where i end and you begin

here's a little gem i found while perusing old articles for work samples:

“I don’t want these guys sucking up our air when there’s some kid waiting to work on their after-school project or before-school project, or even if it’s me waiting to look up my favorite saint." -- County Supervisor Ray Carroll on people who access internet porn from libraries (2006)

if it were not quite so hot, at least the posters would quit falling off the walls. that's all i'm asking, really.

you're not perfect either.














...hypocrite.

the only thing i want in life is more time.

more time to read, especially, and the energy to sustain it.

i am reading "the new history of the world" and "a people's history of the united states" and "ahab's wife." i also have my dad's u.s. literature textbook from high school. my mom sent it in a package the other day. it has little pencil notes throughout, mostly musings on mortality. his own? i don't know.

my kitten wins, so her name is winter. she is the shiz, really. i could go on and on, but it would be much more effective to come see for yourself.

when i get a new computer (elephant box!) i can upload photos of her cute face.

i watched dear zachary.
it made me cry so hard i thought i might throw up.
...but in a good way.
that has never happened to me before.

fucking... wow.

i found out from hipsterbookclub that ayn rand sales are way up this year. mainly people are buying atlas shrugged, though, which is dumb just because

you can't always get your way!

we are talking about businesses maintaining their integrity and independence in corporate america, which is just never going to happen, and ayn rand wants us to fantasize that such a thing is possible.

the fountainhead is way better because art is a completely different matter. if you are an artist, or a person who aspires to live like an artist, you CAN get your way! especially if you are willing to make ginormous sacrifices to uphold your principles. so. there's my 2 cents.

[noah told me my new haircut makes me "the hipster we always knew you were." only two people said anything at all, which is funny because i cut a good 3 inches off the back. apparently people don't look at the back of my head that much.]

so... i wasn't going to follow the crowd on this one, but then i saw my results:

1. nina needs a home
2. nina needs a wee
3. nina needs an holiday
4. nina needs your help
5. nina needs a breaky
6. nina needs a new verizon phone ASAP
7. nina needs you prayers
8. nina needs a part time job for cash
9. nina needs out
10. nina needs to trust

wow.

yes, that does say "wee," as in "how do we know when we need to go potty?" thanks, BBC!

also, "an holiday" (debatable) and "you prayers" (just plain wrong) are their typos, not mine.

just a sampling...

J: are you guys cutting hours?
me: yeah, a bit.
J: is it the economy?
me: i think so. they're just trying to cut costs during the slower times of day.
J: it's happening all over. i'm lucky i work where they can't cut hours.
me: what do you do?
J: i work with developmentally disabled and crazy people.
me: oh, so you can't just tell them to go away.
J: no, they don't stop being crazy just because of the economy.

------

me: our new sleeve says "this is the only handheld device you'll ever need." is it just me or is there a subliminal message there?
D: that's really dirty, nina.
me: that's not what i meant!
D: oh, you mean like cell phones?
me: yes. but thanks, now i'll think about handheld devices every time i give someone their coffee.

------

me: when i was a kid i had this my little pony that would say things when you squeezed its butt. it would say:
i'm pretty.
comb my hair.
i'm pretty.
i love you!
G: it's the vain my little pony.
me: the best part was that it said i'm pretty, not "you're pretty."
G: it was completely self-absorbed. i'm awesome!
me: i'm awesome.
squeeze my butt.
i'm awesome.
you love me!
(lols)
me: i remember because i squeezed it lots and lots of times.
G: that's what she said.

thanks to a combination of holiday bevs, temperatures conducive to baking, and a new season of top chef (!!!!!!), i think i'm finally getting my booty back. i can't wait to fit in my pants again. it's gonna be great.

seriously though, it's a relief because i'm so over the food thing: people thinking i don't eat enough or don't eat the right proportions or need to start eating meat or whatever the fuck people think that they don't tell me. i've even been told "your face is changing." well duh. it's called aging.

here's the other thing: i'm sick of having other people's (eating, etc.) issues in my life. i officially don't care anymore. i don't mean that in the sense that i don't want people with eating issues in my life. that doesn't matter to me at all. it's like if you've grown up with people who never wear shoes and then you go away to college and your roommate never wears shoes. you're like "ok, whatever," and you don't judge that person because it's nothing new. like probably you stopped wearing shoes yourself for a while. it was the cool thing to do. i mean really, why would you wear shoes when it's so much easier not to wear shoes? right. so it would take a lot to shock me. you'd have to like not have toes or something. metaphorically speaking.

anyway, the point is it's not my responsibility to worry about what people eat or don't eat. i don't care. if you eat wrong and you're not willing to start eating right, i don't want to know. if you don't like your weight but you're not going to do anything about it, i don't have any sympathy. it extends outside the kitchen too: if you hate your life but you're not willing to at least try do what it takes to like it again, i don't want to hear about it.

maybe i sound cold, but only because i've been there, and i know for a fact that no matter how much you talk to people and complain and feel sorry for yourself and even admit that you're scared, nothing anyone else says is going to make any difference. and obviously it sucks to surrender and it's hard to make changes and it takes time and energy to work on things, but i don't know anyone who would tell you it's not worth it.

