I get up, I get down

Currently...

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:35:57 GMT

I have:
A Bachelor of Arts degree (pah, whatever)
A Job with a good hourly wage and flexible hours
Apartment rent and utilities that I pay rather than my parents
A manual transmission car (yay) that needs a 4-wheel alignment
A Blockbuster Rewards card that lets me rent a free movie every month
A Carpet that could use a vacuuming
Hella dirty laundry (literal) but not enough quarters or motivation

My boyfriend and I broke up recently but it's been a while coming now so I'm not too shaken. I think our long-standing friendship will remain intact, but I am most sad about slowly losing him as my best friend and companion. I may start finding myself lonely. Catdog please.

I am determined to turn part of myself into the beach babe I could have been while living in Santa Cruz. This, of course, involves surfing lessons. Who am I kidding. My skin is way too pale for me to ever fit into the beach babe category. Actually, if I'm covered in a wetsuit most of the time people won't be able to tell so easily. Until they look down at my pasty white feet. I look forward to my Sandy paste babe future.

the next semester always promises to be ten times more exciting than the current one

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 16:25:52 GMT

Classes for Fall 07! Yay! Here we go:

senior seminar (sociology)
sociology of gender roles
organizational theory (government)
public radio reporting
intro to electronic music
musicianship 2 (taking 1 right now)
gamelan ensemble (drummin' indonesian style)

I'm so stoked about electronic music. Synthesizers!

I was originally planning on taking ceramics, but it ended up not fitting in my schedule. Poop. So I'm taking public radio reporting instead, which should be cool, but, but... ceramics! Oh well. I also want to take existentialism, but that doesn't fit! Plus I've already maxed out on my alloted units with an overabundance of music classes. Huarrghhh.

I will also have a lil' 80 page thesis to write that semester. This is what I get for going to a small liberal arts college. Yayyyy, thesis.

the only news in this post is "dudes"

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 12:39:18 GMT

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA

omigod.

Life is weird and full of unexpected surprises!

For example: dudes!!!!

HAHAHAHHAHA

I have class at 9am!!!!!!!!!!
craaaaaap.
gotta do the homework first, shit.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

heh

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 08:44:19 GMT

Just recently I noticed how shamelessly my advisor promotes the books of his friends by requiring us to use them in his classes. I've taken three classes with him, and I swear that there are at least 7 books where somehow or another we learn he is friends with the author. Maybe "good" sociology to be a rather tight knit field, but seriously. SERIOUSLY.

And now, in a grand flourish of social reproduction, I will make a plug for a book that my advisor assigned (written by his friend, of course). It was for my junior seminar - in preparation for writing our theses. If anyone has to write a thesis, book, or dissertation, The Clockwork Muse by Eviatar Zerubavel provides a clear methodology for finishing by a set date, by virtue of keeping to a set time schedule and keeping a timetable. There's a lot more to it, but yeah. It seems like a way to bust writer's block (you make a contract with yourself to finish a certain number of pages each day). No romantic bohemian flurries of creativity here.

Anyhow, yeah. Worse than professors requiring students to read their friend's books are the professors who use lecture time to tell anecdotal stories about themselves and how awesomely radical they are and how radical everyone else isn't. I'm taking this class at Berkeley and most of the time lecture goes something like this:
"So, funny thing happened... here is how I subverted the system yesterday while I thought about the advertisements I was watching on television... [blah de blah blah 1984, Brave New World blah hehe I'm funny blah blah people don't think like this anymore]. I hope you guys think more about things. Notice stuff. People don't notice things anymore."
What???? How am I supposed to take notes on that??? I already think critically!! Rahhhhhh!!!!!!!!

____

Sun, 21 Jan 2007 11:24:29 GMT

I'm back at school and it kind of sucks. Disjointed, moderately emo reasons follow below.

1) I'd returned from break kind of broken-down, beat to a pulp by under-achievement and low self-esteem. Family, friends, sleep, kitties, and poodles helped me pull myself back together, but it seems that just as I feel like myself again I have to start down the path of self-disappointment again away from all those healing things. Balancing being hopelessly carefree and a good student at once is near to impossible.

2) I have no idea what I want to do with my life. I was pretty sure that I wanted to eventually get my PhD at some point, but I don't think I'm cut out for it. Writing essays is painful for me, in part because of my procrastination fueled by perfectionism. Maybe I still want to do things like social reform or whatever, but then sometimes I think I should just drop out and go live in an ecocommunity in Canada. I was for a time thinking of studying public policy in addition to sociology, but the economics of it bores me, and I'm rather fond of working in the more abstract, theoretical frameworks that sociology can provide. In a matter of days I am having to make decisions which feel like they will have a huge impact on the direction of possible careers. Public policy or no public policy? A large part of me would really enjoy to just be an extreme adventure sports coordinator thing. One of those people who takes people hang-gliding or white water rafting. In actuality, my bachelors probably won't be good for anything. Why am I going to school again?

3) I'm pretty sure that two of the people I'm living with are for some unknown reason angry or annoyed with me, or just have grown to dislike my personality, as they often retire to one of their rooms and speak in hushed voices. One of them is silently passive aggressive and glare-y. I seriously think that she is frustrated because I use the living room for things other than watching television. Oh, and they both like those scented Glade Plug-in things and my other roommate and I think they're suffocating so we always unplug it. Maybe I'm imagining things.

4) In efforts to quell my cabin-fever from living in the solitude at Mills, I've cross registered to take this anthro class at UC Berkeley called "Controlling Processes." It's about cultural control, hegemony, and other such things. Should be really fascinating and in-tune with my personal ideologies, but I just spent the whole day reading 1984 for this class, and now I'm filled with this dry sense of paranoia. It's icky.

5) I don't have a lot of friends here. Well, maybe that's not true... but most of them live off-campus or I see them once in a blue moon. I don't really enjoy the whole process of being "friends for a semester." It's weird and really contrary to what I adapted to in high school. Mostly I don't feel like I have a social life to speak anything of, and often I long for this "time of your life" that I'm supposed to be experiencing in my undergraduate career. Sometimes I wonder if I permanently tainted my college experience by being in a long-distance relationship my first year.

6) I'll be driving home less often this semester to try to stay on track academics-wise. As much as I enjoy going home, I don't like shifting back and forth between different roles every other weekend.

7) I need to figure out the appropriate usages of the dash-dash----------.

8) I don't laugh as much here.

i have clean clothes and a wool coat

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 07:51:22 GMT

Dude. Gail and Lis both have up and left for fuckin' Florida.
WELL I HOPE THEY HAVE A FUN TIME IN FLORIDA.

Winter break has being going, as they often do.

Today I felt like poo.

That rhymed.

But then my parents drug/dragged me downtown and we walked the far side of Pacific (lookin' at all the Kool kids hanging out in front of the Catalyst) and hung out at Logos. I also very productively complained about overgrown raised pickup trucks and how anyone and everyone who drives one is a jerk in my book. So I felt better.

BRING ON THE NEW YEAR

Also! Let's organize a screening of Perfume.
Also! Apocalypto on the 31st? Yes? Yes.

i have no clean clothes

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 22:07:27 GMT

Two tests down... one test and two big projects left to go. Oh, yeah, I didn't finish that project on time. In other words, I failed myself.
I have so much work to do... I don't know when I'll find time to fit in all the crap that needs to be finished before Wednesday. To further complicate my time-issues I'm going home Sunday morning to ceremonially chop down a pine tree with my family. Maybe decorate it. Maybe? My sister has a piano recital as well - she's getting really good. If I could go back ten years, I would have started playing an instrument myself. There was a time when I really wanted to play the drums. Now I want to play electric guitar. Yeah, fuck acoustic. Plug it in, plug it in. If I went for a classical instrument, I would want to play cello.... Electric cello. Byyaaaahhhh!!!

I'm totally making hardcore vegetable soup in the kitchen as I type this. Yesssss. Soup. It's been cooking for about three hours now. I made some two weeks ago and this is my second batch. Deliciousness it will be. And I normally don't like talking about food beyond "good" or "bad" because anything more descriptive kind of creeps me out. So one must then expect that it shall indeed be VERY delicious for me to make this soupy exception of my personal food-talk rule.

I'm yoinking Gail from the airport on Thursday - super excited. What a yoinking it shall be.

no more class... yay!

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 07:36:27 GMT

Had my last classes today (!!) and for dinner went to this potluck thing with burritos. BURRITOS.
I'm kind of freaked out about my stats and econ tests, since those are the classes I got really behind in while I've been sick. I also have a major project I need to have completed by tomorrow at 12pm. If I don't post about it's completion by then I HAVE FAILED MYSELF!!! I bought craploads of gum and Ricola and candies to keep my mouth occupied while I do my work. Productiveness, here I come!

I just read Lissy's HP fanfic and I have to say it was really the best thing I've seen in a long while. Lolly also pointed me in the direction of the trailer for the movie Perfume with the freaky sniffing baby dude (and Alan Rickman). I think we should organize a screening of this movie with Lissy's mom; it would be scarily appropriate. Like whoa. Linda'd totally find some way to pick up this woman's scent on the black market, were it available.

hanging out on the cusp of the inter nets

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 04:41:59 GMT

Here I am, one school day (Monday), two classes, and three reading days away from final exams. Somehow I felt that starting an online journal would be more worthwhile than taking a toothpick to chip away at the piles of work that have built up while I was busy getting sick and feeling sorry for myself.

To prime for useless bouts of study attempts I spent two hours cleaning my room. It is something to write home about, so I figure it is something to write about here as well.

In closing, I've always wanted an emotional lemon head to portray my mood and now that dream is realized.
I AM SO HAPPY