Smart 'n' Sexy:
Your intellect puts you in a class above the rest, and it creates a sexual aura that's untouchable by people who possess nothing more than a pretty face. You have people and intellectual smarts and are able to juggle them accordingly. Your sense of the world at large and your world around you draws people to your mind, and what a beautiful mind it is.

Whether you look the part in horn-rimmed glasses and a finely pressed suit or dress simply in a T-shirt and jeans, your style really takes off when you flaunt your intellectual prowess. You're probably happier volunteering for a good cause, like tutoring kids, than spending all night partying with friends — well, at least some of the time. You've read the classics, or at least know what they are, and get the greatest rush when you can fully connect with people — both mind and body. While you may have the looks as well, it's your brains that turn up the heat wherever you go.

Which Bettie Page Are You?

It seems that the internet is slightly more saturated with quizzes than it was when I was always on The Spark or Emode several years ago. Or maybe I'm just becoming more aware of all the little quizzes that people have invented? Maybe it lost its lustre to me and the sheer quantity of people with too much free time is beginning to impress me?? I don't know. Where I used to find little online personality quizzes as extremely exciting, now they just unsettle me. Who are they to tell me anything about myself?? I don't even fully agree with the results of the Myers-Briggs test I took earlier in the semester -- let alone some stupid crappy piece of poo quizlet that some teenager with HTML knowledge programmed between their busy schedule of smoking pot and not doing their homework!!!!!! (not that I'm passing judgment whatsoever... merely questioning the validity of these quizzes).
I'm just depressed because I don't really look like Bettie Page. That's all.



My Life These Days
Jolly good after-Thanksgiving everyone!!! This holiday season has instilled into me a renewed sense of optimism. I have been saying in the past few weeks that if I could make it to Thanksgiving, I would be able to survive the semester. And here it is, the last few days before classes start up again, and I am alive and back in the room and not dead of complications that come with a nervous breakdown. And Eddie Izzard is coming out with "Dress to Kill" on DVD!!!!!! Life is going to be juuuuuuuust fiiiiiiiine.

I spent the past five days being immensely entertained by a four year old. My cousin is the cutest ever. I only took three rolls of film this year, probably because I knew that the scanner waiting at home for me isn't working too well, so I don't know when I can post these. Also I'm frigging broke, so even if the scanner worked, I wouldn't be able to pay to have the film developed. I was hoping that Santa would find it in his heart to buy me the cool digital camera from Wal-Mart that Chuck and I drooled over, but alas, I have been rather naughty this year. *sigh* Who knows. Maybe a generous frequenter of this website will be sooooo pleased I updated that s/he'll donate $300 to me toward the purchase of this wonder of technology. Then maybe I'll get a pony. And graduate summa cum laude. heheheheheheh.

I would write more, but bear in mind I've been away from the Sims for five whole days. I'll have to get back to this later, the cold sweats of withdrawl are really starting to get to me.

So. I'm broke. Utterly and unquestionably broke. I think there are $3 in my bank account. I used the $2.75 cash in my wallet as a tip to the nice Huddle House server. There was something about him that really comforted me, despite his thuggishly lacksadaisical serving. Maybe it was the heightened emotions caused by speeding on coffee and diet pills, but something about being waited on tonight was really touching to me. The way he wordlessly approached the table and filled my coffee cup without me asking or plunked down another bowl of non-dairy creamers when the old one was empty felt wonderful. I felt so taken care of. That's good service, I feel. It has nothing to do with the joking or the socializing one does with one's customers. It's just taking care of them and making them feel safe with you, like all their needs are going to be met no matter what. That's what I always strived for when I waited tables. I mean I was no good at flirting or chatting or anything, so I devoted all my attentions to meeting their needs. That's one thing I liked about watching Chuck wait on his tables -- he always made them feel so safe and protected from needing anything. He would be unruffled about any problem, assuring them that he'd take care of that. And they'd usually be happy. Unless they were assholes. I don't know if Chuck knows how many times I stood at the Micros station and watched him take care of his tables. I don't know if he'd find it sweet or psychotic. Anyway all that's in the past now, since I quit and he got fired. Such is life.



My Life These Days
Yeah, I meant to update much sooner. But with the unreliability of the internet and the workload I have, added to the experience of procrastinating everything to the point of overwhelm-ation, there just isn't very much opportunity to sit behind a computer and compose something witty and thought-provoking. But as it is 4 a.m. and I'm pumped full of so much caffeine from the free coffee the nice waiter at the Huddle House gave me out of sheer pity, I decided to give it a go. Even though the internet isn't acting extremely reliable at the moment.

So Thanksgiving is never going to get here, thesis will never be finished, I can't believe I auditioned [however horribly] for the Alpha Psi Omega One-Acts when I have so little free time as it is, this room is a shithole that I can't bring myself to clean despite the good advice Mother gave me about cleaning one's room.

Aside from my wallowing in self-pity, life is eventful and interesting. Saw "Aida" in Atlanta this weekend; it was a great road trip preceding a wonderful visit with Erin, whom I need to visit far far far more often. One lesson I learned from the experience: never leave Atlanta after 2 a.m. on a rainy night when you have a detour to Chattanooga on the way home unless you're perfectly okay with arriving home after 7 in the morning. Which I wasn't. Oh well, live and learn.

I just realized this is probably jumbled and incoherent. And I don't really give a crap. I'm really just trying to type away the caffeine so I can grab a few hours' sleep before my 9:30 class.

It doesn't look like it's going to happen.

According to my estimations, I graduate in approximately 6 months. That's a very long time, especially since I quit working at Up the Shit Creek and am currently broke and had to rely on my powers of arousing pity to obtain coffee and toast from the Huddle House. I think I already mentioned that. I want to be back in Atlanta watching "Aida." I wish I had an interesting story to go with the experience like I did with "Rent." I could talk about how abysmally lost we got, but really that's not too interesting, since there was no question in my mind about whether we would get abysmally lost. I get abysmally lost in friggen Knoxville. How the hell am I ever going to move away when I can't even navigate my hometown area? Unless I develop a sense of direction, I'm going to be entirely codependent for the rest of my life. It's going to be crap.

I'd continue the toothpaste chronicles, but I deal with them in the subsequent section complete with an interesting link, so I guess that means I should change the subject and prattle mindlessly on about something else entirely.

So I cleaned my room yesterday. You should have seen it when I started. It was hilarious actually, laundry strewn everywhere. It looked like some sort of blast had gone off, with my mostly-empty laundry bag sitting in the middle as ground zero, and the mess decreasing exponentially according to distance away from the center. It *was* clean anyway, but now there are 2 pairs of pants on the floor. I ran out of hangers and was too tired last night to drape them over a chair. I hung everything up in the closet. It was incredible. I organized my clothing according to categories of short sleeve, long sleeve, sweatshirts and pullovers, and dressy shirts, then ordered them in roygbiv within the separate categories. Then I ran out of hangers. And closet space. Who knew I had so many damn clothes? I think I'm going to usurp Heidi's unused closet to hang the sweatshirts and my jackets and coats. I don't really know when I acquired all this stuff. It's rather bizarre.

