enzymes

today's title comes from the song of the same name by freelance whales:

i'm home. i have the flu. i am headed to the doctor tomorrow - and after that the eye doctor. i am clearly the sickliest child on the face of the earth.

i think today's theme is going to be sentences beginning with i - it's good to be selfish.

i've been home for four hours and have already had to pry my headphones out of lulu's tiny mouth. i've missed having fox soccer channel to watch champion's league games on in hd. i also missed having cookie sleep on my feet (he's doing that right now).

i think this i-thing is harder than i thought it would be; how does steve jobs manage it?

i think the trailer for tangled looks really cool:

i was a bad citizen and didn't vote today. i don't think i'm registered yet. i also think you should stop judging me since i've only been eighteen for two weeks.

i came home and was terrified by my laundry room - the momster replaced our washer and dryer with these scary, high tech things that beep and have a spinny dial and very complicated instruction manuals.

i'm tired and mucus-y and think i will end this post here. i also think that the road to recovery lies with the giant bags of leftover halloween candy sitting in my pantry. i think i'll go liberate them.

rise as the buildings crumble

today's title comes from when the world ends by the dave matthews band. specifically, the oakenfold remix, which has been on a playlist a friend sent me ages ago, and which i rediscovered on the car ride home. here, take a listen - it's kind of dark and...layered. like an onion. i don't know, it sort of fit my mood.

you might have noticed my complete absence from all things bloggy last week. that actually wasn't me being lazy - i finally gave in and went to the doctor last week (i've been trying to stay relatively healthy while i'm at school. i'm - pun intended - sick of my immune system imploding) and found out that i let my cold go so long that it turned into, like, a viral infection that settled in the cartilage in my chest. that's the gist of it, anyway. i was busy sitting on the table and trying not to go "ow. my chest hurts. ow. i can't walk. ew, this is gross, i'm so mucusy and why does mucus have to even sound gross as a word?" while they briefed the momster via the phone since, despite resolutely checking the box that said not to inform my parents, the doctor informed my parents - apparently you don't get a say when you're under 18, even when it's only four days (oh. my. god. i turn eighteen in four days. four days! i'm going to be an adult!) under. bastards. anyway, i now have an arsenal of antibiotics and mucus thinners (seriously, doesn't that word just look gross?) and heavy duty painkillers and things. it's wonderful.

you probably wouldn't have seen much of me on the internet, anyway, though, since most of my midterms were last week and i banned myself from the internet (except for liverpool news, but those don't count because i have both the app and device updates texted directly to my phone and anyway it was special freaking circumstances, okay?). the hall-es and i did the math while trying to figure out how to fit all of our stuff in one elevator yesterday, and it turns out that i've written 32 pages of midterm papers in the last week and a half. i hated life a little after hearing that. especially since one of my midterms was to write two essays, due thursday, for my chaucer class (more medieval dream theory and compare/contrasting of chaucer and langland and dante). i, staying at the library with the hall-es until it closed, finished them ahead of time. but when i get to class, i found out that the teacher extended the deadline until wednesday (my birthday!) because she got so many "sob stories". excuse me? i have a chest infection and i got my work done! ugh, i hate lazy people.

however, there was a silver lining to the week. the momster turned up on campus - again - wednesday to lecture me for not going to the doctor sooner and take me to a "real" (read: not school-employed) one for a second opinion. it was fun anyway, though, because she brought the lulus and two of the hall-es and i got to walk them around campus for a little less than an hour. cookie was his typical adorable self. lulu...well, at least she didn't bark at anyone. she mostly kept walking away from me and michelle to sit in the middle of the path and look cute and pettable, effectively stopping traffic on the campus walk. i guess i'm okay with that, though, since it turns out that dogs are just as good cute-boy-who-like-puppies bait as they are girl-bait. it was a new (and fun) discovery.

we had another nail party during glee, too. lauren the hall-e helped with my nails. they're black with a coat of each different kind of silver sparkle we could find (the sheer one, the dark greyish silver that kind of blends into the black, and the giant chunky ones are my favorites) so it looks like the night sky. lauren the hall-e is quickly becoming a problem. all her spanish music is getting to me (she had a test to study for last week). i've had enrique iglesias in spanish stuck in my head all week. i actually like it. um...can it be less pathetic if it's in spanish? actually, judge me if you will, i'm in love with these two songs:

now that the boring stuff is mostly out of the way, here's an overview of the good news:

LIVERPOOL GOT BOUGHT. it's wonderful. and apparently the new owners also own the boston red sox, which is supposed to be promising. i don't care. as long as it means we get decent transfer funds and a new coach, oh, rafa, i miss you and can actually start winning things, i'll be happy. also, that means i can finally by the new kit. i've been holding off since i didn't want to support the crappy old owners (who are still trying to sue so they don't lose the club) but...well, i really want it. really, really, really want it.

also, i'm home.

let me just say that again. I'M. HOME. it's wonderful. i stayed up until six this morning just running on my wonderful, personal treadmill and watching tv on all the flat screens at once (there's a pleasing echoing effect throughout the house) and emptying my dvr and chewing on ice chips and playing with my dogs and blowing my nose/coughing as loud as i want to and wearing my ugliest, kiddiest pajamas and not wearing any makeup at all and showering without shoes on and...i could go on for a while. i'm just that happy. best of all, the momster's been pampering me. there's nothing like being sick at home (well, besides being well, but we all know that never happens for me). one of the hall-es has gotten into the habit of brushing our hair for us after we shower - it's wonderful, you should all go talk someone into doing it for you, too - and it made me remember when i was little enough to let the momster brush my hair, and...well, i've been bugging her to detangle a lot. yes, i know i'm only four days away from being an adult. i don't care - i like being pampered, okay?

anyway, i'm going to wrap this post up now. we're going to a pumpkin patch and then i have to call husband number two back since i was still asleep when he called earlier. au revoir.

come around sundown

today's title comes from the cutie and the followills album of the same name. it leaked! i'm listening to it now - reviews will be forthcoming...eventually. i have four papers due this week (on top of the four papers i had due last week). i'm beginning to hate school.

you know what i don't hate? justin timberlake. he and britney spears are basically the last relics of my musically-challenged childhood which i can look on without feeling endless shame. actually, watching this makes me and the hall-es all sorts of giddy. you should watch it, too:

to get the tedious recapping out of the way, here's my week in pictures:

rainy days leads to umbrella fencing in the halls. 

why do i always get the mean fortune cookies? the last one told me to eat more carrots to avoid cancer. this can't be normal.

L decided to hang out in my step stool today. she also may have decided to get stuck in it. oh, hall-es.

i was up bright and early at 7:45 this morning to volunteer at the food bank with circle k, but i didn't bring my camera or my phone, so i couldn't take pictures. it was fun, though. we did a lot of sorting and boxing, mostly. people (and businesses) like to donate some weird stuff. we had pallets full of dietary supplements called flush the fat, a bunch of ankle and knee braces, and around fifty boxes of shampoo and conditioner. that was the worst. a lot of the bottles burst in the boxes, which was disgusting to feel when you were reaching in to sort and box them - we went through a ton of paper towels cleaning off the bottles, and my hands still feel kind of slimy. the club and the hall-es and i went out to brunch afterwards, where i introduced everyone to my favorite, most unhealthy brunch food of all time: southwestern tater tot bowls. it's basically what it sounds like: a bowl full of tater tots covered in cheese, bacon bits, tomatoes, green onions, salsa, and sour cream.

...needless to say, i have since been convinced to join in on a healthy eating month. after all, i do have to get into jasmine shape. so for the next 31 days, i'm not drinking coffee or soda (i will probably cheat on the coffee - however, the hall-es seem convinced that my caffeine intake isn't healthy, so i'll have to sneak some on the side) or snacking after nine in the afternoon evening. it's going to be horrible. hopefully it'll pay off. at least it gave me an excuse to stock up on tea and hot chocolate and marshmallows at giant today.

i'm going to have a busy day of homeworking and soccer watching tomorrow (note: real madrid is being shown on espn 2 at 3 p.m. and liverpool plays at 10). i should actually probably just save this post and go to sleep, since i only had a little nap today before watching mean girls in joanna's room (also, apparently i curl up when i sleep? i had no idea that wasn't normal. i don't know, i just like to sleep with the covers over my head and apparently all the hall-es were debating on whether i was actually under the blankets or if it was just a pillow. oh, and apparently i like to hit people who try to wake me up? who knew. ) but i just feel like blogging tonight. it's been a very, very long time.

