life is good.

Lately people have been trying to convince me that I am probably a good creative writer, to which I can only answer "please." I never quite get the phrasing right, and I don't have very good ideas. Hence my desire to enter into publishing. They say those who can't do, teach. Well, those who can't write, edit. At least in my case. Some editors, I suppose, are excellent writers but I am not. Better than some, probably, but I came to the realization a very long time ago that any creative ambitions I had were going to have to find a channel other than writing because it just never comes out right. It ends up flat and stale and pallid.

I've got one semester left of college. One. That's it! It seems somehow monstrously unfair that just when I'm feeling incredibly happy and comfortable on campus that I have to graduate in a few months, but I suppose that means I'll just have to make the most of whatever comes. Which is something I've been getting better at doing, by the way. The last few weeks there were lots of nights I probably should've stayed in and chose to go out instead. But the thing is, no matter how much I love spending time with these kids and how good of friends we are, I probably won't see most of them again after a few months, which is a terrifying thought. That's why I'm spending New Year's in Midway. Mel wanted to go out to the T-Rock, and part of me of course wants to go to the killer free show they are having - but this section of St. Paul just tugs at my heartstrings, to borrow someone else's tired cliche, and I feel like I should stay here. There are, of course, other incentives, but that's a big part of it. It's also nice to be able to stumble home when necessary and not worry about how to get to/from places.

Home for Christmas tomorrow. Strange, how much I used to love love love! going home over break and now I feel like eight days will be far too long. I love my family, and I love my hometown, but I grew out of being the girl who grew up there and I have so little in common anymore with even most of my best friends from high school that I always feel just slightly an intruder in the town that raised me. Also, it will be strange to have Christmas without both of my grandparents. I miss them, especially my grandma. She loved Christmas so much. Loved to see her family come home and gather around her and be together. It'll be strange not having to cook and pack an entire Christmas dinner to take over to the nursing home, and as much of a pain as trying to transport all those cookies and turkey and potatoes and break could be, I'm going to miss even doing that. Most of all I'll miss her though. There will never be another person in the world, I think, who loves me so selflessly as she did - her face just lit up every time I came to visit, and I didn't even do that as often as I should.

Life in general right now is awfully good though. No stress, no worries. New friends. Good parties, good wine, good company. This is the life I plan to maintain over J-term and the spring semester, minus some of the good wine sometimes. Saw the ex the other night and I didn't even care, which was a good feeling. I'm a lucky girl.

if my life was a movie written by itunes...

As defined by iTunes, in the case of my life being a movie.

I quote jake: “this is sweet, i did it more for my own amusement than yours, but it's here, so feel free to read it and love me for it. DO IT.”

if your life were a movie, what would the soundtrack be?
So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that plays
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...

[OPENING CREDITS]: "All the Miles” – Amy Millan

[WAKING UP]: "Hesitation Station" – the Lawrence Arms

[FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL]: "It’s a Hit" – We are Scientists

[FALLING IN LOVE]: "What if You” – Joshua Radin. Sad.

[FIGHT SONG]: "100 Resolutions” – the Lawrence Arms

[BREAKING UP]: "’Til it Happens to You” – Corinne Bailey Rae

[PROM]: "Memories" – Eisley

[LIFE]: "Your Ex-Lover is Dead" – Stars.

[MENTAL BREAKDOWN]: "Cathedrals" – Jump Little Children. AMAZINGLY appropriate, especially for me.

[DRIVING]: "You Only Live Once" – the Strokes. Is this supposed to be a remark on my driving? Because I am a good driver. I swear.

[FLASHBACK]: "The Saddest Song" – the Cardinal Sin. I can see this making sense.

[WEDDING]: "’Til Kingdom Come" – Coldplay. It doesn’t really fit, but that’s okay. I like the song.

[BIRTH OF CHILD]: "Oh My Love" – John Lennon

[FINAL BATTLE]: “Young for Eternity” – the Subways

[DEATH SCENE]: "Petals" – The Honorary Title

[FUNERAL SONG]: "In the Sun" – Joseph Arthur

[END CREDITS]: "Life is Beautiful" – Vega4. Good!

quit laughing.

borderline emo poetry? yes. now shut up.



hese words are slowly strangling me
a thousand things i never said
the things that were left unspoken
they slipped through my hands like water through a sieve


the streetlamps burn dimly in the back of my mind
their once-inviting aura now feels
stale
cold
and bruised


i'm in a chokehold .. if i stay this city will leave me
smothered.


i held you too close
and when i blinked
you vanished
like a fist when you open your hand.


these darkened streets are frail for all their concrete
they can barely sustain the weight of my efforts to keep from falling
and the way you said my name won't stop reverberating


winter is coming sooner than i expected.

onward, to familiarity

I'm with my Oracle peeps in St. Louis. I don't even know what I'd do without these kids; they are amazing. I can honestly say that my life would be very, very different without them. I love them all to death, and my life is better, richer, and much more fun because of their presence.

I've been having a bit of a hard time lately. I've turned a corner, but I still feel like being alone now shouldn't be this hard. I feel like I should be doing a little bit better than I am, and I am still just really struggling with my life as is. I shouldn't because it's really pretty good, but there's still a part of my heart that's a little (sometimes it feels like a lot) bruised and battered. But things are mending, slowly but surely.

Being here while the World Series is going on is pretty fantastic. We're staying right downtown by the Arch, so we're really close to the stadium. We have plans to wander that way later tonight, maybe heckle a few people, maybe see if Tom starts rooting through a bum's stuff again tonight, etc. etc. I wish the weather were a bit warmer. We brought 16 people to conference this year, which has to be a record, and that's after cutting down the list a tad. We thought we'd be able to bring everyone, because usually only around 8 people can even make it, but for some reason this year we're all just here.

The conference is definitely not as beneficial for me as it once was. There were some good sessions still, but most of them are not tailored to copy editors and most of them are for people with slightly less experience. That makes me sound pretentious. It's not meant that way; it's just that these sessions are largely for people who just haven't had the chances to work with the people that I have and get some of the experiences that I've been lucky enough to have. That still sounds kind of pretentious. Oh well.

It's been a really fun weekend. There will be photo documentation at a later date. There's one I especially love of Malin and I rocking out to the Cure on her iPod. I might have to break down and get me one of those one of these days. It would be nice to have.

Anyway. Time for the evening's activities to commence. This is a really lame blog. Sorry to waste your time.

weekend update!