Anyway, the whole reason I brought this up is because of its effect. I was describing to Mother all the stresses I was having, and she told me to clean my room. I thought that was a ludicrous idea, but ended up trying it anyway. The weird thing is, she was RIGHT. It DID help. I feel so much more Zen now that there isn't any more laundry and garbage all over the place. Weird how mothers actually know things.



My Life These Days
So I had the first official Bad Day of the year. Nothing eventful ever really happens to me, so my Bad Days are really quite benign in comparison to, say, the Bad Days of sniper attack victims, but I'm not used to crap bombarding me so it felt much worse. So in Senior Seminar, Dr. Klingensmith called me a Bad Student. He actually called me and Sara and another girl Bad Students, so it wasn't that he was singling me out. He sounded like he was kidding too, but it was the kind of kidding where you say what you mean and get away with it under the guise that it was all in jest. So what if I miss a few days here and there? I got an A on his midterm paper, and that means I'm a GOOD Student. Nevertheless, his nasty little comment was only a prelude to what was about to occur. [I'm building this up like it's something really big and exciting. This is actually one of the most boring stories I've probably ever told.] So in Journalism Dr. Trevathan had asked my permission to photocopy my column article assignment and anonymously distribute it to the class as an example of good column writing. Naturally I accepted, I mean that's a dream come true for a brown-noser such as myself. So the column appeared on the handout stapled to someone else's feature article assignment, which was so much better than my piece of crap writing that I pulled out of my ass 20 minutes before it was due, and all the stupid people in the class proclaimed their uninformed opinions of it and attempted to correct grammar that was already correct. There actually were two errors in there that I didn't catch, which annoyed me to no end. At the lovely sight of the dumb jackals in the class ripping the carcass of my crappy article to pieces, I decided to remain the anonymous writer. Soon after I made this decision, someone asked who the author was and without missing a beat, Dr. Trevathan outed me. Heh. I felt like keeling over dead at the time, but now that I think back on it, it's actually quite humorous. I went to choir, where Mrs. Wilner chewed me and 9 others out for not showing up to the optional performance on Saturday, which I skipped to get lost in Chattanooga for 45 minutes in a valient (and ultimately successful) attempt to collect my sister and take her to my dorm for the weekend. I thought that optional meant we weren't required to attend, but apparently the choir uses something besides the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. After choir I promptly forgot about the weekly newspaper meeting and went out to Pancho's Mexican Restaurant with Chuck and his family.

....hmmmmmmm...... what a boring story that was. My life is so uneventful, even the traumatic things are kind of crap. Well not that it's uneventful. Here's a romantic thing that happened to me last night:

[the background information is that Chuck and I first met outside of work at the 24-hour laundromat] So Chuck gets off work, heads to my dorm, we crack open our respective Miller Lites, and I type a paper on one side of the room while he hacks into the network on the other side. We decide we're hungry, so we hasten to the Huddle House in all of its greasy goodness. We have a lovely dinner/breakfast/undeserved indulgence given my current weight, get in the car, and start toward home.

"I have something to show you," he says.

"What is it?"

"It's a surprise. It's kind of important to me. Wait till you see it." He's so devious.

We pull into the parking lot of the laundromat and idle in the fire lane right in front of it. "See that there?" he asks, pointing to the currently unoccupied expanse of washers and dryers. I nod. "See that table in the back, the first one from the wall, right under the fire extinguisher?" I nod. "That's where I met the most amazing, beautiful girl."

Awwwwwww!!!!!! Big points for that. And I thought romance was dead.

Other than that, little else is happening. I really need to start hanging out with other people again and catching up on my deteriorating friendships, but really who has the time. I feel like I'm in the Sims sometimes, and at any moment a dialog box is going to pop up and tell me "Heidi is no longer your friend. Maybe if you spent some time with her, your relationship points wouldn't decrease so rapidly." The guilt is overwhelming, but even more overwhelming is the amount of schoolwork I'm currently wading through. I'll fix it all soon, I swear.

Oh yeah and if you want to read the column that the morons in my journalism class ripped a new one, here it is, as it was then, is now and ever shall be, because I just can't dredge up the energy needed to correct the mistakes.

Musings of the Moment
To continue these toothpaste chronicles, I seem to have found a brand of toothpaste that I like very much. It's just good old Aquafresh. Except I don't like the tube, it's not durable enough, there are already 2 holes poked in the sides somehow, and that's a pain in the ass when you're half asleep and attempting to go through the motions of the daily morning routine and wind up with toothpaste all over the damn place. How dreadfully wasteful. Also Aquafresh has a way of making me nervous. You can squish it and squish it and squish it to your heart's content, and the three colors will always come out separately. That's weird. I want to take the container apart and see how it works, because they're obviously doing something out-of-the-ordinary to make it do such a thing, but I really can't afford to go out and purchase an entire tube of experimental toothpaste that I won't even get to use.

During the search for the perfect toothpaste, I came across a rare relic from deep within my early youth: Sparkle Fun Crest For Kids. Except now they call it Kid's Crest, Sparkle Fun Flavor. I don't know if I agree with the apostrophe there; it probably should be Kids' Crest because they'd say Women's Crest, not Woman's Crest, am I making sense? I don't like the inconsistency when you see three signs in succession, and they say Men's, Women's, Kid's. Anyway, that's beside the point. I bought a tube of the Sparkle Fun Crest for Kids because I used to absolutely love it as a small child. I loved the deep blue color that glittered. Glittering toothpaste was truly an amazing thing to me at the time. It's not quite as deep a blue as I remember, but it's still glittery. The taste is bizarre. I don't know why I liked it when I was little. It's got some kind of bubble gum fruit flavor to it. Nevertheless, the nostalgia of the taste is really strong, and I enjoy brushing with it from time to time. The glitter still amuses me almost as much.



My Life These Days
Thesis meeting starts in half an hour. I can't believe I'm up so early on a Friday morning, but it happened, wonder of wonders. It's not really that amazing, I didn't get up until 8:30, but after having gone to bed no earlier than 3:30 not only last night but for the entirety of this week and last week and still getting up approximately five hours later, I'm surprised I haven't had some sort of sleep-deprivation-induced epileptic episode or something. ::knocking on wood:: ::oh wait this is Maryville College, they just painted plastic to look like wood, damn I'm screwed::

Anyway, thesis meeting starts in less than half an hour, and I plan to wow her with my executive decision to work the double bind theory into my analysis of the representations of Ophelia, thus intertwining my psychology minor with my writing major. Brilliantly done, isn't it. This of course means that I'm going to be slaving over behavioral science journals as well as literature journals. Ah well, such is life, in 6 or 7 months I'll have a beautiful senior thesis all bound and graded and probably set on fire by then.

Other than that, I'm having a marvelous time. Who knew working at Up the Creek would be a good move in my life? Chuck, a server there, and I met, fell madly in love, and have been dating for 2 weeks yesterday. It's amazing. It's like the Randall Thompson Alleluia. I've always wanted to fall in love like the Randall Thompson Alleluia (only choir geeks are going to understand what I'm talking about). He's a computer supergenius, which means of course that this crappy little website really embarrasses me. That's not why I haven't updated it in over a month, though, I promise. It's just that between spending all my free time with Chuck and the fact that the Maryville College network won't work for shit half the time, I've not gotten around to it. Speaking of it not working for shit, I'm trying to load another page while I'm typing this and it seems the server is "not responding" yet again, which means this isn't going to save, which means I'm going to have to cut and paste the damn thing and save it as a word file for later attempt. That pisses me off.

