i just don't care about school anymore

first, let's discuss how i haven't been on here in about 87 years. that is because said school has largely taken over my life with said stuff i can no longer seem to get very interested in. for instance, i should be writing a paper right now. actually, i'm in the middle of writing it and somehow got distracted by celebs on twitter (the new greatest thing known to mankind and time-sucker extraordinaire, at least in my life lately anyway) and gossip sites with pictures of celebs walking from a store to their car. why i find those things interesting, i can't say exactly, but don't lie, you love it, too.

second, i am more than half way through the spring semester, which means summer is right around the corner and that's pretty much all i can think about. even though this summer will be slightly marred by classes i'll be taking for a month, it is looking to be one of the best yet. bahamas + jobros, living at the beach, texas + dane cook + jobros, and then starting my final semester as an undergrad! madness! awesome madness! this all being the reason my brain cannot focus on the treatment of mental disorders or archaeological critiques because it's screaming, "SUMMER! FUN! ALMOST DONE WITH UNDERGRAD!" this is technically my senior year, therefore senioritis is an important and prevalent factor. i saw several people with their graduation paraphernalia today and i got a tinge, ok a massive tinge, of excitement that in less than 9 months that is going to be me walking around in my cap and gown. can you believe it?! i can still hardly. besides, the end of the semester is always the worst, too. i haven't figured out if it is always actually overloaded with work or it just feels that way because we can already smell the ocean and feel those warm sun rays. it's so close i can almost taste it!

third, i was busy preparing for italy. i've been back now for 2 weeks and still feel as though i haven't adjusted to being back. i keep expecting to wake up in the hotel room and have to be up and ready to go on another ancient exploration! it was an interesting trip, so many words come to mind: incredible, gorgeous, fun, tiring, long, did i say tiring? i meant EXHAUSTING, different, life-altering, new, thrilling. it sounds cheesy and cliche, but i really feel in some weird, indescribable way that i came back a different person. ok, maybe not a different person, but that my outlook on things has certainly changed, expanded. sarawr probably knows what i'm talking about. i have a feeling world traveling has the habit of doing that to a person. and i love it. if i got anything out of the trip, it's that, and i wouldn't trade it all back for anything. i knew there was more to the world when i visited my dad in texas, and then when i came here for school, but it's all so much more when you're surrounded by a completely new culture and people who are speaking something you barely understand while driving 90 miles an hour down side streets made of stones in cars the size of shoe boxes past buildings that are pretty much all ancient.

fourth, all of this combined has just put school as pretty much the last thing i'm concerned about. which is probably not correct or a good thing, but it's all showed me that there is SO much more to life out there than sitting in a classroom reading books you aren't all that interested in while listening to professors ramble on for an hour on that book you aren't all that interested in when you can't stop daydreaming about the next place you'll go and all the things you'll do. even not knowing where you're going to go or what you'll do, but just knowing that it's all beyond that manufactured chunk of wood called a desk that you're sitting in and you can't wait to be there!

i guess what it all comes down to is that i'm incredibly ready for "the rest of my life" to start. whatever that may mean. i want grad school and california and making my dreams happen! is that too much to ask? maybe... but that doesn't mean i'm not gonna annoy the hell outta whoever i have to asking for it.

eating tacos in our underwear

All right, I'm writing this post for two reasons. The first is that I looked at my online checking account this morning and realized it hasn't been as low as it is now since July/August of 2007. And second, because I realized I go to Starbucks way too often.

Back when we first moved into the apartment we're living in now, Alicia and I (Hodges was gone for the summer, so basically it was the two of us that took on/took care of everything) had a really hard time finding a place to live (that was cheap enough for us). It was only a week before our lease ran out that we were able to find somewhere, and even though we knew about deposits and all of that sutff, I don't think we quite realized how much it was going to be, all of the deposits on top of all the bills. Because basically we had to empty our accounts.

Now I have two pretty distinct memories of this month or two when we really didn't have any money left. The first was the day when all Hodges' camp friends came down. Alicia and I had gone to the dollar store a few days before to get some things (cheap! yes!), and while we had a few cans of food in the house, there wasn't anything else. I remember sitting on the couch around six or so in the evening and it occured to me that the only thing I had eaten that day was the can of Pringles I'd been working on. And then later I went to bed with an indifferent sort of "huh"--thinking, well I ought to be hungry.

