I'm going to save him from the vulture

2004-12-12 / 12:17 p.m.

2.000 words is a lot when you�re writing in Spanish. I deserve a lunchtime study break. �Sides, I was thinking about holidays, and thought this would be an apt place to toss my thoughts around, like so many dirty socks upon my dorm room floor.

My favorite Holiday, by Em. N. Age: 22. (gasp)
(l-Em-N-o-p heh, get it?)

I was in the shower this morning thinking about my favorite Holidays. It�s a natural progression of thoughts, seeing as we�ve entered the season of incessant counting down until Christmas and talking about how much Christmas kicks ass. So, to me, Christmas definitely has its moments; but it can get depressing, and there�s always that struggle for me to find a balance in its meaning to me. I enjoy the holiday, but it isn�t my favorite. Thanksgiving I out and out just don�t like. Valentine�s Day can be amusing�it would be more so if it wasn�t manipulated in such unappealing ways by retailers, but as a holiday, it has potential for fun�though I only recognize it on years when I�m seeing someone, so that doesn�t count. Birthdays stopped being of critical importance at 21. 4th of July usually has the kind of stuff I enjoy�barbecues and the nod of approval to play with fire�but my little apathetic family in it�s little house rarely does these things. Really, I�m going to have to go with New Year�s Eve as my new favorite holiday

�Why New Year�s Eve� you ask? (I am so overusing the unordered lists lately!):
• There�s never any weighty discussion on what the holiday means, what it should mean, how the true meaning has been corrupted, etc. I never have to examine my beliefs and convictions to celebrate New Years, as it�s pretty much all about celebrating.
• The best part of holidays is usually spending time with people you love. New Year�s Eve (at this age) allows for partying with friends without feeling obliged to spend excessive time doing family crap. Generally, mom and I have a lighthearted mock of making resolutions, have black-eyed peas for dinner, and that�s the end of our celebration together. She goes upstairs and dozes off to Dick Clark at 11:30, and I�m free to do whatever I choose without that only-child-of-a-single-parent guilt.
• It gets better as we age. We�re finally old enough to easily and legally procure alcohol, and as we start getting real, live, jobs with real, live, salaries, we can maybe wean ourselves off of celebrating the New Year with PBR and a handle of the cheapest vodka on earth.
• While it�s just a day like any other in reality, it does have a pleasant feeling of being able to start over.
• Alcohol.

On that note, I say it�s imperative that we celebrate this holiday in some capacity this year. Now, I�m off to procure lunch and continue this paper. Chau.

You wanna' play with Unicron? That'd be totally hot.

2004-12-09 / 10:57 a.m.

The more I progress on the 282 exam prep sheet, the more worried I become. This has led me to need a short break, which I will fill listening to Guster (goldfly) and writing a brief entry.

Things that incur my wrath today, 12/09/2004:
1. Rain
2. The person who lives above me, who apparently decided to coast around her room in a rolling chair from 2:00 am onward, occasionally casting heavy objects to the floor (at least it sounded like it) causing significant noise below.
3. Terrible junk food, for maliciously tempting me into dietary suicide during exams.
4. Inflation during the early 70�s, because I have no idea how it contributed to the unraveling of the Bretton Woods system.
5. The apparent disappearance of my camera: extra frustrating because I want to take a picture of the cool birthday gift that Roger got for me: a replica of one of those cat wall clocks from the 40�s/50�s where the eyes move with the seconds and the tail swings as the pendulum. It�s neat.

Fortunately, today�s good far outweighs the bad, mostly because I got a heap of sweet and awesome mail today, most notably my birthday gift & Christmas card from Hillary. Her Christmas cards are great�printed with pictures of her & Bruce�s giant cat, Roomba, eyeing the Christmas tree. For my birthday, she sent me the first book of the Golden Compass series, a gift card to Borders, and the faux J-Lo ring that we laughed at in Lerner NY several years ago. Don�t worry, even with my new bling bling, I�m still Emmy from the block. Back to study and toil.

it's always cold in Siberia

2004-12-08 / 1:22 a.m.

Okay kids, this�ll be a short one, as entries writing around finals time tend to be.

Hate this time of year, by the way. Throws my schedule off, and not in a cool, like, yay-no-classes-time-for-fun kind of way, it�s just confusing. My brain isn�t quite sure when to sleep, so I think I just won�t for a couple of days. Gym is open limited and terrible hours, didn�t get a chance to go today and feel lazy and wretched (though guiltily well rested as well, from having slept past my normal alarm time). I have two superevil, study-intensive finals, and a big important paper to write. I also have to muck through my nonfic revisions.

Bah. And then I found ten dollars

A quick Recap:
• The nonfic reading went pretty well. I was actually disappointed that so few people were left in the audience by the time I read. One of the people in our class is an athlete, so her whole team came to hear her read�and left in mass when she was done. Anyway, I was still happy to have my cheering section: my embarrassed mother, my antsy boyfriend, Kristen (whose essay was very good), and Michelle there in spirit. These are some of my favorite people ever. Hillary is obviously the top of the favorite people list, though she couldn�t have come, and probably would have preferred nails driven through her eyelids to a nonfic reading anyway.
• The after party was super fun. My professor is totally cool, and Roger and Kyle were the super awesome extra bonus. Afterwards, the four of us went to Caf� Istanbul and smoked a hookah, then back to TheCollege to engage in �witty repartee� as I believe Kristen called it. Almost certainly the happiest I had been all week.
• I feel like a big failure a lot lately.
• Flute choir concert went okay. I didn�t destroy everything.
• This semester�s finals are very depressing. I can�t conceivably get higher than a B in Spanish; will have to work super hard to keep my A in math (especially now that �A� and �A-� aren�t worth the same amount of grade points, dammit); and 282 is such a long shot, I�d be shocked with anything above a B-. Add this tension to the anxiety of grad school apps and you get�.well, I don�t know�.something bad. It isn�t pie.

.

On that note, I�ll bid thee farewell. If I�m going down in a blaze of 3.0 mediocrity, I�m not going without a fight.