it's funny, but i've been feeling like a sponge, lately. i don't know...i guess i'm just trying a lot of things i never thought i would be interested. like aikido. it's weird and kind of hard and i fall down a lot but it's still really fun. oh, and pilates...actually, that's just hard, but we're going again this week anyway. oh, and letter writing. there's something i never thought i'd pick up - but then i realized the joys of a full mailbox and changed my mind. i wonder if my sponginess is going to stick around. i kind of hope it does, but then...well, i quite liked being a hermit. me and my room or basement or kitchen on a winter afternoon with lulu on my feet as slippers and a book or new music...well, it was nice. better than nice, actually. i'm actually ridiculously excited to get back to that during my breaks.

i guess you could call this my poem of the day, but i've been obsessing over it for, like, the last week, so i don't know if that label really applies any more:

You who never arrived 
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost 
from the start, 
I don't even know what songs 
would please you. I have given up trying 
to recognize you in the surging wave of 
the next moment. All the immense 
images in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt 
landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and 
unsuspected turns in the path, 
and those powerful lands that were once 
pulsing with the life of the gods-- 
all rise within me to mean 
you, who forever elude me. 

You, Beloved, who are all 
the gardens I have ever gazed at, 
longing. An open window 
in a country house-- , and you almost 
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,-- 
you had just walked down them and vanished. 
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors 
were still dizzy with your presence and, 
startled, gave back my too-sudden image.
Who knows? Perhaps the same 
bird echoed through both of us 
yesterday, separate, in the evening... 

- rainer maria rilke 

no post would be complete without music. in no particular order, here's what i've been listening to lately. being deprived of my usual rachel-time (and therefore, music-finding time), i need recommendations. what have you all been listening to lately?

okay, so i lied. clearly there is an order to this and clearly florence and the machine covering girls aloud deserves to be first. i've actually probably blogged this song before, just because my love of cover songs and florence has been well-documented here. you can listen to it again anyway.

counting up the minutes til i get along

today's title comes from uncharted by sara bareilles. my preorder for kaleidoscope heart came through today, so at least i can get some new music at college.

i've had a busy few days. remember how i went home for the weekend? well, originally i was supposed to return to school sunday night (i had actual, set plans and everything - we all know how rarely that happens). this happened instead:

in other words, the momster bribed me with food - specifically, the chocolate volcano at don pablo's. and then, just to be on the safe side, she had a glass of sangria. to those of you who don't know the momster that well, i'll let you in on a little secret - half a glass of even the weakest alcoholic drink has her giggling and talking to potted plants left and right. needless to say, i wasn't going back to school sunday night. i guess that was good. it gave me time to enjoy oovooing with a decent internet connection (question: how much do i hate my dorm's wifi access? answer: more than you will ever know) which is good, since i got into a giant, pointless fight with about 75% of my followers over the weekend. sorry about that, guys. it's all at&t's fault. maybe next time the momster marries someone i'll just text you my freak out instead of attempting to call. i'm still right and also five years old. na na na na boo boo. that's been resolved, though. i think. if only some of them were free to oovoo in the afternoon. it's when my internet's the best because i'm usually everywhere but my dorm room (and everywhere else has better internet).

continuing the story of my adventures at ho- oh, who am i kidding? it's time for doggy picture spamming. i haven't been able to do this in ages.

this is lulu. you might remember her.

this is lulu bitchfacing. you might remember that, too. 

this is cookie. he was too sleepy to look at the camera. i like to call this his donut position. 

i did laundry. cookie and lulu slept on my laundry. cue redoing my laundry. i should've gotten cats.

after her exhausting nap, lulu got on skype. or maybe i got on skype and let lulu flap her ears at the screen. something along those lines, anyway, 

this is my mailbox.

it's empty. this is a hint.

i came to the painful decision that two doors of shoes was excessive and sent some home with the parents. this is all i'm left with. i feel so bereft. 

i just thought this was cool. 

this too. it belongs to sarah the hall-e.

i got back to campus at 8 a.m. on monday. which meant waking up at 5. which meant that i was one very grumpy rachel all day.

