Fleeting moment of self-awareness today:

We accept living in relative poverty and chic-bleak surroundings because we have something that no Escalade-driving middle aged real-estate agent has: youth. It is a constant source of strength, smugness, and justification for our bohemian existence. It is our priceless and fragile commodity.

The eternal darkness and cold is wearing on me. Today I started planning my garden—it is one of the few things that can make me forget that I live in a place I hate for 1/3 of the year.

I plan on having a splendiferous garden, full of heirloom vegetables and herbs and flowers and magic! Well, maybe not magic. But I certainly plan on buying the plastic molds in the shape of president’s heads so I can grow some Nixon and Carter tomatoes. Que indígena?

I have spent the last couple of days at work (ugh) and translating and IPA-ing some Swedish texts for my Sibelius set. PS, the Swedish chef on the muppets was not an exaggeration.

Also I am highly anticipating the arrival of my Jacques LeGuerney CD, and a tape of songs called “Reality Sandwiches” (text by Ginsberg).

Tomorrow portends my doom: 2.5 hours of class, a voice lesson, 5 hours of work, 2 hours of tutoring. Although judging by the (seemingly representative) mouth-breathing, intellectual tundra girl who is incapable of fathoming analogies that sits in front of us in class; i.e, “how can you make that comparison, a mousetrap isn’t even alive”—my evolution test tomorrow morning should be a breeze.

There's a boy I know

Craiger brought me some Häagen-Das black raspberry chip after a shitty Monday.

I love him.

(I know you are going to comment: "Um, I vomited in my mouth a little." Robyn)

And yes, the title is an allusion to a Whitney song.

Insomnia inspired Harvard dictionary of music perusing motivated me to formulate a sketch for an underwater opera.

I suppose Scriabin has the choke-hold on outer space performances, and Stockhausen has a monopoly on helicopter string ensembles.

But underwater opera—that’s where it’s at baby.

Can you imagine Aida with fanned-out hair that hangs listless in the water, or Billy Budd with sea-soaked clingy overalls?

Ok I’m done. I’m just sayin’…

Dick in a box

1) Cut a hole in a box

2) Put your junk in that box

3) Make her open that box

And that's the way you do it!

(I had fun time at trops/shattered/"el rauncho" tonight!)

"Cher, our stock would plummet"

Had a wonderful and relaxing Christmas at home: I mostly played monopoly with my little sisters, and watched fox news (lol) with my parents. Got BioGen stock from my parents, a scissor sisters poster from Craiger, and a Schlitz beer Saturn-shaped light fixture thing from Al.

It will be displayed prominently and lovingly as a document to the silly shit my brother is always doing.

My break consists of getting my QTL mapping on 10+ hours a day, working out, writing some goddamn stupid personal statements for a huge scholarship—one of those “you know I deserve the money so just give it to me” things.

Have been listening to a lot of Cecelia lately. Definitely a fan, if just for sheer originality, even though her voice is not without some pedantic controversy.

Taking Zipper to the dog park in the morning to play with Robyn and Molly. Hopefully Zipper will keep it in his pants—metaphorically that is, as he doesn’t wear actual pants because he is a fucking dog.

Love.

Getting drunk at work on a Friday afternoon, riding my bike home in the snow, and listening to Freder-Deder and Schwarzkopf sing Wolf's Spanische Liederbuch is my favoritest thing *ever*.

SNOW DAY!

Woke up to find my 8+ months pregnant roomie, Mey-ru shoveling her car. Since I didn't feel like driving a woman in labor to the hospital, I finished the driveway. Heavy snow=back-ache.

Pouty pirate?

Encouraged by a dance remix of Holiday, I spent the *entire* day compiling our project for molecular: the Ultrabithorax gene in drosophila, and if I do say so myself, that it is a manifesto.

What am I going to do tommorrow?

Woke up in a cold sweat this morning before my alarm.

Had a dream where the "very hungry" snake that I had "forgotten" in my backpack for several weeks got out and was chasing the dean of the school of music and biting him. I was running in circles on Lowry mall while the snake stretched like an rubber band to chase me from the horizon.

Surreal?

Oh, and it had the colorings of a coral snake, but the body morphology of a green mamba. All skinny and menacing like.

What is it with the Grow boys and snake dreams?

----

Watched Transamerica with Manda at her request for her term project about transsexual parents.

Me at work, on my phone: "Well, do you know any transsexual parents?"

Kevin Zegers...mmm

No one came to my tutoring session tonight, so I had some down-time. Which I spent very unproductively looking at the fluorescent lights and trying to feel my DNA undergoing transcription.

Hey, there it goes!

Woops, false alarm.

Sang a Mozart duet with Becca at the Chancellor’s Residence Preservation Society’s “Italian Garden Party”—aka, how to raise $100,000 to fix up your own house. I was prepared for gratuitous hobnobbing and mingling after being warned of what a “little get-together” for these people usually entails by Craiger—who regularly did things like this with FAWCM.


Many expensive and exotic birds about, including one woman (while dressed to the nines, make-up applied with a paint roller and all, double fisting a wine glass + a program) told us: I would applaud, but I don’t a free hand. [Insert Phyllis Diller laugh, head tilted back 90۫)

Fabulous.

Later we ran into her and she said in passing (still holding the Chardonnay aloft as a liberty torch of sorts): “Went to the Peking opera last weekend. It was horrible. Never go.”

Absolutely fabulous.

All in all, fun (if insincere) atmosphere for performing—and amazing food.

********

Wore my glasses to work tonight, and when leaving Tucker, I scraped a university van parked all of about 4 inches to my right. Got out and explained to the guy that I “can’t see a fucking thing with these goddamn glasses on”. He seemed very nonchalant and reassured me he could care less about a scratch.

While not hitting parked cars today I, in short:
1) Went to work
2) tutored
3) practiced
4) had Die Zauberflöte rehearsal
5) Went to class
6) made a marinated artichoke heart, calamari olive, tomato, feta, red onion, evo, and lemon basil (picked from my front porch, thank you very much) salad to go with my roast beef and tahini-dijon sandwich tomorrow.

Played beer pong with Champagne while listening to Tchaikovsky (= V for Vendetta).

I’ve planted the seeds of incongruity in my life—now all I have to do is harvest them.

Had a fabulous weekend:
Played with zipper, Craig’s new miniature Schnauzer puppy Saturday morning then went to see half-naked men wearing short shorts with Robyn. I mean, went to watch the Rugby game with Robyn. Right...

Went to Shatterday—it was fun, but I required more libations than usual to coerce the dancing. Acted a damn fool, but that’s what Shattered is for I guess. (PS, starting to feel disdain for Saturdays=such a plebian evening, with all the working blokes out and such)

Spent most of Sunday reading the A/L from the Times. And practicing. And doing homework. And at work.

So far everything is going well with me this semester. However, I am freaking about my recital in a month (mostly because the last Poulenc I’m working on are total bitches technically). But classes are going well, opera is going well, work is going well, etc.

Haven’t had the usual major autumnal flip-out that I am accustomed to, so that might be in the making. Prends garde-toi.

Thanks to Mands, I have the new scissor sister's album. And I listened to it *all* day. I have a love in my heart for Jake Shears, because I feel like I really "get" him and what he does. Sighs.

I also watched La Dolce Vita and now am planning to embark on a Netflix induced Fellini fest. If anyone wants to laboriously discuss the movie with me over coffee in a dark jazz house while we wear our side-cocked berets...I'm in.

 
Picture of my ken-doll boyfriend, Craig.

 
Later at Trops where Craig wore the great-googly-moogly Robynesque glasses.

 
Craig, me, and our new friend Emily making "contemplative" faces.

Show me your bones

Wow, it’s been a while. I’ve been busy. Doing what, you ask?

Ripping up the carpet in my new house, scraping the latex paint off my woodfloors, then sanding them (by hand), staining and polyurethane-ing them. Moving in. Working 40 hours a week while starting my senior year, tutoring at the Learning center, training new rotation students, picking out a recital date (OMG!), and trying to start reviewing for the GRE.

Oh, and getting Mediacom to turn on our internet. How I lament them and their monopolistic/exploitive ways.

The good news is I abso-fucking-lutely love my new house, Rachel, and Me-Ru (my two roommates). Hopefully I’ll post some pictures of my bedroom—decorated in a “natural fiber” motif.

I used the approach developed by Manda and I to buy fireworks to select paint for my room. The walls are “pond-lilly green”—as I told Mandy, “gay-in-a-bottle”. I know Alexis would be proud.

I have to go practice some opera before meeting Craiger and assorted straights at the Coliseum for some well-deserved Bombay Saph. G&Ts.

Ah the pathos!

Sparked by Garet’s post lamenting more of the same—I have finally congealed my opinion of the package shipping industry.

When our lab ordered Red-Taq, a DNA polymerase that costs $1000/30mL, DHL let shipments sit on their 95 degree truck overnight. Needless to say, the taq was worthless. Our lab didn’t have to pay for this of course—by DHL had to eat the cost. This happed 3 times.

When I order something from Amazon.com, if I don’t explicitly specify on the shipping instructions to put the package in my mail-box, the UPS guy will make attempts to deliver it to my locked door every day at 7AM for 4 days—when it’s company policy to send the item back. This happened 4 times. Seriously…mail goes in mailboxes.

So, what’s a girl to do?

Well, I could get mad and call some 800 number and talk to some phone-zombie in Nebraska, or I could examine the larger social implications of this phenom.

Really, the same thing has happened with the medical industry. When my grandmas were entering the job market, it wasn’t acceptable for intelligent women to be doctors. So they became teachers and nurses. Nowadays there isn’t a barrier to keep competent women from becoming doctors, so that leaves a void in positions that used to be stricty “for the girls”--teachers, nurses, etc.

All the capable men—men who when given a job use common sense to efficiently accomplish it—don’t work for DHL, Fedex, UPS. They are now CEOs. America has been invaded by the “duhs”.


As we all know, I can’t go 5 minutes without being some pansy queer, so I will negate any intellectual worth of what I just wrote.

Here’s this. YUM.

 

The song is "Send me an angel" by Real Life. But Sarah and I could both swear that they said, "send me an Asian."

Boy, does that conjure a bizarre mental image.