My PC is Healed!

Computing services fixed my little computer! even though i had to haul my ass there and back twice because they're stupid douchebags who can't figure out when a computer will be done and lie and tell you several hours only to call you ten minutes after you have sweatily collapsed onto your bed. it's kinda a hot day today.

Being in Borders today even briefly made me realize what a calming effect bookstores have on me. It seems like possibilities abound, that I could find my next favorite book under every cover. I love being surrounded by books. More books will return with me when I go home for Columbus Day. Maybe i can even find some in that big flea market heather mentioned! I also need to find more people who own books. TJ and Amanda seem to be the only ones who brought any books, and they're both more into sci-fi fantasy stuff. I saw the library today, under construction. Definitely won't be re-opening anytime soon. Alas.

Woke up this morning realizing what I want for my birthday...have the perfect person in mind, too... side note, my birthday is Tommy's half-birthday. how crazy is it that that was six whole months ago? so much has changed. i briefly pondered this morning whether or not he'd remember it and call, then decided i don't care. or i shouldn't care. it'd be nice, but whatever.

first IRC retreat is tomorrow till saturday. we're going to someplace in new york, iroquois springs, and we're staying in cabins, woot. luckily i came equipped with a sleeping bag for debate team, go me! speaking of debate, jamie emailed from florence to tell meredith she is a "partner stealer", that i am now tainted, and that she will not take me back upon her return. lol. i'm fine with that, though.

Hello Again

My computer has been rather fucked up lately, hence the lack of posting. At random times it refuses to let me access the blogger site. bleh.

The most important news of the day: On October 2, the day after my birthday, I'm going to be in Chelsea with my drawing class, which happens to be about three blocks away from Union Square where heather lives, so I'm going to stay with her!! whooooo!! I really do miss you guys. It has been hectic, but the routine is pretty much settling in, so--phone calls, people, phone calls!

School goes well. Drawing class--well ok I feel really substandard in that class, but my first egg drawings didn't go too horribly. I'm trying to condition myself toward accepting whatever grades I get. there are extra credits, generally field trips, and meredith pointed out from personal experience that one not-so-hot grade won't significantly reduce your GPA. but i still have to grapple with my usual hatred of getting anything below a B plus. Creative writing, which i have in half an hour, is the SHIZ. i love this class, i love that the other students are into writing and are pretty talented from the first week's round of poems.

Carla and I are also doing great. there must be something about living with tall, blonde theater people that i just work well with. she can even sleep through lights and noise like wendy does, it's amazing. of course nothing can replace my wendy, and it still sucks that she has to live in dolan, but of all the other random girls i could have been landed with, i'm really glad it was carla. i went with them to a theater party saturday night and had so much fun, i felt like i knew so many more people than i did last year, which was generally the reason why i didn't really enjoy myself, i felt like i only knew wendy. it's still a shame that parties generally only feature beer, but i wasn't really in the mood to drink anyway. we all went to the 3 dollar theater in town bc jared, one of the theater kids, is assistant manager and rented it out for us to watch "wet hot american summer" at midnight, which was awesome. also, i met a bunch of new cool people, including neil ,who heather will remember, and found out that whitney, pace's friend, goes here (and that he thought i was a quiet person in high school).

Debate team has begun again. in the absence of my old partner, the beloved jamie who is partying it up in florence this semester, i am teamed with none other than meredith!! together we are an unstoppable force of evil, evidenced by how we kicked some ass *cough pinky cough* on our first foray into the field. i have concluded that since sean registered himself as a socialist (merely to prove to his grandmother the US is not that free and that he'll get blackballed or something) he is deserving of whatever abuse i can throw at him from the podium, muahaha.

brian's back from texas...he said he really missed me, and i was like *gulp* well then i have to say i missed him too, right? sigh. it's not that i don't have fun with brian, i do, it's just that i feel more bad for him than anything else, because he doesn't know anyone outside of all of khara's old friends around here. and no, i haven't yet settled on anyone to go after or hook up with (though wendy noted that dirk seems to be warming up to me at long last), but that doesn't mean that i want to do anything with him. i would be fine just hanging out, but i know that if he comes down here, that's what he will think is going to happen, no matter what i say, because it's brian and he has a one track mind.

speaking of MY one-track mind, finally started talking to TFB at the theater party. conclusion? very attractive, gorgeous eyes, and nice enough to talk to, but not extremely outgoing. oh well. so sad when you get up close and personal with the hot ones and they're just meh, like dave aka philosophy boy. he joined the cultural committee for ignatian that a bunch of us are also doing, and he was the loud obnoxious kid in the back that you're just like whhhhyyyy must you speak?

in conclusion, life is going really well here, and i hope everyone else is having a good time back at school. update your blogs, people!

Thoughts

Carla mocks me because I never seem to have any homework....oh well. Three of my classes don't have actual finals or midterms, so I'm happy. Started intro to drawing today and already felt woefully inadequate just drawing an egg. Creative writing is joyous, as I expected.

Tonight we met our mentor groups for IRC. This is a small group of kids plus one mentor that we meet with once a month all year, with specific things we talk about. They gave us each these nice leather-esque Ignatian journals to use, except I'm a lefty and I don't know if I actually will. My mentor, George, works up in bellarmine. my group seems nice enough (there's one hot italian guy, jonathon). I'm looking forward to the first retreat, which is a week from friday.

I enjoy having guy friends. I like having guys like steve that I can literally talk to online for hours and have really interesting conversations with. Still seems strange how many girl friends I lack compared to the at-home crowd. I'm going to start writing letters this week, I promise.

Strange how far Andrew and I have come since this time last year. Tonight we had a talk about role reversal and the events of last year, and I was glad we could talk frankly and honestly. Time gives you that needed distance. In talking about being free to do whatever with whomever, he was kind enough to assure me that i could have most guys drooling if i so choose. I don't quite believe that, but I was surprised he would say it. I have many diverse interests in terms of guys. A couple of them are from the guys down the hall (as opposed to my closer guy friends, whom i love dearly, but no). I'm not really interested in them per se but I'd be interested in hooking up with them....I just wonder if that would make things terribly awkward. Also, if I hooked up with one would that mean I couldn't hook up with any of the others?

Since I have done so many things in the past that were, on review, inadvisable, I find myself subjecting my desires to greater scrutiny. Like the desire to hook up with guys I'm friends with. Yes, I'm attracted to them, but I value their company more than that. Also, I've done things for bad reasons before. Examples: I kissed that guy Matt on new year's because I felt bad for him. I dated Charles partially because I knew he really liked me and because Melissa thought it was a really good idea. I've gone on a date with Deconti when I didn't really want to have a date because I kind of felt bad for him. Hence I distrust my feelings of sympathy, because I worry they could get parlayed into some kind of action on my part that I take not because of a romantic interest, but more of a desire to make the other person happy. Basically it's me trying to be nice--this is not good. Resolution: BE EVIL!!

Another Reason to Hate Bush

The Legacy of Legacies

By JEROME KARABEL


Berkeley, Calif. — Admissions policy is an especially popular topic on campus this time of year. As new students arrive, they inevitably ask one another the same questions: Where did you apply? Did you get in anywhere else? Why did you decide to come here?
They are personal questions, of course, often asked more out of courtesy than curiosity, but their answers reveal a story about not only America's system of higher education, but also America's ideals. President Bush appealed to these ideals last month when he acknowledged that while he was the beneficiary of a so-called legacy preference (that is, he was admitted to Yale in part because other members of his family had gone there), he believed that admission to college "ought to be based on merit."
It is an admirable goal. Yet the persistence of legacy preferences may not be fully appreciated by either Mr. Bush or his opponent, John Kerry, who has also called for their abolition - and whose father also went to Yale. If America is to take advantage of this rare bipartisan opportunity to end this form of affirmative action for the privileged, it may be helpful to know the full story of legacy preferences in general and Mr. Bush's in particular.
In the fall of 1963, George W. Bush was a senior at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., facing the same dilemma confronting his 232 classmates: where to apply to college. He had never made the honor roll, and his verbal score on the SAT was a mediocre 566. Although popular among his classmates, he was neither an exceptional athlete nor did he possess any particularly outstanding extracurricular talents. Looking over his record, Andover's dean of students suggested that the young Mr. Bush consider applying to schools other than Yale, the alma mater of his father and grandfather.
But unbeknownst to the dean and Mr. Bush, Yale had quietly changed its admissions policy toward alumni sons during the very months when his application was under consideration. As the number of applicants to Yale increased, the administration decided that it could no longer afford to treat all legacy applicants equally. Instead, it would differentiate among alumni sons, giving extra preference on the basis of the family's contribution to Yale and its importance to American society.
As the son of a prominent Texas oilman then running for the United States Senate - and the grandson of a United States senator from Connecticut who had recently served as a member of the Yale Corporation - George W. Bush was no ordinary applicant. In April 1964, he was accepted to Yale - unlike 49 percent of all alumni sons who applied that year.
Less than two years later, in an abrupt change in policy, Yale's new dean of admissions, R. Inslee Clark, presided over a radical reduction in legacy preference. By 1967, Mr. Clark's second year in office, the proportion of alumni sons in the freshman class plummeted to 12 percent from 17 percent in the class of 1968, George W. Bush's class.
The reaction of the alumni was swift and furious. By the end of 1966, the alumni were in open revolt, and Yale's alumni board hastily formed a special committee to investigate the matter. In 1967, William F. Buckley, an alumnus then running an insurgent campaign for a seat on the Yale Corporation, declared that Yale had ceased to be the "kind of place where your family goes for generations" and had been transformed into an institution where "the son of an alumnus, who goes to a private preparatory school, now has less chance of getting in than some boy from P.S. 109 somewhere."
In truth, Yale had not eliminated the legacy preference even under Mr. Clark. But the new dean had brought the admissions rate of legacy applicants closer to that of non-legacy applicants than at any point in Yale's history. By 1970, Mr. Clark was gone, and by 1974 - just as a major fund-raising effort was beginning - the legacy preference was even stronger than when George W. Bush and John F. Kerry had applied more than a decade earlier.
Yale's chief competitors, Harvard and Princeton, took due note of the turmoil created by this radical experiment, and neither ever tried an admissions policy remotely as meritocratic as Yale's under Dean Clark. (Recently, both Harvard and Princeton have admitted legacy applicants at a rate more than triple that of non-legacy applicants.)
The consequences of the Yale episode are with us still, for the elite colleges drew from it the lesson that the costs of seriously encroaching on alumni privileges are simply too high. Because of the elite universities' investment in the current system, change is unlikely to come from within. But President Bush's denunciation of legacy preference may well have set in motion a public debate that will bring about the demise of this anachronistic policy.
A useful first step would be consideration of a bill introduced last fall by Senator Edward Kennedy that would require universities "to publish data on the racial and socioeconomic composition of legatees." So, too, would a requirement that universities disclose the admission rate of legacies and non-legacies as a way of casting a spotlight on a policy that is, in the end, indefensible.
Such legislation may not end legacy preferences. But it would subject them to the public scrutiny befitting a democratic society - a scrutiny that could well be fatal.
Jerome Karabel, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, is the author of the forthcoming book "The Chosen: Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900 to Today."

I got an 800 on my verbal AND i was an honor student for four years but of course that didn't help me getting into harvard, a comparable school. grrrrr. well at least i know my kids will be getting into fairfield, right?

One Week

I've only been here a week--can that be true? Some things are the same, but so many are different. New room, new roommate, but there's still me and Wendy sitting on my bed discussing the boys down the hall (specifically who'd be the best in bed) and laughing so hard-- "if he only knew!!"

School

Everyone's commenting on how different this year seems from last year. Instead of things being fresh and new, we're settling back into our old patterns and laughing at the freshmen who can't find Canisius or Bannow on the map. We're back to rounding up a giant herd of people for dinner--tonight it was nine, briefly joined by wendy (Tj commented that we have too many friends, but really, what can you do?). I'm back to sitting blearily through an 8am class and then passing out again afterward, although now I will make the effort to be dressed and awake, I swear. I'm back to eyeing TFB in the caf and really wishing I could just go over and talk to him, except I'm not really good at doing that in crowded places. Soon I'll be back to some interesting times on weekends, too (Sean's gleeful expression was priceless: "you have booze!"). Lol.