Oh my. What a weekend I had in Chicago. Talk about getting exactly what I needed. Here is a brief summary.

Friday:
Afternoon:
I leave class, Meagan drives me to the airport. On the way there, we get stuck in the midst of a funeral procession. Yes, a funeral procession. We discuss the ways in which we are unfamiliar with funeral procession traffic etiquette. I am briefly afraid that I will be late to the airport, but we pass the entire procession and continue on our way.

Once in Chicago, I make it to Mel's apartment free from incident. I chill there until she gets home from work - we talk, giggle, gossip, order out for dinner. I consume half of what is quite possibly the most enormous meatball sub known to mankind and then we get ready to go out while drinking plenty of vodka/orange juice.

We hit two of Mel's favorite bars in Chicago, Delilah's and the L&L. At Delilah's, we drink a lot and are offered shots by someone who doesn't even try to suck us into conversation (which we appreciate). A discussion of how we became friends ensues, following which we detail the lack of any attractive guys at the bar, so we head to L&L.

At the train station, we take about twenty pictures of ourselves, giggling uncontrollably the entire time. Once at L&L's, we order another round and then notice that there are still no cute guys around and that we have, in fact, probably already had enough to drink so we head on home, holding hands down the street.

Saturday:
By the time we get up and out of the house, it's past 2. Oh well.

We hit the art museum and learn that language, as it turns out, is not transparent. Our deep artful appreciation of the miniature rooms goes only as far as, "hey, I'd really like to have that wallpaper." We discover that contemporary art is not for us, although a photo exhibition we see is pretty sweet.

We wander around Lincoln Park, browsing through girly things and talking about all the restaurants we see that we'd like to eat at. We feel especially classy walking through this high-class neighborhood with super big gulps from the 7/11.

Getting ready to go out requires aggressive hair styling and much debate about what our clothing choices for the evening should be. Once we're out the door, we head over to the Liar's Club, which turns out to not be such a hotspot for this particular night. Mel's friend Bill calls and invites us back over to Wrigleyville where things are apparently crazy.

Things are just as crazy as we suspected and become even more so. We have a few drinks, joke with all of Bill's friends, who seem to be enjoying our company. We head outside to wait for the trolley that has apparently been ordered for Bill's friend Jenny's birthday. Once on the trolley (which is well-supplied with drinks), headed down the street, Jenny apparently is very angry that Mel and I are there, as we were not invited. Bill and all his friends offer to pay for us and tell her to chill out but tension escalates.

A fistfight breaks out in the back of the trolley and soon Bill is bleeding. The trolley pulls over, and Mel and I, feeling the intensity, leave. We wander around looking for a place to go to the bathroom for awhile, and without any luck end up in a conveniently placed alley. On our way back to the train station, we see four police cars and a police van next to the trolley and wonder how things got so out of control so fast.

On our way back to the train station, Mel decides that really the fight broke out because we are too pretty and the girl whose birthday it was was afraid of us. At the moment, it seems like a pretty good theory. We get home safe, interrupted only by an interesting phone call from Mal.

Once home, we go straight to bed. At 6 a.m. Mel gets a text message from Bill informing her that he had just got out of jail.

For the first night in over a week, I sleep.

Sunday:
We get up and have brunch at the Twisted Spoke, which serves the best French toast I've ever eaten in my life. We then go see The Science of Sleep, a very interesting movie that I don't get and that leaves us with an unidentifiable feeling of some sort of uneasiness.

I pack everything up and head home. Reach home without incident, although as an aside, I think this whole "orange alert" thing at the airports is ridiculous and having to place my hand lotion and lipgloss in a ziploc bag is absurd.

All in all, a pretty sweet weekend. Exactly what I needed - distraction, sleep, and Mel.

i got served.

So much for not being single. I should've known I'd be back here before too long, but I really didn't. I really thought things were going along just fine. But they weren't.

The thing that sucks the most is how completely inadequate this makes me feel. I hate that another person has so much control over what I think of myself and how I feel on a daily basis.

I know I'm going to be just fine in a little while. But right now, even though the logical, rational part of me knows that none of this is really my fault and that I'm not somehow defective, the other part of me that's sad can only think that if I were somehow different - prettier or funnier or smarter or something - that it would have been enough to make him think I was worth it. And I know that's silly, and it doesn't really make sense and isn't probably true. It's just how I'm reacting to this right now. I thought I would be safer than this.

The other way I'm reacting is by not sleeping. I'm so exhausted - I was already tired, and this was going to be my weekend to catch up on sleep, but no such luck. I'm going to have to start figuring out a way to clear my mind enough to fall asleep soon or I'll go crazy.

I wish I could be more angry or more understanding of what happened and why it did, but I'm not, quite, any of those things. I'm mostly just sad. I won't be forever, and I know that, but the getting there from here part is kind of tricky.

In the meantime, I'm really looking forward to a weekend trip to Chicago to see Mel. Things will be better there. I'll be distracted and happy and we'll have good good times.

out of here.

Tonight I found myself struck with the inexplicable, deep, intense need to move away from Minnesota.

I don't understand it. I love the Twin Cities; my heart literally swells with happiness when I'm driving/riding from St. Paul into Minneapolis and I see the skyline at twilight, and it's perfect. And it's clean and beautiful and I love this place that has been my home these last three years.

But tonight, although it's really something that's been shifting around my brain and heart for awhile now, tonight it all came together and solidified and my heart was screaming, "get out of here!" I feel like I'm smothering here; my life is mostly inert. There are a few people I of course love to death here, but this enormous part of me just feels like I can't be here next year or I'll go crazy. There's too much world that I need to see and experience and own. Studying abroad, I sometimes think, is the worst thing that could ever happen to me, because it has made me feel like this world is not so big and scary as I once thought it was, and has made me think that I can experience it and live in it and that I'm not restricted to my little midwestern corner of the world.

It's nine months until graduation. And I am more determined now than ever to work my butt off to get into the NYU Publishing Institute, and if I get in, I swear I'm not looking back. I want out. I want more. And I don't know how that will affect my relationships with tons of other people, but I know that those nearest and dearest to me will always be there, and most of those bonds have already been tested through studying abroad and moving and they have lasted. Maybe it's just the stress of graduation and my fear of being stuck that makes me so intensely desperate to get out of here, and maybe it's a fleeting thing that will pass, but I really don't think so. I want more than this too much to lose that.