Except we weren't always so complacent about it. There was another time when the heat was just driving us crazy--remember, we were very poor so we couldn't turn on the air conditioning (actually we still don't do that, and it's something I directly attribute to these few months)--and I think we just kind of snapped. Imagine something along the lines of "I'm tired of this, it's hot and I'm hungry and baaaagghg I'm just tired of this, we're going to Taco Bell because I want to go and I'm tired of not being able to go! Let's go! Now!"

So we scraped up all the change we could all over the house and came up with just enough to buy us some Taco Bell. Now because it was dang hot, Alicia was wearing a tank top and these underwear that are long like compression shorts or boxer briefs, only shorter. And I was wearing a tank top (no bra!) and a pair of shorts I would never wear in public. And we marched straight out to her car dressed just like that, me with my bra in hand to be put on in the car. Basically we were being trashy, but I blame the heat.

And so we went through the drive-thru at Taco Bell just like that and then came back into our tiny hot apartment and sat on my bed with the fan blowing on us and watched a movie and that's about the best meal I think I've ever had. Wait, I mean party. It was party time for us in House that night.


This morning the guy at Starbucks knew my order before I told him, which means this: even though I just realized how little money I have in my account, we're not eating tacos in our underwear anymore. And while I love taking off my pants, that's a pretty neat thing.

so, i should be doing my sociology for class that i have in less than 2 hours, but as usual i am seriously homework ADD and therefore thought i would come on here briefly to distract myself and let everyone know that this saturday we are giving sarawr purple hair. it is going to be glorious and i'm sure entirely blogworthy. with pictures. so get pumped for that!

oh, and if the sun doesn't return soon, i am getting in my car and driving west until i see it again. so look forward to a possible impromptu-road trip blog within the next couple of days should that occur.

love!

hello 2009!

ok, admittedly, i'm a little bit late. 2 weeks late, actually, but who's counting? we're back everyone! aren't you excited? i'm excited. life just feels a little bit less meaningful when there is no blogging going on.

classes have started and as usual i've already changed my schedule around more times than a book of tickets will get you trips on the merry-go-round at six flags. and that's A LOT. i've finally settled it, besides the fact that add/drop is now over so i kind of have no choice, but i think it's going to be a decent semester. hopefully much easier, smoother sailing than the last one.

speaking of, big things planned this year, kids! in less than 2 months i'm off on my first out of the country excursion (sara has been ridiculously beating me in this arena :-P) to ROMA! ITALY! it's for a class so i'm even getting one credit for it. isn't that fabulous? i think so. then, 2 months after that i'm off on a back-to-back adventure to the BAHAMAS and road trip across the country to CALI. so pretty much between march and may i'm gonna be all over the place, traveling like 15,000 miles or something. crazy! aka AWESOME.

2009 also happens to be the year of my 21st birth, as well as sara's, and that is obviously an important milestone, albeit one that might end up not being entirely remembered, but still a milestone nonetheless. AND as if that weren't all enough, i will be GRADUATING COLLEGE this december. that's less than 12 months. like 330 days or something. now THAT is insane. i can't believe it's already that time. i feel like we were just lowly, little freshmen right out of high school, and now, here we are, on the cusp of the rest of our lives, whatever that means.

know what i'm saying? how people, usually in commencement speeches, talk about graduating as the start of the rest of our lives? as if we haven't been living our lives already these past 21 years. nope, apparently it all starts now. what "rest of our lives" really means is "real responsibility." better known as no more partying, procrastinating, or pretending we aren't adults. but i'll save all that scary "here comes the real world" stuff for later in the year. i am planning on attending graduate school, so even then it really won't be the full thing until it comes time to graduate from that. but you get the idea.

ok, i feel like i've been rambling about nothiing and everything for far too long now. it has been a while though, and you deserved a full post/life update. i need to go do some homework now. did i mention how excited i was classes started? yeah. hear the dripping sarcasm... SO excited.

have a happy new year!!

so it's beautiful and frozen outside, and i haven't felt my feet in days

I just got finished reading Tim O'Brien's "How To Tell A True War Story" and right now all I want to ever read or write or have to do with words are the kinds like his. Just reading that, that's a miracle. I don't even know how to respond to it.

Except now I'm going to write a crass, pointless blog that might make a few people laugh or might just make me feel kind of stupid writing it. And I'm just a little bummed because after reading stuff like that, everything else just seems less, I don't know. Meaningful is cliche. And kind of like the story says, there is no moral. I don't know--these are just thoughts. Go read the story and get ready to be floored.


So as far as today, my friends, it was dang cold. And my cold I mean probably the lowest I experienced was about thirty (fahrenheit, of course). But to be fair, that is polar here. This is the south. It's meant to be warm, especially when the sun is out.

