Sunny Sweets

The title comes from a little live-art thing I did tonight at work, which basically consisted of me arranging leftover candies in a sun pattern on the break room table. As though I didn't have two acts of Merchant of Venice to read. Still, it led Jeanette (coolest manager in history of the universe) to inquire if I was a writer, becaue I'm so creative and put things so well. Yay for me. Who wants a sunny sweet?

I worked things out with my advisor from the Mirror, and it's cool now. It's kind of complicated, but the nub and thrust was that there was a miscommunication about the reapplication process, and she wasn't sure where to put me, and the paper was changing next year, etc etc etc. She said she'd love to have me work with them again, as a copy editor or writer even next year, but there weren't any paid positions left open. Anyway, it was cool to have everyone all righteously indignant for me over the whole ordeal for the past few days... especially Hannah, who seemed more upset about it than I did. Actually, I think she still is, so I wouldn't mention anything about it if you see her... it's like someone mentioning Martha Daugherty around me. It's not pretty.

In case you haven't noticed, things aren't really doom and gloom around here anymore (nether gloom!!!!). I seem to have acquired the odd and unprecedented ability to get over things... relatively quickly. It's an interesting phenomenon, and I wonder if it will last.

Just two more weeks until I am released into the fantastical never-never land of summer, though actually if I can just get all my big projects done this weekend, my cares will be over with. Except for the psychology final. My grade is riding on that mutha.

Oh, and Ben Folds has a new CD out. Who knew?

When Fridays Attack!

I know it's not Friday today. I'm writing about what happened last Friday.

I was sitting in French class, minding my own business, when Phil calls me, aghast and outraged. He was saying something about the Mirror. He said he couldn't believe it. After a few moments, I realized what he was giong off about--the staff list for next year had been posted in the issue, and my name wasn't on the list. I was just as shocked as he and even more upset; so upset, in fact, that I had to leave class. He tried to console me and told me he thought it was a load of crap, and that I was a better writer than all of them, etc. He even emailed my faculty sponsor and asked her why I was let go--she basically replied by telling him it was none of his business. I left campus and cloistered myself from the Drury community all weekend, too shocked and ashamed to ask questions.

From campus I went straight to B&N to get my check and buy some stuff--it was there that my credit card was declined. I wrote it off as another dumb Capital One fluke and called them when I got home, only to discover that my balance was $300 higher than it should have been and I was over my credit limit. After pushing buttons on my phone for ten minutes, I finally got to where I could speak with a human being. He read off the charges and told me they were from Napster. Napster. The ones who gave me a 30-day free trial. The service that was supposed to be $15 a month. Turns out, free is not as free as I thought it was, and there's a difference between "downloading" and "buying." Apparently, everyone knew about this very important distinction except me. I had been downloading (er, excuse me, BUYING) wonderful indie albums willy nilly for the past week, and had racked up $300 in what I thought were free songs. Apparently not. Since it's digital music, there's no way to give it back or get a refund, so I'm just stuck with the bill. That's 2 months worth of saving for me. I've just wasted 2 months of labor. Great.

I'm slightly better today, though the humiliation from both events has worn off slightly. I've had a lot of support from both students and faculty alike on the Mirror thing, which makes me feel better but also makes me even more certain that there must be something fishy going on around here. We have our weekly staff meeting at 4:00 as usual, and it's like some kind of horrible trial looming in the distance. The Mirror tribunal hearing. I just so unsure of how to play this. Should I act as though nothing has happened? Should I be humble and contrite? Obviously distraught? Cold and demure? Proffessional and haughty? I have no idea. I know my advisor is going to talk to me about why I was fired, and I really don't want to hear it. Everyone says I have to face her, but I'm just so hurt by the whole ordeal. I don't know what I'm going to say, how I'm going to publicly react. I don't know if I should go to the editing session on Wednesday. I don't want to. I'm starting to get my customary anxiety symptoms.

It wasn't just me enduring the Friday from hell, Hannah and Amanda were stricken as well. You can read more about it on Hannah's blog, but the long and short of it is, she hit a Mercedes while parking and Amanda got pulled over on her way home. I just keep telling myself, it's only a few more weeks until classes are out. Then the biggest thing I'll have to worry about it whether or not I'm selling enough member cards.

Music Music Music

Went to see Eisley in St. Louis w/ Hannah and Amanda on Wednesday. You can see a pic of us on their myspace page at www.myspace.com/eisley. We're in the pic of The Pageant at St. Louis, just above the far left end of Stacy's keyboard.

It was tons of fun. The district we were in was right next to WashU, so there were a lot of used book stores, record stores, vintage clothing stores, etc. I got a skirt at Rag-O-Rama and some gifts at a fair trade store. The show was awesome and I got Sherri and Chauntelle to sign the sides of my Chuck T.

On the long drive home, the three of us decided that we were going camping and we were going to bring:

Apple
Bust of Abraham Lincoln
Catskill Island Shore
Dominos Pizza
Egalitarian Viewpoint
Friggin' Large Suitcase
Geoffery the Giraffe
Hatpin
Italian Dictionary
Jewel's New CD
Kelly Ripa
Lima Bean
Mongoose
Neoclassical Literature
Olive Oil
Peter Piper's Peck of Pickeled Peppers
Query
Rolling Stone Magazine (we still don't know why)
SSLYBY
Telecaster
U2
Veggies
Whimsical Chiffon
Xenophobe
Yens
Zippo Lighter

And then we found $20.