The only scary part about all of this is that I'm so afraid of being lonely. I'm not so fantastic at making friends, and new places are a little frightening, and I'm slightly afraid of losing some people who are so very very dear to me, although as I've already said, most of those bonds have already been tested so I'm not too terribly worried. It's just the starting over that scares me, because I've taken so long to make these friends and I'm not sure I can handle two years in a new place to reach the same level.

But this is the time in my life to do these things, to move while I'm still relatively unattached and while I have the energy and freedom and space and time to do these things, and I feel very suddenly determined to do them.

Look out, world. I'm coming, and I'm a disaster. But I'm coming.

oh, oracle.

I really haven't been this cranky in quite some time now. It's late, and I'm at the Oracle office (again), and I don't usually mind, but I've been out late a lot this week and I've barely slept and have eaten only at random intervals, and none of that puts me in exactly a fantastic mood. I saw the Robot House boys' band play on Tuesday and I hit up the Heiruspecs show at the Trock last night, as it was my birthday present to Tim, and I actually really had a good time. But right now, tonight, I'm cranky with still being here, and I'm cranky that I'm too exhausted to do my job as well as I'm capable of doing, and I'm super, super sad that I won't get to sleep for more than a couple of hours (again) tonight.

We seem to be having some communication issues tonight, as well as some content issues. Last week's issue was definitely better than this one, I think, as a whole. I don't know what's wrong with us all this week, but things are just ridiculous right now. We are stagnant. This issue isn't fresh, it isn't that compelling, save for a few stories, and we are disorganized and irritable.

But the people here, by and large, are such good people. And that's why, even on nights like this when I want to throw things and kick something and scream and maybe even cry a little, I stay. Because these people are my family away from home, my totally dysfunctional psychotic disagreeing family that, when kept in too close of quarters for too long, starts to insult its own members and argue and complain but when it comes down to it, I think we'd all do anything for each other.

I don't know what I'd do without these kids. I got so much happier at Hamline after I joined the Oracle. I was sort of adrift before that, but this little group of people is my social core. I have plenty of other friends that I spend plenty of time with, but no one I spend more time with or in closer quarters with. And there are certain things that you go through with people, and they cement you together forever regardless of your differences, and Manney's death was one of those things and it ties me to this office and to these people on a very profound level.

I will probably read this entry tomorrow at some time and feel a deep, intense need to copy-edit it, because I'm sure that I've made dozens of mistakes in this already, but I'm too tired and worn out and lazy to fix it right now. I may get to it, but if not oh well. I'm sure the message is getting across anyway.

Life's been pretty good lately overall though. I can't complain too much. Most things are going rather well. I like my classes, I like my jobs (especially my new one for the English department - I could not possibly work for nicer people than that group of professors), and I have a very satisfactory social life. Too satisfactory, almost - it's the reason I'm so damn worn out right now. I'm going to have to work on that.

in summer, the song sings itself.

I'm sitting in my house in Staples, comfortable on the couch while my dog naps next to me. I'm so contented. It helps that my parents finally, finally, FINALLY got high-speed internet, so our house is wired with wireless now. After approximately a decade of dial-up, being able to sit in the living room with my laptop is nothing short of miraculous, really.
I went in to the coffee shop this morning, too. It's about twice as big as it used to be; it's been expanded into the building/room next door. Going home to see it and remembering all the work I did to help start that makes me so proud and glad every single time I go in there. My town is filled with such good people. At the coffee shop I ran into Kelsey's mom, Amy, for awhile and we chatted for a few minutes and then when I went to leave she was like, "Oh, I just have to give you a hug. It was so good to see you and talk to you!" And it's moments like that where I remember all the good things about my town instead of just the smallness and isolation of it. There is still "Minnesota nice" in the cities but it's not the same kind. I don't run into people who watched me grow up there and they don't feel the need to hug me. It's nice to feel that kind of community now and again.
Last night it was so dark and quiet outside. Quietness and darkness in St. Paul are not the same as here. Quiet in St. Paul means I can still hear the traffic on Snelling, people walking down the street at all hours, the orangey smokey glow of the streetlamps and porch lights and the neon flicker or store signs. Here, quiet means dead silence, so quiet that I can hear the silence in between the cricket chirps and if I don't turn on any of our outside lights, the only light I can really actually see comes from the stars and the moon when they are out, otherwise there's only the dimmest of light left coming from above the cloudy cover and I can only see the most shadowy outlines of the trees in our yard. It was so quiet in my room last night that I could hear my dog breathing next to my bed and every tiny creak of the house settling. It's so different. It's a nice change. Don't get me wrong, I love the city's sounds but it is nice to be elsewhere now and then.
I have a meeting about my job at the state fair on Monday. It's going to be a long 12-day stretch - working mornings on campus and almost every afternoon/evening at the fair, but it's less than two weeks and I know the owners and some of the staff already and they are great people, and I definitely need the money. Books aren't cheap and I need twelve of them just for my senior seminar. I can't believe classes will start again in like two and a half weeks - yikes. This has been, without question, one of the best summers of my life, maybe the best. It isn't quite over yet, but it's wrapping up very nicely.

so it is

Last night, Malin and I wound up sort of hosting a mini-party in our living room. Jolly good times, hanging out with kids I haven't hung out with in a really long time and one kid I hadn't met before last night. Copious amounts of alcohol were consumed before even leaving the house (if I remember, I'll put up the picture Mal and I took this morning of our trash can and how full it is) but there was a lot of fun conversation. It was so good to be able to just kick it with some familiar faces and have a good time and not stress about whether everyone was going to get along or anything, because we already knew that everyone did. I can't explain it - but there was a nice feeling of camaraderie. Then we went to Dubliner's down on University, where the drinking and good conversation continued. I forgot my ID the first time, so I had to be driven back to my house to get it. Ooops. I think I may have been slightly belligerent to a member of our party who was missing for most of the night, pestering him with phone calls to hurry up and get off work and come join us, but it was fun. I wasn't that impressed with Dubliner's - it's not that great - but the free popcorn is a definite perk.
It wasn't really all that crazy of a night - it was just funny and random and really enjoyable. The summer exploits of Tessa & Malin must continue. I am glad we live together. It's a pretty happy healthy household. Or maybe it just seems unusually so because I'm unusually healthy and happy, who knows.
I had a good morning, too - it's fun having breakfast made for you, and scrambled eggs and toast are always delicious.
This weather is really painful. I'm super glad my dad put in a window air conditioner in my room, otherwise I think everyone residing in my home would pretty much be dead right about now.
I'm sitting in the Oracle office - I haven't been here all summer, really, but it is nice to be in here. I am happy with the idea of this coming year and what this office will produce because I really feel certain that it will be good. There are too many good and wonderful people working here for it not to be a great experience. I'm going to start revising (well, more like updating) the Oracle style guide and familiarizing myself with it, because really, copy needs to improve for the coming year and I know that every time I see a mistake in print I will be kicking myself, so I need to ensure that such things will happen only rarely.
Summer is going by so quickly.
In a week, Ashley will be married. I feel so strange about that! I am excited for her, because it's definitely going to be a whole new adventure for her, but it would scare me to death. The wedding should be fun, though. Krystle flies in on Thursday, so I get her to myself for a day, and I am definitely looking forward to the reception, now that I have someone to go with me :)
how did we grow up so fast?

life is kind of sweet.

