(warning: particularly old content) I don't ask for it to make sense 
11/30/01
A good day, meaning an utterly boring one to speak of here. Compliments were recieved from teachers, printers were fixed, Japanese was taught, anime was watched, Zachs were bullshitted with, Jims were companionably hung out with while playing lots and lots of Civ III... good stuff.
11/29/01
Several hours ago I had something to talk about. Now I've forgotten it, and it's cold, so I'm going to curl up with my Japanese homework that I really don't want to do instead.
11/28/01
Today was one of those days when I couldn't remember to finish sentences and twirling around seemed like a good idea. I didn't wake up on the wrong side of the bed, per se, but perhaps in the weird corner.
11/27/01
I want to know why it suddenly started being so cold in my room—my poor space heater can't seem to keep up like it was a few weeks ago; I wonder if the insulation is just totally shot. Of course, it is REALLY FUCKING COLD OUT. If it's this damn cold, it should just snow. I don't own nearly enough warm clothes (sweaters, sweatshirts I don't mind wearing, long-sleeved shirts that work correctly under t-shirts) to put up with this without the reward of snow. Bah humbug. Hung out with Zach tonight, catching up on some anime I'd missed a week or two ago and finally meeting his hamsters. It was funny to chill in his dorm room and contemplate the fact that had things gone just so slightly differently two years ago, I might have started dating him instead of my sweetie. I know I'm not supposed to make assumptions like "it wouldn't possibly have been as good as it is with Jim," but I just can't help it. It was such a monumental string of coincidences that kept us apart until I met Jim and was hopelessly lost that the romantic part of me can't help but think that me and Zach weren't meant to be; instead, I was supposed to stumble into knowing the most wonderful man in the world (of course, the whole irrational idea of Jim and me being "supposed" to be together isn't helped by the fact that there were another several odd coincidences that led to the night that started it all). Pish... I hate it when I go and get all gushy and romantic and I usually delete it and write something more generally applicable to humanity... but ah, what the fuck. The occasional mooning romanticism can, I hope, be forgiven.
11/26/01
I'm tired of grading papers (what one girl wrote concerning sources of error in her lab : "And last, believing or not seeing the reactions in the solutions." I swear, that's the full sentence) and what better way to procrastinate and make myself more tired than by catching up on a four-day weekend's store of thoughts. Not that I really have any. I spent the whole weekend eating or playing Civ 3 down at Jim's place. It was beautiful—I didn't check my mail for four straight days. I saw Harry Potter and thought it was long and an odd hack job of the book, but a decent movie. I had a dreadful dream where I was a stewardess and didn't have enough food for all of my angry passengers. I finally got to meet the cousin Travis who's also dating a girl named Jen. I got to see Dougie again. Overall, an excellent weekend, which is why I was so annoyed with myself for having such a wasted day today. A good weekend should be allowed to gracefully bleed out into the rest of the week, rather than being abruptly jolted over and out of the way by an awful Monday.
11/22/01
I had a dream where I flew last night. This doesn't seem as nearly cool as it was unless one considers that I've NEVER before remembered a flying dream, if I had any at all. It involved a broom, which has left me open to not one, not two, but three Harry Potter jokes today (in my defense, I haven't seen the movie yet, and it was a few weeks ago that I read the first book). It was absofuckinglutely fanbloodytastic.
Heh. 61.8%.
11/21/01
Starting off the Thanksgiving weekend by being sick was not a particularly good idea on my part.
11/20/01
Sometimes I think I have no more precious item in my possession than my space heater. I'm such a slave to not being cold in the mornings.
There are few better ways to end a crummy-mood day than to come home and eat mashed potatoes (in today's case, I sauteed some onion, garlic, and green chilies with cayenne pepper and then stirred that into the potatoes, put a little plain yogurt in, and snitched some of Brandon's Montery Jack to grate on top—yummy). Would that all the world's problems could be restored by putting some fluffy potatoes in everyone's stomachs.
Cookie dough. Such a disgusting indulgence, when one actually thinks about it, which is perhaps part of its appeal. Stirring in an egg and watching the white swirl around, knowing that before anything gets cooked, some of that glistening mass will be in your stomach; loading a spoon up and sucking the dough off, only to find that a large chunk in the middle was nothing but butter. Perhaps it's the tabooness of it all that drives me to crave it so much, the same tabooness that when I was little, led me to eat raw hamburger. But while my fear of what raw hamburger could do to my system ultimately resulted in my quitting that little habit, salmonella doesn't hold much of a specter over me. In an age where I try to generally watch what I eat, the occasional cookie dough eating is a delicous little sin. It's funny—my little brother could never stand eating cookie dough (and used to scream when he saw me at an old childhood habit of putting some butter on a spoon and sprinkling sugar on before eating it). I rather wonder what it is that caused him to be so revolted, because while common sense says that he should be, most people I know aren't the most common-sense-bound when cookie dough is concerned.
I have a particular candle, of a creamy orange-yellow, that when blown out wisps a stream of white-grey smoke like a gauzy scarf in the wind.
I spent a goodly amount of time tonight over at wilwheaton.net after just about laughing my ass off at this Slashdot comment he posted in the "Questions to Bruce Campbell" thread. As I told Zach, I've discovered that Wil Wheaton, subject of a crush of mine when I was 10 years old, is a personality startling close to someone I'd want to be friends with if he weren't, you know, a movie star who I've never met. Heh.
11/18/01
Oops. Teach me to leave out one little >. It's funny, I don't look at my own page very frequently... just lucky that I caught that one. Anyway. I very seriously considered calling today a wrap at 8:30 pm, right after I'd woken up from a little nap. It'd been a while since I took a nap; not since this summer in Japan. I've never had the talent for snoozing on campus that such esteemed personalities as Stephen, Jim, and Ian seem to have, though I often quite envy them their power sleeping abilities. I used to nap in the dorms a lot more often than I do now that I'm in an apartment; I'm not sure why. Dorm rooms just seemed more conducive, perhaps because it was very possible to come home during an hour-long break, catch 30 minutes of sleep, and still make it to my next class. Man, I can't believe I've been out of the dorms for over a year now. Once upon a time, I was fully planning on dorm ratting it all the way into a Steven's Court apartment as a grad student. Life was so much simpler then, in a funny way. I may have had more romantic problems, and been a more outwardly messed-up little cookie, but at least the external trappings of life—a bed, food, electricity—were all neatly paid in one little bill, and I could get to class in 7 minutes or less.
11/17/01
There's a smug feeling that goes along with wasting the entire day (if you can call it a day when I didn't wake up until almost 3 pm) goofing around playing video games, but still managing to pull yourself away and get some Real Work done. I'm really enjoying the whole overhaul-the-120-labs thing. It's more fun to think down to their level than I'd admit to my fellow TAs—they're all chem nuts who can't understand my penchant for calling things "goo" and "stuff" and "chunky bits." Sure, Terrah and Marianne may be better at technical definitions... sure, Lafe may be the research whiz... but I bet none of them get their students quoting them in their lab reports and to their friends (heh).
11/16/01
Guh. It's 4:22 am and I think I lost the last many hours to the sweet glory of Civ III. Ah, the addiction.
11/15/01
I haven't done much thinking today.
11/14/01
Wow. I was so out of it yesterday that not only did I not update, but I totally forgot about updating. Usually it's not a real "forgetting;" rather, it's more like it crossed my mind to post something, but I was too tired or something to follow through on the whole thing. But no, last night, I really truly forgot. I suppose that's what happens when you get two 2.5 hour long batches of sleep in a night and don't eat all day—your systems come out a little funny. Someday, I'll learn that I can't run my body ragged without consquences. In other news no one but me cares about, I find it very interesting how my preferences in men have altered in the past year and change. Before I dated Jim, if anything I leaned towards the tall, skinny sort (although really, to try to say that I've ever, even now, limited myself in my appreciation of the male species is something of an amusing thing to attempt). Yet when I found myself eyeing David Draiman of Disturbed with more than a few naughty thoughts in my head a few nights ago, added it to my appreciation of Till Lindemann, and correlated in the other various broad-shouldered men I've been noticing more and more lately... I think I've experienced a definite shift. I think it's fascinating how my appreciation of the man I love has bled out to affect my general perceptions. The human mind is a funny thing.
11/12/01
Professor Raucher is a dumbass—I'm annoyed. Jim has Civ III—I'm jealous. That's about the important thoughts for the day.
11/11/01
What a bizarre feeling. I woke up very late (1:43 pm) and had to run out the door very fast (1:55 pm) to meet up with Kate and Patrick (2:30 pm) to watch Monsters Inc. (2:45-4:20 pm), with the end result that by 5 pm, when we were catching the bus home and it was already pretty dark, I'd racked up a grand total of about 35 minutes of sunlight for the day. All nighttime time seems to collapse together, so even though it's been six hours since I got home, I feel as if nothing's passed. Stupid winter.
11/10/01
Things I learned from watching MTV Europe's 2001 Music Awards tonight : Blink 182 is, just as I thought, a bunch of ugly, stupid men. Depeche Mode's lead singer David Gahan is hot in the same way Liam Neeson is. Europeans think that Wheatus and Dido qualify to be in the 2001 "New Artist" category. Somewhere, someone crazy thought that the obnoxious driver from Madonna's Music video would be a good host, and they should be shot. Rammstein's Till Lindemann is still the man.
I think it's funny that at 3:06 am, I noticed that my feet still have my Birk tan lines from this summer.
11/09/01
Well, out of the whole awful screaming fight that I had tonight with Dad, one thing must be remembered. He finally admitted without reservation (though after much much crying and yelling and other such nastiness on both sides) that while Bryce is frittering away his money, I am making Something of myself. I suppose that's a small victory to relish. I still can't stand the controlling bastard, but it's nice to know that when forced, he's willing to admit things. I don't think that I really doubt that he's proud of me or loves me... it's just that he's so emotionally retarded that he's incapable of showing that without pairing it with something incredibly hurtful, when he tries to show it at all. It's a damn shame.
11/08/01
I wonder if part of why I don't like to hang out at my apartment is because I instinctively think of where "home" is as dangerous and uncomfortable. I'm so used to the idea of escaping from home that I think I may tend to lose sight of the fact that it's not home I had to escape from for so many years, but rather who was at home.
11/07/01
Fighting with my asshole father on the phone wasn't what I wanted to do tonight. Of course, we were both in the wrong; I've never been the sort to shift blame off of myself totally. But it just seems to me that if I were designing a world, fathers being able and willing to express to their daughters that they think they're a terrible, nonworthwhile person just wouldn't be anywhere on the blueprints.
I so very hate crying.
11/06/01
Blah. Remembering at 9:15 pm that you have a 2-3 page paper due at 4:30 the next day does't ruin your night, but it certainly doesn't make one happy.
11/05/01
Sigh. Another Monday night, another bunch of depressing lab reports to grade. This was their easiest-graded lab yet, because there just wasn't much to it, and I still got a bunch of grades around a 4.5 or a 5 due to laziness, forgetting to answer a question, or outright stupidity. And to think that I'm already grading "easier" than the strict protocol by breaking up the 1 point a question is worth into two pieces, preventing a lot of full point drops in their scores. Sigh. I'm going to have an empty lab by the end of the quarter... which is rushing up ohso fast. And I'm still not registered for the GRE because the people won't answer their damn phone.
11/04/01
Nothing like a weekend to make me not update. Those days when nothing much more than going shopping happens aren't exactly ripe for any sort of musing, interesting or otherwise. I bought some lovely candles, had a beautiful night out with my honey, watched lots of TV, saw a movie, and did no homework. Pretty standard stuff.
And then you learn that you can't do JET at all because you have to have graduated by June 30, 2002 to apply (I won't be done until July 24th). And then you're in a really fucking terrible mood despite the overall good weekend. Fucking A. I mean, it's not that I don't want to go to grad school—it's just that I was really looking forward to being able to take a year off while not losing my Japanese. That and having to take the GREs in a month, if I can get registered for them at all, has me incredibly stressed out and depressed. I hate huge life changes that come unexpectedly—I thankfully haven't had very many in my life, but that doesn't mean that I don't bitterly resent them.
11/01/01
I've had a rotten mood and I'm in a rotten day. I didn't mean to write it that way, but once written, it seemed to be no more or less incorrect than the proper grammatical way to have said it. I missed a doctor's appointment, had a bus come too early, had a client bitch me out over the phone, had printers blow up in the period where I wasn't at work because I was late, didn't get enough sleep, had fear injected into me that I might only get 3rd year credit for the summer, got all but accused of grading my students unfairly easily by another TA, didn't get food for 12 hours straight, had to be present for much more of a co-workers' inaptitude than I should have been... it's not necessarily in chronological order, and I may have missed something, but the day was still a right Alexander. Years from now, what will I think about the fact that this song coming on, followed by this one, seemed to lift just that little bit from my heart? Either one or the other wouldn't have done it, I think.... but the perfect combination of obnoxiousness outpouring followed by hope uplifting—that did it.