won't let no mistake take the roof from off our heads

today's title comes from the city by patrick wolf which is amazing and you should all listen to and, yes, that means you, too, s-la:

well, it finally happened. i am really, truly, disgustingly mucus-y sick on campus. it sucks. the hall-es have been plying me with fruit and vitamin c and cold medicine and things, so it's not too bad but i sound gross. like, beyond gross, actually. every time i blow my nose it sounds like i'm trying to do a killer whale mating call or something, which means classes this week are just going to be a barrel of laughs. at least not being at home means i can experiment with cough medicines, so the rest of me is okay, if a little tired and kind of incoherent my roommate told me i sound high but we've settled on a nice little cocktail of robutussin, dayquil, and sudafed along with the world's most wonderful cough drops ever (halls, but no one ever bothered to tell me they came in strawberry and not just that horrible medicinal cherry crap) so i think i'll be fine. or, at least, the momster will think i'm fine because she has no idea i'm sick and if she did she would come here and that would be bad. 

...i just read that paragraph back. my roommate is right, even when i type i sound high. sorry guys. 

the hall-es and i went on an adventure friday night, but it's a story that i want to be, like, grammatically correct so i'll wait until i'm no longer sick to write it up. 

for similar reasons, i won't be recapping the oh-so-wonderful liverpool-chelsea game. well, not in words, anyway:

in conclusion, serhio ramo thanks you for your time:

if i had a boat

today's title comes from the song of the same name by james vincent mcmorrow. it's one of those mellow, lush, bon iver-soundalikes and i'm in love with it, so listen to it right away:

other things i've been listening to lately include: 

and this, which is one of the rare instances of me liking the remix of a song better than the (admittedly awesome original):

and, of course, a cover:

oh, and i finally changed my desktop background:

i'm volunteering at the blood drive later and i feel kind of incredibly sick right now (i know, i know, you're so surprised) so i'm just going to nap and put off the real post which is all about poetry and modernism and brit lit (my professor is insane. no, really. she makes the momster look normal) til tomorrow. 

we're older now, the light is dim

today's title comes from o children by nick cave and the bad seeds as used to wonderful effect in harry potter and the deathly hallows part one.

other than posting that wonderful song, i'm refraining from posting anything about the movie until everyone has seen it. seeing as the urge to babble about it is almost uncontrollable, this is going to be a very short post. instead, watch this video that joanna the hall-e sent me. it is so much better than the original song:

i left campus last night. this morning husband number three and i accompanied the momster to the hospital to get an iron transfusion. it took six hours. six! all went well, though. the momster beat my tap tap score (annoying) and requested cookies, which lead husband number three to pick up gingerbread men. they're yummy. i still have one left. and then we went to see harry potter! again! (the first of many, many times over thanksgiving break, i hope)

leaving campus early had an unforeseen benefit, too. apparently i've missed a total of six fire drills since i left. this is wonderful. 

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.

the clock is ticking forward

warning: the gifs contained in today's post make no sense. at all. proceed ogling soccer players at your own risk. consider this my little birthday present to myself.

today's title comes from bang bang bang by mark ronson. look for a music post tomorrow - i'm too tired right now. 

as you already know, i turned eighteen. it was great. i spent the weekend in a nice, drugged-up haze of sleepiness - the momster says i slept for 63 hours, i disagree - due to the doctor not bothering to look at my drug allergies and prescribing me the wrong thing. oh well. at least i'm well rested. 

the momster and husband number three repeated last year's (and the year before that and the year before that and god, i'm old now) ordeal of showing up at midnight with a cake and candles and horrifically bad singing. this time they included a pint of ben and jerry's cookie dough ice cream. that nine pounds i lost last week? yeah, don't worry, it's all going to come back. after that, i got some more sleep, woke up, and headed back to campus carrying about thirteen thousand pounds of freshly laundered fall/winter clothes. perhaps that's an exaggeration. it was really more like twelve thousand nine hundred and ninety nine pounds of clothes. these distinctions are important, you know. 

i dumped the laundry, my comforter, computer, and new prezzies - highlights include an iPad (dubbed hermione), new uggs (don't judge me, they're comfortable and my old ones never quite recovered from last year's blizzard), and the world's most wonderful coat from anthropoligie. it's red and has silk lining in the sleeves and even came with a hood. it's my favorite. i'll include pictures when i'm less sick and gross.

