this is why my head hurts.

What do I do when I have 30ish hours to finish my application?

Address problems, review notes from the interview with my committee.
Look at adviser's notes.

Too scary.

...not so scary, they said all of this yesterday.

I can do this. All I have to do is start writing! 5 more days!

Open my application Word document. TrumanappJan13.doc...

Facebook. I already read this status. Bored.

Write half a sentence-

Facebook. what am I doing here? CONCENTRATE.

anxiety!!! I have about a day to get this all done!

Write a full sentence. This is going well! I can totally do this, I-

Facebook. maybe I should disconnect from the internet. But what if I need to get more research? OK, bad idea.

half a senten-

Gmail. OH NO. Email from adviser. Email demanding rapid completion of a specific question. She has to send it to the person who is writing my rec letter. Quick. I need to head him off and let him know I may have exaggerated things to make myself sound better. And more in charge. But they TOLD me to! Oh, he probably understands, maybe I don't need to forewarn him about-

OH YEAH I am supposed to be writing and revising! Shit. Back to that. Four words and....

this would be a good time to blog about this...

I wish...

I wish it would stop being cold.
I know it's not that cold. I still don't like it.

I wish people from my high school/university would quit getting married. It's freaking me out.

I wish my scholarship would apply for itself. ...wait.

I wish I hadn't eaten popcorn for dinner. Or seen How Do You Know. How do you know it's gonna be an awful movie? Answer: you don't. Not for a while. You get drawn in by Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon, who (separately) have not steered you wrong in the past, and you spend the whole two hours wondering how this movie is going to pull itself together and then it doesn't.

I wish Facebook would stop showing me pictures of people I don't want to see. I am sure there is a way to block this, but I am too lazy to do anything but complain.

I wish Hogwarts was real. Wait, no. Then that would mean...nevermind.

I wish that the groundhog sees his damn shadow. Or whatever means no more winter.

I wish Brother would put more songs up.

I wish I could go back to Charleston without having to go back to class.

Happy Epiphany everyone!

RLS: I am being courted by a hipster, part 4

I am as shocked as you are. I thought this whole thing was over and done with. To be fair, at this point I don't think it counts as courting, but I would like to share this with you anyway.

Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook (so, basically, anyone reading this) may have even seen this today. He wrote on my wall, saying:

"te dije de una pelicula que yo hacia... la se ha estrenado en este sitio. nagevalo si quieres..."

which translates as "I told you about a movie I made...it has been released on this website. Peruse it if you want..." And true, he did make mention of a movie he made (possibly at the college level? I'm starting to forget things already), and we did share an interest in Spanish.  This isn't the weird part. I'm gonna let you go to the website and see for yourself.

The title of this is "divine being." ...I have no words.

 Personally, I can't even find the movie. If it exists. But I'm glad I looked at this during the day because it kinda freaks me out. 

www.templeofholy.com

so now you know

So I was on Facebook the other day (big surprise), absentmindedly flipping through profiles, browsing friends of friends etc. I found a girl's profile (let's call her Mandy) that had been protected, like many are, from peering eyes like mine, I guess. Or from creepier ones.

A lot of my friends do this- maybe to their shield less-than-proper behavior from employers or graduate school admissions or judgy family members. Personally, I subscribe to the school of thought that if you put it on the internet, it can be seen by anyone who tries hard enough, so if it's embarrassing or not fit to be viewed by your grandmother, DON'T POST IT. Not that hard. Of course I have blocked my two youngest brothers from some things, because Ryan once posted CLAIRE HAS A BOYFRIEND several times all over my wall. Y'know, mature stuff like that.

Back to the story. Mandy has blocked non-friends from seeing her wild spring break pictures, her interests, and her wall (so you can't see the comments like "Woahhh, you were totes puking all over your shoes last night! Did you ever find out that guy's name??? Luvs XXX"). Smart.

However, it does have her basic information: name, school, relationship status ("it's compicated"), political views and religious beliefs. And listed on her oh so limited profile, which is otherwise closely guarded and relatively impenetrable to judging eyes, it says

Religious beliefs: Cantheism.

For those of you who don't know what that means (and I was one of you until I wikied it), Wikipedia has this to say:

"Cantheism, also Kantheism, is a modern term for religions based on the inherent goodness of the cannabis plant"

It goes on to say:

"Observance of Cantheist rites are beneficial but not mandatory. These include the regular consumption of cannabis, offering thanksgiving and blessing for cannabis when you partake, and sharing the holy smoke among the faithful."

So now you know.

It also provides a link to an incredibly legitimate website, that in no way looks like it was created 9 years ago by someone who was undoubtedly high and lazy.

and now you know

In an effort to reach out to my brother Sean the other day, I ventured to Wikipedia for some facts about giraffes.

Lemme 'splain.
My oldest bro (younger than me by about 3 years) is a giraffe. He's tall, a bit awkward, and I'm almost positive he has four stomachs.
He also owns about three shirts, as seen here. He wears one every day. He even found a silly band on vacation: a yellow giraffe. How perfect.

So I decided I would drop some facts on him, hoping to find something phrased like a National Geographic special about the life of a Sean. I found this:

"While research from the 1970s concluded that giraffes did not
socialize, later research found that giraffes did form attachments to
other giraffes, with giraffes spending 15% of their time grazing with
the giraffes they are close to and only 5% of their time grazing with
giraffes who are strangers."

