Merci pour le chocolat.

The boys who work at the Trader Joe's in Goleta are continually straddling the line between simply being very friendly and straight out hitting on my friends and I. They tend to ask too many questions, regardless of whether I am alone or with the group. Examples of said questions for the group situation might be something like "So, do you girls have any plans for the weekend? / Going to any good parties this weekend?" and things of that nature. Entire conversations will surround those questions. When I go by myself to Trader's, I am usually just getting off work or on my break, therefore, I wear the lovely Hollywood Video purple shirt. I usually get this kind of question: "So are you just off work? / Any good movies this week?" Innocent enough. However, I am sometimes recognized outside of the purple shirt by several of the Trader Joe's boys. When that happens, I get the following: "No Hollywood today? What're you doing this weekend?" The pattern ensues. We are never sure if the Trader's boys are simply being friendly or trying to get themselves invited somewhere with us. I like to assume they are simply being friendly.

The man who made my sandwhich at Subway tonight was not simply being friendly. When he inquired what I would be doing with my evening once I got off work, I replied, "Oh, probably just renting movies, going home, and going to sleep." To which he replied, "Nah. Don't do that. I should come with you. We can watch some movies, sure, but you wouldn't sleep." Were I not completely taken aback by this, I think I might have had something clever to say. Instead I said, "Nah . . . I don't know about that." And decided to eat my sandwhich in my car rather than stay in the restaurant. I cannot eat sandwhiches there fore a good long while. I'm sure sandwhich dude meant no real harm by it, but I am sufficiently creeped out.

One nice thing, though, occurred after the sandwhich incident. I shrink-wrapped some movies for this Russian boy so he could return them to the store from whence they came. He insisted on paying me for the favor. I refused to take $5 from him just to shrink-wrap something, considering we hardly use the shrink-wrap anymore so it's completely worthless to the store. After my refusal of his cash, he asked me what kind of chocolate I liked. I intentionally told him that I liked dark chocolate because we do not sell any dark chocolate and I didn't want him to give me anything for such a simple favor. I turn to shrink-wrap the videos, and Russian boy is gone, but his friends are still in the store. He comes back about 5 minutes later and hands me to giant bars of Hershey's Special Dark and thanks for me doing him the favor. "Thank you, but you really didn't have to buy me chocolate. Really." And he just waves his hand at me in that universal "No, I insist" gesture.

There really is no ending to any of these stories. It was just so odd that a routine work night that began with the traditional odd niceties from the Trader's boys wound up being infused with one of the absolute creepiest things I've ever had said to me. (Which. by the way, reminded me vaguely of this one time where a boy at the student store at UC Berkeley read my "Bad Kitty" t-shirt and, when I told him jokingly I tended to scratch up furniture, said "Scratching furniture, huh? Breaking headboards is more like it.") This sandwhich incident was definitely unsettling. I mean, I'm flattered. Really. I'm glad this dude thinks I'm pretty, but I am not legitimately creeped out by him. I'm actually much more flattered that the Russian boy was so dead-set on giving me something in return for the favor that he went out and searched for my favorite kind of chocolate. I suppose a good point of summation would be the following:

1. It is okay to straddle the line between niceties and flirtations if you work at Trader Joe's.
2. It is absolutely not okay to blatantly hit on a customer while you are making her sandwhich--especially when you do so by inviting yourself to her place to prevent her from sleeping in the manner of your choosing.
3. Russian boys are very nice boys.
4. Chocolate is an acceptable form of payment for any favor.

Exchange rates.

My parents have just informed me that they are getting two "sisters" for me over the summer, which is to say that they will be hosting two exchange students for two weeks. They will be getting a Japanese daughter and a Sweedish daughter. Unfortunately, I will be in classes back in SB when they arrive. So I promised the parents that I would come home for the weekend when they arrive so that I can take them dancing and shopping in San Francisco.

The parents might then bring them down to SB to experience SB with me. Oh, let the international fun ensue . . . I'll have an extra bedroom over the summer . . . why not?

