I had a pretty good day at work…I was not stressing and trying to be meticulous, which paid off. My editor only had a few questions on the stuff I wrote. Awesome.

Worked on the website a little bit too. Check out the front page article, and click on the images. Lightbox, betches!

After work I met Mario at Chipotle and I had a burrito (apparently he’d already eaten) so I had to be very very meticulous about my eating (it’s so easy to end up with a face full of burrito) and not just chow down (which was what I wanted). We had about an hour after I ate, and I suggested going to Crepeville and getting hot apple cider, but that place reminds me too much of people I don’t like.

Well that and nobody I know likes it. Annie and Alex liked it…which I guess is more of an indictment than an endorsement. Hmm.

So we went down to Mario’s place…which I hadn’t been to since the week or so after I broke up with Terry. For some damn reason, the place smells exactly like my old friend Josh’s place. Did I mention that he came down a month or so ago? We had dinner at Tapa’s and talked about our futures. It was really cool. We were really close in CC.

He had Katamari Damacy, which I’d heard about for ages and was very interested in playing. It was actually kind of hard, but SUPER fun. We played until right before the movie, but he lives close to the Tower so we got there right as it was starting. We saw Juno, which had this excellent marketing campaign…it was faux-indie, but still, very funny and touching. It didn’t suck. I think that was what surprised me the most.

And people had showed up in droves to see it too. The parking lot was completely full, and so were all the streets around there. This was a Thursday at like seven.

Sadly, though, the main character actor chick (Ellen Page, thank you, Wikipedia) played nearly the same character she played in Hard Candy. Did I mention seeing that? I think I was a little too disturbed by it to really mention that. She always plays this streetwise too-smart-for-her-age teenage girl. But she is funny.

I was so stoked about getting my BlackBerry…but I called T-Mobile and once all the fees were stacked up, it turned out being around $370 with a mail-in rebate of $50.

So…no.

Fuck RIM. I’m going to wait for the first generation Android devices. Okay, for those of you who I constantly gush about how Android is going to revolutionize the mobile phone industry, cure AIDS, and generally give the world a hand job, skip this.

But everyone else…yeah, Android is going to be a wonderful coup for the industry. Okay, you know that one thing you hate about your phone? With a phone based on Adroid, ANYONE THAT KNOWS HOW TO PROGRAM FOR LINUX WILL BE ABLE TO CHANGE IT.

Want an app that mashes up the times that businesses are open with Google Maps? Done.

Want an app that detects ambient noise levels and automatically turns your phone on silent when you’re in a quiet room? Done.

With Linux (Android is based on the Linux kernel), basically, you can make the phone do whatever the hell you want. And you don’t have to ask Microsoft or RIM for permission.

Which is fucking awesome.

Okay, I’m done with the Android lovefest. I have sort of preliminarily decided on getting a Nokia Internet tablet in lieu of a new smartphone. I’ll be able to do like twenty times more shit on it, and FINALLY I will have a (nearly) full-featured computer small enough to carry around with me.

And I’ll just deal with my shitty phone. Oh, something I learned about Android today is that all those prototype videos

are running on a prototype handset with a 200MHZ ARM processor. Okay, that is fucking insane. My smartphone runs a 312MHZ processor from Texas Instruments and it can barely keep up when I type on the phone keyboard. Yet this prototype in the video can play fucking Quake!

So basically, the days of Windows Mobile being ubiquitous on phones are (thank god) numbered.

So anyway, Zero is in Indianapolis until the first :( but we text all the time so it’s like he’s still here but just a few minutes away.

A friend of mine and I were watching this VH1.com thing about retro 90s music and I cannot stop thinking about how much I used to listen to TLC back in the day.

Fan Mail was a fucking amazing album. I remember when my first and only girlfriend broke up with me, she was paraphrasing the song “Dear Lie,” and we both knew it.

Justina Johnson. I saw her a few years later and she was exactly the same, hanging out with her dropout pothead friends. She gave me this disapproving look. “You’ve changed,” she said. I don’t think I said anything. A leopard doesn’t change its spots, apparently.

So after all of this, I went home hoping to wash my clothes (I was at the absolute bottom of the barrel today wearing my “betch” shirt underneath a coat and corduroy pants, ugh). So I fill up the machine, dump in the soap, look down, and I’m standing in this gushing torrent of water coming from the bottom of the machine.

So yeah. All my clothes. Covered in water and soap, in the leaky washing machine.

Doomed. Doooooooomed.

Meh, I’ll get up early and ask Grammie about it. And if she’s not here, I’ll start freaking out. That or buy some new clothes since I get paid today. Working full-time is strange. So is going to sleep before 1 a.m.

I rather like it, since I like my job. But I’m going to get this huge paycheck from these two weeks of full time and I just don’t know what to spend it on. I already have cool clothes. Hmm. I guess I’ll have something to put in my savings account once again. Awesome!

I couldn’t find these lyrics anywhere, so I thought I’d transcribe and post them for Google’s edification.

The song is from I AM X, the stage name of Chris Corner the wonderful former singer for the Sneaker Pimps. The song has this really catchy melody made from this synth I’ve never heard before. Anyway.