This week was crazy busy. I was out every night except Wednesday, which means I got very very little sleep but had quite a bit of fun. I was out until bar close on Monday, at 2-4-1s Tuesday, saw the Lawrence Arms Thursday, had dinner and drinks with my roommate and a friend on Friday followed by a couple of parties, and then spent half of Saturday at a show followed by Graham's welcome home party for a bit. Jeepers.

Clearly, I spent absurd amounts of money on alcohol this week. Not that I ever got out of control or anything, not even really close, but when you go out every night for a week, and you're a socially inept person, and you want to feel more comfortable, it helps to have a drink in your hand and going through your system.

I hate being totally broke. I have almost no money, and this wedding that I'm in, which is in less than two weeks, is taking up a lot more of my time, energy, and money than I had originally anticipated. I have to drive to St. Cloud on Wednesday to try on my dress and see if it needs to be altered at all, and get my hair done, and so on and so forth. Not that I'm complaining - I love Ashley and am glad that she asked me to be a part of this day for her, it's just a little draining. Also I do not want to go to the wedding alone. As indicated by my last post, being dateless will likely be equivalent to being a life failure. Plus it would just be really nice to be there with someone and have someone to talk to and dance with, etc. etc.

Which brings me to something else that I am not sure I want to discuss. Let's just say that lately, I've been really happy. Maybe the happiest I've been in years except for the pain of having the two people who know me best in all the world live hours and hours away. Things in my life just seem to be settling into a really good place right now. I'm less judgemental of myself, more satisfied with my life, healthier, and something that I thought wasn't going to happen has started to.

I feel strange that while the world is going to hell in a handbasket I am more personally fulfilled than I have been in ages. I wonder sometimes if I shouldn't feel guiltier about that, but then I think that if the world is so unhappy in so many places, full of so much sadness and weariness and death, then perhaps any joy anywhere in the world is a small sort of miracle and should be treasured as such so long as I am not blissfully ignorant and am still aware of what else is happening in the world and I work to try to make it better. The more I think about doing Americorps for a year after graduation the more I like the idea. It would be good in so many ways, for me personally and hopefully for the people I would be working with. I haven't made up my mind yet, not by a long shot, but I keep considering it.

I love summer. It will be a wrench heading back into the school year this fall, although that will be pretty enjoyable, too, in its own way. I'll just be so much busier with a much fuller schedule. I really like all the freedom and flexibility I have right now. I suppose I had better enjoy it while I can, which is exactly what I intend to do.

thoughts on marriage. and babies. and stuff.

So last night I went to a bachelorette party. It was not your typical bachelorette party. And I did have fun, and it was great to see the bride-to-be (since I haven't seen her in months), but I also had some issues.
Three of the people there were pregnant, a couple were already married or engaged, and some of them seemed to think that I was absolutely crazy for not wanting this life for myself right now. Which led me to begin questioning things - like, is there something wrong with me that I have absolutely NO desire for any of those things yet?
I like to think that I'm a reasonably mature person, capable of great responsibility and caring. But at the same time, the idea of permanently attaching myself to another human being at this point in my life seems not only terrifying but crazy. I feel like I'm still going to be changing and forming myself so much as a person that making that decision would be a very poor decision right now.
Is it enlightened or selfish for me to want to do more? Is it snobbery for me to think, "that's not enough for me right now"? Yes, marriage is something I most definitely want in my life someday, and maybe kids, too. But is it so unusual for me to want adventures first? I want to work and move and travel and go to grad school - and those things can happen in a marriage, I suppose, but what I really want is a life of my own first. I want time to get to know myself and have my own independent life and adventures first. Not that marriage wouldn't be an adventure, I suppose, it would be. But it would mean the end of a lot of other opportunities that I'm really interested in, too.
I think I've just convinced myself that I am clearly doing what's best for me right now. But I hate that LOOK I sometimes get, that look that says I'm either crazy or selfish for being so disinterested in marriage. I'm only 21, for goodness' sake, and I know so many people who are getting married and engaged and having kids, and I cannot imagine myself in that position right now, not at all. Going home and to family holidays is always interesting that way too. The question never fails to arise - "So, are you seeing anyone special right now? How's that going?" etc. etc. Sometimes this question arises before and more frequently than questions about college and academics, and that puzzles me. I moved to St. Paul for school, not to meet a husband. But in small-town Minnesota and a large Catholic-raised extended family, those things often don't seem to be all that important. It's marriage and kids that take first place. And it makes me frustrated. I'd like for people to care and get as excited about my summer research as I am, but they often don't want to hear it. They just want to know if I'm headed in the same life path that so many of my classmates have already begun to follow.
And for the record, I AM seeing someone. But only very casually. And it's not likely to get serious any time soon, and I'm pretty happy about that. So there. Haha.
Well, this was cathartic.

just because i can.

Life as I know it is pretty good right now. I really can't complain. Due to a variety of factors and a combination of circumstances, I am perhaps the happiest I have been in years (except for when I think about Mel moving away, which makes me want to cry so I mostly try not to think about it). I still worry a lot but at least I don't feel like I have to worry so much about myself anymore, because I'm doing really well.

It's summer, and I'm in St. Paul (which is beautiful), while I get paid to read (which is perfect for a supernerd like me), I have amazing friends, I have the time, energy, and money to go out fairly frequently, and I live with two of the loveliest girls I know (or at least I will when Malin gets back from Sweden). And really, there's nothing bad going on. There are problems, but no major crises at this time. I am a lucky, lucky, lucky girl. Knock on wood.

I bought this laptop that I'm typing on last week. It's a far, far cry from the macbook pro that I dream about someday owning, but in the meantime, it's a nice little machine that helps me get research done and enables me to get a lot of work done outside of libraries and off-campus, which I am a huge fan of. We don't have internet at our house, so the ability to pack up my work and take it to various places with me is a huge bonus right now.