Anyway, my poor estranged sister just called, so I must go.

Musings of the Moment
I've been pondering the significance of nostalgia. I can't understand how your senses demand you feel nostalgic after your brain has decided you don't have any use for the memory in question anymore. Specifically, I've been wondering what to do with my Caress Waterfresh Breeze Body Wash. It's the most delightful scent I've ever sniffed, but it conjures up memories of my freshman year when I was still dating Mike the ex-boyfriend. I used to go with him almost every weekend. The second classes were over on Friday afternoons I'd rush over to my dorm and take a shower in preparation to leave the campus, and I'd use the Caress Waterfresh Breeze Body Wash especially for the occasion. Even though I haven't dated him in years, smelling that scent brings me right back. I think I remember in some psychology class or other how the sense of smell was the most potent memory trigger, and I believe it. Taste is pretty potent too, but it's so closely related to smell that I think they're the same thing.

On a similar yet different note, I can't find a brand of toothpaste I like. I used to use Aim after a particularly romantic weekend with Mike the ex-boyfriend when we were still in high school. In more recent years, I had become attached to Close Up through another boy affiliation. When I came to realize that I don't need my memories dictating my choices in life, I realized that every time I brushed my teeth my brain went straight back to whatever teethbrushing moments were held in the depths of my cerebral cortex. So I set out on a quest to find a toothpaste to call my own. Right now I'm working on a bottle of Crest smooth mint gel in the standy-up bottle. It tastes too much like green peppermints to suit me. (Did you know that Crest has several distinctive flavors including fresh mint, clean mint, and smooth mint? I wonder how they justify the distinction.) Before that I tried Colgate Total fresh stripe, which was too mild a flavor. I like to be overwhelmed with strong yet pleasant flavor. That's what Close-Up did, and Aim too. It pisses me off even further that they were the two cheapest toothpastes available at Wal-Mart. You could get Aim for 88 cents!!! And Close-Up was something like $1.19 or something. Grrrr at boys for ruining things for me and making me wander helplessly in a nightmarish wasteland of expensive yet inferior toothpastes. I don't want ANY of you people giving me advice on which toothpaste is your favorite, either, because that one will be tainted too. Who knew hygeine would be such a damn emotional ordeal???



My Life These Days
So I'm back at school in my dorm room with no kitchen and a bathroom down the hall with several other girls in it. Although, to be perfectly honest, it's not as bad as it could have been. I'm actually enjoying it while it's clean, because I know that cannot last very long. But I have my sister's artwork all over the walls, and it's beginning to feel familiar.

In other news, the computer that crashed and was rebuilt hasn't been working too well since, so my parents decided screw Compaq and ordered me a BRAND NEW DELL!!! It'll be here next week. In the meantime, I'm still making use of this unreliable piece of crap and hoping to God that when I click "save" it will actually do as it's told. I haven't gotten the courage to type up a homework assignment on this thing because I know for certain that it will choose that precise moment to blow up. And the student body would be so pissed at me, because my dorm is above the cafeteria, and where will they all eat if my piece of crap Presario burned it down? [knocking on wood, because this is Maryville College and we haven't had a building destroyed by fire since 1999 so we're due again...]

Also Fifi the fish is very happy to be moved into a more acedemic environment. His major is as of yet still undecided. I keep telling him he should go for vocal performance, but he swears he has a deep and abiding passion for chemistry. I don't think he should be dealing with dangerous chemicals in a dorm room though.

[can you tell the stress is already beginning to wear on me?]

So despite the fact that I have to fabricate a senior thesis as well as an internship portfolio this semester on top of a full course load and frigging concert choir, I hope to keep this thing updated more regularly than I have in the past. Aside from pleasure reading (as in not-schoolwork I mean, I'm not talking about dirty novels you sickos), the internet is the only entertainment I have in this room, and there's only so much porn a person can handle. (just kidding.)

Musings of the Moment
I have developed a deep and incessant craving for hummus (or "hummous," as my pal Ron spells it, and since he used to work at the Tomato Head restaurant where they made their own, I suppose he is a bit of an authority). I never had it until the Alpha Psi Omega gala last spring, when my friend Anna was making hummus rolls with tortillas as an appetizer. I tasted one... and ZAM!!!!! Instant sparks. I believe in love at first taste, not at first sight, and only to edible objects (I'm not trying to make a dirty joke). So anyway, since then I have found it necessary to keep a steady supply of hummus and tortillas handy. I've found I like the Tribe of Three Sheiks brand better than the Athenos brand, which is not to say that Athenos is necessarily bad, just that ...

I just realized how bored I am with blabbering about hummus. I do love hummus quite a bit, but it's not going to cut it for a long blabbering session. What makes me think anyone really reads these "musings" anyway? They're so random...



My Life These Days
So I turned 21, and in the process lost my camera somewhere in the bar. That's a sad sad thing. I figure it will turn up here in the next couple of weeks, at which point I will post many an interesting picture. Until then, it's just indescribable. Mostly because I can't remember it.

In other news, my computer crashed due to a virus, completely destroying 4 years' worth of creative work. I'm so depressed. I feel like my house burnt down. The bright side of all this is that it happened while in the hands of a professional who was attempting to install a 40gig hard drive for me, so I got free virus protection software out of sympathy. For consolation from my parents, I also got the zippiest CD burner I've ever seen. It now takes 10 minutes to copy a CD, as opposed to the 5+ hours I was suffering through with the old (now defunct...sniffle...) machine. Five hours to copy a CD, good lord... I used to start the burning process when I left for rehearsal, and then after we'd run through a show twice, went home, changed, went to Taco Bell, eaten two Meximelts, washed half the dishes, and drank ourselves into a stupor, the damn thing had finished copying. So suffice to say, I'm quite pleased with this new one, even if I'm using it on a computer that's a complete blank slate, devoid of any of the things I'd worked so hard on for countless toiling hours. ...sigh...

Other than that, I'm just mentally gearing up for moving into school again in a dorm room on the third floor with no kitchen and a community bathroom, while my sister, a mere freshman at UTC, has a huge suite with both of the aforementioned accommodations. This is my SENIOR year at Maryville College, when I am paying the final installment of the $80,000 my education is costing, and I get stuck without a friggen bathroom??? I'm so confused. And bitter, as I'm sure you can tell.

Musings of the Moment
I'm so bored. Do you know how bored I am? This is how bored I am: I was reading the Current Impact List published by an astronomy laboratory (or "potential future Earth impact events that the JPL Sentry System has detected based on currently available observations" as the site put it), and I realized that the impact hazard for all but one of the asteroids on the list is zero and only one of them has an extremely unlikely risk that requires monitoring and that one is not predicted until the year 2101. Now, the fact that I'm reading a NASA jet-propulsion laboratory website might indicate a little something about my boredom, but that's not my point. My point is that when I learned that there are no predicted asteroid impacts until 2101, and that one isn't even likely at all, I was DISAPPOINTED. Really REALLY disappointed, actually. I am so bored with the utter eventlessness of my life and the complete meaninglessness of the menial events that are taking place that I want an asteroid to hit the earth just to spice things up a bit. How screwed up is that???