you might be asking why i had to be back on campus so early. well, oh wonderful Hypothetical Question Asker, it's because i had a bio lab from 9 to noon. it was horrible. we had to scrape the inside of our cheeks for skin cells. and then we had to examine fungus and bugs under microscopes. oh, and we had to squish a live termite and look at that, too. luckily, the boys across the table from us offered to do the termite-squishing for us - just watching it was gross. my professor was completely zoned out all class, too. whenever my partner and i would go up to ask how to do something or if we were doing something right (or, later, what to do when we were done) he would just smile and nod and stare at his computer screen. i'm still not sure if he was smiling and nodding at us or whatever he was working on. it was extremely annoying, at least until the end when we interpreted the smile and nod to mean "yes, you can leave forty five minutes early since you're already done with the lab. go forth and frolic and get those pesky images of squished termite out of your head before lunch." all of that can be included in one slightly dopy smile-and-nod, right? right. 

i had my bio lecture after that, and then i finished reading the painted bird. i've probably already told you this, but i'll say it again since it's that important - never, ever read it. it's terrifying and traumatic and after i read it i couldn't get to sleep. we talked about it today in my global issues class. the teacher's pretty weird. he walks around the room carrying the podium in front of him. and, okay, i have some pretty weird habits, but..does he really have to stand behind the damn thing all the time? he nearly hit me in the head with it! and he actually did hit two kids last class. i hope someone steals it. 

in other school news...hmm, what other school news is there? um, i had funnel cake for dessert today? too food-related? um, i went to my chaucer and stats classes today. they were okay. my chaucer class is actually called chaucer and his age and is all about chaucer and his contemporaries and the works that influenced him and the historical context of his major works and...it's great. i love it. we spent the whole class talking about dante, so that was fun. i went to stats after that, which wasn't fun at all. we're talking about things like normal standard deviation and distributions and other mathy-sounding words. there are graphs. and numbers. and my professor still won't make eye contact with any of us. i can't wait until i'm done with that class. 

oh, and by the way, i cut my hair. or michelle cut my hair. in my dorm room. while my roomie and a few of the hall-es watched. it was kind of silly and reminded me of the oops incident. anyway, i have bangs now. they're fun. and, don't worry, i taught the momster to use skype just so i could get her (and the lulus' and jim's) opinions. three of the four seemed to be in favor. that last one, though...well, just look at her smooshy little bitchface:

oh, and speaking of skype, leanne has one! go add her. and then someone should corrupt her/teach her to use oovoo. and by someone, i mean you, s-la. 

i went to yoga on monday. it was awesome. we all fell asleep a little during the relax-y bits, but the actual poses were fun. well, except for the half-lotus when my earring snagged on my shirt and my ear started bleeding all over the place. the rest of it was fun, though. we're going again every friday and monday. oh, and mondays are going to be aikido (which is this weird japanese martial arts thing sarah wants to try). and in more rachel's-actually-being-active-oh-my-god news, i'm hiking on saturday. i don't know where, though, so hopefully the hiking buddies won't let me get lost since i won't be able to get home. (it's probably going to happen. we all know how bad my luck is)

by the way, if you see something weird on my profile, don't worry - i'm not cooking. well, not cooking for real. the hall-es and i have decided to document our adventures in attempting to cook in a dorm. who knows how this is going to turn out. but if you have recipes, hand them over! we need suggestions. so far we've got a list, but it's pretty short. we've got a movie list, too, so send suggestions for that, too. 

the list goes on and on

today's title comes from gives you hell by the all-american rejects/glee because it came on my itunes shuffle just now.

so, my first week of classes is almost over. i've actually managed to survive it. i even did laundry! and my roomies and i are now mostly unpacked. we're still figuring out how to organize everything. we're thinking of going to the mall this weekend to pick up a communal bookcase since, as you can see, my desk area is a little cluttered right now:

the mall is fun. there are actually two of them, right across the highway from each other - an indoor mall and an outdoor reston town center-type deal. we went the sunday before class started with michelle, chiara (she's an italian international student with a fancy coffee maker - i took it as a sign that we should be friends), and renata, my neighbors. michelle's the girl from fredericksburg that i mentioned in my last post. freshmen aren't allowed to have cars on campus but she got her parents to drop hers off for the day so she could give us the grand tour/we wouldn't have to take buses. she's got the cutest car - it's a bright yellow beetle. i'm in love with it. oh, and while we were in downtown fredericksburg, i found the cutest vintage thrift shop. it specializes in nothing but audrey hepburn memorabilia. like, it tracks down posters and post cards and replicas of outfits she wore in movies. i probably don't have to tell you this, but i stocked up:

classes started monday. it was pretty easy. i have my biology lectures and lab that day, but it turned out to be a lot of review from high school. i had a lot of sophomore year/s-la flashbacks. oh, and we got to play with tapeworms. that was fun. our tapeworm had spots and cute little goggle eyes when we looked at him through the microscope, so my partner and i decided to name him fred.

i've got three classes in a row on tuesdays and thursdays. two of them are really fun and one of them is stats. my chaucer and his age class is amazing. the professor is just like my ap lit teacher last year, which means everything is automatically funny. today we started out talking about chaucer's life and the various references he makes to religion/history/literature/nature/astrology/your mom and somehow ended up talking about mimes and how she still can't pronounce virginia place names correctly. i'm happy, because it's a 300-level english class and my advisor was all "caution! danger! danger, will robinson." but it's all good.

my other english class is global issues in literature, which is, predictably, depressing. it's also my last class of the day, so we usually go straight from there to dinner. not the best idea. so far we've been focusing on famine and poverty. as you may expect, these aren't topic conducive to a healthy appetite. thank god for to go boxes, i suppose.

tuesday was pretty eventful outside of class, too, actually. on the way to dinner we ran into a guy dressed like this, which i'm sure s-la will appreciate:

and i stopped him to say hi/tell him how in love with his shirt i am. (the friends i was with were mildly bemused but i think i'm training them to get used to the weird). after that came the awkward small talk phase that actually wasn't awkward because the guy told us the cutest story about how he and his friend were going to the dodgeball club game (side note: there's a dodgeball club. oh, college) and everyone was a little afraid of going now because two people who graduated last year had met at dodgeball and were now married. and then he asked us to go to dodgeball with them. which...no. i'm holding out for an accent or someone with proven culinary ability. we all know what happens when i get near a kitchen. it's a good thing there are dining halls/restaurants/takeout.

the takeout around here isn't bad, actually. i still haven't found a good thai place, yet, but we found a yummy chinese place that delivers and had a movie night in on wednesday. wednesday was basically a girls' night, actually. to begin with, the momster came to visit/drop off more things that i forgot. we walked around downtown with the lulus. i miss my evil little munchkins so much. i wish i could smuggle them into the dorm with me. they're so tiny, it's not like anyone would notice. well, not until every pair of headphones in the hall ends up in lulus evil clutches, anyway. still, we had a good time, see:

after that, we headed to the wonderfully air-conditioned library to chill in the tree houses:

while there, we discovered that one of my hall-es likes to dance while she's studying/listening to her ipod. we got the funniest video of it but i've been banned from posting it. oh, we also invented the term hall-e. it's pronounced like wall-e and it's basically the people who live on your hall. idk, it's just fun to write out. plus we had just watched wall-e (one of the other hall-es was showing it in her room and we popped in) so we sort of had it on the brain. then we had more animal fun times. first, we tried to lure a squirrel over to say hi with trash:

and later that night we saw russell the cat again:

club fair was wednesday night, too, so now i'm signed up for all sorts of interesting things. i'm excited. after club fair was the laundry party. me and six of my hall-es grabbed our laundry and met up to combine our laundry and get it all done together. our laundry room is in the basement, so it was good to have buddies down there. we ended up bringing computers and ipods and speakers and having an exercise/dance party since it took, like, two and a half hours to get everything sorted/washed/dried/folded/sorted again. oh, and in the middle of it, s-la, jenibean, and meggo were all "get on oovoo"/melodramatically asserting that i'm dead (i'm clearly not - look at me bloggling!) so i got on oovoo and talked to them/let them creep on us. it was pretty fun.

and then after that was a bout of creepiness/general hilarity that i can't blog about but am mentioning so you can remind me to text/call/skype you about it sometime. it's carried over until...now, actually (two of my neighbors, one of my roomies, and a couple of my hall-es are stalking the fourth floor while i write this), so you'll want to hear this eventually. i might get to be james(ina?) bond after all! and to think my second grade teacher told me being a super spy wasn't a viable career choice. that bwitch.