I'm going home this weekend. It is still really strange for me to think that I'll never be living in that house again. Packing up my bedroom was such a strange experience last time I was there. I felt as though I was packing up my childhood, tissue-wrapping some of the most fragile parts of my earlier life and throwing less delicate memories into a box in a corner to gather dust until someday, years from now, I blow the dust off the lids to look back at the life I once led. I am a terrible pack rat. I've boxes and boxes of things that I'll never use again, books I know I'll never read ever again, cds that I'm embarassed to admit I own, photos I don't want my friends of today to ever have exposed to them - but I can't bring myself to get rid of any of it. So it will remain, tucked away in my parents' basement, until they move or I pluck up the will to discard the weight of that past.

It will be nice to be home for Father's Day. My dad has had such a rough year; I'm really glad I'll be able to be home to see him. I have a couple of small gifts for him and then my mom and I will be taking him out to brunch on Sunday at the resort I spent the last two summers working at. The brunch there is AMAZING. There are like fifty menu items every week and it's all delicious. Working there is a part of my life I'm glad enough to be through with but happy to be able to look back on. When I called today to make reservations for brunch everyone in the office sounded so truly happy to hear from me, and my manager said she really missed me and wished she had another worker like me this summer. It's nice to hear those kinds of things, to know that the hours and efforts I put in didn't go unnoticed.

I think that's where I'll end this tonight. I'm feeling a hint of wistful nostalgia now, but I am buoyed by the warm goodness of my life right now.

for lack of something better

Not much to report. I've entered into the luxury of a summer without a schedule. I work for a few hours, do some reading, do some cleaning, go out, drive around...now that Tyler's car and I seem to be getting along better, I'm enjoying the freedom offered by a car to explore the cities. Life's pretty good. It's sort of just going placidly along at the moment, but it seems to be at a reasonably contented level.

courtesy of malin:
1. FIRST NAME? tessa
2. WHO WERE YOU NAMED AFTER? no one. i have no idea where my mom came up with it.
3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? yesterday. for some reason i just start crying sometimes, even when i'm not upset or angry or sad.
4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? on good days.
5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? well i don't really have that strong of preferences, but i suppose turkey.
6. KIDS? hopefully someday
7. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOURSELF? i hope so
8. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL? yes
9. Do YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? probably more than i ought
10. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? ...yes
11. WOULD YOU EVER BUNGEE JUMP? i think i'm too much a wimp
12. What is your favorite cereal? why isn't this question capitalized? and smart start. tasty without being disgustingly unhealthy. also, cinnamon toast crunch is pretty good stuff.
13. YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? i don't usually wear shoes with laces, so no.
14. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? in what way? physically, i've got nothing. emotionally, well, it's debatable.
15. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? cookies and cream. or cookie dough. or peppermint bon bon.
16. SHOE SIZE? 8/8.5
17. RED OR PINK? pink. usually.
18. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? oh, so many things. i think a lot of it comes down to my indecision though.
19. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? malin. and graham.
20. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? not really
21. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW? denim capris, white flip flops
22. LAST THING YOU ATE? toast and coffee
23. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? augustana
24. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? hmm. cerulean. i always thought it was a cool word. and a good color.
25. FAVORITE SMELL? the smell after it rains and the grass has just been cut.
26. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? mel
27. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO? do they make me laugh?
28. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? nope. i looove her.
29. FAVORITE DRINK? it changes seasonally. currently, lemonade and vodka sour (which is, essentially, lemonade for grown-ups)
30. FAVORITE SPORTS? uhhh...i'm not so sporty. tennis, i suppose, if i have to play one, otherwise maybe football
31. HAIR COLOR? brown
32. EYE COLOR? brown
33. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? pretty much all of the time.
34. FAVORITE FOOD? all of them.
35. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? breakfast at tiffany's
36. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? purple. it's a my little ponies t-shirt. malin, you have one too!
37. SUMMER OR WINTER? spring and fall.
38. HUGS OR KISSES? depends on the quality of the hugs/kisses in question. i really really like good hugs though.
39. FAVORITE DESSERT? molten.
40. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? no idea
41. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? umm
42. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? the last harry potter book, jude the obscure, love in the time of cholera, and the wings of the dove
43. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? it's just plain black
44. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST NIGHT ON TV? i didn't watch tv last night.
45. FAVORITE SOUNDS? the ocean, music (good music, anyway), laughter
46. ROLLING STONE OR BEATLES? the Beatles, hands down.
47. THE FURTHEST YOU BEEN FROM HOME? germany, i think.
48. WHEN AND WHERE WERE YOU BORN? november 19, in brainerd.
49. IF YOU WON A ROUND TRIP TICKET TO ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, WHERE WOULD YOU GO? uhhhhhhhh...i don't know. that's a big question. amsterdam? australia? prague? i don't know.

summer!

Is about here. I am so, so happy to be done with all my finals. I do still have to write a 6-8 page paper for my independent study but other than that, I'm free as a bird, to borrow a cliche.
Life feels good right now. I'll be starting summer research soon, and I've been told I can work at my on-campus job all summer, which means I'll have very flexible hours and also means I can put off buying a car for awhile longer which I was initially really excited about, although as it turns out, it looks like I'll be car-sitting for my friend Tyler while he's in Seattle over the summer, so I've got pretty much everything lined up. It's going to be a good summer, I'm sure of it. And I'm also really happy that Mel won't be moving until a little bit later in the summer. The longer I can be in denial about her moving, the better.
I think I'm happier lately than I have been in a long time. I mean, I clearly still have my moments of crazy insane mad sadness and frustration, but they've gotten to be pretty few and far between and I'm happy. I'm really almost totally content with my life right now.
My roommate and I started going to aerobics; we signed up through community ed. and it's so much fun! We feel pretty ridiculous most of the time and some of the middle-aged women who we are in the class with are better at aerobics than we are which is a little sad, but it's so enjoyable and it feels good to be taking care of ourselves.
Last night was an excellent entry to summer. Sean's welcome home party was last night, and it was exactly as crazy and fun and crowded and basement-party as it possibly could be. Everything I anticipated and more. It was so good to see him, and everyone else, and to just chill and relax without worrying about anything I had to do today. If that party was any indicator, here's to my first summer in St. Paul. I feel sure it's going to be filled with good friends and good times. At least it better be.

on and on.

