out of the ash i rise with my red hair...

our haunted kitty

2005-12-18T04:23:45Z

finally, proof that we have a ghost, and that he seems to be looking out for our kitty, mischka:

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finally, proof that we have a ghost, and that he seems to be looking out for our kitty, mischka:

<img src="<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v207/pygmalion/mischkaandspiritorb.jpg" alt="Image hosted by Photobucket.com">" />

actually updating.

2005-12-16T03:00:45Z

update in my life: i now work at a school where a student, yesterday, was found to have pissed in the stairwell. so now i suppose i have to start updating my journal, if only to start keeping a record of my daily trials and tribulations, so i can eventually score a lucrative book/movie deal.

also, this seemed more interesting than grading:

Five Things Meme
FIVE JOBS YOU'VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE
1. english teacher
2. bartender
3. puppeteer/"unicorn lady"
4. barbecue slinger
5. shot girl

FIVE MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER
1. monty python and the holy grail
2. about a boy
3. magnolia
4. memento
5. love actually (it's so darn cute...)

FIVE PLACES YOU'VE LIVED
1. buffalo, ny
2. niagara falls, ny
3. fredonia, ny
4. dublin, ireland
5. winnosquam, nh

FIVE TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH (Currently Airing)
1. the daily show
2. the colbert report
3. family guy
4. the boondocks
5. queer eye for the straight guy

FIVE TV SHOWS YOU LOVED TO WATCH (No longer Airing)
1. things i hate about you
2. beacon hill
3. fraggle rock
4. northern exposure
5. the office--bbc

FIVE TV SHOWS YOU LOVE WATCHING AGAIN (Cable Reruns)
1. coupling
2. home movies
3. space ghost coast 2 coast
4. the golden girls
5. mr. ed

FIVE PLACES YOU'VE BEEN ON VACATION
1. dublin, ireland
2. terlingua, texas
3. albuquerque, nm
4. ojinaga, mexico
5. nyc, ny

FIVE WEBSITES YOU VISIT DAILY
1. yahoo.ie
2. buffalonews.com
3. teachers.net
4. theonion.com
5. buffalorising.com

FIVE OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS
1. smokin' eel tempura roll
2. orange chocolate sponge candy
3. cheesecake
4. risotto
5. enchiladas

FIVE PLACES YOU'D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW
1. dublin, ireland
2. albuquerque, nm
3. london, uk
4. anywhere in europe
5. japan

FIVE FAVORITE AUTHORS
1. jane austen
2. j.k. rowling
3. david sedaris
4. mil millington
5. a.s. byatt

FIVE THINGS YOU SHOULD BE DOING INSTEAD OF THIS MEME
1. grading
2. sleeping
3. showering
4. lesson plans
5. grading (more)

goddammit.

2004-03-16T13:09:49Z

i woke up at kat's at 7:40, i thought. kat wasn't supposed to wake me up 'til 8, so i figured i'd go sleep for another 20 minutes.

so i went back to sleep and had a weird dream about eminem. i dreamed his first concert. now, mind you, i know next to nothing about eminem, but i'm assuming this was not how it went. in my dream he had a pushy, mustachio'd father and an evil wench of a house manager at the theatre that he was performing at. and she made some cynical joke about his friend's suicide--which was actually somehow connected to my friend ryan's (natural but young) death--and he went ballistic and started choking her. the whole thing ran like a movie; ominous music swelled as he broke down yelling at the woman and crying. he won over an audience of mostly older middle-aged women who thought he was cute and had him sign mesh thongs. and there were a lot of strangely edited shots in my head of the back of a bunch of cheerleaders' heads as they stood around making comments about eminem.

then kat came in and woke me up but it wasn't quite 8 yet so she left and i fell back asleep. when i woke up again i glanced at the clock in the dining room; it was 8:30, so i got dressed and ready to leave. until i looked at the clock again, realized it actually said 7:30, and i was apparently either a) going back in time, b) dreaming the earlier wake-up or c) i had thought it said half-seven when it was really half-six.

then kat just came out now and said that she had definitely not come in to wake me earlier.

huh.

kevin and i are going on a blind date tomorrow, since we watch so much of the tv show (i'm addicted to reality tv, unfortunately, since it really does violate my few remaining principles). we're going to play miniature golf and go to a sex shop and a swanky dinner at the left bank and then to see mates of state, who kevin likes, at mohawk. with a costume change for each place, of course. such is the way we spend our 4-month anniversary. i like that i have this kind of boyfriend.

st. pat's parade day was kinda lame... i should've pregamed. once we got down to chippewa i realized that i just wasn't in the party mood. we went to barristers and i got a guinness, kevin got a g&t, and we sipped them in very detached fashion in armchairs in the back room. then we went to mondo to rent a movie--we decided (okay, i decided) that a really really really bad porn would be fun, so we rented 'the ribald tales of canterbury.' the opening scene, kevin pointed out, had a bigger budget than any other porn ever. it was actually kinda creepy how suddenly the period drama (with porn actors doing various interpretations of british accents, no less) would switch to wife-of-bath-on-hostess action or a four-way with the miller's wife and daughter. i couldn't stop laughing enough to actually get turned on.

i'm posting a lot today.

2004-03-04T20:05:25Z

the crooked fingers song in my head has been 'you can never leave.' i'm posting the lyrics because now that i've read them, i perhaps see some relevance in this being the song that in a way kind of made me choose to stay with kevin. and they're beautiful. i like this band more and more every day.

Blue eyes of fire
Sweet desire is bitter torture
You are no father's daughter
No man has this much to offer
Skin dark as sin
Soft and when we took cover
From the rain and the thunder
Under stained glass we did slumber
'Til the sun came out to blind us
So we could not see anything
So we knew at once we were meant to be
And we heard the gods all rise and say
The love we made was no lie

With thirty years of hopes and fears breathing down my neck
Such a sad sad thing I set you free 'cause I can't get you back
You are fire and you are water and when you dance it is torture
Maybe some night by the gray light of the dull moon we can meet

Tangled in twine
We have climbed we have wrangled
Shiny sequined sparked and spangled
Our hearts iron cuffed and mangled
We spent the night
By the side of the water and
Past the breakers and the markers
We swam out into the darkness
'Til we could not feel the bottom
'Til we could not feel anything
And the shoreline slowly drifted out of reach
As the moon shone down and the ocean heaved
And darkness gave to the light

With thirty years of hopes and fears breathing down my neck
Such a sad sad thing I set you free 'cause I can't get you back
You are fire you are water and when you dance it is torture
Maybe someday on the bottom of the ocean we can meet
Though we know if we do we can never leave
'Cause the moment that we turn away
The gods will say the love we made was a lie

spiff, huh? aight, off to have coffee with scott, then to writers' ring, then dinner with kat, then back to buffalo... whee...

quizzes.

2004-03-04T18:46:00Z

You are Schroeder!

Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

whyyyyyy....

2004-03-04T14:29:17Z

in the comp lab at school right now. went to kat's last night, then finally forced myself to go to bj's for dollar pint night, since every week i promise my friends that i'm going and then i get comfortable in pj's and i go to bed instead.

i don't know whether my decision to go was a good or a bad thing.

i joke with kevin about his crush on this emily girl who was in his undergrad creative writing class and that he never talked to but really really liked. i had my emily-equivalent my sophomore year in creative writing, this guy named mike. he was absolutely gorgeous and very quiet and shy, and although i eventually worked up the courage to sit next to him in class and occasionally have a brief perfunctory conversation about the day's poem or something, i never really let on that i liked him or anything. and afterwards we saw each other around campus a lot, and out at bars, and smiled at each other, but that was it and i was sure he didn't even know where he knew me from.

so i went to meet up with scott and pounds at muldoon's, and the first person i see when i walk into the bar is this mike guy. and he smiles, and i smile at him and keep going, until i hear pounds call me back--apparently mike is friends with all my buddies, and they were all hanging out. so i started talking to mike, and we laughed and so on about how we sat next to each other but never talked and we're finally having a conversation two and a half years later, and so on.

so we go to bj's, and mike buys me a pint, and asks if i want to be his foozeball partner, so this is all fine and friendly and cool. and then i start getting the impression that he's definitely kind of singling me out in attention, so i'm not quite sure at what point i should bring up my having a boyfriend. but i also was thinking that mike was just interested in a one-night stand or something, just because hot guys are usually in that mindset, so i figured as long as i kept a little bit of distance, it was almost closing time and i could just pretend that everything's only friendly and go home without ever bringing the issue up. that and i guess, to some extent, i didn't want to discourage his attentions to me because they were flattering, since i had really liked him for so long and do admit that i'm still attracted to him to a certain extent.

