General Update

Pros:

• dinner with my ex-roommate, in which we talked about salsa dancing, stutterers, and the Medieval Club
• also, when she hugged me goodbye, she paused while pulling away and said “Whoa.  You smell like a Cabbage Patch Kid!”
• no class on Fridays next semester, officially!
• our room smells like chili right now, which is one of my very favorite smells of the fall ever
• there was this commercial on TV just now with pipes speaking in crazy Eastern Bloc accents that cracked me up
• Bones reruns on TV right now
• shout out to my main man Glenn of Glenn’s Shoe Repair for fixing my brown flats, making them better than ever for a mere $8

Cons:

• it is hotter than the depths of hell in this room, JESUS GOD
• Bones might or might not be making me tear up a little right now; I blame the Christmas music, so shut up
• my intestines or something are revolting and attempting to scrabble their way out of my body

But really, my life isn’t even that bad right now.  Sometimes it helps to get that shit into perspective real quick.

Man I Gotta Get Out Of This Town

When I was home for Spring Break at the beginning of the month, I went through my notebooks and folders from last semester, and found a piece of writing I’d done in my Social Psych class back in October.  I remember the exact day I wrote it; it was the day I was going home for Fall Break, and I was in the most boring class I’ve ever had, at 4:30 in the afternoon.  I couldn’t sit still for the life of me because I was so excited to go home; it had been a while since I’d seen people in Dayton.  So instead of listening to lecture, I wrote this, and then just walked out of class.

5 Places I Would Rather Be Right Now

• Sunday morning, 1996, Grandma’s house, sitting down to bacon and eggs with her and Lydia and Whitney
• Home, now, lounging in the green chair, chili cooking, football on TV
• May 2008, Brooklyn Bridge, with the beer and the wind and the lights
• In bed, under covers, in soft afternoon light, Ben Lee singing in my ear
• Whenever, wherever, driving my old, wrecked Honda, windows down, music up

And then, after I found it, I stuck it in the folder I use for my Shakespeare class now and forgot about it.  Until St. Patty’s day, sitting in class listening to a boring presentation, when I took it out, reread it, and added to it:

• About 15 hours less than a year ago today, drunk off my ass with my best friends, in the room of two trashy boys
• January of my senior year, driving home from work with a song in my head and the biggest crush
• August, my sister’s, with beach hair and a book
• Springtime at OLOM, 2002 or so, outside in the early morning cool, on the bike racks waiting for the bell to ring
• 4 hours from now, taking a walk around campus with coffee and my iPod

I think this might become a thing I do.

Catch Up

It doesn’t feel like it’s been a month and a half.  I don’t understand how time is just flying by so quickly this year.  I still feel like it ought to be the middle of February, not the end of March.  I think that’s a good sign.  I’m enjoying myself.  Even though I’ve been gone for a while, and even though I know I’ve been occupied, I cannot for the life of me tell you with what.  Uhhhhh, listening to Beyonce and Ludacris on my iPod?  Yes.  Swooning after several boys?  Oh my God, yes.  Pumping the brakes as hard as I can so that this semester doesn’t ever end because I love this place that I’m in?  Yes, even though it isn’t working.  I’m just busy being happy.  Here are some things I’ve been thinking about lately:

• My Morning Jacket’s “Lay Low” makes me want to long for someone.  It makes me feel like I’m falling for someone I could never have.  I don’t know why, but it just sounds like wanting.
• I found this scribbled in my little notepad I keep in my desk drawer: “Why hasn’t Keira Knightley done Shakespeare?!”  On the one hand, something about how indginant I am over KK’s lack of Shakespearean acting just makes me laugh.  On the other: for real, though.
• Also in the notepad is a note to myself: “Meredith- You will always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.  Take this shot.”  You know, sometimes you just need a pep talk.  And even though that particular shot didn’t pan out the way I planned, I’m still gonna follow that advice.
• Can we talk about Lexi for a moment?  I don’t think I’ve written about her before, but Lord does she ever need to be written about… She’s my TA for my Bio 101 Lab, and honestly, the only positive thing I can say about her is that she hasn’t murdered anyone in her lifetime (to my knowledge).  She is condescending, rude, inconsistent, bitchy, immature, unprofessional, and all around unqualified to be teaching anyone anything, except maybe how to be an unapologetically heinous beast.  I mean, I feel juvenile saying I can’t wait to write a course eval for her, but it’s true.  I just want to give her the worst write-up for being a snot.  I don’t even know if that will affect her in any way, but it’s the only reourse I feel I have besides maybe being an ultra-bitch and talking to my lecture professor about her, which feels waaaaaaay too dramatic a step to take.  So instead, I’ll just bitch about the bitch here! 
• This is the worst thing I have seen in the month and a half I’ve been away from writing; my German professor showed it to us today during our discussion on art.  The second guy, the guy who lays his head on that block of… marble?  clay?  talcum? and then turns and breathes on it like the creepiest serial killer who ever walked the Earth is the artist we’re learning about in our chapter.  Once, he covered his head in goldleaf and honey and carried around a dead rabbit, talking to it and explaining pieces of art to it.  And called it an art installation.  Like, people actually came to a museum and watched it unfold.  What the fuck, Internet?  I was so fucking bershon about this in class today, I was legit rolling my eyes like a sullen teen.  I was pissed off.  Ha, and then my prof asked the class our opinions about it, and the exact people I had expected to like this pretentious, avant garde artsy bullshit were the ones saying “I think it’s wonderful because it holds such deep meaning for the artist” and “It’s very interesting and a unique way to express oneself outside of the normal artistic modes” and when my prof asked me all I could say was “Ich finde das sehr, sehr blod” because I don’t know the German for “drama-queeny”, “insane”, or “intolerable”.  I mean, what feelings could you possibly need to express through conversing with dead animals?  Isn’t that called having a personality disorder?
• It is crazy how into T.I. I am getting.
• My urge to drive, and the amount to which I miss driving around with the wondows down and my music up, has started to manifest itself in completely unnecessary walks around campus with my iPod.  Sometimes after classes, I don’t head directly back to the dorms, but instead loop all around campus, into the old section by the chapel and the administration building, then over by the graveyard and up the alley between Anderson and the BA building, and then home.  It’s exactly like the loops I used to drive after getting off work at night over the summer.  Sometimes I’m just not finished feeling the wind on my face or listening to my very favorite music.  I’m just not done being in motion.

Shakespeare Class Trivia Fun Facts!

Number of girls in the class: 20+

Number of guys in the class: 4

Number of guys who already talk way too much about how drunk they got this weekend: 1

Number of times my favorite professor cursed in class already: like, 3

Number of people wearing scarves indoors: at least 5

Basic Training

So tonight I talked to a really huge asshole on the phone who basically made me sit there fuming for a good half hour because he was telling me all this shit about not looking a gift horse in the mouth and patience wearing thin and how dare you even think about calling at Christmastime? because yeah, we do that just to piss you off, clearly that’s our aim when contacting alumni.  Right.  Anyway, so I thought I’d just go ahead and publish this, but do know that when I’m bitching about my job, it’s usually in good fun, because I know I got really lucky with this job coming to me out of left field and that financially, things could be alot worse for me and despite what some people may think (Charles), this is one pretty huge gift horse whose mouth I don’t want to look in.  And so I present:

Things I Have Learned While Working At The Fund:

• There seriously are people out there who do not have or use e-mail.  This is unimaginable to me.  I’m such a child of the 90’s.  I talked to one lady who graduated in the 50’s who didn’t even own a computer.  IT IS 2008, NOT THE STONE AGE.  What is with this, people?!
• There are people in this world who would prefer that you call them “B-rent” instead of “Brent”.  There are also people in this world are not going to call you that, ever.  Added bonus: This guy is most likely going to end up being my supervisor one day.
• Dude, people who graduated from here in the 70’s are basically all douches.
• Computer monitors from the 90’s?  Yeah, those’ll trigger a migraine.
• Some people do not like to be called during dinner.  I get this, I really do.  My family doesn’t like to be called during dinner, either.  You know what we do about that?  DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE, YOU 70’s ASSHOLE.
• Saying “I understand” is basically like swearing at someone on the phone.  Seriously, it’s a big no and that is not something I ever would have expected.
• People will really tell you the most personal things while trying to avoid giving you money.  You had a terrible four years here at the University because the faculty was too liberal for your liking?  Um, ok…?  You’re holding a vendetta against the University because we did away with our track team eight years ago, even though you graduated in 1976?  Sensible!  You’re getting a divorce?  Sorry to hear it, mostly because I DON’T EVEN KNOW YOU WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS.
• Evidently, my phone voice is totally Palin-y.  Shit.
• I am not one of those people who will make their four-year-old record the answering machine message.  Not ever.
• I mean, I guess I basically already knew that people could get really, uh, creative with spelling and stuff, but today I dealt with someone whose e-mail address had to do with charisma@aol or whatever, except that for the “charisma” part, there were definitely z’s involved.
• I used to think that I had a lot of patience for graceless assholes, but now I find that I use up all of my patience for that particular type of person while at work, so that when I come home, I don’t have one iota of willpower to deal with someone who steps to me with shit.  Maybe I’m not as patient, then, as I thought?
• Tedious tasks are always made better by a great song running through your head.

Rough Sleddin’

Hello.  I feel like I’m reporting from a war zone or something, because things here?  They are rough.  I woke up yesterday already feeling like I had lived the longest week of my life, and it was only Tuesday.  Here are some things from the past few days that make me feel like my soul is slowly being sucked from my body and scattered on the four winds that blow across the frigid plains of BG all day long, right in your face, never ever ever stopping, no it doesn’t matter if you turn around, the wind will still be blowing DIRECTLY IN YOUR FACE.  Ahem.  Sorry.  The list:

• I have this cough, and it’s not like I’m even sick or anything, it’s just that I have this nagging cough, and it only chooses to be really horrendous when I go to lay down and make an attempt at sleep.
• My German teacher seems to think it’s totally cool to give us 30000 things to do, all to be turned in Friday, including: a take-home exam, a listening exam in class Friday, and three pages of homework.  Why does she seem to think this is at all an ok thing to do?  Dude, I don’t know.  Maybe that’s how they operate in Austria.
• I’m really just worried about a friend from home, and I got distressing news Monday that just reinforced the idea that , man, break cannot come soon enough.
• Along those same lines, my room has been the scene of an awful lot of tears recently.  Like, at least three people cried in here on Monday, and at least one of them was me.  We’re falling apart at the seams, all of us, and just trying like hell to not to go flying apart in all directions days before finals.
• So, Monday is called Pasta Monday around here, which is extremely inventive of us, because Monday’s the day they serve pasta at the Dial.  So anyway, this is usually a highlight of our otherwise crap-ass Mondays, but this week?  This week was sent straight from hell, so of course this is the week where a boy I rejected romantically ends up as the pasta server, thus leaving me with a measly one and a half stuffed shells to eat for dinner, because apparently this is prison camp junior high, where you torture those that heartlessly refuse to go out with you by withholding food from them, even though it’s your job to do exactly the OPPOSITE OF THAT. 
• Five hours of sleep the night before what will probably be the hardest exam you take this semester?  Not the best idea you’ll ever have.  And then, when I came back from classes and took a nap for an hour and a half, I woke up with a headache that morphed into a migraine while at work and ended up putting me to bed at 11:30 last night like soemone’s grandma.
• It poured all day long yesterday, and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s rain when there ought to be snow.  Plus, I spent way too large a chunk of the day yesterday with soaked socks and frozen toes.
• I don’t care to discuss the details, but yesterday also saw me stick my hand in my own pee.
• And then today I come to find out that the bookstore doesn’t buy back lab books.  Motherfuckers, I spent over $100 on this fucking book to do eight experiments out of it?  We didn’t even get halfway through the damn thing!  Are you kidding me?  And you can’t even give me like $20 for it?  And really, the person I should want to cut right now is really my asshole professor who insisted we have the manual and not just make photocopies of the pages, for some unexplained reason which will remain forever locked inside his 87-year-old head.
• I also accidentally skipped ou mandatory floor meeting last night because items just flit in and out of my head at random, and it’s never a sure thing just what will stick in there and just what will go flying out my ear, never to be remembered again. 

