renegadeRICEcracker

almost done.

it's the last night i'll have any considerable amount of stuff in chicago. i'm sitting in my apartment, which doesn't look all that different save a little pile of boxes and the slightly more clear nature of corners that until quite recently had piles of crap in them. i should go to bed, because i get the distinct feeling that tomorrow is not going to be terribly pleasant, but i can't quite sleep.

i don't think it's that i'm horribly traumatized, since not much more than a vague sadness to see my apartment go has set in, but it also kind of strikes me that, come tomorrow, after my movers have taken my apartment and my car away, it will start to feel like i no longer live in chicago. weird.

but hey. i do have an exciting amount of interior design to look forward to. i'm going to go to bed so i can drift to sleep as i envision horrendously bright paints i can splash on my new bare white walls. hoo-rah.

separation anxiety.

so... it's kinda sorta starting to hit me that i am moving for good in, like, three and a half days. oooh...

dammit...

i mean, i'm excited about the new apartment and going back home, and being around old friends and all that, but until quite recently that excitement was unmarred by any thought that i would also be leaving chicago. three years in this place, and over this past year i've come to realize that i'm actually gonna miss it. i, in fact, like it a whole lot.

and the people. and the big house (which, lord knows, needs to be knocked down with a big fat wrecking ball). and my apartment. and all that. i took part in my last chicago poker night tonight (only lost 50 cents - not bad considering what a jackass idiot i am when it comes to poker (and other things, but we won't discuss that just now)).

and i have to start cleaning tomorrow, too. and it's hot and gross (guess i won't miss that, eh?).

ugh. meh. oh well.

the great city of chicago.

it must be my neverending adoration for the city that leads me to continuously contribute to it's coffers. for example, today alone i pledged $75 in parking violations. i can only interpret this pledge to have been voluntary because, while it's true that i didn't expect the line at the consulate to take an hour and fifteen minutes, it was my own willful, lazy stupidity that kept me from picking up the little stack of quarters i left by my wallet to begin with and therefore from having enough change to cover my time with the chinese officials, and secondly - why the hell didn't i ever put the new registration sticker on my plates? now i have to go look for it. i'm halfways concerned that if i can't find it, i'll have to pay registration fees again.

gar...

and i need to get a haircut. ayumi started calling me "mullethead" a good two weeks ago.

printers are fickle.

oh, sure, it's working now, but only after a good measure of begging and fighting and frustration. there seemed to be a communications error, but then again it only seemed to have cropped up after i repeatedly shut it off or otherwise interrupted it when it was trying to print. maybe it got mad and decided to stop trying for a while. just like a printer.

well, the pictures are printed but now it's too late to take them to the consulate for the morning hours (need to get visas for the china trip). i will instead shoot for the 1:00-2:30 afternoon hours. in the meantime... what to do? watch crossing over, which i haven't seen for a long long time, or growing pains, which i just saw for the first time in years last week.

*yawn*

limbo limbo limbo

*yawn*

i think i may have hit that point where there's not so much to do now. i still have to see about getting an immunization for my trip to china, fill out my loan forms, and cancel my utilities, but that's all. i've spoken to my movers and they are going to pack for me, so that's done.

the above is enough for me to feel like i'm procrastinating and should be doing stuff, but that is counterbalanced by bouts of boredom. i need a schedule. i don't have one. that's why you're currently reading meaningless crap about my day. sorry.

my weekend in l.a. was good - i went back for my sister's bridal shower, which was nice and included a massive amount of tasty finger foods, some of which were cut into small cute shapes. it was a very girly party.

we made my sister cry with laughter. it was very cute.

and this baby threw up on me. you would think that in a room full of pediatricians, one of them would have warned me that it would do that. i'd even told them that this was my first time really feeding a baby, and they had to show me how to burp it. but no... one of them put a paper napkin on my shoulder, and that was it. baby puked down the front of my shirt. you know, you can call it "spit up," but that doesn't really make it cuter. it still smells like vomit. the baby was cute, though.

other than that, not much has been going on. i read "np" by banana yoshimoto, "who's irish?" by gish jen, and am in the middle of "dance dance dance" by haruki murakami (i love murakami, and i would say to read "a wild sheep chase" first). i've liked everything so far... i'm a big gish jen fan off of "mona in the promised land" and "typical american."

okay. diane is here, so i'm going to go.

boo snapfish

okay. so apparently, those snapfish e-mails that unnamed persons sometimes delete without opening sometimes have warning notices to purchase something to prevent the aforementioned website from deleting all of the unnamed person's online photo albums.

whatever. snapfish wasn't mac-friendly anyway. and i'm going to righteously feel wronged despite any alleged negligence with which i might have acted.

bastards.

i need to sign up for new e-mail and other related web stuff anyway, so i'll get on .mac or something and put all my pictures up there. if i want 1L pics up i'll have to scan them though. other than that, i think i still have copies of all my digital pics except the ones from work last summer. oops...

bah.

meh.

so sitting around eating and watching tv...

...does not, in fact, get you in shape. i finally decided to go get my bike from the law school, because it'd been there since the musical... in february (i clearly ride it everywhere). besides, i hadn't exercised since... uh... may? maybe even april. whenever it was that i tore something in my knee (i'd decided that clearly the best route would be to not do anything strenuous with it until any muscle i might have had fully atrophied. that way i can start with a clean slate).

bob the building manager man told me that i was lucky it was still around - apparently when the director told me that i could leave it there all summer she'd done so without telling anyone else it would be there. bob stopped someone from taking it literally out the door, and then later moved it to a storage room when he noticed other people eyeing it and saying that clearly no one wanted it, so they should just take it.

so i am lucky to still have a bicycle.

i pumped the tires and then took it out to the lake for a ride. yeeaaahhhh... i just went for, like, a 20 minute bike ride. then i came home and showered. i was tired. i think i feel more pathetic than i ever have in my life. *sigh*

i will make myself feel better by watching tv.

i need to get out of the house.

i've been reduced to watching hours and hours of syndicate television (including an episode of futurama that i already saw... last night) and taking emode tests. i am an intellectual curator whose strongest emotional suit is empathy. yeah.

happy birthday isaac!!!

we went to nuevo leon for dinner (yay!!!) and then to the cove. we were all so freaking full that drinking was painful. at this very moment (well, probably not the moment you are reading this but at the very very least the moment that i am typing this) i am drunk as all hell. yeah. drunk as all hell.

tana taught us a new drinking game and it is evil. it is named after her friend's childhood stuffed animal and randomness. we almost killed isaac.

getting home after ingesting that much alcohol was a long, laborious process.

now we are going to watch tv. check y'alls later.

life has gone bad

when you find yourself watching the nanny.

life is even worse when you realize you recognize the characters and know what's going on.

the new coke can.

it's very exciting. as the clerk guy told ayumi, you get less, but you have to pay more for it. of course, i will buy anything in cool packaging, so i bought one as soon as i saw it.

um... what else have i been up to?

ayumi and i visited brian at work and he showed me his little closet of mysteries... this setup took him an entire weekend and he has more to go.

then we went to the build-a-bear workshop so she could make a birthday present for someone and i made a bear for tana so she could make fun of me. it is one of the cheesier things i've done in a while...

you pick out a bear from the bins of empty bears (they look like scary empty carcasses), pick a sound for it, and then get a heart for it. the guy makes you think of the person you're giving it to while you squeeze the heart in your hand and make a wish for them. and then, um, you kiss it on both sides, rub it against your funnybone to make him witty, rub it against your tummy for i forget, rub it against your heart for love, rub it against your forehead so it's good and smart and rub it against your nose for luck. then you jump up and down three times, spin around three times, and do a little dance.

yes, i did this. shut up.

he puts the heart in the bear and you step on a pedal to make the fluffing machine go, fill up the bear, they stitch it up, and you pick out clothes for it. they also have accessories, bags, shoes, etc. um, you name it and print out a birth certificate for it, too.

i told sahar about this and her first response was to turn to chad and say, "honey, i /really/ want a bear. you should make one for me... and we should take the camera."

okay, i'm off for a playdate with diane, and hopefully won't come back with more stories that embarrass me. (although, to be fair, it was fun. but the decisions were a little daunting, especially given how sleep-deprived i was. ayumi and i decided that they guy probably thought we were stoned because our response times were slow and we took so long to look at everything. when we left ayumi laughed at me and asked, "so did you have a good time? or was that too stressful for you?")

my friend sean is a weirdo.

and maybe a little unstable. but you know. in that good way.

so there's not much going on. which is nice. especially since it doesn't involve barbri. in the last couple days: i found an apartment and signed a lease. i started reading invisible monsters. i went shopping. i declined a reading from the psychic cats on 3rd street. i talked on the phone a total of somewhere around fifteen hours.

that's about it. maybe when i go out today something exciting will happen like my winning the lottery or my tripping over something that accidentally tips something over which hits something and makes something big fall onto the president.

i hate apartment hunting.

not that i've been doing much. but i've started mapping out locations in west hollywood so i can call them. this sucks. what i really want is for someone i know who lives in a really awesome apartment to undergo some unexpected job change that requires them to move, thus inducing them to call me and ask if i would like to take over their kickass lease.

yes, yes, i know i'm just lazy. as this point has not escaped my attention, y'all can stop telling me to suck it up.

cruised westwood with ayumi last night and hit diddy riese for old times' sake.

i was very disturbed to see that they are now charging above a quarter a cookie. the ice cream has moved to 75 cents now, too. i suppose the upside of this is that the ice cream cookie is now a deal, rather than just the cost of two cookies and a scoop of ice cream. but still. i feel like a tradition has ended. and i never did get over the "new" red sign that's been there for at least 5 years.

bah.

*yawn*

so... it's over. on november 21st, i find out if it's over for good. i celebrated last night with japanese/korean bbq and a divey karaoke bar where i heard a more painful rendition of "i still haven't found what i'm looking for" than i thought possible.

1. chad, sahar's boyfriend, has an amazing voice.

2. many other people there did not. after they signed me up for a song, every time someone with a truly horrible, er, "interpretation" of a song was up there, erika would grin at me and say, "are you after /her/?"

anyway. i got very drunk last night and slept a lot today.

this is hilarious. (you shouldn't mess around with asians, we're shifty.)