I've been having a good week so far. Running errands and laughing and playing with friends is just what I needed after being stuck in bed. I got my books for the Philosophy class I'm taking in January and moved most of my stuff out of my dorm room with a little help from my friends (insert proper Beatles joke). I'm actually quite proud of myself for driving on such tricky roads; it's exactly what I signed up for to deal with next semester when I commute, so I should get used to it, right?  I've been getting away with some beastly snow maneuvers, believe you me. Also any car ride that lasts more than an hour devolves into Disney music, whether or not passengers are in the car with me. I'll make a man out of you, alright.

I've been doing a wee bit of "holiday shopping" in the last week as well. Malls are such carnivals of the grotesque. Consensus among myself, Emma, and Smalls is that some sort of nauseating substance is pumped through the air vents to make shoppers tense, hyper, and impulsive. My heart goes out to anyone working retail or forced to cater to the insane whims of shoppers this season. Oh America, ILU.

One thing I noticed from being at the mall is that Waldenbooks is closing its doors. I fear Borders is next. I'm not going to knock the discounts it has been forced into providing, though. 30% off was the discount I got when I worked at Barnes and Noble, and that was just what was off fiction books when I walked in today (slim pickings, though). Doubtless it will rise, but I have to assert some control over my mass book hysteria, or it will ruin me.

Do you like languages? You should try livemocha. It's sort of fun; I have to admit I haven't explored it much beyond the beginner courses of a few languages. Beware the arabic and farsi courses though-- the alphabet appears in the equivalent of what English spakers would call capslock, so don't expect it to teach you the letter forms, which is an important component of their alphabets.

I just found an e-mail from Chris Baty of Nanowrimo reminding me that my book is waiting patiently for me to come back and love it properly like I should. It's true. I have neglected it in order to let ideas swirl in a less frienzied way. I printed out a paper version of my manuscript so far. My characters seem all on the cusp of something, which makes sense considering nothing much has happened. Some of them have weird quirks that I have to flesh out. One of them turned out to be much more violent than I anticipated! Anyway, enough of that for now. 

Have you heard of formspring? You create an account and people post anonymous questions for you to answer. I have just made one. If you're secretly dying to ask me silly or serious things, by all means, do so immediately. 

Lastly, I just want to say that I've been illustrating, really illustrating for the first time since the summer and it's been flexing my creative muscles like woah. If anyone wants anything contact me about commissions/drawing something for them, go for it. I invite you to check out my sketch blog for some random stuff in case you forgot what I do.

In the next few days, some lovely family will be coming to visit and staying until January. It will be fun and busy in the house and I can't wait.

I will leave you with this picture of my bed. It is made of starlight.

Let's play a game. It's called "Adjective, Not So Adjective".

AWESOME: Going Contra Dancing on Friday night, with hope of going again soon for English Country Dance. They even have a Jane Austen dress up night or something, they are unreal and they hold their dances in a barn. Definitely the most random thing I've done in a while.
NOT SO AWESOME: Waiting for an hour said Friday night in order to get into John Harvard's where I didn't even get to eat their delicious and calorically damning bread. But Budassi wore a ridiculous outfit (to visualize, he looked like Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood, with mustache) and I told passers-by that he was John Harvard.

DELICIOUS: Seeing Cindy Liu outside of school, inside IKEA, and sharing a cinnamon roll + Thai meal with her. SPECIAL BONUS: Comforter and Shower rack acquired. I told Cindy she should be a poet and she glowed.
NOT SO DELICIOUS: Thai food was so spicy that I couldn't finish it. This is unheard of, as I am crazy ravenous for Thai food AT ALL TIMES (Kanye West: AT ALL TIMES). I asked for the same amount of spice as Cindy but she tasted both meals and they lied! I cried tears of burning! Burning!

