(no subject)

Listening to Angie and Jeanna's radios at work makes me think about music.

They listen to punky rock stuff from the 90s and beyond, the same station, with ads for beer and sex toys, go Pens, with aggressive drums, wailing electric guitars and growling men who want you to tie them to the bedpost. (I imagine them all there at once, like so many ignored dogs or helium balloons for sale...) I kind of giggle because Angie looks too old for this; it's the sort of thing Mal listens to when she's angsting. But I guess she was 20 in the 90s or something. I don't actually know how old she is.

My musical taste is a mess and far too heavily influenced by dance. I like music I can dance to. Clearly, this varies. Chris was hating on the "I like coffee, I like tea, I like the java jive and it likes me" when we were "swing dancing" today (super basic; in fact, a step we learned was called "the basic", one of... four?), but I have a special fondness for that song because when I was little, my dance studio included that song in a huge jazz piece with a giant coffee cup that michelle hammar popped out of... and it's got a little groove to it. :P I'ma try to get my brother to transfer my old dance recital videos from VHS to DVD for me before we go to Boston so I can take them back with me and watch all the crazy/awesome pieces and fast forward through the little children unless I see the notorious lost shoe or other entertaining archetypal childlike capers. Summer birthday is the excuse. And plans to swing dance more, with others, are forming with Hayley. (Chris is damn uncoordinated. I figure it's a public service to to least get him to be able to identify the beat in a piece of music. :P And maybe notice the female instructor's ass, because I sure did. I would have to be more stern with him if this were a latin class, a dance form pretty much all about the female ass, as far as I can tell.) Anyway, not the hugest fan of their radio selection, but it beats construction noises from down the hall and puts my mind on other things (the dyals: why did jon hate eminem so much that he left the room at the congres dance, this song reminds me of cheesy dance schools from central florida, this song is drunken stepdad back of a truck sort of music, hockey is a sacrifice of blood and bone and teeth) than just the green hanging file, orange file, manila file for each employee of the department (a color scheme only sexy if it's 1974).

Some email someone sent to some staff at some point posted on the side of some piece of furniture at FMS contained a stanza of a robert frost poem, I noticed, not terribly comprehensively, as I signed out five packets of keys. There is a poem stapled to a post at Forbes and Craig; the author is local and has talent. I thought I should like to leave a poem in my sock drawer for nobody to find, kind of like what mallory told me about how victoria's secret is about "loving yourself" (not "sluttiness", to my surprise) because she has cute underwear nobody sees and can't find a plain white bra there.

Little pains in my forehead and behind my eyes would be an array of leds if I were a robot. Caffeine indicator light, from the tea I apparently drink daily now, cold indicator light, triggered by a lemon and vanilla gelati, other little lights I wish I could identify, why don't I have them labeled, pinned down on the dissecting pan, this is where I feel pain, sitting on a bench in a bus shelter in the rain? If we don't watch out, someday robots will hurt, and look at us through sad eyes, shaking their metal heads at what it is to be truly humanoid, cycling through various colors of pain. If we don't watch out, someday robots will love. I suspect, however, this is beyond our meager capabilities. I don't have high hopes for robots; they just sound cool. And probably wouldn't even be made of metal if they were advanced enough to sneer at us with passion! But then where do you stick the magnets (Protip: not in your ass)?

Also, oh god, what are they thinking? People are so crazy! Why is it so hard to come to your senses? Oh yeah, crazy.

Additionally, if things are going well, don't be filled with dread of what's to come. It's a good policy. Then things might actually not blow up and burn you. Or it will just be a grand old surprise when they do.

Sometimes I feel like I'm lying to myself if I say I'm happy. Note: also not a great policy. But when you grow up being told only retarded people are happy by a woman who worked with them, you feel smart when you are miserable as fuck. Not the best feedback loop.

It could be so much better; it could be so much worse. But it is how it is, and you've got to like that. Not try to like that. Like that. Things are mutable here, disposable here, some still waiting to be revealed. Things work out in my life. Even though my old French teacher hates me now (my fault, I spoke English and did physics homework in her class because I was bored and arrogant and didn't appreciate all I had; she probably believes my mother now when she tells her I am a horrible daughter and that I really didn't deserve to participate in that exchange program back in tenth grade, and night still think I shouldn't have had a job and should have had a curfew, but at least I didn't chew gum, horror of horrors), I will never forget what she told me. Things happen for a reason. God knows why, and when I say that, I mean that nobody knows why. But there is a reason, nobody-damn-it. Things are going fairly well. I don't get to bitch, and I am in for the ride. So I'll stop bitching now.

(no subject)

Talked to Jason Wolf today at work. I'm not sure what to call him because he is not a professor. I like him. I told him about how I just finished alphabetizing 2000-2009 theses, and he told me about a MechE he had as a workstudy. He always apologized to the kid when he didn't have much for him to do and just had him sweep or something, but he said the boy was glad, especially after an exam, to do work that didn't require thought. But it's not the kind of thing you want to do for your whole life. His own father was a mail carrier, and he didn't understand how one could be happy just delivering letters and parcels one's whole life, but the answer was simple and understandable. His dad was aiming for perfection; to deliver his mail the best and most efficiently he could. This resounds with me as I make tabs for hanging files that were only ordered today (the ones that arrived this morning were legal size instead of letter), feeling guilty for not having standardized the last name, first name, middle name? middle initial? formatting on the labels and for not having decided the scheme for orange folder-tabs until partway through the Bs. Anyway, he said he might have work for me, maybe not, and I said it was cool; that's how things seemed to be going anyway this summer, and my fall housing situation was kind of like that at the moment. He also asked if I wanted to work in the lab, what about during the school year. This is the part where Nicole is supposed to say, "Oh, golly, sir, would I?!" I think I muttered something about I don't know how the workload is next semester; I have experience with office work and applied for that because I thought I stood a chance. So next time I know what to say... Seriously, I am a spaz.

I remember what my brother said when I talked to him yesterday: "Who needs to go to college when I could just go start a couple businesses and make more than mom and dad combined? My ambition is pretty much shot to shit." First of all, it is not terrifically difficult to make more money than our parents. Second of all, who gives a shit how much money you make? I must shake my head at this boy.

I also collected signatures from two profs. I like Professor Rollett because he had a yellow and white polka-dotted tie and pinstripe pants and black sockfeet and talked to himself as he signed and sent me a nice email a while back. Really it was the tie. Damn. The other two were absent from their offices.

I updated the .plan, but hush, I did it in Windows and have to fix the line-breaks from the Cluster sometime. I have some scans as well. The first of each is a color scan, second greyscale. I can't decide which I like better. Greyscale looks a little funny and bluish to me, but I feel like it brings out more of the contrast present in the original drawings and catches a bit more of the details. Maybe. They are currently somewhat HUGE so you can pick at my drawings and tell me things to fix. Liz's could use more smoothness, especially in the background. Lots of dark coloring blunted my ebony pencil, heh.

( csawyer )

( ehohenst )

( labbott )