Your silver skin
Crawls in rhythm
Sweats like spring
Returns me to the death wish

And all my epiphanies
that branded me
and broke my knees
confirms me
into the death wish

Misfits are free
the gravity pure
expression tears and pulls them
into the death wish

and all our accessories
that concentrate the pain and tears
and brace them with the death wish

Are we pretending
Are we pretending
Are we pretending
‘Cause I like pretending

And are we machines
Obsolete, alone
a symbiotic
self-indulgence

And if we dig deep
the circuitry burnt out
bends into erotic repitition

But your silver skin
Serves my aching curses
And reminds me
That you’re worth it
The whole world’s insanities

The bleeding hearts and tragedies
Won’t distract me
From the death wish

Are we pretending
Are we pretending
Are we pretending
‘Cause I like pretending

Christmas was anticlimactic. I woke up at 1 p.m. (a first for me, I think), and we ate before we opened the six or so presents (that includes cards) that we had. There were only four people this Christmas. We didn’t even have to put the leaf in the table.

Yeah.

I did go over to Kathleen’s afterwards. Kelly was there. I talked with Kathleen for a long time, Kelly was on the phone arguing with Jesse…I felt really embarrassed for overhearing it. I wanted to say something to her, but I didn’t know what.

I don’t know what our family has come to. Grammie is too crazy to make us food (and she was really really sick) so my dad made most of everything. It took all of my discretion to not talk about John being dead. It’s so strange…I hated John, but now that he’s gone, there is just this void in everyone’s life. There is no scapegoat for everything any more. There is no one for Grammie to be codependent on.

I wanted to tell Kelly that I’m sorry her life isn’t going as well as it should be, and that I wish her the best of luck in everything. But that is too stale to really say. I want some kind of soliloquy that would explain it all, but there isn’t one. I just think she’s made some bad decisions in the kind of people she wants to hang out with.

I even sort of got her a present, but I didn’t think it would be right to give it to her. I just don’t know how to fix the rift between us without confronting her about everything. I don’t have the right to confront her, though. That and I’ll never be able to hang out with Becky or Lacey any more. Which is probably more of an issue.

Well, my wrists hurt, I’m going to surf the web and try to forget about those things.

So I’m done with my finals. I think I did pretty well on my math final. However, on the essay question for geology by a really had no idea what I was writing. But I draw diagrams. Diagrams! That should get me at least some points.

I totally aced all of the multiple-choice questions… so I think I will get a B at least. He posted our lab grades and I got a B in lab. Which is not too shabby.

He gave us back all of the photos that he took of us over the year, and some of them were pretty cool. I totally forgot this one was taken, but it’s (left to right) Nappy, this one guy that ran track; me; Ronda, this cool girl that I had so much fun with on the trip; and Matt, the guy that I was undressing with my eyes all semester. From this picture he looks terrible, but he has the sexiest voice you’ve ever heard.

And then the group picture. I thought that I would hate all of these douchebags after the class was over, but I miss everyone terribly.

It’s very close to the amount of bonding that happened in my speech class. Anyway, it’s all over now. I must forge ahead.

I hated everyone in my math class unequivocally. I’m not sure why. I think the main reason went by the name of Andrew Rutherford. HE WOULD NOT SHUT THE FUCK UP ALL CLASS LONG.

I swear to God.

“I learned this one way… where we take the X… and then like… do it.”

NO. THAT IS NOT A FACTORING TECHNIQUE. THAT IS NOT EVEN A SENTENCE!!!!!!

So I’m praying that he’s not in the next semester. Which of course he will be. I got an A or a B in that class… I guess that’s all I should care about.

During my break between finals I had about three hours to waste, so I drove over to the T-Mobile store on Madison and played with the BlackBerry Curve for a while. I don’t know why, but the guy gave me this shocked look when I told him that Windows Mobile sucks ass. I guess I should have left out the “ass” part. But it was the store’s BlackBerry guy, so it shouldn’t have been such a big surprise. I thought that was kind of strange, but was totally unprepared for the next bit of strangeness.

I was asking him a lot of very technical questions about the underpinnings of the BlackBerry operating system, and he answered them… but you know those cell phone salesman, they will lie to you right up and down. I treat it as my own personal mission to get cell phone sales people to lie straight to my face just to see who is trustworthy and who isn’t. The jury’s still out on him… I haven’t done the research yet. I mostly just wanted to play with the phone more.

So after that I thought I would take a spin over to the Target a block or two down and try to find those elusive LED Christmas lights I want more of. However, as I was driving over, I entered the turn lane behind this guy on one of those fast Japanese sports bikes. It kind of weird when you’re right next to someone and you’re both on motorcycles, so I just stayed about half of a car length behind him. So the light turns green and we all kind of full-throttle it into the Target parking lot. I mean, it must have seemed like I was following him… but let’s face it… we were both going to Target. So I park and walk up to the front entrance.

Helmet on, idling, between the concrete stanchions and the entrance doors, THERE HE IS. He revvs the engine and drives it past me, looking me straight in the eye. I was too confused to even react…a million possible explanations flashed through my mind. But he drove away and was gone. But for a moment there — for one pregnant pause — it was time for me to draw my katana and for us to have some kind of Snow Crash meets Akira battle to the death in front of Target on this drizzly December day.