last night i watched ruby, and i was pretty much blown off the couch with respect for her. even though she's way beyond the point where most people would say "i'm not even going to bother trying because it's pointless," she still has the inner strength to set this incredible goal and then go out and find people who can help her meet it and make her friends hold her accountable to it. that takes such an incredible amount of guts. i have so much admiration for her for even starting up that road, because it's ubersteep, you know. and we thought our 100-pound lives were hard.

so yeah. if you're trying to lose 250 pounds, i'm totally 100 percent on your side and i'll do whatever i can to help you. but otherwise, i'm under no obligation to sit there and look at it, or try to carry it myself, or hear about how heavy it is.

death
ozone
incense
beer
light
bees
lightning
bones
drums
greasepaint
panic
ghosts
smoke
dust
ashes
drums

yo.

i watched punch drunk love again last night. so so brilliant. it's like being inside somebody's head when they have a panic attack. but simultaneously funny. and (the best part) so deliciously subtle. yum.

i love the word ridic. for a while i kept thinking it all the time but i didn't want to say it out loud in case anyone thought i was calling them a dick or something. now other people are saying it. where did this originate?

[is slang vocab part of our collective unconscious? in milwaukee we started saying snap as a joke and then suddenly i started hearing it on TV a couple months later. how does this happen?]

what is your favorite word? i haven't found mine yet, but i feel it on the tip of my tongue, preparing to dive off. conquer is a good one. so is alacrity. and of course chiaroscuro. maybe precision.

other people have said clarity, ecstasy. so those are already taken.

[i just looked up spelling bee words on merriam-webster (not marian webster, P.S.; as a copy dork i know these things.) and it disturbs me that gauche was a losing word. that's pretty embarrassing.]

( this makes me sick. )

justice is never truly attainable when a man takes another man's life.

i don't believe in heaven but for ralphie's sake i wish i could.

this is extremely paraphrased, but essentially:

me: i'm surrounded by people my age who are in committed relationships and have been out for years and sometimes i think they're like "what are you waiting for? just come out already." but i don't think it's that clearcut, like there's a whole spectrum of sexuality and you don't necessarily fall at one end or the other. some people do, but some people don't. so i don't feel comfortable putting a label on myself because i don't feel like i've found the one that fits yet. i've definitely been attracted to girls, but i've never been with a girl, so i don't know for sure, and i don't want to just put myself in a box, you know?

mom: well there's no pressure. that's something you'll find out in your own time. and maybe sexuality isn't even that prominent of an issue. i sense that you've always been focused on having a relationship that dignifies itself in other ways: you're looking for things like truth, and you want a partner who's intellectual, and who has a sense of integrity. and those take time to identify. you're just on the track to having relationships develop in a different fashion. so what's the hurry?

nothing changes in the end. and really, i don't care anymore because i have everything that matters.

just in case you didn't believe me, here's proof:

( i read a lot of books... )


and here's something else fun, just for fun, yep.

( comment whores unite... )

um... can anyone identify this screenname? i'm so curious.

HairOfTheCoho: Oh my god, you're Buffy the vampire slayer, aren't you?!
azninac: what? no
azninac: who are you?
HairOfTheCoho: what?

"this election has never been about me. it's about you."

right on. hope feels really good.

everyone else is talking about books, so i will too.

books i read this summer that i would recommend:

the wind-up bird chronicle -- haruki murakami
after dark -- murakami
south of the border, west of the sun -- murakami
the inferno -- dante
no one belongs here more than you -- miranda july
ender's game -- orson scott card
some ether -- nick flynn (again, yeah.)
mr. palomar -- italo calvino
the amazing adventures of cavalier and clay -- michael chabon
running with scissors -- augusten burroughs
dry -- burroughs
a million little pieces -- james frey
symphony -- jude morgan
you shall know our velocity! -- dave eggers
what is the what -- eggers
catch-22 -- joseph heller

books i read this summer that i would not recommend:

deception point -- dan brown

books i'm going to read soon:

oryx and crake -- margaret atwood
tales of the city -- armistead maupin
galapagos -- kurt vonnegut

i love books. a lot.

we are all very intelligent and very driven and very distant. that's all there is, and sometimes it fades away and then there's nothing.

i get lost out here.

(and no one comes looking.)

my car met the angel of death. (not angle! what would that be, 14 degrees?)

it has 25,000 miles left.

25,000 is a lot of miles.

the last this, the last that. i'm ambivalent.

i used to like. write poems. and stuff. every day or something.

something easily forgettable and pretty emo and i guess, yeah, wonderful because i find them and they are the only part of that me that is still in color. if that makes sense.