today i had three classes in a row again, so nothing too interesting happened. like i said, we took today to clean and organize and make a list of groceries to get (we're splitting breakfast and basic snacks with our neighbors so we can all have breakfast and decent coffee together early in the mornings instead of going all the way to a dining hall before class. i spent some more time studying in the tree houses with a few of my hall-es. oh, and we had a mini nail party in the lounge. there were so many pretty colors, i was a little overwhelmed. my fingers are now sherbet orange with a sparkle me silver top coat (OPI! i love my hall) and my toes are painted red hot chili pepper. after that we just chilled in my room and watched reruns of community and the office. oh, and we finally figured out the channel listings. that was exciting (well, to me, since we all know i'm a nerd). and now i'm blogging really quickly (in case you couldn't tell, i've been saving bits and pieces of this post as drafts all week long and was too lazy to finish and post it) before everyone comes back.

tomorrow i have my first revolution and cinema in iran seminar. i'm really excited for that class, in part because the kite runner is on the reading list for it and i really loved that book. wish me luck! and tell me how life has been for all of you. or get on skype. i'm sunandsilence (obviously). i need friends!

let's go for a drive, see the town tonight

today's title comes from arcade fire's suburban war. their new album finally leaked and i can't recommend it enough. the live performance is the best version of it i can find on youtube, but don't let the quality put you off - it's amazing:

so, funnily enough, today's post was almost titled "bitch i'm a let you finish in a minute", courtesy of eminem and lil wayne's no love. no, i'm not kidding. sometimes i listen to rap. don't judge me, okay? i don't see how anyone could hate a song that samples what is love. actually, just to prove my point i'll go ahead and post that song, too. it's been a while since i blogged and we need an appropriately angry soundtrack for the remainder of this post:

why an angry song? well, the answer is simple. i got into an accident today. again. and it actually wasn't my fault. but let's rewind a little since i've been absent from this little blog for a while now.

s-la's already blogged about our shopping adventure earlier this week, so i won't bother recapping that. basically i'm only mentioning it so i can post this:

isn't it horrific? i don't know why they exist. the frost-patterned jeggings, obviously, not s-la and travis-with-no-label-because-he's-too-lame-to-have-one. i feel like the very existence of those monstrosities should have been a warning: bad things will happen this week...and they did.

see, after our little shopping excursion, s-la left for her cousin's (i'm assuming it was a cousin, anyway) wedding, i ended up watching/playing with/feeding her ah-dorable animals. she blogs about schweini all the time, so i'll post a picture of dick cheney in kitty form  sugar:

see? cuteness. it even inspired me to try to spend time with my own evil animals (who've been especially horrendous this week...they ate their eighth pair of headphones. at least the new ones are pink), as shown here:

the good one

lucifer in fluffy form

so far so good, right?

...wrong.

while returning from s-la's house to play with my own furballs this morning (that's right! i drove! by myself! voluntarily!) i decided to be ambitious and pull into the garage...and you all know my driving history. this was a huge step for me.

so everything is going fine. i checked my mirrors for passers-by and cars, looked over my shoulder, prayed to jesus/allah/ratatouille/paul the octopus that nothing would go wrong, took a deep breath, and pressed down on the gas pedal.

and then some crazy evil bitch i swear to god i will get her in her sleep jogs right in front of me. as in she cut across the middle (the middle! who does that? we have sidewalks for a reason!) of my driveway to jog in front of my car as i was pulling in.

being as my foot was still on the gas pedal and all of this happened in about .0005 seconds, i did the only sensible thing i could - i swerved...into the side of my house.

don't worry, it wasn't a major accident or anything. i just clipped the corner of the garage. but look what happened:

the momster was, needless to say, not pleased. neither am i. and apparently it's all on us to pay for the damage since the pedestrian has right of way all the time.

now does everyone see the need for angry background music? yeah, i thought so.

don't worry, though. i'm pretty calm now - blame the arcade fire and ice cream i've been indulging in today.

oh, and i'm still on that poetry kick. here's today's. it was comforting:

Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don't bother remembering
any of it. Let's stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

- dorianne laux 

every night i go sneaking out the door

today's title comes from mama do by pixie lott. i've been listening to her a lot lately. i'm not really sure why - maybe because her style reminds me of amy winehouse who is obviously not singing because she's... indisposed? anyway, listen to it:

since this blog has pretty much replaced my actual diary, i've been thinking that i should have posted about my last few days of school or how i only had to take two exams or how utterly depressed i am that school is ending. i should talk about those things, but i won't, because i've gotten all my nostalgia out already. besides, there's only one thing that really matters right now:

so, with that said, i'm going to turn off the computer, walk my dogs, and wait for the germany game to start.

my mind has changed my body's frame

today's title comes from wolf like me by tv on the radio. it's pretty old - i first heard it freshman year - but it was used on so you think you can dance last night and i fell right back in love with it. have a listen:

as you have probably guessed, that terrible immune system of mine decided to give up again last week. long story short: bacterial infection of the throat probably picked up through drink-sharing. dr. emperor-from-mulan, in true crazy doctor fashion, prescribed antibiotics, rest, and - merde - a maximum of two caffeinated drinks per day. two. apparently the caffeine + related nocturnalness (it is a word, damn it. stop lying to me, safari. it can be a word if i say it is) aren't helping my poor, beleaguered immune system.

tony from skins and i are in full agreement. also we're ecstatic that the skins movie is official!

it's actually been a pretty horrible week. the primary source of my discomfort isn't, as one might expect, the disgusting medicines i now take on a daily basis or the itchy state of my throat. no, it's much, much worse:

the momster donated all of our extended editions of lord of the rings to, like, goodwill or the salvation army or one of those. she "thought we had two copies". um, no. now i've only got the regular versions to watch! whatever am i going to do? my woe is endless.

the momster.

other than that, i'm doing pretty well. my makeup homework is, as expected, minimal. oh, and it's all done. so there's one worry off my mind. oh, and i have job interviews! one at cold stone on saturday morning and one at guess in the afternoon. i'm excited. wish me luck?

the lulus have been acting very strangely lately. first, lulu was like this:

and then cookie was like this:

and then lulu turned on her Cute Face and all was well:

until:

my dogs - they're terrifying.

i'm actually going to start in on a second post tonight. it might go up tonight or tomorrow, depending on when i finish it. it's going to be all about books and writing, which seemed too unrelated to this post for me to include it. until then, amuse yourself with one of my favorite dance-around-the-house songs:

and glozelle. who you better watch. especially you, s-la:

oh, and here's another fun video just because:

give them to the night

today's title comes from sunflower by low. i've been listening to it (and the rest of the album it's from) constantly this week. it makes for good "gee, i should probably study for APs, but i won't, so i guess i'll just listen to relaxing music and not panic instead" listening.

it gets bonus points for having the first youtube result for the song be a skins video, but since e4 (the channel skins is on in the uk) disabled embedding on any video featuring its content, you'll have to make do with the boring one instead.

i've decided that i approve of the alien rat dog haircuts after all, even if they did make cookie and lulu are extra-shivery in the cold. now i have an excuse to dress them up in cute little sweaters! also their neverending search for heat has made them even more cuddly than usual (as i type this lulu is curled on top of both my feet), which is always good. best of all, it's made the daily check for ticks that much easier; i took them for a run in the rain to the canoe launch and was able to pry one off cookie in seconds. shrieky, flaily seconds, but seconds nevertheless.

besides, lulu (the one that looks like a mixture of pinky and the brain) is actually looking sort of cute with her giant head and paws and floppy ears. i'd snap a picture of her, but...well, i already mentioned the sleeping on my feet, right? because she is. and my toes are extremely toasty and reluctant to return to their normal unheated state, so you'll just have to make due with a puppy from cuteoverload.

i don't think you're complaining too much about the lack of lulu. that little dude is adorable.

other than my acceptance of hairless rat dogs my beloved pets, nothing much happened today. i went to school, got tacos and starbucks, came home, read, wrote, and blogged. i'm so interesting, i know. i guess being boring is better than having something horrible happen, though, so there's that.

besides, the national's new album high violet was officially released yesterday. and we all know what that means: i had to go on a mass deletion spree from my iTunes to make room for all the glee songs and an official studio release of high violet there are finally high quality versions of their songs on youtube (and in my iTunes library). this is one of my favorites (and is probably going to be the first single from the album, so i guess it's their favorite, too)

here's little faith, too:

i'd post another one of my favorite songs from this album, but it's not available on youtube yet. it's called england, though, if you want to get it.

anyway, it's getting late and i have to be a good little girl and actually make it to an AP exam on time for once (this is my last shot! ever!), so i guess this is where i'm going to leave off. expect lots of depression and whining about hand cramps tomorrow.

you know those rainy days ain't so bad when you're the king

today's title comes from fans by kings of leon. here, listen to it, it's one of my favorites.

i'm home now, and i'm pretty much killing time until glee comes on, so i thought i'd blog now.

nothing very interesting happened today. i woke up (late, as usual, so yesterday's straightened hair didn't get to make a reappearance), made coffee, went to school, played apples to apples in econ, sat around and talked in yearbook, went to lunch, mooched a bag of frozen strawberries off of jennifer (she brought them in to make punch for her spanish class), and went to gov to watch the world's most boring civil rights movie ever. seriously. i didn't think it was possible to make me hate thurgood marshall but that movie managed it. oh, and then i tagged along with the momster to do Mysterious Real Estate Things (organize papers and look up numbers) and possibly accidentally flashed half the cars on route 7.

gratuitous robert downey jr. gif is gratuitous

just kidding about that last one. well, sort of. basically, i wore two bras today (i felt like bean, it was fun), and then on the way to starbucks (half price frapps! i had three, so it might have cancelled out, but whatever - at least when i work for the momster she buys my coffee) i was like "hey, the momster's office has a gym attached, maybe i can work out" and blame the caffeine i've had seven cups today proceeded to do the good old sleepover/locker room wiggle to pull it off. so, really, i probably didn't actually flash anyone today, but according to the momster i got several strange looks from people on the road.

and here, have some pictures of the alien rat dogs. they have to wear sweaters when we walk them now since otherwise the cold makes them shiver.

look at my little baby aliens

doesn't she look like brain from pinky and the brain?

i like to think of this picture as cookie mourning his lost fur

glee just came on, so that's all for now. how can i resist rachel berry butchering the climb?

Alien Rat Dogs

I am sitting at the kitchen table, sipping my coffee, and lamenting the change in my dogs from these pinacles of furry glory:

To this:

My babies! They've been shaved! How could That Woman do this to us? See if I get her a Mother's Day present ever again. Look how she repaid me - by having my fluffy little munchkin dogs replaced by aliens.

I'm going to go drown my sorrows in frappucino. Excuse the capital letters, I'm blogging from my phone.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

i hope you have more luck with this than me

this blog is brought to you by death cab for post titles or something like that. alternatively, today's title comes from your new twin sized bed by death cab for cutie. what can i say? i've been rediscovering them this week - i accidentally caught an episode of the o. c. and it rekindled my ben gibbard love. here, listen to it so you can obsess with me:

so i was a lazy blogger again. blame cookie and calculus. cookie turned up the cute levels this week, so he's been swanning around the house looking extra fluffy and puppy-eyed. i've got a low tolerance for doggy-resistance (see: lulu forgiveness following the murder of headphones 3, 4, & 5). even if i'd spent hours making silly faces and spouting baby talk at a very unimpressed dog i still would have time to blog - or i would if it wasn't for calculus. to fully understand my feelings on math, i refer you to tim gunn:

oh, project runway. i miss the days when you were still good. i haven't even watched this season.

however, i have been wishing i could wield a sewing machine like one of the project runway contestants. mostly so i could make myself this:

and this - although before any of you start making faces, i want them to wear under tank tops. i think it'd be cute. especially with heaps of necklaces. and - oh, i'm not fooling anyone. we all know i'm going to be wearing one by itself around the house and answer the door just in time to traumatize some of the traveling mormons or something:

of course, if i keep on eating like i've been doing lately i won't fit into any of them and so the poor mormons' eyes will be spared. i say this because i am finishing up a bowl of cookies n cream ice cream. and once i am three thousand pounds i will waddle into the math work room brandishing a spoon and screaming "you! you did this to me! your soul-crushingly hard tests have driven me to drink and ice cream binges and hard drugs."

ahem. not that i've pictured this in any great detail.

now, onto the music...

here's my favorites from the last two days:

this video is so fun:

i've actually been listening to the original, but the video for this version is so much more fun:

and one last death cab song: