Pfft. The Sequel.

Graduation is exactly two months away. I'm trying not to think about it, really. Partially because I have so much other stuff to do, but also because I feel like I started freshman year yesterday and I'm not quite sure I'm ready to leave. Yeah, I've had my complains about this place, but the whole college experience is something I'll never have again. Supposedly graduate school is the new college, but how much truth is there in that statement? Graduate school is where you go to get a degree that will earn you an actual living (but only if you're a humanities or psych major-- everyone else pretty much has it made), so means no more slacking off. Showing up to class in pajamas will be out, as will late night trips to WaHo (that's Waffle House to you-- that unfortunate clotter of Southern arteries) followed by the late nights spent awake wishing you had just stayed home. What else will I be missing out on? Major study sessions which have all ended in one of three ways.
1) A trip to Waffle House
2) Duck chasing. Nuff said.
3) A nervous breakdown by one or more people.
The higher the number of people having breakdowns is directly related to how
challenging the study guide is. The biggest ever group hissy fit: US
Diplomatic History

Having no classes on Tuesday is a little bit of a drag. Yeah, I'll be really glad about that a little later on in the semester when I have to seriously start working on my senior thesis, but now it's a little boring.

Last night I went to a Green Student United meeting, and managed to be appointed chair of the waste reduction committee. As chair, I get to help get the school adopt some sort of recycling program, and figure out how much trash the school as a whole gets rid of. That will probably involve, though I try not to think about it, getting up close and personal with the trash. Nah, I can handle it.

Having survived my first few days back at school, I can honestly say that I feel pretty good about being back up here. Despite everything. Everything being that I have to write a senior thesis, take the GRE, get my grad school applications in, get the fat naked guy to stop lurking by my window, and find a way to get Sallie Mae to quit screwing with me. "Dear Ms. B---, Congratulations on graduating early. Screw you. Now pay us a bunch of stupid fees that normal students don't have to pay."

Last Days of Summer

So yeah, school is right around the corner. I have mixed feelings about this. I'm thrilled that pretty soon I won't have to worry about the whole secret double life thing, but I am less than thrilled to be going back to isolated College Town. Also the girls in the dorm last year wouldn't ever shut the fuck up. Maybe it'll be different this year. Either that or I'll have to introduce them to the wonder that is Tylenol PM.

Despite having the last week and a half off work (gotta love being a contingent), all I've managed to do is pack up two boxes for back to school, totally messing up my room in the process. Oh yeah, thanks to my mother's Swiss-made food chopper, one of my fingers is a little bit shorter than it used to be. My accomplishments are few, but massive. Because hey, lets face it, only the massively clumsy can manage to slice off 1/8 of a pinky finger. And only the massively lazy can boast about having packed up two boxes. After I found my IPod ("missing" since early May), I lost interest in the packing.

Three months

Poor neglected little blog. Poor overworked little blogger. Place of Employment is crushing my soul. Asheville weekends rock though. Where else can one run around a hotel built on a mountain (and come really close to crashing a wedding-- whoops), fall off a chair at the JCC pool, read really funny parts of Cosmopolitan out loud at Barnes and Noble, and bake vegan cookies for an extremely lactose intolerant Israeli camp counselor?

Ok, maybe you can do those things anywhere.

On no longer being SLAMmed

Yesterday was my school's first ever undergrad research symposium, oddly named SLAM. I'm not the world's best public speaker, and yet I did a presentation. I can practice for hours, and I did, but then I step out on stage and my mind goes completely blank. Somehow I managed to survive the presentation without a) running out of the theatre, b) having another mini-breakdown in which I questioned my sanity, or c) making people fall asleep in their chairs. My good feelings about my presentation kinda evaporated after the college sweetheart gave her presentation, but hey, that's life. I'm kinda glad that we were presenting in the same session. There would have been a lot less people there without her.