(
she watches me stumble
in the moment
when i climb from the car
she makes me dizzy
just standing there

we watch the rain
outside her window
the sill twirled with dust
her hand is on my belt
the roof sounds hollow

her eye swallows me
like a camera lens
we zoom in
i am high contrast
grainy

the afternoon passes
in tenths of a second
the rain lets up
the roof is silent
i stumble away
)

so. time for my break now.

hail? sticking? really?

my defroster is having a hard time with this blizzard. [defroster blog: it is APRIL. i want a vacation. WTF.]

tomorrow is the seder, so emotions and singing. but i'm not really in the mood for feelings this year.

people will ask me questions that i don't want to answer. and i will be surrounded by therapists. i don't like to think about how therapists' lives are fucked up too. and how therapists see other therapists and have therapist friends who bring dishes to potlucks.

something always goes wrong when tradition is involved.

oh, and somebody always cries. (dayenu.)

i really like the number 8 too, incidentally.

living inside my head is like a city inside of a city

i totally just stole this from myself because i am that in need of distraction.

Put your iTunes library on shuffle and let the first 16 songs you hear answer the questions.

1. How does the world see me?:
maroon 5: makes me wonder

2. Will I have a happy life?:
the magnetic fields: infinitely late at night (don't worry about me / i'll be allright)

3. What do my friends really think of me?:
avenue Q: everyone's a little bit racist

4. Do people secretly lust after me?:
elliott smith: angeles (and be forever with my poison arms around you)

5. How can I make myself happy?:
avenue Q: i wish i could go back to college (wow.)

6. What should I do with my life?:
will smith: don't say nothin' (i honestly did not know this was on my ipod. sometimes i surprise myself.)

7. Will I ever have children?:
snoop dogg: drop it like it's hot (HA)

8. What is some good advice for me?:
nada surf: concrete bed (to find someone you love / you gotta be someone you love)

9. How will I be remembered?:
the weakerthans: illustrated bible stories for children (love it: Morning bright, rise. Go over your lines. Iron your carefully crafted disguise. We'd all like to sing. It's easy to sigh; to sprinkle a handful or plausible lies. Our buildings will rise, poke out our own eyes. Publicly smile and privately frown. A weeping reprise. Please hear my cries; I'd like to pull just this one building down. So turn off the sky. Head in my hands. Night keep me warm. White window-sill. Blinded by heart. Cut my hair short. Eyeless in Gaza with the slaves at the mill.)

10. What is my signature dancing song?:
what laura says thinks and feels: pairadice (whatever, i'll dance to anything.)

11. What do I think my current theme song is?:
the fray: little house (i don't really like this song. but... yeah. let me introduce: emo me.)

12. What does everyone else think my current theme song is?:
jimmy eat world: bleed american

13. What song will play at my funeral?:
bush: inflatable

14. What type of men/women do you like?:
maritime: young alumni (we've worn our hesitations out / we're made of destinations now)

15. What is my day going to be like?:
jurassic 5: a day at the races (that's pretty wack)

16. Will I ever have love again?
maroon 5: nothing lasts forever

i had a dream that i had gotten a tattoo and i was really upset about how it turned out. it was on my arm and it had a lot of words... i don't remember what the words were. i didn't like the style of the letters, they looked too commercial. i woke up really glad i don't have a tattoo.

i keep snipping little bits off the back of my hair. like, if it's going to be short, it should be SHORT. not like... medium short.

i really want a new job. i'm getting consumed with it, like it's the answer to all my problems. (a downtown job accessible by bus that i get to dress up for, please? thanks.)

in a way i felt i owned the city as much as it owned me.

when i am driving down the street with my windows open, i feel like i am giving all the pedestrians a big treat by letting them listen to my music. this is a good feeling.



i forgot about cherry blossoms. now that i remember, i'm kind of excited. who wants to go to the arboretum with me? it's almost that time of year...

for some reason i can never find things when i am looking for them, even if i know where they are and they are right under my face. for example, i couldn't find my camera the other day, and i started freaking out because i thought i had left it on my dresser but it wasn't there. but then, the third time i looked, it was there, right where i thought it was.

or today i went to the library, and as i was driving there i saw a sign that said "fremont library," and then i parked and walked back, only i couldn't find it. so i walked and walked and finally i realized i had gone about three blocks too far, so i turned around and went back... turns out i had walked right past it. and i've been there before.

anyway, so the library. my hours at work have been cut lately -- a lot. but instead of moping, i'm taking this as an opportunity to reinvest in nourishing my brain. (this will also help with not worrying about SAM. i hope.)

booklist:
slaughterhouse five (just finished)
travels with charley (almost finished)
as i lay dying (just started)
for whom the bell tolls
the stranger
siddhartha
the complete stories of truman capote

and crossword puzzles of course. (food for regular folks = bran? ha!)

i have a new obsession with the fremont PCC. i mean, buying lentils in bulk is pretty exciting. and even the bum outside was nice. actually i'm kind of into fremont in general. how cool would it be to work within walking distance again? really really cool. plus there is a troll. and i can visit meg at theo and eat chocolate samples for free.

oh man, the wheels in my head are turning...

i miss having short hair! i feel like it would be a betrayal to the self who has been trying for three years to grow her hair out, but... i really want to chop it all off. opinions?

someone asked me that for real. i was like ....................... (laugh?)

so a girl at work said her roommate is into me. he wants to know if i'm single. um. er. um.

i am rocking this crossword puzzle. and in a few hours i will be rocking the spelling bee. maybe. or just rocking the birthday cake and beer.

