Patriotic Whatever

Hey! Guess what I did today! I voted! Woot!

Yes, I "avoided the lines" and voted early. I stood in line for about half an hour to do it too. Funny thing is the place I usually vote usually doesn't have much of a line at all. All the news people seem to think that there will be tons o' folks voting on Tuesday though, so maybe I did avoid a long wait.

Best Laid Plans

So, I'm talking to my friend Meagan on the instant messenger thingy. She's feeling spiteful toward this guy she was dating over the summer... we'll call him Joe. Joe is in Florida, Meagan is not. Anyway, she's a little miffed at him and feeling spiteful.

I mentioned, um, Fred, in my last post. We're slightly annoyed with him. Yesterday Meagan suggested beating him over the head with his own ankles. At first I was hesitant to do any beating of Fred, because, frankly, he's not really worth it. However, the picture of him getting beat over the head with his own ankles was sufficiently comical to persuade me that it was actually a good idea.

Back to the present. We, being in somewhat spiteful moods, formulated a plan. This is it: We are going to go to FL and beat Joe over the head with Fred's ankles. We need the following supplies: 3 plane tickets (the third is not for Fred, but for Celcey, who is our third half), a bag for carrying ankles, new beating-people-over-the-head outfits with matching shoes. We're going to obtain these supplies with magic money that has just now poofed into our bank accounts. Isn't magic convenient?

You might be scratching your head at this point and saying to your computer "But, Cassie, don't you think Fred might be a little upset with you taking his ankles to Florida without him?"
The answer is: yes, I think he might be. If he really wants to come to FL, he may. But only his ankles can go to Joe's house for the beating over the head.

That's all. For now. Have a good night!

Oh Hi

Remember me? I'm your friendly neighborhood blogger. I just realized how very long it has been since I posted. I'm actually surprised that I haven't had any complaints from the regular rabble rousers. Perhaps they've been just as busy as I and therefore have not missed my silly rambling. Yes, the excuse I am using for my being remiss with the blogging is that my non-digital life is keeping me very busy. What have I been busy doing? Activities include, but are not limited to (in a martini-glassed list):

Attending Plays (My Fair Lady and Hands of Sodom), the Opera (Madame Butterfly), and a symphony concert (not the Utah Symphony for once, but the Sandy City Orchestra. They were quite good. A friend of mine plays the flute and piccolo for them)





Attending a Swing Dance Invitational event thingy - The even included a competition between college swing clubs. Each club sent two couples. I was a back up for the U (one of the girls was having back problems so she wasn't sure she would be able to dance). I didn't end up competing, but I had fun there anyway. Actually (this is totally me just tooting my own horn), I was told by two really good dancers that I really should have been dancing for my school. One of them told me I am the best dancer that the U swing club has. I don't know that I agree with him, but it was awesome to hear. I promise I won't let it go to my head too much.

Kind of, sort of, potentially, starting a flirtation/dating thing with this kid... we'll call him Fred. And by kid, I mean guy. He's actually one year older than me, I think. As of Saturday, things have fizzled with him. I met Fred through a mutual friend, and thought he was kind of cute. After some flirting and a little encouragement from the mutual friend and Fred himself, I was all ready to see where it was going to go, and he seemed not completely uninterested. Things looked promising for a while, but then it all went to shit. Turns out Fred is kind of a flake. He basically stood me up on Friday, and then didn't get why I was upset with him. We don't hate him, though we would be completely justified in doing so. It's kind of sad that nothing came of that, but probably for the best. To be fair, I'm not really rolling in free time, and neither is he, so the whole new relationship thing may have been just burden for both of us. Of course, it could have also been a fun way to revieve some stress. Oh well, in any case, it's done.

Doing the school thing, which is totally kicking my ass. I'm so unused to being in school full time and it's really hard. I'm barely keeping up with my homework, and I'm not really enjoying my classes as much as I would like to be. It's not that they are bad classes, it's just that with the amount of work I have to do for them.... Getting everything done is a little stressful, add that to trying to work enough to have some spending money and still have some semblance of a social life.... It's a little stressful. I also don't seem to be able to convince myself that it is wise to go to bed early when I have class at 8:35 in the morning. So I go to said class very tired which makes paying attention difficult. I'm pretty sure that for Spring I'm going to take 3 classes at the most. It might take longer for me to graduate that way, but at least I wont destroy myself in the process. It's weird, in high-school being a student, and a good one at that, was pretty natural for me. I seem to have lost my touch.