Our keynote speaker was, pretty much, the world's foremost scholar on hip hop. Visit her website, she's awesome! Hip hop and rap aren't my favorite genres, but after hearing Dr. Rose's lecture, I was struck by the urge to start listening to more rap and hip hop. Funny how easily something/someone can come along and change your entire opinion.

It's also funny how an entire college campus can piss and moan about having to go to all the presentations, but then have no problem showing up for an iPod drawing. Ahh, people.

Looking back over the last 48 hours, it's really amazing how college students from around the country have joined together in solidarity for the students of Virginia Tech. Right after I heard about the shootings, I joined a Facebook tribute group of 17,000. A day later, the group had grown by 100,000 people and is now 250,000+ strong, and has branched off into a number of websites. And while it would be awesome for people to simply remember the victims without getting into political pissing matches, it's never that easy. Right now, as more and more details are coming out about the perpetrator's nature, one has to wonder why no one saw that there might have been a problem in the making and done something about it? Okay, maybe the guy did obtain those guns legally according to VA laws, but come on? If gun control laws can't be made stricter, then maybe make people with clean records looking to buy a gun undergo a psychiatric exam. It's a start, you know?

Everything that happened is so pointless and sad, and people are right, it really could happen anywhere. Will this finally be the straw that breaks the camel's back and forces our government to look at our gun control laws and realize that this kind of thing cannot keep happening!

Stupid internet

The internet goes down a lot around here. I should be used to it by now, and in fact I am used to the internet going down for a couple of hours, five hours max. Four days without internet access is something completely different. Four days without internet sent me through the five stages of grief. As sad as that sounds, I live in the middle of nowhere and depend on the internet as a link to the rest of the world. Because watching TV gets old fast.

I agree with yellow emo dude

Yessssssss!

It got up into the 60s today! Hahahaha!

For the first time in months, the Camilla got to wear these....

And tomorrow, it's supposed to be cold again.

But that's ok, I'm going east!

I'm sick of naming my posts

It's been raining all day. I'm normally not a big fan of rain, because it always manages to catch me without an umbrella. This rain was okay though. It was just rain. Not mixed with snow, ice or anything winterish. Just rain. The rain actually started last night, along with some hellacious thunder. The thunder woke me up around two, and after realizing that the back wall of my room was still there and I wasn't going to fall into the abyss, I managed to go back to sleep. Of course I didn't realize that in the process of being scared shitless by the thunder, I somehow managed to send my alarm clock flying across the room. I still don't know exactly where it is. Without the alarm clock though, I kinda missed my eight o'clock wakeup to go down to the gym. I managed to drag my unhappy butt down there at nine thirty. Mmm, it's awesome not having class until eleven. Its also awesome being able to go outside without a ginormous winter coat, hat, gloves, scarf, etc. That's probably why I was able to get out of bed so easily this morning without cursing myself for deciding to enroll at a school in the mountains. You know, cold weather just sucks the life right out of you. Maybe I should pick a grad school in a warmer place. Too bad I wouldn't get anything done at the U of Hawaii. Even if they did have a public history program.

Since I didn't have anything better to do last weekend, I decided to go home. Relax, eat some good food, get my dad to buy me stuff, the usual. Traffic was absolutely horrendous. So horrendous that I'm not sure I want to go home again if it means having to put up with it taking a half hour to go 3/10 of a mile. I'm not a very patient person, and rush hour traffic tends to bring out the worst in me. No, I'm not a dangerous driver, I just like to scream "GO!!!!!" a lot. Usually at the car in front of me. Like they can go anywhere.

I'm beginning to view my parents as a source of entertainment instead of annoyance. They're getting older, bless 'em, and I guess I've never really noticed it before. They like to argue about the nitpickiest little things, and I think its hilarious. Like when the neighbor across the street fixed his roof. "Forget about the neighbors' roof Jim! When are you gonna fix our roof? I'm sick of my ceiling leaking everytime it rains!" Note: it's "hers" when it, whatever it is, breaks, stops working or leaks. It only becomes "theirs" when she can't fix it.