WTF so drunk.






(wtf)

so it became intensely apparent to me today that the weather in seattle differs from the weather in tucson. duh, i know. but since the effects of dampness and darkness are foremost in my brain right now as i've been battling them lately, here are some observations:

1. dampness causes mold, especially in bathrooms, and especially in my unventilated bathroom. so i just used up an entire roll of paper towels and half a bottle of lysol cleaning really nasty black mold out of places one should never, ever have to look (i won't elaborate) and managed to bleach my pants and my shirt in the process. ugh.

2. my body can't seem to adjust to the fact that it gets dark at 4:30, so i keep heading for bed at 6 pm.

3. in tucson one had to avoid driving east in the morning and west in the evening. here, one has to avoid driving south in general because the sun (when it's out) is blinding at all times of day.

in other news, the cougars won the apple cup and i was intensely glad i had the day off.

also, i found out that my dad saved somebody's life. in the 70s he was flying kites at gasworks and he saw a 10-year-old kid fall 30 feet off a tower, so he alerted some paramedics who happened to be training nearby and they took the kid to harborview and saved him.

we were at the museum of history and industry yesterday for sandy bradley's potluck and they have a timeline tracking immigration to the northwest and you can put a post-it showing when you came to the northwest or when you were born or whatever, and there was this post-it that said "i'm lucky to be alive because when i was a kid i fell off a rig at gasworks and the owner of the great winds kite store saved my life."

i seriously think someone should reunite these guys and write a news article about it. i mean, the connection was made on thanksgiving weekend no less. isn't that the best features story ever?

-layout (woot)
-down vest = so cozy
-life plan?

i want to understand why i was such a weird little kid. i saw a picture of me at age 12 (?) and i wasn't as ugly as i thought i was. but... why are there so few pictures?

-----

how's seattle? oh, you know, it's a little under the weather.

so glad i'm not at the football game. or working after the football game.

I found a popping martian thing when I was trying to organize stuff and I squeezed it and it deflated. ugh.

So I go from one extreme to the other: self-hating with zero self-esteem drowning in futurelessness to self-supporting full of prospects totally excited about everything that's coming. But somehow I feel like I come off as totally full of it. Actually this is the only time in my life that I've had any confidence at all. So if I find things that I'm good at, and I recognize that I'm good at them, why does that make me feel bad?

This feels like a total deja vu.

I am reading "The Time Traveler's Wife" and it's blowing my mind. For a good, I dunno, three hours I was worried about finding a book that could adequately follow up the entire Harry Potter series, and then I found it, and met a super nice librarian to boot. Too bad, as usual, said librarian fills all intellectual and personality qualifications but is about 40 years outside my dating prospects. Not to mention I'm moving. Wouldn't it be ironic if I met a great guy in the next few weeks and then ditched town for another life? Not that that would happen.

Finally, the long, long saga of moving out of the wonderful little house with the crazy little landlady has come to an end. I (seethingly) told crazy landlady that if three full days of cleaning house did not meet her standards then she could hire someone to do it because I didn't want responsibility anymore. So my roommates and I lose part of our deposit and I maintain my sanity, safely assured that I will never see her again in my life. Good riddance.

The word "Angeles" is not in the copy editing program's dictionary. As in Los Angeles, as in huge American city that is probably mentioned in about 15% of newspaper stories.

Alysa is going to China for two months. I'm jealous.

My neighbor came over to thank me for watering his plants when he was out of town and kept referring to me in the third person, as in "Nina said you would all be moving out." So I'm wondering, did he think I was Allie? Did he know who I was? Do I look different? Weirdest of all, why would he remember my name but not my face? Isn't it usually the other way around?

This is especially weird because Allie and I always got mistaken for each other in dance classes, even though we look nothing alike. We don't even have the same body type, let alone similar faces. (or accents, for that matter.) Yet for some reason teachers have always confused us. One went so far as to tell me I had lost weight and looked great. Seriously? When I lose weight I look like I just came back from the Holocaust.

Speaking of which, I'm reading a great book called "Our Holocaust." As usual, I wonder why some terrible books become bestsellers when other amazing books are completely overlooked. Case in point: "Empire Falls."

This just in: A man was found shot on Tucson airport property but police don't know how he got there. Creepy.

Countdown to Awesome Tucson-to-Seattle-to-Montana-and-back Voyage Extraordinaire: 4 days. woot!

Today I slept all day. And I don't mean that in the sense of sleeping in for a few hours and then getting up and puttering around doing things mentally equal to sleeping. No, I went to work from 4 am to 10:30 am and then I went home and went back to bed -- for 5 hours.

And I'm still tired. Why am I so tired? Do I have that weird fatigue disease that makes you tired all the time so that all you can do is sit at home and write a book and then get famous because "it was incredibly difficult to get out of bed every day, let alone write a 1,000-page novel"? Am I a bad person because I think people with chronic fatique syndrome are lazy? Maybe you should drink some coffee and, um, leave the house. Notice how chronic fatique syndrome is not an issue among people of lower income, in other words, people who have no option to sit at home and do nothing.

