Uhhh... exactly.

Here is the other reason I am a huge geek. I'm obsessed with the show Drake & Josh on TeenNick. Seriously. Have I mentioned this before? I friggen' love that show. I get so excited when I'm flipping channels and it's on. It's seriously hilarious! But anyway, I was watching it today and I realized that in every episode, Drake and Josh are both talking about one topic in two separate frames on the screen. Both of them have such opposing ideas of whatever the subject matter is and this is a lead-in to the episode. It hit me today, watching while I babysat, that the entire show is based on the fact that Drake and Josh are stepbrothers who are polar opposites of each other. This makes the show the entertaining, movement-driven thing that it is! And it's never hit me before until I was considering revising a story I had started with a basis of "opposites." So, yay for awesome TeenNick shows and Kayleigh being a great big loser for loving them.

I enjoyed my Fiction 2 class today. It was a good change of pace. We talked about VTech again, a little random conversation here and there, and then we went right into a pretty long workshop which was okay. I like what I worked on so we'll see how it goes, even though it's not related to anything I'm currently doing. Maybe it'll stand on it's own or maybe I'll rework it and use it in the novel. Whichever it is, it was fun and different to write and kind of refreshing. But what I liked mostly about our class today is that we didn't END with a workshop. The workshop was in the middle and we ended by reading student work. I think I liked this because I didn't, for once, leave the class feeling completely drained from writing, reading, recalling, leaving. I hope for the last two weeks it works like that - I'd be highly pleased. And also, I've finally taken to a few of the kids in the room other than Matt. It only took me thirteen weeks. And now the semester is practically over. I wish I was more social and open to people. Haha. A lot of the kids in that class are hilarious, though, and carry on pretty interesting conversations. Of course, there's still the handful that... well, we won't go there.

I'm heading to bed. I'm working on four hours of sleep annnnd tomorrow I will not be home for more than five minutes between 6:20am and 9:30pm. Exciting.

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(April 22th, 2007. 10:47pm.)

I know you've been around.

Today was a waste. I did absolutely nothing of importance except sleep.

I went through and read all of my LiveJournal entries since the beginning of the Fall '06 semester. I am a depressing person. My life is like a grade-D teen flick. And I am dramatic beyond all reasoning. Ooh, I'm going to sleep now.

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(April 22th, 2007. 12:33am.)

These ice cream scoopers look like... oh god.

Two revelations.

One. I'm never going to have a traditional wedding. If I get married at all, that is. Friday night, my mom hosted a wedding shower for a girl from our work. Picture almost 30 women, grouped in an age range of 19-26 and then mid-30s-50s. Put in cocktails, food, and sexual references to almost anything said by anyone, and you've got my coworkers in my living room/kitchen from 6pm-midnight. Thank god for Kelly and jell-o shots. But yeah, all in all, it made me realize that I could never do that for myself. No thanks.

Also. Tonight was Prom at my high school. I only remembered that as I was babysitting and continually heard cars speeding down the road, blaring music and shouting. Then it dawned on me that the school had been covered in toilet paper last night. And duh, hello, Prom. I stopped reading (because I'm now one hundred pages through the second HP book) and sat and contemplated last year's Prom. How it's this big built up thing, you look forward to it all your life (well, not if you're me, but generally most of the population does) and then it's not even that amazing. I don't know why I'm even ranting about this. Maybe it's just because it's so weird that Prom was a year ago. A full year ago. And my first year of college is almost over. Where does the time go? I just don't know.

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(April 19th, 2007. 10:10pm.)

Darling, darling, darling, salvation.

So let's put some things into perspective here:

don't think I have to say anything more about this to be perfectly honest, but I'm going to. Because when I wake up in the morning, 75% of the time I am not happy when I look in the mirror. And I know I should be. And you should be, too. And I know saying all of this won't change much of anything at all, but maybe we should all collectively begin to put forth the effort to change our perspectives? To stop hating ourselves and start caring about the important things? Stop with the vanity and the unnecessary self-loathing. Take it from Kelly Clarkson, you don't need to be a size two to be happy, successful, and beautiful.

Today I joined in a Birthday lunch with a few adults. The Birthday girl? My eighty year old neighbor, otherwise known as Stelle, otherwise known as my third grandmother. As well, her daughter (hello, Suzanne!), my immediate neighbor Patty (hello, too!/hello, Kara!), and my mother. So, three middle aged women, an elderly woman, and myself. The stories alone were hilarious ("men, men, men!!!") and the food was excellent (mmm gnocchi & desserts). But mostly, I just liked the fact that I didn't stick out like a sore thumb. I was a happy camper today.

Stupidly, however, I continued from lunch to work and wore high heels. Two hours into work, I was almost in tears. My body was actually physically shaking from pain. Luckily, the night manager and department head that were closing are both young and awesome (and the DH is very good friends with my mother and was in the same room as I was) and thus, I was allowed to take my shoes off in the downtime and chill behind the counter instead of walking around greeting everyone. Hurrah for that! I did, though, have the most needy customer in the world within the first hour - I went up and down the stairs for her twice, walked her around the entire store at least twice as well, and she ended up buying nothing. As well, she accidentally broke two items. *flails*

I think my iPod is dying. It's had a good run. It's usually when I point out that fact, the one about its lifespan being relatively good, that it conks out. But lately the thing has been freezing whenever I try and scroll through my 3000+ songs. :( It's working right now, though, and delivering some beautiful tunes (Rogue Wave - "Are You On My Side" which I always have to credit Matt for because he introduced this amazing band to me last semester).

Anyway, as for writing, well, I haven't done much. Tomorrow! I have, however, been reading Harry Potter like it's more important to life than breathing.

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(April 18th, 2007. 11:46am.)

This might be my first AM post.

I was planning on updating last night but I was so exhausted and forgot about my Science homework until, oh, 11:30pm last night. Don't expect this to be organized.

Let's start with the most stable part of my life (if you want to call it that). I finished Falling Angels by Barbara Gowdy and I recommend it to all of you. Seriously, if there's one book you check out this summer, let that be it. Also, I started Riding In Cars With Boys by Beverly D'Onofrio, Among The Missing by Dan Chaon (another suggestion from John McNally, as was Gowdy's book), and I'm ALMOST FINALLY DONE WITH Fast Food Nation. Meh. But, finally, I have decided that I want to (and have begun to) reread the Harry Potter series in its entirety. Not because the next and final one is out in July, but because I have NEVER reread any of them. Not since they came out when I was in, what, the sixth grade? Damn, fool! So I'm already halfway through Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Philosopher's Stone if you're like me and have the Brittish release). Oh, reading!

So let's transition right into writing, hurrah! One. I did not go to class on Monday because of previously mentioned fever so I have yet to get a start of stylistic parodies in that specific classroom. However, yesterday Annie got me started on that. We began by reading from American Skin by Don De Grazia because she thinks it'll help influence my own work. I like it so far. Then we read a stylistic parody of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (yay he's coming in May, who's with me?!) that I read last semester, a stylistic parody of Selby, which was interesting considering I'd just finished my Selby essay the day before, and then we read from The Bible. Yeah, I don't know, weird. But then when we went into the workshop, it all made sense. I took a place, I started a scene with Tilden and Brayden that's actually a really good place to be right now, and then I had to draw a line and write in the style of O'Brien. Then I drew a line and wrote in the style of The Bible. Line, Selby. For next week I just have to carry one of those for two pages. Any idea as to which I'm going to choose? :)

Other than that, though, I'm always pumped on Tuesday's to write. At the train station I got two story-starts in my journal and was so pissed that I had to go to work because that meant I couldn't stay home and write. But at least I have starts, right? Oh, and speaking to my Selby essay, I ended up merging the two separate starts and that got me going a little bit. Re-writes should be fun. Ha.