 

i kind of got an unexpected prezzie, too. when i checked my campus mail today, i found one expected package (a purse, courtesy of vogue/husband number three's magazine subscription contribution to the Give Rachel Free Things Fund) and one that was definitely not. specifically, an extra-small, 2010/2011 germany away jersey customized for thomas muller - which i didn't order. seeing as i've talked soccer with all of you readers, the family, and, like, a handful of people on campus, i figured that the pool of suspected senders would be easily narrowed down. however, it's been twelve hours and i still don't know who it's from. it even came with matching shorts! and the return address is from some business in china, which husband number two said meant that it probably came from ebay. not many people even know that i wanted a muller jersey. i'm very confused. do enlighten me. 

i've been highly unhealthy today. i had tomato soup and a slice of pizza - and then came cake after cake after cookie after chocolate after cake. i had to go to the gym with joanna the hall-e for a couple hours to make up for it. but it was still so worth it. michelle the hall-e made me a cake! it was chocolate with purple icing and tastes delicious. the rest of the circle k board gave me chocolate, too. sometimes predictability comes in handy - a birthday really isn't complete without heaps and heaps of junk food. i'd post pictures, but i'm too tired right now, so check facebook or tomorrow's post. 

the best prezzie by far, though was liverpool's Very Exciting News. the takeover of the club - ridding it of the disgusting parasites that more or less ran it into the ground relegation in three years and placing ownership in the hands of the same people who own the boston red sox - was approved by britain's high court yesterday. now you don't have an excuse not to watch (and i can finally order the new jersey, since i've been waiting for a new kit since fernando torres's first season). 

lauren the hall-e is even getting into the spirit. she's doing a skit for her theatre class. the script is predetermined, and somehow or other she ended up playing a man. while helping her practice her lines after bio this afternoon, we decided that she was a spanish soccer player. so now she's borrowing my fernando torres jersey and joanna's basketball shorts and calling herself antonio ban-torres. well, actually, the first name keeps changing. we've so far reject raul, sergio, and alejandro. my favorite is antonio ban-torres, though, so that's just what i'm going to call her.

after we figured that out, the mr. russell competition in our dorm started up. it was basically a bunch of guys stripping to different music for about an hour to an all-girl judging panel and audience. we actually forgot about it, but two of the hall-es were judges and rounded up the entire female half of the dorm (and kicked out all the non-competing guys) so we didn't really have a choice. it was still a hilarious way to spend the night.

random thought: did anyone catch under wraps playing on the disney channel a few days ago? i recorded it but i haven't actually seen it in years. it got me thinking (and googling) about other disney channel movies. why aren't they as good anymore? like, i watched wish upon a star a few weeks ago and it was still awesome. well, it was a little weird realizing that the older sister was played by katherine heigl sporting some serious 90s hair, but other than that i would totally watch it again.

in conclusion, landon and timmy thank you for your time:

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.

circle the drain

today's title comes from the song of the same name by katy perry. it has no relevance to this post at all. it is stuck in my head, though, since this girl in my chaucer seminar was playing it so loudly that i could hear it through her headphones.

it's been a little while since i posted. i know, i know - i always promise to be a better blogger, but...well, there are only so many hours in a day. and, sadly, blogging at 4:35 in the morning (when the original draft of this post was started) doesn't lead to anything coherent. trust me - i just had to delete, like, four paragraphs and a ton of unrelated gifs because of that.

before doing anything else, i guess i should recap my week. let's see...