I realize all of this is pretty depressing, or maybe just irritating, because I guess most of these are pretty white bread complaints.  I do find it important to note that whenever I yell “There is NOTHING good about this day!” my neighbor Cassie makes me name at least three good things about that day.  Some of them are pretty scant, like “I did not wake up dead” or “I like my socks” or something, but some of them end up being pretty legit.  Today is better than yesterday because I got to sleep in late, remembered that I had a check from work that I hadn’t opened, and realized that I can stay up late tonight because I don’t have class until one tomorrow.  So it looks like, against all odds, things might just be looking up.

In Summation

Best Parts Of My Day Today:

• Two midterms, both waaaaaaaay easier than expected
• My least favorite class, canceled!
• Sunshine rain
• Tommorow’s Pre-lab, already finished
• Time to get coffee
• This sentence from my Literary Theory book: “For many of us who consider ourselves lovers of literature, phrases such as ‘the random play of signifiers’ and ‘the transcendental signified’ evoke the kind of fear and loathing the Crusaders must have felt when they learned that the infidels had taken the Holy City”.  That made me throw my head back and laugh out loud.

Worst Part Of My Day Today:

• My white chocolate mocha was totally not mixed up at all

Best Part Of The Worst Part Of My Day Today:

• It was totally not a homogeneous solution!  If you drew samples from the top and bottom sections of the drink, their properties would not be the same!  Cheeeeeeemmmmiiiisssssttttrrrrryyyyyyyyyyy!

Things I have Done In Lieu of Writing My Literary Theory Midterm:

• Chatted with China
• Gotten a latte
• Listened to Wilco’s “Shot in the Arm” on repeat
• Done several Sudokus
• Gone to work
• Ignored my alarm telling me to wake up and get started
• Used the word “lieu” for maybe the first time in my life

Things I Plan On Doing In Lieu of Writing My Literary Theory Midterm:

• Paint my nails a whorish pink
• Make some beef stew, maybe?
• Stick things under my neighbor Hannah’s door
• Man, that’s basically it

Weighing My Options

Reasons I Should Not Work At BG Sub:

• shitty pay
• I’d be working with food
• it’s a bit of a walk from my dorm
• I already have a job
• I can’t even stand the way they write the name (technically BGSUb; how clever)

Reasons I Should Work At BG Sub:

• Man, the boy who works the register has a nice smile

Select Items From My Google Search History

Part 2 (and a sidenote: the earliest items on this list go waaaaaay back to April, so therefore, I really cannot tell you why I was interested in “nubian” or Jewish names or John Larroquette.  April feels like a really long time ago.)

• “This Island’s Mine” by Philip Osment
• Die Bienenkoenigen
• nubian
• mole people
• glaven
• Arbor Day
• Montreal Canadiens
• Jewish names
• Betsy-Tacy
• John Larroquette
• how many countries are there in the world
• Sophocles quote
• the one you are trusting suspiciously dusting the sill
• Cincinnati Christian
• Queen Latifah
• Rena Sofer
• Bay Area Credit
• abrogation
• Madchen Amick wikipedia
• Kigali
• Tina Fey scar
• web md
• dulcimer pictures
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch
• took myself to the movie show, sat myself in the very first row
• heavens to betsy
• Foucault Discipline and Punish (followed, awesomely, directly by…)
• touch my body
• twinkle dwivedi
• Ben Folds way to normal
• Old 97’s
• Charles Keating
• im not a policeman, im a princess