Collectively, we've seen a lot of sunrises lately. That hardly seems healthy.

And a joyous Beltane to all.

Right, and I apparently rank decently on Google searches for "ambiguously gay".

Alright...Lisa. Could I possibly link to her official page any more often? Probably not.

As I've mentioned before, I've become a pretty crazy fan. I attribute this mostly to Peter's zeal for everything and music in particular, since I never really went crazy over a specific artist before. But trust me, she deserves it. She's amazing. We drove six hours each way from Philadelphia to Boston, and I did it to see her. There's only one song of hers that I've never heard, and I should have it any day now from a very generous girl who runs a Lisa Loeb Tab page called Wild Plums and Agrimony. Most excellent.

So there we were, way up in the front, just one row of bodies back from the barrier. The people in front of us were Garbage fans, which is all well and good, but they wouldn't move and they didn't seem to care for Lisa at all, so I was pretty disappointed that I was stuck behind them. That and they were annoying. Anyway, the wait was interminable as the sound crews set up all the amps and wires and guitars that Lisa and her band would be using. The folks from WBOS spent a few minutes talking about the weather and how we should all wear sunscreen because they felt that the silence was uncomfortable.

She finally came out, I cheered and clapped, Peter screamed. She chatted for a little while about the new album and then proceeded to open with our favorite song from Cake and Pie. We screamed, jumped, and sang along as the rest of the audience kinda smiled and nodded in time...when she finished, Peter shouted "That's our favorite!" and she smiled and waved in our direction...Her set was incredible and I just cried my eyes out all through "Stay." I never thought I would, but it's the song that made me fall in love with her and that really endeared Peter to me.

For the record, it's really hard to sing and sob at the same time.

After her set, we waited about forty or forty-five minutes in a line to get cds signed by her. Peter had left his copy here in Philly and I'd accidentally left mine at Rabi's after Peter gave me this "Oh how cute, you think you could get Lisa Loeb to sign your cd" look. Yeah so we had to buy two new copies of the album at the festival for her to sign. Rabi got to keep my old copy and Peter plans to give his to Laurel. So what if we had to buy extra copies of the cd...spread the Lisa love. :) I also got an adorable three quarter sleeve T that's pink and white and says "Someone you should know" across the front...that's the name of the new single...honest. The shirts were supposedly one size fits all...but really they're one size fits me. As Kat said, "It looks like they said...ok, Tam is this big so the shirt has to be..."

So we waited in this line, got to meet some other big fans and chat with them, and eventually got to meet Lisa...yes she is just as cute and "pocket-sized" in person as she appears to be. She guessed how to spell my name right on the first try and she signs cds with an exclamation point after your name. I told her that I was a huge fan of hers and Peter mentioned that we'd driven all the way from Philly to see her and that she should play in Philly. She said that she remembered seeing us up in the front. Then we got a picture with her and found Kat and Rabi, who'd wandered off.

We spent a good long while sprawled on the grass in the park with the brass duck sculptures and then wandered around Boston a little bit and did some shopping. All the while flipping out, as you might imagine, over the fact that I'd actually met Lisa Loeb and spoken to her and cried while she played.

Aaaaah...Boston.

Overall, one of the coolest weekends ever.

So....wow. What a weekend.

I guess I'll start at the beginning. Left the room here for the Garbage concert: 4pm. To sit in line with Peter for three and a half hours. Met a close high-school friend of Peter's. Apparently passed muster. Doors: 7:30pm. To run up to the stage. Didn't get the crap beat out of me nearly as much as I'd expected, though Peter is pretty severely bruised from having been pressed into the metal barrier for all two hours of Garbage's performance. Which is to say that we were damn close to the stage. Garbage was, I might add, incredible. I actually recognized a bit over half of the songs they played despite my only passing familiarity with their second album and my total ignorance of the third album. In their main set, they played a few songs from the second album that I knew: "Special," "Push It," and "When I Grow Up." A couple songs from the first album: "Vow" and "Not My Idea." And a bunch of songs that I didn't know, either from the second album or the third or B sides. For the encore, however, they played "Supervixen," "Milk," and "I'm Only Happy When it Rains." All from the first album...which I know relatively well. Aaah.

