September 9, 2003    "'The time has come,' the Walrus said, 'To talk of many things'"

     Here it is again, the start of a new year.  Moto's doing the Pro Staff thing, Suje has started student teaching, Cookstie will be back this weekend, my best friend Allison is in Budapest (as usual having a millon and one random adventures, like she always has the inexplicable knack for), everyone else is here or there, and for the third year in a row, I'm training.  I truly am a housing whore.  So now that summer is milliseconds away from completion, I thought it was due time to switch back to the traditional page, wrap up the summer, and do the all important processing, with accompanying facial expressions and hand gestures of course...

    It's no secret that at the end of last year, I was beyond burned out; in desperate need of rest and a change of scenery.  This summer and AV have been really good for that, I've had the time and space I've needed to recooperate and rebuild.  I passed most of the time very noncommunicado, only keeping in contact or touching base with a handful of people, and often passing a week without talking to anyone; only returning emails, IMs, and calls as necessary to keep from worrying anyone too much.  I really needed to take some time to regain focus, and basically get my life back, and it took me awhile to figure out what I wanted as far as that went.  So, if I didn't answer your IMs or emails, I apologize, but I hope you understand, and you may consider this my re-entry into the land of living; email, call, IM as much as you see fit.
   As far as my new working and living situation goes, I'll say this, I've really enjoyed it thus far and leaving Middle Earth was definitely the right thing to do.  I'll always be glad for the time I spent in ME, I had a lot of amazing times and met a lot of wonderful people, and it's safe to say that were it not for ME I wouldn't have grown and challenged myself in the ways that I have, my involvement with that community truly has made me the person I am today.   Even so, there's a time and a place to say goodbye, and it was really apparent that after three years it was time for me to move on, and at this point in my life, AV is a better fit for me.  My last year in Middle Earth was really stressful for a lot of varied reasons, and to make it worse I let my life become too overwhelmed with my job and the community, and I lost sight of myself.  It got to the point where even setting foot in Middle Earth made me extremely tense, and I wasn't myself for a really long time, so I apologize for those days and months.  This is one of those rare times when I'll say that change is good, it was definitely what I needed. Though truth be told, going to ME, even just for training meals, still puts a little bit of that familiar tension in my chest, I'm good.  I'm feeling better about everything these days, and thankfully that hole in my stomach, or whatever it was that was making me so sick during the spring and first part of the summer has mostly, subsided, with only a few backward steps here and there.
    As for AV itself, I've had a good time, and passed a relaxing summer.  I've met and had the opportunity to work with a lot really nice people, and if the summer is any indication of how the year will go, I think it'll be a really good way to spend my last year at Irvine.  Training has started now, and I'm now officially responsible for training and preparing a staff, so it's been interesting for me, and hopefully not too boring for them.  Between retreat and training it's been nearly a week, and I have a good feeling about the way things will go.  And for all the stress of last year, it was good for helping me to better understand myself and the things I need, and hopefully this time I'll be better at creating boundaries, taking time for myself and saving my sanity, though knowing me I may need help remembering.

So there it is the basic summer wrap-up...though I suppose it is more of a year in review.  With that, I wish us all a well and happy 2003-2004.
Senior Year
Sept. 9, 2003~ June 2004
May our troubles set with the sun each day.
May our drama pass, and our joy ever stay.
May the hurt and the wrong find quick amend,
And may we always find truth in the eyes of a friend.
May a familiar smile remind us of forgotten times,
And may we make memories enough to last a dozen lifetimes.
May our joy and our happiness always last a good long while,
And may there never be a day when your face doesn't wear a smile
May your laughter be hearty, and your tears be few,
and know that I love you whatever you do.
Back to Musings
Back to Main
September 15, 2003         Confused Caucasions "Sharing the laughter and love"

Nothing much to say, nothing new, still training.  Last night I went to bed at 10:30, I haven't been to bed that early since probably middle school, damn I was tired.  It's a sure sign that I'm getting old when I'm too tired to do anything but watch a movie, and even then too tired to finish it...I never just watch half a movie!  It's a sad state of affairs.  Whether it's as bad as listen to ABBA while browsing the IKEA website to get the all around swedish-feel, I dunno, but it must be close.  Let's see, what other random things, I've had the theme songs from classic '80s family sitcoms stuck in my head for days...sometimes it's "Facts of Life", sometimes "Family Ties", and every now and then a little "Growing Pains" action.  Random, I think I may even start whistling them unconsciously from time to time, but I can't be sure.  Went to Pat and Oscar's with Cookstie and Moto last night, got all lost and confused in the little dining area, they sure pack a lot of tables into that little space.  Once I was safely seated and thoroughly mocked, we noticed more lost and confused people...interestingly enough, all white people.  So it must be concluded that Pat and Oscar is a confusing place for the white people, maybe it's the-get-your-own-plates-and-silverware-thing, maybe it's the whole put-the-number-on-the-stick-in-the-center-of-the-table-thing, whatever it is, it has the white people bemused.  Poor white people, hang in there, you'll get the hang of it.   I think that's it, nothing more, everything is very tame and very lame round here lately, but then again my life usually is...so what are you gonna do, right?

                                                 I bet we've been together for a million years
                                              And I'll bet we'll be together for a million more
                                                             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                                                  What would we do, baby, without us?
                                                 What would we do, baby, without us?
                                                                    Sha-la-la-la

Damn that Sha-la-la-la is catchy
September 21, 2003                                                                                                                                                             

Happy Birthday Today to My Dad!
(who never reads this and probably doesn't even know about it, but still...
It's always move-in or welcome week on his birthday, so I always miss it....)
So Happy Birthday Poppy, miss ya, love ya, see ya soon









~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Move-in was today...welcome week starts tomorrow~
Casino Night, Mon, 7-11pm, AV B-Ball courts~ open to all UCI students, come visit me!
September 25, 2003

     Yesterday was my Grandma Clark's 82nd Birthday, so my aunts and uncles and cousins were all at my house....I was here, but I did get to talk to them all, so you know, that's something.  My aunt Debbie was all excited because on their vacation she and my uncle Ron went to a concert, two retired folks at a concert, "how funny is that?" she asks me.  After I talked to all the adults, my mom put my neice on the phone, if you've never had a phone conversation with a three year old, it's kinda funny.  So, she spent five minutes telling me where she was ("Is this my Auntie Kristen?  I'm at your house...where is you?"), why she was there (" mom said we had to come to your house, so we had to come"), where her dad was ("he's at his game, cus it's important"), who was there ("Grandma's here, but you can't talk to her 'cuz you're talkin' to me, and your uncle and auntie, and poppy's here, but you can't talk to him, you're talkin' to me, talk to me more, more, more auntie"), saying goodbye ("Ok, now talk to nana, when you come home auntie?....FRIDAY!!...ok bye")  I don't think she knows when friday is.....   But she is cuteness, our little curly-blonde-haired chatterbox....

In other news....welcome week is almost over...two programs today and then welcome week is fin.   My last welcome week, kinda sad, kinda not....mostly glad it's done :)

                                                       
                                           Movie on the AV Lawn Tonight
                                                          "Identity"
                              9-11pm, Free Popcorn, bring a blanket for your behind
                                                 ...and  come visit me in AV
October 1, 2003                       "Confucius say: You're an Idiot"

    Welcome week is over, it went pretty well, aside from the minor fire Thursday night, but stuff happens, and let's not talk about that...
    Do you believe in signs?  I do.  For being a (mostly) rational, (fairly) intelligent person, I can't help believing in signs and being superstitious.  Call it faith, call it a reluctance to trust my own mind and instincts, but sometimes I just need a sign.  Now, I'm smart enough to know that we make our own signs, we see, we believe, we read into it want we want.   Dreams, stars, fortune cookies, whatever, are just that, they're not oracles or soothsayers, they're just mass produced stale cookies with a random slip of paper inside.  But you believe what you want to believe, and sometimes you hear just what you were hoping to hear, or at least you convince yourself you do, and through some idiotic trick of psychology it makes it even the slightest bit easier to do what you know you should do anyway.  For me, I build walls and I'm afraid to fail.  I have a habit of closing myself off and being afraid of everything outside the walls, and as childish and idiotic as it is, sometimes I need a sign to verify that something's the right thing to do, no matter how sure I am that it is.  Sometimes I just need a sign, even though I know I shouldn't and I should always just trust myself and my decisions, but sometimes you need a little help to get over the wall, even if it's only a slip of paper from a stale cookie.
   The impetus of the entry, and the irony of this whole wacky need for signs and certainity thing, comes from a fortune cookie I had yesterday that said, "Luck is with you now, Act upon your instincts".  As a person who believes in signs it makes you go "AH!  Brillant!", but as a rational, logical person I think, "What kind of a sign tells you to rely on your instincts?  That undermines the whole sign system.  Isn't it supposed to tell you something you don't already know?  Or at least know but haven't quite yet accepted?"   And that friends, we will call the "DUH! Moment", because like an idiot I needed a sign to tell me that sometimes I don't need a sign.  "AH! Brillant!"
