I'm proud of myself for asking Steve if I could come over last night when I found out the boys were watching the Boondock Saints, which I love. I've never really invited myself to hang out with them, last year I still felt kind of uncomfortable sometimes, like I couldn't tell if they cared if I was there or not. Plus Steve rooms with Dirk, the tall, silent, scowling, intimidating one who was mean to wendy and randomly said hi to us once in the hall last year, which frightened us both, and i definitely couldn't tell if he likes me or not. I ended up asking Steve flat out if Dirk disliked me being around, and he said no he's just like that to everyone and that "he's hard to read". That of course cracked me up, because what phrase does everyone from Greg to Deconti use to describe me? Hard to read, of course. Anyway I went over, Dirk actually said a complete sentence to me, which I suppose is progress. I do enjoy hanging out with them, though theirs is a completely different dynamic from my other friends, who are, well, more friendly. They are most definitely "guys" in the most typical sense of the word. Another way of putting it is that the guys like Sean, Tj, James, Andrew and the Mikes are the "brother" types, the ones who are always just your friends (well not if you're Meredith, wink wink nudge nudge), whereas Steve, Pete and Mark are the regular kind. Not exactly the romantic possibility kind, though I do admit to finding Steve pretty good-looking, but just the regular kind.

Anyway it's good to be back. I felt sort of bad telling Brian that I don't really miss him yet, but I haven't, really. I missed my friends, I missed seeing Sara like every day and hearing Rae giggle and having heather's sense of humor lighting everything up. I miss hanging out with Mel and jessi and just being the Windsor/Bloomfield/West Hartford girls. It is great to be back, I love Fairfield and I'm excited for my classes and for all the guys I plan to meet (though I'm telling myself to take things slowly this year, let's see how that goes), but still I kind of wish I could have things both ways.

Moving In

And we're back. Campus is home again. Excitement and greasy fast food required six tums, I think I've had four cokes, I hauled all my shit up the stairs because my mom was vaccuuming and I didn't know the elevator was working, but I'm here and I'm golden. Johnny Depp is on my door, James Dean on my wall, and the collage of all my lovelies is behind my bed. Also, Wendy's been a prominent room fixture since I got here. Lol. The male RA on the floor, Rory, is gorgeous and a friend of wendy's! TFB looks great, he got a tan. Mrow.

So exhausted, not even energy to socialize tonight. Showering and hitting sack to prepare for 830 wakeup. Future reference: IRC refers to Ignatian Residential College, aka the Cult, aka Loyola, aka the community program thingee where I live. Anyway tomorrow is IRC breakfast, IRC orientation crap, then a trip to NYC with lunch in the city and a visit to the planetarium. Whoo. Sleeping on bus.

The Last Day

Hanging out with greg and sara last night was a good time. How interesting that between the three of us we share four years of history. Sitting and talking in the car in his driveway, while outside it was raining lightly, reminded me of so many nights that Greg and I would sit in the tahoe, not wanting to go inside to have his parents shoo him to bed, just talking aimlessly about anything, things I can't even remember. Strange how long ago that all seems.

Today's my last day at home. Yesterday I was freaking out about getting stuff done in time, plus I spent five hours painting my mom's room, but this morning I woke up and almost entirely packed the car, besides stuff that needs to go in trash bags like my comforter and such. A few more errands, some cleaning, and then it's off for my last night with Sara (with the brief interlude of the sex-toy party at Mel's, yes!). Ignoring the fact that we've spent like the last three days together, it's fitting that my last evening will be spent with my oldest friend. :-)

Shadiness

Ah, the eternal shadiness of deconti. I really would be the cause of his early and most unfortunate demise were we ever to attempt dating (which I have decreed we will not, thereby saving him from himself, go me). I think even tonight shortened his life a bit, though.

Ah and greg's drinking alone bc all his friends are gone, I feel so bad! He wanted to hang out but I'd already told deconti I'd watch that silly disney movie with him, Flight of the Navigator. We ended up watching it at mel's, and this guy josh was there, who apparently went to northwest but got kicked out for stealing a bunch of bibles and schoolbooks and then selling them to kids and teachers. He said he sold a stack of "Man the Mythmaker" to Mrs Juda once. That might be shady, but the kid was hilarious--he reminded me completely of TJ. It was freakish. Every comment out of his mouth during the movie sounded like TJ, his voice was kinda like TJ's and he was even really tall with kind of fluffy hair! I was like ahhhh you are his doppelganger!

Two more days. In the next 48 hrs there will be massive amounts of shopping and packing, the painting of my mom's room, possibly a party at melissa's, some good quality time with Sara, and a sex-toy party on Sunday night, Tupperware style. Sweet.

P.S.

Yeah, don't ever tell someone jokingly that the only way you'd ever have sex with them was if they were suddenly in possession of a really nice Corvette, cause it might turn out that a friend of theirs has a baby-blue 1963 which they would be very willing to lend the person, and then...it might just be awkward.

Bugaboo Creek

That's where we had dinner tonight, to celebrate deconti getting his job at ESPN. Good food, deconti had to kiss a giant stuffed moose, and khara's mom shadily snuck into the restuarant to send over this big weird dessert thing while distracting her on the phone with questions about pork chops and leis. Brian also paid for all of us, which was really nice of him; he also pointed out that he's now going to be making $40,000 a year and the rest of us definitely are not. It's weird that someone I know is actually entering the workforce full-time as a college grad, even weirder that he's going to be making a shitload of money doing it. Well forty grand isn't that much usually, but for a young unmarried guy who's going to be living at home for a while anyway, that's awesome. Plus his job means he gets to travel around the country doing the software at ESPN events, so he's totally thrilled. Thinking of all the stories I've heard about college grads who can't find good jobs for months and have to settle for whatever, Brian is really damn lucky that he landed his dream job less than a month after he graduated. I hope I'm that lucky!

Three more days. Jesus.

Sho

That word, or something like it, is how you said "yes" in Chinese (Cantonese or Mandarin, I'm not sure which. Probably Cantonese.) That's what I learned from watching the movie "Hero" tonight. It is a really excellent film and well worth going to see. In fact I realized afterward that it's the first movie in a long time that I felt was entirely deserving of the $9 admission. Visually stunning, the plot is well-constructed, and the fight scenes are incredible. There were definitely some things that were over the top, like fighting moves done via harnesses and ropes that look like really hokey ballet dances and a lot of chinese guys screaming monosyllabically, but other than that, such a good film.

After the movie we went to AC's for ice cream (even though I'd already had ice cream with amanda earlier in the afternoon) and, after Brian deemed my usual choice of vanilla with sprinkles too boring, he decided to order us the Peterson Royale. For anyone who doesn't know, this monster has seven scoops of ice cream, tons of hot fudge and a mountain of whipped cream. Absolutely insane. Plus it cost thirteen bucks, but I owed him anyway for buying me alcohol at the shadiest package store ever (which i promptly left in my car, in a bag under the backseat, to have its oil changed tonight, because i couldnt think of a way of getting it into my mom's car without her inquiring into it). Yeah so we definitely did not eat most of this freakish concoction (sara I thought about calling you, since you definitely live three seconds away and probably would have loved to help, but i thought it might be a tad awkward) so deconti ended up taking it home.

So I didn't consider tonight a date; however, he asked me on the way to the theater why I "reconsidered" the whole dating thing, and I was like, er, I...didn't? I see no problem in hanging out with him, bc I had a lot of fun tonight, and whatever else happens happens if I feel like it. I can't really imagine anything beyond that, though. He asked what I thought of "us" and I immediately had that deer-in-the-headlights feeling. I just said I had fun hanging out with him, etc etc, basically skirting the question, and then I was leaving anyway. So I don't know. I miss Heather and her intensely humorous take on such situations!

Of Collaging, Cheating, and Layered Hair

Last night I went to sara's to make collages. Both of ours came out really well, though of course miss artiste over there did hers on canvas with tissue paper behind it, and mine's on a piece of cardboard, but hey, to each their own. So many crazy pictures on there, man--including one of rae's Tinky Winky doll when we posed him to look like a drug addict sophomore year, with a bottle of pills and a bottle of baccardi. Another photo of a young sara holding the baccardi prompted her to hastily explain to her mom and aunt how we weren't actually drinking it, but they were like "hey, no big deal, people do things..." yeah, except we were all of fifteen!

I had a lot of pictures of guys on mine, including heather's steven. I showed my mom the collage this mornning, hoping she wouldnt notice the one of heather holding a drink in a coconut and me with a bottle of smirnoff, but the first one she noticed was the one of me and manuel in which his has is very conspicuously on my ass. She asked who that was, and I was like oh, that's manuel, and she didn't ask anything else. My mother. She must think I'm a crazy ho or something. Luckily I guess she couldn't tell I was a sophomore in that pic--which i think you totally can, because I'm ridiculously pale and not wearing any makeup--because what would I have told her? Yeah, mom, remember my trip to spain? Well, your slutty daughter went and made out with some foreign guy she'd just met. Ain't he hot, though?

