so this is it

this will probably be my last post of the year. of the decade. 2009. it's pretty fitting that i have nothing particularly profound planned for it. i'll leave that to the real bloggers out there - you know, the ones who craft pretentious countdown lists and call big yellow taxi the worst song of the decade (what, did you magically forget about creed and, ahem, 'birthday sex'?).

instead, you'll get to read my impressions of sherlock holmes, which s-la and i went to see today. it's a short review. actually, it can be summed up in one word: awesome. seriously, go see it. also, hans zimmer needs another couple of oscars to go along with the nine billion i'm sure he already has because the score to the movie is great, too. i'm actually blogging to it right now. (currently listening to: he's killed the dog again).

after the movie, s-la and i headed to borders. it was an interesting trip, best told in pictures. to begin with, we spotted autographed copies of leviathan by scott westerfeld. s had been blogging about it forever, so i won't bother, but i'm half way through it right now and it's amazing. also, the cover is really pretty. there were autographed copies of uglies and pretties, too, as well as robin wasserman's book 'hacking harvard', but we already have those so there was no point in buying them. well, besides the fact that i'm greedy and like staring at the pretty autographed pages.

so that was the Good. after it came the Funny and Truly Horrifying.

the Funny was unintentional - at least, i hope it was - and actually quite juvenile. someone shelved copies of sarah palin's new book 'going rogue' in the lesbian and gay fiction section. see? it's in the middle of the bottom shelf, in case you were wondering.

the Truly Horrifying, however, was - well, truly horrifying. i have pictures of it but i refuse to post them, mostly because i don't want to remember the awfulness of the experience.

as those of you who frequent bookstores already know, the twilight series gets an obscene amount of floor space relegated to it. entire bookcases and displays are devoted to it. the entire franchise has tons of useless, tacky memorabilia scattered around bookstores everywhere. in other words, the youth of the nation? it's doomed.

s-la and i got to witness this firsthand in front of one such looming display case of twilight-related junk. amidst posters of robert pattinson's slightly constipated scowl and stephenie meyer's comic book (no, i am not making this up. she has a comic book devoted to her life. please share in my unmitigated horror - at least the review is funny) was a mother and her cute four- or five-year-old daughter. who she led around the display case going 'what's that?' and waiting for the response 'it's twilight!' and teaching her to recognize bella swan. now, i realize this isn't the most popular opinion to have, but i think that anyone who can really, truly like and appreciate twilight to the point where you desire to teach your poor, impressionable child about it is sick. sick and twisted. even twistier than that last sentence and all of my late night mixed pronouns. like i said - Truly Horrifying.

i cheered myself up by having thai food and looking at fun quotes on flickr. this one? this is my favorite.

i feel like it's something we all need to try and remember. and, hypocritical as it may sound, since i did just regale you all with a paragraph of epic judginess up above, i really do think we need to forget about what people might think and just go for the things we want.

i write. i like to write. it's pretty much the only reason i've continued blogging after november ended. you know what i don't like? i don't like showing what i write to other people - and i really don't like the wait in between giving someone something i've written and receiving a reaction. somehow my mind manages to conjure up visions of secret writerly-rachel hatred. it's disturbing, to say the least. i mean, i have issues letting people see my college essays and those aren't even being judged (primarily, anyway) on literary ability.

i guess that's the real point of this huge, meandering blog post. i'm spilling my most random, rambling thoughts onto this page and you, whoever you may be, will eventually read them. judge them. get to know me from a few disparate thoughts on twilight and midtown and life as i know it. here's hoping it's good reading.

i guess i'll see you in 2010. it's been a fun eight months of blogging, though. and, well, i'm thinking this quote expresses everything i've been trying to say for the last three hundred words in much more concise terms:

wordle...again

since it is the end of the year and all, i thought i'd do yet another wordle on the last 107 (really?) posts.

it's time to party like it's 1999

since the new year (and decade) are almost upon us i've decided to share my playlist of the day with you. warning: may cause severe flashbacks.

1. blink 182 - all the small things
2. eminem - the real slim shady
3. britney spears - hit me baby one more time
4. nsync - pop
5. christina aguilera - genie in a bottle
6. s club 7 - don't stop moving
7. smash mouth - all star
8. b*witched - c'est la vie
9. backstreet boys - everybody (backstreet's back)
10. tal bachman - she's so high above me
11. tlc - no scrubs
12. savage garden - i knew i loved you
13. blink 182 - going away to college
14. eiffel 64 - blue (da ba dee)
15. anastasia soundtrack - once upon a december
16. the cranberries - zombie
17. sarah maclachlan - i will remember you

stay tuned for another blog post. it'll probably be a sherlock holmes reaction post, actually. can you tell i'm excited? because i am.

occasionally i visit my kitchen

so this is what i did today:

i decided to blog while it bakes. mmm, chocolate cake. well, half a chocolate cake. the other layer's vanilla but that went into the oven before i remembered to take pictures of it. i'm thinking of clapping them together with raspberry jelly and frosting it in chocolate. we have more vanilla icing than chocolate, though, so i'm not sure if i will or not.

i spent the rest of today writing and messing around on the internet. awkwardfamilyphotos and vintage_ads on livejournal are my favorites. oh, and by 'today' i mean from 2 p.m. until now, since that's when i woke up. oh, i'm going to be sad when this break ends.

i'm listening to coffee spoon by cold war kids. i finally bought it off itunes (which, incidentally, made cutie and the followills their album of the year). the truman show is on right now. it's interesting. also, why doesn't jim carrey make more movies? he's amazing.

the cake timer's about to go off, so i'll just leave you with my two favorite poems of the day. epiphany and oasis.

and so a cult was born

what's on the ipod right now? daniel by bat for lashes.

so it's been a fun few days. meggo, jenibean, s-la, and i made our gingerbread...pyramid. it was amazing and infinitely better than that silly kit s-la and i assembled. i blame costco for clouding her mind with happy waves and distracting her into buying it. highlights from this year include kanye woods (a tiger/kanye hybrid gingerbread man), balloon boy stranded atop an obelisk, blink-182 in chocolate santa form, jon & kate plus 8, the hatter from syfy's remake of alice, b!, beat up pete wentz, and the mistresses/cheating girlfriends of the year. oh, and lots and lots of twizzler guts. s-la took some nice pictures of them on her handy dandy (hot pink!) new camera, but some of the pictures are ooh-la-la scandalous, so they're going to have to stay in their secret corner of the internet.

(speaking of secret corners of the internet, this just made me laugh)

the sleepover at meggos was fun. i saw all, like, four hours of alice finally and it was amazing. even if alice had an unusually manly voice. i hope the burton version's going to be just as good (if not better), even if there won't be any pretty people on screen. i managed to stay up until 4:30 - jenibean and meggo were up even later, those crazies, but s-la gave up and abandoned us around 2. we woke up around ten, i think. whatever time it was, it was hideously early, but once i was awake i just couldn't go back to sleep. don't you just hate when that happens? oh, and once again i left things at meggo's - my boots (purposeful; and i have her black flats, they're comfy) and my jacket (very, very accidental). hopefully i'll pick them up wednesday since a little birdie named phoney told me meggo's planning to wear el booties on tuesday.

luckily frank stopped by this afternoon to drop off round two of my christmas prezzies - including a poufy purple jacket and matching scarf! in other words, i am no longer likely to die of pneumonia this week.

after that i did some laundry, took a shower, and power napped until like eight o'clock. it's been a pretty epic day, i think. oh, and i had a dream!

i was standing on an empty road in the country in the new dress i got at nordstrom (why, yes, i did finish my christmas shopping on december 28th, so what?) and out of nowhere a giant ipod on legs appeared. it wasn't a very graceful ipod, either. it's legs were all long and thin and gangly and it seemed kind of bow-legged; it wobbled as it walked toward me. and then it stopped, folded its legs up, and sat down so that it looked like a giant ipod standing on the ground (without visible legs).

and then the ipod speaks. it's got a voice kind of like morgan freeman. it told me to go forth and give people scarves. except for homeless people because it seems like all they have is scarves, so they should get real clothes. and then it told me to wear my hair in princess leia buns. and that my microwave was going to explode on january 1, 2012. oh, and then it promised me that if i followed its directives the sky would rain itunes gift cards that day. after that it did a funny full-body ipod wiggle thing that i just sort of knew was its version of a bow and told me to spread the message to the masses. i wonder if this is how cults begin?

and then i woke up, finally updated the apps on my phone, and downloaded tap tap revenge 3. you...probably don't want to know how long i spent playing that. it's a shamefully large number of hours, though.

hmm, i'm tired. just added new (old) songs to the playlist. stay tuned - whenever i wake up tomorrow i'll post pictures of the new dresses and meggo and s-la's prezzies. but not jenibean's because i ate it already.

if i lived in new york, my theme song would be

empire state of mind feat. alicia keys by jay-z. that's pretty much the only halfway original thought i've had in the last few days. it's not what i'm listening to right now, though. currently playing: there's my bailout! by bomb the music industry.

