No CIF tonight :-(
Couldn't weasel a ticket. Now I get to stay home and mope.

I do not like it when people feed my serious abandonment issues, particularly as the result of their own drunken mis-remembrance of things. Fortunately, I may be going to the Chicago Improv Festival tonight (assuming I can weasle a ticket, as the show is completely sold out), and that ought to cheer me up.

It's almost that wonderful time of the month again and I'm feeling lonely and weepy. I spent a very long time today snuggling the dog, which was wonderful. If I ever get married, I think it will have to be the job of my husband to sit around and tell me he loves me. My dog can't talk, but he's pretty good at making it clear and it's exactly what I need in these moods. Too bad it isn't 50 years ago and people would just call them "spells" and I'd be considered a bit eccentric in a romantic sort of way. Ay, me!

Inebriated notes on a concert

VNV Nation concert.
I went as a willing tourist. Woohoo! Quite different from Josh Ritter.
"Just because you're wearing black doesn't mean you're dead yet!"
I have a number of new best friends. With a little alcohol and live music, everybody is your best friend.

I stopped two fights. Both involved the same guy. I knew none of the people involved, but get a bit of booze in me and I am the greatest peacemaker ever. It is my duty to maintain harmony across the universe. Obviously.

I was surrounded by androgynous and androgynouser, lesbians galore, couples with overprotective boyfriends and their drunk girlfriends chatting it up, and at least two half-chubbies in my back as I was dancing. Yee-fuckin'-haw.

My stomach has been very cranky for almost two weeks now with no other symptoms. I'm not sure if I'm reacting to the Activia stuff or if I have an ulcer or what. But it's being weird gassy stabby a lot and it is not comfortable.

I've been writing a lot all weekend and even more today. I have a big thing due in fiction tonight that I'm not happy with at all yet, but I also brought a number of other things I've been writing for that class to a place where I am significantly happier.

TUMMY SHUT UP FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

BBC story

I think this is fabulous, though I'm currious about how the goat feels.

wake up

My landlord (or actually and agent of my landlord, since my landlord is a large company) just woke me up at 8 am on a Saturday morning to serve me a written notice that my rent is overdue. I thought I'd mailed it. This is something I have a lot of trouble with: paying bills that require a physical check to be mailed every month. It's why I have everything else set up with direct debit and I rely a lot on my Microsoft Money. When I was working at the theater I would hand deliver the rent on my way to work, which helped a lot, but now I'm never over there and here I am screwing up again. I don't know why this is so hard for me, but it's like there is a piece missing from my brain. Now I've got to go down to the office today to hand deliver it because I think three weeks is late enough. Ugh. Not a nice way to wake up.

I am hanging my little white head in shame. I'm trying to write this "updated folktale" for my fiction class, and it's based on an old Yiddish folktale that I am resetting on the South Side of Chicago. The adaptation is going quite well, but there's a part where I need this wise old grandmother character to tell a story within the story, and I can't get her voice for shit. So I actually emailed a sort-of-friend of mine from my magazine class who is a very decent writer and grew up on the south side and begged for help. From now on, you can call me Whitey McJew-Cracker. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go scorn people with any trace of melanin.

nerding off

Facebook message I just sent the guy who bought me a drink at Nerd Dating last night:

God bless the internet and stalking made easy. It's a little creepy, really. I was sending [Friend of mine he knew in college] an email about a recent run-in with a mutual acquaintance of ours and the fact that I met "a guy named [Guy's Name]" who knew her peripherally at [College]. "A guy named [Guy's Name]" wasn't too specific, so I figured I'd do a cursory Facebook search of [College] grads named [Name] in the Chicago network. It took 12 seconds, and there you were. I feel like a stalker, but I'm telling myself that if I send you a message instead of quietly lurking on your profile, all creepiness will magically disappear. And please pardon the nose prints on the outside of your bedroom window--I forgot to bring my windex.

I think I'm soooo funny.
In sober retrospect, last night was fun. I'm incredibly proud of myself for going a) at all and b)alone after my stylist ditched out on me. I did respectably well but lost twice at Balderdash. There were a good number of non-creepy intellectual nerds, most of which were surprisingly not all computer-science-types. The guys came alone and the girls came in pairs. I'd say the average male age was five years older than the average female age and a number of the guys were lurky nerds, but there were a few who seemed completely decent. All in all, I'm glad I went, even if I didn't end up engaged to someone who legally changed his last name to "Skywalker."

I crashed tonight from around 7-11 PM. Now I have writing to do for tomorrow, so as long as I'm up, I'll try to do it now.

over the outfluence

I'd swear my life over to a regimen of pill-popping uppers and downers if I thought it would make any difference. But a day like today, during which I stayed consistently conscious from 8:45 AM onward and partook of a bit too much tequila starting around 8 PM, proves that my body likes to be awake between midnight and 4 AM, regardless of its activities and consumed substances leading up to that point.

I went Nerd Dating. It was fun. I'll be better able to quantify and quality the fun tomorrow, when booze buzz will no longer be a factor, but I played Balderdash twice and a cute intellectual nerd type boy bought me a drink.

Ok, sleeping is not working, but apparently writing isn't either. I'll just drink my delicious but scary green superfood sludge and stare at the dog until I have to get up and go to class.

If the KKK got its own Ben and Jerry's flavor, I think it would be called White (Chocolate) Supremacy.

Apparently, I missed the internet so much that I had to do stupid crap on it until 3:40 AM. I am a dumbass.

crunchy time

I am taking the Activia challenge, which sounds much more impressive and proactive than it is. All it means is that I'm eating an overpriced yogurt every day for two weeks and hoping it makes my digestive system less fucked up.

I need more hours in a day. I finished my taxes but I have to go mail them and I haven't gone to the Verison store to deal with my phone yet, and my class starts in two hours. Perhaps more would have been accomplished had I not fallen back asleep for three hours this afternoon, but I'm back on the caffeine and haven't had my fix today. And my dog is in uber-whiny mode, which is a shame because he's just so cute and we had several good walks yesterday.

My internet is back up in my apartment, but I'm afraid to say anything lest I jinx it.

Sunny sent me this. Now I have to get married like 7 times.

phoney

My phone is now completely and totally dead. This was the new phone as of Christmasish. The part where the charger is supposed to plug in is busted so it won't charge. Yes, that's the same thing that happened to the last one. It was nice for a little while today, feeling free of the cell tether, but around 8 PM with no internet in the apartment or anything, I had myself convinced there were grave emergencies I'd learn of "too late" with no outside contact. So here I am at the internet cafe, which is brilliantly open until midnight. I need to not stay that long, though, since I want to hit the grocery store and I'm behind in my writing assignments for Fiction I and need to get up early tomorrow morning if I'm going to go to the Verison store and figure out the phone thing. I growl and gnash my teeth.

I should have more to say, but right now, I don't.

invisible forces

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
I think I am being stalked by an invisible force field of electromagneticstaticradio waves that is messing with my head and all electronic devices I use. My phone currently holds its charge for about 30 minutes of conversation before its 12 seconds of warning and then shutting off mid-conversation. My computer refuses to work with any internet inside my apartment (even with the code from my neighbor, it works for about 4 minutes every three days) and also won't hold a charge for more than 20 minutes. The Einstein Bagels by my apartment that's supposed to have wireless also wouldn't work and the manager didn't know what I meant by the "access code," even when I used small, nontechnical words. My brain will not behave itself for more than a week at a time before it thwacks me with yet another spring weather/pressure/stress migraine. These things are making me crazy, and keeping me from you, my precious blog.

Updates on the things that need to be updated:
My magazine article writing professor failed me because I had a third absence. "No exceptions." I could have been in the hospital and she still would have failed me. Cunt. Now I have to see if I can withdraw from the class so it doesn't show up on my transcript as an F. If I take it again, the F goes away in my GPA but not on my transcript. Not that anyone will look at my transcript and one F among many As is fairly explainable, but I'm ticked. Everyone in the fiction department was shocked and appalled at the stringency of her absence policy, but that's why I'm spending the rest of my college career in the fiction department and telling the journalism department to suck it. That and the fact the journalism department is significantly weaker and full of idiots. Suck it, Trebek.

I went to New York. It was much fun. We went to the Met and saw Les Mis and ate lots of good food and I saw Birdy and met Inri (for about 20 minutes before I passed out from food/wine/long day coma) and the airport was full of Jews going to Passovers.

Since New York, my life has been: sleep, write, eat, watch TV, poke dog, repeat.

Yeesh, so many things I must do while I have internet. I am very dependent on it these days. Butt.

Wigging out.

a triumphant return before I go

It's internet! and it's in my apartment! I ran into my neighbor this morning and asked if he'd be interested in going in on a wireless network, and he said he already had one set up and would I like the encryption code? He's saying I don't have to help pay for it, either, but I feel like I should bake him a pie with a $20 in it every month or give him a blow job or something. Ok, maybe not the blowjob. He's a really nice guy, but I don't find him attractive. Maybe I should pay someone else to give him a blowjob a month.

I'm going to New York with the fam' Thursday night through Sunday. Very exciting. My baby brother is turning 18 (sweetmotherofgod) but all his friends are gone for spring break so my parents offered to take him to see shows and eat shmancy food in Manhattan and I got invited. I get to see Birdy and meet Inri, too. My dog will have to stay at the vet's, which has me feeling very guilty so I let him eat Corn Pops.

My apartment is actually cleanerish. Last week was my spring break and I spent a lot of it cleaning, and then Friday I had the service come in for three hours. I still have to go through a shittonne of papers and come up with some method of organization, but you can see 95% of the floor and walk around barefoot and use the sink and stove and whatnot. I even removed the old smelly things from my fridge. I deserve cookies.

Back to bed. So tired, but I have to meet a teacher at noon for my mid-semester conference. Penis.

Internet down again. So lonely, this world without the ability to check facebook 9 times a day.

stupid brain. I'm supposed to be seeing Salman Rushdie right now. Is it supposed to rain tomorrow? My head seems to think so. Grrrr.

Interview and Intraview

I am so turning into my mother, right down to our exaggerated views of our respective mothers. I just spent an hour and a half on the phone with my grandma interviewing her about her childhood for school. I was all worried about it, since she's kind of nuts (like, she's actually been committed before as a paranoid delusional) and she just moved into a "retirement community" and my mom said she wasn't doing too well. But it was great and she was great and very funny. There are some things where details changed slightly mid-story (like how old she was when certain things happened) but one of the perks of doing the interview on the phone is that I can take notes on the computer and I can type almost as fast as she talks. I have to turn in the "transcript" of the interview, but it just needs basic cleaning up.

All I've done all day is write and futz around on the computer. I took my dog for a good long walk around one, but that's about it. Days like this make me feel a little crazy, but that's part of being a writer. It's an important part, really. I was looking at cheap houses for sale in the middle of nowhere again. It's like porn for me, except I'm thinking more and more that if I eventually have enough money and am a writer for real, I'll keep an apartment in a city like Chicago or New York and then have my little house off in BFN. The ones currently catching my eye include: the $15,000 one bedroom one bath house in Glascow, Montana; a cozy 2 bedroom place with two porches in Lemmon, South Dakota selling for $12,700. The cheaper and simpler the better, though I really like the idea of two porches.


I think that, since I've Liked Boys since long before anything could come of Liking Boys, unrequited pining has become my natural default. After doing it for 20+ years, it's the form of "love" I know best. I reciprocal, positive, healthy relationship might make my head explode. Thank goodness I'm not going to have one of those any time soon.

Dogs on the brain

HAPPY 25th BIRTHDAY, HOTDOG SAM!
Wuv woooooo!





Move over, YouTube, I just spent an embarrassingly long time on the White House's pet webpage. Barney and Spot's Winter Wonderland (2002) is my favorite, since it's mostly just the dogs playing in the snow. Why is it I don't give a crap about celebrities unless they are dogs?

And why am I awake at all at 6 AM? My dog's allergies are acting up and he was being very itchy and whiny and woke me up. I don't know if we'll be able to get to the vet until next week (when I'm on spring break) for more allergy pills. If he'd just let me give him a friggin' bath...