about dern time

well it is!!! i finally came up with some resolutions, some feelings about school, and the resolve to blog about them.

resolutions:
swear less
moisturize more
do things in time to not be rushing (getting up, writing papers, dealing with bureaucracy, buying monthly t passes)
start liking green tea
i already brush my teeth regularly, so i think that about covers it.

well, i realized that i didn't even TRY to blog about portland. let's start with that. i had a great time. i think i was pretty mean to jake for the first few days i was there. i can't really explain why. it's hard to feel like you belong in three different cities and to constantly change your mind about which one you want to try to live in when you grow up, but that's not an excuse. i feel bad about it. but i got better. first, we went to jordon and laine's house, where we stayed at hotel jordo in an empty room, bed and everything, which was great because i was all prepared to stay on andre's couch for four nights and it was way, way better than that. we had a pretty good time on new year's, just hung out with each other, little miles and dave h. the next day we went to see superbad at the laurelhurst. can't beat those three dollar theaters. after that we went to the chaat house, which i dream about sometimes, and then to powell's city of books, which is a dream all on its own. i blew a bunch of money on books i really love that barely fit in my suitcase. we also hit up the avalon, which is a nickel arcade that is both a wonderland and a nightmare. we went to burgerville several times and drank a lot of incredible coffee. it wasn't that cold, and it only rained for like one day. i really miss portland a lot. i also saw sarah and matt (hey guys! i sent you something in the mail), which was incredible. i really love visiting friends and realizing that even in a situation where they could be "just work friends," you have a real bond with them, something that's important enough to maintain over long distances. keeping people in your life is a relatively new thing for me. i was talking to my grandmother about it in the car yesterday when she took me grocery shopping and to buy my books, and i voiced some surprise at how important all the people in my life are to me, and how that hasn't always been the case. i also expressed some trepidation for getting closer to them or, in some cases, living with some of them, and she said that it's perfectly natural to screw up friendships when you're younger but as you get older you figure out how to compromise in order to keep the ones you care about around. that made me feel better about several friends i've had serious "breakups" with in the past that i've been thinking about lately, because i worry frequently that all friendships are going to end like that but grammy made me feel like i'm old enough and not-teenage enough for that kind of thing to not happen anymore. so if any friends are reading this, you're stuck with me, suckers!!!

the day after i went to the zoo, i did a bunch of laundry and didn't leave the house. the day after that, i went to the comic art museum. in terms of their standard stuff, i was surprised at how much information and material i was already familiar with because of my significant interest in comics - there wasn't much about the history of comics that they tried to educate me about that i didn't already know. the edward gorey exhibit was pretty cool, though. apparently, he put together a performance of dracula - sets, costumes, screenplay, everything, and not a reeinvisioning of the earlier bela lugosi broadway production that was made into film either - to be performed on the cape, which became so popular it went to broadway (starring john waters) and was eventually filmed. he had an apartment in new york, but also spent a lot of time with his family on the cape and did a lot of work there. in new york, he attended the new york ballet religiously from the 60's to the 80's in a fur coat and sneakers. he only watched television for one single six-day stretch, during which he only watched reruns of the original star trek. he liked it so much he went to see william shatner in a play on nantucket. the interviews with him were hilarious. he really sounds like my kind of guy. but you probably have to be rich and famous, or at least have a cult following, before you can be publicly eccentric. i wonder how famous you have to be to go to the ballet in sneakers and have people be cool with it. i went to to gift shop and got a copy of the gashlycrumb tinies, obviously. i wanted the original amphigorey but they were conspicuously out.

that night i left for boston on the redeye. when i got in the next day, i was homesick for about a dozen places, and very sorry that i didn't get a real burrito when i had the chance. so i drank a lot of water and cleaned the house, and then went to my haircut appointment. my stylist is awesome. my stepmom has a pretty close relationship with her stylist, and it's something that i've always thought was old-fashioned in a really cool way. people used to know the people that cut their hair, sold them groceries and dry cleaned their clothes, but that doesn't happen that often anymore, so when my stylist told me it was lame that i was going home to clean my room with hair that looked so awesome, we went out for bloody marys. i had a great time, although i will probably never actually go out partying with him because 1. he's way too stylish for me 2. he rolls way too expensive for me. but, it is cool to be friends with him, especially since he gave me an incredible "glam blowout" and i got my favorite haircut of my entire life, again. later i went out for indian food (not as good as either the chaat house or naan and curry, but still awesome) and some beers with other english students.

yesterday, it was sunny and i had brunch at my grandparents' house. if you've read this far you already know what i did afterwards. i said about two words about being worried about getting home with about fifty pounds of books and/or groceries, and my grandmother had her coat on and was halfway to the car. my mom says that they're retired so they're more than happy to spend time making my life convenient, but i'm always a little incredulous. and they're not the only ones either - during the holidays, greetings just flooded in accompanied by invitations to visit and offers of one kind or another from aunts and uncles all over the place. i love being related to people.

i was a little hesitant about being excited for classes because i was so busy vascillating between being homesick for home and being homesick for portland, but as soon as i got my books i got really hyper about school. i'll refrain about writing about them here because i'll probably write about them later and this is probably the longest blog entry i've ever written. also, it snowed last night and i've become infatuated with the way snow looks on bare trees. i've always been mildly obsessed with trees. for a while there, i thought owls were going to replace trees in terms of the main thing that is aesthetically pleasing to me, but i think the terrible pictures i took today prove otherwise.







oh, also, i have bangs now. just, you know, casual bangs. but i have them.

adventures in anthropomorphism

lizzy and i went to the zoo on wednesday. it was pretty incredible, as predicted. we got REALLY close to the giraffe.

let me tell you, it is completely ridiculous how a giraffe drinks. completely. they are too tall for their own good. "they're basically walking trees," said lizzy.

we also went on the carousel, which was delightful.




the tiger thing was pretty much the big joke of the day. lizzy and i are bad people in that we make light of others' grief and misfortune.



then . . . then we saw the real tiger. it was not scary, but we sort of pretended that it was, just for fun.



this isn't the real tiger, of course. the real tiger was shot to death with handguns by the police.

what there are not any pictures of:
how sad the silverback gorilla looked, and how we waved to him to try and cheer him up but he was having none of it and we realized he was way to smart to be cheered up by us pretending he is human
the giraffe frolicking while we stood on the monkey structure and talked about boys
the enormous rhinoceros which was pretty much a dinosaur except one third the size

i do however have one terrible photograph of the penguins.

they were trumpeting. it was ridiculous. pretty much they took turns sounding like donkeys. a guy in a nice suit with a really nice ankle-length wool coat came up to us and explained that they were looking for mates because mating season is at the end of this month. he pointed out the four youngest penguins, chicks conceived during last year's mating season, who don't have their tuxedos yet. i wanted to ask him why these chicks were so much bigger and fatter and clearly lazier than the other adult penguins, but with a swirl of his coat, he was gone. we talked about him for about half an hour after that - who was he? did he work there? wouldn't you wear rubber boots or a nametag if you worked at the zoo, or at least not really expensive clothes? lizzy said she thought he had a radio - maybe he was security, but in that case, why wasn't he wearing a uniform or a badge? was he some sort of high-up legal authority looking into big cat safety or the recent mauling? do high-up legal authorities have brooklyn accents, or know a ton about penguins? maybe. maybe they do. then we had a usual suspects moment where we realized everything he had told us was written on a sign attached to the penguin enclosure. so. i guess he was just a weirdo with a radio.

after that we went to the petting zoo. the usual goats standing on things and ignoring you if you don't have any food. when i was little i would get so excited because i thought all the goats were pregnant. i would run around to each of them to see if i could feel the baby kick. it was a real turning point for me when i realized they were all just really fat.

one of the highlights of the petting zoo was the birds of prey exhibit. we did not get to pet them, although we desperately wanted to. they were beautiful (except the turkey vulture, he was hideous. sorry frank. you are). my favorite was the eurasian eagle owl, "athena."

she was enormous and fluffy. i'm really bad with sizes, but i'm going to go ahead and say three feet tall and really, really fluffy, golden brown in a lot of places, pretty incredible. birds are strange because they move in really unfamiliar ways.

anyway, i'm going to get out of here and go to the cartoon art museum now to try and get out of the housekeeper's way.

zoo ahoy

it has been in the sixties in boston this week. i'm furious. mostly at myself, because i take this as a sign that i should have gone back east earlier than two days before school starts. but also at boston.

that said, i am having an awesome time at home. my mom just made cookies, i've seen my horse every day since i got back from portland, and i have a series of adventures lined up for every day before i leave. yesterday it rained, so i went to see juno (hated it, see entry regarding amelie) and bought a new hat on west portal - this was an adventure because going to the movies by yourself is always an adventure, and i don't usually wear hats. today i'm going to call lizzy and go to the zoo. tomorrow, i'm going to the cartoon art museum to see the edward gorey/dracula exhibit. did you know that edward gorey illustrated t.s. eliot's old possum's book of practical cats, which was the basis for the musical? well. he also did a series called the gashlycrumb tinies (this version will help you with your spanish!). my favorite is "n is for neville, who died of ennui":

oh man, i just got really excited about going to the comic art museum. but not as excited as i am about going to the zoo. i'm a little worried because getting into the zoo is going to cost money, and then i know i'm going to want a snack or a stuffed animal or something - i just cannot do something like go to the zoo without getting a souvenir, but i'm going to limit myself to a postcard because when the aquarium opens back up i am absolutely getting a stuffed invertebrate - and i also know that i'm going to want to buy an edward gorey thing tomorrow if only to show off to the professor who assigned dracula this semester and suddenly my adventures are racking up kind of a price tag. but once i get to boston i'm not going to have time for any adventures, and the only thing i spend money on is food and the occasional movie anyway. and beer, i guess. occasionally. although whenever i go out with nathaniel he pays for everything. i think he might have weird ideas of what modern chivalry consists of.

friday i'm doing laundry and cleaning out the cookie jar. if you've ever seen the amount of laundry i can accumulate, you will know that this is an adventure.

just in case you, like, care, or whatever

i've been thinking, and i feel the need to clarify a few things.

first. when i said i was happy that i had convinced my dad to do something against his better judgment, i meant that i was happy that i had been confident enough to ask him to go even though i knew he didn't necessarily want to. i do not find it enjoyable to make him sit through horrible cinema. we are not that kind of family. i care about him and i hope he didn't think it was totally horrible. i had fun, at least. i am a good kid.

second. my mom is not a bad mom. she didn't let it go totally unnoticed that i watched a teen drama from the 90's all day saturday. she made exactly the right amount of fun of me for it. she has a healthy attitude towards the occasional bout of self-indulgence, and i appreciate that. she is a great mom.

third, i was not totally drunk today. i had like one lemon drop in the sun after no burrito. i'm not an irresponsible horseback rider, although i know people who are.

i'm still going to the zoo tomorrow.

grisly is right

today i went to the mission and met a couple friends, one from high school and one from college. this happens a lot. i forget that these two groups of people don't know each other, or really any of the same people but me, and i plan to hang out with a bunch of them. you would think i would love being the center of attention, but i actually get really anxious trying to make sure that everyone has a good time. it's going to get worse with grad school mixed in. in fact, it already has. we had a great time today though. i got some really super burnt coffee from a muslim lesbian who runs her own coffee shop on valencia. regular coffee, not with a bunch of chocolate - i'm going for a purist/cheapest thing, although i usually end up dumping about a pound of sugar in as well as a bunch of milk. as much as i would like to drink it black (like jordan catalano) i am just not that cool. we finished a crossword in the guardian, which is a lot less reputable than i thought it was. i almost got a burrito, but i was too full of coffee, although i really could have used it because after visiting a CRAZY fish store and discussing everything we knew about ichthyology (very little, mostly made up except for what i know from youtube), we went to a bar with a patio and got drunk at 2:30 in the afternoon, in the sunshine (which led to a bunch of texting - sorry, everyone). i made it home by 5:30 (on time) and my mom took me out to ride my horse in the pitch dark, which was exhilarating. when i went in to the pasture to get him, i couldn't see ANYthing (also he is black), so i just stood there (still a little drunk) yelling his name and rattling some cookies around in my pocket. he thundered up to me like this big hole cut out of the sky and all i could do was look at the stars and giggle, so we ran around together giggling for a little bit and then i fed him. it was terrific. it is so incredible to have a horse. girls who want ponies know what i mean.

also i saw my friend dan wilson. he was on a bike. this also happens a lot, with dan and with dave h the original. that is a whole nother story.

tomorrow i am going to go to the zoo if it's not raining. i actually have a whole series of adventures planned out to do by myself this week. the zoo is first because it's not supposed to rain tomorrow and i have this sudden urge to support the san francisco zoo after the whole tiger thing. i know a little bit of gossip about that which i will share later. today i was walking around looking for coffee and there were all these hopeful banners up advertising the sf zoo's new "grizzly gulch." it really depressed me. i also just want to see animals, but that's pretty much all the time.

i miss jake. our visit to the zoo last year was probably both the best valentine's day and visit to the zoo i will ever have. i'm not saying i'm going to try and do better tomorrow. i mean, we saved a toucan, so i don't think that's even possible. i'm just saying i want to go, is all.

here are some of the videos that have taught me about ichthyology and the ocean's mysteries:
shark v. octopus
pistol crab [this is insane and i completely did not believe it the first time around (the SUN!!!)]
jellyfish
obligatory hippo clip

five days into the new year and i'm already a bad person again

today i spent all day in bed watching my so-called life. i watched the entire season. my mom was cool with it. i wasn't even sick. i'm starting to think that maybe what my mom thinks is not a particularly accurate barometer.

i'm in love with jordan catalano, who is a fictional character. this is a problem for many obvious reasons, the largest of which are that no boy in real life could possibly be as good at leaning or as bad at talking about feelings, both of which are huge selling points for me. if only i could just find the exact perfect ringtone to reflect this.

i get so angry when people on television forgive other people for doing undefendable things, like sleeping with someone else. they always forgive them within one to two episodes, even if the someone else was, like, a best friend. i would never forgive anything like that if it happened to me. actually, something like that did kind of happen to me, and i forgot about it for a while, but now that i think about it i'm really mad.

there's still a person living on our couch. this is beginning to infuriate me. she lived with us (in an actual room) in high school and infuriated me then, too. i've been back from portland for one day and i feel like i'm in high school again, like a towering behemoth compared to my bird-sized mother, a mean judgmental person compared to my dog, a loser compared to everyone on television, and a complete jerk all around. i also have this weird feeling that new clothes will help, even though i know it's a lie. i think i miss the library.

every time i come to portland something blows my mind. this was today's.