I Have Head Explodey!

. . . and not in the good way.

Just took the hardest final ever. Art history is evil. Can no longer form coherent sentences. So much writing. 10 short answer analysis sections. 2 real essays. Took entire 3 hours. Couldn't find TA. Waited groggy outside Campbell Hall for her to give me back paper. Going to die now.

"I never went to bed with anybody for a role--that's true. I never got any roles, either." --Carla, Kennedy's Children by Robert Patrick

Booked my flight home today! Yay!

I probably shouldn't be this excited about going home just to wake up early and drive to DVC to judge the State Forensics Tournament--something I myself never got to go to in high school, despite all my whoreing and husband killing and transsexualism. Mind you, I was not actually a whore, transsexual or husband killer, but all Dramatic Interp kids take on a little bit of the people they play. If not because you love your character, then because you've spent a good year working on becoming them and understanding them and being them on Saturday mornings at 8 AM in front of a room full of strangers who are also playing at being someone. While I loved Carla and was Carla, I can't deny that there are parts of me that are Agnes and Sarah and Hedwig. I can't deny that there are parts of my abandoned characters in me, either. I am a little bit Betty and a little bit Amneris and (apparently) more than a little bit Joan of Arc.

But judging at State is exciting. Being at State is exciting. Being around exceptionally talented kids is horribly exciting. Being able to see said horribly talented kids doing their interps, their extemps, their expos, their debates, their oratories--that's exciting. And being with my old coach and my teammates is exciting.

And now that I'm thinking back on it and how much I really did love it, I wish I hadn't gotten so overwhelmed. I wish I hadn't given up. I wish I'd not given up on Hedwig just because my audience didn't understand her. Hell, no one understood Carla, but I made people love her because I did. And I should have treated all the characters I played that way. But instead, I just gave up. There were so many factors outside of it though. I wasn't even myself, then. And if I wasn't me, how can I be expected to be someone else when I've got nothing to work with?

Seaweed and Brine

Today is too beautiful for words. Spent a good three hours reading in the sun on the beach. It was absolutely marvelous. Heather and I are planning a picnic for Thursday afternoon. We will make sandwiches in the dining commons, and smuggle them out in our carefully concealed tupperware so that we may take them to the beach later for snacking. And we'll go swimming! And it will be marvelous!

Good gods, I smell so much like salt. But it's good salt. Salt and Coppertone.

I Am Not a Stranger to the Rain

I'm on the 3rd page of my art history paper (due Thursday) and I think it's a good time to stop writing important things and tell my rainy day story from last week, seeing as today is, again, a rainy day.

Santa Barbara has this new thing weatherwise. It's quite extraordinary. It's called rain. And it will only begin to do this at 9:40 am when I leave my English class and have to walk a good long ways to the HSSB. Santa Barbara, being a quaint seaside city, much like Venice, is not equipped to deal with massive amounts of rain, much like Venice. Last Wednesday at precisely 9:40 am as I left English, it began to rain. Big, scary, heavy rain. And it didn't stop. And it got much, much worse as the day went on. I was okay while I was in class, and even fine while walking back from Italian. The real terrors came at about 3:30 in the afternoon as I decided to brave the weather and get coffee before my Electra class. Little did I know what was about to unfold . . .

(note: I am switching to present tense for Dave Eggers style realism.)

It is really fucking wet outside! There are people wearing garbage bags like capes in an attempt to keep their backpacks dry. I scurried about with my hood up, gloves on, and my Eugene O'Neill stuffed nicely inside my coat to keep him dry. (In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have cared so much about a dead playwright's book. I could have just bought another one.) I choose my steps very carefully when going down one of the many flights of hillside stairs at UCSB because they are covered in mud that has slid off the hillsides. I choose my steps even more carefully as I walk along the lagoon path, which is flooded in certain areas with a mixture of landmud from the shoddy areas of the faculty club green and lagoon water. It is raining exceptionally hard. The front of my person is literally drenched. This is really uncomfortable. I make it all the way to the UCen unharmed. And then, right outside the fucking door, of all places, I fall flat on my ass. And hard, too. So, now I am wet pretty much everywhere. And my ass hurts.