Doing the work thing. I still love my job, but I would really like to get hired on at one of the libraries and stop doing the sub thing. I imagine it's only a matter of time.





Doing the dancing thing. I go swing dancing at least once a week - Thursdays- these days. I usually try to get out on Saturday too. I know that a lot of my friends (the old ones anyway, this doesn't so much apply to my new friends who I've met through dancing) don't understand why I go so much. I can see how it might seem kind of like an obsession, and maybe it is. If I had time, I would go dancing every Friday too. And next month I'm going to make time in my busy schedule to take a 4 week lindy class. The thing is, I really like dancing. I mean, really like it. I can think of few things I would rather do. When you find something you really love doing, doesn't it make sense to do that thing?

And that just about sums up everything that has kept me from blogging lately. I'll try to do better in the future. I know the longer I go without blogging the harder it is to get back in the habit, so I might as well not get out of the habit. That way everybody wins. In other news, I'm totally looking forward to Halloween. It is, after all, my favourite holiday. And it's just around the corner. Next weekend and the weekend after that are already full of festivities. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to have time to pull together the costume I was planning on (I had plans to go as Daria) because I just don't have time to hunt down all the necessary pieces. My back up plan: I'm going to wear a toga (what self-respecting college student does not have a toga?) and go as Cassandra. Get it? Cuz my name is Cassandra. It's funny.

Doncha Wish Your Girlfriend was Hot Like Me?

Guess what I did last night! I danced. With a pole. Yep. Pole Dancing. It was girls night out and we all went to a dance studio and learned how to pole dance from a real live stripper!

It was so much fun! And an amazing work out. I can barely move my arms today because they are so sore.

Do Your Part

This is a great video that's been going around the interwebs:



If you haven't registered yet, go out and do it now! With the country going to shit, it irresponsible to not pay attention to what's going on in Washington. I'm not the most political person you'll ever meet, but I'm following the news and forming my own opinions. It's time my generation sat up and started to give a damn about our future.

Getting Ink

I'm blogging about my creative writing class again. The teacher guy recently collected our "writing journals" and today he gave them back, complete with his comments on what we had written.

There was one day I was feeling lazy and simply scribbled all over the page. I justified it as a "poem without language" by adding this quote from a Saussure essay I had to read in another class:

Without language, thought is a vague, uncharted nebula. There are no pre-existing ideas,
and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language.

What makes me laugh a little is the comment left in the margin beside this quote: "You should get this as a tattoo"

Granted, it is a very nice thought. I enjoy the concept and it's very well articulated. It even suits me, I think. As you all probably know by now, I'm a big fan of language and am very interested in finding just the right way to express my thoughts, ideas, feelings etc. I probably wouldn't mind having that tattooed somewhere... maybe on my back? I just think it's funny that it was the first place the prof went.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I absolutely love the idea of getting words tattooed somewhere. I like the idea of being able to read a person, literally, like a book. But the problem is, what could you get tattooed that would fit you for the rest of your life? If I picked a poem or a quote that I absolutely love today, that fits my entire philosophy on life and means a great deal to me now, who's to say it would still fit five or ten years down the road? Even if I choose something, wait and think about it for a year or two (which may seem extreme, but I for something that will be on my body for the rest of my life, I think that it's perfectly reasonable to do so) and it still is a perfect as I originally thought it was, I can't know that I will still even like it when I'm 50 and have twice as much life experience as I do now.

It's also possible that the meaning of whatever was inked would be diminished simply by having it with me all the time. To be faced with it every day, and to have to explain it to everyone who got close enough to read me, would leach all the specialness out of the words. Eventually they would start to feel like my own personal cliche. So maybe, to prevent that, it should be something that doesn't really mean much.