So we dropped off Peter's friend at the train station and proceeded back to the dorm. On the way, I started prepping to meet yet another good friend of Peter's...yes...Rabi. Yeah...that one over there on my sidebar, that's the one. So we got back to the dorm, and I signed Peter in, and I looked at the sign in book..."Rabi's here already!" I yelled. Of course she was there. Kat was expecting her at some time around ten or eleven and it was after midnight when Peter and I got back from the concert. But it was exciting to know that right at that moment she was probably in my dorm room. We went upstairs...she was.

After a bit of running around and clothes-changing etc., we picked up all our bags, had the lady at the front desk take a picture of all of us, and hopped in the car. This was at about 1am.

Hours of sleepy driving and one lesson on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Priciple later, we arrived at the lovely home of the Whitakers and retired for a three hour nap before Earthfest.

Earthfest....yeah. So we got there and it was already really crowded, the city of Boston had been kind enough to run the metro for free on Saturday, and it looked moderately grim that we would be able to get a seat or be able to stand anywhere near the stage and/or with good sound. Somehow, I was enlisted to find us a spot out on the field of blanket-sitting spectators...maybe I was looking bitchy and agressive, I don't know. But I did get us a spot...just big enough for the four of us to sit on the grass, dead center and a little ways in front of the sound booth. Excellent sound, might I add, and a very good view of Garbage. Right...we got there just in time to see Garbage go on. They were quite marvelous again, despite the fact that it definitely looked as though they're unaccustomed to playing in daylight.

As soon as Garbage was over, we started heading up as close as we could get to the barrier. Though we knew there would be a significant wait while the sound was set up, we wanted to be as close as possible for Lisa Loeb's set. Right....Lisa....aaaah.

More to follow after I've showered and done some work.

You know that thing when the person you love is just being so themselves and you hold your breath and you smile really big and you clench your eyes shut until you can't take it anymore and you just have to say 'Ooooh, you're so cute. I love you!'...?

Well I definitely had to go through that today as we walked down the street. And he was talking about having his tonsils taken out.

Maybe twenty minutes ago, I emerge from the Drexel University subterranean cafeteria to the street level. I look west along Chestnut Street at the rushing cars; the light had just turned green. Blinking at the setting sun, I nibble on my ice cream cone and note the long diagonal shadows of the parking meters falling grey on the glowing orange sidewalk.

I step out of the shadow of a building and grow my own long grey one. The light turns red and a motorcycle, laden with man in leather jacket and woman hugging him from behind, speeds through and past me. I cross the street and think...there is only one person I need to share my world with.

So, it turns out that after the 20-25 minute walk home from Peter's, in addition to my recent lack of sleep, I was so tired that when a guy from the 4th floor attempted to flirt with me, I mustered a very enthusiastic "Hey!" for him and then slipped into an upright coma. He tried to remember what floor I'm on, though I've certainly never spoken to him before, and was within one...not awful in a building with 7 residential floors. He made some sort of joke about why he pressed the wrong button making the elevator take an extra stop on the way up...I of course responded with a brilliantly vacant "oh." Yes...very tired indeed.

According to quiz found on Larry's page, if I were a kitchen appliance, I'd be a toaster. Oh, and according to the people at Snapple, fish can drown. There you go.

And I hate…disintegration.

Yes, we can all feel the end of the year approaching and the sense that maybe we haven’t done anything with ourselves this entire time. It’s April…we set up summer jobs and try to figure things out. I worked in the darkroom for two and a half hours yesterday with no one to talk to, no music, and no especially challenging print to keep me busy. I had nothing to do with myself for two and a half hours but think. Work myself up into frustration, actually.

That tiny chunk of me that I might pass off as the soul of an artist has this undying loyalty to the search for truth. Truth and self, what it all means, how people relate to each other and why that’s important, and that little part of me can’t stand when people lie to themselves. While my artistic soul has been carefully insulated under my cynicism and what little rationality I do possess, I have to agree with it on this point.

