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3/30/01

Today was grand.

3/29/01

One of my favorite things to say about a day : For a day that started out terrible, today turned neatly into a great one at exactly 4:21 pm. I'd been grouchy, grumpy, whatever shade may be colored of being in a nasty mood; at 4:21 Maggie flagged me down to tell me that she had an extra copy of the reader for 443 (meaning that I don't have to return to that vile and rude man at Ram's copy center), and everything after that was lovely. I got email from a potential friend, I had a lovely two hour date with Jim, I worked with three people whose company I enjoy intensely... Had I known that my emotions were to be flipped so simply by the generosity of a near-stranger, I would have spent much less of the day sulking. I sulked all around the Quad today, while cherry blossom petals scattered around me in gusts. Despite the strange vibrancy of the cherry trees against the cloudy sky, I couldn't escape the feeling that I was in the midst of a freak spring snowstorm. It was a good setting for a sulk, I must admit—perhaps the time wasn't so wasted, after all.

In a completely different vein, as vulgar as it may sound, I feel compelled to share that the physical satisfaction of relieving a slightly ingrown toenail is second to nearly nothing. Tantamount, I dare say, to a good neckrub (albeit a fleeting one). And we all know how much I like a good neckrub (10/01/99).

3/28/01

So tired, so dispirited. I spent all but three hours today in a total funk which has given no sign (other than for those three hours) of lessening. Phooey on life.

3/27/01

Rakkii! Found someone to live with next year! And there were a few other things I wished to say, but it's nearing 2:30 in the morning (and I only did half my Japanese) and I have to get up in six hours.

3/26/01

Classes begun, and new backtext in place (I was inspired). Three most awesome professors to suck knowledge from, and I discovered that five other students in 317 were similarly screwed for grades—most of them much much worse than I. I shall cease complaining. I wanted to extoll the awesomeness of Professor Reid, but I feel that I've already done that enough times today; instead, I offer the following :

There is something moving about walking home under dark grey-and-yellow skies, feeling the rain advancing while three directions curl bright blue and puffy white against the edges of the storm. There is something saddening about passing a car encasing two elderly people and a minute yapping dog—all three ignoring each other. There is something beautiful about watching the cars outside spray sparkles into the rain lashing down through the sunbeams. And there is something extremely wrong about whatever it is that is growing in my bathtub.

How does one even begin to transcribe to words that which one feels listening to Beethoven's Fifth in C Minor? It seems some sort of blasphemous transgression to even suggest the attempt, yet at times it would be the only possible method of expression.

3/25/01

Sometimes, I sit down to write something, and as I do, a song comes on. And that song pulls me away from my desk, away from my room, and there's nothing I can write that could do justice to what I'm feeling. It's not necessarily (or even usually) due to the words, but rather from that which is mysterious and aural, moving and beautiful. A soft guitar and a slow beat, rocking and smoothing myself away.

3/24/01

I just watched 45+ min of a crazy guy's self-videotaped monologue on public access. It was incredibly surreal—I couldn't turn it off, as he droned on and on from various benches at the King County Courthouse. I couldn't shake myself of the impression that I recognized him (though I think that it merely his rambling resemblance to other crazy people of my aquaintance); I found myself entranced by trying to catch, in the reflections on his thick-rimmed glasses, the world passing by as a single greasy man talked to a camcorder.

3/23/01

Head hanging down, window open, Boa flowing past ears in rocking waves, listening to sounds of traffic—mine are the only lights in the apartment. Excessive amount of time in need of wasting; wishing that I could have stayed at the Roma longer. My paper was finished and they were to be closing early anyway. Coffee's caffeine coursing through veins—a long stare to the side, into the mirror : a geisha dancing in red above my hair. Wondered on the way home about the fragments of phrases omnipresent and the stream-of-consciousness essay written once in Ms. Britton's 11th grade class—if only she'd known. Involuntary twitch and watching tailheadlights streak past in reflections; thinking of the I Saw U's. I've never been Seen, though I Saw once—I hope he smiled when it was mailed to him. Tab to check email... still nothing, of course; waiting impatiently for pages to load, perhaps I should clean my room. Eternal mystery : why is it always an Enya song when I reload my mp3 collection to xmms? Not even the same one, but always Enya, while Ritz crackers become the new crack.

