TGIT (thank goodness its Thursday!)

Yesterday I woke up and thought it was Saturday and I was happy. But then I realized that no, it wad actualy Wednesday, and I had to study for a quiz and go to class. And I was no longer happy. This has been one long week, and athough its technically Thursday, I'm done with classes for the week, so I can breathe a slight sigh of relief. It wasn't a bad week, just an incredibly busy week-mostly because I was hugely unproductive on the weekend, so there was a lot of ctach up involved. Tara and I went looking for culture in Los Angeles, and lo and behold, actually managed to stumble upon some! (of course, I also stumbled upon some sketchy streets populated with even sketchier people in downtown LA, but I figure you win some, you lose some, right?) We went to see the Basquiat retrospective at the MOCA, which was AWESOME! Seriously, if you’re in the LA area in the next few weeks, go! Excellent art, excellent show. The best part was that the museum was staying open late that night, and had a bunch of activities going on, including a “make you own Basqiat inspired artwork.” So of course I did. And as you can see, it truly is a masterpiece.















Tara made some prety awesome art as well:

After the art extravanaganza we walked over to see "Stew Rice" a play about three fri
ends in Hawaii in 1958. It was an interesting walk to the theatre, as we had to traverse the streets of downtown Los Angeles-which is not something I reccommend as a nightime activity. But all was well, and the play was tons of fun.
Unfortuanetly, the good times put me in a severe deficit as far as my studies were concerned, so this has been a long week of late nights and early mornings. But somehow I managed to get everything done, and now its the weekend again! Hopefully, I'll be a better student (and actually be productive)... I suppose only time will tell :)

you be the judge

Saturday: woke up at 7:45 am -no alarm.

Sunday: woke up at 7:15 am -no alarm.

Monday: woke up at 8:55 am- alarm went off at 8:00 am; either I turned it off in my sleep, or woke up, turned it off and went back to sleep with no memory of such actions.

Now, on only one of those days did I have to be at work at 9:00 am, can you guess which one?

Things I would rather do than read Matthew Arnold

Okay, so for the past week, I've been trying to read Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy for my class this Tuesday. For those of you unfamiliar- Matthew Arnold was a cultural critic who wrote in the 19th century about things like "sweetness and light." I do not like Matthew Arnold. Reading his work is not fun. It is infact, the antithesis of fun. It is pain. And so, with this attitude, you can imagine all the things I've managed to do rather than my reading this week. I've:
1. cleaned my room (multiple times in fact, there has been a lot of tidying going on lately- my parents would be so proud)
2. done my laundry (which is not to say that when my reading is not painful, I don't do my laundry, but probably with less enthusiasm)
3. done the dishes (see number 2)
4. cleaned the kitchen floor
5. gone grocery shopping
6. shopped for things on ebay
7. done my other reading (of which there was plenty, believe me)
8. gone to coffee shops (technically to read, but I ended up mostly people watching and looking for light switches in dark restrooms)
9. gone to work (okay, so that wasn't really instead of doing my reading and I kind of have to go to work on a regular basis, but still, work with me here)
10. plucked my eyebrows (the pain of the is nothing compared to the pain of reading Arnold)
11. gone to multiple free food events on campus (okay, so the second one I had to go to for work, because my work was hosting it, so its not like I'm canvasing campus looking for free food...)
12. posted on this blog (which you would think in light of things, I would have done more often this week, but I really didn't have anything to say, and I was sort of busy with all the other non-Matthew Arnold related activities)

Now don't let my witty and wry writing (try saying that three times fast) fool you, I did do some of my reading; it was just painful and very unpleasent. And there's still more to do, *sigh*.

(and Vanessa, I know you laid down the law as far as lists were concerned, but I couldn't remember what the correct rules were, so do what I do and blame Bush- it's probably his fault somewhere down the line)

'tis a strange day when ye talk like a pirate...

Me mateys, this be one strange day. I'm wearing an eye patch, I saw a weird snake like lizard, and its raining as I type. Perhaps some explanations are needed?
Today, I got home after work only to find a pirate set on my bed- complete with cutlass, knife, hook and eye patch! Tara snuck into my house and left it for me in honor of the (aforementioned)International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Awesome! I've been wearing the eye patch on and off throughout the day.
Later, Tara discovered a snake with legs outside of her house. It was the weirdest thing! It looked like a snake, moved like a snake, had a tongue like a snake... but it also had little lizard like feet. So we stared at it for a while and took pictures. Totally the normal and mature grad student reaction, right?
I tried to get some studying done at Borders after the snake-lizard extravaganza, but failed pretty miserably, so instead I drove home. And that's when I saw lightening and it started to rain. Mind you, it was 80 plus degrees today, with no cause for rain. So of course there would be thunder and lightening and rainfall! That makes sense.
I really don't know why these strange things continue to occur. Maybe its me?


Rocking the eye patch and my knife


weird reptile sighting in Claremont

Yarr!

Mateys, today be "International Talk Like a Pirate Day." So bust out yer cutlasses and eye-patches, grab some wenches and some grog, and enjoy the bleedin' day! Arr!
ps. check out the website, it be full of pirate fun! http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

don't wanna work

Its Friday, I'm at work. Despite my purported liking of this job, I don't really feel like working (let's be honest, when do I ever?). I feel like crawling back into bed, and finishing the book I was reading (okay, so to be honest, it was a comic book- but really good! Its called Runaways, and is about these six teenagers who find out their parents are super villians... and I'm very near the end, but I had to stop reading to come to work, argh). So anyway, I'm sitting here at my desk, trying to search for missing articles of one of our co-directors (apparently, its frowned upon when library that he runs is missing his work)... which would be great if I could find any of his articles in the various databaes that I'm using, but, unfortunately, I think I suck at searching because I can't find these damn things. *Sigh* But some good things have happened since I got to work this morning. For instance, I got my bike lock removed from my bike, so now I can ride it home. Why is this noteworthy? Well, lets just say a few days ago some kids thought it would be fun to change the combo on my bike lock and lock it to my front wheel. Not cool. So today, I had to get the maintnance guys to cut open my bike lock. On the upside, my bike is free, and can now be ridden. On the downside, I am once again bike-lock-less.

don't wanna study

Okay, so I still have another 30 pages of Schiller to read tonight, but no real desire to do it, so instead I'm going to post the lyrics of a song I heard today. Its by The Dead Kennedys, called "At My Job." And while for once I actually don't have a crappy mindless job to complain about, I've had enough in the past (just read some of my previous posts) for this song to relevance. So here's to lame jobs and procrastination!

If your machine might slip a gear
Push this button to help it clear
Your time card says your name's Joe
But we'll call you 6-3-0
[Chorus]
I'm working at my job
I'm so happy
More boring by the day
But they pay me
All that time spent going to school
Just to end up following-rules
[Chorus]
Now it's time to take a break
Don't stray too far or you'll be late
Thank you for your service and a long career
Glad you gave us your best years

sad but true

Today Tina asked me to save her a place in the library. Because she knew that "on Sundays, the tables tend to fill up."

I didn't think it was possible; but we've actually reached new lows of nerdiness.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Raccoons... heroes with a ring tail?

Okay, I know its technically Thursday (or no pants wonderday, if you really want to be specific), but in my mind, this has Friday written all over it. It might have something to do with the fact that my week of classes end on Thursday, a fact which I am infinitely excited about as this has been quite possibly a week from hell. After the glory that was Saturday, things were bound to go downhill... and they did. Well, not so much downhill as busy with readings and writings, etc. Pretty much everyday since Sunday has been spent trying to catch up for the next day's class- so you can see why I'm so excited to not have class tomorrow. There's actually an opportunity for me to get on track, and even *gasp* get ahead! Of course, am I taking advantage of such a momentous opportunity? Of course not. If I was, would I be writing in this fantastic blog? And you all would be deprived, and probably cry, so really I'm doing this for you. I'm so generous like that :)
Anyway.
I don't actually have anything exciting to post, as my life has been consumed by reading, I haven't had too many exciting adventures. I did envision my life being ended by rabid raccoons though. The other night, as I walking home from the library (because like I said, I've been living the exciting life lately), I came across three huge raccoons! I wanted to take a picture, but they started lumbering towards me and suddenly I realized that I know very little about raccoons, except I imagined them to have sharp teeth, and then I got mental image of them running me down, knocking me to the ground with their massive weight (seriously- these were GIANT raccoons) and tearing me apart with their sharp teeth! So instead, I hurriedly walked home.

And that has been the most exciting thing to happen to me this week. Envisioning my own death by raccoons.


This was not the raccoon that I saw that night, this was a raccoon that was hanging out outside of my house a couple of nights earlier (Imagine it bigger with sharp teeth and a maniacal gleam in it's eyes!)

It started out simply enough...

Last night, all I really had planned for myself was some dinner with friends and a movie. It was supposed to be a quietly mellow night, as the night before had been the inaugural meeting of the Unofficial CGU Wine Club of which I somehow acquired the somewhat dubious title of "El Vino de Presidente" (I think we got our languages slightly mixed). Our friend Jesse was having a party at his house, and we had decided to make only the minorist of appearances. So after spending the day with "Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (a book I do not recommend, as I believe it adversely affects one's sanity, as you will shortly see) I went to Elaine's for some bbq. Dinner was excellent, and we were all in quite the food coma when we decided to head over to Jesse's. So to bolster ourselves, we acquired some caffeine in the form of coffee beverages. This, as you will see was the first of a long line of questionable decisions. The next being opening random doors and cupboards at Jesse's house- where there is an abundance of seriously random stuff. In one cupboard I found some elderly person's glasses, vitamins, wine glasses and a metal sign saying "DO NOT ENTER TEST IN PROGRESS." Of course I couldn'tÂ’t just let that go unnoticed. The next half an hour or so was spent taking pictures with said sign in various rooms throughout JesseÂ’s house, and cracking ourselves up immensely. After that (and some brownies), we all returned to respective homes, thinking the night couldn'’t get any better.
We were so wrong.

Not thirty minutes later did I get a call from Tara, and not ten minutes later was I over at her house creating a true masterpiece, entitled Aicha. Have you seen the Aicha video on the internet? It's truly spectacular- this random dude singing about a woman who moves like the breeze http://www.ameryonline.com/aicha/ (click on "Aicha Original Video"”). Tara's brother had made his own version, and in a haze of coffee laced insanity, we decided to one up him. And how did we. Lets just say, light sabers, sparkly blue shorts, stick horses and really bad dancing was involved (Oh, and the sign). It was AWESOME!
So that was my Saturday night. I never got to see any movie, but the one we made was totally worth missing any other entertainment adventure. It was also super fun to just hang out with my friends, and be completely silly- its a rare group of people who you can have good intellectual conversations with, who also find the humor in random signs and bad dancing.


Fun with the TEST IN PROGRESS sign






The aftereffects of the awesome Aicha adventure (don't you really want to see the video now?)

Aaaarrrggghhhh!

So my first week of classes are officially over. It's been a good week, but I kept feeling like something was missing. I thought it might have been some of my classes, as they keep getting cancelled (seriously! there was the Monday excitement, and then today, my professor got caught in traffic and the class ended up not happening... so out of five possible sessions, I had three. One would think I would be excited about this prospect, but I'm actually kind of bummed- either the heat is getting to me, or I've officially reached new levels of nerdom), but it was something else entirely. I didn't even realize what I missing until it happened.

A Pirate sighting.

The Pirate of the history department is back and in classes, along with the other oddballs and eccentrics; life in Claremont is complete. And I couldn't be happier!