As I view my entire semester stretching out before me and yawning in a menacing manner...
Ok, so I'm at Spider House to "write my first Trimble paper," by which I mean chat on IM, write emails, read the news, stare into space, and update my blog—anything, really, rather than write this honkin paper. Possibly extra-ironic because the paper itself is on the sociological phenomenon of blogs.
(sigh)
This semester will require a monumental shift in paper-writing technique. I've mushed through the past four years by writing any and all papers the night before they are due. This will almost certainly not fly for Trimble's class. So here it is Sunday afternoon and I'm feelin kinda proud of my page of bulleted notes—mostly scattered words and sentence fragments—and yet I haven't been able to plunge into complete sentences and paragraphs yet. Despite the fact that this here is just streaming forth like so much useless babble.
Maybe I should just write all my rough drafts as blog entries.
I know that half of my dedicated readership has taken JT—any words of wisdom and/or encouragement would be greatly appreciated as I plunge to new and exciting levels of pathetic.
The long-promised house pictures for all you non-Austinites.
Maryann's room became yellow...
Mine became green...
The living room went through a number of stages, one involving a pepto-bismol pink primer coat that was terrifying:
Then three coats of red. The thing about red paint is that not only do you have to do many, many coats, but the paint in the can is an entirely different color from what it dries as on the wall. So I opened up the can of red paint and nearly had a heart attack: "Maryann's going to kill me. I'm about to paint our wall magenta." But no, sure enough, it dried to a very awesome red:
And then there's the dining room table. We got the table and the six chairs for $40 at a garage sale. And then they made us take the table cloth, too. I think it was well worth the price:
Last Saturday before school starts... Maryann and I made the best of it by going to B Side with the red house boys, sitting in animal print-topped booths drinking EZ Wheat pints, Kevin in his suit, talking about getting hit in the nuts and sharing health defects, OCDs, and embarassing stories.
We were also introduced to a fine tradition I was entirely unaware of—the West Campus Crawl, which involves cramming nine people into Kevin's Grand Cherokee, blaring DMX, and driving around West Campus yelling at people. Well, this time it was really just Justin hanging out the window making cat-calls and criticizing people's fashion choices, but I've promised to join in next weekend, in honor of rush.
All in all, a good night. I am emphatically not ready for class to start.
Thanks to Noelle and the three RTF kids who stuck around way past midnight when everyone else turned into a pumpkin and disappeared... I think Maryann's still out partying with the social work girls, cause she's not home and there's a red SUV in the backyard... whee!
Right. So. I'm supposed to be at home on my computer right now, but instead I'm at Spider House because my Road Runner crapped out mere hours after Doug's heroic fix of my network/internet settings. The guy who installed the cable/internet earlier in the day came back in the evening to "finish up something" with the cable box on the back of the house and lo and behold my internet stopped working after he left. I would call him dirty names, but I'm pretty sure he gave us access to all the movie channels, not just the ones we're paying for. I think he thought I was cute. Anyhow, that should be fixed tomorrow (and hopefully they won't take Skin-o-max away).
In other news, my room's green, my books are on a bookshelf... and I'll have a roommate tomorrow, assuming my directions don't get her hideously lost somewhere in east Texas. Once I've got internet at the house again, I'll post some pictures and possibly even update my webspace page before this hellish semester starts. Why didn't someone tell me there's only a week and a half of summer left! Gah!
Sunday morning! Call me! My parents and I will be starting the move around 9am, but help at any point during the morning will be appreciated... as I said before, very short distances are involved, with central air at either end...
Leave me a comment if you can come by and carry a few boxes, or if you want to but need a ride, etc... thanks ahead of time!
"This blank space brought to you by Google" is a fantastic banner ad that's popped up on blogspot in the past few days. Think how improved our surfing and driving experiences would be if everyone switched over to blank rectangles, solid colors, or pretty pictures for online ads and roadside billboards—with just a line at the bottom saying who paid for it.
I just wonder if it's content-triggered like the text ads for travel and baby products... do I meet some "postmodern" or "ironic" content quota?
"Goddammit Elaine, I want babies. Now let's change the subject."
"Another thing," Elaine said, "is that you're an intellectual."
Benjamin yanked the sock off the doorknob and turned around. "Elaine?" he said.
"And I'm not."
"Elaine?"
"You're an intellectual, Benjamin, and you should marry another intellectual."
"Goddammit!" Benjamin said. He threw the sock down on the floor and hurried across the room to sit down again in the chair. "Now listen," he said.
"You should marry someone who can discuss politics and history and art and—"
"Shut up!" He pointed to himself. "Now," he said. "Have you ever heard me talking about those things? Once? Have you ever once heard me talking about that crap?"
I'm going to be moving into my new house this coming Sunday, August 10th. Anyone who wants to assist in hauling my ungodly amounts of crap from the storage space to the house will be rewarded righteously with beer, pizza, and—drumroll, please—Mom Brownies! (NOT the special kind, this time : P )
It won't be that bad, really, I swear—the hauling really only amounts to ten yards from storage to the UHaul and then ten yards from the UHaul to the house, with short side-trips to George's for electronics and to a realtor's house to pick up a washer and dryer. Then everyone can sit around in my central air-conditioning and laugh at me for being such an incurable packrat while drinking Shiner and eating Papa John's and those glorious, delectable brownies. Mmm... brownies...