I don't know. I'm sure I'm over-thinking this way too much. Like I said, I really like the idea of getting words tattooed. Maybe one day I'll actually go out and do it. I will leave you with a question: If you were to get a quote/poem tattooed, what would you get and where would you put it? Or if you already have something, share that.

Neon Green Chuck Taylors

One of the classes eating up my time this semester is Creative Writing. It's actually pretty cake, it's just intro and is kind of a fun nothing class. For this class I have to keep a "writing journal" - different from my regular journal, or an online journal (which is also known as a blog) - and write in it at least 10 minutes a day. This is probably the most helpful thing the class is doing for me because it's forcing me to get into the habit of writing regularly again. However, because I haven't really been writing, I sometime have a hard time coming up with something to write about. To cure this malady, I went through my old writing journals (they seem pretty standard in Creative writing classes) for inspiration in the form of old prompts/exercises/formulas etc. Among a lot of drivel and some useful bits I found an poem, pasted in, that Sam Clarke wrote about me.

Sam was a kid I met at Writers@Work- a week long writing workshop thing held in the summer. They had a program for regular adult writers and also one for high school students. I went to it at least two summers, as did Sam. The poem he wrote about me was nothing like you would expect (certainly not a love poem) - it was about my hand. We had done a workshop earlier that day in which we were supposed to write about someone's hands in this certain formulaic way. He hadn't written his poem. We were hanging out later that day and I was giving him crap for not writing when that was the point of all of us being there. He said that he couldn't think of a hand to write about. I offered him mine, left it on his ankle and moved on to another conversation.

The poem he wrote (I don't have it with me as I'm writing this) was fairly decent. I was super flattered and amused by it. I asked him for a copy the next year and it still makes me smile when I read it.

Every now and then I wonder what happened to Sam. I don't honestly remember much about him. He was kind of a skinny, pale kid with dark hair. He wore chuck taylor high tops that were bright green. Not kelly green, or grass green, but bright, neon, highlighter green. They looked like they should glow in the dark (they didn't, I asked him). He played the clarinet, I think.

Of all the people I met at W@W, Sam is pretty much the only person I really remember. Maybe it's just because he wrote a poem about me. I recall we got along well though, and I like to think that he was a brief friend from that little sliver of my life. I wonder if I were to track him down if he would remember me at all.

It's kind of funny how some people stick with you. Even if you just knew them for a week or so.

Think Happy Thoughts

This week is a very special week. That's right, kids, it's Vasculitis Awareness Week. As most of my long time readers (what are there, 2 of you?) know, I have vasculitis in the form of Wegener's Granulomatosis.

I already told my story here last year, so I wont go into it again. I gave y'all links if you don't know about it. I do have awesome news though! Last week I went to the doctor for my bi-annual visit, just to make sure nothing scary is coming back. Everything checked out, no surprise there. The good part is that Doc told me that he only needs to see me once a year now.

Ok, that doesn't sound like such a big deal, does it? But that's really just about as close to a clean bill of health that I can get. I'm pretty damn happy to be seeing my doctor 50% less frequently. Not that he isn't nice, but, you know.

Other good news is that I am only about 6 months away from being in full remission for 5 years! Super excited about this! Thus the exclamation points! I mentioned this to my doctor and he said, hesitantly, that it is possible that I won't ever have a relapse. He didn't have any statistics to quote me, but there are some cases with WG that people go into remission and stay there for the rest of their life. It's a slim chance, but it's a chance just the same. Let's hope that I'm one such case.

Buckle your Swash

It be international talk like a pirate day, maties. Hoist the Jolly Roger and bring forth the rum! Arrrr!

Mmmmm Pi

On my way home from school today I was thinking about π and the arbitrary nature of things. Π is a pretty important number. It pops up over an over in mathematics concerning the relationship of things in nature. It’s also an irrational number. Strange that something so important would be irrational.

But why is it irrational, really? Yeah, it can't be reduced to a simple fraction and has all those non-repeating decimals, but really, what it all boils down to that π is 3.14 blah blah blah because we have arbitrarily assigned our number system to be based on 1.