Now this morning I had an eight a.m. class, so I was outside at about 740 or so walking to campus and that was fine because I was bundled up in my scarf and mittens (something I rarely do). And then at 850 I turned around and walked back home so I could drive to work. And I was walking through my parking lot when I blinked and my eyes started watering a little bit and all of a sudden, my eyes fogged up. Not even kidding. They FOGGED UP for a few seconds, everything was like when you breathe out air except it was definitely the moisture in my eyes.

Well then I get in my car (TENSE SHIFT) and everything is iced over. The car actually starts without stalling out a couple of times, which is nice, but as I'm sitting there defrosting it, I decide to roll down the windows to see if any of the ice will scrape off.

Except.

The windows won't roll down! They're frozen shut!! So I drive to work and eventually I can get them down. But then four hours go by and it's a little after one and I come home. Now, it's important to note that we don't use the heat in our apartment. And that I'd been complaining all morning about being cold in the office because the thermostat was stuck at 69. And when I got to our apartment, ours was 61, which is actually a good deal warmer than it normally is when we're home, which tends to be night-time.

So I go over to the stove and turn on one of the eyes and warm up over that.





Also, in case you were wondering, the upside down bag of Marshmallow Mateys was my roommate's attempt to warm the apartment up some. She decided to cut the eye of the stove on too, only she turned the wrong one on. And lit the bag of cereal sitting on top of it on fire. Close up:




And I think that speaks enough for the conditions here =)

cheers, guys.

the most random/meandering post ever

Well, I had no idea how to start this post until I logged onto AIM and saw Nicole's away message and it said:

[insert sarawr's last name]-- are you working tomorrow? movies? lemme knowwww

And I'm fairly certain that's the single greatest thing that's ever happened to me.


Now that said, I had a lot of great things happen to me over Christmas break. And I could write post after post about that but it's all sort of cheezy and, no, it doesn't involve boys. Unless you count Frodo and Gandalf when I read The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time.

So okay. I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this, but I will tell you: I am never going to get married. I will be the cat lady, and this is why:

boris the cat puking

I've been watching youtube videos like this all night and I just can't stop, they're so amazing. Cats are so amazing when they throw up. Of course it's disgusting and there's something really mean about laughing uncontrollably while your cat's ribs are trying to push their way out of its mouth and its eyes are bugging, but I mean, it's completely involuntary (I say while I replay the movie thirteen times).

But not only will I be a cat lady, I think I'll have to be the kind who dresses the kitties up in doilies and bonnets and sets up the camcorder and tries to make cat-movies with them.

No, not really. What the heck am I saying?

That this is the most random blog ever and I don't know what the heck I'm saying and I'm just making stuff up about cats (except for the puking part).

I was going to blog about how this guy trying to get people to vote for Obama actually told us to, instead, vote for the person who'd eff things up the least, but the real f-word (censored so as not to expose anyone--what am I saying [again]? I didn't like either of them. Buuuh, stop talking about politics, sarawr, get out of this paranthesis). And then I was going to blog about how I drove for about a mile and a half away from the airport with my headlights off because I'm brilliant (that's almost a pun, ahahaa).

But I think what I'm going to blog about is that--I'm not sure, it's just a feeling, but--it's going to be a really good semester, a really good year even. And it's just going to keep getting bigger. I'm going to Romania for the month of July, and hopefully in a year I'll be studying abroad, and I just can't get it out of my head, but I want to go everywhere, travel the whole world. And I don't know about what's going to happen in 2009 as far as that goes, but I do know that it just feels like things are opening up. I don't know how to explain that, maybe like walking down a hallway and it's getting wider until it opens up into a courtyard. And I'm really looking forward to it, because something's going to be amazing =)


cheers.

well... back in time for 2009 *wiiiiiiiiink*

Well, I have managed to stay up all night completely on accident and it's nearly nine (in the morning) and I'm still awake, so why not write a blog? Since I haven't written one in more than two months, and our poor blog has nearly died, Nicole writing hopeful posts every so often, but it's like this: when I fall off the planet, I can't find it again for another three months.

HOWEVER.

It's the new year, and this is what we do. I want to write once a week--more if I like, sure, but at least once a week. Next semester will probably be as crazy as the last for me, but in a different way, although not only do I mean to blog, I mean to do my homework.

So this is not much of a post at all, but it's New Years Eve and it's the south, so craziness will ensue, which means I'll be blogging soon enough. It's good to be back =)


cheers.