfront. there is one of these restaurants in olympia where we've all enjoyed some pretty good meals, but honestly, i wasn't especially satisfied. i got the ling cod, which the menu made out to be fresh and vibrant tasting with red onion and dill, but what arrived was covered with a very rich fluffy cream...stuff that i'm sure has a fru-fru name, and the dill amounted to a couple sprigs as garnish. the sides of rice with almonds and golden raisins and asparagus were nice, though. my salad, the "seasonal," tasted pretty much like a caesar with a couple slices of mushroom and some bacon. (i picked off most of the bacon; besides being un-vegetarian, i don't especially like the saltiness of bacon.) but. it was nice to see mom and paul and enjoy some time with them, of course. :)

let's see, what else is in life. classes have begun. nothing exciting to report. my TA for developmental, a first-year grad student in social-cognitive psych, also happens to be in my tiny motivational seminar. this is a first for me, but i'm sure not much will come of it. media law is making me yearn for other journalism classes, as, sad as it is, psych has begun to bore me. well, school, really, bores me by now--can you say "burnout?"--but at least i can get excited about journalism stuff. but no! move along, nothing more to see here, at least until i can find something to register for in summer and fall. keep your fingers crossed for me that they offer two really cool skills electives that don't conflict with each other this fall. the schedule so far is hardly promising.

way back to tuesday, canoeing was very nice. we discovered how you can row through the arboretum and it loops back to the freeway, which was a little trippy. we were out for over an hour, and just as we got out of the water, it got very cold and began to rain. we drove to agua verde (for parking reasons, not because it's far from the WAC by any means) to meet josie and delicious food was had by all. we went to kevin's shortly thereafter, where we discovered the trouble with recording that i've already mentioned. (later, jana told us that gg was, in fact, a rerun yet again that night, so all our efforts were for naught anyway. argh!)

wednesday was a kickass harem pizza party. tons of people showed up. graylan was there, lindsay, chris, jana and anna of course, josie, jesse, and i. it was super. we made kickass food and ate too much and talked and laughed and did our haremy thing without the joy of gilmore. (the rerun was a lame one.) i told chris i was going to see guster with kevin, and he brightened with recognition. so i convinced him to join us, saying i'd pay his way as a belated birthday present. there were some annoying assholes and a lot of stupid kids at the show--it was all-ages--but the music was good. chris said he felt weird because it reminded him of some sort of hyper-christian thing, like all the kids were there as part of a bible study camp. i tended to agree, although the band and music weren't that. we caught the end of maroon 5's set, which was a cover of nin's "closer." it was weird, all right, until they fucked up the keyboard at the end. after the show, we went out in the rainy cold only to discover we'd missed the last 15 for 45 minutes. so we sat. and waited. and waited. and got to ballard around 12:45, then kevin drove chris and i home. so late. so tired. so physically exhausted. uf.

yeah. hm. not much else to report, as far as i know. i am semi-irritable lately, things aren't very confidence or joy-inspiring of late. fuck it, dude. let's go bowling.

i have been listening to this like four times in a row now. must buy cd.

listening: xiu xiu - sad pony girl

hokay...is anyone else suddenly on this 'howdy' thoughts and humor mailing list? lemme tell ya, i am more than happy to listen to opposing viewpoints, but uh. i did not ask nor do i wish to receive such viewpoints in my email. it's pushing christianity and a really pretty mundane sense of humor coupled with an overly defensive attitude about what kind of liberal asshole you must be if you don't want to be "open" to his "thoughts." added to that, the unsubscribe address is mired in a riddle, which i already figured out (to the best of my knowledge, and, ha ha, i'm not even a french student) and tried to use but it DID NOT WORK. what the hell? he puts messages from people who don't want to receive his mailings in the mailings and tells them off and also tells them technically his mailing isn't spam because it isn't advertising and there's an unsubscribe (that doesn't work!). SO. any suggestions? any commisseration? how did this asshole get my address? why, why, why? gah.

arrgh. i just woke up, and i was having a dream that becky stabbed herself and only i knew. at first i let her do it, then i realized she wasn't dying and panicked, asked if it was ok to dial 911, and she said ok. but 911 never worked, it didn't dial right, ever, for some reason. oh, this was after she confessed to me that the true love of her life was billy corgan, although she wouldn't leave shawn until her and billy could be together. anyway, i had to sneak her out in my mom's civic, which was parked out at the end of a pier. before i could get her out, though, my mom found me and told me she'd be talking to christine, and she said christine just enlisted in the military. i was shocked, and apparently i'd just been talking to christine and she said nothing.

so. my dream consisted of my two best friends trying to kill themselves. and now i have to go read a long psych article on motivational science or something before running off to class in an hour and a half. joy.

my vcr is having problems properly carrying out the 'r' part of its job description. i am not about to go replace my vcr (and, thusly, my tv; it's a 13" tv/vcr UNIT) in order to tape the occasional program, but it does throw a wrench in my plans to tape gilmore girls for the gang this quarter.

what it does is record whatever i tell it to--keeping the audio track from what was there before. yes, yes, i should try with a new tape, or at least the blank section of one i have. but this still seems like a substantial problem to me. no matter what buttons i push, options i switch, it does the same thing. well, the audio slows down in slp mode, but other than that.

whatever the song was playing over the credits of the movie at the beginning of the tape--it's reggaeish and the lyrics say something about superfly, but it's not, you know, the song superfly to my knowledge--it sounds goddamn funny over scenes from antiques roadshow. and there are sports announcers over that '70s show from earlier in my experiments. man. so funny. but so annoying.

cold, leftover green curry with avocados is very tasty, by the way. even better than it was hot and fresh. mm.

i made five little black bean and brown rice burritos yesterday for my on-the-run lunches during the day. those things are too goddamn small! they are yummy! next week, bigger is better, although i may be sick of black beans, if such a thing is possible! and want to try, say, lentils and potatoes. or something. i don't know! cold burritos hold many possibilities! like more black beans. yum.

tomorrow after my buttload of classes i am going canoeing with kevin, meeting josie at agua verde for dinner (drool), and figuring out how the hell to tape gg. i'm sure you envy the life i lead. don't deny.

listening: pollen - girls love robots

oh, i am here. really. promise. i've just been...away. y'know. as in, not here. but i am here now. so. maybe i'll write some things. about stuff.

doesn't that sound exciting?

perhaps this should be webloggy for awhile... nah. maybe this afternoon at work, but not now.

i've had a whole week with no specific obligations of time or talent. it was quite lovely. i am trying to remember all we did. ("we" being kevin and i, because apparently we got attached at the hip for break. no complaints from my end, though.)

presently, however, i am awake far too early because i fell asleep far too early and have a troubled stomach. my stomach has been unhappy for a few days now. dunno why. it's not the dyspepsia again; the symptoms are entirely different, although at least this time it'd make *sense* to have dyspepsia. "have you been under a lot of stress? do you drink coffee?" err...yup. but i wasn't feeling well for the days i *didn't* drink coffee this week, so fuck it. anyway. i'm sure it'll clear up right quick.

monday night, i attempted falafel in kevin's kitchen. this didn't work too well, and the falafel was very dry. i've done much better. tuesday i finally convinced him to get up and ready to leave around noon, and we headed to olympia. mom made a bunch of tasty vegan food, including a chili i should replicate sometime (which was really stolen from becky's mom and veganized).

she also wanted the hp pavilion from 1997 that i called friday and margot called something else that really sucks and no one uses anymore to be cleaned out, spruced up, and ready for her dad, so kevin tackled that with admirable tenacity. it took much longer than it should have because suddenly windows decided not to be installed anymore and he had to reinstall win98 from our stupid collection of win98 upgrade cds. the computer needed a new monitor (mom said she hadn't bought her dad a birthday present in years, so this seemed a fair expense) and we had to leave in the middle of win98's fifth or so attempt at reinstalling because it was late.

also in olympia, we hung out with becky and shawn, saw becky's crazy new house, watched "but i'm a cheerleader" with them (woo!), and went to priest point park, the food co-op, and walmart. it was pretty fun.

on thursday, it was our intent to go camping at larrabee state park, just south of bellingham on the sound. so we left and got there and set up a campsite around 3pm. kevin's tent was confusing to set up because he'd never done it before, so it was a game of string tension. then we walked to the beach and climbed all over some rocks and saw one of the prettiest sunset views ever. we came back to the site and made a fire from a duraflame log thing, which was all we had to burn besides newspaper. i cut up some potatoes, zucchini, onion, and carrot, put them in two layers of foil, seasoned them, and stuck them on the grill over the fire. then kevin wondered about the safety of this. he read the package of another log: do not cook food directly over flame. may cause cancer. he called his dad to ask for advice. long story short, his dad thought it was *probably* ok provided it doesn't taste funny, but also said his mom would never do it. we did it anyway, since our other food options were soup cups made with cold water and granola/sesame crackers/trail mix. it tasted pretty good, except we pitched a number of pieces that were obviously burned or blackened.

by the time we ate, it was getting very cold and was already dark. a train runs through the park and from our site, the whistle's echo is the creepiest damn thing ever. we were also several yards from the two-lane road taken to get to the park and heard traffic intermittantly. there was, however, a cool owl who-who-whoooing. we got in the tent and bundled up in sleeping bags when i realized i had a headache. i managed to sleep for awhile, then woke up with a headache that was fairly consuming and felt very uncomfortable on the ground and was freezing besides. kevin made a big effort to warm me up, make me more comfortable, etc. but finally it wasn't working and he suggested we just leave. i felt bad since i said we should do this in the first place (knowing he likes to camp, and thinking i could enjoy it), but gave in when he said if i wasn't going to be able to sleep, it wasn't worth it. so he took down the tent and put things away while i sat in the car, trying to warm up and eating trail mix.

anyway. we drove back around midnight. kevin wondered what the record for shortest camping trip ever was while i admired the clear sky and stars through the moon roof. he started getting sleepy as we approached home and i had to feed him granola. i promised we could do something like go hiking the next day to make up for not camping.

the next day, we slept in a lot. he didn't seem interested in my suggestions until i remembered: canoeing. sure enough, canoeing, which now costs $4/hour for students, boo-hoo, is currently OPEN, so we decided to do that. we rowed under the freeway and through the arboretum almost to the other freeway thing. it was really lovely. then we ate at shalimar on the ave, which was pretty tasty, although that may have somehow been the source of my unpleasant stomach.

saturday we cleaned kevin's house, ate spaghetti, and went to carkeek park again. it was fucking freezing, though, and the moon wasn't full so it was pretty dark. we did get to catch a train again. kevin even got a couple pictures of the lights of the oncoming train in the dark.

yesterday, kevin took me home and was expecting to hear from an old friend to meet for lunch, but she never called. we went grocery shopping, i put my crap away, we sat around a lot, and eventually kevin suggested we go out to dinner. we were going to try the himalayan sherpa place, but it was closed, so we ended up getting vegan thai, which is always pretty good.

so, here we are at today. when i have a class and work. class in two hours, work at 12. it's always a party in my life, y'know.