Mind Jump

i don't even know what to say about today ... i have been living too many days in a row in a state of not-quite-hungover-but-definitely-alcohol-induced fogginess. i just can't stop going to bars with cool kids ... but i am very happy that tonight i am sitting here in yoga pants and a big t-shirt that says "Mind The Gap" on it rather than hanging out of some boob shirt banging on the bar while gesticulating wildly with a cigarette going, "Two Coronas, please! TWO ... CORONAS ... PLEASE!!!!!!"

i am so tired. so extremely, unusally exhausted ... i went to see a play this afternoon in ft. wayne with my aunt, and i fell asleep during it no less than six times. the only thing keeping me awake driving home was the ever-fouler scent of my cheese and broccoli burrito leftovers fermenting slowly in the sun of the first hot day this year. ughhh ... needless to say, that did not get eaten.

i am so happy this week is the last week of class. i don't know what my damage is since i'm not really going anywhere till september when i leave for germany, but some days i really do think that i'm going to rip my face off and swallow it if i have to be subjected to even one more day of going up and down rows, saying different verbs in the subjunctive, or sit there and try to interpret well-meaning but heavily-Polish-accented lectures about the ethnic groups of Moldova. I ... NEED ... A BREAK. And SOON!!! Thank the Lord I get one.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Tiffany - "I Think We're Alone Now"

i am ... so sick
oh ... my .... god ....... no one who drove himself or herself home the night before should wake up feeling like THIS ... i am barfy, achy, and shaky ... hungry, yet nauseated ... tired, yet unable to sleep ... and i get to work open to close today!!!! oh goody.

Current Mood: groggy
Current Music: crashing jackhammers in my head

a deadjournal no more
well my various attempts to keep this an up-to-date and accurate commentary of my thrilling life have crashed and burned so badly that they ARE even funny ... in fact i am trying hard to think if i have even touched this in a year, and i don't think so ... it's been as discarded as my $4 vibrator that runs on a watch battery ... or RAN ... it barely even made it through my fantasy about being gang-raped by all the james bonds together (and me answering coolly, after they asked me how it was, "shaken ... NOT stirred ...") but anyway ... yes. very out-of-date.

soooooo if you know me at all the big news is that i am going back to germany for a year starting in septemberish-octobery time. i am so excited, and i just can't hide it ... i'm about to lose control and i think i like it ... i know, i know, i know, i know, i know, i want you ... want you. unfortunately i will not be kicking it this time in the laid-back, storybook land of bavaria with its beers, its alps, and its wandering oompah bands for added ambience, but i will be in muenster (*sigh* yes ... like the cheese), which is up by the netherlands, so lots of entertainment in magic brownie form is just a train ride away. :-)

i'm also going crazy with work and school ... i work in a crazy hippie indian store ... come see us, purveyors of such fine goods as incense burners, beaded curtains, broomstick skirts, and, bizarrely enough, grills. (not of the george foreman variety, as someone asked me, but the blinged-out teeth cover kind.) but insane schedule overload is such a part of the routine at this point that i actually kind of miss the chaos when things slow down. or at least i WOULD miss them; at this point, it's just a hypothesis since that situation has never come up.

anyway, i will try to keep this quasi-updated ... i was convinced my livejournaling days were well behind me, but then i got reluctantly addicted to facebook, so i thought, what the hell ... let's see if anyone reads this damn thing anyway.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: bob seger - "night moves"

good times and great oldies
well things are going pretty well right now ... classes are great and ive met some cool kids.

though i guess when i say classes are great, what i actually mean is my marks are great ... haha. the english class is questionable (who ever heard of a world literature class that begins with reading hemingway), and the spanish class ... *sigh* i was all psyched about it at first, since pretty much all i need is to earn SOME spanish credit SOMEWHERE for the next two semesters to finish my minor, and pragmatics sounded way the heck cooler than being stuck in some boring grammar analysis class. however it seems that we study the same inane basic concepts in violently repetitive detail every freaking time we convene, and eventually i just lost it doing the homework two weeks ago when i was reading a 30-page article with a section subtitled "physiognomy of a speech act." aggghhhhhhhhhh but i guess i'll just hang in there and get my A (eh?)

zach and i are doing a lot better too. hard to believe that we've been together for 11 months ... it seems like i've known him all my life but yet it also feels like we just went on our first date at the MT cup a few weeks ago. we visit the scene of the crime pretty much all the time, haha ... that coffee shop is our cheers. they've actually already started yelling "Norm!" when we walk in the door ... well OK i made that one up. but still ...

work is good too ... love the store, love my coworker casie to death ... actually now she is just more of a really good friend that i get to work with too. shes got a cool boyfriend who is in a band THAT ACTUALLY DOES GIGS ... cause, you know how EVERYONE is in a band, but like, you ask them when their next gig is and they just look down and mutter some line about "spending a lot of time in the studio lately," which pretty much means they haven't played anywhere in about eight months, but they still jam in the bass player's garage every once in awhile. burnside actually plays different places, which is awesome.

ugh, well 1:35 AM = time to go to bed ... later skaters ...

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Guns N Roses - "Sweet Child O' Mine"

i'm still alive
Wow, it's definitely been 5 months since I posted to this website. I am going to die of shock if anyone actually reads this, since for almost half a year it's seemed like I was dead.

It's been a strange five months. We closed our furniture store in May, and I no longer work at Catherines ... thank the Lord. I now work in a funky little hippie store in the Muncie Mall called Rare Image, where we sell such wonderful goods as incense, tie-dyed wall hangings, and band T-shirts, but NOT bongs (or "pipes"), thank you very much.

Zach and I have been going through a rough patch for the past couple of months. We broke up and got back together, then rinsed and repeated, but now it looks like we are on the other side of it. Had a little blip-on-the-radar thing with someone else for a short time, and I wasn't quite sure how that was going to end up, but the upshot of it is that Zach and I are working it out, for now anyway. No longer going to think so much about what the future might hold, and just concentrate on enjoying each other's company now.

What else is new? Class has been in session for a few weeks now, and yes, I am at Ball State again and not back at Guelph. And yes, I really miss it up in Canada, but I'm starting to pull together plans for future study-abroad opportunities, so at least I have something to look forward to. Other than that, just counting down the time till I can get up to Guelph again to visit my lovely Krista, Michelle, and Peter ... well, I guess Peter isn't exactly lovely, but ... yeah.

I have a lot more free time this semester, so hopefully I can update this thing more than like three times a year. Off to do homework now ... *sigh* What made me think that taking European Geography was a smart plan???

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Jane Child - "Don't Want to Fall in Love"

ay yi yi
School is going great. Stuff with Zach is going great (he gets to meet my dad and his family this week; anyone who has already experienced him and his Hitler-like ways and appearance (scheisse!) knows how scary it can be and should send him a consolatationatory email). But yeah we are looking forward to that and also his dad's 50th birthday party; same day ... holy family overdose batman!

Basically all I have to do for school before the end of the semester is rework a paper I wrote last year for European Culture and add in some stuff about this one writer and make it all in Spanish. I skipped that damn 9:30 AM class so much ... Krista remembers the alarm clock going off and me just laughing in its little digital face before chucking it against the wall and rolling back over ... at least once a week ... so who would've ever thought I'd retain any of the subject matter?? Teehee; I did, and now I get to use it to bolster my Greek honour society-loving GPA. Mwahaha.

Work is going well too--well, non-furniture-store work. Basically, our store is tanking. It's so bad we might have to close. Seriously. Muncie's economy is shot to hell, gas prices are almost $3 a gallon, and it's a hard call because businesses are closing all over town, but then again we're getting ready to have lots of new companies come and bring lots of new jobs ... but we don't know if we can hold out that long, as we keep having to pump more cash into it to meet basic bill needs. My parents are scared and worried, and so am I, although I know that somehow, everything will work out OK, even if it doesn't mean we stay in business.

We have been so crazed, busy, and stressed out that we've barely gotten time to breathe. I can't believe that next week, I will have been back in the States for a whole year. Time flies when you're ... I don't know. Working really hard. My parents talk about the sacrifices they've put into this, i.e. retirement funds and the like, and they wonder if we kids feel we have made sacrifices ... I wonder how you measure time against money. Far from paying out the ass for this store, I've gotten paid really well ... but I absolutely did NOT want to come back from Guelph last year. And if I'd known I wouldn't get to ... oh God.

I guess it is a moot point anyway because I did come back and now Guelph won't take my credits, so coming back would be almost as big a waste of time and money as funding and starting a business that's going to tank in a year. But it's really, really not what I thought was going to happen ... and I'm so glad I didn't know this a year ago. Or maybe I wish I did ... I don't know. Aaaaargh!!!

Somebody make me smile ... I'm sure Zach will when he comes up Friday. Yay!!!!

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: train whistles

mixin' it up ...
... the good news with the bad news, that is ...

Good news first: I got a(nother!) new summer job at a hotel, that is if I want to take it ... I am still kind of holding out for Books - A - Million or Payless Shoes, but hey, sitting on my ass three days a week to say "And here is your room key, sir?" Sounds like it could be worse ... and I also got a quasi-promotion at Catherines. I won't exactly be management, but I will be able to open and close by myself, work longer shifts, make bank runs, and presumably get a slight raise. So that's cool!

I've gotten A+s on my last, like, four assignments ... so school is going well and I'll still make the dean's list, be set to get initiated into Tau Sigma, and hopefully be invited to join Alpha Mu Gamma too. It's such a relief when school is going awesome ... Peter, I hope you're not reading this.

Bad news: I'm still having heart problems and although it was initially diagnosed as stress disorders/panic attacks, my doctor now thinks it might not be that after all. So it's back to the hospital with me for more testing; tomorrow I get fitted with a heart monitor that I will have to wear for two weeks. Hopefully that will make things a little clearer, but if not, I'll be sent to a cardiologist who specializes in arrhythmia. >sigh<

Zach is doing well too; applying for different schools and jobs in the area. It'll probably be another good 3 weeks before we see each other ... but hey, being separated from people I love is nothing new (KRISTA) and besides, he'll be back here soon anyway.

Can't wait for the semester to be over so I can do nothing but earn MONEY and lounge by our pool sipping margaritas. We just bought a tanning bed, too, so I am definitely in the spirit for summer.

I'll try to be writing in here a little more often ...

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Toby Keith - "Get Drunk and Be Somebody" (teehee)

ugh
well i haven't written in here for awhile ... wish i could come at this with some better news, but unfortunately, i've been sick with some mysterious illness, i am not going back to canada, and the store is shit.

i do still have an amazing boyfriend though but that is the brightest spot im seeing right now.

update soon, hopefully with some better news ...

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: Michael Jackson -"Billie Jean"

*big sleepy smile*
What a great weekend ...

Thursday I turned 21, so the next day I headed down to Bloomington to spend some time with Zach and celebrate ... it was great to just have some time to hang out with him and relax. We toured the Oliver Winery and of course enjoyed some testing and discovered that he is a big fan of the Camelot Meade and I am rather partial to the Blackberry semi-sweet and the Gewuerztraminer semi-dry. :-)

And by the time I got back to Muncie Saturday night, I discovered that my mom and stepdad had totally rearranged and redecorated my bedroom as a surprise, with a totally new layout, a new couch and desk, new blankets and throw pillows, my long-dormant computer set up, and fantastic new curtains, plus several accent pieces here and there, all coordinated in burgundies, teals, and browns to give the room an exotic Moroccan look! I was completely surprised because I thought I'd already gotten my gift from them: several pieces of vintage designer clothing and accessories. Hooray!

Tomorrow the daily grind will resume again ... but what a great break from it!

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: The Killers - Somebody Told Me Dance Remix

Well, apparently it's Super Bowl Sunday ... that affects me, hmm, not at all. By the grace of God my boyfriend is not one of those roaring, beer-quaffing, nacho-inhaling, jersey-wearing, face-painting Biggest Fan Ever kind of guys who obsessively follows sports and needs to station himself either at the sports bar or on the couch in front of the TV with a 24-pack on a day like today. My stepdad and dad don't really get into that too much either so actually the only reason I knew it was Super Bowl Sunday was that yesterday someone came into the furniture store to buy a couch, saying he needed it for his Super Bowl party tomorrow. (Wow ... and thank you, Zach, for not being like that.)

For some bizarre reason we have snow here again suddenly, and it has just made me want to burrow under a blanket with a trashy magazine and some tea. And actually I have had a great weekend just taking it easy. I worked a little bit and got stood up yesterday by my buddy Alex for some coffee at MT Cup, but other than that I just hit the gym and did homework basically all weekend and spent the entire time in sweatpants. Ahhhh :-) Last night our whole family went to see Nanny McPhee and although I wasn't quite sure about it beforehand, it was pretty cute.

blehhhhh; have to study the iliad for a test tomorrow ... i don't WANT to ...

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: Abba - Super Trooper

weighed down (even though emptying the bank account should make me lighter)
well thanks to ball state's handy-dandy installments payment plan i am just now getting ready to make my first offering to the tuition gods instead of making a mad scramble to get the whole tuition payment together a month before the semester starts like last year. much nicer ... :-) just have to keep plugging and remember that sometime, eventually, inevitably, I hope, somewhere along the line, it'll be worth it to have a degree. *sigh* however, right now graduation feels as far off as, like, retirement.

im serious man, the dream of dropping out to move to nashville and become a country singer is getting more intriguing every time i see that 10% of my final mark comes down to attendance (what is this, ninth grade?), every time i have a quiz over vocabulary (what is this, ninth grade?), and every time i see that a single semester is going to cost more than my first car (at least ninth grade was paid for by the government ...). well, maybe i wouldn't have to be a country singer, and maybe it wouldn't have to be nashville ... all i know is that college sucks and i am tired of it.

or maybe all this is just because i have a 12-page paper due in spanish lit.

in other news, my birthday is now a week and a half away and i am officially SOOOOOOOOOOO excited ... eee! zach is taking me to oliver winery and we are going to have some fun tasting. mostly im just excited to take it easy for a weekend though.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand bedtime ...

Current Mood: stressed
Current Music: (sounds of headache)

my brain hurts
We all know that, if you exercise a moderate amount on a regular basis, you will do your body lots of good and speed up your metabolism and general capacity to process nutrition and burn calories, but scientists and nutritionalists have recently seen that if you do that same beneficial thing TOO much, it becomes the equivalent of having an eating disorder: Thinking your poor little body may never see enough calories all at one time again, the confused little thing starts to conserve the calories it DOES have instead of burning them like it used to, and pretty soon it won't burn ANY anymore, and all your exercise starts to do you more harm than good because your body actually stops itself from working.

I think that's what's happening to my brain.

I used to enjoy the occasional painstaking translation of an 19th-century Mexican folk tale or Google search for the exact lyrics to a Spanish-language song I knew part of. But this. Is kicking. My. ASS! I officially just wrote a first draft of a paper I'm supposed to write in class tomorrow as a test and OH GOD ... actually sad to say it was a lot easier than it would've been at the start of this semester ... but oh yeah just for fun I wrote a German paper too tonight, HAH! Luckily the hardest thing about that was coming up with a topic but I mean seriously. I better never have to write a paper in English again because I dont think it would go well.

So anyway, off-and-on translation work used to be good for me but this nonstop short story-reading and essay-writing is actually going to work against me before too long, I can tell, and instead of making me smarter it will tragically hinder my ability to do anything and I will turn into a drooling stumbling moron. Oh God.

Side note: You know, I've always wanted to learn Arabic ... but maybe this isnt the time.

Eeeeeeee it's my birthday in two weeks! Birthday birthday birthday birthday!

Current Mood: drained
Current Music: Sean Paul - "Like Glue"

endlich mal freitag!!
thank god its friday indeed ... somehow despite this actually being a short week it felt longer than ... well ... *giggle.*

well, i started to suspect it last week, but now i'm pretty sure that jumping right into the 300 level of spanish after not having had it for OVER THREE YEARS was a bad call on my part. luckily it's getting better fast and it's good for reminding myself that i don't have to be super-duper at everything, and to get out of my comfort zone a little bit, and blah blah blah. plus i faintly recall that i wasnt born just magically speaking german ... haha ... i actually put a HELL of a lot of work into that one. so yeah. it's good. painful, but good, in a dirty and masochistic kind of way, which i'm sure my boyfriend will be pleased to hear. teehee.

well better close the ol' furniture store and then it's off to the Y for half an hour (only!) and then i am going to bury myself in my bed with the new issue of Glamour and some diet pepsi and call it a night. >snore< i know ...

only three weeks till my birthday!!!

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: The Guess Who - "American Woman"

ugh what a week. first week of classes down ... pretty good semester but LOTSA work ... stupid spanish ... he olvidado casi todos ... scheiss Deutsch hat mein Spanisch geklaut. Aber ja mei ... :-D OK I'm back; sorry. anyway. i hate class; harumph harumph. i'm thisclose to dropping out and moving to nashville to become a country singer. (you all think i'm joking, dont you?. you just wait.)

zach is here and that's a good thing but it's also bad because the reason he's here is that he got seven (count em folks seven) teeth taken out on Friday. he is doing OK now, it seems, or at least a whole lot better even if he can't necessarily eat solid food, and he is still kinda dizzy and on medicine ... but he was pretty loopy before, scaring me and his mom pretty badly. anyway it's been nice to see him the past few days but im sure sorry he had to have icky oral surgery. i dont know how well i would've handled that. not well.

well i am off to bed ... buenos noches!

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "What You Own" - Rent

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ouch
cool weekend ... lots of work but still fun. spent all afternoon sorting through literally about a hundred pieces of vintage designer clothing at the furniture store ... i know we only sell, well, furniture, and home decor items, but we come across a lot of weird stuff of all types ... we hit the jackpot with the children of an elderly doctor's wife getting rid of basically her entire estate. her closet is filled with 60s and 70s-era couture pieces by oleg cassini, christian dior, emanuel ungaro, bill blass, givenchy ... oh god. i had a cow. i had an entire dairy farm ... and i get first dibs before we sell this stuff! wooHOO! something tells me that on what my parents pay me i probably cant afford vintage givenchy couture ... but i can afford vintage neiman-marcus ready-to-wear!!! :-D

school tomorrow ... everybody all together now: "ugh!"

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: Tears for Fears - "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"

ahhhh ... feel so much better now that ive been to the gym every day this week after a LOOOOONG dry spell (drier than an unlicked stamp as my friend michelle might say) and consumed nearly an entire tropical island's worth of fruit. not necessarily a new year's resolution to lose weight (although 20 more lbs gone and i'll officially be tiny) -- just to return to my everyday routine of 1600-calorie days and hour-long daily cardio workouts that i was maintaining before i broke my foot. now however i'm feeling much better and ready to stop sitting around like a bump on a log.

was talking to my boss(/boyfriend mama) and she is ready to make some changes too, as is another gal who works at catherines, deidre, so we are talking about forming some kind of encouragement group for each other. woohoo!

saw my friend ash last night for the first time since she did her semester abroad in london. she had such a fantastic time and got to do so much travelling ... it made me miss my exchange year in germany and want to dig out all my old pix. her shots from her trip to rome couldn've been my exact roll of film ... oh yeah, minus the total dingbat i went with, trent, who at the time was one of my best friends and now, a whopping year and a half and a trip to canada together later, we don't talk anymore. sad sad ...

am going to finish this melon and then call zach i think ... my boyfriend ... boyfriend boyfriend boyfriend.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Madonna - "Hung Up"

really nice christmas break. not over yet but in the home stretch ... had a good holiday, got to see lots of relatives and received everything i wanted and lots of surprises, which are important. perfect mix between work and down time; also got the chance to see my not-really-new-anymore boyfriend every day for two weeks, which may never happen again! he is off to bloomington this morning so i will go back to getting my own coffee before work instead of having him bring it, going to the gym in the evenings instead of out for dinner, and only shaving my legs every three days instead of every night. haha ... but at least a few times a week. cause otherwise that's just gross. :-)

Current Mood: grateful
Current Music: Dexy's Midnight Runners - "Come On Eileen"

halfway through the hellidays
Well, two Christmases are behind me and two are looming ahead from the vantage point of this weekend. And I have to say, so far it's been very nice. I was surprised with a lot of really nice gifts, including two ponchos I've been eyeing forever at Catherines from Zach's mom, a turquoise suede oversized hobo bag that I will make sweet, sweet love to forever from my mom, a gift card to Texas Roadhouse from my stepdad (hmm ... I'm a vegetarian, but my boyfriend is definitely not, so I guess that's what he was thinking), and a lovely warm black cashmere scarf and glove set from Zach. :-) Fun fun.

Speaking of Zach, he passed the family test with flying colours on Sunday night coming over to my grandma and grandpa's for a Christmas get-together. Normally those gatherings are drier than an unlicked stamp, as my friend Michelle would say ... most of my family seems to consider me to be some kind of bizarre alien life form, and consequently treats me as such ... but my parents brought some games and a plethora of cookies as ammunition, so we lived. Everyone seemed to like Zach a lot, so I was happy. I hope I did OK at his ... I think I did. his family is really nice, too, but I already knew that. :-)

I am going to see my dad and his family this weekend for their Christmas celebration. I haven't been up to their house in Elkhart, IN, for a long time ... it's three hours away, but I guess that's no excuse since I've probably been to Canada more frequently than I've been up there. They have a really big house and some land for shooting and games and stuff ... we will be there probably Friday night through Sunday morning, when we'll leave to go to Ft. Wayne for our Christmas with the rest of the family. So much for going out on New Year's.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Oldies! Sick of 'em, but finally no more Xmas music

AUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
shopping buying baking wrapping travelling visiting eating eating eating EATING going crazy it's Christmas Eve

Current Mood: rushed
Current Music: Mariah Carey - "All I Want for Christmas Is You"

few more days ...
Wow, I could really get spoiled having Zach up here semi-long-term like this! No, no, Sally; don’t think about it, don’t think about it.

Well, finally it’s starting to feel like Christmas is coming. I have (almost all of) my holiday shopping done and Christmas cards sent. Yesterday I even did some baking, which is ordinarily not something I would even consider (I’m so bad in the kitchen, I once made Kool-Aid without the sugar), but we got these great almond-flavoured shortbread frosted jam tart thingies in a cookie exchange this year from my new aunt Rebecca, and they were so amazing, I thought I’d make some to take along to Christmas Eve. They didn’t come out quite as orgasmatastical as Rebecca’s, but hey. I’m more Rachel from Friends than Rachel Ray, so what do you want from me.

We also just got our Christmas tree at home, which helps the whole holiday mood thing. We’ve had trees and lights and greenery up in the store since Thanksgiving, so I think it was at a point where I’d just dust around it and not really see it … so it’s nice to have decorations at home. My parents were declaring that they’d bring our decorated tree home from the store in the pickup truck on Christmas Eve instead of actually putting another one up at home, since we’re never there. But I guess they got their act together and decorated, and even cleaned, too, from the look of it … so I guess we don’t have to resort to holding our Christmas brunch at the store after all.

Another hour and a half of work and then I go drop my Christmas stuff off at Catherines, since I forgot last night being all nervous about the District Manager being there … then Zach is coming over to meet my parents. Eeep!

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: Hot Hot Heat - Goodnight Goodnight

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