My Life These Days
My internship's end is in sight, but I still haven't written the midterm paper for Dr. Schneibel. I guess I'll do that tomorrow. I hope I will anyway, because I can't afford to fail something as ridiculous as this internship. Also I spent the entire summer in denial of the fact that I have to do a senior thesis. Maybe I'm subconsciously trying to keep myself from growing up. I assume I'll be able to complete it without spending these three months prior to the actual class working on it, right? I mean, lots of people do that, right? The way my thesis advisor talked to me about it, the fact that I waited until then to start was going to screw me, and that was three months ago. I'll try not to worry. After all, that won't matter if an asteroid hits the earth, and one might hit in 2101, so why bother exerting myself for extra academic work that won't matter if the world ends in a hundred years, right?

Um, aside from that lack of things going on, little else is going on either. Actually I'm flying to Houston two days after my birthday. I miss Kellie so very very much. Also the play closes tomorrow, sad day. It was actually a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be, and I ended up making lots of really good new friendships and cementing old acquaintenceships into real friendships. Which is good. It's good to know that every situation has the potential for something worthwhile to come of it, even if an asteroid might hit in 2101. I have to stop fixating on that asteroid.

Musings of the Moment
I have developed a fear of change. It's the weirdest thing I've ever experienced. I can't remember if this has ever happened to me before, but I don't think so. I assume that it's some kind of side effect to the fact that one year from now I will be forced to be a responsible adult and will no longer be a dependent on my mother. That wasn't a scary thought when it was happening to all my older friends, but now it's happening to me. I have less than one year to decide what I want to do, find a way to do what I want to do, and find a place to live while I'm doing it. I haven't even started my senior thesis yet; how am I supposed to start my adult life???

Well, I'm not really that scared. I mean, like most of the major things in my life, it will work itself out I suppose. I have never experienced a major or even minor milestone in my life that didn't work out. I could procrastinate anything until 2 a.m. the night before it's due and it would work itself out. (I could be jinxing myself by saying such things, but so far I've been lucky and I don't see the luck running out anytime soon.) So I'm only moderately worried about it. I mean, a year is a long time.

Nonetheless, I have developed a fear of change. Or of the future. Or of the past. Have I mentioned this before? I hope I'm not repeating myself. I worry about it so much in my head that I can't remember to whom I've actually mentioned it out loud. But this fear is getting in the way of my life. I can't handle my sister dressing up all sexy and going out to tease older men... because DAMMIT SHE USED TO BE LITTLE AND NOW SHE'S ALL BIG AND 18 AND STUFF. And that's an unsettling thought for me. Also I have trouble attending parties. All these old acquaintences from high school end up at parties, and I see how they've changed and how I haven't talked to them in about 5 years and damn 5 years is a long time. And then they tell me what they're doing with their lives and I tell them what I'm doing with my life and it's all so different than it used to be and it just exemplifies the sensation of my life chugging full speed ahead when I'm quite sure I wasn't finished with where it used to be to begin with.

...groan...



My Life These Days
Other than crippling anxieties and paralyzing phobias, things are going quite well. I got my hamster chopsticks in the mail. I got around to cleaning out Fifi's tank, and he is ever so appreciative of that fact, although he's pissed that I moved the plastic plant an inch to the right and he gives me a dirty look every time he accidentally bumps into it. But what can you do.

Also my job is crap because I never do anything of any importance. An untrained monkey could do what I do if it had a pleasant telephone voice. However, this means I get paid $7 an hour to do what an untrained monkey could do, which is a pleasant feeling indeed. It's like getting free paychecks. I'm excited about that. I'm trying to save up for going to Europe during Christmas break, and I hope that's a real plan and not a futile pipe dream. Because that would be fun.

Also the show is going well, despite the fact that nobody in the cast is a big partier so I just end up going out with Johnny and outside friends. Maybe we'll have a big wild cast party after it opens that will surprise me and all the goodie goodies in the cast will shock me and it will be great fun. I hope. If not that's okay.

Also I turn 21 on August 8, which is as I write this one month and two days away. I'M SO EXCITED!!!!!!

Musings of the Moment
Living at home for longer than a week and a half for the first time in two years, I am slowly becoming reacquainted with my teenage self. After all, there are relics of her all over this room. I went through pictures I had forgotten were taken, leafed through angsty journals, read at length the crap I used to write. It's a very strange experience to go through my life that I haven't thought about in so long. I have boxes and drawers full of mementos which have lost their significance to me, and it's unnerving because when I put those little pieces of junk in these boxes, they were the most important thing in my life at that time and I thought I would remember it forever. Some of it I do remember and I can't believe I've forgotten: an acorn my old boyfriend once threw at me, a piece of a popped balloon from a charity event I was passionate about, Sweet-N-Low from every play or musical event I've ever been involved in (don't ask the background to that; it would take far too long), et cetera et cetera. And I can't believe I saved all this junk!!! But I simply can't throw it away, as much as I need the drawer space for my socks and underwear. It would feel like a huge betrayal. It would be like throwing away a promise to my past self, or in a way throwing away my past self. Those dried-up rose petals are the only remembrance I have of whyever I received them in the first place. If I can't remember what one of those pieces of junk means, it feels even worse to throw it out; it's like tossing away the unidentified remains of some soldier from a long-lost battle. It's so weird living in this house because all this clutter reflects the stuff I've left behind and don't really care to return to, and the fact that I don't want to return to it makes me feel as though I've lost something. God how I hate change.



My Life These Days
I start at the assisted living facility tomorrow. I feel myself getting queasy just thinking about it. Fortunately I went on a shopping spree and purchased $167 of clearance items that looked respectable yet not matronly or frumpy. This was after a Learning Experience that involved me, my mother, an old-career-woman store, and my mother's opinions about what I should wear to the workplace. Suffice to say it didn't end well and I have as souvenir a hideous purple clownsuit... er, pantsuit. *shudder* But that's the price one must pay for family harmony, I suppose.

Auditions went reasonably well, so all I have to do now is sit back and wait Reggie's customary week and a half until he casts the show. I think the list will be posted on their website if I'm not mistaken. So everyone can share in my impending defeat and read my name not on the list.

All the women in the house are on the Magic Soup Diet, which is going infinitely better this time than when I attempted it last fall before Hamlet ~ what a fiasco that turned out to be. This time, with Mother's funds as the backbone of the grocery shopping, perhaps it won't end in flames. I think I lost 2 pounds already. I'll let everyone know how it turns out. Maybe I'll post the recipe for the magic soup here. My nice friend Stephanie sent it to me last year, and finally I think it will do some good.

I got a present from myself in the mail the other day. From The Onion's website one night I found myself on a link to an online merchant centered in Japan. After a few Smirnoff Ices, it was especially hilarious, but it would have been rather amusing to just about anyone in any state of mind. They have Hello Kitty vibrators, hell what more does one need out of life? But I wasn't that brave; I ended up purchasing a very cheap lunchbox. Here it is actually:

Isn't it cute?? I returned to the site just today and purchased matching chopsticks to go with it. I highly recommend this to everyone. It was loads of fun.