Anyway, speaking of sitting around doing nothing, I'm currently sitting in the newsroom doing nothing. Actually I've been doing crosswords online and watching for lightning outside the window and thinking about going home to watch CSI.

countdown: 5.5 days till I go home. time for a time warp anybody?

There's a guy at work who's been hitting on me, and -- like most guys who hit on me -- he's probably at least 60. Why do old guys like me so much? Is it because I have an old-fashioned bearing? Is it because they're pedophiles and I'm young-looking?

This guy initiated his efforts a few weeks ago telling me I have "a classic look" and that I should be a model. Despite my refusals and insistence that I don't have any interest in being a model, he continues to bring up the subject. Today he even told me that he's going to the doctor in a couple weeks and he's going to ask his doctor if I'm too old to undergo growth hormone therapy.

"It would be $400 or $500 a month, but I think it's worth it," he tells me.

We also talked about books: He called me a bookworm, and when he found out I was reading historical nonfiction (The Gulag Archipelago), he started listing all these books that he thinks I would love and told me I could borrow them.

Then he asked me to lunch. He said we could go to a sports bar and then hit up the used bookstores. ("You probably drink, don't you?") I told him I can't hang out with customers like that. Hopefully that's a strong enough excuse.

Then the best part: He started telling me how France just released all their archives on UFOs, and how they're friendlier to aliens than Americans. The U.S. has killed aliens point-blank on several occasions, he tells me. "But that's the American way of dealing with other people."

One of my roommate's parents' cars has been parked in our driveway since yesterday morning. I am totally mystified by this. I can't figure out:

A) why they would park at our house when both of them have campus parking passes
B) why they would abandon the car for at least 24 hours
C) why they wouldn't tell me they were leaving the car in the driveway

Do they expect me to keep an eye on it?

My guess is that since they are paying rent even while my roommate is out of the country, they must feel they have earned the right to a free parking spot. But I feel like they should have at least told me about their plan. If they were going to bring a couch over for summer storage, I would expect them to call ahead of time and say, "by the way, we're leaving our couch in your yard. Call us if somebody crashes into it."

Sometimes I think I expect too much of people.

I smell like steamed milk and coffee grounds and I am going back to bed because I had to get up at 3:20 to be at work at 4 a.m.

good night/morning.

One of my friends has walked off with a whole bunch of my clothes in the past few years. I don't want to say she stole these things because I don't think it was ever deliberate; she just has a different perception of the boundary between MINE and HERS. To her, a lot of things seem to be OURS, but the problem is that she has borrowed many things that were once mine and never gave them back.

I can mostly forgive this behavior. I'd like to think I'm not so attached to material things that I can't handle losing a T-shirt or a leotard once in a while. Most of these things I know I'll never see again. I don't even know if she will ever see them again. Last year I actually went through her closet looking for any of my stuff that might still be around, and most of it was gone. But now that we're both graduated, and I'll probably never see her again, I'm getting peeved. A couple weeks before school ended, this girl was at my house studying for an exam and she was feeling sick. She asked if she could borrow something with sleeves so she wouldn't get cold. How could I refuse to lend her something? So I grabbed a shirt that I got at a dance show in high school. It was a stupid decision. I should have given her something replaceable, instead I gave her something I'll miss. I've called her three times now, and she told me she would bring it to me, but now she's stopped returning my calls. She probably lost the shirt already.

Even thinking about this is making my skin crawl. It's so stupid to lose a friend -- she used to be my best friend here, and she knows things about me that I've never told anybody else -- over something as petty as a few shirts. But now that I think about it, she did take my favorite vintage T-shirt, and my favorite black sweaters that I used to wear to work, and a unitard that I really loved, and my super-comfy green sweater, and even some dance clothes (although I don't really care about those anymore). And she took other people's stuff too. Maybe they weren't incredibly valuable things, but they were all irreplaceable and they're all things that I still miss, even a couple of years later.

I'm oversimplifying by saying that we're not friends anymore because of this. There's actually a lot more between us than a few T-shirts, and we had an intense friendship that existed when we needed each other and ended when our lives led us in different directions. I'm just sad that I'm always going to remember this terrible thing about her and about our relationship. What really sucks is that I got screwed over for being nice and lending her my stuff. So much for the golden rule. But I guess there's nothing I can do about it now.

In other news, my house is really quiet and creepy. I've also been watching a lot of CSI, which does not exactly temper my paranoid, pessimistic imagination. This really should compel me to want to be more social, but really it's nice just to read and watch TV all day when I'm not at work. I'm just a coffee-chugging book worm couch potato.

This poster was taped to the electric pole in front of my house when I got home from work today. It totally made my day. I don't think that someone had me in mind when they posted it -- I live on a busy street, so it's more likely that a lot of people were meant to see it. But the fact that it was there reminded me of a lot of happy things and made me happy to see it.

This is after I was a super klutz at Starbucks today. I managed to spill an entire bag of plastic lids on the floor, contaminating them so they all had to be thrown away. I accidentally signed out of my register during an afternoon rush and had to abandon the other baristas to go count money and make a deposit so I could sign back in.

Apparently sales tax went up; all day people were perturbed because their regular drinks were suddenly more expensive than normal. One lady had a huge fit about it, although most are understanding. I'm learning that usually people just want to get their coffee with the least amount of trouble possible. If you stand in their way, they get irritable. But if you show that you also want them to get their coffee ASAP, then they are pretty understanding.

Our district manager also came by the store to check out how we're doing and said nice things about me to my manager, so that was nice. Apparently he called me "legendary," which is a big word around Starbucks, so that was cool. A legendary klutz, maybe, but still legendary.

Yesterday I was in the optical sciences building on my way to biomechanics when a guy popped out of the elevator right in front of me and said, "You're a dancer. Where do I go?"

It turns out he was a new sign-language interpreter for a deaf girl in the dance department, and he saw me and figured that because I'm a dancer, I would know where the class would be, which I did.

Never mind the fact that I haven't danced since December. Never mind the fact that all my dancer muscles are gone. Never mind that I was dressed like a normal person, unlike the rest of my peers, who come to biomechanics in sweats. I even had my hair down.

Am I that obvious?

This has happened to me my entire life. I used to wear my hair up every day and people were always asking me if I was a dancer. Adults always tell me I look like a dancer. Today a volunteer at Centennial Hall was not surprised at all when I told her I used to do ballet.

What I'm getting at is that I'll never to be able to live this down; this part of me that I abandoned yet it won't abandon me. What's ironic is that last night, I did dance. It was the last dance dept. show of the year and the seniors concocted an elaborate parody of our four years here, even though senior spoofs were technically outlawed after all the seniors brought alcohol onstage last year. So we had to disguise our piece as a serious choreography project, and none of us were listed in the program so no one would get tipped off before we came onstage.

I wasn't even going to be in this piece, but roommate Allie dragged me to rehearsal and forced me to learn the entire 9-minute dance ... 4 hours before showtime.

I am so glad I did it. Basically we took selections from just about every piece that has been put onstage in the past four years, and everyone got to do whatever they wanted. I finally got to perform Serenade, which was the major heartbreak of my freshman year when I slaved away as an understudy. I got to perform jazz choreography even though I was never cast in a jazz piece. I got to show off: After not stretching for 4 months, I did split leaps and extensions, just to show the faculty what I'm still made of. Maybe to show them what they missed out on.

Yes, I was afraid I'd get hurt (and I'm really sore today). My muscle memory contradicts what my body can still do. I'm used to having flexibility that I've lost since I stopped dancing, and I was scared that I would tear something in my hip trying to jump as high as I used to be able to. But I'm ok. In fact I'm more than OK. I feel fabulous. What a way to go out...

In the end, I'm still graduating from the dance department. Maybe I'm a minor instead of a major, and maybe the lessons I learned have been different than the lessons the other graduates learned, but I still feel like I'm part of the class of 2007.

Someone asked me in a job interview what I regret about college, and I answered truthfully: I really don't regret anything. That's not to say that I was happy the whole time, because there were definitely times when I just wanted to go back to Seattle and hide under my bed for a few years. But when there were choices to be made, I made them the right way, and I'm really happy about the way this all is ending up.

Here is a list of ridiculous things that happened to me today:

1. I found out that not only do I have to pay for a credit in order to do my summer internship, but because it is a copy internship (i.e. no published clips with my name on them) I also have to write an 8-10 page research paper to prove that I've learned something from my summer of work. Because apparently a couple hundred hours of editing is not enough of an accomplishment. Here is the resulting dialog:

Me: What if I just fail? (It's a pass-fail credit.)
adviser lady: Then you won't get the credit.
Me: But I don't need the credit! I'm graduating!
adviser lady: ummm...

2. I was called for jury duty. Don't get me wrong; I would love to do jury duty, in fact it's one of the things I've been looking forward to about, you know, growing up. But I did not expect to be called THE WEEK AFTER GRADUATION in a county where I don't even intend to live.

So now I have a dilemma. How am I going to explain to a potential employer that I may have to take off an indefinite period of time during my first week on the job? How am I going to explain to my internship advisers that the reason I (temporarily) suck at copy editing is because I have been sitting in court all day? And finally, most importantly, how am I going to stay awake? I have a history of falling asleep during jury proceedings (when I was covering opening arguments for a class last semester).

Unfortunately, and I know this because I called the jury office to whine, I can't get out of jury duty based on the fact that I am not a Pima County resident despite the fact that I have every intention of leaving Pima County as soon as I possibly can and never coming back. Because apparently I am a Pima County resident. Would someone tell that to the UA so I can earn a bigger stipend?

The only way I can imagine this possibly being any worse is if I had been called for duty the week OF graduation as opposed to the week after. You can bet that if I don't get hired because of this "conflict," Pima County is going to be hearing about it.

In other news, today in class a few people mistook my exercise for the work of another poet whose work I seriously admire. So that was cool.

