Adventures in alternative lifestyles

So it's looking like my mother is moving to the bay area in the fall. A headhunter emailed her a couple months ago about an infection control job at a hospital in Fremont, so she did a phone interview, and yesterday they flew her up here to interview with them. Now what will happen to Sean, you ask? Well, it's very interesting. A few months ago my mom decided she wanted to rent out our guest room to a med student or such to help pay my student loans. Well, that idea has recently been scrapped because Mohamed is moving in. After 4 years in London and finally getting a Visa to come here and take his medical equivalency exams, he's decided that it's not worth it to renew his work Visa in the UK, so he's coming to America. So he will be looking after Sean when my mom isn't there. I think she'll be flying down on the weekends, not sure yet. So she's gonna try to get a place in Montclair (near Oakland) or in the Berkeley hills, and she will be able to afford all this cuz this new job pays 15% more than what she's making now. Sooo yeah, my mom's gonna be living near me now (sort of). Very weird to think about, but at least it means she'll be taking Chelsea and me out to dinner in the city haha.

Doggy doctors and things

So we took my poor dog to the emergency room today because after days of vomiting from both ends, several x-rays and an ultrasound, they finally figured out that she had a "foreign body" stuck in her intestine and she needed surgery to get it out.
Great.
So we're waiting at the emergency hospital and my mother reminded me that when I was little I wanted to be a veterinarian. She didn't mention that I also wanted to be a ballerina, an artist, a writer, a firewoman, an environmental-save-the-earth type, an astronaut, and a teacher at the same time. While my other aspirations continued on for weeks or months or years, my dream of being a veterinarian was cut short the day we put my first dog to sleep. Her veterinarian did it. I didn't know that vets kill dogs. But they do. And I don't. So I will never be a veterinarian.

Anyway, poor fucking Tika goes under the knife tonight. They think she has floss stuck in her intestine.
I never wanted to be a dentist.

On Manners

I'm making my way through New York Magazine's Urban Etiquette Handbook, and I've got to say, some of this is relevant to us college students. And if you're a college student in New York, well then, aren't you special?

Is it ever acceptable to talk to a stranger on an elevator?
If there are six or fewer people on the elevator, no. However, if the group is larger than six, you have achieved an Elevator Humor Quorum and someone must make a remark about the elevator’s lack of size or speed in order to relieve the tension created by standing in a tiny space with six or more strangers. If another member of the group makes the remark first, Elevator Humor Solidarity obligates you to chuckle mildly.

I think we should make a college etiquette guide. I'll start:

Is it okay to mention information from the Facebook in conversation?
Rarely. While, in some circumstances, it is permissible to say "Happy Birthday" because you were reminded by Facebook, most other information should be kept to yourself for fear of looking like a stalker. Interests, activities, wall posts and photographs published on the Facebook should never be mentioned in person, especially in cases where you aren't "Friends" with the person you are talking to. If someone tells you something you already knew because you saw it on the Facebook, don't use the opportunity to display how much free time you have. Instead, react as though you are hearing the information for the first time.

An Inconvenient Truth.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived our their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner on another, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some priviledged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

GO SEE IT.

I can feel Jennifer Aniston crying

Go look at the magazine and check out the picture of Brad holding her. It's intense.

Greetings from the Stone Age

So I have the day off today and I am trying to find as many things to do as possible without spending money. If I sit in my apartment all day I'll go crazy because there is no internet and no TV. I have finished unpacking and organizing everything, I'm sick of reading. So today I got up and made myself Frosted Mini Wheats and eggs. Right now I'm at the library on campus using their computers ha. I had to come her anyway to buy myself a Muni pass and vote (in the dorms, random polling place). Anyway, I want to kill some time here before I got back home, have a snack, and go to the gym. By the way, I can't find my gym card. I dug it out last night and it is no where to be found. I'll have to sneak into the gym but I can only do that for so long. Maybe I'll tell them my wallet was stolen. Gah.

Comcast comes tomorrow and I will be out of the stone age. Now I need to start work so I can buy a couch. Justin and Chelsea are gonna camp out in the apartment this weekend. Big fun and free dinners out. I love Justin.

It's still not over

Sooooooo a little update on my life because I haven't sat down in like a week. Last Thursday I had the mother of all freak outs and my mom and I screamed and hung up on each other and cried. Friday went pretty smoothly, actually. My mom arrived with the car, we dumped my shit in Berkeley, Chelsea and I cleaned, then signed out and hit the road for SLO. Which was amazing. We laid on Avila Beach and Bryan called and there were drunk people from the beer festival and yeah. We had amazing SELF SERVE frozen yogurt downtown. You go on and put your own flavors in and all the toppings you want and they charge you 24 cents an ounce. GENIUS. I didn't pay for the food the whole weekend because Justin threatened my life when I tried, so yeah. And Justin's room mate Tyler is truly the most insane person I have ever met. Many deep conversations while Justin and Chelsea were hooking it up upstairs. So yeah, SLO was incredible and I can't wait to go back.

Then two nights in Santa Rosa, coffee with Chris (the creator of Google as my nickname), and we moved in on Thursday. We have NO furniture, except for my TV table and a foam mattress I'm sleeping on. But we have pots and pans and food and dishes. So I can eat or sleep, basically. Comcast is coming on Wednesday morning to set up the internet and cable. Yesterday I addressed invitations and folded programs at my internship, then bussed it over to Haight where I'm pretty sure I got a job. The woman said they'd call but she asked when I could start and told me what I was allowed to wear so I guess that's good. Went "home" and baked salmon like a pro for dinner. Today we got up and drove back to SR for some anniversary party. Whatever, free food. Tomorrow I bus my ass back to SF so I can intern on Monday morning.

My life is really, really overwhelming and I hope I can pull through. Furniture will help.