Avoiding Responsibility.

So, I've been super busy with work and school and costuming a show. Hamlet on the Moon is going to be really exciting, especially because there are robots, and robots are cool. Moon Hamlet is also my first huge costuming project for the theatre. Thus far, I've been lucky enough to get readymades for my 2 film projects, but with Moon Hamlet, I have $230 worth of crepe satin to sew and about three weeks to sew it all in.
With that said, I present you all with another random thing I stole from Jenrikay's blog:

A - Age you got your first kiss:
13
B - Band listening to right now:
Louis XIV
C - Crush:
Jewish guys like my fiance
D - Dad's name:
Joe
E - Easiest person to talk to:
Marcus, followed by my roommates Jen, Cassie and Heather
F - Favorite bands at the moment:
Louis XIV, Head Automatica, David Byrne
G - Gummy worms or gummy bears?
I really don't enjoy gummy candies.
H - Hometown:
Crockett, which, coming from Highway 4 after dark, becomes the swinging hotspot of
"C ock tt"
I - Instruments:
I used to play piano and lap harp, but I actually have no musical talent
J- Junior High:
St. Patrick School
K - Kids:
I love kids! My cute kid story of the week involves this absolutely adorable one-year-old girl who was in the video store with her parents. She was absolutely serene--a fucking angel. Not a peep from her . . . until she let out this random screech and then was silent again. Her father looked at her and cooed, "Awww . . . are you a Nasgool?" I thought that was so awesome. Really, who compares their child to a flying dragon creature from LOTR?
L - Longest car ride ever:
my last trip to LA, which should not have been a 7 hour drive, but due to LA traffic and a storm on the Grapevine, it was
M - Mum's name:
Dianna
N- nicknames:
there really are too many to list, and most of them are only applied to me by one person at a time
O - One wish:
To publish.
P - Phobia[s]:
clowns, squirrels, failure, stupidity
Q - Quote:
"I miss his pretty white points."--Toni Morrison, Beloved. I put this one down only because I've been reading slave narratives from the Romantic period, and none of those accounts capture slavery as well as Toni Morrison in Beloved. Maybe it's just the 18th century writing style that turns me off, but the above quote absolutely fills me with chills--unlike anything I've been reading lately.
R - Reason to smile:
I made two shirts today for Moon Hamlet, and they are shiny!
S- Last song you heard:
David Byrne's "Miss America"
T - Time you woke up [today]:
9 am.
U - Unknown fact about me:
D.H. Lawrence turns me on.
V - Vegetable you hate:
Fucking peppers. Fuck peppers.
W - Worst habit(s):
worrying too much, getting frustrated with things that are beyond my control, being too forward, my stupid mouth
X - X-rays you've had:
Teeth, and I've had a couple CT scans and an MRI--which is the most frighteningly close to an alien abduction I'll ever be
Y - Yummy food:
Silvergreen's potato cheddar soup, curries from Nirvana, sukiyaki, pizzocheri, my dad's sketti sauce, braised green beans, spicy tofu from Hunan Villa
Z - Zodiac sign:
Capricorn

Hair products galore.

We are sick of being blondey pink. The locks have been lovingly smothered in some brown shade called French Roast. The shade lives up to its name. I think I look rather sultry, if I do say so myself. Others seem to take to it. I make a good brunette.

Picasso, on the other hand, is not such a good blonde. Graham requested that he become the standard bleach-blonde Laurence Olivier type Hamlet. I whimpered, but complied because you do what your director wants. So we died Picasso's hair after fittings on Saturday. Dark haired boys are not meant to be blonde! And we have to keep bleaching so its perfect for the show! I just keep getting these flashbacks of when we tried to die Greg Montoya's hair grey for some anime convention and he, olive-skinned half-Mexican Greg, had bleach-blonde hair for months thereafter. Dark haired boys are not meant to be blonde!

Blonde haired girls, on the other hand, do make fetching brunettes.