But now that I've cemented my place as the emotional, irrational (if not unbalanced) one, I should go and get ready for the day...I'll take the fact that I can no longer hear the shower going as a sign that it's my turn.  Have a good day.
October 4, 2003                          The Hows and the Whys

       The other day, having nothing to do, which you know isn't all that unusual, I skimmed the website for possible layout changes and read over the old musings.  Everytime I reread the things I've written, I'm struck by how candid and personal I can be at times, or at the very least candid and personal in my own way.  It's surprising because I'm an intensely private person, and it's odd to think that the things I write about, whether personal or randomly idiotic, are just floating out there in the ether for anyone to read.  Sometimes, it makes me wonder why I do it.  I know a lot of it has to do with my personality and the way my mind works.  I've never been good at conversation, which is an ineptitude that I strangely inherited from neither of my parents.  There were even a few years growing up when I really didn't talk at all.  I didn't want to draw attention to myself, so I didn't speak much and I took to writing things down when I was upset or confused, basically when I had anything that I needed to work out and understand.  Now, it's become so much a part of me that I think better when I write, even if I'm just writing in my head.  So as long as I can remember I've needed to write things down, because I didn't have any other outlet, it was the only way for me to clear the cluttered recesses of my mind, and the best way for me to get understanding, both for myself and others.  A lot of times when I sit down to write these entries I finish with a better understanding than when I started.  It seems I'm better able to work things out with the taping of the keys and arranging of words, than with silent, focused contemplation.  I know that writing these things helps me figure out me, but a lot of times I don't do it for me.  I know that I'm not an easy person to know, I know that most people don't really understand me, and small as it is, this is my way of trying to change that.  There are still those times when I don't speak, and other times when even if I tried I couldn't verbalize the things I'd want people to know, so in a way this and these words are still my only outlet.  It's still the best way I know for me to try to build that understanding, for me to talk about and share all the pieces of myself, random or fragile, without fear.  I suppose it's my way of trying to tear down the walls and still feel safe.  So I thank you for always listening, even if sometimes you didn't understand the hows and the whys of these random musings, sometimes I didn't understand myself, but I suppose in the end that's the point.  Or as much of point as one can expect at 4 am.
October 6, 2003              Like A Lifetime Supply of Afterschool Specials                                               
                                                                                       
Children aren't the only ones entitled to unabashed joy; they're not the only ones who deserve to laugh

If you take a deep breath and close your eyes, it's amazing what you can see

The funny thing about peace is it's so quiet you don't hear it coming   

Thinking about things that have yet to happen increases the likelihood that they never will

There's no shame in fragility, only a suprising strength

The only thing worry accomplishes is highly developed fear

Once you know and accept yourself all life's hurt and drama can't shake it

Until you learn to trust yourself it'll never be easy to have faith in others

Sometimes you don't see the corner until after you've turned it

Life's too short to be too afraid to live it







Sometimes all you need is to remember the things you already know.
October 6, 2003
                
              " I took the email to the market and I bought it some kind of fish sauce"

Weird that I never get regular songs stuck in my head.
October 9, 2003                    "If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies."
                                                                                    --Unknown

     It's one-thirty, I'm exhausted but unfortunately hopped up on thai iced tea and spicy chicken, which undoubtedly means two things:  time for musings, and I'll need to pee at least twice before I'm done writing....

       Tonight I had my Hollywood history class, and all I can say is...disappointing.  For the last three years I've been waiting for this class, I've been biding my time, hoping that they'd eventually offer it, and now, sadly....not so much.  Way back when, when I decided that I wanted to study film in college, I always knew my focus would be critical studies and history, and my favorite classes have been the ones with a focus in film history. So, I was so stoked when I saw Hollywood History offered for the fall, I figured after all this time I would finally get to have a class on all the things I find really interesting; classic hollywood, the star system, the studio system, all the behind the scenes stuff that shapes the images on the screen... you know, the good stuff.  But sadly, it is not to be, it's a history class cross-listed film studies, so the material is extremely basic, stuff I learned as a freshman or from watching AMC and TCM growing up.  The class is three hours long, but try as I might I can't get anything out of it, just when I think he's going to go into depth or background, he changes subjects or shows a clip...gloss, gloss, gloss, but no substance.  It's ridiculous that it's an upper-division film class and last week he talked about what a dissolve is, that's like intro to film, day 1.  You just shouldn't cross list upper-division classes, it's bad news.  I just wish it were a film class, taught by a film professor, where we would discuss in depth the history of hollywood, not some skethy superficial timeline of Hollywood produced films.  Bah, it's disappointing, but I'm happy for the people in there that find somethings engrossing or interesting, all those non-film majors who get something out of it, that's good.  I just wish it were a class where people knew who Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were, or Edith Head, Max Factor, David O. Selznick, Howard Hawks, Darryl Zanuck, and so on.  I had such high hopes for this class too, I was hoping it would revitalize my faith in my choice of study and make the post-graduate world slightly less worrisome.  But alas, no, the future is still that thing I don't want to think about and the NYU graduate program in film restoration is still more money than I'll see in a lifetime, and that time on the other side of June will go on being dark oblivion.  Such is life.  It's disappointing, not to mention freezing in there, but I'll get over it, just long as he doesn't explain what genre is again.   
                                                               ****************

      The other day I came across a cloud of butterflies flying around some bushes.  There were so many of them, and as I stood watching them flutter around me, I remembered what my grandma said about butterflies.  She used to say that they were angels, that seeing them meant good luck and that someone was watching over you.  And I can't help but believe that she was right.  Standing amongst them even just for a moment I felt the most incredible peace and couldn't help but smile for no reason in particular.  That's the way I feel a lot now, happy, glad for no reason in particular, and it feels good, it's been a long time.  Grandma was right, they are good sign, and I know she's watching over me.  I know it everytime I hear her favorite song; it makes me think that it's my time, time for me to sing "do wa ditty ditty dum ditty do".  And I think, I'm ready.
October 12, 2003                                          Apple Trees

     Since the last entry I've been thinking a lot about my Grandmother.  She always stands out in the memories of my childhood as a sort of grand dame, Auntie Mame type figure.  She was always larger than life to me.  With an affinity for bright, flashy clothes, she loved anything that sparkled and shined, anything that was what she'd call "gaudy", anything that would go with all her beloved "baubles".  She wasn't like what I thought most other people's grandmothers were like.  She smoked like a chimney, drank coffee at all hours of the day, she had her opinions and didn't have any problem saying just what she thought, she was beutiful.  She was so strong and audacious, and timid as I was, there times when I was small that I was the slightest bit afraid of her.  When I was really young and beginning to form my first views of the world, I used to think how strange it was that my mother was her daughter.  She was so free spirited, my mother was so stable and reliable.  Grandma was so audacious, Mom always seemed more straightlaced.  As I got older, I began to see them more for the women they were, than from that upward looking child's view.  They were different, but they were the same.  More and more I saw that their lives were different, they had different responsibilies, they held different things to be important, but each was vivacious and spirited in her own way, each had the ability to light up the world.  Now that I'm older, even though my grandma is gone, I'm able to understand more about the person she was, who my mother is, and in turn the person I am.  It's odd how genetics works, three different people, yet in some ways the same.  There were times growing up when I felt the odd one out, that I wasn't like those two women, they were too strong, too colorful, they were so much more than I was.  But there comes a time when you realize that different isn't one way or the other; good, bad, it's just different, and sometimes just different in the same ways.  After my Grandmother passed away I made some promises to myself, I wanted to make changes, but mostly I just grew up.  After awhile I began to see that while I was different, like them, it was just different in the same ways.  I finally see that I too am strong, beautiful, audacious in my own quiet way.  And although from time to time life has a way of shattering our views and shaking our sense of self worth, they always come back, usually stronger and more resilient than before.  My grandma and mom always said "it's painful to be beautiful", usually as they dragged a brush through my unruly curls.  But I realize now that they were talking about life, sometimes it hurts; hurts so much that you cry or just want to give up altogether, but eventually you come out the other side stronger, beautiful, audacious enough to keep on going.  They're wise, and I suppose someday I'll be too.  Someday I'll be a lot of things, for now I'll just be me, and I know, one of these days, like them, I'll have the ability to light up the world.
October 20, 2003                                   The Latest Man In My Life

      I may have mentioned, that it's very quiet around here.  For a long time it was just what I needed, a little peace, a little quiet, and a little time to figure out just what to do with it.  Lately though, the quiet's been like having a second person in the room, a bit unnerving.  Now that things have settled back into the well worn routine of meetings, programs, occasional classes, and never studying, the quiet times, few as they may be at times, have become a little sad and lonely.  So to combat the isolation and quiet of AV, I thought I'd buy a friend.  Now, I was thinking puppy, but considering housing's policies about such things, and my own secret theory, I decided to go another way.  His name's Finn, he's a redhead.
      Yeah, so the problem: too much quiet.  The solution: a fish, naturally.  See the logic in that?  See how that works?  Excellent.
      Um...yeah, so after a long car ride, no doubt with lots of traumatic sloshing, Finn has taken up residence on my desk.  It hasn't been that long, but he's already proving to be an interesting roommate/distraction.  He's an odd little beast, anxiously jutting here and there and back again trying to figure things out.  I think the transfer from tank to bowl is freaking him out, he makes furiously slow trips around the bowl gazing out at what must be a disturbingly distorted world; poor little guy's living a perpetual hangover.  From time to time I find him looking at me, his jaw angrily flapping, and his head rapidly swaying from side to side in a seriously agitated manner, if I didn't know better, I'd swear he was yelling at me... 
      My fish it seems is obviously confused, fidgety, strongwilled with a little bit of a temper, clearly the anxious sort, a tad nuerotic, and endlessly perplexing.  I have a sneaking suspicion that Finn and I will get along very well indeed.
October 25, 2003
        
       There's nothing like jazz.  The mournful wail of the saxophone, the life and spirit of blasts from the trumpet, and the soft, sentimental tinkle of the piano keys, there's something about it that takes you to another place and time.  On a day like today when the haze in the sky sends the sunlight slowly tumbling through the window in warm and lazy shafts of amber, there's nothing like the sentiment and soul of jazz.  So much emotion, the longing, the sweet sorrow, the jubilence and joy, it penetrates the soul in a way that makes you wonder if it had been there all the while, brought to life by the slow and subtle movement of the music through your heart.  When I was a little girl I used to dance in the kitchen with my Grandpa, waltz, two-step, fox trot, never knowing the steps but just following along as best I could with his long steps, it didn't matter because the music longed for the dance.  Even now, there's something about this music that makes me want to throw on a swishy skirt, grab the first man I see, hold him tight, and slow dance the night away with the sounds of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday floating through the air.  The music still longs for the dance.
October 30, 2003                            Sometimes I Kick Trees: The Sequel

    Siran says I need to update, and since she takes such good care of friend Ray, who am I to say no?   Being that my life is uneventful, and I don't have too much to say about her preferred topic, we'll make this entry all about me...shocking!

   It's no great secret that I'm a bit on the conflicted, confusing side, and since I do spend a lot of time on my own, just me and the fish, I've had a lot of time to think about things like that.  So for this entry, another list of all the odd, quirky, sometimes contradictory things about me.....

  *I took Home Ec twice in middle school, it never really took.
  *My optometrist told me I had the biggest pupils she'd ever seen, and she's an optometrist.
  *I'm always ten feet from the loop.
  *I'm tough on the outside, fragile on the inside.
  *I'm right-handed, but I always want to go left.  Going right always seems like going backward, I'm telling you it's  anti-productive.
  *I think I was supposed to be a twin, which I find kinda cool despite the fact that Moto says twins are cliche.
  *I drive in the center lane because it has options.
  *I'm a jeans and t-shirt kinda girl who sometimes secretly wants to be a frilly dress kinda girl.
  *I work in a people oriented field, but I'm not so comfortable around people.
  *I always wanted a sister, but I'm glad I don't have one.  I'm pretty well convinced people would say she's the pretty one.
  *I'm a realist who believes and hopes for the impossible.
  *Don't say I look sad, that makes me sad.
  *Everytime I watch "Office Space", I have the strangest desire to follow it up with an episode of "The Wonder Years".
  *I never used to swear, yet I've been know to scream profanities off the Arts bridge in the middle of the night.
  *I never know how or what to say when things need to be said, but I always manage to say something at the wrong time.
  *My favorite place in the world is a movie theather, I haven't been in ages.
  *I love the beach but not during the day.
  *I come from a town where juvenile offenders are sometimes let off with a stern talking to and an essay, myself included.
  *I once told Cookie that I only need two things to be happy.  I already have one of them, a home entertainment system.
  *I like to watch people, but I hate being the center of attention.
  *When I was in kindergarten I wanted to grow up to be a waitress, ironically enough with my humanites degree it may just happen.  Who says dreams don't come true?
  *I believe you make your own destiny, with the things that fate provides.
  *I'm a fan of control and stabilty, but I'm learning that it's good to be less than responsible now and then.
  *Days go by, life changes, but I still say:
                      Cherish the people in your life, the greatest gift you can receive is the love of others;         
                       whoever loves you is truly your family.  Don't hang your hope and faith on those that
                       don't care about you, it will only make this world harder to survive.  Look with your
                      eyes as much as with your heart, know when to open a door, and when to say goodbye.
                      And know that sometimes even goodbye isn't the end.  Live your life for you alone,
                      everyone else is just along for the ride or there to watch the parade.  Just give them a
                      smile and wave now and then.  And when life get you down, it's ok to kick trees.  I do.



   Hope that satisfies Siran's boredom.  If not, oh well, it satisfied mine :).

November 2, 2003

      Feeling like death on a stick, wanting to do the only thing I can't.  No sleep until this ludicrous group midterm stuff gets finalized, so just waiting to get some info on that...which unfortunately seems like it'll take all night.

   So in the interest of sating my boredom and appeasing one of my CPs (Yes, Danny, I'm finally putting you on the website), here's a little info on what it is I do over here in AV aside from sucking at foosball and spending my office hours flipping through magazines or looking into buying a buffalo for Chinako...

  So basically I supervise these guys, though most the time I'm pretty sure they're just putting up with me for the extra $250 each month.....
So this is them, AV's Community Programmers....
































First there's Danny, who harasses me about putting him on my website and the way I drive, is very protective of his skateboard, and is learning all sorts of colorful phrases from his Italian roommate and vice versa (probably more in the direction of vice versa)....

then there's me, the SPC.  This picture was taken in the middle of welcome week, which means I probably hadn't slept in three weeks...good look for me...

then Cyndee... who comandeers the radio with country music, always has smiles and hugs for everyone, and drags me out to Huntington for a 3 hour one on one...

Then Peter the Anteater, whose name ironically was Peter...but he's not my problem....

Next is Kevin who enjoys some pretty interesting extra-cirricular activities, tries to get us to change banks with the enticement of overdraft protection, and likes to threaten that he's going to take over for me...go for it, less work for me.

Then there's Doug, the young one.  Doug writes me epic weekly reports, regales us all with crazy and entertaining stories, and has an uncanny knack for pole dancing.

Finally Stephanie who is always ready with frank suggestions and good ideas, keeps us calm and stable, and has a flower for her hair that matches every outfit.


   

Yeah, so these are my CPs....who leave notes on my car written on parking ticket envelopes to freak me out.... good times.
November 13, 2003                       Straight from a Vermont Maple

      When it comes to romantic comedies, I have two favorite quotes; the first comes from "When Harry Met Sally" and it always makes me wonder, but it's the second, from "Sleepless in Seattle", that has to do with this musing.  Last weekend, I went and saw "Love, Actually" with my mom, mainly to spend sometime with her, but also mainly because I'm a hopelessly incurable romantic in need of a fix every now and again.  This isn't meant to be a movie review, so if it gets to be, let me know and I'll turn this car around.  But, as for the movie, I'll say this, I laughed, I even cried a little, I had that unmistakeable fuzzy, warm feeling, and as the ads promised, I left the theater smiling, but not the kind of smile that starts from the heart.  The thing that bothered me about the film, is that it was too easy.  It felt like cheating, like flipping through a romance novel just to get to the juicy parts.  With the montage and vignette style there wasn't time for anything more than a superficial investment, I didn't feel like I earned the right to take a bit of the onscreen emotion and love home with me.  The thing about romantic comedies, cliched and predictable as any genre, maybe more, but there's something about it that stays with you.  A thriller can challenge you, a drama can add a touch of fear or saddness to your heart, but what a romantic comedy can do to your heart is far more involved.  If you're a complete sap like me, and I hope you are, then it feels as though you give your heart over for two hours and when you get it back, it's bigger, with all the emotions of the film wrapped up in little sample size packs for later.  But I think it's safe to say that all the schmaltz and cheese aside, what films of this genre, and films in general for that matter, really traffic in is hope.  Everyone needs hope, it's an eternal constant, like the smell after the rain.  Now, I may be an idealist masquerading as a realist, but I know that there are days when you can't find optimism in a field full of rainbows, but even in those moments, there's always hope.  Talk of hope always reminds me of a quote from "The Shawshank Redemption"; "Hope is a good thing, and no good thing ever dies."  And it's true, you can't kill it, even if you want to, even if you try, because even if you've given up hope, somebody else hasn't.  And I guess that's what life's all about, filling in the holes with hope, and sharing with others when yours runs low.  Everyone needs hope, and everyone gets it from a different place, but having it is all the matters, whether it comes easily or not.  And that's what those movies are about, that hope, and that feeling that makes you smile with your heart, and it's hard not to fall in love with the idea and the hope, no matter what the reality is.  Which brings me to the aforementioned quote from "Sleepless in Seattle", "That's your problem! You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie."   But then who doesn't?  Who wouldn't take a guaranteed happily ever after?  But like "Love, Actually", even that seems too easy, all the reward with none of the work, it's tempting, but I think I'll stick with hope.
November 15, 2003                               Half as many pairs of shoes
       Back in the day, when I saw "Ace Ventura" for the first time, I left the theater thinking about the climax/unveiling scene, and said, much louder than necessary and to no one in particular, "How do they do that?!", and knowing me, there probably were hand gestures involved, as well as that all too recognizeable confused look on my face.  Whether I was asking about tucking it back, or some kind of surgical procedure, who remembers?  But what I do remember is the look of shock and embarassment on my best friend Allison's face as people turned to look at us, just before she started laughing at me.  That, and it becoming a moment that I probably haven't lived down in the ten years we've been friends.  But what's the point, you ask?  Good question, I had one, I think it had something to do with the man with the shopping cart full of Sketchers...  Ok, so thinking about that moment, I realize that it was the first time I came to see certain aspects of my personality, just at that moment when they all came crashing together (as the aspects of my personality tend to do with shocking regularity, but that's a whole 'nother can of fish bait).  Now, at that moment I realized three things. One, I'm endlessly naive. Two, I have a thing about questions, which is probably why around the time I was eight or so my parents bought a set of encyclopedias and their standard answer became "go look it up."  I'd rather have certainty and resolution than always wonder or doubt, and as time has shown, I can be curious and inquisitive to a fault.  And three, for someone who doesn't really talk much, I have an uncanny knack for saying the wrong thing.  The combination of those three, on that day so long ago, in a decade called the 90s, outside of a theater called Temeku, apparently led to "the bite."  So for those moments, often as they can be, when the filter fails, there's the last line of defense...the bite, but not just any bite.  I know that when I'm concentrating hard, or at least trying hard to concentrate, I bite either the right side of my bottom lip or my tongue, but this is different.  It wasn't until I was about to ask the man with the shopping cart full of reduced price Sketchers and Adidas what he was going to do with them all, probably in a way that would have indicated that I was hoping that the answer would have something to do with some kind of athletic shoe smuggling ring, or at the very least the black market, that I realized I was biting the left half of my bottom lip, just managing to keep it in.  I never noticed it before, but it's true, when I have something I'm trying to say (and usually trying not to say), or just trying to keep something in, I chew on the left side of my bottom lip, and I tend to get all shifty eyed and fidgety, shifting in my seat or playing with my watch.  I guess those were the tells Ray was saying I have, and I suppose the bite could be considered a contributing factor of the years of silence, and it probably saved me from having the constant taste of shoe leather in my mouth.  But I still can't help but wonder about all those shoes.  I bet they're for orphans, homeless orphans...ooh, homeless, one-legged orphans.  That's half as many pairs of shoes.  Dude, that's so it.
November 24, 2003                                  Fourth and inches
      Earlier, I caught the last part of Monday Night Football, which is a sure sign that we're on a collision course with the holiday season.  After Thursday, the christmas music that has been inescapable since Halloween will finally be close to appropriate, so I suppose it's time to reflect on the holiday's past and those yet to be.  On my Clark side, I have a large, close knit extended family.  My dad's the youngest of five, and I'm nearly at the bottom of thirteen cousins, most of whom are married with at least two kids, so last year we had about 40 people at our house for the annual Clark Family Christmas Party.  When I was really young, some of my aunts and uncles and cousins lived in Hemet and we had Sunday dinners, but since those days, and aside from the weddings, the graduations, the big birthdays, Christmas is the only time we're all together (with the exception of my black sheep uncle who lives in a cabin in the hills of Arizona, and I've only seen maybe four times in my life).  So as long as I can remember, there's been the big Christmas party, at a different house every year but somethings always remain the same.  Everyone arrives a little late, there's always way too much food, but always pecan pie, there's no Clark Christmas without pecan pie.  Then there's the gift exchange, the most important rite of passage in our family.  You forgo a bunch of gifts from the aunts and uncles to get just one, but you get to be an adult, though some of us got bumped up to the big leagues when we were still sitting at the kiddie table because everyone else was so much older...poor Austin.  Then there were Aunt Sandy's Christmas pageants, when she'd round up all the youngest ones to put on some sort of Christmas related play to keep everyone entertained after the football and dinner and before gifts, and so my Grandma would feel better about us being mostly heathens otherwise.  We could fill an album with the pictures of years of pageants, all of us shrouded in sheets and towels, the youngest swaddled up as the baby Jesus...again, poor Austin.  Ah, family time can be humiliating at times.  These days my oldest cousin is forty, Austin's too big to be the baby Jesus, and every year brings some new change.  Each year, someone's gotten married, someone (or three) is pregnant, my uncle emerges from the wilderness for a few days, or there's a new baby (or three).  No more christmas plays, but a whole new generations of cousins, twelve new little Clarks getting presents from santa, with the oldest ones trying to figure out which one of their grandpas is missing.  So another Clark Christmas is on the horizon, no pregnancies or weddings this year to shift the focus from those of us with unsettled lives, my older unmarried cousins, and me still staring into the all too uncertain future on the other side of June.  Lucky Austin, the one time it proves beneficial to be the youngest.  But I'm not worried, after all most of them still think of me as sixteen.  Plus, it's easy to get lost in a big family, especially if you try.  But as for the holiday season, I have one last thing to say, if it's fourth and inches, I say go big or go home, pass the damn ball!  Take the chance.  That is all, as you were.
Barely November 26, 2003
     While I'm still managing to keep my eyes open after a long day, here's the concert recap in a nutshell....