Man, I really just want to go home. I don't care about this internship anymore. I don't care about losing money on a lease through August. I do care about the jobs I'm trying to get, but I could just as easily work at Starbucks in Seattle as here. In fact I can't really think of anything here that's worth staying for and I can think of a whole bunch of things that I'm going to have to deal with as a result of staying for the summer and possibly beyond. Sigh. I really wish I weren't so discouraged leading up to ... the rest of my life.

"the way i see it, gonzalez is not up to republican standards of lying"

--my dad on the senate hearing

i successfully evaded the job offer for another day. i'm supposed to call back tomorrow; i might deny it, even though the manager was willing to offer me part-time instead of full-time. i dunno, it might be fun. but starbucks might be more fun, so i'm going to apply there in the morning.

a few photos from the dance show

"I am sick of all the fighting and stupidity and i wish everyone could just be happy, like me."

-- me as a high school sophomore

oh how much things change.

for an assignment for poetry i read back over a bunch of old blog entries, like from the days before the word "blog" came into existence. i don't like the way the assignment came out at all, but it was fun to look back at the person i used to be. in a lot of ways i've grown, but in a lot of ways i wish i could go back to that time. it makes me a bit achy.

one thing that really struck me was how much i used to write, so i really want to get back in that habit. it's so valuable to be able to look back on that time, but when i look back on this time... there will be more than a year missing. sad.

i have had more job interviews in the past three days than ever before in my life, it feels like. and another one tomorrow. but i'm feeling very uncertain about the whole thing. if i get a full-time job here, then i can't just leave whenever i want to. and i do want to. why can't the tucson citizen be based in seattle? that would make things so much easier.

here is the other weird extra pressure: my parents seem to really want me to come home. they've never expressed wanting me to make that decision, but they keep saying things like "you don't really want to stay in tucson" and just assume that i'll be coming home as soon as i get the chance.

but home isn't really home anymore. what would it be like to live in seattle and not live with my parents? what would it be like to live in tucson and not be going to school? actually now that i think of it, i really do want to go home after the summer. but do i want that more than this job? dammit, i hate growing up.

This should put things into perspective for us all:

http://livesstrong.blogspot.com/

I went to the first poetry reading of the semester tonight: Naomi Shihab Nye. I remember reading her poems in magazines when I was in middle school and high school and not being particularly impressed, but I guess that speaks to my general ignorance of poetry. The thing is: poems take time. That's why I never read poetry unless it's an assignment; because I need instant gratification when it comes to books.

Another note on another book: I am currently reading Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer," which I picked up over break, and I am having a hard time with it. No, I'm not so faint of heart or mind as to be offended. I just don't have the patience for a book with no immediate plot, which sort of makes me sick of myself. So I am not going to give in. I am going to push through the meat of it and come out the other end a bit more literary.

In fact, that's something I'd much like to do tonight, except that I have a headache that feels like a fever expanding in my brain. This headache comes in spurts, a few nights in a row and then a few nights off. I am afraid I'm going to destroy my liver eating too much tylenol/advil/generic-cure-all-pain pill, but then... it hurts. At least (thankfully) it's my head and not my stomach. But I think I would rather have a footache and be able to read than a headache and be able to walk. Maybe that's just because I'm an ex-dancer gone lazy.

My friend posted this on his facebook profile. It's kinda lame but I'm bored. The gist is you put your iTunes library on shuffle and let the first 16 songs you hear answer the questions.

1. How does the world see me?:
Wolf Parade: Fancy Claps

2. Will I have a happy life?:
Modest Mouse: The Cold Part

3. What do my friends really think of me?:
Elliott Smith: Speed Trials (this is creepy if you read the lyrics)


4. Do people secretly lust after me?:
Sufjan Stevens: John Wayne Gacy Jr. (look beneath the floorboards for the secrets i have hid)

5. How can I make myself happy?:
Blanket Music: Back to the Grind (this is true. i need to get back to work)

6. What should I do with my life?:
Elliott Smith: Ballad of Big Nothing (ha.)

7. Will I ever have children?:
Tori Amos: Playboy Mommy (don't judge me so harsh little girl)

8. What is some good advice for me?:
Fiona Apple: Please Please Please (drugs?)

9. How will I be remembered?:
Swords: Family Photographs (this is a song about a family that falls apart. huh)

10. What is my signature dancing song?:
Gorillaz: New Genious

11. What do I think my current theme song is?:
The New Amsterdams: Beautiful Mistake (i didn't even know this was on my ipod.)

12. What does everyone else think my current theme song is?:
Alana Davis: I Want You

13. What song will play at my funeral?:
Lauryn Hill: Lost Ones (that's creepy.)

14. What type of men/women do you like?:
Gotan Project: Epoca (men who tango.)

15. What is my day going to be like?:
The New Pornographers: The New Face of Zero and One

16. Will I ever have love again?
The Beatles: All Together Now (5,6,7 8 9 10 i love you)

So I hope it doesn't turn out like that. But at least it gave me something to do. Woot.

On xmas day my parents and I traveled from Seattle to LA, where we stayed until new year's eve. Photos are up.