I pick myself up, brush myself off (as though it would help), and head into the UCen to nab some coffee from Nicoletti's. I was hoping sympathy coffee from Brian the Barista, but no such luck. I pay for my coffee, and sit down on one of the nice, warm, dry UCen chairs for a bit and watch the rain through the picture window. After a good ten minutes, I brave the rain again. I think it literally must be worse now, rainwise. Definitely heavier and even more unrelenting. I trek to the HSSB through several large puddles that have accumulated outside of the Art Museum. Large, unseen puddles are proof that SB was not equipped to handle deluge. The water has soaked entirely through my All-Stars. And my socks. The next hour will be very, very uncomfortable. I have wet pants and wet feet. I am not a happy camper.

I climb the water-logged steps of the HSSB and squeak my way down the hallway to class. Everyone who has made it there before me is also soaked. Aditi still has water on her face that she has neglected to brush off. We moan about how miserable it is. And how miserable we are. This is the most uncomfortable hour of our lives.

Once the hour is up, I brave the rain again. It's still wet, but less so now. I make it down to flights of HSSB stairs before my foot lands in a puddle and a fall--again--on the landing. Ass is even more wet. Left side of body is now in a lot of wet, cold, uncomfortable, rainy pain. I whimper to myself as I very fucking carefully descend. I feel a bit like Myrrah, that I'm dissolving into tears, but it's really more like tears are dissolving me. I whimper all the way home.

And halfway there. I decide Raffi's place is a lot closer than mine. So I pop up at his door for sympathy and shelter and warmth. Kitties don't like this much water! I am soaking. My hair is soaking and I had a fucking hood on. Rafe blow dries me--hair to feet. With his hairdryer. It is both kind and humiliating, but, hey, I fell fucking twice in the rain. This is the highlight of my day.

Mmmmmm . . . . Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Most of my day I've spent sleeping. I do not entirely know why. I'm sure somehow this is my body's very odd way of attempting to make up for the missed sleep I got this weekend. My body knows full well that said sleep can not actually be made up. So, with that in mind, I think maybe my body is trying to fuck me over. Well, I've got news for you body . . . I'm not gonna take it! I'll sleep when I want to and wake up when I want to and you can't make me do or say anything! My mind is much more powerful than you and you ought to know it, you frail, weak peice of flesh!

If I Were a Grand Slam . . . (sung to the tune of "If I Were a Rich Man," just in case that didn't immediately pop into your head like it should have)

Spent the past two weeks doing so much work regarding last Friday's V-Day Extravaganza and this weekend's upcoming production of The Vagina Monologues that I hardly had time to sleep or breathe or any other such vital function. And then this weekend happened. And despite rehearsal from forever until the end of time on Sunday night . . . I suddenly had only time to sleep and breathe.

I don't think I'd ever been so bored in my life. Last night, I literally spent a half hour staring at objects in my roommate's possession. I was awake then, and I couldn't actually bring myself to sleep. (Funny how "after you get what you want you don't want it," isn't it? Who knew Irving Berlin songs could be so prophetic.) I could call this relaxing, I suppose. But relaxing is a term I generally reserve for reading in a hot bath or sitting in a spa or visiting the masseuse I don't actually have. Relaxing is not resorting to asking your roommates such questions as: "If you were a menu item at Denny's, what would you be?"

And just FYI, Jen is Cheesesticks, Heather is French Toast and I am a Milkshake. Raffi, when later asked this question, supplied me with the Denny's menu item in the title.

Sloth Isn't That Much of a Sin . . . Is It?

Kate said that her only desire once she got to college was to sleep. Judging by the state of my room and the moment, I think it just might be true.

Last night, I was up talking with Kevin and Jen until 2:30 am. At which point, they left and I went to sleep. I have no idea what happened until about 9 am, when Jen's alarm went off and I roll over to find the two of them curled up in opposite corners of the futon . . . which Kevin had somehow taken down in the middle of the morning without rousting me. I went back to sleep until noon.