I don't have much to say lately. I feel like I'm just keeping life as complacent as possible because if allow myself to think about everything that's really going on in my life I will go crazy. I feel like if I really let myself think about what I'm feeling about what's going on in my mind I would realize that I'm really one of the most irrevocably screwed up people.

The problem, I have realized, with making friends who are older than you is that they all graduate and go away before you do, and then you have to re-imagine your life without them in it and you cannot even begin the process. And it's funny, because you have a life, obviously, before you are friends with these people. But then you meet and talk and suddenly these people become the most important ones you have in your life and then they graduate and prepare to move on with their lives before you are able to do so with yours.

I love St. Paul. I love it SO MUCH. But there's so much more out there. So many places I want to see, people I want to meet, things I want to do, and I am stuck here in limbo waiting to see if I can make any of that happen. I want to go to grad school but I don't know why, and I want to live in New York for awhile, or maybe Boston, and eventually London because I feel so of myself there. And there are people I am so afraid of losing that I don't even let myself consider the possibility of what I would do without them in my life in some form or another because I don't know how to function without them. I don't know who to tell my secrets to anymore.

Spring always makes me a little crazy I think and this year more than ever except for last spring, which was just screwed up to the utmost. It becomes this time where everything seems possible because things are starting new and the world is fresh and beautiful and lovely and aching but nothing seems possible because I'm stuck here going to classes and the loveliness is somehow beyond me.

Sigh. It's going to be a long week.

dear hamline

Okay. I don't know if it's because I was abroad for a semester or what, but so many things frustrate me on a much deeper level than ever before, or maybe I've just learned to see them more clearly.

At risk of echoing Mel, people around here need to learn to not always blame other people for what they perceive as problems or issues on campus or in their lives or how they perceive certain statements made by others. If you have a problem with something someone says in class, SAY SO at the time!! Don't just complain about it later or talk to someone else about how it makes you feel bad or makes you uncomfortable, RAISE A CONSTRUCTIVE ARGUMENT against such statements/attitudes/whatever the hell is bothering you.

Working for the Oracle also frustrates me beyond all belief right now. Whatever coverage I give to "sensitive issues" on campus, someone is mad at me or thinks I have done a crappy job or feels I'm misrepresenting something. Well, that's because they are SENSITIVE ISSUES, and no matter WHAT I say or how objective I attempt to be about something or how much I try to listen to both sides of a story or argument and then do my best to represent that, I get lambasted. Which is why I do not want to be a journalist professionally. There is no way to discuss these issues in a manner by which SOMEONE isn't going to tell me that I've got it all wrong. No one, at the end of the day, is going to be happy, least of all me.

You see, the thing is, I do have very, very strong opinions regarding what's going on around campus. But I can't just write and publish whatever the hell I think and feel like writing about. That's called irresponsible, unobjective journalism. Yes, go ahead and scoff and smirk and make snide comments about an Oracle staffer referring to what she does as journalism. I am doing the best I can. By some people's standards, that is clearly not good enough, but when I hear two totally opposite accounts of an event and there is NO WAY to prove or disprove one of them, what good can possibly be achieved by writing anything about either account, when I (and no one else on campus except the people involved) cannot POSSIBLY judge what the truth is. He said/she said arguments do not work in newspapers. At least, they aren't supposed to.

As regards the recent City Pages article (in case you couldn't tell this is what I'm largely referring to), do I think that admin. at Hamline handled the situation perfectly? NO! Do I think the "compromise/resolution" that was reached is ideal, or even good? NO!!! But I can't just say, "Well, I think this sucks," and publish it. As far as I can tell, the administration followed the general guidelines for what went on. Should these vague guidelines be more specific and have more stipulations attached? Yeah, I think they should. I think students being able to go around and accuse professors of being racist or intolerant or whatever they choose to term it is disturbing and caustic and damaging to all involved parties. Can I research what exactly these rules are and interview people regarding how they might be improved to protect the interests of faculty and students and to keep even incidences in which students feel genuinely and maybe even occasionally rightfully upset ones that can be handled in a reasonable way that actually helps provide some good background and learning and construction toward deeper understanding of one another? Yes, I can. And that's what I'm trying to do. But although we are a professional staff, doing our best to put out a professional product, this office that we half-live in is still not our life.

I have other things happening. I have people dying in my family, I have friends with problems, I have classes and exams and independent studies and research projects and all kinds of shit to do besides this. People seem to have a hard time remembering that this paper, which we work on until 4 a.m. on Thursdays and skip class to interviewpeople for and get out of bed two hours early to work on that story we didn't have time to do earlier because we were studying for that midterm and working a double shift, is what we do ON TOP OF the five hundred million things we are all ALSO involved in. Does that sound like an excuse? probably, yeah. And to some extent it is.

We aren't perfect. We know we aren't perfect. But we also know we're trying our damndest and we are just as frustrated as everyone else when an issue or story doesn't come out the way we'd like it to. I would love to be able to sit down for hours to write a news piece, I would LOVE for that to be the only thing I have to do in my day. But it can't be, it just can't. Almost nothing I write comes out the way I want it to. I always want it to be better, stronger, more direct, more informative, sharper, etc. I feel that way about everything I write.

I seem to have lost track of where I was going with all of this. I seem to feel a little better having gotten this out of my system, however.

headaches and bad luck

another funeral. i don't know if i am going yet, as it's in florida. this routine is getting to be too much. too many tears, too much black clothing, too much feeling wrenched from the inside out from the emotional exhaustion of death and it's permanence and the searing finality of realizing i'm never going to see people again.
i didn't know my uncle all that well. haven't seen him in a couple of years now.
they got married when i was five. it was the only time i ever got to be a flower girl in a wedding. even though i was little, i think that's the day i remember him best from. they were so happy. the memories are incomplete, vague, without definition.
i had a bouquet of daisies. they were married on a ship, out on the ocean, and the weather was perfect. it was a day when the sky and the ocean were so blue and the sun so warm and bright that everything seems perfect. the dress i wore was white, with lace, and what i remember most is their smiling faces and how they fed each other cake and looked so happy. it is the first wedding i really remember, i think.
i find it strange to think that their entire marriage and its duration and now its end has all come within my lifespan. things happen so fast.
and this didn't, really. we have known that it would be coming. but it is still so hard to think of him being gone because they always seemed so happy. i don't know why those two things seem like they are connected but they do.
and i know these feelings i have are all related to the general frustration with life i've been experiencing lately, to that feeling of being just a short step away from the fall off the cliff to some kind of minor mental breakdown, to emotional overload, to the constant change and the upheaval and the chaos of things being the same.
i am overwhelmed by my inertia, my inability to bring change, my utter failure to make enough of a difference to those around me. like maybe i don't love enough, or tell people enough how much i appreciate what they do. instead i spend time being upset with people, getting irritated and impatient, when i should generally be thanking them for being in my life. so for those of you reading this, thank you for taking the time to see what's up with my life. thank you for putting up with me, my foul moods, my sarcasm, my frequent closed-off-ness. i am lucky to have the people i have in my life. i am so lucky to have you for friends and i promise to work to be a better friend to you. i love you all more than you can know.
i am planning right now to probably go to this funeral but if i do i feel it will be for selfish reasons. it won't help my aunt to feel better, it won't make a difference to al's daughters, at best it will bring me some feeling of false closure or the pretense of making things easier on my dad or somehow being able to help my aunt.
and no matter how i'm feeling at times, i know it can't be anything compared to how my aunt is feeling right now. in the span of five months she has lost both her parents and her husband.