Stuff I've Been Reading

In an attempt to be more like British author Nick Hornby (who is 3 for 5 in the books-turned-into-movies ratio), I will now publish a monthly column of Stuff I've Been Reading.

Books I've Read:
How to Be Good--Nick Hornby
Kennedy's Children--Robert Patrick
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates--Tom Robbins
Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For --Frank Miller

Books I've Bought:
The Bell Jar--Sylvia Plath
Ariel--Sylvia Plath
Wintering, a Novel of Sylvia Plath--Kate Moses
Sideways--Rex Pickett
Will in the Word--Stephen Greenblatt
House of Leaves--Mark Z. Danielewsky
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay--Michael Chabon
Ash Wednesday--Ethan Hawke
Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For--Frank Miller

It's amazing that I've finally read all of Kennedy's Children now, after knowing every bit of Carla's part for a good four years. It's a great character play, composed entirely of monologues. A challenge for actors in terms of making each of these characters (especially Sparger) real and a challenge for directors in terms of staging. No character interacts with another (modernist isolation?), so the challenge to a director is to keep this play from being boring to watch. Essentially, the success of the show is determined by just how enthralling your actors can be. I still think Carla and Rona are the best characters in the play, and I still want to play Carla. Again. I also think that, given the uncertainty of our political situation, Kennedy's Children is an excellent way to remind people of the past. There is no Camelot, there are no stars, and the new kids are no use.
Frank Miller is fabulous. All the beauty of a graphic novel with the grit of detective fiction and the themes of noir.
As much as I want to be like Nick Hornby and am half-assedly emulating his monthly rag on books from The Believer magazine, I really don't want to be like Nick Honrby. I've got to say straight off that How to Be Good is certainly not his best. It, like the other book I managed to finish in March, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, attempts to answer grand questions about goodness and spirituality, but the inherent problem in trying to write books about these grand questions of spirituality and goodness is that they are unanswerable questions. Thus leaving me with two books with wholly unsatisfying endings. The Hornby novel takes a very domestic approach to the Grand Questions. It explores the practical means of goodness and spirituality through the eyes of a scientist in a marriage that is rapidly falling apart--until her husband meets a street kid spiritual guru with turtle eyebrow peircings. Hornby's argument in all of this is rather basic: we shouldn't be too hardhearted, nor should we be too softhearted; goodness is measured on an individual level and we can only give what we ourselves don't need. The book had far too simple of scope and far too simple a thesis to receive the kind of praise it was given on the jacket cover. Tom Robbins' novel, on the other hand, we definitely much more interesting than Hornby's in the way it chose to deal with the Grand Questions, but nonetheless disappointing in the end. The ultimate question posed in Fiece Invalids through an intense discussion of the Fatima prophecies (and Robbins' speculation at what the 3rd unknown prophecy might be for the purpose of this book) is the following: which religion will bring the most spiritual satisfaction to the greatest number of people? Along the way, former CIA agent Switters visits several countries, lusts after his 16-year-old step-sister, meets the model for Matisse's Blue Nude, eats his grandmother's beloved parrot, makes love to two defrocked nuns, and receives a shaman's curse that renders him unable to set his feet on the floor. Women love these fierce invalids home from hot climates. By exploring the recent interest in a Marian view of Catholicism, Robbins sets a much more convincing background to attempt to answer the question, and comes up with many great witticisms along the way. However, the question is never really answered. At all. I was really disappointed in the ending, not because the Grand Question went unanswered (because that was arguably on purpose: no greater force can bring us joy/wahoo, we must find that in ourselves). I was more disappointed that the Switters story had come to an end when there was so much more about him that I wanted to know. Maybe just five or six pages more. Some resolution is all I'm asking out of this book. I suppose I just have to make my own wahoo out of the ending.

I am not above star-fucking.

On Easter Sunday, I sat in James Wong's living room and listened to him discuss his problems finding a roller coaster for Final Destination 3. This was naturally proceeded by a discussion of my favorite X-Files episode ever, "The Field Where I Died," which he wrote. James Wong is just the most laid back guy. And he's James Wong! I like knowing people who are known but not Olympian Diety Brad and Jen / J-Lo and Ben status.

Robert Wuhl of Arli$$ is also really chill. And a complete history nerd. But I did not sit in Mr. Wuhl's living room discussing his current work. My fiance' just interns for him. I met Robert in a comedy club in Hermosa Beach after his set, which was a much shortened version of a lengthy comedy-history lecture that he has been touring colleges with and is trying to get picked up by HBO. Robert's thesis for this premeire lecture--entitled "Assume the Position, with Mr. Wuhl"--is that we must assume the position that history is pop culture, and that when a legend becomes fact, we print the legend, therefore propigating the continual miseducation of American schoolchildren. It's totally intriguing, and occasionally hilarious.

There is a charge, a very large charge for a touch or a word...

I heart Sylvia Plath.

And indeed there is a very large charge for a word, because I am a fucking master-mistress of rhetoric.

I just finished a huge paper--can you tell?

The paper on cross-dressing? So last week. I just finished my gigantic term paper for my linguistics class. I don't know how well received it will be, as my research was not exactly discussed at any point during the quarter, but I think it's pretty solid and I should get points for originality. I backed things up with text. There are quotes from people who are much more knowledgeable than I am. I made pretty tables. I think I'll be okay.

Now all that's left is my equally gigantic term-paper, due Friday, on T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland."

I feel quite on top of things, though. I'm on page three (single-spaced) of that one, and there really are no limits as to where I can go with it.

I am not worried.

On the topic of words, though, I must admit that with spring there's come a sort of renaissance for me. I'm reading again--for leisure, not just for class. I wrote a few lines of poetry the other day. I'm journaling--physical and etherial-internet journals alike. It's as though my life had been possessed by someone, something other. I'd been reading a Nick Hornby novel since December. What had become of me? I don't quite know where I was, but in picking up the pen, in my feverish scrawling and my obsessive purchasing of books recently . . . I feel like I'm back in my own skin.

This is what I do. This is why I have a quill tattooed on my ankle. This is why I want words carved into my back like The Woman Warrior.

This feels right.

An immune system would be really nice right now, she said.

My body had to revolt against me sometime.

I'm sick. Crazy body aching sore throat possibly the flu sick. All I have done today is read and sleep.

I am still sweating out the fever.

I'm under the impression that buying things online would make me feel better. Really, I think that being able to hold my head up for more than an hour would make me feel better.

And some stolen soup from the dining commons.

And my fee, but that one's going to be much harder to come by than commodity, culinary delights, and correct posture.

Stop the world I wanna get off.

Item: Medical Condition rears its ugly head. The people at the DMV are complete retards. I have apparently been driving with a suspended license since October. No one at the DMV saw fit to notify me. We are in the process of corrections. This is complete bollucks.

Item: The Ethan Hawke version of Hamlet from 2000 is interesting, and not always in good ways. Hamlet should never be an hour and forty minutes long. Nor should Julia Stiles ever be in any movies at all.

Item: Papers. Three. One complete, titled: "The Last Time I Wore a Dress: Cross-Dressing in Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice." Other two incomplete. One, still untitled, on African-American speech patterns. The other, titled: "I Do Not Find the Hanged Man: Divination in T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland." I feel burned out and exhausted, but something of a true academic. I'm supposed to stop eating and sleeping in the best interest of the field of literary criticism, aren't I?

Sleep is much desired. That or death.

I need to stop reading Sylvia Plath.

Shameless Self Promotion.

Come see . . .

The Vagina Monologues

Friday and Saturday

February 18 & 19, 2005

at 8 pm in UCSB's Campbell Hall

Tickets are $8 and are available at the AS ticket office.

All proceeds will de donated to Women in Iraq, Domestic Violence Solutions and the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center.

We promise women moaning, lots of mention of the word "vagina" and a special transgendered peice that was just written this year for the show by Eve Ensler. (The latter of which I am in and am thoroughly excited about.

Fantastic.

I am so grown up.

I just paid my deposit and signed the first part of my lease for my new apartment.

I am so grown up.

And it is absolutely amazing. 2 bedrooms, 2 bath, with den. New floors. New fluffy blue-grey carpet. New paint. New fridge. New stove. Spacious rooms. Interesting planked ceiling that makes the room a little nautical.

I move in at the beginning of July.

This is really the only joy right now in my overworked, joyless life.

Mind blowing.

I just explained what oral sex was to my grandmother.

Grams: I was watchin' this progrum on younguns havin' sex. And they said that kids as young as 13 were havin' sex and that if they weren't havin' sex they was havin' oral sex. I don't even know that that is!
Stevi: Really?
Grams: Well, no, honey, I don't know about things like that. Do you know what it is?
Stevi: Yeah, Grandma. It's when you pleasure your partner with your mouth . . . instead of your . . . vagina.
Grams: Really? That's what that is? You'd put your mouth down there? My God, I can't even imagine doing that.

Previously, we had been talking about preserves.

Stevi: Grandma, I can't believe I just had a conversation about oral sex with you. Weren't we just talking about preserves? How did we go from preserves to oral sex?
Grams: Well, they're both sticky!

Grandma is so on top of her game.

Of little importance.

Recent Developments:

• Old people backed into my car yesterday, and let me tell you, the old are just as untrustworthy as anyone else. They insist that the nice new bumper-exposing dent in the back of my car was not possibly made by them--despite how fucking hard their huge Oldsmobile may have smacked my car, also despite the fact that the would be backing up on a downward slope, they insist their bumper is too high to hit where it hit. Whatever. They will die soon. And I know that I was a Good Person. I also know they are assholes because they did not even go to check out my car when they hit it, nor did they leave me a note. I repeat that they will die soon. And I am the Bigger Man, though the Sicilian in me wishes them 4 flat tires in the middle of a crowded intersection.
• Vagilogue time draws near. I have so much shit to print.
• Overabundance of work, mere pittance of sleep.
• I hate Ezra Pound. I thought I liked him, but then I read some of the Cantos and decided that, not only is he a total fascist (which we all knew), but that he is also an elitist dick. Yes, switching languages and writing systems in the middle of a poem is kind of cool and interesting, but continually making highbrow references that do not further the message or the content is not cool. I refuse to forgive him, even though he begs me to do so in one of his dying Cantos. It is cool, however, that his middle name is Loomis.
• We have found an apartment! Off-street parking, gated pool, spacious everything, new floors and new plumbing, $380 a month for five people once Heather returns from Japan, and $475 until then--utilities included. I am so grown up.
• I met my idol from musicals of the 1940's on Friday night, and she is still just as funny and talented as she was then. Oh, Betty Garrett, how I love thee.

I'm the green fairy.

Birthday extravaganza took place on Monday, January 3, 2005. 2 chocolate rum cheese cakes, a chocolate cake and a giant Grand Avenue Apple (covered in chocolate, nuts and caramel) were consumed. Also consumed were many Accountants (preferred drink of the girls of 1307: 1 shot of vodka, 1 shot of peachtree schnapps and Martinelli's apple cider; etymology: Marty Schnapski, Your Accountant). Also consumed was an entire bottle of Absinthe. 2nd bottle apparently will never arrive. $60 dollars lost to lying business men. I'll live. But maybe they won't . . .

Good times had by all. The Best Friend and others came down from the Bay area to spend my birthday drunk with me. Best Friend is quoted as saying the following, "You know you've been at a good party when you find your phone the next morning inside the bagel box." His phone was indeed found inside the bagel box.

Cool New Aquisitions:

• Pretty ink stain on my ankle, commonly called "tattoo." Purchased for me by the Best Friend.
• Abstract painting of an Absinthe bottle, courtesy of Corey, made especially for the occasion.

Photos of me being cool and boho can be found here.

Things

Recently ran into Jenrikay at the local military base. We have been in school together forever. Same grade school. Same high school. Same college. But despite how well we get along and like each other and can apparently talk for hours and such, we never hang out. We just read about what's happening in one another's lives via the miracle of weblogs. So I invited her for a birthday drink one we both return to SB. I stole the following survey thing from her blog. Answers supplied are my own.

10 random things about me:

1. I feel like my fashion sense is inferior and invalid whenever I sell clothing to Buffalo Exchange because I know that over half of it will be rejected.
2. I believe that conjunctions are the most misunderstood parts of the English language.
3. I want to name all my pets after great writers. For instance, I would like to own a cat named Geoffrey Chaucer and a bloodhound named Samuel Leghorn Clemmens, sometimes to be called Mark Twain.
4. I am strangely fascinated by carnies.
5. I not so secretly long to be bohemian.
6. I strip for Cassie when I get home late from work.
7. When I attend movies at the Isla Vista theatre, I try to go in costume as much as humanly possible. Examples: I wore my faire garb to LOTR to be Rosie Cotton. I dressed as a pirate for Pirates of the Carribean. I went as Alex to a showing of A Clockwork Orange. And so on.
8. I think D.H. Lawrence is the sexiest writer EVER.
9. I try to associate myself with talented people so that I may feed of their creative glory.
10. I really, really vehemently loathe mushrooms and peppers.

9 places I’ve visited:

1. Sidney, Adelaide & the Blue Mountains, Australia
2. Edinburg & Glasgow, Scotland
3. Tijuana, Mexico
4. London, England
5. various cities (small and large) in Italy
6. New York, New York
7. Anchorage, Alaska
8. the unfortunate state of Missouri
9. Maui and Ouahu, Hawaii

8 things I wanna do before I die:

1. Write a novel. It doesn't have to be good.
2. Do the costume design for a feature-length motion picture.
3. Bear and rear gorgeous and intelligent children and love them ceaselessly.
4. Swim with dolphins.
5. Live a life of the mind.
6. Win a literary prize of some kind.
7. Take a road trip through California or the British Isles, visiting the places famous writers once lived.
8. Ride in a hot air baloon over the Napa Valley.
   

7 ways for a guy to win my heart:

1. Be interesting.
2. Read me poetry.
3. Like both the cinema and the theatre.
4. Sing to me.
5. Know when to be silly and when to be serious.
6. Be a good cuddler.
7. Respect me.

6 things I believe in:

1. The beauty of dreams.
2. That we all must follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bounds of human thought.
3. The power of art to change individuals, if not the world.
4. Soulmates.
5. Reincarnation.
6. Above all things, I believe in love.
   

5 things I’m afraid of:

1. Never having a child.
2. Becoming like my mother.
3. Growing old.
4. Failure.
5. Settling for less.

4 of my favorite things in my bedroom:

1. My Academy Award. (Given to me by my parents on closing night of my last high school play.)
2. My collection of quills.
3. The picture that Bryna took of Marcus and I at a picnic some years ago.
4. My castanets from Spain.

3 things I do everyday:

1. Spend more time than I should on the internet.
2. Mention some random peice of trivia to someone regarding a movie or book.
3. Shower.

2 things I’ve been thinking about constantly lately:

1. That the monstrous earthquake and ensuing tsunamis that ravaged Southeast Asia might be Earth's way of letting us know how burdened she is by the severe overpopulation of this planet.
2. My impending tattoo.

1 Person I want to see right now: Marcus.

Czechoslovakia beware.

My absinthe arrived, minus one bottle. Not that it was broken in shipping or damaged in any way, this second bottle. It was simply missing from the package. The contents of the package were very obviously incongruent with the intendend contents expressed on the packing slip. This is expensive booze. My wrath shall be felt across the Czech Republic.

Results in 2 to 4 weeks.

Now that I am at home, my adventures in hospital vists begin anew.

I really think MRIs are about the fucking scariest things anyone will ever have to experience. The tiny, enclosed space is not the scary part. What I find to be utterly terrifying about MRIs are the whirry, beepy, machiney noises that continue for inordinate amounts of time.

To top off the terror that is getting an MRI, the MRI unit at Kaiser Vallejo is mobile. That's correct. Mobile. As in, in a trailer outside of the hospital. My mother assures me that most MRI units are mobile and in trailers. I assure you she lies to me.

So I am enclosed in a tube, blindfolded, immobilized and surrounded by whirry machiney noises that continue for inordinate amounts of time and in a mysterious trailer. This is pretty much how I imagine a typical alien abduction scenario to be, minus the anal probe.

The internet doesn't check ID.

I just spent an entire paycheck on alcohol.

I think I can officially say now that I live in Isla Vista.

I only fake when I know I'm on tape.

Evil linguistics project is finally done. My approach to research proves very useless. This is what I get for skillfully avoiding research papers for my entire academic career. I will never make it in the honors program.

I have also learned to read things much more carefully from this experience. I had completely forgotten the section on stress and allophones of the language, so I naturally didn't get a recording of it with my speaker. So I faked it. I fucking faked it. And probably poorly, too. But I do not care. It's done. And I do not care.

Resolution for next quarter: take classes with no finals and term projects instead much more seriously.

Graced with the pleasure of my company.

List-form items from my Turkey Trot home.

1. 5.5 hour drives up the California coast are kind of fun when you're alone singing at the top of your lungs. You have a lot of time to meditate on life, the landscape, John Steinbeck novels, and everything you are going to make time for during the precious few days you have at home.
2. New car. Grandmother bought a new car without telling Parents, so upon my arrival at home, I am bestowed with her 2003 Toyota Matrix. Miss Kitty is retired. Lola is in service. I no longer worry about the possibility of my car breaking down on long, contemplative drives up and down the California coast.
3. DMV. My Wednesday-morning research time was spent at the DMV transferring the title and registration of Lola from Grandma to me. 2 hours chillin' at the DMV with my mom. Bonding time.
4. Two Thanksgivings. First half of day was spent with my family. Much wine was involved. They treat me like an adult now. Second half of day was spent with Marcus' family. Much wine was involved. Rousing game of charades.
5. My term project in linguistics continually fucked me up the ass. Precious research time was lost to the DMV, so I spent Friday morning at the Berkeley Public Library. Or, I would have had it been open. I spent 3 hours Friday morning trying desperately to find a book on Armenian. I openly wept at Moe's on Telegraph when I found a grammar from 1990. Salvation!
6. Little Shop of Horrors: Saturday matinee with parents and Marcus. Good over all, but I definitely didn't laugh as hard as when Roommates, Nikki Ferry and I saw a Santa Barbara Junior High production of Little Shop last year, because that shit was hilarious. The show is much funnier with a slightly homosexual 12-year-old as The Dentist and a kid inside the Audrey II with tentacle arms singing the role of the plant. Notable creepiness from this production came in the form of the roots of the Audrey II . . . as they were not animatronic like the final incarnation of the Audrey II, but people. Creepy as all fuck.
7. Useless things acquired at home: movie and book journals, a set of 6 double shot glasses with booze labels on them, $30 worth of lip gloss, November's issue of The Believer, and a Little Shop tee
8. Inventory of friends I saw while at home: Eric, Sean, Steffany, Anders, Jake, Greg Montoya, Bryna
9. Stuff found in the backpacks my parents give the Roommates and I for Xmas: plastic wine goblets (2 silver, 2 gold), an abundance of chapstick, silver wire jewelry boxes, brownie mix, potato chips, 12 headphones (3 for each of us, in 3 different styles), a plush snowman, a chocolate star, toe socks in the following colors/styles: blue with monkeys, pink and purple striped with the words "beauty sleep" on them, blue and green striped with the words "twinkle toes" on them, crazy-ass neon stripes; cough drops

I am no back home in Santa Barbara. Finals approach. The linguistics term project continues to fuck me. I do not enjoy it.