in which life is funny

I planned lots of blog posts in my head before this one, and I'll get to them eventually, but it's my theory that we all need a good laugh more often than we need anything else.

So go look at this blog. You will crap yourself laughing. I nearly did. I still can't help giggling when I think of any post on this blog. Oh dear.

I'm also swamped with work. Sad. =( But I had a fabulous birthday! Thank you for all the birthday wishes/cards/comments!

"if we accept one dime from thomas kinkade, we are accepting money from satan!"

-- Don Forsythe, my printmaking professor, when Kinkade invited Christians in the Visual Arts to his Malibu ranch to discuss giving them a donation. Apparently Kinkade is an evangelical. Or something.

Birthdays, birthdays. Ruth had a birthday on Saturday. Yay Ruth! Greg has a birthday coming up soon. Yay Greg! My roommate Amy has a birthday coming up soon. Yay Amy! Birthdays basically rock. I'm pretty sure.

I'm getting a much-anticipated birthday present from myself -- tomorrow I should be able to order my new computer. I'm impatiently waiting for the transfer of my funds from my electronic savings account to my checking account. Then I'm doing it -- I'm ordering a mac laptop. I'm doing a little dance, because man it is hard to be frugal. But it is awesome to own technology.

Then I have to save up for software. And marriage? I may also have to save up for marriage. Just in case, you know, we need a little extra grocery money in the first few months of unemployment.

Unemployment. . . . crap.

I had another funny story to tell you, I'm pretty sure, but I forgot. If I remember, I'll tell you.

ooh, ooh, i know! pick me!

I discovered what my new countdown should be about: my birthday is in ten days! Wooh! I will be 22, and now a "twenty-something," rather than a "twenty-one year old." I feel that the distinction is immense. But probably only for people who are 21.

Also, don't some mental diseases manifest themselves in your mid-twenties? I'm freaking out that I'll develop a disease before I finish college. Or worse, after college, after I've already put up with so many mental-breakdown-inducing circumstances yet never really gave way to them.

Ooh, also, I remembered I have candy in my desk. Yay!


The other day, Greg and I managed to cook our very own whole, free-range chicken. It had that little bag inside with the gibblets in it, you know the one I'm talking about? And it still had the neck attached, which is weird looking. But I don't know what to do with gibblets. Mom said maybe Turkey stuffing/dressing. Greg thinks we should feed it to his housemate's cat.

In any case, I'm proud of us, because it wasn't dry, and it wasn't undercooked, and we only each called our respective mothers like five times about it. And we even went to the extra trouble of boiling the bones and stuff and making chicken broth. So basically we are pretty awesome in the kitchen.

And then I found out that there's another whole chicken waiting for us in his mom's freezer back home. Haha. Oh, and we ordered two more for November. So apparently we are just all about the meat and the roasting, etc.

I do feel really good, though, about eating meat that's free-range. . . and about making our own chicken broth, so we can have free-range stews!

what, i have to invent a new countdown since classes started?

It's the second day of classes and I haven't yet lost the elusive, precious delusion perpetrated by Feelings of Personal or Professional Competence.

I win!

I am taking classes of the levels 300, 200, and yes, even 100. Some of them are gen eds (yes, I am That Person, who put off the easy stuff and to my regret is in the back row making cynical comments and generally causing trouble for people actually interested in European history in the 1700s! Woe!) and I find people saying to me "Are you new? I haven't seen you around."

My response is "That's 'cause I could be your grandma!" And when they look confused, I explain that I am a super senior, and so far ahead of their time that if they were on horseback I would be driving a Mustang.

And then I think to myself, "I am going to kick your academic ass." Because, you know, I have waaaaay more practice at college than anyone else. Well, except maybe this older student in my printmaking class. And the professors themselves. And a few super seniors with whom I have assiduously bonded.

See, that's a joke to cover some of my insecurities, and avoid facing the fact that some of these juniors are probably better artists than I will ever be. Denial and repression, thank you Dan, for those words of wisdom.

I have also acquired The Sickness. So in another way I completely lose at the first week of classes. But it's OK -- no fever, no throwing up, so mostly there's nothing very much wrong with me.

Oh yeah, and shouldn't I have graduated a few months ago and be mired in the quagmass of career aspirations and cold, hard reality knocking against my poorly-heated apartment door, like the majority of recent college graduates? (Poorly-heated because I wouldn't be able to afford the oil to heat it considering that I would still be hunting desperately for a job and cursing the genes that make me congenitally unsuitable for careers like engineering.)

I introspect too much. And also, I clearly have some repressed snark from sitting in classrooms for just two days. What will happen after a whole semester?

It will be an explosion the likes of which has not been seen since Hiroshima. Except, you know, it will be an explosion of snark and not an explosion of anything that kills people.