NERDTASTIC: Having 20 items checked out from the HHH library. I have these great resource books on Persian Mythology and Ancient Persian architecture, plus I found The Authoress of the Odyssey and The Persian Boy. I had to wait for the latter because someone at Stony Brook took it out from that library. (Who? What? Why? Phhfhtft.) It's a really awesome read, and I'm the littlest bit in love with the way Mary Renault writes Alexander the Great. I can very clearly see what Jacqueline Carey meant when she said she was influenced by it, but it only adds to my love/enjoyment of both authors.
NOT SO NERDTASTIC: Not being able to read all 20 items checked out from the library. I've got these Sufi books I KNOW I'll never get to, and A Clash of Kings remains untouched (even though I long desperately to get back into the series). Also comes the fact that I really don't have time to be reading so many books for pleasure hello. Along with the books on Ancient Persia I also started Censoring an Iranian Love Story (which is, after only 45 pages, quite remarkable and charming and modern), which I really shouldn't be reading - I can justify the others as being related to my thesis, but this one is just because. SIGH.

LITERARY: Reading the Odyssey for EGL. Starting useless, 100+ page reading on the Metric System in France and other such things for HON. Reading my last "how to" book for my thesis preparation.
FAIL-ERARY: Not being able to read for RLS. And there's a quiz tomorrow DURFFDGH.

HOT: Michael Fassbender, the cast of Merlin, and Gregory House (and Hugh Laurie, obviously). I've started watching Hex just for Mr. Fassbender - I can see what works about the show: teen drama/snark well captured, strong acting, pop culture references (even if they're from 2004), that gorgeous manor and the green fields they use for the school setting - but I can also see its problems, too. The plot and main character just seem unsteady somehow. It's as if the episodes cut off at the wrong places, or all the pieces are there but they won't fit right into the puzzle. Merlin is adorable - the best part of that show is the sheer amount of plot the writers manage to fit into one episode and still manage to keep each episode self-enclosed; the pacing is wonderful! House...well, it's House. Tonight's episode was called "Epic Fail". Wilson and House made slash jokes and 13 even insulted Jeremy Piven at some point. (I don't think that was too spoilery on the whole, forgive me if you feel violated somehow.)
NOT: Spending this time watching TV shows when I could have been studying cancer biology. WUH WOH.

Clearly that game de-volved by the end.

You know how I venture into my basement, or various nooks and crannies in my house, and sometimes stumble upon magical troves of delightful things? Well, in the process of writing this entry I watched House, and while I was doing so, I went to the garage to grab a drink and found a bunch of hardcover books sitting on top of a box. They didn't look like books that I typically read, but then my dad walked past the door and I asked him where they came from. He was surprised I didn't know! Oftentimes my parents don't keep tabs of my presence around the house and their lives, and I love this. Anyway he laughed in a Daddy-like fashion and walked away to continue watching House and now he's asleep, so I'll have to wait to ask him where they came from. I did go through the entirety of the box - there must have been at least 70 books in it - and I have suspicions about the original owner. I want to say he's a male, Italian or Jewish, and flies a lot. He's also a parent and own a George Foreman grill. The reason I say these things are that most of the books were Dude Fiction (you know, Stuart Woods, Tom Clancy, James Patterson, John Sandford, John Grisham, etc), so he's clearly into a good thriller, and most were paperbacks that you can grab at an airport and go with. Also in one book I opened at random I found the envelope/outer stub of a Delta boarding pass. I say those other things because I found two pregnancy books and a George Foreman cook book. Italian/Jewish is just a guess (I mean come on we're on Long Island).

Anyway, I'll end the entry there - have to finish another book in the Odyssey and go over another Cancer Bio lecture before bed. But I'll open a cut and list the awesome books I found in the box and decided to keep! Let me know if you want to come over and go through my box of bro books.

( Here they are! All paperbacks; whoever owned these had a serious desire to rid himself of Shakespeare, to my gain. )

Yeaaaaaah~~~. I don't care that this could be my worst academic semester ever, I have had it up to my ears with stress. I feel like everything I've held dear in my academic and social life this semester has been thrown for a loop, beaten, broken, and bruised, and I am not going to take it any more. So I said no goodbyes and just took off last night for Dix Hills. Tonight I'm flying away and leaving the country. Sounds sort of rash, but sometimes you just need a clean break.

First stop: England with Gregory. We're gonna go visit Kavita in Oxford, go to London with her, then visit Laura and Sam in Sussex. After that, I go to France alone, starting with Lyon, then Grenoble, then Paris, visiting family all the way.

No Blackberry, no laptop, no obligations. I'm not sure if I deserve such a boon, but I am taking it and running.

I have a dreamwidth invite code. Two, in fact. Comment if you want one.

I have been trying, in agony, to write in this livejournal, but I have had the poorest luck imaginable. I have had this post open for the last five days. FIVE. Maybe what I meant to write will never be written. All I know is I have two finals on Tuesday, a flight to England on Wednesday, and severe drama regarding the MCAT to worry about right now (see below). Discussing Beerfest will probably not be very conducive to success should I attempt it. But I will say this, I drove home last Sunday with a smile, compared last year's emotional self-flagellation. Smiles are important, oh yes they are.

May I just mention that the leak of the new Tori Amos album has reached my ears (thank you annaybunny). It's the first album I've been able to sit & listen to all the way through since Scarlet's Walk. I'm not sure why this is so. It may be partially because I have this deep affection for Scarlet's Walk and had looked to her other albums, without much success, to give me that same feeling of beauty and yearning. But this is good. It makes me want to take a long walk alone and get lost. It will make for good travel music when I am in Europe, I think.

MCAT WANK ALERT: I have to take this test by July 2nd. I only found out the latest I should take it is July 2nd this morning, because up until this point I just thought I had to take it by the ballpark month of July. All the dates are closed in the 100 mile radius for July 2nd. So I signed up for July 31st (the nearest date that didn't involve me driving to South Jersey, Connecticut, etc.) and intend to look out for drops opening up spots closer to me. But seriously, Stony Brook Med School, do you think it would have been wise to send me mail, be it electronic or postal, that delineates the protocol that's appropriate? To tell me officially instead of by word of mouth? To have some kind of relationship with me, even the most formal and methodical/contractual way? How was I supposed to know? Come to think of it I STILL have no idea what's involved in preparing for the med school application process other than sending things to you through AAMC.org. You would think that one of the colleges with the highest rate of pre-med undergraduates in the state/area would have some sort of mandatory pre-med advising, especially for people who are in their 8 year program! But in the last three years, if I wasn't vigilant about the classes I'm required to take, everything would have imploded.

I just want to read about biology & psychology and think about my vacation this week, please.

I have 4 chapters of Physics, 4 chapters of Psychology, an abstract to perfect and lecture slides to memorize. And yet here I am.

I want to announce to the world that Greg and I FINALLY bought our tickets to England (and I bought my return ticket from France; at some point I have to get all up on easyjet.com and get my in-between flight from Gatwick to Lyon). I would just like to say that Orbitz and CheapTickets.com were cheaper than both StudentUniverse.com and StaTravel.com (although the latter most was almost comparable, I will be fair). But if I hadn't checked I would have paid $140 more. The true Quest for Money begins now that I need spending cash. If you know anyone who would like art commissions done, or in fact have so much expendable income that they wish to give it to a wandering college student in Europe, please send them my way. As for MCATs, I'll take 'em in June or July. Studying in advance is only helping me.

In other absolutely random news, check out Paper Links. I meant to plug it before this point but I'm sure they won't miss the .2453 number of hits this link will get them.

Does anyone on my flist have a DSLR? I have been itching to buy a Canon Digital Rebel since this past summer. My flatmate has an XTi and she gets some damned gorgeous shots out of the thing. Canon is rumored to be releasing the 500D and will have a press release of some sort in a couple of days; this is exciting because by the time I have enough money to buy a DSLR the new 500D will presumably drop down the prices of the XTi and the XSi. Or I'll just throw caution to the wind and buy a 500D (it is going to have video capabilities! I wouldn't need my point and shoot any more!). But if anyone out there in livejournal land has anything good/bad to say about Canon, or in fact wants to tell me all about how I'm wrong and should be purchasing a Nikon instead, speak now!

And in another plug for the sake of plugging, I've been incredibly consistent in updating my sketch blog!

If you like using your eyes, or beauty, or goodness, or believing that the world is capable of wonderful things, I suggest you see Coraline. If anyone on my flist wants to see it again with me name your place and time.

I have to take quizzes every other day for my physics class, and I logged in to Blackboard to see if tomorrow's assignment was up, and found this:

I know it was my crazy German professor who wrote that. I KNOW IT.

In the endearing grammar of my Bio 201 professor:
HOW COOK PHYSICS??

Today is December 29, the first official day in my 2009 Moleskine weekly planner! Die, 2008, die! I have been waiting for this moment since August when I bought it! Exclamation points and dorkish celebration!


*Why yes, I know I could have theoretically been putting events in to my planner from since whenever. But you are making the foolish assumption that I have such things as long term plans.

The past 72+ hours have been filled with so much sugar, caffeine, reading, cortisol, adrenaline, insanity, heartbeats, screaming, disappointment and confusion, pride, voting, hugging, fondling, blood, winning, passing, failing, pissing, writing, planning, craving, crafting and calculating.

But right now it's mostly draining. And I fear when I retire to bed, I will sleep like the dead sleep; silent still, lost to delta waves and rapid eye movements forevermore.


I was caught in the rain today. Usually when that happens, I decide that I will write a livejournal entry about it. In what other way can one fuel the most famous internet angst machine? No angst in this entry, though.

Walking back tonight with soaked, deliberate steps during the rain (sans umbrella, of course) felt very different than gliding along the exact same path with Cory last night when we were screaming "Obama!" at anything that moved. Last night was grace and hope and dreams, today was reality that had to be faced and fixed and realized.

I walked in to the E commons merely intending to give Emma back her wallet and dry off. With blurred vision, as soon as I stepped in and took my glasses off a boy asked me if I wanted to donate blood.

Yes, yes I want to donate blood. I answered immediately, purposefully. As if I had known they were there. As if they knew that after hours and days of madness sucking away at my sanity I wanted nothing more than to just sit down and literally give a little bit of myself away. My dears, understand that after getting rejected from volunteering to donate blood last Spring, I slaved away for months, eating meat (and broccoli) for the sole purpose of upping my hemoglobin count. I was ready for this business. I answered the survey questions so hastily the nurse had to correct me three times ("You checked male for this box -- I'm going to need you to check this box that says you're a female,"). The nurse asked, like others before her, whether my blood pressure was really that low. Yes, it really is that low. She literally asked me to feign anger so it could rise to a passable, human number, and I apologized for being a succubus. They stuck a needle in me and I watched with curious eyes as skin was punctured and liquid drifted forth. I filled up the bag in around 7 minutes. I am a bloody maverick.

I forgot that blood is warm. I felt really foolish for that.

It is nearing midnight. The lump of metal near my bed that generates heat and cold is making hissing noises at me & I have no idea why. After about a month of listening to its deep mechanical breathing I'm still at a loss. It's not even turned on. Any time I ask someone if they hear what I hear, they look at me oddly. It sounds like a mixture of running water, a far-away train horn, and indignation.

Anyway. Where have I been? Nowhere, really. I am still perpetually tired and still vaguely emotionally unfulfilled. I have yet to cook a meal other than pasta and eggs for myself and I don't really feel like eating meat any more. I am reading books as an act of rebellion against my classes and studying as an act of rebellion against Facebook invitations to events with names such as, "oh shit...it's a party".

My walls are blank, and my indecision keeps them that way. While I hate writing sentences and realizing that they sound pitifully figurative immediately after they have been written, I assure you, I really do have walls that are too white for my own comfort.

I have a Mammalian Physiology test tomorrow. Excited? More excited than a synapse firing (and my real synapses firing as I roll my eyes at that bad joke).

Going to the gym at 6:48 PM and having it close at 7 PM is not really fun. Despite New York Sports Club's attempt to kick me out and encourage more social behavior, I refused to listen and instead spent the better part of the next hour and a half chasing bunnies and talking to che_strana on the phone. Those elusive critters evaded my grasp every time. Curses.


Here is your moment of zen, precious readers.

Till it burned down.


WEEEEEEEEEEEEEIRD.

It's so, so nice to wake up and have absolutely nothing to do.

In an act of extremely uncharacteristic girliness, I got my nails done today. They were flippin' long, so something had to be done to them, lest they gouge someone's eyes out accidentally in the near future (I don't know how it would happen, either, but one can never be too sure?). Also, several girly magazines were read.

Blarblarblar. My reading list for this week includes:
-Veronika Decides to Die
-A Great and Terrible Beauty
-Saturday
& possibly
-Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

We shall see how I fare.

Five Reasons Why My Life Is Good
1. I've got an apartment to live in next year, it does not include people I wish to punch in the kidney, and as an added bonus, I will live in a single room.
2. After picking classes for next year, I effectively have only 3 days of class a week. With Fridays off. Go, me.
3. There is a three day weekend. Starting tomorrow. Thanks, Jews!
4. The weather is finally making me feel as if I go to college. Other students have emerged from wherever they were hiding for the last four months and are now occupying every crevice of land and bench seen on this campus.
5. I quit Facebook and now my life isn't controlled by social networking!

Five Reasons Why My Life COULD Be Better
1. I dropped my laptop today. Now I REALLY don't know whether or not to buy a hard shell case.
2. My hemoglobin, platelet count, and blood pressure are low, so they wouldn't let me donate blood today. Reject blood! REJECT blood courses through my veins!
3. Tickets to Paris are expensive.
4. I miss making cash monies, because I am a materialistic, capitalistic scum.
5. I quit Facebook and now my life is as boring as it was before I joined!

You know there's something wrong when Ann Coulter prefers Hilary to McCain.

This has been the easiest start of the semester so far. Besides my lab class, everything is reading reading reading, and, hopefully you will know this by now, I love to read. So it's not too bad.

Today can be described in many words, but my word of choice is wet. It is raining outside. More accurately, it is Noah's-Flooding outside. Or The Tempest-ing. Gallons of emo tears fall from the sky. Luckily, I forgot my umbrella and for the first time experienced what it is like to walk around half a mile in pure torrential rain. Coupled with the fact that I had to turn back halfway to class and get something I forgot and STILL neglected to bring my umbrella (because at that point the sky was deceptively well behaved and the weather coy and tranquil), I had to pay $25 dollars this week to get a new ID card because I STEPPED ON AND BROKE MY OTHER ONE IN HALF, and just ruined my Converse sneakers by passing through puddles, one would expect me to be in a foul mood. Not so, dear reader, not so.

What?
WHAT?

In other news, my reading spree is almost complete. With Monday's commencement of Spring semester comes a lull in pleasure reading, and in anticipation I am trying to blast through my last four or five books. While I am not speeding (I can't. I savor ever word, thankyouverymuch), I may not get through them all. But we'll see. One can only hope that the fervor and interest that have been displayed towards the books I've read in this last month can readily be applied to my intensive pre-med studies and texts..blarblarblar!

I have a new pair of glasses which can only be described as fierce.

They are loud, they are extreme, but you have to admit they have style. I chose rimless glasses as to not clutter up my face (my eyebrows are dark) and the silver is very sleek, contrasting well with the black sides (I originally wanted white sides).


I intended to post more, but the power, for whatever inexplicable reason, has been flickering on and off. It's probably a sign that I should go do yoga or write or do something useful with my life before I grow old and tired and crazy.

It's a pleasure to say that I finished Ian McEwan's novel, because I'm glad I discovered him as a writer. The novel itself shook me, made me violent with emotion, made me keep reading until the ending which I had read in advance but still made me feel like I knew nothing beforehand.
It is a shame the movie won't be as good, but my rule of thumb with these things is to treat each art form separately.

McEwan's writing. When I begin to think about the way it impresses me, I'm still at a loss for words. I feel shamed at how good it is! That's not right! Do you hear me, Mr. McEwan? Your writing abilities leave me neurotic and guilt ridden! *screams into the night*

It was my last day at work today, technically speaking. It finally hit me that I wasted my break working. For what? Money? To buy me what? Certainly not any of the time that has been lost. I feel cheated. Were it not for the books that I have read, I would be seriously incensed at the benefits I have received from this month. One week is left to rectify my evaluation...I will use it.

I couldn't remember "oublier" and the past tense "voulu" today. My french is leaving me. Noo!

Today is pay day, and it is greatly welcomed. Instead of succumbing to the lures of my discount off books at work, I've been stalking the library. Lately, reading has consumed my days; I happily oblige. I've joined the goodreads bandwagon (and it excites me). Friend me if you have it! ( http://goodreads.com/profile/pamina )

My desperate attempts to save my earnings is sabotaged all too often by high school friends who want to catch-up, which inevitably means dining out. Cheesecake Factory, Panera, Diner food, Sushi, etc. All I want is a good home-cooked meal, that I am actually *home* to enjoy (by the time I can enjoy these meals, they have become day-old left-overs to eat for dinner when I go to work the next day, since I work 4-12AM shifts). Sigh. Don't you guys love how this is what my life has become? Me whining about spending money on food? No wonder I never update. I can't even take this crap. Hahaha.

I'm going to try to practice writing in narrative form, either on here or somewhere new. I have all of these activities and projects that I long to undertake, but the sum total of all of them leaves me languorous.


Lastly, I have a flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/acathisia/ . I am suuuch a good photographer. As in, I'm not.

It's high time for a "life update" for the (as Brett will say) .8 people that read this livejournal.

Finished the semester up this week. It went by in a flash...I had three finals on Tuesday. Did y'all hear me? THREE. Kavita says at Columbia they'd let you reschedule if you had such an issue. Silly Stony Brook..
Anyway I'm finally unpacked, and ready to donate about 6 bags of clothes to charity. I didn't know I owned all those pieces of clothing. Luckily I've changed my wardrobe regime, if you will.

Speaking of, I met Tim Gunn on May 3rd, when I bought his new book. This bookstore in Huntington village usually gets really interesting guests to do book signings (7 years ago -god, was it really 7?- J. K. Rowling came!). Anyway I thought it would be packed, but I got there late anyway so the line wasn't as big as I thought. He was very cordial and *exactly* like he is on tv, with that velvety voice and meticulous sense of style. He gave me his e-mail address for an interview, too!

This week I saw Andrew Bird in concert. I love that man. So talented and gorgeous and humble. He has a pet sockmonkey and whistles better than I do! Jealousy!

Greg and I are joining a gym, or at least toying with 2-week trial memberships in an attempt to, as Greg so aptly puts it, get "the bodies of our lives!". Not that he needs to lose weight, if he turned sideways he'd disappear.

If you are still reading this, I pose a question to you: what Broadway show should I buy tickets to see with my 20something cousin? I'm looking for something light, not very dramatic. She's coming to visit from Australia on the 31st for a few days and any feedback would rock my socks off.

I might finally get my "first job". I know, I know, I'm spoiled and lame. But Barnes and Noble is giving me a second interview on Monday. It's actually my dream job (at least for a job that doesn't require a degree). Mostly for the discount on books. Delicious, delicious books...

Lastly, I must admit that I've become a TV and movie addict. I've been keeping up with Doctor Who, Entourage, I'm on season two of Battlestar Galactica, and have become obsessed with The Office (not to mention House and Lost, my old friends). In the past few days I've seen Stranger than Fiction, Hot Fuzz, Sisterhood of Traveling Pants (stfu, y'all), Little Children, and Girl, Interrupted.

Not much else to say, besides the fact that I'm struggling over a new haircolor, if I want to color it at all... in terms of length, I'm working on growing it out so it looks like *mermaid* hair. Lulz.

I believe in karma. & perhaps, more importantly, I believe in myself.


As Woody Allen /Alvy Singer would say, I need the eggs.