Now let's go into some randomness because, hey, fun! Like, ooh, ooh, I was just looking over my journal and found this little thing I wrote while on the train yesterday morning. I was reading Harry Potter and listening to She Wants Revenge. What I wrote down amuses me now: "Try reading something like HP while listening to something like SWR's '[Hidden Track]' or anything by them, really. How does one explain that feeling?" Seriously. I'm laughing because, well, hmm. Remember that entry a few days ago about listening to sexy songs? SWR is the epitome of this in some senses. And then you've got this book of magic, one that reminds me of my middle school years (see also: hell). My heart was all light and happy and awkward (because HP and music makes me feel that way, yo).

Also, since we're talking about feelings now (insert giggles here), I made a few notes about a discussion that took place in my CRW class. The two things I wrote down were oh-so-intelligent such as: "In a room full of writers, it's just...wow." & "Fearing something you like - meeting new people and networking!" Okae. I'm brillant, etc. etc. But seriously, I'm never as motivated as I am when I am surrounded by people who write, who know what writing is like, who enjoy reading and writing as much as I do. And then this girl Amanda said something about how writing is her art, not her job, because she hates the whole networking part of the job and whatnot. And I was thinking about that because, hello, I'm awkward and shy and socially-retarded and yet, when I think really hard about it, I guess it doesn't matter much as long as it means I am doing what I want to be doing with my life.

Which brings me to something not so great. So beware, I'm taking the tone down a couple notches here. VT. I spent all of Monday, since I was home, watching CNN. It was depressing and scary and a number of other things I can't even touch, you know? Especially as a college student. One girl I know works in one of the offices there and so she was on lockdown from 9:30 to 12:30 and had no idea what was going on. She said everyone in their office just stayed down and the only way they knew what was going on was by checking news websites. I think that's ridiculous. As well, this message board I so dorkily frequent has a member or two that goes to VT, so I was getting more info than the TV was saying at the time. It was weird and insane and everyone was so worked up and the numbers just kept rising. It's sad. It's so fucking sad. We live in a nation where acid is stolen and poured on playgrounds, giving two-year-olds third degree burns for going down a slide. We live in a nation where suicide is just another word. And we live in a nation where a school shooting is becoming a regular occurrence. I don't even know where to go from there. I've read a million of those little political cartoons where they make a comment on how we're so adjusted to the deaths of people in Iraq that we're unphased when we hear fifteen were killed one day, thirty the next, etc., but the second there's a massacre like this, everyone is wide-eyed and alert. It actually pissed me off and rightfully so, I do believe. Who is to say that we're, in a sense, prone to the whole happenings in Iraq? We're not. What an assumption! I mean, sure, it's more of a regular happening than this, and you have to take into account that Virginia Tech is RIGHT HERE and is almost more ridiculous than our war. When it comes down to it, neither of these things should happen. Ever. I hate politics. Moving on.

Let's get a little happier now. Well, kind of, because here's my opener to this paragraph: The other day, I was in my parents room with my sister and her friend Nikki watching TV and I looked at my dog on her bed and I thought she was dead. But then she twitched. My heart had sank for a second and I think I stopped breathing, but alas. She's an old fart now, and you should click on her name to see my (old)puppy being lazy right after I thought she'd died. Awww... Princess.

Oh! So I'm finally pulling a B in my Science of Nutrition class. Go me! It's such a bitch of a class, and after coming from High School where I think I studied maybe once a month for a random test here and there and yet, still got near-perfect grades (this is not bragging, this is only a lead-in!), I cannot study. I cannot take notes. I've been riding this C the entire semester. Here is an example of my notes but backwards because I used my MacBook camera. One, it's not even legible, and two, it's nowhere near organized. So I'm patting myself on the back.

I'm going to wrap it up for now. This is a long one. At least it's not ALL about writing though, right? Right. And hey, way belated congratulations to my friend and neighbor, Kara, for getting into DePaul to start her dream career. I'm so proud of you! We keep putting it off, but let's get coffee and talk.

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(April 15th, 2007. 10:22pm.)

This is not what I wanted.

All weekend my head has been pounding and I've had a fever. Not fun.

I've got two separate starts to my Selby essay and neither are working too well. I'm werkin' on it. I thought I'd have the Falling Angels novel finished by the end of the weekend at the latest, but I fail at life.

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(April 13th, 2007. 5:32pm.)

Friday the 13th is sexy.

Maybe it's just the song I'm listening to. I'm not going to admit what the song is, but have you ever just listened to a song and though, god, this is amazing? And then it all trickles down to being lonely and wishing you had someone you could share this awesome feeling with, etc, until you remember that you're better off single! Oh, what a perfect little rant to start this entry with. Joy!!!

Though, to be honest, I'm in a rockin' mood. I bummed around the house all day and decided to head over to Blockbuster and the weather is finally relatively NICE again so here I am, actually happy! Matt was right in pointing out that the weather has definitely had an affect on moods lately. Fuck snow in the middle of April!

So let's get serious here. Last night I did some editting and ended up submitting two stories for possible publication. This is my first attempt ever so my hopes are not entirely high, but you've got to start somewhere, right? I was freaking out about formatting because to be turned down due to poor formatting would be devastating. But, I'll keep my fingers crossed for the best (thank you to those I bothered endlessly about submitting, see also: Annie) and I'll keep you all updated on how that goes.

Let's talk books. This past week I finished Grab On To Me Tightly As If I Knew The Way by Bryan Charles. I saw it at Borders and I'm a cover whore but I'm also cheap as hell, so I went right to the library and checked it out on top of a few other books. I read through it in two days. When I was done and contemplating, I realized Elizabeth Crane had some quoted comment on the back cover. And I also realized that I didn't agree with her. She said, "Bryan Charles will get inside your brain and make sense of it for you once and for all. And while he's at it, he'll make you laugh hard and possibly scream in pain, but in a good way, in a way that makes you feel known." I don't know. I didn't laugh all too much. To me, it came off as trying too hard. Maybe it was all intentional, but there wasn't enough substance maybe? It's like, there would be substantial action and sufficient place, I suppose, but then there'd be these flighty passages that were all lyrical and poetic and so NOT what I'd expect an eighteen-year-old male to be thinking. Example. "Dear god please fill me with the light of something larger than myself amen." And also, "Am I still crying? Who knows what the fuck to call it. The fan is on, blowing right on me, but fails to soothe. The stereo is quiet, the Stratocaster in the corner against the wall, untouched. Everything previously a comfort now mocks me." It's all deep and shit and then there'd be the random dude sentences like, "And then I masturbated and felt revived." I don't know, check the book out for yourself, I guess. I wasn't highly impressed, nor was I appalled. I found it hilarious that it took place in Kalamazoo, but yes, that's a whole other story.

I'm currently reading Falling Angels by Barbara Gowdy and I haven't been so wrapped up in a book in such a long time. Highly impressive. I'll see how it ends.

So this whole writing/reading every day thing is going well. After my last ridiculously long entry about how I wrote, wrote, wrote!!! I spent the next day reading for an hour, writing for one and a half (maybe two?) and got a short story out. About eight pages or so. I did a little editing. And then yesterday I did a bunch of editing, about a half hour of reading, and submitted that shit! So it's been a pretty productive week so far. Tonight I plan on watching those movies and getting all inspired and shit, and then trying to tackle the essay that I'm excited to work on but also on the edge about how to do it well. Ugh. You know how it goes.

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(April 11th, 2007. 11:14pm.)

Wow.

Kurt Vonnegut died today. Nothing else is nearly as important to update about.

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(April 10th, 2007. 10:36pm.)

Let's talk about how I'm awesome and shit.

No seriously. And here's why. Because I came home today with the intention to get my Science crap out of the way so I could work out two rewrites, get some new stuff started and feel proud of myself. And guess what I did? ALL OF IT. Well, except that I still haven't done one of the assignments for Science, but god, I don't care in the least. Plus, it's not due until 9am tomorrow... but why am I dwelling on this? SO NOT IMPORTANT.

What's important is that I got a small re-write done and am going to submit it somewhere by friday. This is monumental. And suggested by Jeff. Ack. Oh yes, I had my conference with him today, but we'll get to that in a second. So let's go back to the original topic of this paragraph. I finished a re-write of this story I wrote in January that needed some very slight fine-tuning. Then I was in such a great mood and I knew I'd have a "good writing day" if I just sat myself down and said, "Write." And that's exactly what I did - for an hour straight, I pounded out a good portion of my parody of Afterward, which is actually very far from the real story, but since I already wrote through my entire parody movement (first draft, anyway) I figured it wouldn't matter if I had a bit of fun with this. So, ten pages later... And I stopped somewhere where I know I can pick it up later and not get stuck, so we'll see how that goes tomorrow. After that, I felt like maybe I could still write some more, so I flipped to the pages I'd started in tutoring today. It's a rewrite of a possible opening chapter of my novel, told in an overall third person instead of first. I really like where it went because I wrote it out for a good five pages before I felt that it settled on a good ending point. I'm going to come back to it tomorrow and maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to send it out by friday, too. I think this is my best rewrite yet for this specific scene, and it's been through about five rewrites so far.

So about fifteen pages today. Just in a couple of hours. Imagine what I could do if I did this every day! I can't even fathom. I need to try. I'm really proud of myself right now. Like, really proud.

On top of that, today was a good day, I'd say. I tried to step it up a bit in my CRW class, which wasn't as hard as I thought, and then I had my presentation, which didn't go nearly as bad as I thought it would. But that's just me being dramatic and hating presentations with a passion. Selby was an interesting dude with some awesome things to say about writing for sure. I just wish I had the luxury he had to write what I wanted and just get published, or not care if I didn't get published, etc. Lucky bastard. AND I'm excited about the final essay, though I haven't narrowed anything down as to what I'm going to do with it. Maybe I'll get a couple starts and see which one I like best. We'll see.

Anyway, tutoring was great as usual. We talked a lot about place because, since I've been focusing so much on character and actions between characters, I've kind of lost place somewhere in there. So Annie and I have been working on getting a better sense of place (exactly why the fifth rewrite has been the best so far!) and I feel like tutoring has honestly helped me a lot. Which reminds me that they finally lifted my fucking hold this morning, so at break during class I pulled out my laptop and registered for next semester. Ha! Geek much? So I've got Prose Forms, Story in Fiction & Film (with Sam! Long time no see!), Oral whateverthefuck (aka Speech, kill me.), English Composition 2 (which also has a new name, and while we're on the subject, kill me part two) and finally, tutoring. Yay! I'm going to be busy as hell and I'm kind of sad that I won't need to take anymore CRW classes because I think I get the most out of them.

Actually, speaking of that, there are only four weeks left of class. You know what's crazy? As much as the release of stress will be welcome, I'm kind of sad. When I get home after a day of class, surrounded by fiction writers, readers, and teachers, I'm pumped as hell to write. I find that the days where I've got off and I don't have to get up and be anywhere, I fall off the wagon. I know I need to get myself out of that cycle, but it's moreso the immediate inspiration that I wish I could constantly have - that, unfortunately, comes only with being emersed in the culture. Which, again unfortunately, I am not. I have no one in my crappy little suburb community that writes (as consistently) as I do, so it's hard.

Okay, I forgot where I was going with this because I got distracted. OH! Then there was the conference with Jeff. We talked a lot about Tilden and Brayden and where my story might be headed, how I might structure it (novel in stories or straight novel?) and books I should read to get a good idea (Sherwood Anderson? Check. Love Medicine? Check. Trainspotting? ...No check [yet]). Then he pulled out a few stories that stand on their own, he went through and made little notes, little questions here and there, told me to go through some rewrites to turn into him and get his opinion on, and then send them the fuck out. So I guess that's what I'm going to be doing for the next week: checking out places to submit shit. And fine-tuning what I've got. One of those stories, by the way, is posted on this website (the Hicksville one) but will be going through an extensive re-write this week to be submitted, possibly, to f-Magazine. We'll see. Ack! So much to do.

So anyway, if you can't tell, I'm super fucking pumped right now. I am not pumped that I still have to do this Science homework. I am, however, ridiculously motivated to do everything but that. So here's the game plan for tomorrow. I'm going to wake up and maybe work out (I say maybe because suck it, I have work tomorrow and if I wake up late [I am not setting an alarm, screw that!] I'd rather read/write than run/die), then set an alarm to read for an hour or two, then set an alarm to write for an hour or two. I'll tackle my CRW essay (at least one of the plot ideas) if Desiree gets back to me with some links she had on Selby that I never got, and if not, I'll tackle the rewrite of Hicksville. Maybe even both! But this may be a little too... hopeful. Let's leave it at this: Wednesday-Sunday, I will write at LEAST an hour a day. Then, by Monday, we'll see where that takes me. Ha!

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(April 9th, 2007. 10:18pm.)

AriZona Ice Tea With Lemon Flavor!!!

FIRE, FIRE, FIRE!!! *bobs head to a crazy breakdown*

Now that I'm done with that, let me rant. Well, I don't have to have permission, but here goes anyway. Consider it a warning. SOMETIMES I HATE COLUMBIA. Right now they have a hold on my account that they promised would be lifted by 5pm today. Is it lifted? No. When will it MAYBE be lifted? 8:30am tomorrow morning. Where will I be? Sitting in class that ends right when tutoring begins and then once tutoring ends I go right to a conference with Jeff. Thus, I will not get home til about 4pm tomorrow. Odds are, any and all classes I wanted will be taken. This is not making me very happy. To top it off, I've got friends IMing me left and right going, "Take this class with me!" And, yes, I want to take classes with these people, but if there are no seats left, this won't be possible! *flails* I guess I'll just bring my laptop to class tomorrow and try to register during break or something.

Also, I'm beginning to feel anxious. Presentation tomorrow about Selby with Desiree. Ack. I hate presentations. We're prepared and all, I guess, and have an outline for what we need/want to do. It's more about getting up there and doing it. I like to go early, do this shit and get it over with, but Desiree wanted to go later and to accomodate, we just chose this week. *flails again*

This morning proved to me that mondays are only good every other week. Last week was a good monday. This week, not so much. I got very little sleep, maybe three hours and when I woke up I was freezing and groggy and didn't want to move. I ended up running late, being unable to find my wallet or my car keys, and eventually stumbling out the door in a hoodie and my "Ashlee Simpson" pants (circa 2005, people). So I'm running about five minutes late. Usually I can park and chill in my car, collect my thoughts, set my iPod to whatever I feel like listening to. Today I had to run out of my car, throw the money in the little fucking slot, and go, go, go. I get on the train and low and behold, I realize my pass is still at home, tucked in a copy of Elizabeth Crane's When The Messenger is Hot. Shit. So then I have to go and pay $5.something for a ticket I technically already have, and the ticket guy is all irritated at me for this, but dude, lighten up. I should be way more irritated that I'm going to end up spending just under $10 unnecessarily today and all you have to do is punch a stupid piece of paper and hand me a couple singles. Eff. You. And then Fiction II got out early today by ten minutes so I hauled ass to the train station and everything was delayed. Sometimes...I swear.

But then tonight, Matt made me laugh for like fifteen minutes. Let me warn you. This is not appropriate for younger people. You have been warned.

If you haven't noticed, I'm sadly obsessed with youtube. Speaking of youtube, remember the Smosh brothers I posted earlier? How happy they make me for their stupid activities and such? Well, Anthony cut his fucking hair off this episode. I almost keeled over. Seriously. Enough.

And let me end on this note.

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(April 8th, 2007. 11:16pm.)

This is it, this is the end.

Of the day that is. I told myself I'd go to bed at 10. Then I pushed that back to 11. Now it's almost ten past 11 and I am updating this place pointlessly, mostly because I feel guilty for neglecting it all week, and partly because old habits die hard. I haven't been feeling too great the past handful of days. Blah. And I still have the taste of Mimosas in my mouth.

I got a ton of writing done on Wednesday and then I faltered and failed for the rest of the week. Argh. I think my total page count for the week was about fifteen and none of that had anything to do with my novel. What kills me is how many pages of writing my AIM conversations would combine to. Oye.

And chocolate will be the death of me. I never want to see another candy bar again. Ever.

I feel like I spent 90% of my life this week at work. In reality, I worked about sixteen hours which doesn't amount to anything at all, really, but very little cash in my bank. I wish I could have the time for another job, too, because I'd like to have the kind of money that moving out is about but blah.

Tomorrow is my registration day for fall. I have some kind of unresolved hold on my account. This doesn't make for a good schedule.

What do I need in my life? I've been contemplating this question a lot lately. Something is missing. I need to fill in this void so I stop dwelling on the unnecessary. For now I'll just twirl my hair and ponder the possibilities. Happy Easter and shit.

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(April 3rd, 2007. 10:21pm.)

>Today was something like a great day.

Has anyone else noticed that I ALWAYS tend to update around 9-10pm? Ignore the previous post and check out the archives. I swear it, it's like some theraputic ending to the day. Maybe. Though I'd like to consider my journal that specific utopia, for lack of better word.

Commuting is always something I find humor in. I enjoy it, in all honesty, because it's kind of my "me" time. Of course, I'm surrounded by a million strangers at various times throughout the commute, but alas! Rarely do they talk to me and I sure as hell don't strike up conversation with any of them. It's just me and my iPod and my journal (when I'm sitting, that is, as it's pretty difficult to walk and write - have you ever tried?) and I feel motivated as all hell. But again, going back to the fact that it's funny. In a stereotypical way, I guess, wherein adults get frustrated and scoff at the teenagers that also commute. And what do I say to that? My backpack needs a seat, too, buddy. Okay, I'm kidding and all. Sort of. But okay, if you're sitting next to one of those middle-facing seats on the second level of a Metra train, be aware that you might get hit when the person next to you stands up. Or at least that maybe your ugly, bland-colored coat may get eaten up by the folding seat when it shoots up after the ass previously on it is removed. So when I apologize to you, though I don't feel like apologies are necessary in this respect, it's anything but polite that you grunted at me, your lip curled, and turned to your friend with a look that said, "Ugh, teenagers." Look, dude, I didn't fucking shove your coat up your ass, did I? Calm down, son.

Today in my CRW class, Molly was doing her presentation on Elizabeth Crane (whose book, conveniently, I just finished this morning [When The Messenger Is Hot] oooh, score one for subtle grammatical ganking!) when suddenly, a man descends from the building outside and hangs in our window. Of course every single person in the room turned, distracted, and watched the man swing side to side before trying to focus back on Molly's presentation. The man kept banging though and I assume he was just washing the windows or something, but my back was to him. So I got to thinking some awful thoughts like, "What if he falls and I miss it? Well, what if he just falls in general, fuck whether I see it or not!" Then I thought even further into the idea, like how all fourteen of us (I think I counted correctly) would probably follow such an occurrance with a story about being witness to it and how that'd actually be kind of cool to see what everyone's take on the event would be, how far they would twist the story and to what degree. Morbid thoughts, really, but you know that if the rope had somehow snapped and the man had plunged to his ultimate doom, every single one of the people in that room would definitely have written about it sometime this week.

Hey, tell me something completely random about yourself. I'm in a random mood. I'll start. I realized today, after a can of diet coke and a bottle of water and having to sit through two twenty-minute presentations, that whenever I really have to pee, and I mean REALLY BADLY, Panic! at the Disco enters my head. I'll even get so specific as to say that the song that comes to mind is, "I Constantly Thank God for Esteban." And even more specifically, the exact lines that play over and over endlessly are right when the "la-da-das" begin and go into "strike up the band! Whoa-oh, the conductor is beckoning. Come, congregation, sing it like you mean it." I really have no idea why, but this isn't the first time, and thus it automatically becomes a strange factoid in the life of Kayleigh. So, share! (Though I'm doubting any of you will.)

Anyway, today was a grand day that left me feeling really motivated. Tutoring rocked my world. I can't believe there's only four more weeks - what am I going to do? I just don't know. I'm excited as hell for summer, that's for sure, and I'm 99.9% sure that I will keep myself working and reading and journaling (and blogging!) so it's not any of that that worries me. It's missing people! I am a people misser! And I'm thinking fall semester is going to suck because I'm planning on tackling a few gen eds so it won't be as writing-oriented as my first two semesters here at Columbia have been. Hopefully I'll get in tutoring on top of Prose Forms. We'll see where my credits stand as of April 9th!

So originally, I had one video I wanted to share with you all, but now I've found a better one. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to link you to this one HERE and I recommend you watch it. Especially if you've, at any time in your life, liked Alanis Morissette and/or have caught yourself singing "My Humps" by the BEPs.

And here is the other video. The Matches (who are apparently working on ANOTHER album?). They keep me smiling even when they aren't around (oh, hello there, depressing thought! It's nice to see you again! End sarcasm.) and I felt it only necessary to share this with all of you:

That's it for now, I guess. I mean, I could always go on and on forever but who really gives a shit, right? I might as well direct my inability to sleep right now to something more productive like, say, writing! NOW THERE'S A THOUGHT!

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(April 1st, 2007. 7:24pm.)

Maybe I'll just sit here and bleed at you.

First of all, thank you for all the Harry Potter related links you guys commented with. They were hilarious.

Second. I hate April Fools Day. Hate it. The majority of the pranks are not funny - especially at this one message board I go to where every thread was labeled as "this sucks" and words such as "like" were censored. It was cute for five seconds and then it was just annoying. As well, our local radio station thought it'd be funny to report that William Beckett of The Acadey Is... had overdosed and was found dead in his hotel room or something of that nature. Hello, heart failure for two seconds. And for those of you that know me, it's not about the band, it's about the man. Haha. Still, ridiculous holiday for people who like to get away with doing lame ass pranks.

Everyone needs to go check out this website right now. Although I attempted at avoiding the internet to the best of my ability this entire week, it was near impossible. I managed to get a lot done when I wasn't online, but alas, it's websites like this that keep me tied up for endless moments of my life that I'll never have back. So, go waste your precious moments and make me feel better about myself! Ha.

I also thought I'd share this with you all because I laughed for about an hour. Okay, not really, but still:

I've watched a ton of movies this week. The best two of the bunch were Mysterious Skin starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (mmmm) and Stay featuring Ewan McGregor and Ryan Gosling. I don't want to have any spoilers in this blog, so I just suggest that you guys check out both films. They're very different from each other but oh-so-awesome. I seriously wrote about Stay for pages last night. So much to figure out!

And now that I've wasted a crapload of time, I got in a short story today although it's not finished and I'm not sure where I want to go with it. But I've been journaling a lot more which is great and very theraputic. I can't make myself finish Love Medicine though, or do any research on Hubert Selby Jr. because I'm feeling really lazy lately. I've been sleeping too much. I definitely don't want to get up and go to class in the morning. Sigh. We will see. Now I'm gonna go eat some salad and other good food and chill some more. Yay!

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