Right now, Kevin is sprawled out on my bed--aka "the couch"--napping under the glow of a halogen lamp. Jennifer has crawled up to her roost for ten minutes of mid-midterm studying naptime. And those sleepy motherfuckers are making me tired as hell. I yawn just knowing that they are here! Here and tired!

Kevin's sloth-like nature must be rubbing off on me. He has decreased my desire to do any sort of work merely by being in the same room. I want him to see Sevenfor the sloth-murder, but at the same time I admire his dedication to laziness and wish he were a sort of superhero. If he were indeed a superhero, he would be the patron and savior of college students everywhere.

Who do you have to fuck to get a cup of tea and some chocolate biscuits around here?

Being that I have two papers rapidly approaching, I naturally have no inclination to write anything. (Not even here, really, which explains the brief hiatus.)

I've got one paper on the treatment of women in the poetry of Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift and another on . . . well, I haven't chosen yet, but it's for art history and it will inevitably involve a Renaissance altarpeice of some variety. But, as I have no school on Fridays this quarter, I like to pretend that Thursday is my Friday and thusly, I prefer not to do a whole lot of work on Thursday. Friday I may spend the day slaving away at my computer and writing a hefty load of bollux.

For now, I adjourn to being mildly British and enjoying my cup of chai tea. Someone must find me biscuits.

Sideshow Stevi

I've made a decision: no matter what other wonderful, fantastic things I do in my life (being an English teacher, winning a Pulitzer, and getting an Academy Nom for Original Screenplay . . . or Adapted, I don't care) I am going to become an expert on Carnival Sideshows.

And I am totally serious.

I have a fascination with Carnie folk. The way the live their rootless lives as American gypsies, the wandering minstrels of their era. The social acceptance of treating those with unique genetic anomilies as exhibits. The endurance of the freakshow tradition. The seemingly contradictory view that the freakshow allows an outlet for such genetic anomolies to "make a living just by being themselves." The silmultaneous rise of the burlesque show as both art and entertainment. It's all fascinating.

Almost as fascinating as genuine sideshow performers is the way a "gaff" is pulled off. Half the time, customers would never know if they were seeing the genuine article or a falsification. Siamese twins were "constructed" by carnival management because the condition is exceptionally rare, and having grown twins was even more of an anomily due to the low survival rates of such conjoined siblings during the heyday of the carnival era. Hermaphrodites were constructed using prosthetics. Parasitic twins (a half-formed twin attached somewhere on the abdomen to the host twin, essentially a failed attempted at the development of conjoined twins; parasitic twins have no brains or hearts but subsist on the bloodflow of the host twin, like an extra limb) were attached with simple paste and children's dolls. People added extra limbs the same way. (People born with so-called "extra limbs" are actually a subclassification of individuals born with parasitic twins, called dypigus, meaning that the lower half of the body is reduplicated. It's like having a parasitic twin, but having one that can actually function in a near-normal way.) Then there are the fake lycans. The fake bearded ladies. The faux mentalists. And so on.

The world of the carnival sideshow is so inherently intriguging because of the blurred lines between fiction and reality. It's a social world of the past. A form of entertainment that is no longer PC. By modern standards, it must be some violation of civil rights and liberties, though most carnival showfolk joined-up willingly. I like its inherent contradictions, its mysteries, its story.

The only thing that even comes close to being a carnival sideshow in our society, is probably reality TV.

I Guess the Renaissance Really is Over.

The Northern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire has been closed permanantly. It's over. No more two hour drives from my house to Hollister. I feel like I've been kicked square in the chest. I spend four years collecting a great costume, each year promising myself some silly new accessory so that the outfit is never really complete and I always have a good excuse to spend a great deal of my hard earned money. ("But Mom, this year I promised myself a set of leather handcuffs and a new cat o' nine. That's why I spent 100 dollars at the faire!") This year I was finally going to get a tankard to put in the tankard strap I bought 4 years ago. I guess I'm not getting it from that faire.

I guess its a little silly to be this upset that the NorCal faire is gone. It's not like its the only one. (AND THANK GOD!) The Heart of the Forest Faire, I hear, is very lovely, and in the location that NorCal Faire used to be in the late 80's and early 90's. But NorCal faire was the big faire, and it was my faire. And it has all kinds of stupid sentimental value behind it. And for a few years, it was only 30 minutes from my house! I could always go to Faire then. But like I said, its not the only faire. I found out that Heart of the Forest Faire happens here in Santa Barbara, as well. And during Spring quarter, too! But there goes all the familiarity that I miss about NorCal Faire. There's always SoCal Faire, but that is a two hour drive I'd be making without my friends . . . or my crappy little un-Renaissance white Prizm.

Sigh.

I shouldn't be this crushed. But I am.

Pool Sharks.

I am very bad at pool. Actually, we are all pretty bad at pool--Jen, Heather and I, I mean. In a bout of Saturday Night Boredom, we decided to drag Raffi along to play some pool in DeAnza. It was a fairly even match, considering the teams (me with Raffi, and my roommates against us). Even if only because we are all so terrifically bad at the game. Jen and I rarely sink any shots. I am known to scratch on breaks. Heather and Raffi are of much better skill . . . except for the scratches . . . or sinking shots for the other team. Our games last forever because none of us possess the simple abilities to execute the shots that we can clearly, through clever observations of physics and geometry, see. Let's just say that I really shouldn't have titled this entry "Pool Sharks" as none of us seem to live up to the name.

But Jen is determined that if we play a game or two of pool a day, or at least as often as we can, that we can improve. And this is true. Today's three game series with Kevin as a fourth showed much improvement over last night (until in the 3rd game, when Kevin and I spent 20 minutes trying to sink the 8 ball and failing miserably . . . then I think we just stoppd caring). Now, if I said that my team (last night, Stevi-Raffi, today, Stevi-Kevin) lost every single game we played, you'd have to assume that Jen and Heather are actually pretty good at pool. But this assumption would be wholly incorrect. They are no better than us, really. They just never get an oppurtunity to go for the 8 ball and, therefore, never get the oppurtunity to scratch on the 8 ball. They win simply because we fail. Not because they're (dare I say it?) good at pool.
I think this bit of dialogue between Raffi and me last night in the pool room is so good that it needs to be shared:

(after scratching on the 8 ball to lose our second game that night)

Me: I am very bad at this. I should just give up and kill myself now.

Raffi: Ahh. Don't do that. After all, it is only pool.

Me: You're right. Let's go get ice cream.

Raffi: Wow. Crisis averted. You almost killed yourself. Thank God I stepped in.

Me: Eh, I'm pretty easy to distract.

That last bit, that's probably why I'm not very good at pool.

Le cough. Le hack. Le sigh.

I was practially glowing last quarter because the move from the Bay to Santa Barbara had proven quite fruitful for my health. For once in my life, I wasn't ill every other week. In fact, I could breathe easily, sleep well, etc. In general, an improvement over the last four years of my life. But I go home for break, and pick up a slight cold. Annoying, yes, but a vast improvement over that one week in high school where I swear I had the bubonic plague . . . and all other subsequent high school illnesses, for that matter. And I got over it quickly, which was even more of a miracle because my normal immune system must have some sort of deficiency. But despite all that good fortune, I return to campus and I am smacked in the face with a cold. Admittedly, this one is far superior to most colds Ive had. The sore throat has passed and now I am left with a stuffy nose . . . that would seem to contain more mucus than I thought humanly possible. Nevertheless, it doesn't make me happy. I long for last quarter, where I lived happily and disease free!

I did fulfill my long-ago promise to Jake to see a doctor before the end of the year, though. I did it right on the wire: December 31st. However, I did it. Apparently, there really isn't anything wrong with me. Not anemic. Not diabetic. Not iron deficient. I'm just little. And frail. (All the rage with the gents during the French revolution, so I'm told. Doesn't everyone love a waif?) My uterus is, however, tilted slightly to the left. I don't know what that means. It's apparently not a bad thing. It's just a quaint abnormailty.