Musings of the Moment
I live in squalor. It's true. Well, there isn't too much food trash in here, but in all honesty this is a pigsty (I hate that word... it just looks and sounds all wrong). There is no floor anywhere to be seen. I would have thought that once my roommate moved out, it would be *cleaner* in here, but now it seems as though the mess has exploded with the freedom from respecting anyone else's side of the room. Honestly, I didn't know that I even owned so much stuff that it could so completely blanket the floor. Doing laundry doesn't help, either; in fact it makes the mess worse by creating another category - clean clothes - to be dealt with. I just don't know what to do. I can't muster up the ambition to attempt to fix this. I have wayyy to much else to do instead of playing around cleaning my room.

Why, then, am I playing around with the internet? Hmmmm what an interesting question you pose there...



My Life These Days
So, yeah, I've not been installing updates at all in the past six weeks or so due to "Lysistrata," which ended just a few days ago. It was fun. I'm surprised I survived actually, but it was fun. I'll post pictures of it as soon as I discover $15 to get them developed. Hmmm, a digital camera is looking like a better and better investment all the time...

So only a week left of classes is what I just realized just now... hot damn! And then a week of finals... and then I'm off to Oak Ridge to live in my parents' house once more and acquire public relations skills in a thrilling internship at a retirement facility. (Oh god.........)

Hopefully I'll get in the play at the Playhouse and at least have some debauchery available to me at cast parties. Then I'll last until the end of August.... I hope....

Musings of the Moment
My sudden craving for bananas has led me to an interesting new thought. Texture is just as important -- if not more -- in eating as taste is. I really don't enjoy a banana straight out of the peel monkey-style, but sliced up and eaten with a fork from a plate and I can't get enough of them. It's the smooth texture of the slices versus the jagged edges on the bitten-off bananas: smooth sides are obviously far superior, obviously the main reason I like bananas. This applies to drinking as well. The cup from which I drink makes a major difference in the taste of the beverage. I noticed this at home over spring break, when Mother allowed me to use one of the multitudinous teacups she has been collecting. Tea tastes so much better when consumed from a delicate porcelain teacup than when guzzled from a chipped cheap coffee cup you stole from your roommate last summer. The thin, graceful edges of the teacup seem to completely enhance the tea's flavor, making it a far preferable experience to enjoying the tea when your lips are pressed against the cumbersomely thick edges of a cheap mug. This is my excuse for why M&Ms were so prevalent in my life over the summer; I found the texture to be extremely soothing and invigorating at the same time. It was an interesting dychotemy of sharp crunchiness of the candy shell right up against the smooth, thick chocolate inside. Peanut M&Ms are even more of an adventure with the salty, gentle crunch of the core of the candy. Compare this with peanut butter M&Ms, which provide you with the hard crunchiness of the candy shell, the soft smoothness of the chocolate immediately contrasting, and just when you think that it can't get any softer or smoother here comes a dab of peanut butter gracefully caressing your senses like fattening silk. DAMN how I love M&Ms!!!!



My Life These Days
Nothing new to report. Nothing truly exciting ever happens around here. I have a choir performance in just 5 short hours and my voice is still completely blown from the other night at the karioke bar, when our table won a screaming contest and a round of free tasty beverages. Despite my habit of frequenting the Rainbow Club on karioke night (ignoring my short hiatus from attendance last semester due to business of schedules), I still remain a karioke virgin. The time just has never been quite right. I'm saving myself for the perfect night. I suppose this perfect night will have to be when I'm too drunk to give a crap about how people think I sound, and thus it will have to take place next August when I'll be legal to purchase the means to become too drunk without hiding my hands with the big X's on them under the table. I have a long wait, but at least this means I have plenty of time to pick out the song that will defile my karioke virginity. Maybe I'll do some Madonna.

In other news... there is no other news. All my friends had excellent spring breaks, except Josh who was stuck on the choir tour bus with me so that's some consolation. I registered for classes and maybe I will graduate on time after all. I got a hair cut, and for the first time in six months I don't look like poo if you disregard the mystery 10 pounds that appeared out of nowhere. Roger the goldfish is trying to write his one great song. He keeps me up at night with the electric guitar. I think he's trying to rub it in that I've fallen behind in practicing violin. He's so mean sometimes.

But I like him anyway.







Musings of the Moment
Lately at work I have become fixated on concerns over shelf life. Of course, as a lowly server, I am not privy to all the details of the storage of the meat and the salad bar and things of that nature, but what is in my control I have taken to looking over with great fervor. Lemons, for example. I make absolute certain that the buckets cut yesterday afternoon are used before the buckets cut yesterday evening, because they are at least 4 hours older. I don't know what 4 hours is to a lemon, but it seems as though one is better safe than sorry. Also when I cut the lemons, I always store the first buckets I cut in front of the last ones. That crucial 45 seconds between buckets might just make all the difference in the world. Coffee and tea bags, too - I always restock them by removing the leftover bags and then replacing them on top of the new ones. Of course they're sealed, and we go through tea like there will be no tea tomorrow, but still, you don't want old dried up tea at the bottom of the box, do you? What does tea taste like when it rots? And then there is the issue of the wetnaps. I know nobody eats wetnaps, or at least nobody should, although they do smell pleasantly of lemon. Nonetheless, I find it to be imperative that the old wetnaps be placed upon the new ones in case they get old and dry out. The disappointment of a dry wetnap is the most horrible feeling in the world, quite similar to an overripe orange or an overcooked steak or underwhelming orgasms. This also applies to straws. I always try to rotate the straw stock, not only on the shelves, but in my apron pocket. I replace new straws on the left side of the pocket and always give people straws from the right side. This way you know you have the freshest straw available to me. Silverware too. There are always more forks than knives because the thin little knives are more apt to slide into the trash can, so when new clean silver comes out to roll, I try to make sure to roll the older forks first so that none of the forks sit there too long. They might get dusty, you know? They'll be the forks that have lain there undisturbed for so many shifts that they'll be crap forks; the wear and tear on them won't match that of the knives who were used more frequently, so it will look strange. Rotating stock properly is very important, I feel. Of course I never mention any of this to my coworkers because I am aware that it is on the neurotic side and might require medication if I begin washing my hands repeatedly or following woodgrain lines in floorboards.



My Life These Days
Here is my very interesting Rent story:

So after a fabulous viewing of Rent, my sister decided that she wanted to be like her cool friend Rachel and meet the cast like Rachel did the other night, hanging outside the performers' exit until they emerged, then chatting amiably and personably with them in her very Rachel way. My sister and Sarah with an H went off in a frantic search for that particular exit, shadowed closely by Johnny, while Sara with no H and I hung back and expressed a bit of concern for tresspassing issues. Being as we were in the balcony and were not among the first to leave the theatre, many of the entrances and exits that seemed promising were already locked up. They at last located a cracked door, and they disappeared within its uncertain shadows. Moments later Genny, Sarah with an H, and Johnny returned, flanked by three security guards. "This is it," I lamented to Sara with no H. "We're going to be arrested," she agreed mournfully. Fortunately, it was not to be the case. The security guards seemed to be sympathetic to their star-struck pleas, or maybe they showed a little cleavage. In any case, one security guard led us to a suspiciously rickety elevator in the colloseum portion of the building where there was a noisy UT hockey game taking place. The elevator opened, it's bars and chains parting up and down as well as side to side, and out emerged a group of people hurrying out. I swear I glanced Angel in the crowd. Damn was he hot. We boarded the elevator, Genny and Sarah with an H all very excited about this big adventure. I was excited too but I'm too old and jaded now so I pretended to be cool. We descended to the floor that led to the backstage. The chains and bars parted once more to reveal.... that they'd locked it up already, and everything was deserted.

"They must have left already," the security guard noted apologetically.

"Damn."

The elevator doors closed noisily, and we prepared for the descent back up to the ground floor and to our fruitless return home. Suddenly, to everyone's surprise, instead of up, the suspicious elevator began to move DOWN.

"We're on the Tower of Terror," I commented wittily. Only those of my friends who had been to Disney World appreciated this comment.

We reached a sub-basement level, and once more the doors parted to reveal a substantial small crowd of people consisting of ..... the cast of Rent. They boarded the elevator.

Silence.

The irony of the situation overcame me. Irony like this never happens to me, and I realized that when confronted with delicious irony, I begin to giggle. So I giggled. The cast chatted amongst themselves, Genny stared wide-eyed and wordless, and I hit whichever of my friends was nearest to me multiple times out of irony. I was within ten inches of Roger and two inches of Maureen. It was beautiful.

We ascended noisily back to ground level, and the cast tried to hurry off but Sarah with an H ran off and attempted to tackle Mimi and Maureen while Genny monopolized Roger, who kindly humored her teenaged gushing. Sara with no H grudgingly loaned them her expensive pens to get autographs, Johnny wandered off to talk to the 14 year old he wants to date, and I entertained the thought of seducing sexy Roger but decided that would not be my best laid plan. Then I took Genny home and we all went clubbing and I fell down and scuffed the toe of my porn star boots. All in all it was a marvelous night.

Musings of the Moment
I don't know WHO you are, or FROM WHERE you came, but you really should sign my damn guestbook. I am too lazy to provide a link for it right now, but you can scroll down to the bottom of the page and click there. It would be greatly appreciated. The number on the counter keeps going up but the last person who cared about me was Heidi over Christmas break and I'm lonely again.



My Life These Days
My friends and I just embarked upon a seemingly simple task of making spaghetti for dinner. Spaghetti - the easiest of dinners to create. You boil water, you stick the noodles in, you time it, you drain it, you smother it in your sauce of choice. Okay, so that didn't happen. I don't know what went wrong with the poor first box of angelhair, but it somehow ended up in a large squidgy clump. We tried to put ranch dressing on it to see if that made it better, but that was too weird. The second box of spaghetti turned out okay I guess, but by then what with all the crises over the noodles we had become quite distracted from the garlic bread which had turned a little overcrisp. Nevertheless dinner turned out to be very edible all around - Kellie's hamburger meat sauce was the absolute piece de la whatever. Now we are baking her belated replacement birthday cake (as we ate the original without her while she was bedded down with the flu), and when we taste that I'll let you know if we have any hope of salvation as cooks.







Musings of the Moment
I am too tired to philosophize about anything.



My Life These Days
Okay, for a terrifying several half hours last night I thought all this work had been flushed down the toilet, but as mysteriously as this site was claimed to have violated terms of service, it's back up and I'm still confused but much happier in general. I KNEW I didn't have any porn here. I suppose this means I should be updating this puppy more. I suppose, it being January Term now, I don't have an excuse for not doing so.

So yes, my Human Sexuality can be interesting but it's usually a frustrating class. I should have suspected that it was really going to be Intergender Relationships 101. Yeah yeah, men are from Mars and women are from Venus and we're all pissed about that, but I signed up for this class to talk about SEX. Oh well...

Musings of the Moment
I hate Victorian literature. I hate Victorian literature even worse than I hated Romantic literature, which was a lot. I would rather spend the rest of my life reading Keats every day three times a day than go to English 335 one more time. Keats was actually kind of good. I enjoyed him and his Grecian urn and his nightingale, and I enjoyed what's-his-name with the Tyger and the Lamb and all that. Well... enjoyed might be too strong a word, but I didn't despise it in the same manner I despise the Victorians. If I had been in England while everyone was a Victorian, I would move to Italy where everyone is cool and rides by on motorbikes saying "Ciao."



My Life These Days
...Meanwhile, a month later, I venture back into the daily grind of reality, blinking in the sudden glare of the sun with eyes accustomed only to shadowy dressing-rooms, eyes all awash with tears of grief for the departure from the "Hamlet" experience. Yes it's over folks... I survived, my grades are slowly recovering from the blow, and there is a mere week of classes left, then a mere week of finals, then holiday freedom!! I can't wait until I can sleep until I wake up. I can't wait until I can lounge about the house and watch TV... god, TV... I seem to remember faintly the wonders of staring mindlessly into the glowing magic box for hours. I'm so excited.. I may just quit school tonight and go watch TV for the rest of my life. ...yeah, because THAT wouldn't make Mother cry.







Musings of the Moment
Wow, I haven't done this since May, so I'm really out of practice and I can't think of anything eloquent or biting or even remotely interesting to say. I'll take a stab at it...

So...popsicles. I've discovered I have a thing for popsicles. This doesn't include just any frozen confection on a stick; oh no no no. I am talking about the kind that are in a long plastic pouch that one must chop the end off, then push from the bottom while sucking from the top. I prefer Flav-O-Ice brand, tropical flavors, except the banana yellow ones. Fake banana taste is something I can't quite get into. I was at Wal-Mart several nights ago when I noted a large box of Pop-Ice brand: 100 for $4.00. Who could pass up such a golden opportunity?? So now I have ample popsicles to last me at least a month or more. Unfortunately, the freezer they gave us, though not as broken as the first one, is still not quite large enough to house the frozen foods of the four people living in this suite [I told you I would be living in a dorm this year] and so most of them are on the top shelf of my closet. It's okay though. I can handle that.



My Life These Days
Yes, it is October now and classes are in full swing. I'm not entirely certain how many hours I am taking due to the fact that two of them are audit only and I don't know how many hours they would be, so all I can say is if I were taking them for credit I would be in course overload at this point. We are also rehearsing Hamlet at the moment, which means the answer to every inquiry is "I can't; I have rehearsal." It's not really a big part but it's a bit integral [Ophelia - go me] so there go all my nights from 7pm to 10pm for the next several weeks. Also the newspaper is a pain in my ass. This is probably due to my lack of motivation in taking the time to get an interview set up, but nonetheless I blame it all on someone else. This same lack of motivation can be evidenced in my room. I have had clean laundry scattered about the place for two weeks since I washed it, and at this point I am unable to tell which laundry is clean and which is dirty, as they're all wrinkled. I don't have enough closet space to hang everything, so it's all in Yaffa blocks in the closet and I can't get to the Yaffa due to the pile of laundry in front of it... It is a curious paradox. Actually it's on the agenda to clean the room tonight and tomorrow as I am entertaining an out of town guest. I hope it will get done, but if it doesn't at least I'm being honest about my true personality - a friggin mess.