~ I only got mildly lost on the way there (and the way back).  An improvement, who says I shouldn't be allowed out alone at night?
~  Per usual, I managed to attract the drunkest couple in the house.  In the course of three hours, they were on all sides of me, leaned against me to make out, and at one point, one of them was playing with my hair.  But this time I got away without being spilled on, so you know, that's a plus. 
Note to Guys: When your girlfriend is barely standing on her own and about to pass out, buying her another drink is not the correct answer.
~ Sadly, Moto was right....Gavin Degraw, way cheesy, but I still love "Follow Through"
~ The music was really good.  Big City Rock, very cool...I mean, he had a keytar.  And Maroon 5, very beyond awesome.
~ Finally, and most importantly.....Drummers are Hot!  No, seriously, damn hot!

                                                    Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!
November 30, 2003                 Band-aids and Bullies: A Holiday Tale
      Thanksgiving this year was small and quiet, the first holiday I can remember when it was just the six of us, my parents, my three brothers and me.  A little odd, but nice just the same.  We watched the cowboys get trounced, which made my brothers sad as they reminisced about the time when being a cowboys fan didn't involve defending their admiration.  At halftime we ate, then gave up the televised football and went to throw the ball around in the street, and here begins our musing.  There was once a time, when I wasn't the smallest, when I could easily hold my own against my brothers.  At least against the other two, Zach has always been bigger than me, and when I was little and he would sit on me and threaten to play connect the dots with my freckles, or tickle the bottom of my feet until I almost peed myself, there was really nothing I could do, especially if there wasn't a parent within screaming distance.  The younger two though, I used to be able to take them, but when I washing the gravel out of my bloody elbow, I realized, maybe not so much anymore.  Growing up, it was easier to get around Zach, to push his buttons and get away with it, because he was so much older and my parent's expected him to be more responsible, but most the time I got what I deserved.  Ryan was always trickier, you could only push him so far before it stopped being funny.  We would roughhouse when we were young, and when Ryan started to get mad he'd start ramming us with his head, he called it the bull, which was a sign that it was time to stop, because when the bull came out, things got broken, like the kitchen counter, the kitchen windows, or my bottom tooth.  Austin's probably the best natured out of all of us, but he has a temper just like the rest, and Ryan has always been an expert at instigating fights with him.  I suppose Austin's tough because of Ryan, Ryan and I are tough because of Zach, and Zach's tough because he was the oldest.  We don't fight anymore, not really, and now if there's blood it's accidental.  Actually, now that my brothers are all taller than my dad, he's their new target, and sometimes mom too, my brothers like to throw them in the pool.  Which is always funny as long as I don't get thrown in too.  But this entry has gone beyond having anything to do with Thanksgiving, aside from explaining why I'm all brusied and banged up after a weekend at home.  The answer is of course, my brothers are bullies.  Screw that, I know I can still take them, if they all didn't gang up on me.  Or if I were six inches taller.  And if they were six inches shorter.  And blindfolded, with one hand tied behind their backs.  Damn it sucks to be the little one.
December 10, 2003

    So, it's finals week, so a complete pointless entry is in order....

   But unfortunately I wasted all my good bullshit on that paper I wrote for Monday, so just keep looking at this picture.  Maybe it's just me, but how phallic is this picture?....very interesting...very interesting indeed.
December 12ish, 2003                         And so it goes....

   Now that things have wound down, finals are done, and there are no more meetings or programs, I'm finding that I have nothing to do.  I mean, it's only been ten hours, but I think I've forgotten how to sustain prolonged periods of nothingness.  Who am I?  What's happened to me?  I used to be so good at the nothingness, but now, I feel like I should be doing something, accomplishing things...dude, when did I become a grown-up?  Ok, the fact that I said "dude" just then is comforting, maybe I'm not completely grown up, but damn near close...maybe just a little.  But my impending middle-age is not the point I was getting at...  So, I'm sitting here bundled up against the subzero temperatures of my room watching my snowy TV, having given up on spider solitaire, the napping, re-watching of dvds for the millionth time, and any human interaction for the night or next few days or so on.  But again, still not the point, but closer this time...  My TV intake over the last week or so has been on the rise, anything to put off studying, and you can only vacuum so many times.  Anyway, with all this TV watching I've noticed something that's made me a bit peeved...in fact it's slowly replacing the Hummer as the most peeving thing of all...ok, we are slowly progressing toward the point, take heart, we'll get there.  So, it's the holiday season, a time for gift giving and love and all, which I'm behind by the way, the thing that I'm not so much the fan of are all those diamond and jewelry commericials.  Not to be all angry feminist and everything, but could those commericals be more offensive to women (ok, I'm sure they could be, but bear with me here).  Those commercials depict women as incredibly shallow, which I find really insulting.  Take for example, the commercial with the couple in the piazza, the man professes his love at the top of his lungs, the woman is completely embarrassed by him, if not the slightest bit miffed, wondering what the hell she's doing with him.  But then he breaks out the diamond, and everything changes, oh she loooves him them.  And they're all pretty much like that, the ring or necklace or diamond solitaire earrings as the ultimate goal, the righter of all wrong, the ultimate symbol of love, and yet there's really no sentiment behind it.  I mean, yeah it's sparkly and extravagant and special, but most of that special seems to be wrapped up in the fact that it's sparkly and extravagant.  So the commercials say "tell her how much you love her with diamonds", but don't you think if you loved her she would already know, and  if she doesn't, then maybe you have bigger problems than which cut and carat.  At the very least if she doesn't know, or if you just wanted to tell her you loved her, call me crazy, but maybe you could just tell her.  I mean if you have to rely on flashy pieces of jewelry to express your love, maybe there isn't anything all that special to express, I don't know, maybe I'm a bit jaded, but it just seems that they're buying the love, or at least the expression of it.  I'm probably just being sentimental and sappy, but love should be anything but conventional, and diamonds seem to be just that.  I mean, I know it can be hard to express things sometimes, but wouldn't you rather give or receive something more personal and sentimental than something advertised on TV that thousands of other people are using to express their love?  Wouldn't you like to believe that your love is special, one in a million, that it's something just the two of you share, not something you share with thousands of other couples?  Bah, I'm just ranting now, I should go back to huddling under the blankets and watching TV, and forget about all this consumer madness...ooh look, flip phones, sweet.
December 12, 2003                                   The List...

   Now that I've finished what will probably be my last film class, I have a confession to make that will no doubt bring shame to the House of Kristen, and cause the film department to deny my application for graduation.  So I've seen a lot of movies in my life, and a lot more in the last few years, but there are some that I've still never seen.  Some that I was always too young to see, or too scared to see, or too busy to see, whatever the reason, on this list are movies that every self-repecting film student, and person, should see...and I haven't...