There are thousands of ways to lie to yourself, among them are actual self-delusion, negligence, and distraction. These, of course, are my definitions, and as usual, I’m making this up as I go along.
--Self-delusion: actively (though perhaps subconsciously) replacing the truth with something else. For example, if I were to convince myself that I really wanted to run away with the circus. I could probably do this, mentally, just as I could probably make myself believe any number of ridiculous things.
-- Negligence: simply refusing to think about the truth; one of the lesser ways to lie to oneself; much akin to distraction.
--Distraction: engaging in some consuming activity instead of coming to grips with reality; otherwise known as escapism.

Incidentally, I probably despise escapist forms of denial more than I do self-delusion. Self-delusion usually has some sort of justification to it, be it a coping method or as way to try to make the world make sense. A person can think that they should feel a certain way about a given situation and thus make themselves feel that way. Not to mention the fact that I’m always a little in awe of people who can just create a reality for themselves. Escapism, on the other hand is really only acceptable, in my mind, for very very short periods of time following some sort of shock. After that, it seems that whatever the issue is, it needs to be dealt with rather than avoided.

I guess I just believe in really feeling however you feel. It’s great to feel good, alright to feel indifferent, and definitely okay to be unhappy. While it’s not a good thing to be unhappy all the time, artificially inducing happiness, however you do it, is just another way of lying to yourself, though I guess chronic depression would be an exception.

At this point, however, this is a day-old rant, and now I’m probably just using it to avoid doing something else…

A beautiful start to a beautiful day.

Nice things about suburbia:

Wisteria trailing from telephone wires
More stars than the city
Damp-quiet-glowing-springleaf mornings
Amazingly good, amazingly cheap bakery, a 4 minute drive from home

Bad things about suburbia:

Missing people in the city
It's suburbia, come on.

So, I got to talk to my parents and my boss about our impending trip to Boston...
My parents both said, "Hey, that's really cool, have a good time."
My boss said, "Oh my gosh, driving so late at night! Be careful!"

My life is so marvelously ironic.

So I have an 8am "Mathematics for Design" exam...right, and I know that's in lik 15 minutes, but anyway...

So I set my alarm clock for 7:30 this morning. Dreamed that my alarm clock went off, woke up at 7:15, went back to sleep, was shocked awake by the volume of "Supervixen". Mmmm...out of bed at 7:30 in the morning is nice as a one-time event.

Said project met with absolutely no enthusiasm from the professor...I returned to my room to exclaim, "What a waste of three hours!" only to remind myself that at least it wasn't a waste of vastly more than three hours. So yeah....Peter Mulvey concert tonight...I'm hyped. Or I would be if I weren't exhausted. I get to hang out with Peter and his mom, though, so that should be neat....right...did I mention that Drexel University has drained every last vestige of creativity from me? Yeah....I no write pretty no more. *sigh* :)

After only about three hours of work (don't tell the teacher), I've come up with a "planal" material that encourages light to go in and out of it...or something like that. And it looks like something out of a Tim Burton drawing.

I spent a while yesterday working in the darkroom and at the library scanner to get some of my photographs onto the computer so...maybe I'll put up a gallery or something soon. :) That'd be fun. And um......right.

Yeah for portabella mushrooms and other goodies!

So right....I'm so magic!

Sunday afternoon, as Kat and I were gluing ourselves to our projects, I said, "You know, I really wish I'd gone to that Dar concert. She should come to Philadelphia. I'm going to go see what her tour dates are." I walked over to my computer, opened up her page, clicked the TOUR button, and sat in front of my computer going "Oh my god....oh my god..." Kat asked four or five times what had happened, but she finally had to come over and look for herself. "She's playing here....tomorrow." Yes, I am magic.

Well, that Dar show was a very expensive benefit, and I'd just spent like four hundred dollars on a guitar, so needless to say, we didn't go. But today Peter emailed me a link to the Perdue University page to point out that Lisa Loeb is playing there a week from today. And I knew that, of course. But I decided to check out her web page and see if any new tour dates were posted. No, there hadn't been any new dates, but she is still planning to play "Earthfest" in Boston the day after Peter and I are going to see Garbage, and Peter and I had been mostly joking about driving to Boston to see her. Well. About that. I finally decided to seriously check out this Earthfest business and to see if they were sold out yet, since it had been noted that Bonnie Raitt is going to be headlining. Turns out that the concert is free. And that Garbage is going to be playing, too.

Anyone else feel a road trip coming on?

You are the end of my week...

Mmm....new colors. Who needs to do photography assignments anyway?

We walked east on Walnut street until 40th, then north on 40th to Market where he kissed me goodbye and descended into the maw of the city...the Market Frankford line. I began singing track one of the Lisa Loeb Cake and Pie and continued to walk east on Market.

Well...started with track one, might as well go to track two...people I pass look at me strangely, though I think the panhandlers and the managers of the food trucks are probably getting used to the sight.

On to track three...yes, I do this a lot. Walk home, by myself these days, singing--usually Lisa Loeb, even. I never used to be this obsessive about her music, but Peter is such a bad influence...both when it comes to obsessing and when it comes to music. I spent eight hours practicing on my new guitar on Saturday, and most of that time learning "Do You Sleep?"

Track four--the home stretch, geographically. I rounded that corner with the previously Rococo landscaping and noted that they were significantly greener than they had been the last time I'd seen them.

I sighed a bit, walking under them towards home, and laughed as a strong breeze rained hundreds of tiny pink petals down on me.

I love giving people presents. Be it random things that I think people might just like, or something they've said they wanted but didn't get for themselves, I have a strong tendency to return from places bearing gifts.

Over thanksgiving break, I got Kat a bomber-type jacket from the store at which I work, because she said she was looking for one. I've been to Reading Terminal Market and returned with a couple of pieces of rock candy for myself, caramel cheesecake for Peter, and wasabe peas for Kat. On a recent trip to Chinatown, I couldn't help but purchase, thinking of Peter, a pair of black chopsticks and a set of teacups with the most lovely colors of glaze crazed in the bottom of every cup.

On my birthday, Kat and I went shopping, and there was more than one time I said out loud, "No...it's my birthday. I shouldn't be buying other people presents today." It helped, of course, that I'd just bought myself a guitar.

I don't know if it's some subconscious desire to get people to like me, but it feels to me more like I just really like to surprise people and to make them happy and to let them know that I care about them.

So...ya know....if I like you, watch out. :)

And in a gesture of peace, the Puritans attempted to feed the California pagan the flesh of their little feathery enemies.


...My brilliant narrative in action.

I walked through the city this morning, earlier than I usually do. The air was damp, definitely bordering on steamy, and the day was already warming. The trees were black with the drizzle that fell all night, and puddles in the sidewalk still assaulted the hems of my jeans.

The thing about spring, I think, is the colors. Those trees, their bark wet and dark, were misted at the tips of their twigs with the faintest yellow-green. Yesterday, returning from a very expensive birthday shopping excursion, we passed a corner of campus that we don't see all that often. I noted that the trees there with their pink blossoms and pale green leaves looked like Rococo. She didn't know what I meant, since she hasn't yet gotten to that particular segment of Art History geekery, but I clarified. "Rococo painting." "Oh."

I'd obviously gotten my point across.

As I walked, today, I saw more birds than I am accustomed to seeing. Fluffy little sparrows in the branches of the scrawny landscaping on Walnut street. Some strange black bird in the middle of the sidewalk right outside the house, that sat and looked at me and cried a couple times before flying away. I wondered if these birds that I was seeing had ever flown in a forest. Had they ever made it to the park, even? The lifespan of an average bird can't be more than a few years, I suppose, and they're probably too busy scavenging for food to explore.

