apocalypse later?

[phthalombrage]

Yesterday I finally finished the awful scanner-shredder paper-pushing project. Waiting nervously for the final mailbox shelves to arrive by post...

I got to leave work a half hour early because no one is here and Jeanna couldn't think of anything for me to do, but it was sort of good because traffic on the way out of the South Side was hell. Also, oh god, I own shorts now? I will have to convince myself that they are adequate clothing. But shit, women's clothing, why is shopping for you so harrowing? Saleslady attack force thwarted, the allure of the leopard-print bustier laughable, needing different sizes at different stores and for different classes of garment at the same store (I evidently need smaller shorts than pants and skirts are so goddamn variable, and several stores can't make up their mind about whether or not they're going to use European or American sizing or their own bizarre system? I don't even know what that was.) I think I've finally realized that I probably shouldn't fudge around with sizes, but it wasn't as necessary at the stores I would never be brave enough to enter without Mal, featuring similar music and a selection of clothes marketed to small teenage girls. Still, the snail's-pace traffic was by no measure unbearable, perhaps because 1)Mallory was eerily calm about it, having grown up in a major metropolitan area 2)I wasn't driving and haven't since January 3)neither of us was late for anything or in any particular hurry.

Then belated Mirvish. Was wow, social event that did not make me feel awkward as one should. Formal dress, but laid-back atmosphere. Everyone looked pretty damn ultra-fancy, the food was excellent (appetizers, classed-up spaghettios, poutine, so many delicious desserts!), jcreed provided sweet music for a silent film, and we had fun and silly contests. In the process of these, I revisited the strange vault of contiguous blocks of memorized French I have been accumulating over the years. (Gotta talk to that OIE lady about seeking out native speakers, exchange or otherwise, to speak with. Maybe someday I should try to visit Canada, make pilgrimage to Mirvish's emporium of rare deals, see if Mme Karr is still fattening herself on delicious bread and dreaming of a Québec libre.) After the departure of approximately half of the guests, ghannema and I co-remembered a rolling cummerbund in a Disney film (Peter Pan, perhaps?), and we all ended up watching Bugs Bunny opera cartoons on youtube. It was perhaps one of the most fun evenings of the summer, and definitely the best Mirvish Day party I've ever attended. At home, I glued some googly eyes to my spatula, because few are the things that cannot be improved with googly eyes (see dbesse's Masquerade Ball mask, whenever we ever actually do or do not hold one).

Dreams were weird, though. Transported my cat (uncharacteristically docile) in a backpack (without suffocation) to "CMU", which looked like a combination of the Catho in Angers, backstage at various theatres of my childhood, the museums and Wean Hall of my dreams and pre-Pittsburgh imagination, a construction site, and the skateboarding venues from my brother's video games (in other words, nothing like actual CMU). At one point, I confused my cat with chrisamaphone's kitty and some other random black and white kittens that don't actually look like her. Strangely I had remembered food for her (I didn't exactly remember packing it), and delivered her to my puzzlingly grateful and uncritical mother. My brother was also around? There was also one of very very few sex dreams I have ever had (my brother was no longer around, nor was my mother, thank gods), but it was like drunkenly trying to unlock a door for which you don't even have the correct key. Perhaps I have been putting away too many keys this week and having too much trouble with locks.

Tonight we're supposed to have a partnering class with some dude from Attack. I am mal à l'aise, but quand même intrigued. Sometimes I wonder if I am trying too hard at unnatural things (ironic because I used to do ballet, canonically "beautiful" but with a very unnatural vocabulary of movement), trying to be "more than just a dancer." A lot of people at CMU seem to be doing the inverse, "more than just a particle physicist", "more than just a biomedical engineer". I wonder if that is even preferable? I suspect I am natively more of an artist than I am letting myself be with my choices at school, and sometimes I wonder if I am just building the channels that will spit me out in the slaughterhouse, a peaceful winding journey, like those designed for the comfort of cows by that hug-machine autist, Temple Grandin. I don't know if I can imagine being a scientist by trade, but I know my life would fall to ruins if I seriously pursued any art (I am timid, statistically unremarkable, not prone to self-promotion, have no significant financial reserves to fall back on). So yeah, fun journey ahead of me, particularly this semester as I try on the guise of materials scientist/engineer for the first time with conviction. Outcome to be determined, though. Best plan seems, as always, to be shut up, don't think too hard about it, and see where things go. I can always end up doing something crazy (and in fact it seems likely that I might), but if it EVER involves stirring the sauce with my arm, fail, abort, retry.