It Happened One Night (1934)
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
From Here to Eternity (1953)
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
Ben-Hur (1959)
Psycho (1960)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (1966)
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) --> or any Kubrick film for that matter
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Easy Rider (1969)
The Godfather Movies (1972, 1974, 1990) 
The Exorcist (1973)
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
Jaws (1975)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Animal House (1978)
Halloween (1978)--> or pretty much any horror movie
Raging Bull (1980)
Scarface (1983)
The Terminator Series (1984, 1991, 2003)
Platoon (1986)
Full Metal Jacket (1987)
Resevoir Dogs (1992)
Schindler's List (1993)
(in order of distribution year)

   Now before you judge me too too much, I have seen bits and pieces of most of these film, just not the whole thing.  But aside from that, judge me, because it's disgraceful, I really need to watch these movies...there is much shame.
December 15, 2003                             Really, it's just a haircut

      Took a walk down memory lane today...nice, but kinda eerie and sad too.  Ray and I went back to Hemet to catch up with our friend Andrew and visit some of our teachers from high school.  Our school always resembled a prison from the outside, beige stucco and cinder block walls, not to mention the decorative and oh so functional razor wire.  It may have looked like a prison, but it never really felt like one, until now.  They made a bunch of structural changes over the summer, bringing the old building up to code, and managed to suck the character out of the place.  Now it looks like an institution inside and out, they knocked out walls, built new ones, and painted everything a blinding white.  It was heartbreaking and eerie, it felt like an asylum.  It makes me sad just to think about it.  Still, sadder than the structural changes is the fact that a bunch of the great ones had retired, leaving just one to go on alone.  Sad to see new people teaching in the room where we learned US history, sad to see The Great One lamenting the loss of his best friends, colleagues he taught with for over thirty years.  Sad stuff.  Stranger still is how much everyone said I've changed.  I don't think I've changed that much, my hair is different, I talk more, maybe I smile more, but I still feel pretty much the same.  I'm the same person, but maybe there is a difference, maybe now I'm less afraid to show who that person is.  I don't know if that's a change or some amazing transformation, so much as just growing up.  Life and the passage of time are crazy, but I'm finding that it's best not to think too much about the way things change, especially if one of those things is me.  'Cause you know, I am pretty amazing, I should probably just accept that.  Haha...yeah right...I'm such a dork.  See, some things don't change.
December 20, 2003                               The Feeling

       Tomorrow I pack it in and finally head for home.  I probably should have gone today, or even yesterday, but I've had the strangest feeling that I should stay a little longer.  It's odd, but I've felt like something's been keeping me here, and there's a strange finality in the sensation, that if I left whatever it was would be lost forever.  So I've been here with this odd sense of waiting and anticipation for whatever has been keeping me to show its face, but nothing.    It's probably just my imagination, or the final shreds of my sanity slipping away, it's hard to explain, but I felt it.  Not that there needs to be any more layers to my eccentricity, but I believe in stuff like that, intuition and feelings, I always have.  It plays havoc with my sense of logic and rationality, but there are times that however illogical it may seem, you just have to put your faith in the feeling and see it through.  So here I sit in a nearly empty building, waiting for the phone to ring or a knock at the door, anything to explain this feeling, to justify this faith in intuition and the reasoning power of my heart versus my head.  But as the hours tick by resolution seems less likely, and when I wake up tomorrow I'll pack and go, and as I sit in traffic on the 91 I'll probably wonder about the feeling.  Wonder if once again I put my faith in something that was never there to begin with, wonder if I should stop believing in things like that--feelings, intuition, fate.  But I don't think so, I don't think I ever want to not believe in those things, I hope there will always be a part of me that believes in fate and feelings, dreams and magic, a part of me that never stops wishing on the night sky.  Maybe it's childish, but I don't care.  Just because you grow up doesn't mean you have to stop believing, it doesn't mean you have to change the workings of your heart.  So I heed this feeling, like I have the others, and put my faith in the idea that maybe this time that faith will see me through to the other things I believe in, and spend my days looking for--understanding, assurance, certainty.  If not that this time, then the next or someday, I have a feeling it'll happen one of these days.  I've put my faith in the that feeling, and I plan to see it through, no matter how long I have to wait.
December 22, 2003                          Home for the Holidays

    Being back in Hemet is always a bit surreal.  These days every time I drive down the mainstreet of town something's different.  I've gotten used to the drive thru Starbucks and the dairy queen, now all of a sudden there's a Chuck E. Cheese.  Weird Stuff, but I think I should check it out, it's been a while since I played the skee ball, and since I've got a four year old niece, I can use her as an excuse to go play games and watch the auto-animatronics :)... And you never know, she'd probably like it too, skee ball is fun.  Living with my brothers again is always a strange transition too.  Three years away and some thing's always stay with you...like the things you learn growing up sharing a bathroom with three brothers, things like shower quick, shower early, or there's no chance in hell that you'll shower at all, that and even sound asleep to check if the seat's up.  Other things you think would be more useful to remember though, like the roughhousing, for some reason they really enjoy picking on me, and for some reason I always forget that.  You think the fact that I still have the bruises from Thanksgiving would help with that, but...um, no.  So aside from stuff like that, it's strange because they're all so old now.  My oldest brother has two little girls, my younger brother is getting ready to move up north, and my youngest brother is almost 15...when did that happen?  So weird passages of time stuff...Austin's in high school, on the phone with girls all the time, and between you and me, he's got more game than any of his older siblings, probably combined.  But he tells me I'm still his number one girl...so from that you can tell how good he is with the ladies...sweet talker.  Being home, there's always the stories to catch up on, my wacky parents deciding to do this or that, the cute things my nieces have said or done... Not to be all gushing aunt, but one day my younger brother was babysitting the girls and they called me, later when my older brother came to get them, my niece refused to leave.  She told him she couldn't go, not til I came home, "I can't leave, auntie's coming, I talked to her, I can't go auntie's coming home"...makes my heart smile, I miss my girls.  Things like that make it good to be home.  That and the fact there's no work or class, a big screen TV, and lots of sleeping.

                                                      Happy Holidays Everyone!!




call me, Hemet gets boring.....  :)
January 12, 2003                          Look at me, I'm growing

    Here's the deal, if you know me even a little you know that I like to be self-sufficient and have the knowledge that I can take care of myself.  So knowing that, I hope you realize that although what I'm about to ask may seem frivolous and inconsequential, it comes from a serious place.  So here it is...
    There's something I've known for a long time, but recent conversations have brought it to the foreground, and I think I'm ready to make the change.  So, it's no secret that I'm not too great at spontaniety, I have a close personal relationship with a little thing called control, I can be a smidge uptight and overly structured, and I really don't have a whole lot of fun.  Most of that has to do with the fact that I'm a chicken, I'm  scared, but you know, I've pretty much been afraid my whole life and I'm really sick of it.  I have six months left of college, and I want to have some fun.  I've been too scared and too structured for far too long, and before I have to become a grown up forever, I want to live a little.  I want to have more random adventures, I want to get in the car and not know where I'm going and when I'll be back.  I don't always want to be the reliable one, the responsible one, sometimes I want to be unpredictable.  I don't want to always be afraid of the unknown, I'm tired of always making the safe choices, always choosing the more familiar road.
    And knowing me, knowing how set I am in my ways, and how I have a very wide stubborn streak, I know that this isn't something that I can do by myself.  So I'm reaching out to you, help me.  Help me be more spontaneous.  Hold my hand, push me, challenge me, fight with me if you have to, but if you can, help me not to be afraid to live my own life.   My youth is passing by day by day, and at the end I want to have more than a few memories and handful of regret.  It may be late in the game, but it's not too late.  So will you help me?
January 30ish, 2003                     Pointless...yet worthwhile

   After falling asleep on the couch bed watching Conan and thinking about an Alejandro's carne asade burrito, I had the following thought...
    So I was thinking about this whole crazy celebrity thing, how people are so obsessed with famous people and celebrities are so obsessive about their privacy, etc.  When it struck me that the best way to end media saturation is to seek it out obsessively until people get damn sick of you.   Take for instance, Ben and Jen, or Britney Spears, or the trainwreck that is Paris Hilton.  Sure, garnering public distaste in a bid for privacy will probably affect their careers, or what's left, but at least they'll have their privacy, and we can hear about actual news on the news.  If it were me, knowing how I am about attention and things like that, I would forgoe the traditional blackend windowed and totally conspicuous stretch limo, and adapt a different approach.  I would regularly ride around in a special car, ala the Pope Mobile, and drive the streets waving to the little people until it became inconsequential to them.  By then people wouldn't want to see me anymore, of course then my career would be over, but by that point I would have made an obscene amount of money, so it wouldn't matter if I  was ever heard from again.  I would be happy, the people would be happy, it's a win-win.  Hollywood is cool.
February 6, 2004                        Something about a tiger cub

   Whether it's the thought of the impending future or the death of someone we knew in those long past days when the future still seemed a lifetime away, I've been thinking a lot recently about high school, college, and what lays beyond that Saturday in June.  As my old friend Dug used to say, "no good can come of that", perhaps not, but this entry is in no way meant to be one of those long drawn out sob stories that came to epitomize this page a year ago...but if you are still wary of the introspection, I understand and you have my full permission to stop reading now....
     After learning of Jason's death and convening online with the old Hemet group, Ray and I got together to talk things out.  Over the past four years it's become the standard, talk things out in the bad times, the confusing times, and the times in between; he's my voice of Hemet reason.  But sometimes there's no reason or sense to be found, there's only what is and what was.  And as I sat with Ray flipping through our high school yearbook and his pictures of grad night and graduation, the realization of exactly how much has changed between then and now finally hit me.  Looking at the pictures of the old crew and thinking about how much we've fallen out of contact, it's hard to ignore the fact that we don't know each other anymore.  Now they live in my memory as the people they were, eighteen and on the verge of making their escape from our small town, but they've all undoubtedly changed, and sadly I'll probably have little opportunity to get to know the people they've become.  Seeing Ray on a regular basis, I've seen how much he's changed, but I've always felt the same.  My hair is shorter, it's slightly a different color, my braces came off a long time, but I've always felt like I'm the same person I was then.  Looking at the pictures of me from high school, I finally see what Ray's been talking about all this time, I finally recognize just how much I've changed.  I looked at those pictures, and I didn't recognize that girl, she's not me.  It's really strange.  I remember those times and taking those pictures, but in the way you remember a film you watched or a book you read years ago, you remember the story, remember how it felt, but at the same time it doesn't feel real, it doesn't feel like it happened to you.  I remember that girl very well, I vividly remember how it felt to be her, but looking at those pictures, I know that I'm not her anymore.  That was my life, I lived it, but that girl is mostly gone now, who I am today grew out of who she was and her experiences.   And for all the times I still feel awkward, scared, and riddled with self-doubt, basically fourteen, it's comforting to know that I'm not fourteen anymore, I'm not that girl anymore. As odd as it is to think that barely four years out of high school I've become unrecognizeable to myself, I see now just how true it is, just how much I've changed.  I'm a different person now, and whether it's for the better is not for me to say.  But I do know that I'm glad that I've changed, and as much as I'm still confused and uncertain and basically have no idea who I am, I can say without reservation that I'm glad that I'm not that girl anymore, truthfully, it wasn't all that much fun to be her.  I don't wish that that time was different, or that I was different then, there was a purpose, things happened that way for a reason.  It's just nice to finally know that I'm not that girl anymore.  And it makes me wonder if five years from now when I look back on these times if I'll have the same reaction.  If I'll look at the pictures and think about college and feel like it was someone else's life, if I'll look at the pictures and wonder, "who's that girl"?  For what it's worth, I hope I do, I hope the woman I am 5 or 10 or 20 years from now, isn't the woman I am today, because I still feel that I'm still not the person I was meant to be.
   All this talk of change reminds me of a story my mom used to read when I was little, not "The Ugly Duckling"  because change or not, I'm no swan.   I'm talking about "Leo the Late Bloomer", the story of a little tiger cub (though I always thought he was a lion because his name is Leo, but whatever), who couldn't do anything the other kids could do, his father was worried, but his mother had faith that he'd get there in his own time.  Of all the books my parents read to me when I was growing, I always remember this one.  Whenever I hear the words "late bloomer", I always think of Leo.  Thinking now about changing and growing up, I remember Leo, after everything, in the end he blooms.  Me, I'm getting there.

February 10th-ish, 2004                    

     Being as I have little to do and way too much time to do it in, I've been trying to find ways to fill the time and  of course, the obvious answer to this and most of life's questions, is mind numbing amounts of TV.  Which is all well and good aside from the fact that every commercial break there's at the very least one commercial about diamonds and jewelry.  I mean, seriously, when will it end.  Stop the madness!  Ok, so yeah, refer to the pre-Christmas rant on the same subject.  I do have one ammendment to make, though....Frickin' Valentine's Day!!!
February 25, 2004             Being She

      I've been listening to nothing but Maroon 5 for over a week now, and it only gets better.  On the right is the song I find myself listening to on repeat as I waste time between classes sitting on my bench in the park.  What can I say, it speaks to me.  Sometimes it makes me sad, sometimes it makes me smile, it makes think that maybe someday I could be "She".  It would be nice to be "She".  I could get used to that, while still be completely independent of course.












    On a completely unrelated subject, could it rain anymore?  Don't get me wrong, I love the rain, it washes everything clean.  I like to think of it as absolution for the world, but this much rain makes me cringe at the things we must have done to need so much absolution.




                   Maroon 5- She will be loved
Beauty queen of only eighteen
She had some trouble with herself
He was always there to help her
She always belonged to someone else

I drove for miles and miles
And wound up at your door
I've had you so many times but somehow
I want more

I don't mind spending everyday
Out on your corner in the pouring rain
Look for the girl with the broken smile
Ask her if she wants to stay awhile
And she will be loved
She will be loved

Tap on my window knock on my door
I want to make you feel beautiful
I know I tend to get insecure
It doesn't matter anymore

It's not always rainbows and butterflies
It's compromise that moves us along
My heart is full and my door's always open
You can come anytime you want

I don't mind spending everyday
Out on your corner in the pouring rain
Look for the girl with the broken smile
Ask her if she wants to stay awhile
And she will be loved
She will be loved

I know where you hide
Alone in your car
Know all of the things that make you who you are
I know that goodbye means nothing at all
Comes back and begs me to catch her every time she falls
March 13, 2004

      What a crazy, stressful, somewhat worrying week.  I can hardly believe it was only seven days, even with the million and fifty things I had to do, it still felt like an eternity.  Oh well, time will still tell on that, no sense in worrying about uncertainty.  Anyway, stress and worry aside, the AV Semi-formal was last night.  Thankfuly it went off without a hitch, which was quite a relief, and it's always good to see people enjoying themselves, makes it all worthwhile.  My staff did such a great job, I'm so proud of them, months of hard work payed off beautifully.  Nice dinner, good dancing, fun people, good times, and no worrying for me....a perfect evening.  Check out the pics online, keyword: Arroyo. Looks like everyone had a good time.  So yeah, in case you're wondering, those are my breasts, I figured it was high time to let the ladies out for the evening :)......Lisa Bennet would be proud.  Slept til 2:30 today, I haven't slept that long in years, I guess I was tired, it really was a long week.

Oh well, off to have a girls night/sex and the city marathon with the housemates...have a good weekend everyone!
March 14, 2004                                     Sex and the Single Girl
      
     Having spent the better part of the last tweny-four hours in a haze of sex and cosmopolitans (vicariously, of course), I've come to two conclusions....
       First, were there ever any doubt as to my capacity to become completely and utterly addicted to something, it no longer has call to exist.  Thanks to Tessa's complete collection of "Sex and the City", I spent a sizeable portion of my weekend curled up in my comfy chair discovering what people have been talking about for the last six years, and thoroughly enjoying myself.  So much in fact that I've had to cut myself off two seasons in for fear that I may never see another three dimensional person again.  Completely engrossed, completely obsessed, and completely addicted.  This grey area of knowing when you've had too much of a good thing is in large part why I only drink on occasion.
       Secondly, for as much as I was utterly invested in every moment, I still felt a million miles from it.  The distance between those stories and my life is something you'd need a passport to travel, it gives real meaning to the term "escapist entertainment."  I was all ready to chalk it up as an outrageous, if not informative way to pass the time.  Thinking of it as, at the very least, a bit of research in the slim eventuality that my dream of living in New York ever comes to fruition.  Seeing flashes of country mouse/city mouse, realizing it's not a very Mary Tyler Moore kind of world, and feeling more than a little puritanical in comparision, I was watching my last episode before going cold turkey, until at least next weekend when I'll need an inevitable finals distraction, when I felt the only real moment of kinship.  Season Finale, season two, there's a discussion of "The Way We Were" in reference to Big's new relationship; they come to the conclusion that there are two types of women: the simple ones and the Katie Girls, complex in the way of Barbra Streisand's complicated, curly haired character in the film.  If my limited and mostly uneventful experience with guys tells us anything, it's that of the two types I'm most assuredly not the former, not that that's any big surprise.  But what that means, where that leaves me, I have no clue, maybe I need to break out the kleenex and revisit "The Way We Were".  Maybe I need to break out the martini glasses, buy a ridiculously expensive pair of strappy, Italian designer heels, steal back the DVDs from Tessa and go on watching until I find greater insight, or until I burn a hole in my retinas, who knows?  I'll tell you one thing for sure though, that whole cosmopolitan soaked world of sex and nameless, faceless men, might be a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there, not for too long at least  ;)
March 21, 2004    "The one that Elton John wrote for that guy on 'Who's The Boss'"

     Trapped in an elevator at 5:30 AM, after four hours of blackjack and around 15 jack and cokes, there's a lot of interesting things to think about, the most important being the desperate need to pee, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  Just back from a weekend at the river, AKA Laughlin, with two aunts, my grandma, and two of my cousins...lots of gambling, lots of drinking, and lots of trips to the ATM.  Laughlin wasn't that hospitable this time around, the first time I gambled legally there, and I dropped a bundle.  But it wasn't a total bust, there was quite a lot to do and observe.  For example, Laughlin in the winter is all about the grey-haired and those who work the mullet.  More mullets than I've ever seen, mullets as far as the eye could see, mullets 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  Now, theoretically I enjoy the mullet, but the real life mullet is a whole 'nother animal, and just in case you're wondering, there was mullet-overload.  Let's see what else...playing black jack on friday afternoon, the tannest little old man in the world sat next to me.  Dressed in black, with a black and gold vest, wearing a black pork pie hat, and drinking scotch on the rocks, he looked like the last surviving member of the rat pack, like they lost him between Vegas and LA circa 1960 and he's been there ever since.  He was a nice, quiet little old man, with a voice like broken glass and gravel.  At this point I wasn't drinking, so I wasn't talking much, just smiling politely in his direction whenever he'd say anything.  Wrapping up my final hands, he starts rubbing my arm and winking at me.  Right about then seemed like the time to step...apparently old men have the eye for me.   My cousin on the other hand attracted all the middle-agers.  Saturday night/sunday morning, three drinks in, we're playing video poker in the mostly abandoned sports bar, when we start chatting it up with the guy next to us.  Some how we got on the subject of age, and we allowed him to guess our ages.  So he looks at us and says "um, 33", and I'm thinking, "my cousin's 32, good guess", right?  Then he turns more directly to my cousin and says "31."  So ouch...  People always think I'm older than I am, but 33?!?! Good Lord, I know I have some laugh and smile lines, but 33!?!?  In my rapidly progressing state of intoxication, and considering the fact that the guy (37 and balding) had the eye for the cousin, I found it more funny than anything else.  Thankfully I wasn't traumatized enough to need to seek comfort from my old rat packer, or the drunk guy who earlier in the afternoon grabbed me and asked if I knew mouth to mouth.  An hour later, back at the tables, and more jack and cokes later, we were making a new friend.  I don't know if we ever found out his name, I was beating frequent paths to the ladies room, so we just called him "Friend".  So, Friend was a 40-something guy, as was par for the day, who was drawn to us, as many were, but the sound of our synchronous victory clap and the frequent presence of the cocktail waitress at our table.  Friend hung out with us through dealer changes and table changes, wholeheartedly embracing the victory clap.  Eventually one or both of the cousins, as we came to be called, would run out of money, and like family does, we'd toss down some chips for the other when the need would arise.  Friend, whether he was particularly fond of us or the victory clap or just didn't want to play alone, started tossing money in our direction, bailing us out when we were tapped out.  Very nice, and it kept the fun, the clapping, and the general ruckus making going until about dawn.  Thinking about it now, we were whoring our clap and fun-loving selves for more blackjack and more jack and coke.  And that was probably wrong, and I should have been at mass this morning praying for my black soul at what I like to call Church of the Good Sinner, otherwise known as Don's Celebrity Theater which the night before showcased the vocal stylings of Tony Danza.  But by dawn it was clear we wouldn't be making it to one of the two sunday showings of Catholic mass starring Father Fitzpatrick, and we definitely couldn't take/lose anymore of Friend's money.  So we packed it in, headed to the elevators, and promptly became stuck between the 10th and 11th floors.  After a very intense two minutes, of which my most prevalent thoughts were "we're going to die" and "there's no bathroom in here...how come there's no bathroom in here?", we thankfully managed to escape death by overdramatics.  Even with the amorous older men and foray into prostitution, it was a pretty damn good way to spend the weekend with the only down side being that I didn't see Tony Danza.  Though, I suppose it's a good thing, if it would have happened, there's no doubt it would have been at 15 drinks in, at which point I just might have started singing "hold me close, young Tony Danza"...and that's not good for anybody, not even the victory clap could make up for that.
March 22, 2004                    Just so long as there's a home theater system

        Another finals week closer to the inevitable future and more and more I find myself fielding the questions of what lies beyond that day that's now only 3 months away.  Tonight the questions came from Ray, and true to form they weren't the usual inquiries and they disrupted my carefully crafted avoidance of the subject.  Not to shatter your image of me, but I don't leap, I'm not that good at graceful acceptance of change.  I fight, I do what I can to make it work, I stick until there's nothing left to stick to.  As ready as I've been to be done with this whole college thing, more and more I'm not so ready, more and more I find myself wanting to stick until I find the next safe road to travel, all thoughts of wings spread and adventure growing fainter and fainter.  But tonight's questions went beyond June to a future that's far less inevitable and most of the time feels a lifetime away.  Maybe it was the fact that I'm now in my mid-thirties, maybe it's something I should be prepared to hear more often, but frankly I wasn't expecting to spend a monday evening discussing my timeline for marriage and family.  It's not something I think I think about, but interestingly enough I had ready opinions on the subject.  I admit that there was a time when I did pay it a considerable amount of attention, but that was when my most pressing decisions involved the merits of swings versus dogeball; I chalk it mostly up to the social influences and gender stereotyping of a childhood awash in the kind of pink that only Mattel could be responsible for.  But growing up and out of a world of security and conviction into one that proved to be far less certain and accepting, it's hard to escape with your youthful dreams intact and without too much of a cynical tilt to your view of the world.  Somewhere along the way I settled into a more realistic way of thinking, I suppose I must have packed away the optimism with Barbie's frilly dresses and my own.  Whether at the time it seemed a necessary or a harmless precaution, somewhere in my awkward adolescence, out of either sense or fear, I resigned myself to the real possibility that all the dreams of the future might never come true, that I might never travel the world, that it might always just be me, party of one.  There was a time when hope was a precious commodity and faith was a word I reserved for my infrequent trips to mass, but somewhere between then and now hope and faith have seen a second coming.  Maybe I'm wiser now, maybe I'm just not as afraid as I once was, but none of it seems to matter.  In three months time my life becomes mine completely, and each step into the future is a step I take for myself.  Who's to say whether or not I'll reach that white house with the green shutters and whether that man who'll love me for everything I am and everything I'm not will be inside with our 3-4 kids and our big dog, or if there's something else entirely waiting in the years to come.  Part of me still believes in fate and the inescapable meant to be, and the other part of me knows that whether or not it exists, whether it's happily ever after or Eleanor Rigby, I'll get there in my own time on my own terms.  There's comfort in the fact that I can make my own way, that I can take care of myself whatever the future brings.  One thing's for certain though, next time Ray says, "I have a question", I'll think twice before giving the green light, who knows what he'll ask next, now that I'm thirty-three.
April 8, 2004                              "Sunny Day, Sweeping the clouds away"

      Nearly two thirty in the morning, and I've got this smiley-happy-giddiness thing going on.  I'd say it was the two huge glasses of sugar-laced lemonade I had earlier this evening, but it's been an all day thing.  Inexplicable, unexpected, maybe uncharacteristic, but really nice just the same.  Who knows what started it.  An uninterrupted night's sleep.  Waking and seeing my latest purchase on the wall, the sign I got for my future apartment that makes me smile each time I see it; it's like those framed milestone ten and twenty dollar bills in restaurants, it's my first step into the future.  The fit of my new t-shirt; looking into the mirror and smiling, knowing that this is me for better or worse, and it's perfectly fine with me, my hips may never be any smaller than this, but it's ok because I have a really nice rack ;).  Going to work and doing everything that needs to be done, and knowing that when the end comes I'll have done everything I set out to do, I've learned, I've grown, and this time around I'll have no regrets.  Seeing all the pre-Celebrate UCI tours, remembering those days and being thankful that I'm not 18 anymore, that I'm the woman I am now, that four years later things are beginning to make sense.  The little kids hanging on to the blue wagon with one hand and waving wholeheartedly at the shuttle with the other.  The guy I passed on ring road today in the pink and oh-so-shiny patent leather loafers.  Getting a call about being randomly selected to win a home theater system; funny that although I'm old enough to do everything else, it seems I'm too young to own expensive electronics.  Still being close with my roomie after four years.  Being crazy neighbors with my first RA, and after everything being crazy family with the other two (who else meets random people with my name and makes them leave me messages on my voicemail?).  Thinking about all the people I've known these past few years, and the more time passes, knowing that the ones that still stand by after everything are the ones to love and care for the most.  Taking a walk in the middle of the night without any drama; laughing, smiling, and a few happy tears on what once was the yelling bridge.  Watching the overly analytical turn over the reins and go with the flow; knowing that someone cares for my friend likes she deserves.  Walking the familiar pathways and feeling nothing but at peace with everything thing that happened in the last year, or two, or four.  For whatever reason or all of them, I've got nothing to do but smile.  That, and keep randomly whistling the Sesame Street Theme song.
April 25, 2004                                               The Inevitable

     Twelve-thirty on a Sunday afternoon, here I sit bed head and pajamas trying to occupy the time.  I've had a lot of time on my hands lately, and seeing that everyday my attention span gets shorter and the ADD gets more prevalent, my mind does a lot of wandering.  I've done my fair share of thinking in recent days, there's a lot to think about lately.  And as an old friend used to say, "no good can come of that", and come to find out it's pretty much true.  In most cases I'm a proponent for certainty, hitting things head on and solving the problem, but life seems to be set on becoming increasingly less simple, and that line of certainty more and more fades into the gray background.  And there's nothing more irritating about the future than it's complete lack of certainty.  I can sit here all day, listening to thought provoking music, lay a thoughtful finger upon my chin, and still be no more closer to puzzling it all out.  It all adds up to helpless; one of my greatest fears and something I take great pains not to be, but it's seemingly unavoidable all the same.  The future is coming and try as I might I can't find any signs or clues as to how things will end, which completely frustrates my need for control, but more than that leaves me a little sad.  I can chalk the fact that I got a bit misty eyed last night at Songfest up to that time of the month, but this general feeling of blahness goes beyond hormones.  But before you read on thinking that I'm entrenched in a deep meloncholia and I've been spending my days moping about, don't, because I'm not sad in the weepy kind of way, it's just a sad tinge to the thinking and normal random thoughts that clutter my "fragile little mind."  At any rate, I've never been much good with expressing my emotions or at times even accepting them, I've always been more about repressing than expressing, which it would seem isn't the healthiest way to deal with things.  For some reason now I'm reminded of the day of my grandmother's funeral.  I left the cemetery right before the interment under the pretense of going home to make sure the house was clean and ready for post funeral guests, but really because I couldn't bear to stand in that graveyard anymore and watch them place the coffin in the ground.  I went home and the only thing I managed to do was scrub the hood above the stove for a half an hour.  I didn't cry, I just stood there in the kitchen in the same dress I wore the last time I saw her, at my brother's wedding a month before, and I scrubbed at it with everything I had.  It was almost beyond reach and mostly out of sight, but I couldn't tear myself away from it, I felt so helpless and it was the only thing I could do.  I feel helpless in a similar sort of way now, it's less, but helpless all the same.  I feel like I'm spinning my wheels with nothing much to do but twist my curls and think about the "what ifs."  What if the last time I saw someone was the last time I'll ever see them?  What if I never find out the answers to the questions I was too afraid to ask?  What if this is as far as it goes?  What if everything changes?  What if nothing changes?  What if they don't know how much I care?  What if I never did the things I should have done?  What if this is the end?  What if when the time comes to be strong and say goodbye the only thing I can do is stand in the kitchen and scrub the oven hood?  The only thing to do now is wait and try not to worry about what happens next.  Irritating as it is, I know that there's no way to know, there is nothing to do but go on and things will work themselves out without my help, you can't force life.  So before yet another sad song comes on, I'll take a shower, start the day, and do all the things that need to be done, hopefully leaving all the worry and nagging bits of sadness here and taking away the faith that things always manage to work out for the best, mysteriously and inexplicably so.  All this talk of the end reminds me of a BeeGees song, like most disco ballads it's about love, but it's the last few lines that I've always found especially poignant.  In a way it seems the answer to all the worry and the questions, but only time and faith will tell just how true it is...

                                                        And what else we may do

                                                         We don't say goodbye...
April 27, 2004
May 3, 2004                                             Things about Today

   Sweltering heat, sitting here eating my grandiose dinner of peanut butter and jelly, and remembering back to the days when my family was even more middle class than it is now, when PB and J constituted a great deal of our meals in any given week.  Lunches growing up were usually peanut butter and jelly, always concord grape, and always on store brand white bread, until I hit middle school and made a Scarlett O'Hara like stand: As God is my witness, I will never eat peanut butter and jelly again.  And I didn't, for a really long time, and now because I'm a poor college student I eat PB and J again, damn economics always stealing the thunder from my dramatic declarations.  It's not so bad, actually I kinda like it, but never concord grape, that's where I draw the line.  No, now I only do strawberry jelly, and always on wheat.  Yeah, I know, high class.

                                                      * * * * * * * * * * * *

   Tonight, as senioritis dictates, I was fleeing my class as quickly as possible, when I ran right smack into one of those classic Kristen accidental moments.  I thought I had grown out of it, I haven't stepped in a hole while talking on Chinako's cell phone and twisted my ankle, or tripped over myself, or fallen out of bed, or gotten so much as even a papercut in the longest time.  I figured with graduation looming on the horizon and finally being able to take the training wheels off my adulthood that this whole awkward, klutzy stage was fading into history.  Apparently not.  Leaving HIB, digging my keys out of my purse, I decided to cut across the edge of the planter in order to shave a few precious seconds off of my dash to the parking lot.  But yeah, not so much.  Still searching for the keys, I misjugded the height of the planter, caught my flip flop on the edge, and thanks to my haste, wound up flying way over the edge of the planter and onto ring road with my purse flying into the planter and keys and folder going in opposite directions.  Seeing as I've done this falling thing before, and since I'm not a fan of knees on asphalt, I attempted to direct the fall to a much more amply padded body part, namely my ass.  I must not have been quick enough, or maybe I was too quick, because I think I've twisted my knee...yeah it kinda hurts.  Oh well.  So yeah, I fell, it was pretty embarassing, and if there's one thing I hate more than Hummers and bad remakes of classics films, it's drawing attention to myself.  Heinous. Which is what I was saying when this guy from class, who I'm inclined to call Phil, which probably isn't his actual name, came up, said something to the effect of "What's happening here girly?" and picked me up off the ground.  Which was very nice considering that aside from talking with him briefly during an in class activity a few weeks ago, I have absolutely no idea who he is...Though his name could be Phil.  Very nice, especially in light of the fact that people don't usually do things like that, and certainly not for me, if you recall the entry for April 6, 2002, then you know what I'm talking about...oh the drama.  Bastard.  But yeah, anyway, to sum up, I fell, it was embarassing, there are nice people in the world, who may or may not be named Phil, and give one reason to hope that not all people suck (just most ;) ), and I still have the knack for being accident prone, which doesn't bode well for when the training wheels come off.  Maybe I should invest in a helmet, and maybe some knee pads.  Now that's high class.
May 14, 2004
  
    About a month left, and despite the hectic schedule and half a million things left to do, every day it becomes a little bit harder to ignore the elephant in the room.  It's too early yet for all the sentiment and hopeful optimistism that comes with saying goodbye and trying not to say goodbye.  There's still time for all of that and time to say the things that need to be said.  Still, there's a part of me, the overly-analytical part, that needs to ask "how's it gonna to be?"  But, you know, it doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter when or where or how, because it'll happen, eventually it'll be.  And until it does, maybe I'll just use the elephant to hold back the tide...I mean, he's just taking up space, he ought to be prepared to work for it.
May 17, 2004   "that unspoken feeling of knowing that right now is all that matters"

        Maybe it's the return of summer or an insatiable desire to rock, but I've reignited my love affair with The Ataris...that is not to suggest that they haven't been firmly entrenched in my heart since freshman year, only that as of this weekend there's been a resurgence of all Ataris, all the time.  Four long years ago, the prophetic Dugles once said "the ataris always know", and it's true.  When I was in a bad place and pretty thoroughly screwed up a year ago, nothing spoke to me more than the Ataris, matching the rage, despair, and saddness line for line.  Listening to those same songs now, they speak to me in an entirely different way.  In those same words now I hear hope and happiness.  The saddness and anger are still there, but that's not the part that I hear anymore.  It's odd, Dug was right, the Ataris do always know, but I think it goes beyond that.  Music, like most media, is about projection.  It relies on the audience to make the personal connection, to take their own experiences and emotions, and in projecting them into the music create that feeling of correlation.  We read into the music whatever we can to make it fit our lives, project the rage or happiness in an attempt to find an outlet or some kind of expression of the emotion, a reassurance that ours isn't a unique experience.  That's the beauty of media, its malleabilty, the ability to mold it into whatever we need it to be.  Which, depending upon your take on media theory, is mildly profound or utter bullshit.  This I do know for sure, I listen to The Ataris now and I smile, I dance, I toss my mop of too short, too wild curls around in a manner that demonstrates my complete lack of rhythm, I laugh at myself, I feel young, happy.  And it's not because of the music, the music is get a means to express what it is I already feel, it celebrates the fact that I am happy, I am young, I am in a really good place, even in the face of the forthcoming upheaval.  It's hard to explain, but I think everyone has something that speaks to them no matter the emotion, so maybe it's not that difficult to understand.  But then again, The Ataris could be an inexplicable phenomenon, they are pretty sweet.

life is only
as good as the memories we make
and I'm taking back what belongs to me
polaroids of classrooms unattended
these relics of remembrance
are just like shipwrecks
only they're gone faster
than the smell after it rains

So long astoria
I found a map to buried treasure
and even if we come home empty handed
well still have our stories
of battle scars, pirate ships and wounded hearts,
broken bones, and all the best of friendships

and when this hourglass
has filtered out
its final grain of sand
I raise my glass to the memories we had
this is my wish
this is my wish
im takin back
im takin them all back
-so long astoria
May 18, 2004                                Giddy about housing...Me?
 
   True story.  Call it passdown fever, but I'm so excited about housing right now, and so proud of all my CP loves, past and present, and the ChicagHo.  Moving on to new adventures and totally gonna rock housing like the stars they are.  They grow up so fast...*tear*.  You're amazing, I love you guys (and miss my old school CBP kids, we need CBPMNKOSPAME like nobody's business)!  I'm so proud of you all!  Much love from your PA, SPC, and fellow IsenHo.  Muah!
May 24, 2004                                        Curiouser and curiouser

  Rapidfire Randomness....

      On Saturday, Cookie and I went shopping at South Coast, when we were leaving I pulled up to a stop sign behind a volvo station wagon that never moved.  Unlike Chinako, I don't embrace the honking, so I pulled around him into the other lane, and pulled alongside to see what the hold up was.  He was a sleep or passed out behind the wheel, at which point Cookie and I gave each other looks that encompassed three basic sentiments, "yeah, that's not good", "we need to do something", and "not again, why do these types of things always happen when we're together?".  So I pulled out, crossed the street and flipped a bitch in the Marshall's parking lot, which coincidentally is where we were nearly knocked over by a trio of shoplifters and their getaway driver the last time we went shopping.  So back to the volvo, which by this point was now leaking a lot of fluid and starting to billow smoke.  We parked the car and jumped out like the all-powerful superheroes we are, at which point we couldn't decide what to do next.  Fearing that it was something more serious than an impromptu nap, we ran into the nearest, overpriced department store to call the security personnel, or someone more equipped to handle this crisis situation.  I went back to check on the car, followed by Cookie and Bev, the jewelry counter lady, it was still sitting there with people stuck behind it, and honking vehemently as they passed by.  Then a car stopped in the next lane, the guy got out and knocked on the window of the volvo, and just like that the volvo drove away.  So apparently the man didn't have a heart attack, or stroke out, and there was probably no narcolepsy or epilepsy or any other lepsy involved, and despite the fact that the car had seriously overheated and leaked out all its radiator fluid everything was peachy keen.  The man drove away and presumably got on the freeway, where hopefully he didn't fall asleep in the fast lane. Crazy.


   On Saturday night, when I came back from CAUCI's Culture night, I found this: "When I sing out of tune, you stand up and walk out on me," on my door.  The handwriting is strangely familiar but I can't figure out who wrote it, or what they meant by it.  It's bothersome.  Where did it come from?  It's too random to be random.  And everytime I come back, it's there and it gets me thinking all over again.  I'd erase it, but I want to know what it means and who put it there.  So did someone just randomly misquote Joe Cocker lyrics?  Or is it more inflammatory and accusatory?  Did I upset someone, and they chose to let me know through the reworking of a classic song about friendship?  Bothersome.  What's it all about, days later still scratching my head.  Any ideas?


    I don't have to register for classes.  So bizarre.


     On Wednesday, my parents and all my brothers came out to dinner.  Which was nice and a little odd.  They all pulled up in the nanavan, which after giving me problems on the Monday after mother's day I left behind in Hemet, in favor of The Beast, also known as my Dad's Dodge Ram 1500 Club Cab, which is a trip to drive, especially in Orange County, the land of the compact import.  I had to laugh as I watched my brothers, all over 6 foot, struggle to get out of the backseats of the van.  Even funnier, watching them trying to figure out how they were all going to fit without serious leg cramping in the truck on the way home.  We went out to dinner, the first time it was just the six of us in I can't remember how long.  My mom's thing is saying how nice it is to have all her kids at one table, and even though I was obligated to roll my eyes and teasingly call her sentimental, I agreed with her.  It really  was nice, my family is weird and funny, and completely not in keeping with stade and pretentious Irvine society.  In the parking lot, my brothers were honked at by a car full of girls, which led to a lot of hooting and hollering, and a night long discussion as to which one of them is the best looking.  We made a ruckus in the restaurant, and when they started singing, our waitress looked at me with a look of sympathy that said she recognized I was the only normal one.  I guess after four years in this place I've gotten pretty good at hiding all my weirdness.  But if she looked more closely, she would have realized that you can take the girl out of Hemet, but you can't take the Hemet out of the girl.
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