where you came from

today's title comes from radioactive by cutie and the followills as covered by cee-lo green. it's not on youtube yet, but you can listen to it here. and you should. you really, really should. it's way better than the original.

i'm still enjoying having fox soccer channel again. i've been watching all the champion's league matches in high definition. it's been wonderful. real madrid drew 2-2 today, but it was okay because i occupied myself/fought off disappointment by laughing at the way the oh-so-american commentators kept mispronouncing everyone's names. the real highlight of the day came in watching bayern munich slaughter some random team called cfr cluj. mario gomez scored three times! and muller scored once! and schweini was wonderful with his assists (and his yellow card). biebstuber had a groin injury and couldn't play, though. i've decided that even if husband number two doesn't like them because they are like the real barcelona of germany and always spend too much money and buy all the good players, i'll support them.

a little. all teams are not equal, after all, and liverpool is (deservedly) number one forever and ever. i'm so excited that s-la has been converted, because now we can watch the istanbul dvd together over some break or the other and force jenibean and meggo to watch, too.

speaking of s-la, her contact removal advice once again proved to be priceless. after the regular doctor's appointment, the momster dragged me to the eye doctor. i got new contacts. and new glasses, but those aren't here yet. i had to wear contacts all day, though, so i could give the doctor a "report" about how they felt over the phone tomorrow. doesn't that just sound strange? i think so. i finally took them out a few minutes ago and i didn't poke myself in the eye or flip the contact inside out or rip it in half or anything. you go, s-la. four for you, steffi coco. here, have some germans as thanks:

this just made me laugh. i'm not even sure why. i just like picturing kanye west and george bush having one of those old school rap feuds. the mental image of george bush rapping diss tracks and shooting people in drive-bys is wonderful.

i've pretty much given up on this post. i'm a little too caffeinated/high on leftover halloween candy to string together anything remotely coherent. here, have some more pictures!

question: how much do i want these? answer: a lot. 

tumblr reminds me that i'm not the only loser who gets excited by the debut of the christmas cups at starbucks.

i have decided to try to keep this in mind more often.

scream it to the nothingness

today's title comes from home by edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros. idk, blame ginger.

i guess it's time for me to update this thing again. where do i begin? well, a quick skim of my last post let me know that i left off right before my iranian revolution seminar, so i guess that's as good a place as any to start.

let's do this chronologically, shall we? on friday, after running all the way from my bio lecture, which ends at 2:50, to my film class, which begins at 3, i found myself in a rather large, carpeted office. not a classroom - an office. a very nice, dimly lit office, but still an office. oh, and there were no chairs in it. just lots and lots of rugs and these flat chair/pillow things on the floor. i'm not sure what they're called - maybe s-la could ask mona about it. anyway, we all sit down in the floor-pillow things and wait for a professor to come in.

except there is no professor. after a few minutes, a TA comes in, introduces herself, and puts a ten-minute video of the professor introducing himself and talking about the class on the projector. then she puts in a dvd and leaves.

the dvd in question? a compilation of pre-revolution iranian films. it was three hours long. now, i'm going to let you do a little critical thinking here. what does one dimly lit, air-conditioned office, plus comfortable pillows, plus one three hour movie equal? if you guessed a roomful of drowsy people, you'd be right. i'm thoroughly excited for this class now. as you all probably know, i'm all for naptime.

later that night, i had another nail party with the hall-es. look at all the nail polish!

oh, and marvel at my toes. aren't they great?

after that, i attempted to figure out the big bad world of skype. it sort of worked. i got s-la on for a little while, but ended up getting distracted by the hall-es playing christmas music (we've decided that now is as good a time as any to start the caroling - i miss holiday music, you know?) and making funny faces at me. i think she talked to them a little, too, when i went to get my computer charger. at any rate, it was a lot more successful than any of my other attempts to use skype. if only sarah with an umlaut would figure out oovoo like everyone else.

best quote ever? "i hate having to tell people i'm from leesburg because no one knows where lansdowne is. we're too rich to live in leesburg!" oh, s-la, never change. the angry twelve-year-olds from omegle would be proud. 

oh, i went running on friday with one of the hall-es and another friend, too. it was only about a mile, but it was enough to prove that all the eating i've been doing has gotten me way out of shape. i guess i'm going to have to work on that. i'm going to yoga and kick boxing classes, though, so hopefully that'll help.

on saturday, michelle and another one of the hall-es and i went to the farmer's market in fredericksburg. i have fresh fruit now! peaches, specifically. they're yummy. oh, and we got pastries there, too. actually, we just ate a lot - see what i mean about being out of shape? like after that, we went to the fredericksburg library - i have a library card now! - and got books, and then shopped a bit. i got a belt and a shirt, but that's it in terms of clothes since i already have too many. but then michelle showed us this amazing little bookstore where i stocked up. here's the full list, more for my records than yours, since i'm trying to keep track of what i read while i'm here:

1. howl's moving castle - diana wynne jones. i got this for one dollar! i love tiny bookstores. 
2. the road - cormac mccarthy
3. the dante club - matthew pearl. this was a library book since i have a copy at home. i just miss it. 
4. the white tiger - aravind adiga. my global issues in lit teacher talks about this one all the time, so i figured i'd give it a try.
5. the queen of dreams - chitra banerjee divakaruni. also mentioned in lit. 
6. the cardinal and the queen - evelyn anthony. this just looked fun. 
7. the secret history of the mongol queens - jack weatherford. remember how s-la and i really liked genghis khan and the making of the modern world, the book we had to read for ap world sophomore year? yeah, it has a sequel. i'm ridiculously excited for it. 
8. the devil wears prada - the movie. not technically a book, but i got it at the bookstore - and for only five dollars!

we had dinner at this amazing diner michelle always talks about. i had the best milkshake of my entire life. it was huge - we split it between three of us and were basically full just from that, but the food was good, too. after that, we headed back to the dorm and watched the devil wears prada with some of the hall-es, and then i got ready and went out. 

sunday was more of the same. i caught up on my studying and homework for the week - i'm completely done with all of my bio work for the whole week! i'm pretty excited about that - and we went to a cookout and hung out with a few people and went to a bunch of club and newspaper meetings. we went downtown again for dinner. we ate at a purple restaurant! it was purple inside and out, a policy all other restaurants should try to follow. oh, and then on the way back we found a gelato place run by an actual italian. we could barely understand a word he said but the gelato was amazing. i got black raspberry cookie dough, which i didn't even know existed until...now, actually. it was so good that i bought a pint of it, but now i'm trying to ration it so i don't run out. 

after that, i completely failed at skyping/oovooing again, so if anyone wants to try to have a real conversation, i'll be on tomorrow night. some of the hall-es and i watched sherlock holmes. i forgot how much i missed robert downey jr.'s silly faces:

nothing very interesting happened today. this is my back-to-back bio classes day, so i basically spent five hours trying not to laugh every time professor bowtie described unsaturated fats as kinky. oh, and i wore contacts again. so far nothing too bad has happened, but when i tried to take them out last night the right one folded in half and got stuck in my eyelid and i had to flush my eyes with water for like half an hour (and with roomie supervision, since they seem convinced i might accidentally die on them or something) before it would pop back out. why do these things always happen to me?

i'm going to wrap this up now. i've got to meet some friends for dinner and then get my homework done. i figured i'd get this post over with now so you could all marvel at my good blogging and finally update your own. not that i'm hinting or anything. 

why should we even care?

today's title comes from iron man by black sabbath. here, enjoy it:

if you haven't heard by now, i went to see iron man 2 at midnight the day of/after my ap lit exam (which was ridiculously easy, i felt so smart...look for that to change on thursday when i have to take two econ exams). i liked it even more than the first one but my appreciation of these movies has always been based on how long robert downey jr. is on screen, so it was definitely worth going to the midnight showing, even if i did have to suffer through school on four hours of sleep (and not one drop of caffeine until i cried to an unnamed school official for coffee - did you know that officially teachers can't provide us with anything caffeinated because it's a "drug"? those fascists). luckily we weren't doing anything too strenuous in class on friday...or anything at all. we mostly spent the day playing board games in various parts of the school. i'm guessing the last few weeks of school are going to hover somewhere between "easy" and "laughable" or the hard work scale.

oh, and a little thing called prom happened yesterday. it was...like every other dance i've been to, actually. the only new additions to the formula of bad music + good dinner + fun group + pretty clothes and nails and hair were the limo and meggo. and even meggo doesn't really count, since s-la and i have both tagged along to her dances before. at least i sort of managed to dance with my shoes on for a little while? i find that impressive. so does robert downey jr.

after, however, something wonderful happened. i learned how to take out my contacts. and it neither ripped in half nor mysteriously popped out while i kept stabbing my eye with my finger. all the credit for that goes to s-la. so, who knows, now that i've figured out how to touch my eye without horrible things happening maybe i'll even start wearing them regularly. maybe.

an alternative name for this holiday is gratuitous rdj gif day, just so you all know

today was mother's day. it was pretty uneventful. i presented the momster with her prezzie, she flapped around a bit, we went out to eat, the end. i'm mentioning this because it's sheer lack of drama fills me with glee. i learned long ago in middle school to include a handwritten disclaimer with all of her cards and presents banning overly emotional displays of affection between us, since hallmark hasn't seen fit to create a card with that addendum. they should really get on that. would any of you want to be cried on and called pumpkin for, like, an hour? i don't think so. this way is so much better.

anyway, i'm still pretty tired/operating on a sleep deficit, so i'm going to cut this post short. look for longer blogs this week, though, since things are finally winding down in school.

eye eye eye

i'm thinking i should give up on contacts. experience 1 since the Case of the Ripped Contact Lens involved me sitting in meg's bathroom poking at my eye for fifteen minutes before realizing that my contact had already come out. fml.

contact update

a lot of people have wondered why i never wanted contacts - well, today i present to you the best reason ever to avoid contacts (or, a story from rachel's saturday night)

our lovely protagonist (moi) happens to be very fond of mac's lash-defining mascara. you might even go so far as to call it her best friend. but, in the tradition of all sexy best friends (hello lex luthor, we miss you) it went bad. how? well...

