A Paved Road Runs Through It

A week ago, after numerous pained deliberations, I made my journey home. If I could have, I would have stayed in my apartment with Meemee, worked at Macy's, and played all day, but unfortunately the idiots who make the rules over at UPS still dictate my life. My participation in the Spring 2006 commencement ceremony was lies, all lies! I hold no bachelor's in English LIterature, and I shan't until I complete this American Sign Language class. Even then, because of some incredibly pointless rule, I won't offically graduate until Spring 2007 even though I'm taking and completing the class this fall. Those uptight bastards. One final twist of the dagger before they push me out the door into the realm of... reality.

Some of you may know that I was considering moving Chicago or Denver. It turns out Chicago was a case of bad timing, so I went to visit Denver with Debbie on our second romantic vacation. It turns out Denver was a case of being way too ghetto for my taste but right before we left we went through Boulder, which is definitely more my kind of town. I'm keeping Univ. of Colorado as a possibility for grad school, so the trip wasn't a total waste. The point is, moving somewhere random alone and having to deal with the stress of finishing my degree, finding a job and a place, and paying the rent was not something I needed to deal with at the moment, so home was pretty much the only option (no matter how much I tried to deny it all summer.)

So on a cool Tacoma evening, a mere two days after dearest Daebi departed for D.C., I absconded with (most of) my earthly possessions. Grande vanilla latté in hand, I headed for Portland and arrived at Auntie Joanie's empty house close to 2AM (just like that song used in the totally awesome episode of Grey's Anatomy where George helps Dr. Bailey give birth while McDreamy is doing brain surgery on her husband and Meredith has her finger on a bomb in some guy's chest...yeah, you had to be there.)

In the morning whilst watering the petunias and gathering the mail, I struck up an odd conversation with a balding, fourtysomething runner taking a breather in the middle of the street--apparently he is at the point in his career where he's well aware of the absence of any upward movement, and he strongly recommends that I do "whatever comes most naturally," careerwise that is. This trend for random conversations continued well throughout the day: outside of Powell's (where I bought 13 "new" books) with a spandex-clad biker; a nosey gas station attendent; a pair of middle aged women road-trippin to pass the time; and bunch of other secondary characters.

To be more concise, here is my trip home in bullet points:

DAY 2 (DAY 1 being packing and driving to P-town)
• Drove from Portland to Tillamook via the Tillamook Nat'l Forest. Many trees.
• Driving down the 101, Cali here I come. Stopped in Hebo, OR for lunch before finally glimpsing the coast. Ah glorious water.
• Took a gander at Boiler Bay and just happened to see a grey whale spouting no more than 20 ft. offshore. It swam lazily about for quite some time. Apparently the whales like to come here to rub against the rocks to get barnacles and other unwelcome critters off their backs.
• Saw and smelled a truck load of pinnipeds at the Sea Lion Caves near Florence, OR. Shared the elevator with a Korean family of nine children + the eldest girl's Celtic descendant boyfriend.
• Almost plunged to my death watching a bald eagle fly by.
• Pulled over for speeding not once, but TWICE and I didn't get a single ticket--thank Zeus for my Berkeleys.

DAY 3
• Goodbye sales-tax-free Oregon!
• Squeezed in some tidepooling at one of the first Cali beaches I saw. Admired crabs, starfish, and fed a mussel to a sea anenome.
• Ambled down the Avenue of the Giants near Humboldt. Walked a fallen redwood and communed with a blue jay who was using my car as camoflage.
• Passed through Benbow, CA and the Benbow Inn, a place I once stayed with my mom when we visited my sister at sleepaway camp. She was a counselor named Gator, and I was subsequently named Gatorade or some other derivative.
• Dramatically announced my arrival back home with much horn-honking and engine-revving. Boy were the folks surprised! Did I mention that I neglected to mention to my parents that I was coming home?
So was my solitary adventure. In retrospect, it was really quite Bill Bryson-esque, minus the cool British people.