the hall-es and i have been busy making things. to begin with, we made a master class schedule so we could stop sending out bulk text messages to the effect of "where are you? are you in class? do you want to eat dinner?" and made copies for everyone. it's pretty:

and on friday we made glee t-shirts. michelle and i had club meetings to go to first, so we didn't get started until late friday night, but here they are:

we're wearing them right now, actually, since we just finished watching glee in my room. (it was an awesome episode, by the way. britney spears night!).

the alchy roommate lost her key on friday, so we've been having to keep the door unlocked until the lock gets replaced. it really sucked since this weekend was family weekend and i was supposed to go home friday night. i ended up unpacking all of my stuff and staying until saturday afternoon since i didn't want to leave for the weekend with all of our stuff in the room. i ended up enlisting the hall-es to watch the door so i could go home, but when i repacked my bag, i left my phone charger in the dorm.

since you all know me, you should know what a catastrophe that was for me. two whole days without my phone! it was horrible. on top of that, the momster replaced the house phones with fancy new ones that i don't know how to use, so i couldn't even stay home alone since she was all "no! what if something happens and you forget how to call me?". i ended up going to an open house with her sunday. it was alright. it was in this huge house in arlington - it had six bathrooms and nine bedrooms and a jacuzzi. i mostly sat around reading while she talked to clients. however, i did perk up during her conversation with one family. they were this awkward, horribly dressed group of people that used words like "new-fangled" and "gosh darn" and "modernizated" when referring to kitchen appliances and thought the house was "nice" but would have preferred it if the owners painted the halls tangerine, replaced the beige carpet with a "nice salmon pink", and painted all the bedrooms and bathrooms purple or green. you might think they were playing a joke or something - they weren't. they were actually two million dollar-offering, house-buying serious. oh well. i guess the world needs people with hideously decorated houses as well as nice ones.

after the open house, the momster and i went shopping at tyson's. it was wonderful. there was a giant sale on vera bradley stuff so i stocked up and came away with a free wristlet, a planner (which is ridiculously exciting, since i was completely useless without the calendar in my phone over the weekend). aren't they pretty?

oh, and i got the world's most amazing computer bag. i've been using it every day since i got it. oh, and i started in on buying fall clothes just in time - it started raining the monday after i got back on campus and has been raining ever since. however, the most important purchase of the day came in food form. specifically, this food:

this is a hummus and goat cheese salad. it's got grilled chicken and feta cheese and flat bread and tomatoes and peppers and yummy dressing and is basically the most amazing thing i've eaten in my entire life. in case you couldn't tell, i like food.

since monday, i've been busy writing four papers (four! and one of them is six pages long!), outlining my take-home midterm (two more papers, due next week), and avoiding the Giant Rain Puddle which lives outside the back door of my dorm. said avoidance is mostly occurring through the constant wearing of rain boots (wonderful) and pants (horrific). at least the rain means that everyone's wearing their rain boots and carrying umbrellas. i love getting to admire everyone's cute stuff. the coolest pair of rain boots i've seen so far had a bunch of whales and rain drops and penguins on them. they were adorable.

it's a good thing i've had cute rain boots to cheer me up, since on the health front there is no good news. remember the earring that snagged on my shirt during yoga a few weeks ago? yeah, it was healing fine until it caught on another shirt (same yoga class). so, the momster came down for a visit wednesday (bearing many of the broker open panera sandwiches, some of which i am munching on right now) and took me to the doctor to get it checked out. "checking out" in this case entailed a tetanus and meningitis shot "just in case", since apparently dorms are breeding grounds of contagion and disease and having gotten them done this summer was just not enough to guarantee my health. oh yeah, and there was a flu shot and needle-tastic antibiotics, too. my arm felt like a pincushion. it kind of still does, actually.

oh, and i got elected chair of the history committee and co-chair of the publicity/member recruiting committee in circle k (key club, basically). i'm kind of excited because freshmen couldn't vote (you have to have been a due-paying member last year to cast a vote), which is why i ran for both - i figured i wouldn't get either. i tied with another girl for the last committee, but that's okay since the committee is huge and she seems like she'll be fun to work with. it's getting its own tag now since i'm sure you'll be hearing a lot about it this year.

so, i left this post before my chaucer class and figured i would finish it when i got back. however, something Incredibly Wonderful has happened.

as you should know, there was a liverpool game today against utrecht. it started at one in the afternoon. as you probably don't know, my chaucer class starts at two, which gave me barely fifteen minutes during halftime to run to the auditorium and get the game set up (and on mute) in the back row. while i was waiting for halftime to end, i happened to glance around the rest of the room at all the other computer screens on display and saw...

THE SAME STREAM I WAS WATCHING. as in, there was another liverpool fan watching the game. and he's a boy. and he's cute. and he had a steven gerrard jersey on. and is apparently a sophomore and friends with my biology partner. still don't know his name. am still convinced i have met briefly glanced at before being overwhelmed by depression at watching my team draw against a third-rate eastern european side seen the future LOVE OF MY LIFE. why, yes, this does require all caps. baby stevie g and xabeard alonso (circa 2005, also known as the best footballing year of our lives) are up there celebrating this news. however, all of you -- if you happen to see more of this wonderful species of boy in the wild, feel free to tackle them/drug them and mail them to me/offer them my number. in this instance i have no shame.

i'm going to back to watching smallville online and working on my iranian cinema paper. smallville is still silly and unquittable; my iranian film for the week is actually pretty good. i figure it should balance out.

physician, heal thyself.

alternatively, you could heal me.

i seem to be spontaneously sick again, but for once i'm going to the doctor early and getting it all sorted out before i become debilitatingly ill/loose another tooth. i hear they come in limited supply or something.

there's a real blog in the works, but until i get back from the doctor, here's two things to tide you over:

this is amazing. i kind of hate the original song, but...big band covers! you listen to this one if you know what's good for you (this means you, too, s-la)

soccer football! i'm saving s-la's latest post to read in the car/waiting room so i don't know if she wrote about it or not, but we were in full international friendly-viewing mode. it was relatively good times. well, it was cathartic to be able to yell about the usmnt's poor defending with other people, anyway. for those of you slackers who still aren't watching, bayern munich is playing real madrid (so basically, the german national team's starting 11 and a few dutch players are playing half of the spanish national team) at 2:55 and it's being showed on espn. not espn 2, or 3, or depo-something spanish idk. actual espn. go watch it.

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:

show me your teeth

the title of today's post comes from lady gaga's teeth and is for once highly appropriate. mostly because i didn't actually have a full set of teeth this morning. worse - i was missing half (read it like this: half!) of one of my front teeth.

yes, morgan freeman, i agree. this doesn't make any sense.

i suppose i should splainy then (hey, if banana can make up words, so can i). as we all remember, i had very excited plans to return to school today. to that end, i woke up (early, for once, i even got meggo's seven-something-in-the-morning text but was too busy bleeding all over the bathroom to reply to it), brushed my teeth (oh, my teeth), and took a shower. to borrow from jenibean's third person blogging style, Shi(h)t(zu) Happened Like This:

7:20 - Rachel shampoos her hair. 

7:21 - Rachel stops shampooing hair and takes a moment to appreciate the oh-so-delectable scent of Herbal Essence's Hello, Hyrdation shampoo. (The reader should note that this shampoo is even more wonderful than its name and scent would suggest owing to the fact that it is not one, but two whole shades of purple)

7:22 - Rachel resumes shampooing. 

7:24 - Rachel gets dizzy. 

7:24 and a half - Rachel thinks "Gee, this isn't good, time to get out of the shower."

7:25 or 11,320-Why-Is-The-Clock-Spinning-Like-That - Rachel hops out of the shower.

7:26 - OMG OMG OMG I CAN'T BREATHE. 

7:27 - Ditto. 

7:27 - AGHHHHHH.

7:28 - Rachel nosedives. Onto the bathroom's exceedingly soft tile floor. Bottom half of front tooth decides to abandon ship. 

7:29 - The Momster, henceforth referred to in all communications as The Momster, begins a single-front offensive on an enemy known as Locked Bathroom Door. 

7:30 - The Momster, despite being approximately a foot tall and twenty two pounds (more or less), is as her name suggests, a formidable figure of fury. The Door surrenders. 

7:31 - Rachel catches sight of tooth. Uncontrollable crying ensues. The Momster calls in Emergency Dental Reserves. 

And then from eight in the morning until a little after noon there ensued a truly horrifying process known by the cheerful name of Tooth Reconstruction. it involved drills, and filing, and compulsive measuring of my teeth. however, throughout this process i was allowed the use of my iPod and was able to more or less ignore the fact that my dentist (who's adorable and asian and yet has a southern accent and is always pleasantly surprised that i can pronounce her last name - nguyen - because of meggo's tagalog newspeak tutelage) was, you know, filing my front teeth into an acceptable shape and size.

i have since been assured by the momster, her assistant, and the entire dentist's office don't judge me they were my front teeth and prom is in like a month a few tooth-experts that the change isn't noticeable. actually, the momster went so far as to say they look better now than before, since i had been (past tense! my poor lost teeth!) in the possession of rather overlarge front teeth and now they're more-or-less normal sized. but she's required to say that, since she's my tiny, scary, psychotic momster. actually, so are the rest of you. i'm not even kidding. if i see you in the next few weeks, there had better not be an honest comment from any of you or i will cry. and, trust me, you don't want to see my cry. it's a messy business, all snot and flapping hands and hiccups and shrieking and things. let's all avoid it, okay?

well, except you, s-la. i'm trusting you to give me your unmitigated opinion on The Tooth Situation. and if, after careful observation, you have concluded that i'm horribly disfigured i'm retiring to my bedroom forevermore and becoming a professional hermit i'm not going to prom.

on a happier note, i discovered that i'm fully capable of texting while having my teeth drilled. also, i used my dentist-time productively by googling facts about the healthcare bill. and then i used that freebooks app jeni was going on about a little while ago to read more sherlock holmes, since my copy was still at home. oh, and the momster has tried to comfort me over my state of probable-exam-takingness by pointing out that when one is a Student In Good Standing and will be handing over no less than eight (highly bloodstained, but that couldn't be helped, i had the great misfortune of landing on my face) notes to the attendance office tomorrow, there's got to be at least one teacher willing to let me off. right? don't shatter my dreams, kids.

oh, and after some prompting, i have concluded that the development of my (dearly departed) front teeth has kept pace with hermione granger - first they were too big and then they got horrifically filed shrunk. so at least i have that to comfort me.

also comforting? these three songs, they were my favorites during the Dentist Trip of Nightmares Future:

because i do have a ton of "bruises and contusions" between Sickville #1, the Great Pancake Incident, and The Holy Union of Floor and Face:

and a classic which now rings sadly true:

jumping jehosaphat (dear god, hope you got the letter)

while bored out of my mind last week, i started a read-through of the bible. and by "read-through" i mean that i've been flicking it open at random and reading a passage or two. it's funny how, in my rash youth (two months ago) i might've found this to be unbearably boring. strangely enough it's now pretty interesting reading. perhaps Operation: Read Instead is working?

i mention this, as you might have guessed, to explain today's title. today's random biblical passage came from 2 Chronicles, specifically the parts detailing that lovely creature jehoshaphat and his dealings with the moabs and the ammonites and then all the tedious bits about him sending forth the messengers and what have you to splainy the law to people. having just come off a weekend-long sherlock holmes bender which encompassed a reread of a study in scarlet, the sign of four, a scandal in bohemia, and the red-headed league i'm afraid that i wasn't able to take much moral or intellectual improvement from 2 Chronicles, beyond observing that jehosaphat must have been one Swell Dude.

however, my literary and biblical adventures did manage to bring the phrase 'jumping jehosaphat' to the forefront of my mind (oh, to live in doyle's london, and have irritable constables uttering such phrases all the time) and, when combined with the fact that my latest musical find has been a collection of sarah mclachlan's b-sides and rarities - including the wonderful 'dear god', which comprises the parenthetical half of this post's title - at least gave me something to snicker at. perhaps i'll improve my mind tomorrow.

correction, i will definitely have to put off any hopes of intellectual improvement. i've used up all of today's allotment of Thinky Thoughts on laughing at this video:

and being blown away by this one. it's tik tok! with a ukulele! and a decent singer! who's an australian japanese/irish person! my mind is so blown all i can do is use exclamation points! like this! !!!

oh, and i have come to a decision. most of you know that i'm fourteen songs away from having thirteen thousand. actually, i hit the thirteen thousand song mark after lunch with s-la, but then i had to go through and cut the songs i didn't like anymore, so...12,986 it is.

anyway, i've been thinking of instituting some sort of posting format to this blog. i'm not sure how i'd do it, though. i'm torn between having a designated day for everything - like a Music Monday and a There's Nothing Alliterative About Today, Let's Just Post Random Facts Tuesday and a What Is Your Life? Wednesday and so on - or just having a specific format of post and having them alternate for whenever the topic comes up. like when i really want to obsess over an album or artist, then i could do a music post (and only a music post, with none of the random asides that i normally include) or when something really weird happens, i could do a OMG I HATE MY LIFE post or...well. you get the idea. or, you know, i could just keep on posting the way i normally do stream-of-consciousness at its less-than-finest. thoughts? i am a creature of indecision, i need advice.

oh, look. pictures!

somewhat relevant pictures, even!

robert downey jr.'s awful pretty:

anyway, i'm officially No Longer Sick. well, except for the burn but that's an entirely different matter which i'll talk about later. right now i'm just going to revel in the fact that i can run and jump and play and eat in public and without feeling like i'm dying a slow death due to bubonic plague.

gee, that was an oddly specific description, wasn't it?

anyway, i headed out with the momster to the reston town center yesterday. after all, i need shorts. we ended up having lunch at la madeleine, where i had the great misfortune of encountering someone who both hates lettuce and wanted to order a salad without the offending vegetable in it.

i know.

i then had the even greater misfortune of receiving this horrible series of text messages from someone whose latent sense of shame has caused them to ask to remain anonymous. i still hate you.

Note: Text messages transcribed verbatim, except that I wrote out the words for characters since it would've been more than my nerves could handle to seriously type "b4" in place of 'before'.

The Devil: Can I call you strumpet?

Me: BITCH I WILL CUT YOU.

The Devil: :( It's a compliment of your hooker/strumpet legs. 

Me: Hooker legs are not happy things!

The Devil: I'm sure you'd fetch $2000 more in a human trafficking auction. See, they wouldn't want me so then I could sneak in and bust you out after we get the money but before you're raped. 

isn't that just the most awful thing you've ever heard? i was beside myself with :O face. no, really, i cloned myself just so me and my clone-self could make horrified faces at each other and fully convey our horror. (oh, and just in case you didn't get it from my oh-so-convoluted explanation above, under new blog format #1, this, and related events would all have to wait to be posted until What Is Your Life? Wednesday, and in new blog format #2, the texts and other weird things would be one post and a little bit later there would be another post for the pictures and youtube videos, so you'd be looking at multiple - but shorter - posts a day, i guess)

today i had another mini-adventure when having lunch with s-la, travis, jason, and patrick. we had a nazi waitress and played apples-to-apples, but if you want details you're going to have to harass s-la since i'm all blogged out.

anyway, i'll leave you with one last video. s, in case you couldn't tell, this is one you should watch. it's vampire weekend's song ottoman (aka the song currently playing on my itunes):

every single one's got a story to tell

today's titles is from seven nation army by the white stripes. they really should've just used this for the quantum of solace title track instead of the alicia keys/jack white mess masquerading as a duet that they ended up going with. still bitter? who, me? never.

so remember my great plan to beg, borrow, and steal cry my way into going to school today? yeah, that pretty much failed miserably. actually, it prompted a call to dr. emperor-from-mulan who nearly made me stay home on monday, too. which - well, let's just wee little baby potter explain my reaction to this:

so i stayed home. again. this time with a lovely little burn on my hand that actually isn't my fault. really, it isn't - it's the momster's fault.

most of you probably know that the momster's culinary skills are...questionable, at best. well, she tried to make pancakes for me yesterday to distract me from the Let Rachel Go Back To School offensive. in the process she set the entire pan of batter, the overhead fan, and parts of our kitchen on fire.

i know. 


anyway, i managed to put the fire out - hence the burn, which is actually quite tiny even if it does sting like you wouldn't believe - with our handy dandy fire extinguisher and now we're going to have to vacate the house saturday while some construction-type people replace the overhead fan and surrounding tiles and things.

also, the pan is completely unsalvageable. it's the real loss in this whole mess. well, that and my poor dogs' peace of mind since they both took off to hide behind the washing machine at the first shrieks of the smoke alarm and refused to come out until three hours after everything had calmed down. is it possible for animals to acquire their owners' neuroses? because i think mine have.

never mind, i have proof that it is possible. i went a-googling and came across this picture:

clearly the sensible cat's owner is an english teacher. blahbedy blah blah learned proper kitty grammar from its owner blah blah blah some more and - i'm right.

yes, i know. i was wonderful at proofs, i can assure you.

so last night was the season finale of skins. since you're all mentally deranged none of you have watched the show, i'll give you a brief overview. the show follows a group of friends through the british version of high school, known to those crazy people as college. the characters get more or less equal screen time since they all get one episode titled and devoted to them per season. oh, and the cast completely changes every two seasons since by the end of the second season they're all ready to head off to university or the real world or something. with me so far?

good.

anyway, the season four finale was last night. i had to practically sell my remaining good hand to find a live stream of it, but find one i did. and it was - well. i can't accurately describe it. so instead i'll continue wasting your time by blathering on about it until one of you watches the show so i can obsess over it with someone. also, it gives you scenes like this:

and this:

and this:

but s-la, you're still never, ever allowed to watch, okay? actually, you, too, banana. you'd both probably hate it anyway and that'd make me sad.

anyway, since the momster and i are both afraid of the kitchen, tonight's pizza night. in other words, i'm going to pull a hamtaro on some cheese sticks. and, yes, i'm fully aware that i just outed myself as an irredeemable nerd with that reference. it's okay. i've got a pikachu gif to make up for it:

okay, that's all for now. time to go attack the food.

in the blackest of rooms

today's title comes from - okay, seriously? if you don't know this song, i honestly don't know how we're friends. everyone knows this song. i'm pretty sure it's been covered on american idol, even. but i'll give you a hint anyway:

it's been a pretty ben gibbard sort of day, actually - lot's of complaining and a whole three bands playing on my ipod. and since two of those bands include him and the other one has his wife, i'm not even sure they should be counted separately.

in other words, i'm listening to brand new colony (acoustic) by the postal service right now. all i've been listening to today is volume two of she & him (zooey deschanel's and m. ward's band), a bunch of random death cab, and the forty song compilation of ben gibbard's various acoustic performances i got on tumblr. that last one's my favorite. he covers thriller. and avril lavigne.

just to get all the music news out of the way before i launch into my epic tale of doctorly madness and pain and suffering and things, i thought i'd address something banana brought up in a comment to my last post. the end of the boombox video? totally disgusting. old people are supposed to be asexual. just focus on the Important Parts. like this:

and this:

and this:

and how much i wish julian casablancas was ten years younger so i could stalk/obsess over him with a clear conscience, it's not fair that the last generation got him and all of the followills and all we got is stupid justin bieber and, like, the jonas brothers. ahem.

now, onto the doctor story...

you've all probably figured out that i'm sick. what else is new? however, a change is gonna come has already come. dr. cray cray has been replaced. the momster finally got around to switching our general practitioner to dr. omg-it's-the-emperor-from-mulan.

i'm not kidding, either. he looks, acts, and talks like the emperor from mulan. like, i was sitting their babbling on about muscle spasms and migraines and fevers and malfunctioning pain killers and he started talking about my freaking chi.

at first i thought that meant he was even crazier than the last doctor (and the momster definitely thought so, i wish i could've snapped a picture of her face), but then he wrapped it back to actual medical terminology and managed to work in the usual bout of drink-less-coffee-have-a-few-more-calories-stop-staying-up-so-late-and-for-christ's-sake-turn-your-brain-off-you're-probably-not-going-to-die-yet-you-crazy-bitch. anyway, the gist of it is that i'm supposed to stay heavily medicated (just the painkiller kind this time and not the "sing me a song about pineapples, mr. squirrel" kind) and at home all week.

this was my reaction:

since if i miss the entire week i'm going to have to take exams in all my b day classes - calc, lit, and physics. it's just not going to happen, okay? i'd rather go to school all "HI GUYS, I'M DOPED UP ON PAINKILLERS LIKE YEAH, ENOUGH TO SING MILEY CYRUS LIKE YEAH" than take those three exams. so thursday night i'm going to institute a campaign of whining, crying, and screaming "think of my education!" and "think of all the starving kids in Africa who don't have any education at all!" at the momster so i can go to school friday.

reread that last paragraph. that horrified "why would you want to go to school?" face you're making at the screen right now? yeah, that was basically my reaction. sacrifices must be made, though.

this really is the worst time for Operation: Read Instead, though. my fingers have been twitching toward the remote all day, especially since i'm still too blegh to run/work out. i've been reading and listening to music nonstop to make up for my lack of television. i just started villette by charlotte bronte.

oh, and i've been writing. it's been weird trying to get back into it after a few months of nonstop homework. i miss february. this month just seems so long, you know?

anyway, this post has gotten pretty long. i'm just going to stop here, especially since the painkillers have made my fingers sort of numb and typing kind of crazy. that is my defense for all the typos: the meds made me do it, OKAY?

i'll just leave you with this, it made me laugh:

rhymes with ick

so my day was pretty awful. random muscle cramps and a fever last night lead to me being knocked out (who knew the dr. cray cray pills would come in handy after all?) until...five o'clock, actually. let me clarify  that: five p.m.

so i missed school today. surprisingly, that's a really, really bad thing. now i have to go in super early to make up that stupid calc test and i can only miss one more b day unless i want to take exams (i don't). life: it's depressing. luckily i had this to cheer me up:

oh, julian casablancas, don't ever change, okay? i'm not even kidding. just stay exactly the same forever and ever - dorian gray managed it, why can't you? oh, you don't want to enshrine your soul in a painting? well too bad.

that's the other thing i've been doing for the whole four hours i've been awake: rereading the picture of dorian gray. i really want to see the movie version with silly prince caspian ben barnes as dorian.

for those of you still undecided about watching skins (jeni), here's yet another reason why you should get over british televisions' unique definition of censorship and watch anyway:

this is from season two. chris is basically the best character on the show. besides cassie. and maxxie. and tony. and effy (oh my god, effy. her last episode just about killed me). besides the episode this is from is all about the school's attempt to put on a show...called Osama: The Musical. i know.

anyway, i'm still feeling pretty awful (and have to continue studying for calc since the makeups are usually a billion times worse than the regular tests) so i'm going to cut this post short. goodnight, moon all you cray crays.