all of those lovely mascara-aided lashes got stuck to my left contact. so i, of course, went with the reflex of brushing/rubbing them out of the way. and when that didn't work, i (being a very resourceful protagonist, none of that wishy washy bella swan nonsense up in here) attempted to take my contact out. in the car. in a maryland parking lot at 11:30 at night. 

unfortunately, no one warned me (oh that evil ministry of magic contact wearing, why must you keep the public in the dark?) that these favorable conditions won't persuade the contact to magically jump onto your finger. so the contact stayed put. and mascara the evil bff caused Severe Itching in the eye area. mon dieu, what was a girl to do?

well, the natural course was to rub the eye in question vigorously. which i did. and then my contact ripped in half. in half. and i couldn't even tell if the other half was still in my eye or not. 

so, after several badly lit public restrooms, many, many restaurant patrons wondering why on earth the insane girl kept touching her eye and going "ohmygodohmygodohmygod", and a very rushed trip home (surprising sans ticket, but only because we explained to the police officer and he let it slide), we got home. 

and then i spent an hour staring at my eyeball in a giant mirror and trying to figure out if the contact (well, half...let's call it halfie, shall we?) was still stuck to my eye and how to get it if it was -- why yes, this period did feature a panic attack, my mother was most unimpressed. by the end of the night we concluded halfie was no longer on my person and so i went to sleep. 

but then came morning, all three hours ago (for me). and my eye still felt strange. so after more rubbing (can you tell i was the little kid in preschool with both hands like permanently glued to her face?) out popped halfie. i'm not sure if i was more horrified or relieved. relieved, for obvious reasons. horrified because a. i'd heard all the sleeping with contacts horror stories and b. because if it'd been in all night and we couldn't see it, where the hell had it been?

and so ends the story. i hope you tell it to all your children in the grand style of horror stories everywhere. don't forget the flashlights, blankets, and appropriate exclamations of pure horror. 

in more happy news, i spent most of yesterday at meggo's, helping her friend get ready for prom. my makeup skills were put to good use on her at least. who knew i could line someone's eyes without killing them?

victory!

update on project contact: i can now put them in and take them out in one try (and, when taking them out at least, without a mirror). why, yes, i am excited. 

i'm reading the screwtape letters by c. s. lewis now. what's ophelia the ipod playing? beau fixe by coralie clement qui j'adore. 

i have a french speaking quiz tomorrow. as a consequence i've been frantically practicing the lovely french r sound. my mother recently informed me that i sound like a dying cat while i do so, so i figured that was an indicator that more practice was necessary. 

in other news, the story idea i've been playing with is starting to come together plot-wise. thank my muse, viola. she's been working overtime - and quite randomly. one idea is for the first pure fantasy i've ever considered writing and the other is for a post-apocalyptic society with vaguely religious undertones. 

flickr picture of the day: comme des enfants. 

i can see clearly now...

well, not now that the rain is gone (it's not, in fact it's still pouring outside and the weatherbug radar has the entire county covered in a solid block of red), but now that i have finally given in and gotten contacts. you know, those things i said i would never get (i am highly disturbed by the notion of placing anything on my eyeball, especially my own fingers and not excepting small bendy pieces of plastic). however, after years of mocking me for my inability to join the ranks of the corrective lens wearing masses, my own mother issued me an ultimatum - she wasn't going to pay for my second prom dress if i was determined to "ruin the effect of everything" by wearing glasses. and so, to the eye doctor i went. 

i am now on day two of this whole adjustment period business - specifically, i'm almost out of hour 2 of 4 for the day. so far, i've been convinced that i was going to go blind - in reality, i put the left lens in inside out, dripped lens solution into my eye because i couldn't find eye drops and my eyes are so dry it felt like the sahara had moved to my eye socket, and put my finger on the lens seven times and moved it around just because it looked so weird. 

and in the midst of all this excitement, i decided i'm going to blog my way through this experience. i've been neglecting this thing in the name of homework (the gods of gpantheon will not be denied), so i might as well get back in the hang of things. 

also, last night, i stayed up til 3 doing a project on fallacies for lang. here's the customer testimonial, i think you'll enjoy it.

what's playing on my ipod right now? c'etait salement romantique by coeur du pirate they're really good, and i'm trying to listen to more french music because a. the language is gorgeous and b. i have a test on monday that is supposedly 

ridiculously difficile, so it wouldn't hurt to prepare

what am i reading? the killer angels by michael shaara. actually, it's a reread (and for a reason - it's one of the best books i've ever read, and one of the few war books that i'll read for the battle descriptions and logistical information as much as the characters). i just finished incantation by alice hoffman. it was gorgeous and painful, just like all of her novels. i wish i had her flair for prose; everything she writes, every detail, every choice of syntax and scene, just flows. it's a little magical, to tell the truth. and more importantly, her writing has...oomph. it hurts, in just the right way. if you haven't read her books, start - practical magic is probably my favorite, but any of them will do. 

and it wouldn't be right if i didn't end with the usual pretty piccy from flickr. this one's called, appropriately, let there be light. isn't it gorgeous?