The most amusing point in the evening was definitely when the topic of Dave came up. For any who may not know or remember, junior year I was lucky enough to get to go to the Breadloaf Young Writers' Conference, which is held at Middlebury College in Vermont. It was without a doubt four of the best days of my entire life, to be surrounded by people who loved to write as much as I did in such a gorgeous natural setting, right near where Robert Frost had his cabin. Ok it did manage to snow like the third day, in May, and once again I only had a hoodie I'd borrowed from greg against the cold, but that always seems to happen to me. Anyway, there was this absolutely gorgeous guy Dave in my writing group, and he was flirting with me, and the girls I was rooming with were all encouraging me to go for it. The only problem, of course, was that I'd started dating greg two weeks before (Breadloaf was one week after my junior prom) and I'd even brought my prom pics with me so I could admire how hot greg was. The long and short of it was that I did nothing, even though I really was tempted to; however, I did get him to pose for a couple of really hot photos on the day we left, one of which is in the collage. Meghan, incidentally, stole a copy of one of them and kept it because she thought he was so gorgeous.

What's amusing is that we're relating this story to sara's mom and I showed her the picture, and then she says "Well, what's the problem? She wasn't going to marry greg anyway." Sara and I were both like, "What?!" Her mom went on to say that greg never would have known, it wouldn't have hurt anyone, etc etc, and sara's pretty much having a heart attack and I'm just laughing my ass off at the look of horror on her face. Hahaha. I guess her mom tried to backtrack later and said she was only kidding, but she looked pretty damn poker-faced at the time. lol.

Oh and I got my hair cut! It's shorter and I have layers and it flips a lot. So strange after years of just having it long. Heehee. I look hot.

Freedom!

My third summer at Sofia's is officially over. Sweet.

The countdown begins--one week until I leave and return to my rightful home! Wendy gets to move in early, damn her. Carla and I are apparently both planning to arrive exactly at 10am, so this should be interesting...I don't like that we have an orientation dinner for IRC the very night we move in, in addition to the orientation breakfast and IRC trip to New York the next day. I mean, I only have class from 11-11:50 on wednesday, but still I'd like to spend tuesday getting my room organized and seeing everyone. Also it means I can't have dinner with wendy, AND that I'll have to be up at like nine am on tuesday, and you know no one's going to bed. Please. Hey, maybe I'll just pull an all-nighter and sleep on the bus. No....roommate will probably be sleeing. Damnation.

To Whom It May Concern: My birthday is a month from Wednesday! :-)

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

As of 4am this morning, which is actually like an hour from now, heather's gone. Like I have said before, the lights have dimmed in northern connecticut. Last night we played our final game of lazertag of the summer. Heather and I teamed up this time, in a flashback to the "Damn you, Warm Chicken!" days of yore, and battled a really creepy seven-year-old who trailed us around the maze shooting us even though we were screaming insults at him about his height, age, and lack of potential in life. It was actually a Frantic game, which is twice and long with no downtime in between hits, which is intense!! We had a lot of people along for the ride, too--in addition to our usual crowd, we were featuring Jess' boyfriend Mike (he of the extremely hairy eyebrows), Greg, his friend Mike (he of man-slut fame, though not as hot as I remembered him) and DeConti. Yeah I was a tad wary at first, bc I know Mike S. was not too fond of me in the past (greg just happened to be at mike's house rehearsing when I broke up with him, oops), but whatever, it wasn't scheisty, in fact it was extremely good times. The only slightly awkward part was when we were all in Friendly's and I told greg I'd pay for his sundae cause he didn't have any money left, and Melissa says loudly from down the table "oh, you're paying for him? Aww, you two might as well still be going out!" Greg and I were just like, er...ok. Melissa also later made sure to tell both of us how proud she was that we both lost the Vcards this summer lol. Actually it was more aimed at heather, a kind of like hey look at them! Now you too!

Saying goodbye to my girl flanny was so hard. Tonight the four of us stood in her kitchen sharing one of possibly ten hundred group hugs and I just had to point out, dude, we were like this, together, sophomore year of high school--and now again, sophomore year of college. How incredible is that, that I've had these best friends for five years (and in sara's case, seven)? As valuable as new friends are, there is something to be said for the power of old friends. They know all the backstories, they remember all the old crushes, the old drama, the old secrets and wishes. They can laugh about how a girl you went to school with is getting married at 19 and is living with her sketchy boyfriend in New Haven but you never liked her anyway so it's ok. They can instantly hold up all your old relationships to the light and compare them against the current one, all the way back to the stupid football player you REALLY shouldn't have dated freshman year of high school. They can mock you for the incredibly sketchy guy who tossed you what you thought was a very sweet note out of the window of a bus, only to turn out to be a complete stalker who chased you across the town green next Halloween and had to be diverted by your clever friends while you were hurried to safety. They can threaten you with the really horrible photos they have of your less beautiful years and how they will release them to the paparazzi if you ever become famous, but they are also perhaps the only ones who really appreciate how far you've come from those Days of Struggle. They can look through photo albums with you and know who everyone and their boyfriend is; plus, they're the only ones who really understand what it was like to wake up that April morning in Sante Fe and throw open the curtains to find yourself yelling "OHMYGODHEATHERITSFUCKINGSNOWING!!" Man, old friends are the shiz.

Heather, my Flanny, my heterolifemate, the Jay to my Silent Bob, I miss you already.

Leroy!

I just like that name, leroy. For any who might not know, that's the name of the sexy black kitten who seems to have a fetish for red pumps worn by heather. meow.

we just watched some crazy wayans brothers movie that spoofed all the "growin up in the hood" movies of the early 90s. like most of their movies it was only good for about an hour, but it still made me and heather talk ghetto on the way home lol. and now i am sitting here burning her like twenty million cds, because i am her bitch and i love her madly!

Today was the day of sketchiness and of struggle....so many issues on the horizon. Stuff about Tommy, stuff with Wendy, Rae's situation, Heather's impending departure, and to top it all off, scheistiness with deconti! Yay for struggle! So apparently not only does his sister Marianne (who I graduated Northwest with) know about us hooking up at melissa's, she referred to me as "the goth one"! This girl (who is the spitting image of her brother, it's freaky) sat in front of me in homeroom for four years, she was friends with one of my best friends, meghan, and she actually thought I was goth? Now I'm wondering how many people in goddamned northwest thought I was goth, or a satanist/atheist like Joe whatisname in sophomore year. *rolls eyes* Oh well. Fuck 'em.

Anyway beyond that little bit of info there was the larger uncomfortable issue of him asking me out on a date tomorrow night. Hrm. Brian's a fun kid, in general, but we already established last year that we have nothing in common besides liking Corvettes and being Sox fans and I'm not even a hardcore fan like he is. Unfortunately he was also really nice about it. Sigh.

What a Day

That's a good angry song by Nonpoint, actually, "What a Day". Random trivia.

So Tuesday night marked the first time Greg and I have hung out alone in like a year. He showed me a lot of the art he made for school last year, which was cool. Also he played me the hilarious cd from the band he has with conor and mike, the Noctambules. None of the numbers were actually planned, and they were high when they recorded a lot of them, but it's so funny, especially the ones with Greg randomly yelling and yipping and making other assorted noises. He wound up giving me like twenty cds that heather had wanted along with some he thought i'd like. Now, I have no idea what the classifications for this stuff are, indie, post-rock, whatever, but some of them are just awesome. I particularly like Postal Service and Interpol, both of which are pretty mellow but with some techno-style beats thrown in. There was something called Porcupine Tree which he said had been compared to Tool...it's not as hard as Tool, but it's still good. Also there's an older Modest Mouse cd that's good, along with the Microphones and Yo La Tengo. So if you get a chance, definitely check these bands out. I think most people would like the first two, the latter ones are a little more unique....Sara, I think you might like Porcupine Tree.

yesterday i went down to wendy's and we went to school to pick up our books (mine are still in her trunk, i just realized. shit.) we had lunch with rob, then we met joe to go scout tattoo parlors for wendy's soon-to-be tinkerbell. yeah joe drives like a fucking maniac. that was frightening but also strangely enjoyable. we ended up having dinner with him, then we went over to tommy's. that was ok, though it was a little awkward to realize that he has the link to Animal Crackers. i guess it's fate lol, cause greg and andrew both used to read this too. oh well. if i had anything to hide i wouldn't really be putting it up here; this journal is for me to remember things and for my friends to be kept advised of whatever's going on in my life, and so it shall continue to be. apparently he was upset to learn that i had gotten rid of kit e kat. why, i don't know; it's not like i had any great attachment to it. maybe i was supposed to, i don't know. i kept the mouse, that's what was important to me. the cat i didn't care. some poor abused kid will get more happiness from it than i ever would. (i suppose that could be said for most of my stuffed animals, but some of them i'm really attached to, like Raccoony, the Valentine bear my dad gave me, and strangely enough Huggy Bear, which i rescued from greg's basement when he was going to get rid of him. he's really cuddly. my cats tried to kill him, though, i'm not sure why). oh, and if tommy was taken aback by my disposal of the cat, well, i was taken aback by being dumped! lol.

Anyway besides that particular bit of shadiness, along with the tidbit of information that tommy's decided to become a drug dealer and sell the rest of his percosets at school (if you're thinking "christ, they broke up in the nick of time" yes, my thoughts exactly), the night was fun. Brian Fracchi (he has a real last name but they call him fracchi) and i wandered around the carnival for a bit--and if you think i'm ADD for shiny things normally, you should see me when i'm a bit drunk and there are bright flashing lights everywhere. I know talked to meredith on the phone, and I remember drunkenly professing my undying love to Sara...wendy, meanwhile, left a voicemail for pete that ended with "i love you". haha. Then I remember it being me, wendy and fracchi sitting on the bed of his truck out front for a good long while. brian's a nice kid; wendy said later that he's definitely a "charles" kind of guy, also known as the type she's fond of and i'm not so much. anyway, wendy and i had some differences of opinion as to what is shady behavior and what is not, vis-a-vis certain young men, when one already has a young man. when it comes down to it, though, everyone makes their own choices, and that's ok whether i agree with them or not. however, i will say that i think the two of us make an admirable team. i doubt it'll happen again soon since we never share a taste in guys....though perhaps TFB?

Tonight there will be lazer-tagging with my girls. Sweetness!

For the record, the view from a mountaintop after a fierce rainstorm is wonderful; your friend almost backing the car off a cliff on a mountaintop is not. Playing board games for hours while it pours is wonderful; all four people waking up shivering at four am with the same thought--"BLANKETS!" is not. (Men in uniform are always wonderful. There are no caveats there).

Double Entendre

I love that phrase, double entendre...what's more, I love people who actually know what that means. I hope the next guy I date is someone who knows what that means, along with a host of other so-called "big words" of which I am fond. In fact it's more than a hope, it's almost a damned prerequisite. This came to mind today as I was talking to deconti online, at this moment:

the lazarus cat :and of course that would contain no double entrendre
sniperk62 : oh man I forgot about the big words!

Yes, and I had forgotten to omit the big words from my vocabulary when talking to him. Did I mention this kid is a recent college graduate? Suddenly I felt very frustrated with the idea that so many guys I'm going to meet in life *cough* Fairfield *cough* are going to think that I use too many big words or, in Julie's immortal phrase, that I "talk funny". I'm so tired of that. I feel like the only guy I've ever dated whose intelligence has been a prominent part of his personality was Andrew, and while I can appreciate that from the distance of a friend, quite obviously that was not a good move for me. Again, I'm not looking for any boyfriends to pop up in the near future, but maybe I should put up a little sign in some corner of my head: Losers/Drunks/Smokers/Potheads/Criminals/Idiots/People With Small Vocabularies Need Not Apply.
That looks about right.

Dada

I love it when I actually catch some of the more obscure cultural references in "Frasier". That show always made me feel alternately very smart or very ignorant. Tonight I felt smart for actually understanding when Frasier and Niles discussed attending an art exhibit of one of the foremost Dada artists; it was this weird modern art movement that we looked at in the end of the spring semester. I don't think I'd ever go to any great lengths to see any of it, but as anyone who's ever watched Frasier knows, those two love absolutely anything cultural. I mean, is it possible for someone to be that damn sophisticated, about theatre, opera, art, ballet, wine, all of that? And to also know a bunch of languages and be a doctor? Jeez.

I loved the irony of my goodbye scene with Charlie this evening, before he leaves for Sicily for several months: he pulled me into a hug and an extremely gross Italian kiss, and my purse knocked his bottle of water off the table and into his lap. muahahha. serves you right, you little pervert. I hope he catches hoof-and-mouth disease over there or something.