In the same vein, I tried to picture the stunted and tenuous trees that spring from the pavement on Penn's campus growing in the woods. Would they look silly? I think they might. Their meticulously pruned branches would likely make them the laughingstock of the glade, like a child who's been given a bad haircut by his mother...

Mhmm...so...right...*catches her breath*

J.K.Rowling allegedly has some deep knowledge and experience with Satanism and the Illuminati. Just ask these guys. And have a read through some of their other articles, while you're at it. As a matter of fact, bookmark them. They have quite a sense of humor, and it doesn't seem as if they even realize it.

A little love to my girl Krystle whose simple accounts of her life and thoughts are sweet, insightful, and frequently humorous. Oh, and she's really pretty. ;)

19 is definitely the most useless birthday I've had in a while.

So, last night during my five straight hours of design work, I listened to Meredith Brooks Blurring the Edges, Mike Kovacs Sacred, and the soundtrack to Broadway's A Chorus Line in addition to various random tracks off my computer.

During my work breaks, I had no choice but to get up and dance frantically as a remedy for hours of sitting on the floor hunched over a utility knife.

The world becomes a miraculous place when you have nothing but love and music with which to keep your sanity.

I am stubborn. And rebellious. And, much as I hate it, contrary.

I never like to do what I'm told. I don't accept most of the pop culture that other people think is fabulous. Heresy #1--I don't like the Simpsons. Now, if I'm forced by someone to sit and watch an episode or six, yes, I will laugh. The wit is even clever, sometimes. But I refuse to believe that it's as great as everyone says it is. Heresy#2 (in my social circle)--Dar over Ani. Any day, any time. Why? Dar is more pop, and I can love her immediately. Which brings me to my point.

I don't like to accept things that are forced on or handed to me. "Like this." I say "No," without even looking at what's being offered. But if given the time to warm up to something on my own terms, I can learn.

Not that anyone will buy that....

I just realized that maybe getting up and checking my favorite blogs first thing in the morning will really strongly affect my mood for the day. Today, I read Bluelikethat and Wockerjabby as I do almost compulsively, and I thought about what to post, and I realized that they'd set my tone for the day.

Martha at Bluelikethat wrote about how tired she is of schoolwork, a sentiment I can understand completely, and about the simplicity of a more innocent time. It reminded me of writing this.

Rabi's post about her day of silence just made me....well...quiet.

I know that I plan to spend much of today alone, and not with loud music as I did yesterday. I want to work very hard and gather all the little pieces of myself that I've been losing in the past couple weeks. Maybe I'll come out of today a whole person again.

I walked up to the elevator, planted my hands on opposite sides of the doorframe and said aloud in the middle of the lobby, "Come on, Bruce, rock my world."
I thought to myself, "Show me something new, take me places I've never been before..." and snickered.

Got to the classroom, saw the sign on the door which reads "Viscom 100 will not be meeting today, 4/9/02," and said "Thanks."

Mm....spring. The season of self-improvement. Apparently.

Body image. How do you improve body image? Well...either you change your body to meet your standards or you change your standards to meet your body, or I suppose you can combine the two. I've seen article upon article lately--in magazines, in our dorm bathroom, etc.--about how society views the female body and about that affects women both psychologically and then physically. Women's magazines also outline how you can feel better about your body, but they fill their pages with images of thin models and weight loss tricks.

Not, of course, that I'm not a victim, to some extent. I don't think I'm fat, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm trying to learn that I don't have to finish anything that's put in front of me. I'm going to get back into the habit of doing sit-ups in the morning, and I'm going to try to get rid of the little pudge-pockets that sit over my hips.

And I won't mind if, in getting abs and a waistline, I don't lose a single pound.

I mumbled this morning, from my six inches of pillow, "Boys suck."

But the truth is that despite their onion-eating tendencies, their insistance that 75 percent of the bed isn't enough, and their general clumsiness, they're entirely worth it.

This has been a public service announcement brought to you by me, and indirectly inspired by Rabi.

Thank you.

I...right....head exploding. I've had a new experience, today...it was the first time since I started college that I looked at a project and said...'yeah...you know what? I don't really care that much,' and decided that it isn't worth the mental anguish to do what is requested of me.

Kat and I have been giddy in a sleep-deprived, overworked kind of way since about 9pm last night. It's a fun high to be on, and everything is funny...especially anything you can say in a high-pitched voice....especially when you're speaking on behalf of your roommate's ambiguously gay art supplies.

It's really amazing how those two minutes between when my alarm buzzer goes off and when the cd starts playing can feel like an eternity. By the by, an eternity just happens to be the perfect amount of sleep.

I must have looked very approachable, today. Why? Who knows. Maybe cause I look like hell: ripped jeans covered with paint, T-shirt I've had literally since I was seven, semi-dirty fleece, sneakers, no makeup, hair in a ponytail from sometime last night before bed. Yes. An absolutely lovely sight.

Nonetheless, I spoke with three totally different strangers in public places today. All were men as old or older than my dad, all three asked directions of some sort. I was vaguely suspicious of all three, but since I was in very public places and only one actually attempted to make conversation with me, I felt relatively unthreatened.

On the other hand, I was on South Street alone today. Got hit on very heavily by the guys at the papers counter at Pearl, got whistled at by the guy in the candle store, etc etc. Now, my policy on sexual harassment is incredibly lenient. I, personally, don't mind being whistled at, called 'gorgeous' or anything of the sort, though I can see why some people would be offended. I feel very good about my physical self, under most circumstances, and I don't mind when other people want to express their appreciation of me. I like flattery from total strangers.

But just for the record, in case anyone was wondering, hanging out the window of a moving car and yelling "Hey Chinese girl, can I stick it in your ass" does not qualify.

Keep your chins up girls, and travel in packs.

I was walking east on Walnut Street this morning, as I am wont to do after vanishing for an entire weekend without so much as a phone call to my poor distraught roommate, when I realized that I was singing in my head in time to my footsteps. I don't even know what it was that I was singing, but I'm sure I was keeping time, measuring held notes and rests by the metronome of my movement. Step, step, step, step.

When I approached the Inn at Penn I began to hear a very soft melody...as I neared, it faded in louder and louder. By the time I was in front of the actual building, it was full blast from all around me, some cheeful-but-slow jazzy tune from the Inn's sidewalk speakers. It was one of those moments when you think someone is soundtracking your life. When there's music to accompany your everyday life, and when you aren't the one that put it on, even walking down the street can seem dramatic.

Some of the greatest moments of my life have been soundtracked...some of the only moments of my life.

Since then, I've been hearing music in everything--the click of the boxes that control the streetlights, car wheels, Kat's laptop, and of course...footsteps.

For the majority of my romantic life, I've dated boys whose parents were somewhat older than mine and/or old fashioned and/or just plain conservative. This trend in parent-types was, I'm sure, partly caused by the fact that I dated mostly older boys...some significantly older than myself. Nonetheless, what this meant was that whatever boy would not be permitted to sleep over my house under any circumstances, and that I was not permitted to sleep over his house.

Now, it may just have been a burning desire for that which I could not have, but one of my greatest wishes was always to be able to wake up next to someone I cared deeply about and see sunlight falling softly across their sleeping face, or maybe to kiss them awake or who knows what. Of course, this was always denied me until the boy went to college, and then things always ceased to work properly.

Now, though, I've fallen in love with someone who just happens to be everything it's ever occurred to me to want, and he lives in an apartment with two female roomates...no parents. And though we spend the vast majority of our nights together, I've learned to take it for granted, something which should never ever happen.

So, when I woke this morning, it simply struck me how lucky I am to be able to fall asleep every night in his arms and to wake up the next morning beside him.

Ok....enough gushing from me, it's time for breakfast.

The past week or so, I've been having a lot of trouble concentrating. I'll think of something, like "Hey, would you mind if I changed the cd?" but then someone will IM me or say something, and I'll be entirely incapable of recapturing the thought.

For example, when I woke up this morning, I vividly rememberd a very very strange dream that I'd had. I said to myself, remember this because if you don't concentrate on it right now, you'll forget the dream. And I had it firmly in my mind for all of about three minutes, that is, until someone distracted me; now, of course, it's gone altogether.

Later, I thought of a very good blog topic. I had it halfway formulated on my way to some class or other, digital imaging, I think, and as soon as I got there, I lost it. I think it may have been something about Kat but I might not even be right about that. Even if it was about her, damned if that helps me remember what it was.

So, all these lovely thought bubbles have been tentatively drawn around me, and then burst into a thousand little shimmering drops, never to be a bubble again. *sigh*

Today promises to be a day much like Tuesday...that is to say, a bad one. Same exact class schedule, but on Thursdays, we have math quizzes. Not only that, but we're two days closer to the due date of the evil design project....as opposed to the non-evil ones. Grr.

Side note: for anyone in the NYC area, Lisa Loeb is playing today at the Tower Records at 692 Broadway at 4th St. There will be Cake and Pie and brownies, too, actually. Wish I was going...maybe if I get out of design really really early....

Rock. Design project at most critical urgency: status--complete. Only about 6 hours of actual labor, too. Unfortunately, I had to banish it to the top shelf of my closet for the remainder of the night, since the nice balsa wood and primary-painted implied volumes were making my brain explode.
Considered painting everything but the implied volumes middle grey. Idea: rejected due to lack of energy and mental cohesion. Or can't you tell that I'm falling apart.

I was walking down the street today in our sudden 75 degree weather, thinking about how I'm having a skinny day and how much of a badass I look in my Legend t-shirt, when little snippets of lines came to me. Here's what I've got, I don't know if it will ever be more than it is now, or maybe it's done. As always, feedback is welcome.

Wearing blues, feeling pink
Lipgloss, laundry.
Music like heroin
Kissing against wet paint.

Yesterday, my design teacher gave us soooooo much work that the vast majority of the class went home and cried about it. This is not a phenomenon in the Drexel College of Media Art and Design--what is uncommon is that it happened at the third class of the term, while the professors usually wait until week five or six before setting us on suicide missions.

I didn't have the supplies I'd need to start on the project that's due Thursday, the nearby art store was closed even before we got out of class (relatively late, might I add), and on top of that, there was no milk in the room. *sigh* Needless to say I was in a very foul mood.

After panicking for a little while and putting some certain mp3s on repeat at high volume, I received a much-appreciated call from Peter who did his utmost to comfort me, and I decided that I was in desperate need of Garbage's self-titled album. That and that I'd have to spend some money on myself in order to cheer up and be able to concentrate on my work.

So I talked to Peter, called my mom and talked to her for a while, a conversation during which she advised me to take the credit card out for a little exercise, and finally left the room to head for the mall. Getting off the El at 11th street at 8:30, the Gallery was already closed. What the heck is up with that. I thought this was supposed to be a city--the malls in my suburbs are open until 9pm or 9:30 on weeknights during non-holiday seasons. So I wandered for a little while, despairing of returning to my room with new cds, let alone anything else, and began to walk homewards. Hit Broad Street at City Hall, glanced down it in search of any shopping opportunities, when I saw it. Tower Records. My salvation. I walked over to it, smiled as I read the hours printed huge on the glass doors--"Open 9am to Midnight, 365 days a year." Aaaah.

So I spent seventy dollars on two cds and a dvd. Two of Peter's alltime favorite cds, actually: the Garbage self-titled and Tori's from the choirgirl hotel.

Eventually got back to the room to find roommate and her boyfriend home unexpectedly. Put Garbage cd in boombox. *ch-ch-ch-ch-schwoom....*
I shivered in ecstasy, looked at Kat and said "This must be what heroin feels like." She blinked, then nodded in realization and perfect understanding. My day was greatly improved.

Went to Peter's later, and my day was saved.

I sat today in my astronomy class, digging my grey curlies into some familiar old physics equations. Understanding why the universe works the way it does, yet again, because I do always forget.

We started back at Kepler's laws; he asked who knew them. Looked at me, since I'd been a smart ass to him earlier. I rattled off the first one, since I'd fortunately just been reviewing my notes...."Not only is that one of Kepler's laws, but it is, in fact, the first in order...What's your name again?" he asked. I told him and he scrutinized me. "You're Joe Smith's friend, aren't you?" The class seemed to chuckle as a whole. I balked--"I wouldn't call myself that, exactly." Yes...the physics major upstairs had just been talking to this professor and happened to mention that he knew me and Kat.

Later, we were discussing escape velocity. He had a chalkboard eraser "Pretend this is a spaceship on the surface of the earth" and threw it into the air. "Poor little space monkeys," Kat says from under her sunset-or-mixed-drink-colored hair.

He started out by noting that you'd need a velocity of 11.2 kilometers per second at the surface of the eart to escape from its gravitational field. Then that you'd need a velocity of about 42 kilometers per second to escape from the sun's gravitational field, even if you escaped from the earth's. Then, if you wanted to get out of the galaxy's gravitational field, you'd need a velocity of about 300 kilometers per second. He proceeded to give the velocity you'd need to escape from the local universe, but by then I had realized that this would not be on the quiz and so stopped writing down numbers. Not only that, but I was beginning to have a Total Perspective Vortex moment, and the professor had just given the "You are here"...a sensation which only increased when Kat engaged him in a discussion of why the planets' orbits are pretty much coplanar.

Other notable astronomical events: "The thing about algebra is that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"
-The astrophysics students have apparently pointed a telescope at the site on which a new Drexel observatory is being built.

Ok. Agenda: Shower, nail polish, school store, huge lunch, astronomy (read assigned pages beforehand, if possible), digital imaging (bring...negs or images? hmmm), design (rock ass with latest assignment to the amazement of all present--bring large sketch paper).

After class: Nail polish and/or school store if I don't get to them before noon, laundry, "Visual Journal" entry for dumbass photo 2, three separate photo shooting/processing assignments, extra-curricular but nonetheless urgent digital work, call and order new contacts, make yet another appointment at the student health center, call my mom and apologize for all the credit card expenditures and.....I think that's all. Rock...an easy day.

I had one of those "Couple's first..." moments, today. You know, like couple's first slow dance or couple's first being invited somewhere specifically as a couple or the first time one of you cries in front of the other. Somewhat less important than the first two, and significantly less important than the third is what happened today...first clothes shopping experience.

It wasn't planned. As a matter of fact, it was just an impulse on the walk back to campus, this morning. We were on Walnut Street, we'd already stopped to drop off his rent check and gone to the bank. The oh-so-vital trip to the camera shop was to be next, but alas, we were shanghaied on the high seas. A very large, yet very conservative sign in the window said 'SALE,' and he knew that I was thirsting for another pair of my new favorite jeans. He gave me a look that was certainly seductive and would have been suggestive in any other situation. I wrinkled my nose, took a deep breath and said, 'Alright, let's go in.'

That's right. He totally thought it first.

So we went in and he helped me ravage the sale rack for a pair of jeans identical to the pair I was currently wearing. Style, color, size. He announced that there were none and wandered off to the men's sale rack, but I was not convinced, and minutes later, my skepticism was rewarded with a lovely pair in my size. He, meanwhile, had found two styles of jeans that called to him, and he requested and agreed with my opinion on them. We tried on, he fussed a bit about which pair of jeans will still fit him if he 'gets any fatter' and about which size of retro jacket looked sexier.

In the end, he opted for one of the pairs of jeans and a vow to return for a jacket after he thought more about which size to get. I had finished with my carbon copy pair of jeans, a tiny sale t-shirt and an optional pair of khaki corduroys. "I don't know about the corduroys," I said. He asked if I really liked or needed them. I noted that I had nothing in khaki and no corduroys at all; he considered and asked their price. "Thirteen," says I. Making a face and waving his hand at me, he says as if it had been obvious all along, "Oh, get them." It might have sounded better as 'Oh, just get them, honey."

I love boys that know how to shop.