aside from a fifty-minute class i have tomorrow, i’m done with classes for the week. all of them were to my liking (including geology!) so i’m thinking that it’s well within the realm of possibility to do well in all my courses.

i really enjoy being a student and learning and hearing professors lecture but one aspect of college life i really don’t appreciate (and i’m aware of how absurd this sounds) is my classmates. i have never been able to have any patience with them and it’s few and far between that i actually like something a classmate will have to say. but i guess this simply extends from my general lack of patience with the human race.

but yes this post was just for me to express some of the joy that i’ve had in me from realizing that the end is nigh! i want to update soon with my plans for the next year and a half so that might come tomorrow.

also, i read about some pretty cool websites earlier today so check ‘em out:

http://gowalla.com/

http://soytuaire.labuat.com/

2. something really odd that i think is happening this fall is the fact that my youngest brother, gabriel, is starting college. this means that my brothers and i, all three of us, are going to, not only be in college, but attending the same university. i think this is kind of funny. i mean, i’ve heard of kids going to the same school but for all three of us to be there at the same time? i guess it just goes to show that we are the major underachievers. i blame it completely on our coddling parents. we three are weird baby-people and it’s all their fault. thanks ma! thanks pa!

3. i’ve been going to the movies a lot lately. in the last month i think i’ve seen inception (twice!), scott pilgrim, the other guys, city island and a few others i can’t really think of, all at the movie theater. i love going to the movies. i really do. i just hate, Hate,  HATE how expensive it is to go. it’s crazy. ten dollars to see a movie? i mean, that’s not even the amount of money i get paid to work in an hour. isn’t that a little sad? it totally is! what kills me the most is how industrialized the movie business has gotten. every monday, you hear these obscenely huge amounts of money that a movie makes and i can’t help but wonder why going to the movies isn’t a little less expensive. is that really what the film industry is about? if movies cut down their prices in half, filmmakers would still make a lot of money. i also think lowering prices would definitely curb piracy. i wish i had willpower enough to say that i’m going to boycott going to the movie theater but i really can’t.

4. there is something most people do not like admitting to. lots of people feel this way but they simply don’t like confessing. i, however, have no scruples in divulging this not-so-terrible fact about myself. i don’t like commitment. i don’t like leaving something open-ended. i hate loose ends. i’m one of those people that needs finality, closure, conclusions. black and white. no gray area. for this reason, i believe, i have never been able to delve into the world of comic books. if you go to a comic book store and pick up an issue at random, chances are you are not getting the beginning of a series nor the end. you’re getting a part of a greater whole and how are you supposed to know where to start and how much is there until the end and questions like these are the kinds i really don’t like to have to ask when i’m going to read for fun. but, i’ve recently decided that there are ways around this. there are comic books i can read that i can get finality from. i’m not going to get into anything huge like the amazing spider-man or any huge series but i did read a series called supreme power. i totally loved it and it just encourages me to keep reading graphic novels. i’ve learned that i shouldn’t be scared to starting something that might take some patience.

5. this summer i’ve done some pretty banal things. i’ve taken a boring class, gone to my boring job, watched some boring movies, and read some boring books. all these things, though, might seem comparatively exciting when i reveal another activity that has probably taken a substantial chunk of my time this summer. minesweeper. it’s a game wherein the player has to rely on problem solving skills, logic, and common sense to figure out where mines are kept in a battlefield and your only clues are numbers on a tile indicating how many mines are surrounding that particular tile. i know most people don’t really play it but, for some reason, i like it. a lot. probably too much. on my mac, i have an application called mine swept where i’ve already made some really awesome high scores. i don’t use this application much, though, because once i was fooling around on my keyboard and i inadvertently stumbled on a key combination that revealed all the mines to you without losing the game. then i found a minesweeper widget to put on my igoogle page and i use that more now. i also have a minesweeper application on my cellphone. it’s one of my only vices in the world. also, i’m super kick-ass at it!