So of course I immediately called Patrick: “GIRL you will not just BELIEVE what just happened.” I told him the story and he laughed and told me he would call me back. Which he never did. But still. I was like a second away from having my life turned into a movie. Which, when I think about it, is actually pretty damn awesome. We were talking on the phone about how long an epic battle actually lasts. 20 minutes? 45 minutes? Five minutes? I need to know these things.

Either I have a fever or my grandma has the heat on the “surface of the Sun” setting again… both are likely. It’s been a week and three days since my exposure to the MRSA, and quite frankly, I’m very pissed off about the whole affair. Things like this that underscore the fact that I am totally without any sort of health care. What if I really did get this thing? I would have to go to the hospital and they would send me a bill for like $5,000.

[UPDATE: I'm feeling fine, even though my nose has been running nonstop since October.]

Being an American sucks.

I worked on another one of my paintings tonight. I thought it was going to look really awesome, but the actual thing ended up looking less than stellar. It wasn’t the look and was going for, but maybe I will grow to like it. I tried to take a picture of it, but my yellow walls make pictures turn out all fucked up.

I have work tomorrow and it’s probably going to be raining like crazy again. It’s supposed to rain all week. Which normally I wouldn’t care about, but you have to have a death wish to drive any two-wheeled vehicle in the rain. So it’s the bus for me. Hell, at least I’ll get some hardcore reading done.

Well, I’m going to make some tea and watch The Happiness of the Katakuris. Back when Adrian and I were dating, everyone that we knew had that movie in their MySpace “movies” box and we put it in ours even though we’d never seen it as a kind of inside joke. So I’m going to watch it. And it won’t be a joke any more.

I also got In The Company of Men, which I’d seen before but wanted to watch again. It is a fucking amazing movie. Go rent it!

I helped my grandma get her tree and get it all set up.

My wrists hurt today, it doesn’t bode well for my final. But I had a bunch of fun at the party :)

It’s two, so I’ve got to head to class. Geology final today, w00t.

So I had a pretty fun night tonight. Brian called me and see what out with Katie who I adore but rarely see. Also, the last time we hung out it was kind of strange because this guy that she was dating was a big loser.

But she broke up with him and all is well in the universe. We went over to Katie’s house, had some gumbo, watched some Family Guy, and I kept texting jokes to Brian.

After that we headed down to visit Josh, this guy that we had met a while ago that works with Katie. Katie ended up locking her keys in her car so we spent about an hour trying to get it open again. Luckily, two good Samaritans showed up and finally got it open. It was amazing, this hispanic guy and this black guy working in the two front doors, with Brian, the boyfriend guy, and I working on the two backdoor with wire hangers that we had gone over and bought at Long’s drugs.

After it was all over, I took a picture.

After that, we went down to the Starbucks where Katie works. We all talked for awhile, and then Katie went and dropped everyone off. It was only about 10:30, but that’s very late for Katie. She has to get up and open the store at like four every morning.

So I’m making some food and Zero just called me, he invited me to this party. And normally I am not the kind of person that goes to parties, but it might be fun with Zero. And if not, I’ve got my own transportation, so I can head out the moment I’m bored.

In making this tortellini which takes like 20 minutes to boil… I’m just going to eat it half-raw, ’cause I’m hungry and I want something cool to happen tonight.

I want to have an awesome weekend. I went jogging this morning, I got up to 20 minutes. That’s like four laps around my block, which is friggin’ awesome.

I talked to Brian on Friday and he told me that he wasn’t mad at me just that he thought that it was very soon after Terry and that he didn’t approve of the way I went about it, whether it had been Zero or any guy.

I still think about Terry more than I should. It’s so easy to call someone a vacuous retail bimbo, but he satisfied a lot of my deep-seated needs… and he cute in this kind of dead-inside doomed my-mother-never-loved-me-so-its-impossible-for-me-to-form-real-relationships way… and when he had his mask on, he was very easy to get along with.

A month or two ago Christen was telling me that the only person that she ever saw me with where she felt like it was really my capital-B boyfriend was Adrian. When we hung out this one time on the roof of this parking structure, she was like “well… it was just kind of like you and me…and then this random other guy.”

So I guess Sam has a staph infection. He called me up all dramatically because he said I should get tested or some crap. I’m not sick. And he got it like a week after we made out. The weeklong interim involved him getting a tattoo and sleeping with some random Russian guy.

It’s so strange… many of my preconceptions that I had about Sam were actually true about Zero and all of my preconceptions about Zero were actually sure about Sam. I guess the moral of the story is that I have absolutely no clue how to read people.

I’m not really in the mood to go out to party, but I never am. Well, I used to have a lot of fun of the parties that Kelly used to have at our house, but mostly because those were all my really close friends at the time.

He just called me and he’s there and I just finished my food, so I’m going to eat and then head out.

MMm….steamed vegetables and tortellini.

I need to overcome my shyness and be one of the cool kids. :P