They also did some blood tests during my visit to the doctor's office. Let me tell you, having blood drawn is possibly the coolest thing in existence. It may have been some of the most medically related fun I've ever had in my life. I couldn't stop laughing. It was great! Blood is all swirly and there's just so much of it! And they can fill tubes with blood instantaneously! My god, why is blood so fucking cool?! Why did no one tell me blood was this cool? I would have dontated blood all the time in high school had I known! Oh, had I only known. College blood drives, here I come!

And we're back.

Back in Santa Barbara. Back in my dorm. Back in class. Back . . . here.

But here is a pretty good place for me, usually. I'm more sane here than I've ever been before. And that's saying a lot, I think.

Only here can I listen to No Doubt's "Simple Kind of Life" with my roommate singing along (in her perfect, perfect Gwen-like pitch) and not be in tears. I promised myself in the wee hours of New Year's Day (after several episodes of "Sex & the City") that these kinds of things would no longer bother me. It's four days into the new year and I'm succeeding. We shall see how long this lasts.

Regardless, I love being back here in my dark little room with Jen and Heather--Jen singing along to whatever CD she has on, Heather on the phone with someone. It feels right. It also feels right to be walking around here and rearranging things to accomodate our Christmas gifts and all the other extra stuff we returned with.

It even feels right to be wandering through the bookstore and realize that I got the most obscure of all English 10 professors. Everyone else has a good four books on their reading list, and most include at least one Toni Morrison novel (Sidenote: Marcus bought me her new book, the aptly titled Love, for our anniversary.) . . . my professor chose two books, both of which I have never heard of in my life. In the best case, this class turns out to be absolutely fascinating and the books are both some of the most interesting things I've never heard of. In the worst case, it blows because the novels chosen are reminiscent of Melville's Billy Budd, voted worst book every by students in Mrs. Pasternak's 2nd period AP English Lit class in 2003. Tomorrow morning shall tell.

We'll see if I can wake up at 7:40 of my own volition.

Heather and I are horrible human beings. The last of our fish has died.

Well, to be totally technical, we had to kill it. It sounds horrible, but let's set a couple things straight: a) it would have died anyway over the break and b) it was Selina's idea.

The fish had several options facing it, all of which included its eminent demise:
1. We leave it in the tank for three weeks, during which it dies of starvation because the only food tablets available last for a maximum of two weeks.
2. We put it in a cup and take it home with one of us. This sounds like a good idea at first, but when you think about it the fish would die on the long rides to our varius destinations. There is no way in hell Jen was going to be able to take a fish in a cup on the Greyhound down to LA. I probably could have taken it home to Crockett . . . if I were driving the five hours straight and not spending the duration of my week in Santa Monica with Marcus. (This would also involve putting a fish on a bus.) Finally, Heather lives a whole 9 hour drive from school. And I'm sure the fish would feeze to death before she reached Tahoe.
3. We flush the little fucker. The force kills him immediately.
4. Selina suggests we set him free in the lagoon . . . and let the saltwater cause it to die of shock within 30 seconds.

We went with option number four. And we set him free in the lagoon . . . he tried to swim back to us, and thrashed about violently in the shallows of the lagoon as the salt entered his gills. It was horrifying. We're fucking murderers. What kind of vegetarians are we?

I think this is it for us and dorm room pets, though. So its good news for all other living creatures we encounter.

I love the Holidays!!!!!

Yuletide is the bestest season . . . EVER!!!

The roommates and I are having Christmas tonight. I'm so excited. Plus, Heather and I get to have our birthdays tonight, too. (Heather was born two days after Christmas and I was born nine days after Christmas.) I'm such an egocentric whore. I love all Holidays that involve centering at least some sort of attention on myself. Be it by the use of food or gifts, I care not. So long as its all about me.

You know, and the spirit of giving and all that rot.

I kid. I'm a sucker for buying people presents, too. I like to spend money on people almost as much as spending money on myself. But, again, I can't discuss the supercool things I got for people because those snoopy bastards are probably reading this. However, I can say that Raffi and I have impeccable taste.

I left Raffi his gift in his room on Saturday night, so it would be waiting for him when he got back from his evil math final. I got him Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies, because I'm sure that at least part of the spirit of Christmas involves the macabre deaths of unsuspecting children. Unbeknownst to me, he had gotten me the same book. It's all crazy-like! But, upon opening his gift, he returned the copy he got for me and traded it in for Amphigorey, Too. Now I have them all. But that's crazy. It's like we share a brain. A brain that delights in macabre demises, apparently.

I took a final this morning at 8 am. During which I wrote an essay about setting a production of Tartuffe in a Catholic High School (because the closest thing to 17th century French class structure is high school) and another essay about how the Olympics are a capitalist marketing tool that sells merchandise degrading the culture of the host countries/cities, with specific reference to the 2002 winter games in Salt Lake wherein pins featuring bicycling LDS missionaries and green jello made a mockery of American religions.

My brain does funny things when it has to think and hasn't really gotten a good rest.

Lalalalala . . . I was born at the wrong time of the year! Japanese restaurants are never open on my birthday and there are no theatrical productions running in the city that are of note. My mom and I were trying to plan what to do on my birthday. We were going to go to Teatro Zinzanni . . . until we realized that it would be $125 per person ($500 for a CARNIVAL????) plus another $40 that night in gratuity for the wait staff. Fuck that. I'll just put on my own show!

God, I'm tired.

So it's dead week, and there is literally nothing to do. One can only spend so much time studying, after all. Brooks on the 2nd floor is quoted as saying this about weekends in Santa Barbara: "It's so boring here. The only things to do are drink, study or spend money." It's sad, but true. I don't drink, because my idea of a good time with alcohol is getting together with a bunch of intellectual friends, getting drunk and trying to play word games or charades . . . and that kind of shit just doesn't go down in Santa Barbara. But it should. I don't really want to study just yet. I have a final Saturday in theatre . . . which I don't think will be very hard at all. However, I have to get up before 8 am to take it. That doesn't make me happy. After that, my next final is on Monday. At noon. And it's linguistics. So I'll get my study on a little later in the weekend. This leaves me with one choice: spend money.

I went downtown today to finalize my Christmas shopping. Or at least to bring it closer to its inevitable end. I bought a lot of books for people. I am not at liberty to say what books or for whom, because the intended recipients read this weblog and I don't want those snooping bastards to find out and ruin the suprise. Let it be said, however, that Barnes & Noble and Borders booksellers are just a little bit richer today because of me.

I'm also noticing that because drinking, studying, and spending money are the only things to do on weekends around here . . . and because I usually do the latter . . . my favorite stores on State Street are getting a little old due to biweekly visitation. New Deal is my favorite place for Swingwear, but the prices are tailored to the budget of some movie star's neice who just happens to have a very big place in the Santa Barbara hills. Plus, I know for a fact I can find those dresses at half the price if I look hard enough on the Macy's and JC Penny's clearance racks. (I just did that very thing over Thanksgiving break.) Midnite Sun is the closest thing to Goth-coture that you'll find on State . . . but it's also a smidge pricey . . . and I've only seen one skirt in there that I cannot live without. I mostly just buy their raunchy underwear. The girl's stuff continually changes. The guy's stuff doesn't. This is why it's hard to find cool shirts for Marcus there. In fact, thats a problem with a lot of the boutiques on State: 75% female oriented, 25% male oriented. Marcus likes clothing. He just doesn't have nice clothing. And it's my mission to find him some sort of style. State Street boutiques are not helping me here. Scavenge is alright, but they should lower their prices a bit, seeing as they don't do any business post-Halloween . . . and I really just want a pair of extra-cheap boots from them. And maybe a Dickie's jacket. So I'm forced to go shopping in Reference, because there is no Forever 21 on State and the stores are practically sisters, which has very little black most of the year. But it's winter right now. Black is in. But if I want any of it, I'm apparently going to have to be preppy-goth . . . or start building up my professional teacher's wardrobe.

It's really hard to have a good Thanksgiving under the following circumstances:
a. You're a vegetarian.
b. Your Grandmother is from the South/Midwest . . . and doesn't know how to cook for vegetarians.
c. You have a very small family.
d. Said very small family is largely uneccentric and uninteresting.
e. Grandfather is dying of cancer.
But given all of these circumstances, Turkey Day wasn't horrible. It was okay. I wasn't expecting a whole lot more than that, anyway. I've accepted the fact that my grandmother will always forget to make vegetarian food. (I usually spend Thanksgiving munching on potatoes. Which is okay by me.) It's the Ed dying part that blows. He's the nicest, most loving man in the world and he really doesn't deserve to spend the remainder of his days in so much pain. Ed's the kind of guy who should die in a freak repelling accident, or in a rockslide. Or by falling into a grapepress. He should die on a Boy Scout Trip (since he's been Scoutmastering for 50 plus years), or making wine. Either way, he'd go out doing what he loves. His heart has never been used; it beat far too slowly. Only when he met my grandmother 12 years ago did he have a pacemaker put in. He has all the will and strength of someone half his age. But now his body is riddled with the cancer that so kindly lodged itself in his lungs after working for years as a plumber in asbestos-ridden homes and ships. Ed doesn't deserve to die just because there were no building codes back in the day. But he will. And it probably won't be very long until then. And without Ed, I fear my hometown will be entirely devoured in darkness.

But on a far less depressing note, my weekend at home was alright. Good, in fact, if ya' wanna get all technical and stuff. I was very anxious to get back and see mia famiglia, despite the mask I put on that I don't miss them. I do miss them a little teensy bit. I spent a lot of good quality time with my mums, which is a whole lot different than spending good quality time with a dictionary, let me tell you. We rummaged around department stores on the absolute worst of shopping days in an attempt to find me a decent winter coat. But I'm a finicky bitch: all the coats that fit me were ugly, and the ones that I liked didn't fit. Bugger me. I did however find the following wonders that I cannot have until Christmas (because that's how my mom shops for me, takes me out and lets me get things that I deem cool, but hides them from me and wraps them up for Christmas . . . so much for the element of suprise): a pair of vintage white lace knee high Victorian boots, a purse in the shape of a corset, yet another swing dress . . . and a new glass pen from Dicken's Fair.

Dicken's Fair is by far my new favorite Christmas tradition. Because it's just a San Francisco thing, it feels far more authentic than RenFaire . . . and I prefer Victorian garb to RenGarb by far, anyway. Plus it's always nice when your parents indulge your bizarre costume party fantasies and pay your admission and food. Alas, I was not in garb. Because this was unexpected. My mother just woke me up and announced we were going . . . and then I realized that my corsets were still in Santa Barbara. Teach me to leave them behind!

Plus, I got to see The Best Friend, whom I have been missing terribly. All in all, a lovely trip back home to the bay.

And it is officially only 13 more days til Big Bad Voodoo Daddy! I cannot contain my excitement.

745.

That's my number.

I am the 745th girl to play J.J.'s bongo drums.

Let me elaborate: J.J. is this blind music major that I see around campus. He's really friendly--so much so that it sometimes borders on annoying--and he's been doing this experiment-type thing about girls playing the bongos. I am not actually entirely certain about what, per say, this is, but I do know this: this is an awesome way to meet women. Hell, if I had a quaint disability such as blindness (hey, I'm halfway there!) I would totally come up with something as novel as this to meet people. Raffi and I were returning a game to the front desk in San Raf, and J.J. walked by us and started talking to us about music. At one point he takes these bongos out of his backpack and asks me if I would play them for him. I confess that I have no musical talent, but he asks me to play anyway. He demonstates how to do a beat and I fail fucking miserably. He then asks me to do a drumroll. Apparently, I do such a kickass German drumroll that I get to go on his special list. "You just say that. All the girls are on the special list, aren't they?" says Raffi. J.J. proves him wrong by reciting to us the entirety of the special list, with reasons for why some of them were on there if they were extra special. German drumrolls are apparently extra special.

I found the perfect Christmas card! It's all weird and kinda spooky and Edward Gorey-fied . . . but it is out of stock on Gorey Details! I am greatly dismayed. No one will have a spookified Christmas if they cannot have Christmas with the Great Veiled Bear. I am deeply saddened. Deeply.