3/22/01

Looks like I finally turned up with Brandon's flu. Yay me. I came in here intending to write something about watching the boys play with the water in the sink, but Lars is purring me to come pet him, and I feel gross and tired... back to the couch.

3/21/01

What the -FUCK-??? A fracking 3.3 in my lab class? Noooooooooooooo fucking way. I concede the thermo, I lament the Japanese, but I deserved an A in that class and Jake and Ahmad are bastards for not giving it to me. What the FUCK.

At least it pulls me up to a 3 point + avg for the quarter. Small comfort... I seriously expected a 3.6 or so in that class. It's the final slap in the face for the worst scholastic quarter of my sorry career. No offense to those friends of mine who scrape and thank heavens for their 2.0s, but that's not who I've been. At least not until now. AUGH.

Why can I no longer be the me of last July? I could communicate, then. It's depressing to think that I may no longer have anything to say.

3/20/01

How do you tell someone that you don't know very well "I think you're really cool and interesting and I'd like to spend more time with you," without having it sound as if you're hitting on them? How do yousay "I think about you all the time; you fascinate me" without having it sound as if you want to jump their bones? It's really something of a dilemma. Because I'm not sexually interested in him, but how does one convey the intellectual interest without hitching along the physical? A simple problem, perhaps, but one that I've never had to deal with before. In the past, I was either single, or not particularly committed to a significant other; in those cases, it wasn't necessary to worry about how I was coming across—now, I worry.

3/19/01

Well, I won't have to repeat 456, but I rather wish that I had to rather than to have gotten the grade I did. And not even an A in Japanese.

3/18/01

Thought experiment upon endless thought experiment; what better usage of time while in a car, if not to imagine what one would do in situation A or B? Time in a car, time while eating or trying to sleep or listening to a lecture. I can't help myself—all the imagination I stored up when I stopped writing stories pours out into daydreams of what-ifs. I suppose that I wouldn't mind, if I didn't manufacture things that could so possibly happen that I can't help but hope, albeit often masochistically, that they'll occur.

To completely change the subject, I very much enjoyed Enemy at the Gates' gratuitous sex scene. It was much better done and worked into the story than I could have hoped—they were even dirty for it!

3/17/01

Still so... blah. Desperate for attention, more than would or could be supplied by one person; and who else can I turn to? No one. All in all, a depressing situation.

3/16/01

Sad again. I feel like I haven't really been anything BUT sad for the past several months. Happy bits here and there of course (Wednesday, for example), but overall, just melancholy for weeks upon weeks. I am displeased.

3/15/01

Coffee and The Stranger at the Roma in the morning—scents of wet pavement drifting from the door, coffee, unwashed man sitting two tables away. Flipping pages, rush of the heater floating strands of hair around face, obscuring sounds of traffic. Faint conversations, cool drafts of air now and then, reading a unexpectedly well-composed article about perceptions of God; Radiohead and I Saw U's heralding slight melancholy as the last of the coffee is sipped away. Consummate Thursday experience, so long missed, and seemingly inexpressable with conjunctions.

3/14/01

I don't think I failed it, so I refuse to worry about it anymore. In happier news, I spent a very enjoyable day today talking Brandon's ear off. I was at loose ends, and so was he; we ended up spending the entire day together (though some was at work), while I talked and talked and talked (as well as dragging him all over Seattle). He put up with my finals-induced hyperactivity very gracefully, which I appreciated. I feel rather bad that I couldn't stop my stupid motor mouth... it was just nice to have someone to talk to, who gave every appearance of actually listening and being interested, who wasn't Jim. No offense to Jim, of course—it's just that, as I've said before, sometimes it's nice to have someone to talk to who isn't your significant other. Plus it gave me a chance to retell old stories that I'd been hashing over in my head lately; he was most polite about hearing me rattle on and on.

It's a truly wonderful feeling, to have someone listen, to have them nod and comment and say "oh my!" with raised eyebrows or hum sympathetically at appropriate moments. Not that I don't make people listen to me normally, by just talking away, but it's nice when you don't worry too much that they're hating you every step of the way for it. It was such a glorious release, to talk.

I really do need more friends.

And then just as spontaneously, music fills the air as I skim the world around me, and I lay my head on the desk in despair.

Perhaps I should repeat that I really do need more friends.

ooooooh. "Merely to speak is a kind of self-betrayal, in that we surrender our innermost being to the mercy of the circumstances."—attributed to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, philosopher. ooooooooh.

3/13/01

AUGH. I don't understand nearly a single question on the sample final for thermo. It's hard to really express a wail in text, but please do me the favor of understanding that that's what I'm doing, long and loud. It's not even the sort of not-understanding where I have an inkling of where in the book to look it up and get an example done; it's the sort where I stare at the questions and ask myself when in God's name we covered any material that looked even slightly like that. I hate Engel's exams—he wants us to extrapolate our scanty knowledge as far as his experience takes him, and the result is a 55% mean that he confesses so much surprise at. I don't understaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand it at allllllllllllllllllll. SNIFFLE. WAIL. SOB. I'm going to be happy with my 2.0 or whatever I get... so long as it beats a 2.0. If I fail this class and have to take the damn thing over, I think I'm going to kill myself.

3/12/01

I really sounded rather juvenile yesterday. I'm still not sure exactly why the idea of Angela having turned into a raging Sailor Moon otaku should bother me so much (I nearly choked on the apple I was eating, and had anyone else been home, they would have heard me yelling out "OH MY GOD!" at the top of my lungs repeatedly); perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it pains me greatly to think that she might possibly have ended up with an interest in Japan, like me. It hurts, to think that we might still have something in common, after all these years.

I GET TO GO I GET TO GO I GET TO GO!!!!!!!!!! As Mom said when I phoned her the good news, it's not as if I really thought I wouldn't be able to, and we'd been pretending that it didn't matter... but the acceptance letter still made me jump up and down and squeal like a squirrel on crack.

3/11/01

My god. A search for Angela on google turned up that she's a Moonie. As in a Sailor Moon otaku. Good lord. Or maybe not... two Angela Gasparettis in the world that have affinity for Sailor Moon? Augh. Okay. This one is different. That worried me. Why? I'm not entirely certain. And whoever is reading this understands even less.

3/10/01

I am so tired. Stupid finals.

3/09/01

I'm so lonely. But a year ago on this night, I randomly decided to cover a shift at work, and ended finding the person I care about more than anything else. So things even out, after all. Memories and actualities, all delicately balanced.

I am so glad I decided to work that evening.

3/08/01

I had intended to write something tonight—perhaps to expound on the awesomeness of Professer Mayer, or on why I hate Jake and Ahmad, or about how nifty my hair looks in the weird way I've got it caught up, or on Marcus' ineptidude screwing me over again, or on how nostalgic going through my old chem textbooks makes me. But considering that I have a oral final tomorrow and I haven't studied up on any of the situations yet... I do believe that I shall curl up in bed and read Japanese until I fall asleep instead.

3/07/01

Sometimes, you just want to stop, on your way home. You're tired, your feet hurt, and here seems like just as good a place to cry as there. But instead you trudge on, smelling the rain in the air and determinedly watching the sunset to keep the tears from brimming over. You school your face into as close as calm as you can, lest you have to pass someone you know—because that's what it's all about, isn't it? It's about not letting Ahmad and Jake push you into tears into lab, and it's about not letting strangers see you crying on your way home. It's about waiting until you're at home, in your room, to let the feelings pour out. You tried to tell someone about it, but it didn't help, did it? Because you couldn't help but make light of it, laugh it away as nothing, couldn't help but "be strong" about it. You're the only one who can be let see how much it's hurting, how much it hurts to watch the best thing in your life slipping away. You don't know how to fix it, or if it can even be fixed, and so you sit in a small room and cry, uselessly. Cry, uselessly, as it drags out longer and longer, while you find yourself, your strong self, unable to do anything but desperately cry, alone, feeling it all falling away.

3/06/01

Sigh. Almost nothing to eat in the house that wouldn't take much more time than I want (and this means rice—that and noodles and some packages of ramen are about my only choices), so root beer and ice cream for dinner. Oh, and the rice I'd left never got eaten, and milk had been let go bad, so our kitchen reeks... and that was before I opened up the door to the trash. And let's not forget the earwig flailing on the kitchen floor. Oh yeah, this week is reeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaalllllllllyyyyyyyyyy looking up. I have a final on Thursday, and one on Saturday—and it's not even officially finals week until Monday. I'm pissy as all hell, to boot.

Annoyance—I walk into a quiet, dim bathroom in Mary Gates, and settle into a peaceful stall. I unfocus my eyes on a tile floor and relax. Suddenly, a noise, a splash, cold. Rumble fading away slowly. I absolutely hate those automatically flushing toilets. I don't know how they work—it's certainly not because I'm breaking some reflecting beam, because they tend to flush when I'm just sitting there, trying to mind my own business. I think they do it on purpose... just to scare me onto my ass right as someone else walks in.

My CDs are still spilled out in a riot of color and reflecting plastic.

3/05/01

Rather odd—for a day in which several things went well and that was overall pretty good, I'm outstandingly depressed. "You shouldn't compare yourself to Noel" didn't help.

3/04/01

I got to escort a young lady home tonight. She was afraid that a drunk that had been harrassing her in Aladdins was going to follow her when she left, and she asked me to walk along with her. I felt quite the gallant. ;) We chitchatted as I finished my food and as we walked home about our fields of study and crazy people... it was all very random but not unpleasant. Thankfully, the drunk (or perhaps he was strung out... we couldn't really tell) didn't follow us... she was pretty edgy. She'd just graduated from Evergreen and is starting her Masters here, and complained that she just didn't feel comfortable walking around the U District at night by herself yet. I found that very odd... but perhaps that's because I've been roaming the streets of the U District at night for at least ten years now. Brooklyn can be a frightening street, but the Ave, with its lights and shops that can be ducked into, not to mention bums to hide behind, is never far away. But I sigh. I'm tired and my CDs are all over the floor from the earthquake still and I don't have the energy to pick them up. The quarter is almost over, and I can tell... my energy is almost non-existent.

3/03/01

I found Settlers of Catan! Sweet!

3/02/01

I wish I could take this week back. The quarter, on a larger scale, as well, but most certainly this week. It's been the most terrible time; even more so because there's been no single truly awful events... just hours after hours of moderately bad. It begins to add up. The wind lashed waves all the way over 520 last night, as I drove to John's in the dark. There would be nothing, and then the van would get slapped with the trail of a whitecap—I could barely keep the car in one lane, the wind was gusting so badly. I rather wanted it to be worse... if I were lost in a dreadful accident, I wouldn't have to face up to my responsibilities in life. Of course, I could just be like Bryce, with the same effect.

3/01/01

Well, perhaps I should have written stuff last night, but I didn't really feel like it. My cd rack fell down in the quake. There's CDs all over my room and I was too exasperated to clean it up last night. I feel rather bad—some of the cups that Voni gave me for Christmas broke, and I'd never gotten the chance to use them. It feels like such a waste.