What if π was our basic unit? How would that change things? If our number system were set up so that π=1, or rather that 1= the Circumference of a circle divided by its diameter. For one thing, circles would be a lot easier. It could be done. Or rather, it could have been done. Once upon a time when whoever was inventing numbers and math, what if they saw that π was an important number and decided to base the entire number system on that?

One only means one to us because that's what we believe. It's what we've been taught, that's the significance that has been assigned to that particular unit by society, by people. It could have just as easily been assigned to π. If π had been assigned as our basic unit, as 1, it wouldn't actually change the world we live in much at all. Ok, it was totally fuck math, but we'd be used to it by now, and we'd have a totally rational number to explain the relationships of circles.

I wonder though, if that's how we saw the world - where π was the basis of our number system, if we would See things differently? I think this is something to think about while staring at the ceiling and just letting my mind wander. It's kind of a mind-fuck. Sadly, I don't have time. I have to do stuff for school.

Gardens

When I reach the stage of my life when I need a wheel barrow. It absolutely will not be red.

Furthermore, it will in no way be glazed with rain. And there will certainly not be any white chickens.

Take that William Carlos Williams!

Nothing would depend on a freeking red wheel barrow if he hadn't said that it did. Four bloody words at the beginning of that poem and all of a sudden it's so bloody brilliant that it has to show up in every single English/Writing class.

It's worse than Wallace Stevens and his blackbirds.

Maybe I'm just grumpy because I didn't get to sleep much last night.

Teach a Man to Fish

I'm pretty sure that my eighth grade English teacher came into the library where I was working today. I didn't talk to him because I was busy helping someone else, but I would have liked to say something.

He wasn't even my actually English teacher. He was a student teacher, or something like that. He basically taught the second half of the class while our actual teacher sat in back of the room doing who knows what. We spent a lot of time reading/studying Watership Down and we also did poetry.

Jeff Baird (that was his name, and I'm totally ok with using it because a- I doubt he'll ever run across this little blog o' mine and b- he deserves some credit) was really the first teacher I had who really influenced the course of my life. Mr. Baird did so by encouraging me to write and making me think that the silly peoms I wrote were any good. It's pretty much soley because of him that I ever thought I could write.

Granted, I'm not some famous authoress or anything. It would be fun to say "I'm a famous poet and it all started with this one great teacher." Who knows, maybe some day I will be able to say that. But Mr. Baird's influence is none the less prevelant. I mean, I am majoring in English with a focus on Creative Writing and I am a published writer, even if it is just in silly little lit mags.

Anyway, seeing him made me think about the impact some teachers have. I'm incredibly grateful for the encouragement I recieved from him. I hate to use a worn out cliche, but I wouldn't be who I am today if it weren't for that class and this amazing teacher.

Running, Jumping, Climbing Trees

The problem with going on adventures is that I get busy doing that and can't find time to blog about it. This wouldn't really be a problem (because living life is better than writing about it any day) except my readers seems to get cranky if I don't post often enough. It's both flattering and annoying.

Anyway, this last weekend I was as far from my computer as I can get, sort of. I went camping at Dead Horse Point with a bunch of friends. It was a lot of fun. I learned something about myself: my idea of camping is not exactly compatible with other people.

When I go camping, I like to take as little as possible and spend as much time as I can hiking and exploring. Especially being where we were, with Dead Horse Point, Canyonlands and Arches right at our fingertips, my ideal weekend would have been getting up early, having a quick breakfast, packing a lunch and hiking until I couldn't walk and then doing it again the next day.

I understand that it's a little unreasonable to expect a group of 8 people to really be able to do that, but this weekend was almost the complete opposite of that. We did manage to get up early, but then it took 2 hours for us all to make and eat breakfast each day. Breakfast tended to consist of something elaborate and messy (albeit delicious) that used up every dish we brought. Then some of the people I was with couldn't handle hiking more than about 5 miles a day. I feel like I spent most of the first day hopping from foot to foot waiting to get out hiking and then being disappointed by the silly little walks we went on.

