call me an expert after three days

well, a lot has happened since the last post. for one thing, i managed to move in...surprisingly successfully, actually. like, don't get me wrong, there's still a whole army issue duffel bag full of clothes that hasn't even been opened yet, but some things are unpacked. that's way more than i thought would happen.

so, here at training wheels college, i have already been semi-rescued by the momster. she was here having dinner with the future-stepdad's boss (who lives like a minute away from campus - so guess who's been loaded down with emergency contact numbers) and i come back to the dorm like five hours after move-in and find six bags full of food from target waiting for me. well, at least i won't starve.

despite my worries (see the last emo post), college is fun. we're in the middle of a whole week of orientation, so maybe it's been a little too fun, but don't worry - once classes start and i need sleep (9 a.m. labs...blegh), i'm probably going to morph into the world's most boring college student.

...actually, i might already be the world's most boring college student. activities include: seeing the magic show (surprisingly good), going to the free fair (where - surprise surprise - you get free stuff), a couple of parties (including a jersey shore viewing party...why do those exist?), and wandering around with people trying to find things.

homesickness hasn't really kicked in yet, but ever since ginger reintroduced this song to me, i've had it stuck in my head. it was playing on loop the entire drive down here, so now i'm probably always going to associate it with depressing leaving-home things. thanks a lot, ginger.

my roommates are nice. one of them has horrible, horrible taste in music and is a bit of a partier, but she's being considerate and not an alchy, so we'll see how it goes. oh, and i have access to a car! don't worry, i won't be driving it. i met a girl who lives in fredericksburg but didn't want to commute, so she lives on campus, but she introduced me to all her friends who do commute (and therefore can drive us places) so now i'm excited.

other exciting things include:

the treehouses. they're these elevated study pods in the library where you can just look down and feel taller than everyone. why, yes, i am a nerd.

this is russell the cat. he isn't to be confused with russell the dorm or russell the person who lives in my dorm. nope, he's a kitty. a stray kitty, to be precise. we first saw him after being (badly) serenaded by a band of drunks who were standing on the hill outside my friends' room and trying to creep on us/get us to come outside. once one of the (few) sober ones figured out what room we were in, came up to say hi, and turned out to be nice, we headed downstairs and said hi/laughed at his drunk friends. my favorite was mah-mood. i'm probably spelling that wrong, but whatever. that's how he introduced himself to us. all "HI, MY NAME IS mah-MOOOOD." and then he started ranting about basically everything under the sun. i love drunk people. but, to get on with this story, we were all sitting outside our dorm and two guys walked past us and basically threw the cat over to us. we figure they must have picked it up from the ground since it seems to live around our dorm, but at the the time we were all kind of freaked out/going "wtf, there's flying cats here?". and that's how i met russell the cat. i kind of wish i could take him home with me, or at least let him into the dorm. meg the crazy head resident (and she really is crazy - all the RAs are really nice and friendly and soft spoken, and then meg calls us down for a meeting, cusses for every other word, and threatens our souls if we do any little thing wrong) would probably stop me, though. i'm sure there's a "no stray cats in the dorm" rule somewhere.

as for taking the cat home...well, sometimes i kind of want to take me home, too. it's so strange. i'm having tons of fun (except for right now - i'm waiting to go to my advisor meeting, which promises to be very, very boring) and people are nice and it actually isn't too hard to make friends but...it's like if i stand still and think about it, i actually miss home. like, fun as this is, i still expect it to be like going to camp or something, and being able to go home after a week or two and just pick my schedule back up. i still don't think i've wrapped my mind around the fact that we're all in or going to completely different places. hell, i even miss the momster/having her crazy around to make me feel normal. i guess it's time to see how well the oovoo/skype works.

we all knew this was coming

it's two thirty in the morning and i'm still awake. i am one hundred percent packed now. even the car is packed up. that's how packed for college i am. also, i really hate using my number keypad, so don't expect anything with...digits. is that the word? i don't actually know. it's late, i'm tired, and...

i don't remember my first day of high school. or middle school, for that matter. for some reason i do remember every first day of every grade between kindergarten and sixth grade. i guess my brain is just weird like that.

well, today is about to be my first day of college. i wonder if i'll remember this one. i guess that's why i'm blogging. i really shouldn't be, i'm so tired that i can't even understand what i'm typing right now. i guess it's a free write, then. stream-of-consciousness? if only i was james joyce.

i'm actually excited to go to college - and even if i wasn't, the momster's crying fits in the container store/bed, bath & beyond/harris teeter/every public place in the world would be enough to make me excited just at the prospect of leaving her. but...

my room is empty. like, meggo's and jenibean's fans are off the walls and my bulletin board is taken down and my sheets are in the dryer still because the momster said i wouldn't want to come home to a dirty room. it's so creepy.

so now i'm sleeping on the couch. it's kind of fitting in a way. i mean, my first night in this house (my first night in a lot of houses, actually) was spent sleeping on the couch because those slacker parents of mine were too lazy to set up my bedframe. they blamed it on my picking out a bed made of wrought iron and wood. i still think they were just lazy.

i dyed my hair black yesterday. it's going to be a pain to keep up during college, but at least it isn't The Oops.

just looking at the link is enough to make me nostalgic. alas, alack. woe is me, etc. etc.

in other news, real madrid signed another midfielder and drew against a third-rate belgian team in a pointless friendly yesterday. if they keep this crap up expect lots and lots of pissed off soccer ranting from me this year.

oh, and get on oovoo. it's addictive.

ahahahaha

i'm getting to all of you. this is a quick post to share the good news: i've got another convert. that's right: the soulless ginger has a blog! go follow him. hopefully we can peer pressure him and sarah with an umlaut into consistent blogging.

...which also means he needs a tag. damn it.

oh well, here's my nocturnal song of the night. it used to be on the bloglist (you know, way back when there was one), so it should be familiar (i'm looking at you s-la), but just in case you haven't heard it:

also, i just want it on record that i object to this whole "rachel is snarky" thing you all seem to have agreed on. i am so not snarky. trust me, i know snarky people and i'm definitely not one of them. mildly sarcastic, yes. full blown snark? not there yet. but, oh, do i have goals.

let's see how far we've come

today's title comes from how far we've come by matchbox twenty. i've got this playlist full of really cheesy songs that i listen to during moves/transferring schools/important life changes &c. and this one is all over it.

in case that wasn't enough to tip you off, i'm in full on nostalgia mode right now. i'm not entirely sure why it kicked in now and not, like, a week/month/year ago, but...well, it probably has something to do with this:

that? that is the result of six hours of shopping yesterday. my feet still haven't recovered. and i strained my ankle doing yoga last night and have to wear tape on it like a loser, so that might have something to do with it.


i've got to pick up a bunch of odds and ends tomorrow morning before the movie marathon s-la mentioned finally starts, but other than that i'm...done. other than laundry and physically throwing things into boxes (i'm not a big believer in that thing called "neatness", especially not when it comes to packing), i'm actually ready to move into my dorm...and away from home. i feel like i should be more excited/worried/spastic about this. i'm mostly just calm, though. maybe this is the real reason seniors get to leave school early - summer has stretched on for so long that i'm just ready to actually do something. or at least get away from the momster who keeps trying to bribe me to stay home with cupcakes and coffee and crying binges in the middle of the container store, oh lord.

it's so weird to think about this, but - excepting meggo, of course - i didn't know any of you four years ago, and now you're all so important. i wonder who we're all going to meet in the next four years. i wonder if we'll still talk then, or if we'll all have gone the way of the girl jenibean affectionately refers to as she-devil. like s-la, i don't think we will. for one thing, we really are the only people weird enough to put up with each other, and for another, i'm kind of bossy. all of you better expect lots of annoying blog posts/texts/facebook messages from me for the rest of your lives. also, we've discovered technology! see?

look at us, using technology. successfully, even. i'm still a little amazed. honestly, web cams just make me feel old. it seems like not that long ago video chatting was that thing they showed in movies to let you know you were in The Future. what happened to us?

also, i feel like our omegle adventures really have scarred me for life. like, i might have post traumatic stress disorders. when we added bean to the conversation her friend was the only person in view and i had, like, a vietnam flashback, all "OMG PENISES. PENISES ARE GOING TO RISE OUT OF THE DEPTHS AND FLASH US RUN FOR YOUR LIVES BITCHES."

and, yes, that is exactly how the vietnam war was fought. don't let anyone tell you anything different, okay?

maybe later i'll take a picture of the dogs for you all. the momster had them shaved again. they look terrifying.

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.

non, je ne regrette rien (a post in pictures)

fifty percent of today's title comes from the song of the same name by edith piaf, also known as the-song-that-played-during-the-kick. i've actually been playing the inception score on loop lately. it's good background music, but then again i love just about everything hans zimmer chooses to do. 

part 1: fun with masks.

awww. 

s-la tries on the hooker mask. 

so does jenn the asian. 

i get photographed trying on something...odd. 

again, so does jenn the asian. 

and travis just gets photographed trying on something gay.

...and something terrifying. 

part 2: questionable taste in clothing

we ventured into ed hardy while waiting for s-la to stop being lost.

the store that sold the masks only seemed to carry Rings of a Certain Size.

and that size would be giant.

see what we had to work with?

part 3: someone eats twice their own body weight.

look at those plates!

part 4: goooaaaal.

real madrid vs. club america. i started capping when the game started looking interesting.

see the other tabs open in my window? yeah, stop judging me for them.

this is a shameless attempt to get you to watch club football. 

or at least support the usa's bid for the 2018 world cup. sign up here. 

holy roller novocaine

today's title comes from the song of the same name by kings of leon. it's (in my opinion, which is the only one that matters) one of their best songs. at the very least, there is no mention of flaming intercourse or wanting to use somebody like you. this can only be a good thing. also, even s-la likes it, and she is notoriously (again, in my opinion) picky about what she listens to. here, judge it for yourselves:

so today s-la, travis, and jennifer (who are just not cool enough to get code names, sucks for them) went shopping - primarily for travis because, as you all should know, i've been shopping more or less constantly for the last few weeks.

s has already covered this, but shopping for boys is hard. their sizes are weird! they don't have fun styles to choose from. actually, there isn't much in the way of personal style in the world of men's fashion at all. as far as i can tell there is either "well dressed" or "blegh". like, there's no middle ground. it's kind of strange. there isn't "quirky" or "bohemian" or "fancy" or "retro" or "indie" or anything. i don't understand how they deal with it!

schweini doesn't understand, either.

well, we had to cover all of tyson's and the leesburg outlets (and, of course we made it to the outlets just in time for a giant thunderstorm), but we at last managed to get the ginger one the makings of a good wardrobe. we taught him what argyle and sweater vests were! also included in today's lessons: the importance of the long-sleeved collared shirt in layering. i feel so proud, i basically did this when he started showing signs of comprehension:

i also got a few things for myself, which is always good. best of all, i went to barnes & noble! i got the bell jar (sylvia plath), the lacuna (barbara kingsolver), and the alchemist (paulo co-oh fucking hell i have no idea how to spell or pronounce his last name). after my momster-enforced round of real estate tomorrow i think i'll go on a book binge. anything to distract me from hicks and gillet, the liverpool football club owners, trying to sabotage the club's sale to a chinese billionaire. and in case the thread i linked to isn't enough to clarify the matter, we definitely want the sale to go through. the current owners have put the team into a couple hundred million pounds of debt and might do worse if they aren't stopped. and, no, this isn't a shameless ploy to get you all to start following the english premier league/support liverpool. it so is. you should all know better by now.


other things of interest...

this video made me laugh so hard. watch all the way through, okay?

oh, and in keeping with my arcade fire kick, here's my latest love from their new album:

and another song that's been stuck in my head:

anyway, i'm off to start reading/snacking. i'm feeling gouda cheese and the lacuna tonight. what do you think?

eta: in case you couldn't tell, i'm dead tired, so tomorrow i'll probably post actual details/anecdotes/pictures of our mall adventures. highlights include: masks, jennifer eating twice as much as anyone at the table, and ed hardy.

eta #2: screw books and food. real madrid vs. club america is streaming right now. later, gators.