today

Today has been, without a doubt, one of the most RIDICULOUS days of my entire life.
Details to follow some other time.
Right now I am too consumed with the absurdity of this day to expound upon this subject any more.

tired.

I am exhausted. I am running on something beyond empty. I have reached the level at which it is actually easier to get only a few hours of sleep because my system has adapted to getting only a little sleep so a full night of sleep becomes more painful than not enough.
This has become my life. I read this column pretty religiously and it usually strikes a chord with me somewhere, but this one pretty much was about me.
How did I get here?
Collectively, the amount of stuff I do should not leave me feeling this way. I am busy, yes, but should I be this thinly stretched?

three weeks and counting.

I'm going to New York over spring break to see Krystle!! I am ridiculously excited to see her. We haven't properly spent any time together since August. Which is much, much too long ago. I miss her so much. She is my best friend in the world (except for Mel and Mal) but she understands me differently than they do because she has known me longer. Not that much longer, but enough longer to have seen me transition through a lot of crap.

Also, I'm not going to lie. I'm incredibly restless. Since being back from abroad I have a traveling bug like no other. It is really difficult to explain to people though, but I feel like if I stay in Minnesota much longer I'll go crazy, and I've only been back for two months. Someone asked me today what it is exactly that I miss about England and I couldn't come up with a good answer.

I think it's the whole experience. I loved York - that city and I were meant to come together, I swear. And I miss the experience of every day being an adventure. I'm incredibly busy here but my life has very quickly fallen back into a routine. Which is not a bad thing - it's just that I had more freedom and independence while I was abroad than I ever have before, and I miss that feeling - that I can do whatever I want. I can't just hop on a train to Scotland anymore, or take a weekend trip to visit Lena.

All this growing up to do. I've started planning for grad school already. I don't know when I want to go but I know I do want to, very much. I took a practice single-subject lit. test last week and it was SO HARD! I don't think I will ever get into any of the schools I dream of going to. But for the next year I will read like crazy and study and look for keys and practice and work hard at the classes I am in now in order to secure a good transcript and killer recommendations. And then I will take that GRE, and I will fear it not, and I will kick it's butt. I hope. So going to New York can also be construed as educationally helpful, since it will help me decide if I want to go to grad school there or not.

Three cheers for New York City! I can't wait until I am there and not here.

mood swings.

sometimes lately i feel like i am about fifteen again. i get so angry for no reason, and so sad (also for no reason) and i feel hurt even when no one has said anything to hurt me. it's a very strange feeling.

and then alternately, i have moments of total exuberance and happiness. i would like more of them though.

i think it will be a good weekend. tonight i'm staying in - i didn't get to bed until about 4 am and then i woke up at 8 am and was wiiiiide awake. so i'm going to be crashing, energy-wise, at any moment now. tomorrow night i think i'm supposed to be going out with a bunch of girls which should be a good time.

i'm feeling a general dissatisfaction with myself. ick.

so it is.

My grandma died this weekend. Saturday night, at about 10:15. A few hours after I left the nursing home. I wish I had stayed. My dad was there, by himself, when his mom died, and somehow that feels wrong to me. But the thing about living in the nursing home that my grandma was always afraid of was dying alone. That was the one thing that she really, really didn't want and so I am glad my dad was there. He spent Thursday night there on a sofa, and my uncle spent Friday night, and Dad was going to spend Saturday night.

I miss her already, in a way that I'll never miss my grandfather. I had very different relationships with them. My grandma's family was her whole world. Her kids meant everything to her, and in her eyes they were pretty much perfect. Approaching that, she adored her grandchildren, and that includes me. It sounds conceited to say that she used to light up when my brother and/or I would visit her, but it isn't. It's just that her family was so precious to her that visiting members made her whole day. I don't think anyone is ever going to love me as unconditionally and think of me so highly as my grandmother did. She waitressed until she was well into her seventies, and she used to keep all of the change from her tips and take turns giving it to me, my brother, and my cousin. I think the container full usually came to around $15, which seems like a small fortune when you're six.

She was the kind of grandmother that I wish everyone could have. We used to spend a lot of time in the summer out at the lake. She was a terrific gardener - she had one of the greenest thumbs of anyone I've known. I never used to eat fruit, hardly ever, but I liked her raspberries. I have an afghan that she crocheted for me years ago, and I loved it so much when I was little that I used the colors in it as the color scheme for my bedroom when we first built our house. She taught me to crochet, and I wasn't bad at it, but I haven't even tried it in so long that I know I've forgotten how now. She was a great cook, too, and she never failed to cook too much. She didn't care for leftovers though, so there was seldom any chance of leaving the table until she'd coaxed you into having a second, or even third, helping of just about anything.

Her cookie jar, at least in my memory, was never empty. Usually it was full of either molasses cookies or chocolate chip. I used to lie to my parents in the summer and tell them I was going up to the house to go to the bathroom when really I was going into the empty kitchen to sneak a few more cookies.

I really think she's in a better place now. She was tired, and she didn't like living in the nursing home, although she loved most of the people who worked there.

Church was hard on Sunday. It was therapeutic, but then everyone's condolences came after the service, and it was hard to hear them without bawling all over the place. I continue to cry in random spurts, but they seem to be getting a little shorter, which is good. I haven't done much sleeping either. But it will come eventually.

The funeral is Thursday evening. Any thoughts and prayers for my family, especially my dad and aunts and uncles, are so much appreciated. It has been hard enough losing two grandparents in three months; I cannot imagine losing both parents in that time frame.

quick update.

I am very glad to be finished with j-term. I'm not technically finished, as I still have a 3-page paper due, but I'm done going to class, anyway, which is something. I'm ready for spring term to start. I need to be busier. I need to not have enough time to even lay awake at night and think. I'm a workaholic at the age of 21. Sad. Although, in the name of saving my sanity, I am dropping my senior seminar, so I'll only have 14 credits instead of 18. I really like the idea of the topic that is going to be offered in Moorhead's class next fall so it should be interesting - hard-boiled detective fiction as senior sem. what fun!

I'm headed home for the weekend. The good news is, I'll get to see Ashley and I will get to see JOE!!! Who is now home. How I have missed that boy! The bad news is, by all accounts, my grandma is dying. I know I couldn't expect her to live forever; she is, after all, 93. But she is the only real grandparent I have left, and now it sounds as though I'm losing her 3 months after losing my grandfather. I think it's selfish of me to be so sad. She's had a long full good life and she is tired. But oh how I love her. So many happy little-girl memories of mine center around that woman and the lake and her cookies and raspberries and her gardens and her love. I cried for a long time last night. So. I am going home to say goodbye, presumably. We've been worried before and she has come back, but my parents don't seem to think that is going to happen this time around.

I am tired of going to funerals. I think I have had enough this year.

issues.

I have so many of them. I've been feeling...tense, to say the least, lately.
Firstly, it's just been rough being back at Hamline. Do I love Hamline, and do I love my friends here beyond everything else on this earth? yes. But that doesn't make it totally easy being back, either. As I said in my last post, there's plenty of things I miss. I know I'll go back to England someday, and probably someday in the not-very-distant future, but I wish I could just go back whenever I wanted.
Then there's the little pressure-builders: filling out my intent to graduate form, trying to figure out how I'm going to cram a religion minor into the next three semesters, changing advisors again, worrying about a summer job and an internship, struggling to understand the readings for my feminist philosophy class, etc. I know that none of these are life-and-death issues, especially not right now, but already the idea of being a senior and graduating is starting to frighten me. I make jokes all the time about being an impoverished English major and how I'll never find a job and always be poor, but it's honestly something I fear. I WANT to work in publishing, I really do, and I don't really have any idea how I am going to accomplish that. I guess it's one more thing to add to the list to talk to my advisor about.
And then there's another, much bigger, much more profound issue that I cannot get off of my mind lately. It's absolutely not something I can discuss in any amount of real detail, partly because it's just too personal and partly because I don't want to talk about it, because I want it to have never happened and because I hate even thinking about it. And talking about it seems like it would make it even more real and bring even more of it back and I just don't want that at all. It's something I really thought I had dealt with and that I thought I was finished with, and I haven't even thought about it that much recently, but owing to certain events of last Friday night and some of the topics we've been discussing in my J-term, it's returned to my mind in full force and it's eating away at me, slowly gnawing. It's put me in this bizarre mood where I keep just feeling hurt and alone and sad for no real reason that exists anymore. It's something I've only ever told two people about in my entire life, and it happened a long time ago, so long ago that it seems absolutely absurd that it should be taking such a predominant place in my mind recently. But I can't seem to get rid of it.
Wow. How's that for being a downer?
Sometimes I think I think far too much.

adjusting.

I am slowly starting to get used to being home again. Sort of, anyway.

J-term is in swing - my first paper is due this Monday and I have, as of now, no idea what I'm going to write about. I have to do a 3-page analysis of one of the articles we've read for class and I'm really not sure what to say. I never know what to say. This is one of my great problems in life. I can never think of what I truly want to say until it's too late. Also, although my Feminist Philosophy class is very interesting and I really am enjoying it so far, it is an oral-intensive class and I can't think of anything worthwhile or even remotely intelligent to say in class. I occasionally think of things later, but by then it is obviously too late. I hate that.

There are things about England I really miss. I miss the accents, I miss my morning coffee with the coolest barista ever, I miss the cobblestone streets and the row houses and the tea and the university library. I do not miss the stupid ducks and geese, or the rather plain dull buildings on campus. I kind of miss the schizophrenic weather, and I miss a few of the people, and I miss the radio stations and I miss walking by ponies on my way to class every day. And it isn't even so much these things I miss as the altogether feeling of being there - I miss more than the sum of these parts.

It is, however, good to be home though. Last night I was out with Mel at the Triple Rock, which was good times and good music and then we saw Malin for a bit, which was really needed, and she leaves for Sweden soon which makes me sad even though I know she'll have a wonderful time. I shall miss her much.

And Thursday night, Mal and Tommy and I went thrfiting and I came back with books. 3 from Goodwill, 3 from Half Price Books. When I am going to find time to read these, along with the 3 books I ordered from the public library and in addition to my J-term reading, is totally beyond me, but I'll find a way. I always do. There is nothing I love so much as being able to talk, really talk, about books and feel that another person understands just what I mean, which makes Tommy awesome. And if you are reading, Tommy, yes, I mean you. And then we went for ice cream at Grand Ole Creamery and I ordered the most disgustingly, deliciously sweet sticky sundae and relished every bite. Yum.

Also I had lunch with Ken on Thursday, which was fun except for the part where I was an idiot and forgot my wallet so that he wound up paying. Oh well. I'll fix that next time by paying myself.

People just keep paying for me. I had lunch with Ashley today, too, which was wonderful and so much fun and she insisted on paying, the ridiculous girl. It's amazing how sometimes I don't realize how incredibly much I miss people until I see them. It was the same last weekend when I saw Mary and Jake and Petey.

I still have so many people I want to see! There is never enough time. And I hate having class in the afternoon because it means I never accomplish ANYTHING in the mornings. I know I should get up and do stuff, but I just never actually do.

I'm settling into my new place (Mal's old room) pretty nicely. It's really a nice house, and the room is tiny but it's cozy and soon I'll be too busy to do anything in that room other than sleep (and even that's questionable at times) so it's just fine. The people I'm living with seem really really nice, although one of them is a bit reclusive perhaps, and rent and location are great.

I'm looking forward to spring semester. I take a kind of sick pleasure in being so busy that some days I really DON'T have time to eat or sleep much. Why is that? I am insane.

On that note, time for bed. I think I got to sleep sometime around 4 am yesterday, and now I am tired.

This has been said before by many and may seem insignificant, but it is so true. I love you all.

Good night.