Musings of the Moment
I just ate this bowl of strawberry-flavored applesauce. I have always liked that, but it just hit me how weird that is. I mean, what's wrong with plain applesauce? I have in my refridgerator three kinds of applesauce: strawberry-flavored, cinnamon-flavored, and peach-mango-flavored. I wonder what's wrong with plain applesauce. It just looked so enticing at Wal-Mart, the paradox of disguising what I was buying never occurred to me. I was contemplating it and I remembered that you can make really low-fat brownies by using applesauce instead of butter or oil. What a versatile thing applesauce is. I don't suppose it's a good thing to be like applesauce. I don't know if I would enjoy bending to the whim of everyone else's favorite flavor, or being combined with other things at will to create a more expedient result. I would rather someone appreciate my plain applesauce flavor instead of adding things to make me taste like peach mango. That's my new goal: I'm going to find someone who loves me for my unaltered state rather than for the interesting additives that allow me to function well in the world. Hmm. It's 3:30 in the morning, isn't it.



My Life These Days
I passed all my classes with grades of B- or above, my car only cost $400 to fix, I now have a new apartment with my veryown room and a job lined up for next Tuesday in Pigeon Forge at The Chop House. That doesn't really sound like a step up from Sonny's BBQ, but really it is. It's a classy restaurant. I have to buy a tie. Then I have to learn to tie it.

This whole modem connection thing sucks quite a bit. I miss the LAN connections we had at school. This is a 144000000bps connection and it still is crawlingly slow. I haven't even tried Napster yet. I probably won't anyway, since by now it's probably all filtered out.

Since the internet isn't fast and I have to share with my roommate's internet and the phone as well, and since I get kicked off a lot, I don't expect a surplus of updates this summer. Check back in September.

Musings of the Moment
Secretly I think Wal-Mart is out to get us. Now, don't get me wrong, because I have nothing but goodwill toward this store of stores that is open for my business at any time of night, its wide aisles spanning the horizon before me as I step through the sliding doors and into its dreamlike dimension. However, it knows me too well for my own good. It knows exactly how excited I will get when I see that Cadbury Cream Eggs are only 20 cents apiece, and it knows that I will have no resistance to buying as many as I can carry. This was a deliberate, carefully-planned Capitalistic venture. It's investing in my lack of willpower, becaue it knows that after I have gained 100 pounds from eating their clearance-priced leftover Easter candy, I will succumb to the lifestyle of the fat American and I will come to them for such things as cushy TV chairs. It's really a long-term investment. I'm kind of pissed that I fell for it. I guess I could give all these Cadbury Cream Eggs away to people now before the damage is done, but truth be told, I must have eaten 10 of them already since Sunday night. It being Thursday, the outlook is not so good for my already unsatisfactory waistline. I'm just doomed to be a puppet of the corporate master geniuses, I guess. Poop.



My Life These Days
Waitressing makes money, college makes stress, Astronomy labs make for loss of sleep. I was out in the freezing cold [again, East Tennessee weather is bizarre] at one a.m. last night with Sara and the other lab partner, measuring altitudes of stars in the eastern sky... sigh... We probably did it wrong and now we'll fail. To tell the truth I'm not too terribly happy with this short summary, and I'll fix it later tonight when I'm doing my laundry. If I remember to do my laundry, I mean. I had better remember to do my laundry because everything in my closet smells of real pit barbeque smoke. I have to go to Child Development class now. Tootles.

Okay, I'm back. I thought I would write a more comprehensive history of my life these days, but that just about covers it. I have two weeks to complete six weeks' worth of work in one class, three days to complete eight weeks' worth of work in another, I'm hanging by my last thread in the others, and I can't stop eating Easter candy. Best to just go ahead and check back with me in three weeks when everything will be over. So, all I have to do is get Bs in my classes, make several hundred dollars, and break the news to my mother that Mel and Vicki and I are planning to live in an apartment in some other city this summer. Suffice to say, mere trifles like clean clothes and dishes have fallen by the wayside of my schedule. Aw crap, I do have to wash clothes tonight. I forgot. Well poop!! [I have just realized that I have said "poop" twice already. Things must have really hit rock bottom.]

Musings of the Moment
I can't wait to move back into a dorm room next year. It will be so completely exciting, so worth all the stupidities of having an RA and room inspections and quiet hours and things of that nature. Of course if it's a suite I'll still have to buy my own toilet paper. I never realized until this year how quickly toilet paper is used up. It's such a transient thing. All I want is to be able to step outside my room into a well-lit, carpeted hallway and scream, "Does anyone have any tylenol I can borrow?!?!" Also it's going to be nice to not have to fear for my life when walking to class, because as far as I know those frightening 18-wheelers don't barrel down the street between Carnegie and Anderson. The most exciting part will be the fact that I'll be able to afford a meal plan again next year! What bliss, where food preparation is all of standing in line and putting it on the plate, and cleanup is placing the dishes on a conveyer belt to be swept out of sight. Who cares if the food tastes like shit; I'm so unbelievably excited at the prospect of no dirty dishes!!



My Life These Days
Three more days and Concert Choir will be over for the semester. One of those days is today, so if I can just survive the performance at 8pm, I'll be fine. I wish we were better, and I wish some of the people would transfer. And I wish I had a pony. Um, so anyway, yeah, yay for the iminent departure from Concert Choir for the semester. Choir tour was interesting. I learned a lot from the phenominal Moses Hogan, from the 7000-hour bus ride, from that ill-fated game of strip poker...

Other than that there is not much going on. We had tech for "The Marriage of Bette and Boo" last night and it was depressingly uneventful -- my fault of course, by volunteering to go up to the grid to weight the arbors while everyone else got to hang the lights and do cartwheels and things like that. Still, it's fun anyway because the play is student-produced, so we don't have Alan the crusty technical director breathing down our necks the whole time. I'm quite excited about it.

Besides these exciting tidbits, I have no life. The toaster burnt my pop tart and I don't think my evening will recover after that. Also it's still Lent and on top of that it's Friday, so I can't get chicken and chocolate out of my mind. Not at the same time, of course, but alternating between the two cravings. Maybe I'll convert to Unitarian-Universalism. Yeah, because that wouldn't make my mother cry.

Musings of the Moment
I think the reason everyone is so pissy lately is something to do with this awful Tennessee weather. Our bodies can't deal with it being 65 one day and 30 the next. The temperature needs to make up its damn mind, because I think everyone's seratonin level is consequently suffering and it's really beginning to piss me off. Also it's Lent; that might have something to do with the aggression. People have stopped eating chocolate or drinking coffee, or else they started to but failed and are now feeling the inadequacy of their inability to resist temptation. Or something. I really don't know. I have to go to Astronomy class now (hmm, maybe that has something to do with pissiness levels as well) so I don't have time to analyze this.



My Life These Days
I just got off the phone with Mike the ex boyfriend. God bless, was he in a bad mood. This, coupled with the fact that at the time I was attempting to try on last summer's swimsuit for choir tour next-next week, has not left my spirits particularly soaring. Damn boys, damn swimsuits... on Smart People Island we will have neither. I always thought the boys could come too, but now I see it is a contradiction of terms to allow boys onto Smart People Island.