That's a little bit of an exageration, but it really was frustrating. At some point I decided to take a zen approach to it all and just go with what the group wanted to do. I was still a little understimulated, but I managed to have fun anyway. It was sort of neat to do the more touristy side of Arches- we usually don't bother with all that. It was also kind of nice to force myself to sit still for a while and just do nothing while everyone else was dinking around. Plus it's always rejuvenating to get down to southern Utah.

Here's the whole gang:

Flush it Down!

Remember when the internet was still kind of novel? You know, before facebook and myspace made it that much easier to spam your friends. Back when it was really cool (or at least it passed the time) to spend hours taking personality quizzes online, and maybe even e-mail them to your friends. No? Oh. Well. Fine. But back in Jr High (or maybe it was early high school) I wasted a lot of time online taking stupid quizzes.

Most of them I don't really remember. They would ask a series of questions and then show a generic profile that omigod was, like, so totally accurate and, like, exactly what I was like. Or some of them would offer you 5 colors or something and tell you what amazing profound thing the color you picked meant. Really dumb stuff like that.

There is one quiz from all those many years ago that has actually stuck with me. You are going to laugh at me when I tell you about it. Basically, showed a diagram of a public restroom with three stalls and asked which one you would usually chose to use, assuming that they are all available and not-gross. Whichever you chose supposedly revealed something rather profound about your personality. I don't remember which I picked or what it said about me, but the idea that bathroom stall preference says something about a person's personality intrigues me.

I'm actually sort of serious about this. Every other time I use a public restroom, I wonder what my choice of stall says about me. Then I briefly ponder if you could use that choice to make behavioral changes.

Say choosing the first stall means you live life in the fast lane, always rushing from activity to activity, doing as much as you can and packing every minute with fast paced excitement, and if choosing the second stall means you think of yourself as pretty average and middling, you don't mind some attention, but your more than happy to step aside and let someone else take the spotlight, and the third stall means you are super easygoing and don't really care what other people think, you roll with the punches and just sort of float through life taking whatever comes with a zen-like sense of calm. What if you are a pretty regular first-staller, but you want to calm down a little. Could conciously making an effort to use the third stall help calm you?

If I had time I could totally make this into some weird metaphor for some philosophical principal or something. Unfortunately, it's kind of late and I still have to read for class. Yep, school has started again, and this fall I'm playing the role of Full-Time-Student again. More on that later. In the mean time, take a moment to ponder what your bathroom habits really say about you, really.

What Goes Up Must Come Down

Remember how fantastically happy I was last week? It shouldn't be hard to remember, just scroll down. This week has kind of burst my bubble. Not that I'm super bummed now or anything, but the euphoria has definitely worn off. Basically a series of unfortunate events have seriously damaged my happy.

First of all, my car decided to break. It needed a new pump somewhere which set me back $300. That means I am low on teh cashy-monies so I can't go to the San Francisco Lindy Exchange in a couple weeks. This makes me sad, cuz I likes me some lindy.

Second! Last night I really wanted to go dance at the Golden Skillet (yes, it sounds like the name of a restaurant, but it's actually a good place to dance. Mostly because that's where the good dancers are). I haven't made it out there since I got back from Denver, so I feel like I'm losing all my super amazing dance mojo that I gained there. So I really wanted to go last night. But I was doing stuff with my parents until 10:30, which meant I wouldn't get out to the Skillet for another hour (I needed to get gas and visit the ATM before heading out there) and the dancing pretty much ends at 12:00. So I didn't go. Sad day.

Third (and last that I will mention) : I found out today that I didn't get the job I was hoping for. There was a 20 hour regular position open at one of the libraries I like best, and I was really hoping they would hire me. It would be nice with School to have a regular schedule and not have to drive all over the valley to sub at all the different libraries. The thing that really sucks about it all is the only reason they didn't hire me is that they just couldn't make my schedule work with the people they already have. They really tried, but there's only so much flexibility they have because there are a couple other people working there who have school or other jobs, so they work at the times I would be able to. What they need there is someone who can work when I'm in class. Super sad day.

I'm going to go out and have some serious fun tonight to blow off my disappointment with the universe. If you have any positive energy that you don't need, feel free to send it my way!

Flyin' High

I don't know what it is, but all week I've been in an unshakably good mood.

The best explanation I can think of is that I'm still riding the high from last weekend in CO. Something about spending a couple days really good dancing boosted up my confidence or something. I don't know what it is, but I've felt really great all week.

It hasn't even been that good a week. I've had some car trouble, I haven't been sleeping that well. I've been crazy busy and barely had time to get everything done (in fact, I did have to give a few small things up for lack of time). But all week I've been extremely happy. It's like I can't help but embrace everything that gets thrown at me. If I'm handed lemons, I make the best damn lemonade you've ever tasted.

It's hard to describe my mood. Telling you everything I've been doing wouldn't cut it... But this week is fantastic! And I wanted to get that thought out in the world.

Jump, Jive and Wail

Here's the breakdown

Where I was this weekend: Denver CO

When I got there: 1:00 am on Thursday

What I was doing: Lindy on the Rocks

What the hell is that: A weekend of swing dancing. Including classes all day Sat and Sun, plus dances all night.

Hours of Sleep each night: no more than 5

Hours spent dancing Friday: 7 or 8

Hours dancing on Sat (including classes): around 14

Hours dancing on Sun (including classes): around 11

Time I left Denver: 12:00 am Monday (After the Sunday dance. And it was so hard to leave! I would have liked to stay all night and gone to some of the unofficial after parties/dances)

When I had to let someone else drive because I couldn't keep my eyes open: 3:30 am

Number of Perseid meteors spotted: 2 while driving, 6 when we stopped for maybe 5 minutes to change drivers

Time we got back to SLC: 7:45 Monday morning

Lindy Crushes: Too many to count! There was Eric, who was so much fun to dance with. Benjamin, who was just really cute. Peter Strom, who was one of the instructors (this is more of a celebrity lindy crush. He's a brilliant dancer... and a total dream boat)

What I did on Monday: Slept. All day.

Blues on Parade

This week has started out rather harshly. Moment to moment it has not been too bad, but there seems to be a slew of bad news that has popped up.

The thing that has upset me most is my cat. She's old (15) and has hyper-thyroid and on Saturday she was out all night and then she wasn't eating at all Sunday or Monday. She was such a sad sight we were sure we'd have to put her to sleep. For various reasons, we weren't able to get an appointment to euthanize her right away. Then yesterday she ate a little so we decided to wait and see if she kept improving. Today she's eating a little more and is more like her vocal annoying self. So things are kind of up in the air about her. Hopefully she's rallying, but she is a very old cat so who knows what will happen. I really hope we don't have to kill my kitty. Worrying about her and about what would be the best thing to do has cast a sad note on the week for me.

That's the most personal bit of news. It seems like bad things are happening all over the place though. I feel like all I hear about is people getting sick or dying or losing their jobs. It's all very depressing. Most of it doesn't really affect me directly, which is why I'm more upset about my cat than death and disease and unemployment. Still it's worrisome and it doesn't do anything to cheer a person up.

Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Batman!

If you haven't seen The Dark Knight yet, you're probably the only one in the country. It opened at $155 million (Mama Mia, the second biggest movie this weekend, only made $27 million) this weekend, breaking all sorts of records including biggest single day and biggest opening weekend ever. I was one of the 22 million people who saw it over the weekend. Thursday night, specifically, at midnight (which is technically Friday I guess).

It is a really brilliant movie. Especially if you remember (how can you forget) that it's based on a comic book. I guess I don't really have to gush about it. If you have any interest in the movie, you've probably read all the reviews already that laud it as a fucking awesome flick. Critics everywhere loved it, except a bunch of New York rags, including the New Yorker. I actually read that review and it made me very sad. David Denby completely missed the point and basically whined that TDK wasn't campy enough to measure up to Batman ala Michael Keaton. And yeah, I guess if what you want out of your movie is a bunch of two dimentional fluff and a few laughs, TDK is not nearly as good as Batman. But if you want some real pathos, believable characters, plot depth and a villian who is actually villanous, TDK wins out by a long shot.

Let me clarify what I mean by believable characters. I will readily admit that it's a little far fetched that Bruce Wayne would deal with his rage over his parent's death by dressing up in a batsuit and fighting crime. The Joker is another character that makes you go "yeah, that's cool, but there's no way that would really happen." My point is that the characters are portrayed in such a way that they become believeable. And once the premise of the character is set, the way they react and interract with each other is consistant and makes sense.

I'm sure it doesn't need to be said, but holy cats was Heath Ledger brilliant!

I'm still excited about Batman five days later. It really was mind blowing amazing. I need to see TDK about 6 more times, I think. Anyone want to go to a movie this weekend?

Come Up With Your Own Clever Title

Since Aaron gets all Whiney McWhiney-Pants when I don't update, and who am I to ignore my adoring public, I decided to jot down a few random thoughts today at work. I didn't blog in real time because... well technically I'm not allowed to while I'm getting paid. And that kind of makes sense, really, if you think about it. I also have to make it clear that the thoughts herein expressed are in no way representative of my employer etc. But you all know that.

The point is I now have two little pieces of paper with a collection of random things that came floating through my head. I am going to type them up now so that you can get a feel for what it's like being inside my head when I'm at work and it's really slow and I'm on desk all by myself. I present to you (in a bulletted Warhol Soup Canned list) the random thoughts from work today:

A lady was in here with puzzle pieces tattooed all over her head. Her head is shaved and the whole effect is really neat. I wanted to say something complimentary, but what does one say to someone like that? "Dude, sweet tats" is so cliche... not to mention stupid. The best I came up with was, "I like your head" but it amused me so much that I just sat silently laughing at myself until she left and it was too late. Which is fine. I didn't really need to talk to her anyway.



Skirts are fun. They are nice and cool in the summer. Much nicer than pants. Pants suck. If I swivel in my chair I get a little bit of a Marilyn Monroe effect from the fan under the desk. It's sort of fun. And potentially embarrassing. Skirts are fun, but risky.





According to the stupid book I'm reading (How To Make Someone Love You Forever in 90 Minutes or Less) the best and quickest way to connect with other people is simply by making eye contact and smiling. That was in the chapter that doesn't really have anything to do with making someone fall in love with you; it was about meeting new people. Anyway, people don't make eye contact much these days let alone smile. It's so simple, and no one does it. Just think about all the people you miss out on when you're looking down all the time. All the interesting people you could meet, or at least see. It's the simplest of connections, but I think it could be really powerful. I resolve to make eye contact with and smile at as many people as possible today. And tomorrow too. All week. Hell, It'll just be my policy to look up and smile and look people in the eye. Who knows, maybe that will lead to me making someone love me in 90 minutes or less after all.



There's a girl here with a bandage on her nose. She can't be more than 15 or 16. Nose job? Sad, if it is. She's way too young to be getting a nose job. That said, if I ever get Wegener's again (knock on wood - to not get it) I totally get a new nose out of it! Seriously, the chances of my nose collapsing if I have a relapse are pretty high. So I can get a new one. But who's nose should I pick???? Yours! Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha. Just kidding. Your nose would look kinda funny on my face. I would probably just take and old picture of me and say "I want my old nose back please." It would be a picture from before I got sick the first time though. My nose is a bit wonky since then. You wont notice it unless you spend a lot of time looking at my nose, which I do, apparently.



I love it when guys try to show off and then fail. I just got winked at. Then the kid ran into a wall. Classic! And you thought that only happened in the movies! Yes, boys, I take much pleasure in your pain!






na-na-nana-nana-nana na-na-nana-nana-nana Batman! I'm totally going to see that tomorrow night. At midnight. Then I waking up at 6 to take the parents to the airport the next morning. And I have a paper due Friday too. Crap. And I'm working all day tomorrow. Hmmm I have some time between 6 and 8... or nine. Good thing it's a short paper.




The Batman theme song... the oldschool one from the TV show... is a traditional blues chord progression. Aren't you glad you know that now? So if you ever are with me and a jazz concert and you notice I am singing batman under my breath, it's only because I'm trying to determine whether they are playing blues or not. That's pretty much the only thing I remember from the Survey of Jazz (or whatever it was) class I took a year or so back. That and Johnny Hodges is an amazing sax player.