have you ever been chatting with a friend when, all of a sudden, they say one little phrase or word that is so annoying or out of context or superfluous, that you just tune out the rest of the conversation while you grind your teeth hard enough so that you don’t tell him/her to shut up? well, maybe i’m just really touchy, but this happens quite often. with the help of two friends, sophia and roxie, i’ve compiled a list of some of those phrases that just really grind our gears.

readers, feel free to leave a comment with a phrase that you absolutely hate. (more…)

Check it out! I’m keeping my promise. I bet you all thought I wouldn’t. I was wondering how I would do my T-Day spectacular all of yesterday and I decided that I would simply do a time-breakdown entry. Every time something big happens, I’ll note the time and upload the info here. I’m going to point out that my brother and father have been up since some ungodly hour working on something experimental so I may have missed some important thing happening. I’ll be taking photos of the birds and the food and everything else going down. (more…)

this semester has been a hectic one for me. being the brilliant person that i am, i decided to take four literature classes. why? it’s beyond me. fortunately, though, after 4:15pm this afternoon, i will be on a short three day break. that means i don’t have class wednesday or thursday and, even better, no work wednesday through friday! amazing. i love thanksgiving. i know it’s a total immoral holiday to celebrate with such enthusiasm, but it’s the best. really. i’ll break down its amazing-ness. first, you get the day before the holiday off, too. you’re feeling good, because for the past day you haven’t done anything except pick at the delicious food that’s been bought for the special day. if you’re a good person, you’ve also been considering what you can contribute to the big dinner yourself. personally, i like experimenting with desserts. yes, delicious, carb-filled, desserts. on wednesday, you can also catch some awesome marathon on tv. it’s either james bond films or clint eastwood movies or trilogies (star wars, lord of the rings, etc) or, my personal favorite, the Twilight Zone marathon on the sci fi channel. after you’ve watched the same show or series of movie for about six hours, you realize you have to go to bed. you get under your sheets, all excited and jittery but then you drift away dreaming of turkey and pie and stuffing and cranberry sauce and gravy fairies and football gods. then it’s thanksgiving. i would describe all the warm feelings this word inspires in me, but no. a simple mention in an ol’ run-of-the-mill post is not enough. that’s why right here, right now, i’m promising a Thanksgiving Special blog post coming this thursday, right to your computer screens. awesome. it will be great. i promise.  (more…)

i’m sorry that i haven’t written anything substantial in the last couple of weeks. lots of things have been going wrong, and this causes me to feel really shitty and definitely not wanting to write. i know when i’m in a sort of mood like that, my writing will just be pissy and not good. i’m aware that that is where i’m heading right now, but i have to write. i really do. since this is a blog that belongs to me, i get to write about all the things that have been upsetting me. there are four to five main reasons why i’ve been in such a crappy mood lately. (more…)

a fair warning: this post is going to be way more on the “dear diary” side than my usual social commentaries in today’s world that are filled with insight and well-thought out perspectives and analysis. well, that’s not true at all. what is true, though, is that this post will be way more gushy and girly than anything i’ve posted ever before, so i thought a warning/disclaimer should be in order. (more…)

i am blessedly able to say that i have, not just one but, several best friends. most of them are scattered around. a few in austin, one in new york, another in college station, tx, but, once again, blessedly i have a friend who chose to attend the same university as me. we spend lots of time together, because friends as close as she and i usually do things like that. i totally love her to death, and if she wasn’t around as much as she is, i seriously would be way more unstable. she definitely helps keep me grounded. among her many, many special qualities that make me (and lots of other people) love her, we also share lots of things. well, maybe not that many. i really believe that a major reason we’ve been such good friends for so long is that we sort of mush together. we complement each other. whereas i, at times, lack a social filter, and consistently put my foot in my mouth, she is much more guarded and tactful. and so on. however, we do have similar opinions regarding lots of things. we like a lot of the same music, movies, and books. (more…)

In Mexico, retirement plans are different from those in the States. In the US, I believe that a person has to work until they are sixty-five years old. However, Mexicans do it differently. After a certain number of years, a person is allowed to retire. I’m not really sure what the number is but that’s how it works. Tonight, I was at a celebratory party for one of my aunts who was retiring. For the past seven years, she had been working as both an elementary school teacher, but also as a school principal at another institution. This fall, she finally was able to hang up her teaching britches and retire. It was a real nice party and I took some pics. Also included are pictures of my recent days. Enjoy. (more…)

i’m taking this american literature class right now with the theme of women and the houses they live in. we started with some pretty typical stuff: anne bradstreet’s “upon the burning of our house”, emily dickinson’s “there’s been a death in the opposite house”, but now we’re moving on to more contemporary stuff. last week, we were supposed to read toni morrison’s beloved and i absolutely hated it. i know that toni morrison is supposed to be this amazing writer, and i don’t doubt for a millisecond that she is. it’s just that i’d never read anything by her, and all of a sudden, i’m expected to read beloved and it’s crazy. definitely too heavy for me. there’s all this talk about dead babies and their angry ghosts and cow-fuckers and i hated it. i couldn’t get past the first few chapters. i know i’ll have to, because i’ll be tested on my knowledge of the course content, but i’m not looking forward to it. i’m simply not. (more…)

here in town is a bar/restaurant-type place that can be a nice hang-out. tuesday evenings at this establishment are really nice. the mood is quiet and relaxed, the bartenders are at ease and friendly, and people are usually nowhere to be found. my friend and i discovered this well-kept secret a few months ago, and we enjoy going there. however, one day one of us suggested that we perhaps go on friday, because …. well, i don’t know the reason now, but we went. instead of quiet, the mood was loud and obnoxious. instead of the bartenders being at ease, they were rude and agitated. and instead of there being no people around, there were people everywhere. and of every kind. there were the type of people with whom you hoped you would never have to share a roof, people you hoped you’d never have to see after high school, and people who should never leave their homes. cages. whatever. (more…)

most of my close friends know about my current crushes. i pluralize the word because there are always several, and i use the word “current” because i tend to fall in and out of “love” quite often. however, in the proverbial spinning rolodex that contains all the usually inadequate objects of my attentions, there has been one person whose contact card has not been crumpled up and thrown out. for obvious reasons, i won’t actually name this lucky fellow. i can imagine that if i did, someone who is acquainted with him would take a sudden yet totally innocent interest in this blog, see his name, raise their eyebrows in a somewhat high degree of incredulity, and bring it to this certain person’s attention. (more…)

if asked of you, could you assuredly say which has been the worst year of year life? that one year when absolutely nothing went right and, when looked back on, you just sort of cringe because you’d just rather pretend it never happened? the key word being pretend, of course. i am of the strong belief that one should never regret anything in life, and i don’t. i just disregard certain things. the year 2007 is one of those little things i just choose to never talk about. 2K7, for me, was … a mess. a disaster. literally nothing good or right happened. (more…)

i signed up to last.fm, the music community website, almost three years ago. i don’t know anyone really in real life that uses it, but to put it simply, it’s kind of like the website pandora and facebook would produce if websites could get married, go on a honeymoon, and bam! nine months later, have this beautiful social networking/internet radio baby. to use last.fm, you have to set up whatever media players you use on your own computer. this way, whenever you’re just working on your laptop and listening to music at the same time, last.fm is quietly working away in the background, keeping track of everything you’re listening to. this is called scrobbling. scrobbling lets you do lots of really cool things. for one, last.fm keeps track every single artist you’ve listened to and the amount of times a particular song has been heard. it also puts together a radio station just for you and everything it knows you love to listen to. however, not only do you get a radio station with the music you hear, you also get a station made up solely of recommendations, artists and songs last.fm thinks you would enjoy listening to. scrobbling also helps out by finding people with similar tastes and calling you neighbors. (more…)