So Medea opened last night, quite pathetically in my opinion. I was really ready for this to have been over several weeks ago, but what can one do. Sunday morning this will all be but a happy memory.

Musings of the Moment
Heidi had a prospective student stay with her last night. She was really cool; she laughed at lot, which made me really happy. It made me think of those long-past days when I was a prospective, staying the night with current students, struggling with the pros and cons of this particular place over other similar places. I said just the other day to a group of people (in a rather sappy manner, I might add) how glad I was that I chose this school because otherwise they wouldn't be my friends. (I think they thought I was being insincere.) That being said, I wonder exactly how many times I have used the adjective "stupid" in conjunction with "Maryville College," pining for some other school elsewhere: "O if only I had gone to University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, then I would not be forced to do this ridiculous [enter the name of one of the stupid assignments here]!" There are, however, many advantages to going here... like... um... hell with such few students, competition in the theatre is nothing. That's a big plus. And you get to learn a lot of things here that you wouldn't necessarily learn elsewhere... try to get into an argument about religion with a MC humanities major, and they start throwing names like Feuerbach at you... all in all, I don't know where I'm going with this sloppy free-association reminiscing. I guess I'm glad I'm here is what I'm saying. That's an awfully good thing too, because if I suddenly chose to transfer I would be left with maybe two real credits and 60 elective credits... I'm not sure Biblical Studies is a core curriculum course anywhere else in the [non-churchgoing college] world.



My Life These Days
Medea opens tomorrow. It's about damn time too; I think that was the longest rehearsal process to which I've ever been subjected. It's not that it's a bad show. On the contrary, this looks to be quite an excellent evening of infanticide. It's just that... damn... all that fear, guilt, and mourning for two hours really spoil the rest of your night, you know what I mean? Sobbing on the floor as you listen to children scream backstage takes its toll on the brain's chemical balance of seratonin levels. I should have been taking Welbutrin through this rehearsal process. Nonetheless, I think this show will be really good.

In other areas of life... interview for a job today... real job, not cataloguing sheet music in the fine arts center. Waitressing at the newly-opened Bar-B-Q restaurant. I hate Bar-B-Q. This is probably a good thing because when I was hired at Baskin Robbins I loved ice cream. I loved ten pounds of weight gain of ice cream, to be precise. It was devastating. So I need to go change into nice clothes for that, then I'm off to Wal-Mart to drop off some film, and maybe purchase a quick sandwich at Chick-Fil-A before Astronomy. I don't know. This is awfully rambly and thesisless, like most of my life is, so I guess it's representative.

Musings of the Moment
I was at Wal-Mart the other day, doing some grocery shopping with a large, loud group of people. Deep within the recesses of the soup aisle, I was carefully selecting from a variety of cans of various Campbell's, when Melinda looked at me and my armload of ten or eleven cans and asked me, "Hey Jessica, are you a soup person?" This was meant to be funny and ironic, but the comment set me to thinking. What exactly constitutes a soup person? Maybe soup people are seeking comforting warmth, seeking the variety of the contradictory consistancies, seeking deviation from the norm of our sandwich society. This would be exciting if it were at all true. In all honesty I am a soup person for very mundane reasons: it's a $0.65 meal, it's easy to prepare, it's easy to clean up, and it's terribly low in fat and high in nutrition. I'm ashamed to admit there's nothing exotic and exciting about the motives behind my eating habits. Even the toasted bread thing to which I ascribe is not because I enjoy the crispiness, the flirting-with-the-edge-of-burnt quality that goes along with toast. It's because I keep my bread in the freezer so it won't mold. I'm a dreadfully boring person, I regret.



My Life These Days
Truthfully, I need to be studying for that Astronomy exam which is going to take place in approximately one hour. Have I read what I need to read? Have I read any of Chapter Four as of yet? Have I read anything at all for that class? It's not that I'm a bad student; it's just that the professor hasn't yet instilled in me the fear of God as have the professors for my Humanities class. If I'm not scared enough to wet my pants at the mere thought of the class, I'm not going to be able to muster the self-discipline to spend the required hours poring over the many aspects of stellar astronomy, some of which I would list here at this point if I could call any to mind. As it is my academic responsibility to learn and strive and excel, it is the professor's academic responsibility to frighten the hell out of me. This is one of those give and take relationships, and if he's not doing his part, then how am I to be expected to do my part either?? Don't tell me not to project the blame here; this is the Way Things Are.

As I now have less than 45 minutes to commit the main points of Chapter Four to memory I suppose I'll wrap this up now.

Musings of the Moment
I seem to be striken with the stunning inability to add and subtract. Namely subtract. Namely subtract spendings from balance in my checkbook registry. I can't even begin to recall how many of those ominous blue notices from the bank have arrived at my house since I've opened the checking account. Basically I've come to accept the fact that when the time comes for me to purchase a car or rent an apartment or adopt children from a third world country, I will be given a Look and/or laughed at in a most humiliating manner. I think I need to marry an accountant.



My Life These Days
"No Business Like Show Business" has at last come to a close, thank the Lord. All in all it went over quite well, ignoring the rows of loud people yelling insults at the stage. I'm so happy that it's over I'm not even worrying about where to come up with $511.75(+tax) to pay for books for this semester. That's really quite a large sum. You'd think I was majoring in biology or something. How expensive can a few lit books cost?? This school is ripping me off.

On the bright side, I cleaned the bathroom today. And the kitchen. The only thing left to do is clean out my fish Alejandro's bowl, and I'll tackle that after my head has cleared from the lysol fumes and I can stand up without getting dizzy and nauseated. This apartment sucks, it has no light and no air circulation. I can't believe Brittany and I are paying a collective $600 a month for this dump. Oh, wait, this was supposed to be on the bright side, wasn't it.

Musings of the Moment
I have recently discovered the joy that can be found in clementine oranges. I didn't even know these wonders existed until something like two weeks ago, when my parents returned from visiting family and returned bearing a basket of assorted edibles, included in which were these amazing fruits. How enchanting! They're so small and so very easy to peel. I think they serve clementines in heaven. Unfortunately, the case I bought is just not being eaten quickly enough and they're started to rot... it's really quite tragic...



My Life These Days
There must be a reason my parents are paying $22,000 a year for me to get educated. This isn't it. Honestly I have no idea what possessed me to sign up for a class called "No Business Like Show Business." It must have been the same little voice that told me that yeah, it would be a really good idea to sign up for Modern Philosophy for fun. At least I'm learning this month that neanderthals really do walk among us... and they're ALL IN THIS CLASS WITH ME. Not even getting started on the stupidity and humiliation of the actual course curriculum, which consists of ridiculous dances to the worst songs ever to grace a Broadway stage, just co-existing for three hours a day with these people is comparable to embarking upon a journey to hell in that trite old handbasket. It'll be over in just a week and a half, and I hope I can hold out that long. Maybe I can convince Lilly the theatre ghost to drop a weight or two on a couple heads.

Also I can't get this stupid javascript thing to work. I just don't understand it. There's some elusive mistake somewhere in line 6, and being that I know verrrrrrry little about javascript, I'll probably never find it. I found it once before and actually got it to work quite impressively when I was in high school, but I think that was just dumb luck. It's very depressing.

Okay that is all.

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