Revelations and highlights from the trip:

1. I found out my cousin who I haven't seen in something like 10 years is gay. It made me want to be friends with him so I found him on facebook.

2. I was completely spoiled with a Santa Monica shopping trip where I received clothes that I am paranoid to wear because of the chance that I will spill something on them, or that someone else will spill something on them.

3. I learned that people in Britain are also deficient when it comes to the proper use of punctuation, which destroys my thesis that Americans are stupid.

4. General advisory: Quitting (anything) cold turkey is a bad idea, especially over the holidays.

5. I need to figure out what to do with my life. Now.

6. Laughing your head off is the best feeling in the world.

Fine, I'll write a blog. For once, I have some time and nothing more pressing to fill it with.

Things that are on my mind right now:

1. People's birthdays that I have missed recently
2. The news desk not doing its job
3. What happens if I don't get the internship I want for this summer -- perhaps I should consider alternatives?
4. I haven't seen Allie -- my roommate -- since Friday
5. The arbitrary manner in which newspapers cover news. I went to see Arizona Supreme Court oral arguments today in the case of a 21-year-old who took 6 oxycontin pills with alcohol at a party and didn't wake up the next morning. His mom sued the 63-year-old man who supplied him with the pills, and the case made it all the way to the highest court in the state, yet I can't find any mention of it in any papers, and the Wildcat was the only media outlet covering it today.
6. My throat hurts
7. I have to do payroll today
8. I am procrastinating on too many articles and it's going to bite me in the butt
9. It's official: The thought of being a lawyer completely appalls me
10. I'm sick of incompetent people in general
11. Most of the law students at the court today were dressed in T-shirts and jeans, as were their teachers (!) even though working attire was specifically recommended. Arizona is so backwards.
12. I'm shooting two basketball games this weekend. Woot!
13. French onion soup sounds really appetizing at the moment
14. As far as I'm concerned, the holiday season officially starts today. That means I'm going to drink peppermint mochas and wear fuzzy sweaters even more than usual.
15. I'm coming home in 21 days! Maybe life isn't so bad after all.

Just for kix, I looked back at my old xanga site just now. Yep, I had a xanga site, way before anyone else had one, before it was normal to have a website where you poured your heart out. No, you can't see it.

It's interesting how my priorities change yet I am still so much the same person. Something I love becomes something I hate, so I learn to move on to something else. But that phenomenon of loving/hating always hangs around backstage and I can't quite let go either way.

I wonder what would happen if those xanga entries from four, five years ago got deleted. Would I forget a chunk of my past?

I forgot until now that I still have to finish an article for tomorrow. Oops.

To quote my 4-years-ago self:

i'm a national merit scholarship semifinalist. does that mean i have to go to college next year?

CRAP!!!

i hate decisions.

That's funny. Thank god I did come to college... Otherwise I would have had to figure out what to do with my life a whole lot sooner.

yes, i am still in rome, and yes, i am bored. is that sacreligious? anyway, this is what i have been doing for an hour and 21 minutes:

(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)

✓ I miss somebody right now.  (i guess that's what happens when you leave the country for extended periods)	× I don't watch much TV these days.  (haha, very funny. i learn italian by watching tv)	✓ I own lots of books.  (and it's a pain in the butt every time i have to move)
× I wear glasses or contact lenses.  (nope, but i always wanted to (remember fake braces?))	✓ I love to play video games.  (i should have had a brother)	✓ I've tried marijuana.  (sadly, it did nothing)
✓ I've watched porn movies.  (not exactly on purpose)	× I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.  (past relationship?)	✓ I believe honesty is usually the best policy.  (it's one of my three resume words)
✓ I curse sometimes.  (sometimes in other languages!)	✓ I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.  (over the last 6 years)	× I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.  (huh. that sounds so sinister.)

( it goes on... )

For the summer and perhaps beyond, i'm switching over to the more photo-friendly http://aznina.com/italiablog.html because I'm going to Italy and I want to share everything I see! Keep in touch everyone...

hugs

This doosey practically made it into the paper:

"The club involves both Jewish and Muslim students working together to form a student peace alliance as a model for their respective homelands."

I'd say it would have been up there on the list of most embarassing mistakes ever, right next to "the country of Africa," which has managed to run twice.

So I never write. Surprise surprise.

I feel as tired as the seniors must feel, except I have a full year left until I graduate. Plus the rest of this semester: 3 huge papers, finals, MASSIVE drawing final project (tons of square footage), getting my life in order because I am going to Italy...

Sadly I think I'll have to forfeit my trip to Colorado with the photographer I help out sometimes, even though that also means forfeiting $500. But we would have been driving for twon entire days so that I could get back to Tucson in time to drive back up to Phoenix to catch a flight to Milan at 6:45 in the morning. This after an entire week of working photo shoots, preceded by an entire week of packing my apartment so I can move as soon as I get back from Italy...

We're signing the lease tomorrow. I'm so excited I'm afraid I'll pee my pants in front of the landlord. Check out pictures!

And here is a good article about art. Back to work...