i have now tried and failed four times to blog about my holiday. every time i approach the keyboard with the intention of transcribing the events of the last few days my fingers just shrivel up and die of premature exhaustion. i've given up all hopes of ever getting it all down. for those of you who'll see me tomorrow, you'll get the entire story in excruciating detail. everyone else - well, a blogger should try and keep a little mystery about herself, non?

i'll tell you about the last twenty four hours, instead. to begin with, i had the strangest dream last night. the fact that i still remember it is unusual enough because i almost never remember my dreams, but it gets much weirder.

in the dream my nose, which is slightly beaky to begin with, morphed into an actual beak. a toucan's beak, to be precise, only rainbow striped like toucan sam's.

i didn't get any wings or magical cereal powers. just a leopard printed snuggie and a replica harry potter wand like one of the ones they sell in those in-flight magazines. and then - equipped with beak, wand, and snuggie - i flapped off into the night and started hexing the mailboxes of lansdowne. the james bond theme song was playing. it all seemed a little like a video game, actually. like, i was running through the streets, dodging cars and giving mailboxes legs. it was exciting. if only it'd been real.

in other news, watching this took up a significant amount of the trip back yesterday. (it's just the first part but the rest of the videos are all on the marblehornets username)

also, commonapp.org finally disappeared from my top sites on safari today. i was so excited that i...immediately reopened the site and clapped at all the little green triangles on the screen. i know, i'm pretty lame. also, i'll never get over the irony of listing my favorite word as 'quiet' on the UVA supplement. it's actually my second favorite, but i felt like a 250 word ode to violet might be a little too much for the poor, scholarly admissions officers to handle.

oh, and this kinda made my day:

home(ward bound was the greatest movie of all time)

so i haven't blogged much this week. christmas was great - santa was generous this year. saw the rockettes, too, which was amazing - we nearly didn't, since our tickets were for last weekend and we were still snowed in here, but there was a cancellation for the last show on christmas eve and we got to exchange them. saw alvin and the chipmunks: the squeaquel, too. it was adorable. and the single ladies chipmunk dance was just as cute as i hoped it would be.

i'll spare you a long list of prezzies, but the highlights this year were guitar hero (5! with the rock show and sex on fire!), the wii fit, a new acoustic, purple legwarmers, and two snuggies. two. although, in the interest of full disclosure, i will confess that the reason i received those snuggies is because i added a p.s. to my mother's/aunt's email of planniness earlier this month to the effect of: IF I DON'T GET A SNUGGIE I WILL CUT SOMEONE. HAPPY HOLIDAYS! in more or less those exact words. don't judge me - i got them good gifts, too, okay? and if they hadn't been warned ahead of time, i would've just had to exchange their presents for snuggies anyway. so there. the best prezzie of all though? was a fuzzy purple blankie of unparalleled fluffiness. it's keeping me company right now. i think i'll bring it to meggo's on monday for the gingerbread pyramidding/guitar hero-playing/alice-watching day of doom.

since christmas is over, the regular bloggy playlist is back. aren't you excited? my current song of the moment is black & gold by sam sparro. it was hard to find a good version of that for the blog playlist, though, so you get katy perry's version instead.

we're headed to dinner since we don't actually have groceries. will blog something real later. i hope you all had a great christmas!

well, i could just blog about my day

but that'd be boring. basically it was: christmas shopping, manicure/pedicures with the momster, more christmas shopping, grocery shopping, getting cookie a new sweater vest, and shoveling out the driveway because the plows finally came through and dumped a bunch of snow against the sidewalk/mailbox. see? boring.

i've kind of been on an inspiration kick lately. i guess that's good, because when i go through long periods of fangirling/obsessing over random things it's generally followed by extended periods of writing - which, you may have noticed, i just haven't felt like doing after the last few months of nonstop school/college/soulsucking writing i've been doing. so just to clear things up, these aren't my views of the year, they're just things that i've found during my daily internet/iphone wanderings.

examples include the prompt of the day at one of the writing blogs i follow. (actually, it was the prompt of the day in, like, november - i just haven't been checking it since, well, see above for the reasons i haven't been writing, you lazyass).

no retreats, no regrets.

oh, and remember that story about the world war one soldiers who had the truce at christmas and couldn't fight against each other? i always thought that was lovely, and then i got to see the history channel's documentary on it, which was amazing. i'm thinking this goes on my list of things to look up in 2010 (i would start in on it now, but i'm having such fun rereading othello and plowing through my stack of victorian-era research books in the car...they make me want to write a steampunk story). also, i like how this is flickr's idea of a relevant photo for world war one. aren't they cute?

other things which have been making my fingers itch for some post-its and a pencil so i could start outlining include this song by the be good tanyas:

really, i would've loved this song just for the lyrics well it's times like these i feel so small and wild, but the whole thing's just so happy and folky and summery it makes me think of sunshine and flip flops and forgetting everything i've ever learned.

i finished season three of the tudors, today. well, all except the sixth episode, which itunes replaced with the first episode. i wrote them an angry email (thankfully attributed to my mother, who one expects that sort of thing from, since the account is under her name) and ended up getting the whole season refunded and a promise that they'd get on uploading the right version in the next two weeks. aw, isn't that sweet of you, apple? this is why no one likes PCs. you can't imagine their customer service people are justin long.

as for the tudors, i'd explain why i like the show so much, but having just finished a picspam of Certain Characters and/or emmy-winning costuming in the notebook-who-shall-not-be-named (why, yes, i did just watch harry potter), i'm kind of tired of splainying. besides, who needs reasons to watch a show with him in it?

what am i listening to now? tourist by julian casablancas. full disclosure: s-la's blog inspired me to put him on again, since before this i was listening to the mission "m is for milla mix" by puscifer.

this didn't really have any inspirational value. i just found it on flickr and was amused.

soul is boring - spirit flies

today's title is gleaned from michael mcclure's poem 99 theses, as i'm far too unoriginal to come up with anything myself. no, really. today i haven't done anything that could possibly be construed as productive. i've just been reading and running and listening to music. it's been another slow day, just sitting back and finding things that inspire me. like this:

in keeping with that theme (and having decided my life is too boring to blog about) i've decided to blog about other people. or, rather, to blog about random things that caught my eye on the interwebs or idiot box today.

starting with this. could they really not come up with any better descriptor than 'jesus-era'? geez, time magazine, follow my example - on days when your creativity seems sapped, turn to better writers. but thank you for letting me know that this is on youtube, since now i'll have something to watch on my phone in the car:

the economist is doing much better, having produced articles like this (and to think the british say we're the uncultured ones) and, which would've been highly appreciated back in the days when i had current events to do and couldn't think of global topics.

random fact of the day: typing in theone.com redirects you to the daily record's home page. how did i find this out? i tried to get to the onion's homepage on my phone and accidentally hit enter too early.

other random fact which wasn't quite interesting enough to be the official random fact of the day: i enjoy all the editorials calling the 'double-ohs' the decade from hell. for my commentary on the 'double-ohs', see above, right around the part where i advise people lacking in creativity to look to more eloquent sources. as for calling this the decade from hell...well, seeing as this is the first full decade i've been alive for (sorry, nineties, if i had just come along two years earlier i could pretend to be an expert on you, too), i'm not going to make any judgements. however, can a decade which gave us the end of the harry potter books and the beginning of the movie franchise be all bad?

...never mind. clearly this was bad enough to erase all the good done in the last ten years.

i've been reading a lot of poetry lately. this is one of my favorites. go check it out.

i'm in hardcore christmas mode right now, so i'm listening to the sixpence none the richer version of it came upon a midnight clear. sadly, it wasn't available when i was putting together the holiday blog playlist, so you'll just have to find it for yourself since youtube refuses to play it.

ooh, ooh! breaking news: keith olbermann just declared 'death panel' (first used by sarah palin) to be the lie of the year. share in my amusement. cable news never stops being funny.

this blog has gone on long enough. i'll restrain myself and just post one more link.

have yourself a sandinista christmas, guys!

this picture isn't related to anything, beyond the fact that there's roughly eighty three feet of snow on the ground and i really wish my backyard and/or town looked like this instead of the mess which it currently is (way to fail, snow plow men).

so today i was the laziest i've been in ages. no homework, no college applications, no...anything, really. it felt amazing. and since winter break is sixteen days this year, i'm hoping that there'll be a lot more days exactly like this one. why? well, there's a poem which describes what i feel a lot better than i ever could. it's called blues by elizabeth alexander:

I am lazy, the laziest

girl in the world. I sleep during

the day when I want to, 'til

my face is creased and swollen,

'til my lips are dry and hot. I

eat as I please: cookies and milk

after lunch, butter and sour cream

on my baked potato, foods that

slothful people eat, that turn

yellow and opaque beneath the skin.

Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday

I am still in my nightgown, the one

with the lace trim listing because

I have not mended it. Many days

I do not exercise, only

consider it, then rub my curdy

belly and lie down. Even

my poems are lazy. I use

syllabics instead of iambs,

prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme,

write briefly while others go

for pages. And yesterday,

for example, I did not work at all!

I got in my car and I drove

to factory outlet stores, purchased

stockings and panties and socks

with my father's money.

To think, in childhood I missed only

one day of school per year. I went

to ballet class four days a week

at four-forty-five and on

Saturdays, beginning always

with plie, ending with curtsy.

To think, I knew only industry,

the industry of my race

and of immigrants, the radio

tuned always to the station

that said, Line up your summer

job months in advance. Work hard

and do not shame your family,

who worked hard to give you what you have.

There is no sin but sloth. Burn

to a wick and keep moving.

I avoided sleep for years,

up at night replaying

evening news stories about

nearby jailbreaks, fat people

who ate fried chicken and woke up

dead. In sleep I am looking

for poems in the shape of open

V's of birds flying in formation,

or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.

what am i listening to right now? 1 John 4:16 by the mountain goats.

that's all for now. i'm going to sleep, and am hopefully not going to wake up for the next twelve hours.

100th post!

that's right, i've successfully blogged 100 times. aren't you proud?

to commemorate this wonderful occasion, i'm going to leave you with a profound summation of my last eight months of blogging:

cuz, let's face it - at least half of those hundred posts have been variations on 'OMG LOOK AT THE CUTE FUZZY ANIMAL'.

also, in honor of jeni finally discovering the onion last night, i give you this:

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

in other news, i no longer have MongolEyes. oh, and our walkway and driveway is shoveled out! we actually managed to leave the house today. surprisingly, it was only for a little while as both the momster and i aren't really fans of driving on snowy roads. hmm, maybe by tomorrow everything will be cleared up? we can hope, right?

one of those fruit of the loom commercials came on. i really want a giant purple grape suit now. it'd match my...life. soul. room. idk, it would match one of the many purple things i own and there is no reason why i shouldn't get a purple grape suit for christmas.

...never mind. i just tried running that argument with the momster via text. still a no. however, if any of you haven't gotten me a prezzie yet - now you know what i want, so get on that. (except you, jeni, because i'm just going to show up at your house or meggo's and eat all your food one of these days. you brought this on yourself, though, with all the foodwhoring pictures, so no complaining)

i'm listening to...eurgh, i wish i could lie about this one, but - from a distance (christmas version) by bette midler. shut up. i can feel you judging me and i don't like it. it was on the radio today and i have a thing for 80s ballads. so there.

good work, snowstorm. i always knew i could count on you.

before i say anything else, let's just take a moment to appreciate this:

hmm, so the many (mis)adventures of r-wa & s-la can be read here, accompanied by pictures, s-la's commentary, and happy christmas music. and since this is clearly going to be the first blog of many this weekend, i won't bother to give my own version of events, except to elaborate on the two things she skipped.

the first is, of course, the MongolEyes. at first i thought i'd suddenly developed an allergy to cats which, as you all know, would've been disastrous, given my kitty-owning, lol-cat-making aspirations. however, further reflection revealed that that was highly unlikely since i've never been allergic to her cats before and if i was allergic to them than i wouldn't stil have giant, puffy, mongol-approved red eyes right now.

oh, and in case you're wondering, the Mongol reference comes from this movie. i couldn't find the clip online because people just don't appreciate baby genghis khan the way s and i do, but when little genghis/temudjin is picking out his wife, his father advises him not to get one with really big eyes since that's how the demons could fly into her mind.

needless to say, the demons won't be flying into my head anytime soon. i'd post pictures but even my mother won't stop laughing about them (she wants to make a snowman with 0_o face to commemorate my current 0_o face!). also, unlike paris hilton and sarah palin, i know better than to let unfortunate pictures or videos of mine get published. what if i miraculously end up famous and then my mongol face comes up and that's the one picture newscasters use to refer to me? like that one really awful picture of sarah palin that jon stewart always brings up whenever he talks about her? nuh uh. but just so you get an idea of the true horror of the situation, here, have a picture of my current MongolEye-treating tools:

from left to right: my buddies the costco roll of oreos, pills from dr. cray-cray, pills from new dr, callie the bottle of calamine lotion, & miss. bumble the purple hairspray bottle

anyway, onto the second thing s-la forgot: prezzies! well, just mine, since she's not getting hers until tuesday (along with her socks, sweatpants, Notey, mix cd, and thank you card...have i mentioned that s-la is the greatest?). they're purple! and scarfy! and hatty! and glovey! and altogether worthy of exclamation points! sadly, they won't be pictured since they're now drying from their first excursion into the snow (it's so deep now - at least we know it won't melt before christmas).

what am i listening to right now? shake, rattle, & roll by elvis.

that's all for now, since it's time to re-icepack my poor MongolEyes before they decide to start swelling again. but before i go, let's all take a moment to bask in this for a moment:

oh, loudoun county public schools, i take back every bad thought and whiny blog i've ever had about you. we have a two week winter break after all!

BlogPress

so today i got this handy dandy app on my phone which lets me update my blog a little more easily. we'll see how that works out. it'll probably be a lot easier than my previous method of updating via iPhone, which mainly involved opening up blogger, switching to HTML mode, and copying in any pictures or videos i wanted in.

strangely, i just misspelled wanted and my phone's autofill dictionary suggested that i meant to type sanhedrin. what, exactly, is Sanhedrin? Someone google it for me since i can't quit this app without losing everything I posted.

what am i listening to? the well and the lighthouse by arcade fire. it's good music for waiting in parking lots, which is what i'm up to right now, since the momster is taking the lulus fir their rabies vaccinations and i didn't feel like waiting in the vets office. basically, this will probably be my only opportunity to blog today and I felt like I should seize it.

i have a feeling that sentence was horribly convoluted. oh well, it's been a long day.
buzzer club was fun today. the muslim student association was meeting next door, though, and they were so loud we had to shut the door. gee, way to show some courtesy guys.

a lot of people wore purple today. it was extremely happymaking. candy canes if you get that reference! here's a hint:

also at lunch, my friend katrina was talking about how she can read tagalog more easily than spanish, which reminded me of when s-la and i tried to speak tagalog. meggo, i hope you get us another pamphlet - s and i need to perfect our newspeak skills. oh, and why does autofill recognize newspeak but not ryro or muggle or funner? silly autofill. you need to get with the grammatically incorrect times

that's all, folks. let's see how this works out.

edit: eh, i like posting from the phone. uploading pictures isn't as fun, mostly because you can't upload straight from flickr, and then you'd all have to miss out on little gems like this (the ipod home screen in cupcake form!)

let me steal this moment from you now

so i'm not sure if i'm happy or annoyed that running up this hill by placebo is being used in the previews for what looks like a really crappy movie. random thought, but since the commercial is currently playing, i thought i'd share.

hey, look, trailer over. just switched to the ipod. now playing saint jerome by joy division.

oh, and speaking of things switching, notice anything about the layout? i felt like making a change. thoughts? should i keep it or try a new one?

since gina blogged about her candy cane experience today, i'll share mine, too. it's pretty boring, actually. i love candy canes, though, and i've been waiting since the beginning of december to get one. of course, since the world decided to imitate scrooge without telling me, i didn't get any. and then today i got three and a half! (only a half because i had to split the one from the doctor's office with frank).

the doctor's office wasn't that bad. they did draw blood, but at least time i had frank with me instead of my mom, since last time i got blood drawn i squeezed her hand so hard she had little finger shaped bruises for over a week. and then afterwards we went to the thai place in lansdowne. it's a good thing we go there so often - i'd hate to think what they would've done when we called ahead and asked them to have the order waiting on the table if they didn't know us.

i miss glee. oh, wednesday, things aren't the same without the promise of campy singalongs. it's like your tiger woods and i'm the wife that wishes she could leave yo- oh, really. huh. well there goes that analogy.

there is no point to that picture. it's just really cute. i don't if that's a point for or against getting a puppy, since that puppy is adorable, but ew, look at the mess.

so i was going through some of the random stuff in the garage and i found my eighth grade english binder. highlights? the first comment on my last essay (it was the first one in the binder, since i like filing things backwards). 'you scatter commas like grass seed.' reason 4645535 to hate middle school.

ahahahaha

i went out into the night

my new doctor is trying to turn me into a druggie. at least, i think she is. like, she's the fill-in for my normal (also bitchy) doctor whose on vacation, and she seems convinced i need like 9835798573 pills. no, seriously. she's all 'why don't you sleep more? you need more sleep. here's a prescription for ambien.' and 'why are you so stressed out? there's no need to be stressed, everyone gets into college. have a prescription for xanax.' and then 'oh, no need to worry about those pesky side effects like drowsiness. every morning take one of these handy dandy uppers to get you alert for school. oh, and here's a prescription for valium. it's a muscle relaxant because you look tense.'

...you only wish i was kidding.

i've always wondered how, on tv shows or talk shows or movies, there'll be all of these housewives and, like, twelve year olds on maury talking about how they got addicted to prescription drugs or sell black market medication because they couldn't face the prospect of stripping for another ten years to pay for their kid's college tuition (that's a true story too - it was on the talk show that was playing in the waiting room) and now i know. like, apparently, there are doctors who'll just give you pills for anything. wow, world, no wonder our healthcare system is failing.

i was totally all for trying to find one of those desperate housewives or twelve year old addicts, but the momster told me i'm not allowed to take any of them (or even look at them too hard). oh well. there goes my future as a drug dealer. i guess i'll have to stay in school after all.

well, starting thursday, anyway. since the doctor was a nut, the momster made an appointment at another office for tomorrow, and then we might be going to williamsburg for a mental health/gee-i'm-bored-let's-drive day after. we'll see how that works out.

in other news, i'm listening to arcade fire again right now. neighborhood #3 (power out). it's my favorite.

oh, and i got new nail polish today. it's called ho ho ho red, which, wow. talk about bad nail polish names. it's a really pretty, christmassy color, tho, so i'm happy with it anyway. i don't think it's really fair to blame the nail polish for its name. after all, we don't do that to people, right? or i hope we don't, because poor apple martin and bronx wentz are going to have miserable lives in a few years, then.

also, everyone join in the push for jeni to either open a bakery or save me some goodies. all her pictures/texts/descriptions make me hungry, which is bad enough on its own when i've already gained weight (blegh, doctors - why must you weigh us every single time? what good does knowing that do anyone? none, that's what), but downright cruel when the only goodies in our house are an absolutely disgusting yule log and peanut butter chewy bars. seriously, jeni, if you keep this up santa's gonna bean you in the head with a lump of coal come christmas.

the third season of the tudors has finally finished downloading on itunes, so i'm going to go watch that now. night, guys.

unwrapped

so today has been a little crazy. it began with a flailfest in the morning because i thought my ear was falling off - basically, i woke up and there was blood all over my face/the pillow and a giant cut right where my ear connects to my head and...yeah. i'm barely functional at best in the morning, so to wake up to a face full of blood lead me into Panic Mode (not to be confused with panic! at the mode), which got my mother to wander in and also start freaking out. and since i'm anemic and my blood doesn't clot very well, my stupid ear wouldn't stop bleeding (although, seriously, how did i even manage to cut myself in the first place? i was asleep. lulu must've wandered in and tried to exact revenge on me for all the bitter blogs), so we went to the doctor and now my ear is no longer bleeding and i have super!iron vitamins to take. they're huge pills and pretty nasty, so i don't know if i'll actually stick to that unless i'm, like, bleeding to death or something.

well, after the traumarama of the morning, the momster and i decided to take the day off and indulge in some happy holiday times. we went to mount vernon and did some christmas shopping in tyson's and after that we hit all the christmas light shows. which lead to us having dinner in alexandria at ten in an empty (but amazing) restaurant. it was pretty cool. we'd never been there before and the owner and the last waiter, who's her daughter, just came out to talk with us and we got free dessert.

the best part of today, though, was getting the ornaments. see, the momster and i have a tradition where every year, after we've decorated the tree, we spend the run up to christmas keeping an eye out for one perfect ornament for each of us. it's pretty fun, mostly because there's nothing i love more than christmas ornaments. it's a rule on our tree that each ornament has to have a story - it can't be one of those generic out-of-the-box deals. we've spent a lot of time trolling christmas stores, and now we have a stockpile of good ones, plus the Ornaments of the Year, which always make it on the tree. here's this years, from the christmas attic in alexandria:

mine was the peacock and mom's is the little bird clipped to the edge of the box. this year we amended the tradition a little and got cookie and lulu ornaments. in case you couldn't tell (check the cookie is a wookie and lulu labels for proof), the ornaments look just like them, mostly because the store had one of those walls of dog breed ornaments. and, well, they were just so cute we couldn't resist buying them.

so since Certain People have informed me that they hate my doting musical review posts, i'll refrain from fangirling too much (but, really, it's not too much until you're parked outside their house with binoculars, right?), but i've been obsessed with arcade fire and the format lately. i've always sort of liked arcade fire, but was mostly put off by their hipster-pitchfork association. then the day before yesterday one of their songs came on shuffle while i was college apping and it just seemed so perfect for writing to that i put on the rest of the album and then the one after that and then bought their itunes-only eps and tracked down their live sessions and b-sides and covers and then found interviews and band member profiles and...yeah. this is basically what i do whenever i find a band i really like, actually. of course, those steps are also like checkpoints for if i still like them or not. to use kings of leon as an example, i stopped at the interview step just because, well, the followills aren't really nice people, what with the cocaine and alcoholism and womanizing and other fun stuff like that. and sometimes i work backwards, like i did with panic! at the disco and the format. other bands i like will mention them or i'll come across an interview in a magazine or something and decide they seem nice and maybe i'll give their music a listen and things will spiral from there. in other words, my obsessions are mercurial yet intense (points if you can name where that reference came from without googling). also, i just realized that i just went off into a long-winded, totally unnecessary, musical tangent yet again, but...well, they have some relevance. i mean, both band just cracked my itunes top 25 after only three days of solid listening (knocking out don't stop believing from the glee cast and crazy by ray lamontagne).