Oh! And I got one of those Dell Pocket DJ MP3 players. As I told my father, "But the iPod's click wheel design is intrinsically superior!" and as he then told me, "But this one is intrinsically free!" It's not pink and fashionable, but what's in a name? I don't want to turn into a brand snob now. The corporations want us to develop product loyalty. Also, yeah, this one was free. Another *major* advantage is that I can get Napster with this one, which means all my downloads are $15 a month, a flat rate, instead of $1 a song. Also, my first month is free so I'm currently downloading the whole world. Stand in awe of my music-accumulating power.

Unwittingly Drenched in Pheramones

What the holy hobbit is going on around here??? Okay, *weirdest* day ever. All of the straight men I've come into contact with today have been oddly enamored with me... or at least have been *a* *lot* nicer to me than they usually are. I got asked out twice today. *Twice*. That's like, 3 years' worth for me, in *one* *day*. The first guy to ask me out was an aquaintance who I could tell had a kinda sorta crush on me, and the second was a random customer at BN, not old or gross, but just a young guy who asked if I played an instrument and then wanted to know if I would "jam" with him sometime. He actually bought something, left, and came back five minutes later to ask if I would consider "playing" with him sometime. He blamed it on the shirt I was wearing, stating that it made me look "creative".

The shirt in question will heretofore be called the Apparently Really Attractive Shirt, because it is a shirt that I am not entirely impressed with, but JUST FOR TODAY, everyone else is. I got it at Plato's, it has a rip in the upper layer on the side, and I'm beginning to the think the print sort of old-lady-ish; also, I'm nearly positive the sleaves are too short. And yet, people wouldn't shut up about it. My manager went on and on about how she loved it and needed to start shopping where I shop. Another co-worker, who is in fact a straight man, stated that it complimented my complexion well. *What*?? Straight men aren't supposed to know the word "complexion"; that's what all the gay men at BN are for!

In fact, just about everyone complimented the ARAS, so some of you will probably be quick to use it to explain the whole ordeal, but the catch is I was only wearing the ARAS for the second half of my day, while I was at work; while I was on campus earlier, I was wearing the absolute ugliest shirt I own (my delightful Junior Year English Club T-Shirt, designed by Josh) with my comfy jeans and flip-flops, no makeup, and had my hair under a bandanna that was randomly purple. Yes ladies and gentlemen, this is the fabulous ensemble that earned me my first offer.

Furthermore, another co-worker, who is usually not very friendly with me, and is in fact usually very short with me, suddenly started talking to me like I was in the club. When I started complaining that everyone liked the stupid shirt, he said, "I don't like it. You know, to balance things out," so we cannot attribute his sudden warming-up-to-me to the ARAS. He even started telling me all these neat stories about ghosts in the old Drury Library where he once worked. It was kind of creepy how nice he was being to me.

Aside from these notable instances, I just felt like guys were looking at me all day, or generally liked me a lot when I talked to them. It was just *weird*. Sure, I *read* about pheramones last night while studying for my Psych test, but I don't think reading about them is supposed to make you release them. I don't know what's going on, but it better be over with by tomorrow. I feel like I'm being watched everywhere I go, and if one more guy asks me out, and I'm going to start to run out of excuses.

Even creepier: last night I was thinking about how funny it would be if the three (3) straight guys I know all professed their undying love to me in one day, and I reacted to this by freaking out (much as I am now, in fact, but more severely) and yelling "What the f*** is going on here??!!!??" several times. I then supposed that I would proceed to assuming it was all Hannah's doing, and that she had called them all and told them to pretend to be in love with me just to freak me out. It was really funny in my head, as instances of me screaming "What the f*** is going on here??!!??" usually are, and I considered putting it in a short story or something. So, the question of the day is obviously, did I somehow bring this upon myself? Did my thinking it make it happen (albeit in a lesser form), and if so, holy crap! My brain needs to be deactivated for altruistic purposes. Wait, I retract that request. It might actually happen... did I go in The Sphere?

Ew... What's on the Ceiling?

That, ladies and gentlemen, would be my blood pressure. Nasty, huh? This week has made me want to pull my own face off and stick it on an end cap. Little B&N joke for ya there...

I have to write *two* (2) papers for Monday, and as of this moment I have exactly squat. Nada. Zilch. *However*...

I am working on a scene from Taming of the Shrew. It's scene 2.1, the one where Katherine slaps Petruccio, and it's going to be great fun. I'm probably focusing on it a lot more than I should be, as I should be directing my resources elsewhere (i.e. writing PAPERS), but I just can't get it out of my head. The whole thing is just great. I've come up with all of these stage directions and blocking.... the hard part is going to be actually *doing* it. I've never really *acted* acted before, since every school/church play I was in I was cast as the narrator. The problem is that acting takes so much energy for me that it's nearly impossible to rehearse, because every time I have to give about 1000%, and I can only keep that energy level for so long. I have no walls between me and the character at all--when I act, I *become* the character. So when my partner is yelling, he's not yelling at Katherine, he's yelling at me. When he hits on Katherine, he hits on me. When Katherine slaps him, *I* slap him. It's so emotionally exhausting that I think I'm going to go into a psychological coma by the time it's done, but it will be worth it.

I'm having notions to start another cheesy alt. universe short story ala Dream, which Hannah will remember. She is probably the *only* one who will remember. Those were the days. The days of Dream, ASTER, and MDA. I'm still upset that I wasn't actually *in* MDA. Uh oh. Thinking about acting followed by think about old alt. universe novels starring your high school friends= seeing your high school friends act out stage productions of your alt. universe novels, all of them playing their own characters of course. Hee hee. NO! No, very bad. I think it is time that this ill-fated post met its end.