Puck, mommy is tired

I feel like I just had a baby. Utter exhaustion. After four nights of Ruben's friends going to bed at 3 and waking up at 8, plus two nights of the kitten not sleeping more than 3 hours straight...yesterday was a BAD day. I got up early, took Puck to the pet store to get his shots and such. That went well. Came back, read in the living room and he didn't cry when I left him in my room. Took a nap. Woke up from nap. Mental breakdown. I think my body assumed that the nap would be a full night's sleep, and when I woke up I basically became hysterical. I need Prozac when I'm sleep deprived. It's serious. Luckily, I should be catching up on my sleep soon. Last night I went to bed I worked that kitten out so hard that he passed out at 11 with me and didn't wake up again until 5:30. Then I basically tossed him off the bed repeatedly until he found something else to do or just went to sleep next to me. I don't remember because I put my ear plugs in. He loooooves to wrestle in the morning. He comes up and lays down under my chin like he's going to snuggle. Then he rolls sideways and starting batting and kicking my neck. Oy. At least he's getting better. The HEPA vacuum is coming in the mail soon so he'll be able to play all throughout the apartment, and I can boot him from my room if he won't let me sleep. I'm babysitting 8 hours this weekend, 12 bucks an hour, so that money will go to Puck's big toys.

On another note, Lauren and Mike came to San Francisco on Saturday and we had a grand old time. Unfortunately we were evaded by cookies made of 2 parts love, 3 parts orgasm, and 3 parts chocolate chips. Or something like that?

Here he is. . .!

What is my life?

Well, it's mostly jobs, furniture, and kitten planning.

On the job front: I'm suspending my search for a real job because I found a three week nannying gig for a family whose 3 1/2 year old daughter needs someone to watch her while she's in between her summer program and regular preschool. It's minimum wage ($8.82), but it's cool. I also found another family who was looking for a French speaking babysitter and have three evenings with them lined up for sure, more in the future. So hopefully I'll make some money in this time and then I'll look for a real job again.

And furniture. This past weekend we got TWO free, in-lovely-shape couches. One was donated by a coworker, another was found on the sidewalk and hauled to the apartment on skateboards, then up 9 flights of stairs. Silly boys. My bed is arriving tonight at approximately 10 pm. It's full, it's pillow-top, it's a year old and $50 -- it's basically magnificent. The search for sheets has been less successful, but I can deal with my twin XL flat sheet and duvet for a while. New bedding can be seen here. And this completes the ensemble. Now I'm on the lookout for a desk and a night stand. Found some great stuff on Craig's list, but the shite part about Craig's list is that many people post stuff and then don't check their email.

And thirdly, the big preparation for our baby kitten. After much careful planning (Cat trees! Premium kitten food! Vaccinations, deworming, neutering!), discussion on the Craig's list pet forum, and one major set-back (major but not disastrous, as I've learned. . .Blake (one of my roommate's) is allergic to cats. However. After much internet research (Google saves lives) I have discovered solutions. Item 1: there are many pet shampoos and washes that eliminate the allergenic cat protein. 2: a HEPA filter. 3: Kitty will live mostly in my 13x17 sqft. room (playing with this. And a helpful person on Craig's list also suggested taking kitty for walks (with this) to make sure he gets even more exercise and doesn't mind staying mostly in one room (I'll let him in the living room when I'm home). Sounds a little nutty, but I don't see why not. Cats'll do pretty much anything if you get them used to it at a young age. My kitten will be bathed and go for walks. I have always spoiled my pets, but there's only so far you can go with a hamster or a chinchilla (did you know my chinchillas, at one time, had HUGE hamster balls to run around the house -- and sometimes the backyard -- in. It's true. However the board and a hand vacuum proved to be more humane alternative). But rest assured -- I will never cook for my cat (as I've learned, there are some insane people out there who cook gourment dinners -- I'm talking beef, brown rice, and veggies type of stuff -- for their dogs) nor will the cat wear clothes or travel in a purse. Although I wouldn't mind potty training him.

So there it is. Life is coming together? Hopefully.

Remember her?

I have no comments. You'll have to see for yourself.

What does NATO Stand for?
Never A Dull Opportunity.

Sad day for me / I am Grace

Yes, my former future husband has come out of the closet. However, I'd rather see him with a man than marrying another woman, so really, everyone wins here.

P.S. - his boyfriend is hot.

Um, aren't they ALL?

So Lance Bass is gay.

I'll only be really excited when Justin comes out of the closet, too.

Oh, and um, it says in the People Magazine article that Lance "is developing an Odd Couple-inspired sitcom pilot with [Joey] Fatone in which his character will be gay."

Raise your hand if you think that's a bad idea.

K Thanks.

All the news that's fit to print

Smart people are usually informed people, and I like the idea of being at least a semi-informed individual. There's a lot of shit that goes on in the world, and I'd like to know about at least some of it in a timely manner, not a week after it happens when someone asks me if I heard about it and I stare at them like an idiot. So I decided that I'd subscribe to a newspaper to be delivered to me daily. (Delivery anything is a good thing, if you ask me. Especially Chinese food.)
The Santa Barbara News Press is terrible and lame for reasons that neither you nor I really want to hear about, so my next choice was the LA Times. I made the commitment and subscribed online. A week later, then two weeks later, I hadn't had a single paper at my door. So I call to see what's going on, and after some confusion and awful music while being on hold, the man on the other end of the line tells me they don't deliver to Goleta. You'd think that they would say that when I signed up for the paper with my 93117 zip code, but that's obviously way too difficult to program into the registration website. Silly me. So no LA Times.
Next on my list was the New York Times. They deliver everywhere, right? Well, I actually don't know, but they do deliver to Goleta. Except it was going to cost me $6 a week (Okay, $5.95). The LA Times wasn't even $3/week. So I look at the Wall Street Journal, expecting it to cost around $10. Nope. $2 a week, sir, and actually with the student discount, about $1.30/week. With the NY Times student discount, my price goes all the way down to a whopping $4.90 per week. I am less than thrilled. But I want more news than stocks, so the New York Times it is, and they tell me I'll get my first paper this Friday. We'll see.

But I'm looking forward to the weekend, because I know when I wake up late, cook myself a nice big breakfast (or more likely, have my boyfriend cook me a nice big breakfast), and sit down to eat with a fatty newspaper to read, I'll feel pretty smart. Maybe I'll even wear my glasses.

P.S. Happy Birthday, Meghann.

A Cinderella Story

I want to be this rich. From an article I'm working on:

"Ben Addoms, CEO of Quintess, is fond of telling the story of a member whose wife desired a rare pair of Manolo Blahnick shoes for their anniversary. 'She tore the page out of a magazine and gave it to him. He called around to try and find the shoes and couldn’t find them, so our concierge service called literally every outlet in the United States and found the last pair of size seven shoes. They were gift-wrapped and delivered two days before their anniversary.'”

Then again, I wouldn't mind knowing Manolo Blahnick personally so I could skip the whole personal concierge service thing.

Happy days are yours and mine?

So... married people are happier than single people, people without children are happier than parents, and people who believe in God are happier than those who don't. Are you happy now?

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.

It's, like, 'The Hills'

Looks like all it takes to get an internship at Teen Vogue is your own television reality docu-drama. Fuck that, man.

what you waiting for?

But the war wasn't all that way.

"There should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put your own precious fluids on the line. You have to head for the front and hook up with an infantry unit and help spill the blood. And you have to bring along your wife, or your kids, or your lover. A law, I thought."

Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried.

You asked for it

I'm posting, even though I'm ass-deep in finals and such. I've finished two papers thus far and have three tests and one more paper to go. I signed the lease for my apartment (see here) yesterday (with Chelsea, Jake, and Rueben) and we will be moving in on June 1st. So the plan is as follows: Mom drives my car up on the 26th with some of my stuff from home and we dump it and all my stuff here either at the apartment (we can't move in yet but Chelsea and my room is empty right now) or Jake's house (depending on when he has to move out). Then we put Mom on Muni and she spends the night at a hotel downtown and then flies back to San Diego the next day. Chelsea and I drive down to San Luis Obispo on Friday night and spend three night's at Justin's, going to the beach everyday. Then we come back up here and spent two nights in Santa Rosa, then move in on Thursday. Currently I have to choose a job. But not before I finish this week's work. Yeah. What else? I'll be down for a few days around the weekend of July 8th because it's Zeidy's 80th and we're going to Ruth's Chris in Beverly Hills. Lauren, I don't remember your schedule, but I think the week you're gonna be home is the week I'm at camp. Anywho, I plan to go home for a few days around my birthday and since I'll probably want my car, I was thinking of making a road trip of it and driving to Santa Barbara, spending the night, and then driving home. Perhaps vice versa on the way back? Let me know.

So there you have it. That is my life. I'm done with finals on Monday and then I have to pack up my life.