31 July 2007
sharkweek
Occasionally all you can do to feel satisfied is to quantify yourself.
If someone asked me, at this moment in time, to identify myself in fifteen ways that best convey my sense of self, this is what I would say:
I am an atheist, an existentialist, a pragmatist, a feminist, a social liberal, an economic moderate, a Political Science major*, a Ravenclaw**, a swimmer, a Brit, an American, a Francophile, a reader, a letter writer, and a vegetarian.
Right now I really care about going to the gym often, world politics, the 2008 presidential campaign, eating more veggies, and finding good books to read. I don't really care about cooking, television, shaving, political correctness, or alcohol.
*Yes, it's true. Once and for all. It's been a long summer of contemplation.
**Well, maybe not seriously. But I was sorted, fair and square!
29 July 2007
toetwitch
The week got better. Yesterday I spent twelve hours reading the last half of HP and the Half-Blood Prince and the entirety of the new book. I think the 7th was my favorite of them all, possibly because the characters are really no longer kids, a transition I am going through now... and because everything comes together. It was a really quiet day; my parents are in San Francisco so Will and Hannah and I just hung out in the living room all day. I've been trying to find some device that will work with my memory card and my computer to transfer my photos. I've already impulsively bought two that both don't work, so I got help from a BestBuy guy and found one that for all logical reasons should work but my computer doesn't want to let it. One day everything will just recognize everything else and there won't be any problems with compatibility. I can't wait until that day. I'm trying to find some new music to buy but there are no names that stick out and I can't really identify what kind of music I want. My iTunes Library feels so stagnant, I kind of want to delete everything I haven't listened to in the last few months but I know that one day I'd regret that. It really does need a thorough spring cleaning, though. Maybe I'll delete stuff from the application but not send it to the Recycle Bin, just let it mull in its little folder in My Music. I feel like I'm listening to the same stuff I've listened to all year, and I can't do that too long before going insane. Why isn't July over yet?
24 July 2007
humprheharerasdfkjsdf
Oh man. After this summer, I will forever dread entering the work force for real. At least I'm now being paid for every hour I spend wishing I were anywhere but at work. I've ended my internship at the museum (I prefer to say "I'm calling it a summer") since it wasn't going anywhere new. While I've had a good range of "projects" (if you can call them that) it was clear that things weren't going to get any more thrilling than copying text onto colored paper. I was talking with my Dad the other night about deciding whether to end it, and he summed it up perfectly with this, "In my experience, internships need structure and regular personal attention to make them successful". Neither of which I had. Also, the summer is the quietest season of the year because visitor numbers are low, many of the staff is on vacation, the budget is being finalized and everyone's doing their own thing. Things I can't do, because I'm not qualified. I hate always being not qualified enough to do actual interesting things. I hope my constant stream of mundane $8, 9, 10/hour jobs isn't burning me out for the real career stuff. So - the OBGYN wants me to work there full-time for the rest of the summer, and even though I prefer the solitude and quietness and lack of "customer interaction" at the Heard, I am paid at the office. So I'm working there from basically 8 to 5 with an hour for lunch (I go home, or go swim depending on the day) and my paycheck will soon jump dramatically, but my sanity and my supply of goodnaturedness is quickly being depleted. Please, be nice to the front desk staff at any doctor's office. They work really hard, and when you're the thirtieth person to sigh and moan and complain that you've been waiting for half an hour, you make it harder for all of us to keep up the act. Perhaps it's the mental state of being in a doctor's office, or of insurance/copay/claims woes, or having to take time out of their day, but most people enter in a sour mood which rubs off on all of us. My jobs are also not the most stimulating - copying insurance cards, making labels, stapling packets, punching the date stamp on everything, swiping credit cards. We have three "providers" (hate that word) so on some days there are fifty patients... with a front-office staff of two and a half. We book the schedules to the max (four patients an hour is simply not feasible) and people don't allow enough time for paperwork. All these factors lead to disaster, and the front office staff are the ones who get slammed with the negative energy. BIG SIGH. At the end of yesterday, I felt like I'd worked four days, and it was only Monday. Long story short, I cannot wait until I go back to school.
Last Sunday I got up and, sick of the crap my siblings watch on tv all day, I got a jigsaw puzzle out of the dusty game drawer. I haven't done a jigsaw puzzle in at least eight years. Definitely not since we moved from New York. And it was fun! So much more satisfying than sitting brain-dead in front of a box. This puzzle is missing three pieces, but at least its just a corner. Anyway, it's so pretty! I learned a lot about the British Isles and many of its lovely sights.
It's monsoon season here. It's cloudy, rainy, and humid and at 100 degrees, generally very unpleasant. But I love the rain.
Also, my French penpal is so cute and sends me lots of photos of his gorgeous little village, as well as collages and music and things. Writing to him keeps up my French which is still pretty pathetic but I hope will improve enormously after taking intermediate and advanced this school year. Getting his letters every two weeks is one of the things keeping me from going crazy this summer.
19 July 2007
irrationality
If staying up uncomfortably late means I can prolong the amount of waking hours I spend not at work, just so I don't feel like I work all the live long day... so be it.
18 July 2007
spoons
Hikes and swimming and sunburns, oh my!
Vacation was oodles of fun. I took very few pictures because I always kept forgotting forgetting to bring my motherlode of a camera around with me. I finally took a detailed record of the exterior of the cabin, the dock, and the lake and mountains, so I can have them revolve as my screensaver in the frigid California winters. Funny thing happened: when I moved all my stuff home from Scripps by myself (I feel like I need to say that, but then again, don't a lot of students who have to enter an airport and endure the raping that is Homeland Security still pack by themselves?) I split my stuff between a family friend's house in Claremont and my little car. Although I do think I'm quite good at Packing with a capital P as is Andrea, I'm also excellent at the toss, zip and haul approach. So I lost my digital photo transfer key (DPTK) that I bought in Colorado Springs first semester freshmen year when I lost the actual cord that came with the camera. 1.5 years with the same $15 plastic piece isn't terrible, though! I'm afraid of Best Buy (so enormous, so empty, so frigid) so I haven't bothered to replace it because I secretly think I will find this three x three inch plastic thing when I move back to school in six five and a half weeks. Doing it at home means I have to do it on my family's 10-year old computer that has the metabolism of your grandfather. In the end [I just had one of those moments when you're telling a story to people in person and it's going on and on and you see the end coming but its been so long that the audience's resolve is wavering and you see the eyes gazing behind you and you know a graceful exit is becoming pretty unlikely but you have to keep going or else] I couldn't be bothered to email thirty photos to myself (all that clicking and going back and forth) so I randomly picked seven. It's hard being an atheist sometimes, especially when you really do or don't want something to happen and you obviously can't pray about it but you kind of do secretly and feel dirty afterwards because it sort of slipped out and you're stronger than that but in atheist school you don't learn an equivalent, it's true. Anyway, I thought it'd be sexy to rely on "fate, which will send me those pictures that best represent me and my feelings about this right now, me me me and my important life and problems, never wrong because it's fate, it was meant to happen". Slap on the wrist. Oh shut up.
I despise these candy cane-striped seat covers but my mom chose them so I couldn't say anything. They look hideous in the surroundings but were surprisingly comfortable. I spent a good many hours in that chair reading a good many books:
Now swing your view left and connect these two pictures into one sweeping panorama.
I now feel mildly disgusted with myself.