so it's closing time, and i'm getting ready to leave, and he asks for a ride home, and i was like, sure, since he lives in brigham, which was on my way anyway. and then he suddenly says, 'i know i probably shouldn't even say this because i know you've got a boyfriend, but i just really feel like i have to tell you that i had the biggest crush on you during that creative writing class.'

i believe bridget jones pointed out that after years of singleness when not one guy you like appears vaguely interested in you, as soon as you find someone to be involved in a happy, functional relationship with, all of a sudden all the blokes you liked will be lining up at your door to cause heartache, guilt, and apprehension.

so i told him i likewise had had a huge crush, and we were very cool and joking about it, but he also said how much he was kicking himself that he never said anything about it... so i drove him home, and we were sitting in my car outside his apartment talking for a little bit, and a friend of his came by and was standing next to the car talking to us, and suddenly his friend is like, 'um, i think you should shut your car off.'

and i notice the massive clouds of smoke billowing from under the hood. so i turn it off and pop the hood, and friend and mike take turns trying to get the hood open without breathing too much toxic smoke, and they determine that my engine is overheating and i should be okay if i let it cool down for a bit. so mike invites me in, and says if the car doesn't work he'll drive me home. so i go in and use the bathroom and so on, and we're sitting on his couch with one polite seat cushion of space between us. and he apologizes over and over again for even bringing it up but tells me how much he liked me and still likes me and all that. i don't even know how to respond; i told him that i love my boyfriend, that if it is fate that made me have this conversation with mike and find this out and be stuck with an overheated engine at his house *now* when i've got a boyfriend that i'm happy with, that there must be some reason. i don't know what it is yet. maybe a test for my willpower/devotion/etc., maybe a warning sign, etc. and i'm also disconcerted by the fact that the previous day, my financial counselor/psychic actually said that he didn't see my being with kevin for the rest of my life, and the very next day i hear a declaration of adoration from the guy i would've killed for a year ago. and i've been upset about what the psychic said; i don't want to think about breaking up with kevin. i don't know if he's 'the one,' but i do feel about him in a way that i've never felt about anyone before, and i really want it to be this special and this perfect for a long time.

so then he walked me out to my car and i started it up and it was running okay, so i got out to hug him. he asked if he could have one kiss, and i said that i couldn't, and so we hugged and exchanged e-mails and phone numbers and so on, and i left. and now i'm much less torn than i was last night; i was lying in bed this morning thinking about kevin, and i just went to his yahoo picture gallery thing to look at his pictures, and it made me feel warm and happy and contented again. but it still is kind of upsetting that i have to find this out now, that this guy that had meant so much to me should suddenly appear in my life and i won't get the opportunity to find out what could've been and so on. and i feel disloyal even thinking that. i'm sure he'd have the same reaction if he saw emily at a bar and she declared her undying devotion to him or something. i don't know how much of what happened i should tell him. i think he'd be jealous and sad, but i want him to know how much i'd rather have him than my emily-equivalent, so maybe that would be worth telling him.

my surreal life.

2004-03-03T21:27:20Z

so yesterday i went to consumer credit counseling to meet with a financial advisor. a friendly, middle-aged black guy, named michael. he informed me that i needed to close out all outstanding credit cards, start putting everything in writing, and let go of the insecurities i was retaining from a past relationship in order to help my current partner better please me in bed.

yes. my financial counseling session also included a psychic reading.

i can't even explain half of what he said to me. a lot of it was quite interesting. he didn't seem too positive about my current relationship, but indicated that it was going to go where i wanted it to go, and if i wanted to make the correct choices i had to start trusting other people and myself and lose my old insecurities. he said i was going to have a rocky next couple of years (although this could just be based on the fact that he'd figured out what my total of debt was), but as long as i remained true to myself i would come through it okay.

kevin was so fascinated by this that he's calling michael to set up an appointment, ostensibly about his student loans, but really because he also wants a reading.

and then today, i went to jail. i went to pay the $300 fine for those parking tickets, and i told the lady that i couldn't really afford it and would like to speak to someone if i could about making payments. she said, okay, you can speak to the judge, i'll send someone down to get you. this should have been my first warning, but i was already in the dopey-sweet-innocent mode i adapt whenever i have to try to get out of something, so i guess it went over my head. so an officer came down and fetched me and led me upstairs, and said i could see the judge in a little bit, and a woman in regular clothes asked me into her office, asked me a bunch of questions, made me empty my pockets, counted the pathetic amount of cash in my purse, and told me to take off all my jewelry and put it in my purse. at this point i realized that this was not normal procedure just to talk with someone. so i pointed out, i have to take off my ring to see the judge? she said, well, technically right now you're under arrest. i'm like, oh. is this going to be on my record or stop me from getting a job and so on? she said, well, it's a parking ticket, so i highly doubt it. so she took my purse and put it in a locker, and then i was led back into the main room for my booking. the officers hanging around in the room were all very funny and friendly, and very amused by my being arrested. so i got booked, and then taken to cell #1. it was just me, a bench, and a stainless steel toilet/sink thinger. rather boring, other than listening to the raileries of the woman two cells down waiting to be taken to the county jail for a fifteen-day sentence. so then after about fifteen minutes, the woman came back and handcuffed me, and she and an officer took me up to the judge. i pointed out that the handcuffs, although on their smallest link, were still too big and that i could slip out, which they found amusing. then i was taken into this special enclosed room on the side of the courtroom and the judge called me; i had to speak into a microphone and look at him through a pane of glass. the woman who cuffed me said later that the bailiff and the judge both looked at her like she had just led a handcuffed first-grader into the courtroom. anyway, he realized that two of the tickets were apparently ten minutes apart on the same date and dismissed them both; the other two i plead guilty to, and he reduced one to a $50 fine and one to $30. i said i could pay that amount, the case was closed, i was led back to my holding cell and uncuffed, and eventually someone came down to collect my fine and i got to walk free.

and such is my life.

er.

2004-02-26T16:22:13Z

first anthropology test score: 62%. perhaps i should either go to class more often, buy the textbook so i can study, or at least pay attention in the classes i do go to instead of daydreaming.

daydreaming for me usually consists of planning things. apartment setup and decorating, a party, etc. today it was my wedding, since kat and i were discussing weddings last night, and i was browsing a bride's magazine of hers. not that i'm planning to get married or anything in the very near future; it's just fun to think about. my current favourite wedding theme is based on the klimt 'kiss' painting, which i love... i'd have that as the colour scheme, with lots of multicoloured wildflowers everywhere, and lots of sunlight, and the bridesmaids can pick their own dresses and such that have colours from the painting. and irises; i've recently decided i love irises. and i want a vintage wedding dress. and there'd be klimt artwork on the tables and the favours and the invitations and so on. and more flowers. i think i'd spend the entire budget on flowers. i can't decide between an outdoor wedding, preferable but with chance of rain, or in a nice old sunny church. and the reception at twilight and into the evening, outside under the stars. and maybe have the steam donkeys play; if there's a band i want it to be composed of my friends. and maybe honeymooning in europe, italy or something. that'd be nice.

while i was thinking about this i missed the lecture on neolithic villages and the growth of city-states. hmm.

yay, new journal...

2004-02-26T14:26:06Z

i haven't kept a journal of any sort for at least a year or two. i attempted to keep a travel journal when i went to ireland, but ultimately it had three entries: two from various airports, and one drunken, scrawled one from the first night there, coming back from the pub (the only intelligible line is 'wow, guinness much stronger here--' and then it trails off to a scribble again).

but i figure perhaps it will help force me to write and be productive, so that can't hurt.

quick background info for anyone stumbling upon this and curious: i'm currently 21, a super-senior in english education finally facing graduation in may. live in buffalo, ny. live on my own, with two cats--isolde and mischka. have a boyfriend of three months, kevin, who is wonderful and part of my impetus for getting a journal--he has an online one that i'm not allowed to go hunting for, so i figure i'll make one that he can't go looking for, and then at least i'll have a partner in my paranoia. play harp, and write; i'll probably occasionally post poems and such here, provided i start writing some new ones soon (i've been at a bit of a stalemate lately).

i'm currently in the computer lab at school trying to work up the energy to go to anthropology class. stayed the night at my friend kat's house; was supposed to go meet scott and matt p. out at a local bar, but i ended up wimping out. wine and a cozy bed and the daily show and my pajamas tends to draw me more than dollar pints at bj's nowadays. perhaps i'm getting old.

okay, i guess i should go to class. if only because i only go once a week or so.