so it's late and i have a vocab quiz first thing tomorrow, so i'm going to sleep now. you probably should too. or, you know, put some arcade fire on and relax, because they really are just ridiculously atmospheric and perfect.

want to hold a mirror up to the world

what's on the ipod right now? antichrist television blues by arcade fire.

so, the blogging is occurring a little later than i originally intended. among other things i had some cookies and milk, prevented lucifer the smooshy faced dog from eating the christmas tree, and discovered that the song i'm currently listening to is actually about joe simpson. in other words, today has been productive.

so you know that quote from 'the perks of being a wallflower' about wanting to feel infinite? the picture up there? that's one of the things that makes me feel infinite. here's another thing that does. it's amazing how we can become so preoccupied with our own petty concerns that we forget that there can be things and people and places in this scary, beautiful world that are just completely beyond our own lives. i mean look at that girl. she doesn't need to feel infinite, she just is - infinite and self-contained and capable of remembering the difference between right and wrong even when she's surrounded by people who can't say the same. every once in a while, you see something which reminds you that there are no limits to the human condition beyond the self-imposed.

to see examples of self-imposed limits on human growth, see this. same website, and an example of the worst parenting since jon and kate plus 8 went off the air. hmm, maybe arcade fire will right a song about them next? we can only hope.

also, to continue the 'do i want a kitty or a tiger or a pony or a puppy or...' debate, maybe i want a kitty after all? if i got one i could do this!

the story of smooshy smooshy face

This is Lulu.

She will eat you.

No, really. And then she'll go after your dearly beloved Notebooks, Potters, and Pencil Cases.

Don't expect to survive.

(New blog in approximately 15 minutes. In the car now. Not bad for pictures taken on my phone last night, eh?)

i'm being overwhelmed by cute

to start with, cookie is sleeping on top of my feet and dog 2 - known during times of headphone-chewing as lucifer and currently referred to as Smooshy Face - is sleeping on the pillow next to me. we decided not to have their fur trimmed when they went to the groomer last week, so when they got their bath this afternoon, cookie was so furry we ran out of dog shampoo halfway through his and resorted to using herbal essences 'tousle me softly' on him and Smooshy Face.

and to add to the cute, i'm listening to zooey deschanel's duet with will ferrel from elf, which always makes me think of the 'omg, santa' scene.

mostly, though my probable death by cute overload will be attributable to this:

puppy! tilting its head!

...remember when i only youtubed things like stephen colbert's white house press correspondents speech and midtown concert footage? i bet you miss those days, huh? i don't know why, but december's shaping up to be an 'aww, look at the widdle fuzzy [insert animal here]' month. what happened?

edit: i found another one. look how cute it is!

edit again: this is the last one, it's just too D': not to include

oh glory (oh panic!, i wish you'd finally release something)

no blogging of substance to be found here. sadly all of my coherent thoughts have been liquified and sold to the masses as part of this lovely drinkle here.

i'm listening to she's got me dancing by tommy sparks, but a few minutes ago the thirty-second demo of panic's oh glory came on and it made me really wish they'd finally finish their album. apparently it's going to come out 'sometime' in 2010. what does that even mean? can't they at least 'accidentally' leak a song or two? or even a cover? way to gip your fans, guys. i mean, i'm getting so annoyed with waiting that i actually turned to the young veins - and am starting to like them. no, seriously. maybe because this time i'm listening to them after a weeklong musical binge of indie bands, the who, early followills, &c. instead of hearing the new songs straight after listening to nothing but panic!, blink, fall out boy, and britney spears. or maybe it's because hearing ryan ross's voice no longer makes me think 'ahahahahaha CRACKHEAD'. either way, i'm actually kind of excited for their new album.

oh, and speaking of things which randomly came on, i was channel surfing and caught a glimpse of the new girls next door. in case you were wondering, it was the most inane excuse for a reality show i've ever seen, and this is coming after having seen jersey shore (which defies description. oh, mtv, since you've completely given up on actually showing music videos, please never stop providing unintentionally ironic scripted reality shows, okay?).

also, reason 423 i need a cat:

it could blog with me!