Ha ha. Because he eats a lot and doesn't socialize. So I posted this on his Facebook. But upon further examination of the text (read: Wiki article), I also learned something quite interesting. About mating habits. That I am in no way implying relate to my brother. But I still think it's a fun fact worth knowing, so here you go:

"Another function of necking is sexual, in which two males caress and court each other, leading up to mounting and climax. Such interactions between males are more frequent than heterosexual coupling. In one study, up to 94% of observed mounting incidents took place between two males. The proportion of same sex activities varied between 30 and 75%, and at any given time one in twenty males were engaged in non-combative necking behavior with another male."

Gay giraffes. Bisexual giraffes. Bros with benefits. Besties with testes. Whodathunk?

Of course I checked other sources, to make sure some dude with a giraffe fetish wasn't editing Wikipedia (again), and it all checked out. You learn something new everyday.



Note: this post is not aimed at anyone. Especially my brother. Who totally likes giraffes for other reasons. Like their knobby head things.

shenanigans

It's my last day in A-town. So I should be packing right now, but I can't bring myself to do it somehow. Don't worry, I will. Eventually.

The other day, I woke up like usual for work. My alarm went off, ruined my dream, and I fumbled around, sleep-drunk, for the off button. I coaxed my head off the pillow and stumbled through the mountains of "packing" in my room and headed towards the bathroom.

For those of you who know me well enough to have been upstairs in my house (or just those of you who may have creeped up there, or even those of you who I've already told this to) you know we keep our hamster in the bathroom. This sounds weird, I know. But it's best for everyone; if a hamster is gonna be smelly somewhere, it might as well be where it's already smelly. And with three boys using that room, trust me, it's rancid. OK, maybe it's not that bad. It does smell like showers sometimes, which is good. Especially if they use my mango and pomegranate soap and think I don't know about it. ANYWAY. The hamster is in the bathroom. Between the two sinks on the counter.

Also- about the hamster: Daniel bought her. He saved money and begged and begged for one. Mom said if he had enough to buy the hamster and its food, he could get it. We had had hamsters before; a little brown one named Pepper and a black and white we named Oreo for obvious reasons. Oreo was a bitch. Anyway. They both died of the same mysterious eye-popping-out disease at completely different times in our family history. They also both escaped a few times. Don't ask me how. I just know one ended up chewing up the carpet in my closet. It was the bitchy one. So when we tried to catch her she ran all around and gnawed at our hands with what I remember to be venomous eye teeth.

So my mom had one condition when Daniel left with my dad one evening to buy his hamster: "That thing better not have a tail. If it gets out, and it will, I am NOT picking up anything that has a nasty rat tail without whuppah-ing that thing. NO. TAILS." (a note to those outside the family: whuppah is the noise a whip makes. SO there you go.) Daniel, restless with excitement, agrees vehemently, crossing his heart and hoping to die and all that.

Well, a bit later they come home with a little cardboard carrier (which is dumb Petsmart, hamsters eat cardboard. Use your brain) and I'm sure you can guess what Daniel brought home:
In my mom's defense: it is a tail. But Daniel protested that is it a Chinese dwarf hamster, and the tail is really small.

Daniel named her Aphrodite. Eventually, Mom grew to like her.

So that morning, I noticed her food dish was empty and her water was almost gone. I filled them both, with a mental note to give Daniel a verbal lashing for shirking responsibilities, etc.

When I came home from work, my mom called from the living room "Guess what So-and-So said on Facebook: 'you should put the hamster in a plastic bag and keep it in the car' hahaha!" (for those of you who haven't heard The Dead Dog Story, remind me to tell you. The shorthand is this means the hamster is dead.) I paused, trying to understand. "What?!" "Oh. Aphrodite died."

SO. Never feeding a hamster again. But at least she kept her eyeballs. And her dignity. Unless Ethel (cat) dug her up in the back yard...

not to harp on...

The anatomy of a summer bedroom is simple and yet incredibly messy. At the moment, I have two fans spinning perilously; one at my window (which, until noticed by my brother, was blowing air OUT), and one, of course, on the ceiling. The floor finds itself littered with sandals, a tool box, boxes full of unpacked dorm gear, unhelpfully warm blankets and a bathing suit or two. The bed lays unmade, a resting place for a book or the remote control. The comforter sits at the foot, folded and forgotten. Sheets are crumpled but clean. The fan in the window cancels out bird noise and wafts in smells from the grill outside. The air moving is hot. My keyboard is hot. My knee-pits (which do not have a medical name) are sweaty. How lovely.

On days like this, it is best to lie, inert, on the closest flat surface. Also helpful would be a drink, itself sweating with condensation and a paperback book about living in Alaska. Or the top of a mountain. Or the inside of a Coca Cola bottle. However, this immobility, no matter how comfortable, always comes with a side of guilt. At least in my family. My mother feels guilty pausing to watch something on TV, yet feels no qualms about farming* on Facebook, probably because it feels more "active." All joking aside, this is a popular rationalization within my family. My father believes he is going faster by taking a shortcut around traffic as long as the car is in motion. I feel it too. I have convinced myself that writing this is more productive than watching iCarly or another episode of Clean House, but is it really?

I know the answer is no, but it still feels like a yes. And now that I've accomplished something today, I'm going to take a well earned break and turn on the tube or read some Bill Bryson. The sad thing about summer is that it will be more than what I did yesterday.

*I love my mother and think fb farming is pretty cute, but also kind of ridiculous. right?