one:
a couple of weeks ago, i went out of town to go see these bands i really like in austin. since this is a four-hour trip, i decided to take two days off of work. just two. i hardly ever take days like this off of work, so i thought they would be understanding. i told them i’d be gone wednesday and thursday, and that i’d be back the friday before halloween. so i went to the amazing concert, had a great time in austin the next day, and friday i was back at work. at first, i thought everything was peaches and cream, but then my supervisor called me into her office, and that’s never good. apparently, several of the people i work with had banded together while i was gone to tell my supervisor all the fuck-ups i’d committed over the past year or so. when you put all these little things into one big list, yeah, it sounds fucking awful. so right now, i’m in some sort of probationary status which totally blows. i haven’t spoken to these other women who i thought i was somewhat friends with in a while. it’s kind of a bummer, but that’s why it’s work. you don’t go to make friends. you go to make money.

two:
i attend a university and, within this university, i’m studying my major in the arts & sciences college (aka the humanities college, the liberal arts college, etc). in a lot of my classes, professors are constantly urging us to discuss the course content between us. in one particular classroom discussion about two weeks ago, a classmate made a particularly irrelevant and asinine comment. now, i’m not that brash that i point out people’s stupidities to them immediately. no. this girl has been a thorn in my side since the beginning of the year when i had her for two classes in the spring semester. since then, i’ve noticed that she seems to relish in making remarks in class that she, in some vague way, feels pertain to our discussion. she will constantly mention things about her family or the house her family is building or her boyfriend or her ex boyfriend and it’s not appreciated by me at all. finally, she said this one thing recently that i really couldn’t stand. everything went in tunnel-vision, and, before i knew it, i was making some snide remark about where she learned these things. a week later, my professor was emailing me to please visit her and it was to address this incident. this classmate of mine was truly hurt and instead of confronting me, she went to the professor and demanded that i publicly apologize to her in front of the class. hah! i told the professor that i would not do this, but i knew that i had lost control which was in poor taste on my part. while the issue has been dropped, it still feels shitty.

three: i think i’m a pretty level-headed girl. however, there is one aspect in my life in which i totally fucking fail at. i’m constantly losing things: clothes, gadgets, homework, personal belongings, etc. recently, though, it feels like i’m particularly good at losing my identification/drivers license. in the past two years, i’ve gone through about four different IDs. it sucks hard. especially now that i’m twenty-one and i should be able to go out to bars. anyway, last week, a good friend of mine invited me to this bar to go see his really cool band play. knowing that this bar sometimes has asshole-y bouncers, i took with me my provisional paper license, a birth registration card, and a student ID to prove i was the person on the first two credentials. even with these three documents, the bouncer did not let me in. i was turned away and i couldn’t even let my friend know in person. i was pissed.

four & five: these two are actually really pathetic reasons, having to do mainly with guys and how stupid they are and the demeaning effect they have on my personal confidence. i won’t waste my words.

i love you guys.

after our supposed reading of beloved, came sandra cisneros’s the house on mango street. i have much less beef with this book, because it’s a much lighter read. whereas beloved is the lengthy story about a slave on the run who is now being haunted by the angry spirit of the 2-year old daughter whom she murdered, mango street is a short collection of vignettes by a tormented teenager with mexican heritage. while the narrator can sometimes be a bit whiny, i find myself relating to her situation in life. while my homelife is not as tragic as esperanza’s, i feel that sometimes i am a bit too harsh on my parents. i know that sometimes they cannot give me all that i wish i could have, but if they had the means, i know they would. it’s not like they’re holding out on us, their kids. but neither do my parents, unlike esperanza’s, have their heads in the clouds. pera’s mother spends her days at home wistfully sighing about the life she could have lead had she done one thing or another and how as soon as they win the lottery, they’ll finally start living the life they deserve. i do understand what that feels like, but never have my parents shown that dreamy, airheaded attitude.

before we started discussing the actual book, the professor told us about the author, sandra cisneros. she wrote the book when was supposedly twenty-four while in a poetry seminar for her master’s degree. we watched some videos about the author and her inspiration for mango street. in one particular video, she spoke about writer’s block. she said that writer’s block is not having a lack of something to say, but being afraid to say something that really means something to you.

“Writer’s block doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to say. Writer’s block means you are afraid to say what you really have to say.” -Sandra Cisneros

i am aware that too much time has passed since my last entry in this blog. in fact, the last thing i wrote about honesty, i wasn’t even happy with. it’s true. yes, it’s an important thing to me, but i couldn’t even be honest with myself to write something good. for the past week or two that i haven’t written anything, it’s not that i’ve had “writer’s block,” it’s just that i’ve lacked inspiration. my life, right now, is at such a stagnant point, there is truly nothing that inspires me to write. i am stuck in a routine that i won’t be able to get out of for another year or so. what does inspire me to write are completely vapid thoughts that i should have outgrown when i was wearing my plaid skirt and knee-high white socks in the eighth grade. things that are going on in my life are my classes, my job, my family, my friends, the shows i watch, and the men that i find myself “in love” with. i’m not saying that any of these things are unimportant. they totally are. without one of them, all that would be left would be fragments of a life that used to resemble mine (except maybe for the tv).

take today, for example. fearlesslydelicate has been in the back of my mind for the past week or so. i peel my eyes open for anything i can write about, but nothing seems worthy. the monotony of my life has left me with nothing interesting. today, however, i went to an art gallery with a friend, and it was nice, but things didn’t start to heat up -literally- until someone for whom i have very strong feelings walked up the stairwell and i turned into a mess. i say that things literally heated up, because at the moment, i became totally flushed, my body temperature must have risen about fifteen degrees, and i could feel a light sheen of moisture accruing all over my skin. all this over the mere presence of someone. that’s right. i didn’t even talk to this guy. i think i may have made the slightest bit of eye contact with him but it was totally dismissible if existent at all. i went home almost immediately after this scene that went unnoticed by everyone except the friend i was with. once i was home, all i could think of was writing a story in which a girl like me finally had the guts to say what she really wanted to a guy like him, but i couldn’t. and i guess that’s where sandra’s quote comes in.

i’m so scared of some unknown thing, that i can’t even find comfort in writing. one thing in this world that i should have absolute control over.

this semester mondays are definitely my most trying day. i wake my poor self up around nine o’ clock and loaf around my room, occasionally spotting something on the floor or coming out of a dresser drawer that i might consider. i meditate in between wardrobe selections and also play with one or both of my pets. after i finally walk out of my front door for the third time (the first two don’t count since i have to go back anyway for my cellphone, keys, shoe, etc) at ten ’til ten, i speed over to campus, hoping that no law enforcement agents will finally decide that today will be the day i get punished for the calculated recklessness that is my driving.

i get to campus pretty quickly and, after circling the lot two, three, twelve, eighteen, thirty-three (?!) times, i get an okay parking spot and end up walking into my office about ten minutes late. if it wasn’t for my incredible efficiency as a student administrative assistant, i would be unemployed. as of eight months ago. after a mix of good work, facebooking, and other miscellaneous non-productive activities for two hours, i go on a lunch break. since i live so close to campus, i’m always more than tempted to go home for lunch. today, for example, i did give in to my homebody ways and had lunch at home. most of the time, though, i just stick around on campus.

after lunch, i work for another ninety minutes (how do i manage working so hard?? i ask myself daily…) and head over to my first class of the week: history of the english language. before you interject about how interesting that sounds, spare me. while the professor is great, the class itself is a total drag. the textbook is incredibly dense, making it mandatory that one read a 40-page chapter at least three times before anything truly begins to sink in.

after HEL (as us really cool english majors refer to this course), i have YAL (another nifty acronym): young adult literature. this class is really neat, mainly because the professor has given us the opportunity to choose whatever we want to read. so far, i have had to turn in assignments on Animorphs (amazing, i know), Pride & Prejudice, and, for our end of the year presentation, my literary circle will be making an elaborate project devoted entirely to neil gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. it is exciting!

after YAL comes the big’un: 17th century literature. at the beginning of the semester (all five weeks ago…), i had a time conflict and i wasn’t able to register for the undergraduate class. fortunately, the professor was going to offer a graduate course and follow the same syllable. i spoke to the professor, and he allowed me to register for the grad course. this is an awesome class. when people think of the 17th century english literature (because i know people often ponder this), i know their minds quickly focus on ol’ bill shakespeare. however, the 1600s were rife with other amazing authors and this class is devoted to knocking that old hack off the pedestal he’s been standing on for the past three hundred years. that class is two and a half hours long since we only meet once a week, so i end up getting home at nine o’ clock.

i’m usually pretty beat, so i just have a light dinner, do some homework, and go to bed. it’s a crazy day, but i love it!

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