Today is kind of a putzy day, not because I'm still tired, because I'm not, really, but the day before vacation is always pretty useless. I've been reading random crap all day, and trying to figure out how it is that I'm supposed to file a FAFSA on Feb 1 when I'm supposed to have my tax forms before I fill it out, and I just got my W2 today online and the paper copy won't come for several days. Fucken Harvard.

Also fucken Hopkins for neither sending me a decision or for emailing me back about whether it's just lost in the mail or they are slow.

I'm very psyched about the ski trip!

Arg, pain!

So, Friday night I vegged around the house. Saturday was the foosball tournament. I beat Katie in the first round, which would have been better if it wasn't her birthday. Then Lee beat me, but it's okay he ended up finishing second overall. Matty and I went to Grendel's Den for a couple of drinks while the tourney wrapped up, which was lovely. We got back and the kids were just finishing, so we watched the games and then a crew of us headed to Mather for drinking and shooting the shit. We started pretty late, so we didn't end up going to bed until like 6:30. Crazy.

But not as crazy as Sunday. I went to Chuck's to have lunch with Withers and it ended up being a marathon session. Seriously, sitting at the bar at Charlie's is extremely dangerous. Well, I put in a banner day, and I don't even remember leaving Chuck's or saying goodbye to Withers or walking to Eliot. It's a wonder I managed to put my coat on. M got me home, although I killed a cigarette butt stand and a trash can tried to beat me up.

So today, pain and agony, though I got to work and I've even managed to keep some rice down, so I think I'm on the recovery path.

In conclusion, I am sooo sooo dumb. And Matty is incredibly wonderful.

After the rice, all was well, and I have managed to eat multiple things all day. I still don't feel that well, but just normal hungover instead of pukey horrible death hungover. Though I do feel like an idiot.

But I'm doing laundry! And then I'll pack. And then tomorrow it's off to Harvard to drop off my bag, to work, and then to Canadia! It should be a wicked blast.

Man, I feel like poo again today. And I haven't been to the gym since Tuesday. I feel too pooey to go. Poo. Poooooo.

Maybe it's sympathy pooness for exam takers.

I can't wait for ski trip goodness.

I don't know what to blame for this feeling of crapness today. I didn't go to bed as early as I wanted, but then I slept in. I even continued the dream I had when my alarm went off and I reset it and fell back asleep. Maybe it was the dream... an odd fight by mail, a science fiction story written in a fugue along with, apparently, some torn-up accusing letters that were understood enough to start the fight, but a return package of a check for publication of the story, some bags of trinkets and candy, and the inadvertant inclusion of a notebook with photos in it. Then worse, an actual visit, angry and sullen and though my sister and I waited around for him to quit his job at the FitCorp, he just left without us, the dick.

Maybe it's dread I've been ignoring bubbling up. Maybe it's my brain asserting itself against my declaration of victory, letting me know it's never quite complete.

Maybe I just need some damn General Gau.

Aaauuuughhhh, I'm so mad at what Storey has to say about funerals, because he just makes awful generalizations about people who do not want their funeral to be a wicked drag, just because he disagrees. I already wrote about my funeral demands in October, so scroll to the bottom to read that first entry, and see if you think it has anything to do with emotional dishonesty or not wanting to admit dependencies. I'm of the opinion that my vision has an awful lot to do with engaging a variety of emotions and incorporating interconnectedness. So, before you paint everyone with the same brush on a very personal issue, how bout you think first about other possibilities. Argh.

Then again, if anyone holds a "celebration" in my honor that turns out to be a drag, that would be horrible. Call it what it is.

Anyway.

Yesterday I headed to the BR after work, and just started to get some reading done for work when the kids showed up. Katie and I played foosball, and I proved that I sucked in the first two games, then beat her in the third! Hah. Poor M had to do lots of reading, so he was sad, and I tried to help him read in his office, but it was boring! RNA transcription, no thanks!

So I went to karaoke. I sang "Crazy" by Patsy Cline. Woo. Dave and I did not get to sing "Video Killed the Radio Star," so maybe in a couple of weeks. Next week I'll be enroute to Canadia, so no singing for me. Or 24. :-( People tape that shit for me.

*sigh* I can't be bothered defending myself to people who don't bother to read what I say carefully and who try to cram my words in their little idea of what the world is like and how people should be.