And so my life is right back where it was four years ago. I'm at community college five days a week (for ASL and choir), no degree to speak of, unemployed, living at home with my animals, hanging out with my babies, my friends are all elsewhere and...yeah. That's it! Who knows, maybe things will change soon. Until then, I'll be laying in my house watching tv, seriously depressed that the sun goes down a whole hour and a half earlier than I've been used to all summer.

The is NOT the Pajama Game! Who do I look like, Harry Connick Jr?

Why have I been repeatedly ambushed by semi-strange people while I am scantily-clad in my nightgown?! It went something like this each time:

Well, it would certainly be much more titillating this way. In reality, the other day Debbie came over (expected) with Heesun and Lily (unexpected.) Just tonight, Rebecca came over (unexpected) with her one and only cousin Cody (really super unexpected.) It was just a little embarrasing for me and didn't really end in any hijinks that would look good played in a montage with some sweet pop song playing in the background.

In my defense, I'm often found in my jammies now since I work an early morning shift at Macy's. Seven AM may not be super early for some, but it's certainly early for one who is a social butterfly such as moi.

If I were Mimi Marquez from Rent, I would rectify the situation by performing my famous lawn chair-handcuff dance, while clad only in bubble wrap, to the sounds of ice tea being stirred.

Viva la vie boheme!

An update of sorts, if you will.

In May, I walked the stage posing as a spring 2006 graduate from the University of Puget Sound. It was all a lie! I still have one class left to take--American Sign Language II. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed "graduating" one seat away from Debbie in the boiling heat. (Traditionally, it rains every year for commencement, but somehow we lucked out.) I had a large cheering section with the usual familial suspects, my mom's cousins from Texas, and my own (engaged) cousin.

After grad, I had to rush back to Cali to take care of my animalés, because my parents had ever so thoughtfully booked their European vacation a mere three days after the ceremony. I probably didn't mention this earlier, but I did end up keeping that gorgeous kitty kat, who I named Nox after the Roman personification of the night. I discovered that he does quite well in airports and on airplanes when I had to fly him home. Anyway, he's all settled in at my El Cerrito residence, and he absolutely adores his new brothers and sisters; he tortures them endlessly. Unfortunately, Gila (my super-fat, black cat) is less than entralled with the new arrival and will most certainly take some time getting used to the situation.

I paid my dues for three weeks before returning to my homies in da northwest biotché! Some bullet points:
• I got the stomach flu the second day I was back, compliments of Shay. Fun times.
• Despite that minor fact, Debbie, Rebecca, and I went to Auntie Joanie's in Portland for some Powell's, hot tub soaking, and...hiking(?!) Yes, we hiked to the top of Multnomah Falls.
• Watched a slew of movies and tv shows (thank you Netflix.) I watched the first season of Alias, and I fully intend to watch the entire series before the summer's up.
• I've also made sure to enrich my mind so it doesn't all go to mush. I've been reading a lot of fun British fiction and studying for the GRE.
• For Debbie's birthday, we went on a romantic lesbian vacation to the San Juan Islands. Actually, no one else could make it, but come on, she booked us for a sunset kayak! I'll admit it was fun even though I lost feeling in my feet. Oh, and National Geographic taped us for a segment on Good Morning America which never aired. We would've been number 7.
• Oh, and I got a job at Macy's. I'm a dressing room.. attendent... thingy. I don't do sales, but I may have to interact with customers. Boo. I start tomorrow, so I'll let y'all know how it goes.

That's pretty much it--my life in three, rambling paragraphs.

To finish, my latest obsession:
I saw it once on its first US tour, back in '96-7, and I liked it, but it took 10 years and one mediocre movie to make me realize that I <3 Rent! My new life dream is to play Mimi--not on Broadway, just in front of people...real ones, not imaginary.

To days of inspiration
Playing hookey, making
Something out of nothing
The need to express-
To communicate,
To going against the grain,
Going insane, going mad
To loving tension, no pension
To more than one dimension,
To starving for attention,
Hating convention, hating pretension
Not to mention of course,
Hating dear old Mom and Dad
To riding your bike,
Midday past the three-piece suits
To fruits - to no absolutes-
To Absolut - to choice-
To the Village Voice-
To any passing fad
To being an us for once ... instead of a them!!
LA VIE BOHEME!