When I finally got back to school, I found out that I missed two things. One of them was snow, which I didn't mind missing. In fact it's the reason I went home. The second thing was finding out about AK's engagement (Mazal tov, AK and Dan!). I found out about it from Facebook. Not the best way to hear about your friend's engagement. And its the second time that its happened. What is it about senior year that makes people get engaged left, right and center?

Hooray for warmer weather! Even if it isn't going to last. At least I got to go to Asheville without my heavy coat. Downtown Asheville is one of my favorite places because there's always something going on. I was there for three hours yesterday, and I got a bunch of great pictures for my photography class, as well as some chocolate covered espresso beans from Mast. I heart Mast! Not only do they have chocolate espresso beans for a reasonable price, they also have all kinds of cute Life is Good stuff and candy that I remember from my childhood. Gummy Coke bottles anyone?

As if I don't have enough going on in my life already, I'm working on my research proposal for Spring Slam. I've got my topic, it's the same one I presented over the summer to community college faculty from all over the country. Dr. K is of the opinion that it will look good on my CV for grad school, and I'm pretty much up for anything that helps with grad school. These last few months I've really started coming out of my shell. Being the shy, quiet one is getting so old. Speaking up in class is something I used to never do, but just last week Dr. G asked a question and the next thing I know I'm explaining to the class what the pogroms were. Dr. G's jaw dropped, and AK acted like a proud momma. "Look at you steppin' up! And I know where you learned the answer!" I actually learned the answer from Golda Meir's autobiography, not my intro class. Sorry AK.

And some days you just want to be alone

Over the last two days, I managed to haul all my stuff out of my old room, and into my brand new single room. My new room is about 2/3 the size of my old one, but I am ok with that.

Old room: ugly desk looking thing attached along the entire back wall
New room: ugly desk taking up only half the wall

Old room: overlooking a walkway, where passersby would always stop to look in the room
New room: no more walkway

Old room: 3 channels came in (Comedy Central, Cartoon Network and TBS)
New room: 35 channels (and no more South Park, Adult Swim and Sex in the City as my only viewing options. I enjoy all of those shows, but enough is enough)

Old room: en suite bathroom (shared with a nymphomanic klepto who enjoyed stealing my triple blade razors as much as she enjoyed having sex in the shower that I too had to use).
New room: private bathroom (with a bathtub!) And now I will know for sure that that off white liquidy looking stuff is actually my conditioner, and not... well, you know.

Now all I have to do is unpack all the boxes laying around. Sigh.

I have tricky veins

Today I gave blood for the first time. Not a pleasant experience, but one I plan on doing again someday. I walked into the little clinic they set up in the student union right on time, and one hour, two nurses, three tries (one in the right arm, two in the left), my blood was draining out into the little baggie. And now here I am munching on a brownie with pink and red sprinkles on top, and one of those cute mini cans of ginger ale.


"There's food involved?"
"Yes."
"And all I have to do is let you stick a metal spike* in my arm?"
"Yes."
"Ok!"




Behold my sexy, sexy arm.


*Note: "stick a metal spike in my arm" can be replaced with "sign me up for a credit card with a ridiculously high interest rate" and that little set of quotes up there loses none of its meaning.

You got a problem with that, honey?

Ok, so I'm sitting here, waiting on it to start snowing. The weather people have been saying its going to snow today all week, and yet there isn't one snowflake in sight. Hell, there isn't even a cloud in sight.

Earlier this week, I was having lunch with Nicole, who is just about the sweetest girl on the planet. She's one of the few people that I've really opened up to about my desire to convert, but that's a different story for a different day. Nicole, like me, had the good fortune to be born in North Carolina. However, her life began several hundred miles west of mine. To hear me talk, it isn't immediately apparent that I'm an NC native. With Nicole, it's unmistakable. I often find myself wishing that I hadn't been brought up in a big, diverse city, and that I don't feel the need to hide my accent when I'm back home, especially at work. But that too is a different story for a different day.

The other day at lunch, Nicole and I were approached by this guy that wanted to know if the table next to us was taken. Nicole politely replied that "Yes, that table is taken, sorry." The guy, apparently unable to understand Appalachian English, made Nicole repeat herself several times before stalking off. Damn Yankee.

Now, I'm not going to turn this into an anti-Yankee rant. First of all, there's no point, and second of all, I don't want to alienate one-third of my readership. But the whole Southern stereotype thing is getting pretty fucking old. To hear some of my classmates/coworkers (who thought I was from Washington State for whatever reason)/customers talk, we Southerners are nothing but a bunch of ignorant, Jesus lovin', beer drinkin', snuff dippin' rednecks, and that there is nothing to do in the South but go to county fairs. Let me point out that I will (hopefully) have two masters degrees five years from now, I am on my way to becoming a JBC, I hate (most) beer and the only tobacco product I've ever tried was a cigarette, and that was just stupid. And for the there's nothing to do part, those people obviously haven't visited downtown Asheville, any part of Atlanta, or Charleston.

My sister-in-law's mom, a Carolina girl if ever I met one, moved up to BFE, Michigan a few years ago with her husband. Upon arrival, she was asked "Don't you just love it up here? This place is really thriving!" My sister-in-law's mom then replied "I'm from Charlotte. It's one of the biggest banking centers in the country. That's thriving. You people don't even have a movie theater."

Maybe, being from Charlotte, I'm not really qualified to talk about stuff like this. Still, it's something I felt like addressing.

Mall Restrooms... boy don't I feel safe now...

*I don't normally post forwarded emails on my blog or even bother forwarding them on to people in my address book, but this seemed creepy enough. Hat tip: Sonja*

Please Send to Every Female You Know With Love for Their Safety!!!!!

The Latest Scam: Robbing Females Using the Bathrooms at Shopping Malls.

The way the scam works is, a man slips into the women's rest-room and sneaks into a stall. He waits until there is only one woman in the restroom in a neighboring stall. The criminal then stands on the toilet and points a hand gun into the next stall, demanding the woman's valuables. After getting her cash and jewelry, he demands that she remove all of her clothing and kick them out of the stall. The thief tosses the clothing into a shopping bag, hangs an out of order sign on the restroom door, and slips back into the mall. The out of order sign ensures no one will soon come to the woman's rescue. It usually takes an hour or two for the woman to work up the nerve to leave the restroom in the nude, giving the criminal ample time to make his get away. The woman is left naked and humiliated in a mall full of strangers. The best defense, says police, is to never go into a shopping mall restroom alone, as only women who are by themselves are targeted.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!! This has so far been a nearly perfect crime, as none of the perpetrators have been caught. Don't let this happen to you!

Take that you woman hater*!

I'm one day into my internship at the Thomas Wolfe house and I'm already sick of it. Why does it have to be so boring? If only it wouldn't help my chances of getting into State.

Oh yeah, wearing a mid-calf length skirt in the snow wasn't the best idea either.

*The woman hater in question is Wolfe. Even if he did have an affair with a married one.

Random ramblings

I can't stand the classrooms in the education building. They almost seem like classrooms that a real college would have.

My NC Gov't/History teacher is the best NC Gov't/History class teacher to ever come out of Pennsylvania.

AK finally had her first real drink, ever. My baby's all grown up!

My new suitemate has a penchant for rearranging the furniture in her room at least one a day. While blaring Fall Out Boy.

I could convert by this December. Emotionally, however, I don't think I'll be ready. That doesn't mean I haven't emotionally matured a ton over the last few months.

Tuesday Night Blues

Less than one week before I get out of this overpriced, overdeveloped hellhole of a city and back to my real life. Studying geography, Japanese history and leading tour groups through the Thomas Wolfe house will be infinitely more exciting than selling Coach and Dooney & Bourke handbags to spoiled teenagers. If only Look Homeward Angel wasn't so hellishly boring. Was Wolfe really that brilliant? Who knows? He did, however, have the good fortune to be born in Asheville.