Sometimes it really hits home that I'm totally different from the kid I grew up with. Or the one I went to college with. I mean, some basic personality things are the same -- the confidence, the pushy opinionatedness, the low tolerance for most people -- but my outlook is a lot different. I'm extremely forward-looking. I have volumes of journals, thousands of emails, but less and less do I ever review them. They're just not that relevant when you're moving forward. They're entertainment for a really boring day, or something to break out in 20 years for maximum hilarity. I feel in charge of my future. Not with some starry-eyed vision of this perfect path that will never be derailed. Much more flexible, with the assurance that I have the ability to work with challenges that will definitely arise. Unless I end up leading a charmed life from here on out. And though most people still get on my nerves, I'm free of the most painful anxieties and feelings of isolation, and I'm more open to people. And that boiling anger that hurt me for so many years has simmered down to a pleasant warm with occasional fieriness. I've moved forward, and I'm going to keep at it.

It would certainly help, though, if Hopkins would freaking send me an admissions decision already.

So last night M saved me from boredom by going to dinner with me, which was lovely. We went to JH's, where I haven't been in ages. Then he had to go work, so I watched movies with Clark and then Katie while he sat in his room and worked, poor boy. Then he worked a lot while I slept a lot. He still has a lot of work to do. Essentially, school blows and I'm glad I've had some time off from it.

Court's roommate is housesitting for these ridiculously rich people, so we went over there to watch the games on their enormous widescreen TV with HDTV. It was pretty sick. And great. Yay Pats, sorry Eagles... M and Josh were very sad. :-(

Stopped by the Cube for Kristin's birthday. But I think I drank too much beer and ate too much pizza and was improperly hydrated and it was hot in there, because I started feeling pretty yack, so now I'm at home. I think I'm going in for at least a half day tomorrow.

It feels a little silly to say that it is a joy to experience niceness, just really basic kindness and decency. And respect that extends in every direction. Because that's what should be standard. But I've found it to be more the exception than the rule. Exceptional is how it feels, to be the recipient of such a blessing.

I hope no one ever hurts you, that you never discover pain.

I'm glad I decided not to go hang out with a bunch of Deaniacs tonight, because so far the Iowa results are mighty depressing.

But, Iowa is not necessarily the rest of the country.

I hate reading period. Or exam period. Whatever they call it that makes people busy and tired.

At least I don't have to deal with it... slept until 1 today!

I guess I should shower. I kinda wish I had something to do today, even if it just meant kinda hanging out.

Mired in thoughts, I saw an apparition which zipped by me, turned around and zipped away. I called out, but not strongly enough. Upon reaching my destination, again I saw, but I lowered my head and went inside.

How did I come to be mired in thoughts anyway, on that very subject that most confuses me? I was on the bus to Central, and suddenly it's all I was thinking about. Sometimes the day after I've been drinking, if I have no aim or I'm too lazy, I get wrapped up in my head, and I feel like I'm on the verge of tears at every moment. For no reason at all.

It would be nice if we could assess our possibilities objectively. If more could be known. I suspect I could be projecting my feelings, because from where I am that's vastly easier. If that's truly the case, then I should just stop being an idiot. But I don't know that that's the case, and if it's not, then my second wish, oh genie, is to see the outcome of every possible course of action. Which path is right?

What I think about is that I'm happy. Even with weird days like today when my mind turns against me, I know on most days I'm really quite enthusiastic about the course of my life at the moment.

Conspiracy Day is about a month away, but of course already it's everywhere. I went to Walgreens the other day, and they were setting up an entire aisle of red and pink horrors. In my perks email at work today, *two* items pertained to horrible valentines, one for a pottery painting studio's dicount on their heart-shaped ceramics, and a flower shop letting us know it's taking orders already. Geh! Twitch! I've spent so many years hating this holiday, I can't not hate it so much.

I had an idea a few years ago, and I think it's a good one. Instead of Valentine's Day being all about couples being all smoochy woochy like they are everyday, except they have to buy crap, it should be a day of social freedom in which single people take totally random ass people out on dates. The week before Valentine's Day should just be a flurry of people asking each other out for coffee, to lunch, to movies, just out of some small level of interest in the other person. The assumption would not be that it was some huge dramatic level of interest. It's kind of like the Christmas party... everyone is kissing everyone, so the individual kisses don't have any big meaning, it's just amusing. Likewise, people could drop all this nonsense where they never go on dates, and just ask random people, because everyone's doing it and it's not a big deal.

Then again, maybe this is only a good idea in Harvard-world where people make a giant fuss about dating and yet never do it.

I still think it would be a really great social movement, though. Someone do it.

Also, there's too much candy at all these holidays, and I have no self-control. I'm like four. Last year was great because I was on the diet and could not partake. So I got money from my relatives instead. Much better! This year I'm sure I will eat too much candy, and I will be fat.

Though I did get a trainer to help me set up two new weight routines yesterday, so I can switch between them and the gym will be new and exciting and probably soreness-inducing again. So, maybe candy fatness will be averted by muscular raaaaaaarrrr.

Tonight is Primal Scream. I think I will go, but I'm wearing all my clothes. I think I'll wear a big loaner Band jacket outisde all my clothes.

Dear global warming, please come hang out in my neighborhood for a while. Thank you.

Almost the weekend! I love weekends.

Even though it's cold outside, it's tropical in here. I have the window open. Fucked up.

So, can anyone figure out why the heck I'm taking three days off work in a couple of weeks to go hang out in the cold snowy mountains? Instead of going somewhere warm?

Ha, who am I kidding, you totally know why.

I love to say Canadia and make fun of the French.

Danny and I finally sang "Up Where We Belong" at karaoke. It was fun and people sang along. It was wicked packed there last night... they had a long waitlist to get upstairs for anyone who got there not long after we did. Nuts.

It's so cold outside, I'm moving to Hawaii.

Primal Scream on Friday is going to be all woodwinds and drums because all brass instruments are going to be frozen up. We should just make everyone bring drums and make a lot of beating noise.

Can I just say that I find amusing this charge leveled at Dean that he didn't have any black cabinet members when he was gov. Have these people ever been to Vermont? My sister and her then-boyfriend went up there one weekend, and she said she felt like they were an interracial couple because she's not totally the whitest looking person ever. Seriously, folks, I'm sure we can dig up enough actual non-comical things to say about the man if you want to challenge him... no wonder the Dems lose left and right with such loserly campaign tactics.

It's warmer now on Sunday night than it was all weekend, even during the sunny daytimes. A snowstorm is coming in to dump a few inches, and then the brutal cold will return to make everything frozen and miserable. Woo. Friday night is Primal Scream, which I intended to attend, but if it's going to be below zero, I might just stay inside at the cocktail party.

The weekend. Friday night was men's hockey vs. Cornell, which we lost. The men aren't looking too good. Back to the BR for a little foosball, then to sleepy sleep. Saturday I had some lunch with the kids and then headed to Davis for some good old Family Dollar before getting the bus. I intended to watch the first game at home, but my roommate and her boyfriend were here, and she seemed upset about something, so I decided to go back to Cambridge to watch both football games. So there was football and beer and merriment, and I got two free meals out of Harvard in one day.

Up this morning, ran some errands, and then to the women's hockey game vs. Dartmouth, which we also lost, but it was a better game. There were actually fans there! The only consolation to not tying the game up at the end was that we had plenty of time to get back for the late NFL game. Boy had birdfeathers in his brain, so he vanished without me, but I just watched the first quarter in the BR then headed over to Adams. I haven't been there (well, sober enough to function) since the beginning of the year when Keith was still building stuff, and it's amazing! They have a whole bar! With a tap! It's fab. And an awesome place to watch football. The Eagles won, so M was happy. :-)

This week promises to be pretty mundane, with the usual bright spot of karaoke.

Yesterday I felt so productive and energetic, and then last night I didn't sleep amazingly well and so today I feel like bleh and can't concentrate. It appears I need 12 hours of sleep a day to function.

My heat is stupid. The colder it gets outside, the hotter it gets in my room. It's zero outside, and like 85 degrees in my room. I have to open the friggin window!

So, last night I really did go to bed at 6, and I slept until 7 am. It was righteous. Today I felt much better.

The only thing I could accomplish yesterday afternoon was figuring out a schedule for my week so that I maybe will accomplish things at work. Today's schedule worked out pretty well. I put getting in at nine and going to the gym in every day, so I hope both work out. Today I didn't quite get in at nine... I think that's going to be difficult, seeing as I can't really get into the shower until 7:30 reliably. Maybe earlier, who knows, depends on my roommate.

It's been a good week so far. Hung out with M on Monday night, since he *finally* came back. ;-) Last night was the usual 24 and karaoke, and I sang Don't Worry, Be Happy. Today I am mighty tired, and our group meeting now starts at 9, so I couldn't just bum around and sleep in a bit. I think my plan for tonight is to sleep, followed by more sleep, and then maybe I'll sleep some more until it's morning again.

I think I will probably accomplish nothing at work today.

Shut up, I totally usually accomplish some things at work.

I am happy.

I was sort of concerned walking home that my eyeballs might freeze if I didn't blink enough. Like, the wind would hit me in the eye, and it felt funny.

Wind chill has been like 4 all day. It's supposed to be wicked ass freezing through the weekend. Then it's supposed to warm up and snow. So, either you can't go outside because it's too damn cold, or you can't go inside because it's impossible to walk anywhere due to snow or ice.

Of course, none of this will deter me from my sports bender this weekend. Friday night is the hugest hockey game of the year against evil Cornell, Saturday is football playoffs, as is Sunday, after the huge women's hockey game against Dartmouth. It should be very exciting.

Also, it's 6pm, and I think I'm going to bed. For good. Not just a nap, but, like, sleep until tomorrow. We'll see. I brushed my teeth and everything.

The weekend wasn't so bad. Saturday I went to the mall and bought hoodies and jeans (finally I found jeans that fit and aren't too long or dumb!) and ice cream. then I cam ehome and napped for several hours. Then I watched the second half of the Cowboy game, but it was pretty much over by then.

Yesterday I watched football all day, though I ignored the second half of the late NFL game because it was such a whuppin and I needed to clean my room and start laundry. Sadly I still have one load to do because I didn't have enough quarters, but I'm getting much closer! And now my room is clean! And I finished my little crafts project, so note to Jenn, your present is done! I watched the BCS title game and went to bed too late and then woke up at 6 am to pee and couldn't fall all the way back to sleep.

You know, I used to be able to sleep through the night without needing to pee, and if I did pee, I could fall asleep pretty easily after. Both of these things are getting more difficult. Hate.

Despite my tiredness, I got up at my new improved wake up time (I had let it slide all the way to 8, but then I started not being able to leave the house on time, so back to 7:30 it goes), and I left the house on time... then as I'm getting to the bottom of the hill, I see my bus turning the corner. I dunno if it had people on it, but it was exactly 10 minutes late or 10 minutes early. Fuxor. So I decided it was just the other bus being late and mine would be on time. Sure enough, a lovely green-striped bus appeared at the proper hour. Out of service. Vroomed away. FUCK YOU MBTA. So I stood outside in the butt ass cold for half an hour, and my feet still haven't thawed and probably won't all day until I go to the gym. This drained any energy I had, so now I'm at work and I'm tired.

But! Today will be a fine day! :-)

I can tell this is going to be a weird lonely sort of weekend. It's rainy and cold.

Bleh.

I should go to the gym. I wish it were nice, because I really want to go for a walk instead. Walking is the best for a clogged brain.

In my small life I've learned that to live today you have to move forward. Sometimes you can't help but stop and look back, but you have to pick up what was and observe it from outside, peering into a snowglobe of pain or ecstasy (because you can't keep trying to relive former happiness either), but then you have to put it down and be where you are. Put it down, put your head forward, and walk.

All my friends new and old know this old cynic, this sarcastic disbeliever. But maybe you'd be surprised at this proponent of hope, this woman who believes that things can get better, with patience and careful effort. People whose lives would make you cry to hear them and that would kill you if you had to live them, many of those people find a way to be satisfied in some crucial way. And so for us spoiled children whose pains will always be so small, it is too easy and true not to believe that we can't overcome all things with joy and dignity. It is too insulting to not trust in our friends, to not shower them with honesty, to not wade in their own thoughts and feelings out of love and caring. This old grouch, she has more optimism than you know.

Happy New Year, all!

Last night was good times. Mostly just a lot of people hanging out and watching TV and playing beer pong... usual Cube fare. :-) The cells were all crazy and unusable right after midnight, but we all eventually connected to the people we sought, and I passed M around to everyone who crazily said nutty things to him about the Eagles and Jesus. Courtney and I beat Jeremy and Mike at beer pong, mostly thanks to Courtney, though I had a few decent shots. I think I went to bed around 4, and didn't get up until 2, which is a pretty good deal. Of course, now it's almost dark again!

I thought about totally revamping this page, but I'm way too lazy.

If you were trying to get into my head, you succeeded.