Mmm, salty tears

Weird but fuckin' hilarious

http://www.cryingwhileeating.com/

I think I'll go eat some cheesecake and cry about the final episode of the Golden Girls.

My Friend Flicka

No, I did not get a horse, but yes, I have a new friend. He has no name, but he's the handsomest bugger you ever did see.

It was merely by chance that kitty came into my life. As I like to tell it, a friend of a friend of a friend found this little baby kitty wandering around the lonely streets of Tacompton. They tried to find his mommy or where he came from but to no avail. Finally it was decided that the friend of the friend (who has nine brothers and sisters and seven chinchilas) could not keep the kitty, and if nothing was done with it before the next morning they would simply put him back where they found him. Enter my brilliant friend Meemee who thinks to call me, lover of all animals and future crazy cat lady. She knows that I will take the kitty in without hesitation and of course I do.

I was beside myself, not really sure what to do with him. My original plan was to take him to the humane society the following morning before any bonds were forged betwixt us, but that obviously didn't happen. When I discoved that the humane society in fact does NOT employ a no-kill policy, that became out of the question. Instead, I devoted myself to finding someone who would love and care for kitty unconditionally. Though the offers were slow coming, I finally found two very willing and capable souls. Unfortunately, there haven't the time nor space to care for the kitty, so he is temporarily in my care.

The more I'm with him, the more he grows on me. I think I'm in love. I'm doomed (and somewhat pathetic and obviously man-less and single.)

I keep on fallin'...literally

Oh how time flies. Just last weekend I was relaxing in the hot tub at Auntie Joanie's house in Portland, and today I'm taking my memory midterm and nursing my physical and emotional wounds at Debbie's house, the new home of my old tv. Let me take a few steps back.

Many of my nights this week were spent at Debbie's house on the air mattress, because I needed to escape the bad karma that besieges my apartment. Once upon a time my apartment was a happy, jolly place where we were safe and could escape the pressures of school and life. But alas, this is no more. Now there is just an apartment that is a shell of its former gay and carefree self. Sigh.

Speaking of gay, I had my first private voice lesson with James. I'm not really sure how it went though. He seemed really jolly and happy to be working with me, but I swear I saw him flinch every time my voice broke on the high notes. Anyway, he's an awesome teacher and even though there's only two months left (!) I think it will be time well spent. More than improving my voice, my main objective is to bond to him. Then maybe I can work on Jonathan (Stockdale) and we can all become best girlfriends. Oh, a girl can dream, can't she?

The original point of my post was to talk about two unusual things that happened to me in the last 24 hours:

1) I got a talking-to in class today. Wallace Weston, you are forever on my bad side. Okay, so this guy is always making terrible jokes and most of the time I'm half listening, but today I was trying to study for my memory exam. I noticed him say something about "noisy" and look at me. I smiled at him, thinking he made some dumb joke again. And then two minutes later he said, "That really needs to stop. It's very distracting and it needs to wait until after class." Then I realized he was talking about the pastry I was eating from a paper bag. As if I was the first person to ever eat a pastry in his class. That pisses me the hell off!!

2) Last night Debbie and I were in search of the perfect ice cream. We stopped by Safeway and they didn't have B&Js on sale so I bought us some "buy one, get one free" roses (such a good deal!). Yellow with orange tips for Debbie and whitish with pink tips for me. Yeah, so we decided to check Albertson's to see if any of the ice cream was on sale. It was coldish and deserted-ish and late-ish, so Debbie started to run for the store. Stupid me, I started to run after her. Well, can you guess what happened? I blame the flip flops! Needless to say, I'm really super glad no one else was around, and I have two scraped knees, a cut foot and two raw hands to show for my raging desire to eat ice cream while I studied for memory.

Oh my life! There should be a law against my level of specialness.

Who am I?

You are spoon guy. You should have planned ahead

buddy, or packed a bigger lunch.


which rejected character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla