i'm 27 and can't have emotionally detached hookups. can teens?
from the new york times magazine

Friends, Friends With Benefits and the Benefits of the Local Mall

Jesse wants to meet at Hooters. ''It's 40 minutes from where I live,'' he says, ''but trust me, it's worth the drive.''

Jesse is 15. Surprisingly, there is no age requirement to dine at Hooters. When I call the restaurant to make sure I'm not aiding and abetting teen delinquency, the woman who picks up seems annoyed I would even ask. ''No, we're a family restaurant,'' she says. So, amid the bronzed, scantily clad waitresses and a boisterous bachelor party, I find Jesse, a high-school sophomore with broad shoulders and messy brown hair peeking out from underneath his baseball cap. Jesse is there with four of his close friends, whom he has arranged for me to meet.

Among them is Caity, a thin, 14-year-old freshman with long blond hair and braces, who says that she is a virgin but that she occasionally ''hooks up'' with guys. Caity doesn't make clear what she means by ''hooking up.'' The term itself is vague -- covering everything from kissing to intercourse -- though it is sometimes a euphemism for oral sex, performed by a girl on a boy. Sitting next to Caity is her best friend, Kate, also 14, whom everyone affectionately refers to as the ''prude'' of the group. Outgoing and attractive, she's had a boyfriend for a couple of months, but they haven't even kissed yet.

In her New England exurban world, where, I was told, oral sex is common by eighth or ninth grade, and where hookups may skip kissing altogether, Kate's predicament strikes her friends, and even herself, as bizarre. ''It's retarded,'' she says, burying her head in Caity's shoulder. ''Even my mom thinks it's weird.''

Just a few weeks ago, Caity and Kate met a cute boy at the mall. ''Me and Kate walked into this store,'' Caity says, ''and this boy saw the shirt Kate was wearing that says, 'Kiss Me, I'm an Amoeba.' So he was, like, 'That's an awesome shirt.' And she was, like, 'Want me to make you one?' So he went and got Sharpies, and she went and got T-shirts, we met back there and then he said to me, 'You want my screen name?' So he wrote it on my arm. He just got his license, so he came up, and we hooked up.''

I ask Caity if that's it, or if her hookup might lead to something more. ''We might date,'' she tells me. ''I don't know. It's just that guys can get so annoying when you start dating them.''

Adam, a 16-year-old sophomore at the end of the table, breaks in, adding that girls, too, can get really annoying when you start dating them. A soccer player with shaggy blond hair and a muscular body, he likes to lift his shirt at inappropriate times (like now, to the Hooters waitress) and scream, ''I've had sex!'' Adam has had the most hookups of the group -- about 10, he estimates.

When he lived in Florida last year, he lost his virginity to a friend who threw a condom at him and ordered him to put it on. ''Down in Key West, high-school girls are crazy,'' Adam said. ''Girls were making out with each other on the beach. Lesbians are cool!''

While Adam and Caity denied it, there was a thick fog of sexual intrigue that surrounded their friendship -- and a few weeks after our dinner at Hooters, Jesse sent me an online message notifying me of a hookup in the making between Adam and Caity. They were planning to go over to Jesse's house and ''mess around.'' As Jesse explained it, Adam told Caity he didn't want a relationship, and she replied that that was fine, she didn't want one, either.

According to Jesse, Caity set the ground rules. ''Caity told me, 'Adam knows he's not going to get in my pants, but I might get into his.' For now they might just make out, but Caity said that if they hang out a lot more, maybe they'll do more.'' The next day, Jesse messaged me to say that the hookup never materialized. ''Everyone got busy. But I'm guessing it still might happen.''

I first met Jesse online at facethejury.com, one of many Internet sites popular with high-school and college students, where teenagers can post profiles, exchange e-mail and arrange to hook up. (Though facethejury.com, like many such sites, requires members to be 18, younger teenagers routinely lie about their age.) Over the course of several months spent hanging out and communicating online with nearly 100 high-school students (mostly white, middle- and upper-middle-class suburban and exurban teenagers from the Northeast and Midwest), I heard the same thing: hooking up is more common than dating.

(continued here)

perk or punishment?
so it took my parents like 13 days to get to san fran on their recent trip becasue of cancellations and transfers. they had to fly half-way home to get to san fran in the end because of canceled and missesd flights. well, they flew air tran and the airline gave them 2 free one way tickets. and my parents gave those to me. my question first is: does this mean i get a round-trip ticket, or do i have to fly them two separate times and get one way free each time? second: do i even dare fly them? i'm not so sure the tickets are a perk or a punishment.

ramblings
my head hurts. i can't wait to flip the page on my calendary. i just got my first color printer ever today. it was mistakenly delivered to another house in town by stupid ups. turns out the people who got it are the parents of one of my high school classmates. meeting friends in city for korean food and sushi yummy and oh-so-fattening. i hate when people call me before 2pm after i work at the club. unless i've asked them to, of course. i have a few people who are like my personal alarm clocks. my head hurts a lot. it's gorgeous out. i want to go to a barbecue. i don't want to work. oh well. life sucks sometimes.

i really really really want this polaroid camera. and fyi, photo paper is like a bajillion times cheaper on amazon than in staples.

update 4.13
i don't know why i haven't really been writing much here. kinda busy, i guess. my parents have been away, and i've had to take care of stuff for them. like on tuesday i sat around all day as these electricians hooked up some cameras and music stuff at the club. wednesday i did jack. and then thursday i had to shop for fruit and then worked all afternoon and tested for my deputy black belt. successfully, i might add, with a few bruises to boot. next: black belt eek! i never thought i'd make it this far. i'm really bad at pursuing things long term. today, i've run around again, into the city, battling afternoon traffic to pay my parents' mortgage. then fighting holiday traffic out of the city on my way to buy liquor for the club. and then in a few short tens of minutes, i'm off to work at the club. thank god my parents come home tonight. i'm always left with too much responsiblity when they're gone. like having to fax a copy of some food handlers' certification my father got over a decade ago to some lawyer because of some violations they're in court for. life is so much simpler when it's just me. unfortunately, they're going away again in like 10 days.

so not much else is going on. it's memorial day, and according to npr, 6 million people are taking to the roads for the holiday. i was one of them, unfortunately it wasn't for holiday. i am going to seattle and vancouver in three weeks. hopefully i'll get to check out the new downtown library and sci-fi geek museum (not it's official moniker) in seattle (can't be bothered to post links). and then some outdoor shit in vancouver and environs. maybe in the next week or two i'll take this rock climbing course in new paltz, with a friend. i get all giddy just thinking about doing outdoor shit. maybe it's because i'm not going to be at camp. maybe because i've realized it makes me happy. maybe it's just because i like the gear. in august, soon after moving to boston and going to wedding 1of3 for the month, some friends and i are going to maine. FIFTY baby. i know i've talked about all of this. but this is all the news i have, all the things i'm looking forward to.

i'm also looking forward to june. may has been kind of a long month, my first full one back in this country. maybe that's why it's felt long. with june comes the more reasonable concepts of apartment hunting and packing. i've already had a few suitcases packed for the upcoming move -- sweaters and winter stuff mostly -- and people have kinda looked at me funny.

today as i was driving into the city, i was following this giant tractor trailer. as it was making this turn towards i-78, its rear wheels went up on the curb. but it kept going. unfortunately, as he rounded the corner, he kind of ran into this cement wall -- this was also a highway overpass, if you can picture the low wall i'm talking about. it went over the wall, nearly took out a lampost, loudly blew out a tire, and thankfully returned to the road rightside up. i was kinda shaken up watching this. good thing those trucks have like 47 tires.

i guess that's it for now. this long post kinda makes up for not posting much for so long. not that it matters since as far as i know, i have an audience of one. a well-loved audience of one.

i hate email

from a friend who's moving to boston too
EVERYBODY I run into lately says something like "So, now that you're moving to Massachusetts, are you going to get married???". And you know what? I'm getting a little tired of it. Talk about an awkward situation (when we're both together and people ask). Would they ask their other couple friends if they're getting married soon in front of one another? Chances are that they'd know better because maybe, just maybe, they don't want to get married yet. E and I haven't talked about it together, but we have to talk about it in front of all our friends. And then when they ask, he just sort of looks at me, and I just sort of look at him, because neither one of us knows what to say. I've even developed a canned response now. I say "well, maybe if I meet the right person", and then I change the subject immediately. But some of these assholes just don't seem to get it. They'll ask again and again and again. And the thing that really pisses me off is that 99% of those who ask this question want us to get married because they think it would CUTE!!!! What the fuck??? Our (quite seriuos) relationship is now driven by CUTENESS??? When I think of getting married, I think about the cost, the rediculous amount of planning, and all the legal questions and uncertainties. None of those things are cute. And just because everybody else I know has decided to get married this year does not mean that I need to get married, too. AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

just thought it was interesting
d out

the usual
having second thoughts about law school. it hit me today, hit me hard, right in the gut. do i really want to do this? it's not that i love what i do now so much -- far from it -- it's just, is this what i really want to do for three years, accumulating $60,000 in debt, at best? i've probably posted the same thing several weeks ago. i didn't doubt going to grad school this much -- i was really happy with that decision, actually, even if it didn't pan out so well. but now ... what about being a professional camp counselor? that was always a possible path, though not at my camp of course. or SOMETHING besides this big thing. i really want to move to boston. that part i'm excited about, but do i have to go to law school to do it? what else could i do there? ugh. grin and bear it. it'll get better when i'm actually there, and doing it, and not anticipating it. transitions, waiting, things i'm bad at. ok.

it's like that movie...
my parents have gone off to san francisco. their flight was at 6am so they had to leave before we finished at the club. and they don't get back until friday, so that means i have to take care of things during the week, like be there to open the door when the guy comes to fix the air conditioner on tuesday. only, dad didn't leave me the key, so i called a few minutes after he left and was like, uhh, key? they didn't really have the time to turn around and drop it off with me, so he was like we'll leave it for you at the rest area. cause there's a rest area as soon as you get on the turnpike. uhh, ok. so i go. it's 5:30, the sun is up, and i'm prowling around the parking lot looking for a key they left me under a bench. it was funny, weird and neat. i felt like i was in a movie, only in the movies, we wouldn't have been on cell phones talking to each other during the whole thing.

ok, bedtime.

what i did today:
work work work work work work work work work work work work work

expectations
i don't know why i anticipate trips so much. i just end up getting homesick. got the rough guide to the pacific northwest and i have to say, i don't think canada is nearly as exciting as new zealand. it's also harder to get around, being bigger and all. but still, i'm looking forward to my trip in 4.5 weeks. it's still a trip, i still get to see friends, i still get the hell out of working. yippee!

oh and...
that was the first time i linked photos to my blog. i think i've reached a new milestone ... thanks for sharing it with me, kev! ;)

late night -- or early morning -- again
going spinning in 6 hours, got a long day tomorrow. but stumbled upon someone else's late night blogging and got caught up in the same silly online quizzes. i'm not sure the following works for me.




What childhood toy from the 80s are you?


You're a Spirograph!! You're pretty tripped out,
even though you've been known to be a bit
boring at times. You manage to serve your
purpose in life while expending hardly any
effort (and are probably stoned to the gills
all the while).

brought to you by Quizilla



Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?

Non curo. Si metrum non habet, non est poema.
"I don't care. If it doesn't rhyme, it isn't
a poem."
You are a type A personality. You like bright
things, you don't call in sick to work, and you
have devastating opinions about art.

brought to you by Quizilla

new definition for scatterbrain
the merriam-webster dictionary defines scatterbrain as a giddy heedless person. that's not really me, but i feel that scatterbrain really describes how i feel. so either i'm redefining the word or i'm being an idiot and not comprehending the definition.

anyhow, my brain is just all over the place. i'm here, in nj, doing what i need to do in terms of working and socializing. my brain is in boston, too, where i keep thinking about apartment, law school, my new life. thus, i'm here packing but i'm sort of freaking out because i know i'm moving out of my parents' house (again) but with summers and study abroad, i feel like there's a chance i could come back, so my brain is kind of here too, but in the future. i know, i have three more months, but i'm packing ... like winter clothes and books i know i won't read for the next three months. but my brain is also in the pacific northwest because i'm a bloomin' idiot. anywhere else? ... i just feel so fractured and focusing on too many things at once, but in a good way, i guess. there could be worse things than anticipating a trip to the northwest, moving to boston, and starting law school.

like a root canal. ick.

i learned a new word the other day, from an article i was reading. it struck me because it seems to be lacking a vowel or two: chthonic. merriam-webster defines it as of or relating to the underworld. so there you go.

oh no
insomnia. too much caffeine. too much thinking. whatever it is, it's 5am and i haven't slept. i remember this feeling. working nights screws with my circadian rhythm. oy.

caffeine is for more than getting rid of cellulite
Scientific American: Regular Mini Doses of Caffeine More Energizing Than Morning Mug

Many people start their day with a big cup of coffee, hoping that the jolt of caffeine will invigorate them. But there might be a better way to stay awake for long periods. Scientists say low doses of caffeine administered at regular intervals provide improved pick-me-up benefits.

business is weird
so at&t sold off their cellular services to cingular in 2001, the deal is expected to close this year, at which point, a recently signed new deal signed with sprint will take effect, where at&t can then sell cellular services over sprint's network.

I'M SO CONFUSED!

at&t decided they didn't want to be in the mobile business, so they sold it to cingular. when that's finally going to go through, and the at&t brandname is available again, they're going to sell over sprint. my questions are many...will current at&t customers experience any interruption of service? and will they take those annoying ryan seacrest cut-outs out of their stores?

observation
outside of penn station in new york city, there was some constructing of the sidewalk going on. the nature of the project wasn't obvious, but a wooden wall, about three feet high, had been erected around the area in question. sunday evening, the area was full of people going about, doing their sunday evening types of things, including some young children. many of these young children would pull their attached parental units towards the wall so they could peer over, as if they would find a mystical animal, or something enclosed that is far more intriguing than cement. oh the curiosity of children.

eew
i saw them ... it was brighter when i was driving home from work and i saw what it was that was splatting on my windscreen. i'd have to say cicadas. they were just swarming around these trees along the highway. it was really disgusting! i hate things that swarm. really. it's one of my things ...

new jersey rocks
I was driving home from work this morning. It was about 5:30am, cloudy and foggy, the sun was coming up. Around exit 15, I started to drive through what seemed like rain. But upon closer inspection, the "rain" was leaving green/brown turd colored splats on my windscreen. Was it cicadas, bugs or shit? I still don't know. Ahh, New Jersey.

From my friend:
I'm loading CD's into my Music Match program. I pulled out the Bloodhound Gang's CD with "The Bad Touch" on it. I noticed that one of the tracks is called "The 10 Greatest Things about New Jersey".

It's blank.

MCCAIN FOR VEEP!

seriously, i would wet myself if the democratic ticket for president was kerry and mccain.

THE SKY IS DIMMING! THE SKY IS DIMMING!
Globe Grows Darker as Sunshine Diminishes 10% to 37%
By KENNETH CHANG
From the New York Times

Published: May 13, 2004

In the second half of the 20th century, the world became, quite literally, a darker place.

Defying expectation and easy explanation, hundreds of instruments around the world recorded a drop in sunshine reaching the surface of Earth, as much as 10 percent from the late 1950's to the early 90's, or 2 percent to 3 percent a decade. In some regions like Asia, the United States and Europe, the drop was even steeper. In Hong Kong, sunlight decreased 37 percent.

No one is predicting that it may soon be night all day, and some scientists theorize that the skies have brightened in the last decade as the suspected cause of global dimming, air pollution, clears up in many parts of the world.

Yet the dimming trend — noticed by a handful of scientists 20 years ago but dismissed then as unbelievable — is attracting wide attention. Research on dimming and its implications for weather, water supplies and agriculture will be presented next week in Montreal at a joint meeting of American and Canadian geological groups.

"There could be a big gorilla sitting on the dining table, and we didn't know about it," said Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor of climate and atmospheric sciences at the University of California, San Diego. "There are many, many issues that it raises."

Dr. James E. Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said that scientists had long known that pollution particles reflected some sunlight, but that they were now realizing the magnitude of the effect.

"It's occurred over a long time period," Dr. Hansen said. "So it's not something that, perhaps, jumps out at you as a person in the street. But it's a large effect."

Satellite measurements show that the sun remains as bright as ever, but that less and less sunlight has been making it through the atmosphere to the ground.

Pollution dims sunlight in two ways, scientists theorize. Some light bounces off soot particles in the air and goes back into outer space. The pollution also causes more water droplets to condense out of air, leading to thicker, darker clouds, which also block more light. For that reason, the dimming appears to be more pronounced on cloudy days than sunny ones. Some less polluted regions have had little or no dimming.

The dynamics of global dimming are not completely understood. Antarctica, which would be expected to have clean air, has also dimmed.

"In general, we don't really understand this thing that's going on," said Dr. Shabtai Cohen, a scientist in the Israeli Agriculture Ministry who has studied dimming for a decade. "And we don't have the whole story."

The measuring instrument, a radiometer, is simple, a black plate under a glass dome. Like asphalt in summer, the black plate turns hot as it absorbs the sun's energy. Its temperature tells the amount of sunlight that has shone on it.

Since the 50's, hundreds of radiometers have been installed from the Arctic to Antarctica, dutifully recording sunshine. In the mid-80's, Dr. Atsumu Ohmura of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich sifted through the data to compare levels in different regions. "Suddenly," Dr. Ohmura said, "I realized it's not easy to do that, because the radiation was changing over time."

He recalled his reaction, saying, "I thought it is rather unbelievable."

After an analysis, he was convinced that the figures were reliable and presented his findings at a scientific conference.

Asked about his colleagues' reaction, Dr. Ohmura said: "There's no reaction. Very disappointing."

At that time, Dr. Gerald Stanhill of the Israeli Agriculture Ministry noticed similar darkening in Israel.

"I really didn't believe it," Dr. Stanhill said. "I thought there was some error in the apparatus."

Dr. Stanhill, now retired and living in New York, also looked around and found dimming elsewhere. In the 90's, he wrote papers describing the phenomenon, also largely ignored. In 2001, Drs. Stanhill and Cohen estimated that the worldwide dimming averaged 2.7 percent a decade.

Not every scientist is convinced that the dimming has been that pronounced. Although radiometers are simple, they do require periodic calibration and care. Dirt on the dome blocks light, leading to erroneous indications. Also, all radiometers have been on land, leaving three-fourths of the earth to supposition.

"I see some datasets that are consistent and some that aren't," Dr. Ellsworth G. Dutton, who heads surface-radiation monitoring at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said. "Certainly, the magnitude of the phenomenon is in considerable question."

Dr. Beate G. Liepert, a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, has analyzed similar information and arrives at a smaller estimate of the dimming than Drs. Stanhill and Cohen. Dr. Liepert puts it at 4 percent from 1961 to 1990, or 1.3 percent a decade. "It's a little bit the way you do the statistics," she said.

A major set of measurements from the Indian Ocean in 1999 showed that air pollution did block significant sunlight. Following plumes of soot and other pollution, scientists measured sunlight under the plumes that was 10 percent less bright than in clear air.

"I thought I was too old to be surprised by anything," said Dr. Ramanathan, who was co-chief scientist of the projects.

Dr. Ohmura said he hoped to finish his analysis of the numbers since 1990 by late next month or early July.

"I have a very strong feeling that probably solar radiation is increasing during the last 14 years," he said. He based his hunch, he said, on a reduction in cloud cover and faster melting rates in glaciers.

But clearer, sunnier days could mean bad news for global warming. Instead of cloudiness slowing rising temperatures, sunshine would be expected to accelerate the warming.

soy una dumbass-a
i punched myself in the face tonight, while i was sparring. my hands, i'm just so out of practice, they were in the way and my knee bumped one and it flew into my lip which then hit my tooth and i've cut the inside of my lip. soy una dumbassa.

so cool
i have wandered upon a really neat site. musicplasma. it claims to identify all the music you'd like based on input of one band. NEATO!

RIGHT NOW
we are having some massive thunderstorms. you know, the kind you get in the tropics in the afternoon, it's all humid all day and then it's just too much and the sky opens up and pours and there's thunder and lightening. really, they happen almost every day in the tropics, but we're having them right now in new jersey! i love storms!

i miss us
had a nice mini-reunion with my grad school classmates. gosh i miss them. they are all amazing. one girl is in cambodia, reporting. she's back for a wee visit. one is finishing her first year of med school, another is starting a ph.d. program in remote sensing. a few have full-time journalism jobs -- space.com and pop sci -- and it's all just amazing. i feel like a bit of a bum compared to them, but i'm not unhappy, so it's all good. i have warm fuzzies.

but why is it some guys ... ergh! they just insist on touching and invading personal space. i was on the train back home -- to jersey hell -- and the conductor passed by me and i swear he intentionally brushed my arm. it wasn't a breezy kind of brush, it was like let me touch your arm kind of thing. and then as i was waiting to disembark, he is very friendly, hello how are you, and that's all good. but as i'm stepping off, he grabs my arm, as if trying to help, but not needing it, not wanting it, never having gotten it before. i hate being touched by men strangers.

altruism
i haven't done anything volunteeresque in a very long time. today, off to volunteer to tutor some kids in the bronx.

self-improvement regime
since i don't work very much, i find i have a lot of time to do other things. i've mentioned crafts. i've also been spending a lot of time at the gym. i took a capoeira class today. it was fun! it was something i've been wanting to do for a long time, like since first year of college. i basically worked out for like 3 hours today. ouch. oof.

and it's been confirmed. this guy at the gym that i thought was cute, who was working there for a while, and who my gay best friend said i should go after ... he's a senior in high school. HA HA HA! i am NOT getting on that.

may sweeps
last week it was 10.5. this week, today in fact, it's a wrinkle in time, based on the phenomenal eponymous (--like that vocab word?!) madeleine l'engle book. yeay!

ps: since i may not be home to watch it, i'm recording it...and using tapes that have old blue's clues episodes, a la steve era. it's nice to purge past obsessions.

updates
can't sleep ... took too long of a nap this evening. now i'm messing with blogger. added my amazon wish list to the left -- i didn't get any birthday gifts this year. :( and gifting is one of my love languages. also am trying to add comments ... damn new blogger...so shiny and nice but infuriating when it's so new.

so yes, you can post comments by clicking the little [+]. yeay! are you out there, my attending public?

before bed
i forgot about one somewhat exciting yet excruciatingly annoying aspect of the club ... fights. what is it with boys and alcohol and fists? we had one tonight. it was totally jumping too. people were happy, the dancing was good, guys were hitting on girls, girls were having drinks bought for them. and then out of nowhere, fisticuffs. aiyah!

ritual
blogging after working at the club and before i go to bed is becoming a bit of a habit. so is checking my email, though for the life of me, I'm not sure who i'm expecting an email from. maybe one of the millions of contests i entered! but not with my fastmail address, because i'm determined to not let that get polluted with canned meat.

my mom yelled at all the employees today. because they are a lazy bunch of mother fuckers, never mind racist. (but so is my mom, so that's like you know, pot and kettle.) wow, i have never taken such joy in other people being reprimanded. and for the first time, i realized how bad it could be if i was ever caught selling alcohol after 4am. apparently, the restaurant upstairs was ticketed once for it and two of their waiters spent like three days in jail. i have no idea how much of this is true, but i'm not sure i really want to see the inside of a jail cell. so tonight, i shut down all sales at 4am sharp. oh well. the little spoiled brats can go somewhere else, i DON'T care. la la la ...

future and ramblings
in a few short months, i will officially matriculate at _________. it is comprised of, in total, one 18-story building on the university's campus. one awful ugly building that screams of the 70s. or 60s. you know, that general architectural era. in addition, the [school's] web site is one of the ugliest sites around.

i'm not a manager. i didn't sign on to be a manager. yet again, inevitably, i've found myself in that position. it's ok. the temporary nature of it makes it bearable. and the fact that my pms is passing. it is amazing how racist people can be, though. i was told tonight that black people "always" act before they think. and that hispanics inherently can't seem to understand concepts that our inept lazy waiters do. i don't know, must be the water. god help me.

but something to cheer me up when i got home: one breezy reply later, and i've got a casual invite. "rafting or something". anyone wanna go to canada?!

i've since edited this to remove any references to my law school. not hard to figure out, but still, just to be paranoid...

need to work more hours
i'm addicted to crafts. ok, i go through phases. rubber stamping. beading. now it's sewing. i need to work more.

hormones
one email, brief, just a few lines, no info, really, but an email nonetheless and i feel a blush that warms my neck. i thought i was done, the distance and time worked their magic, but a few bytes of 0s and 1s and all of a sudden, i'm back to a month ago. sheesh.

don't you hate it when...
...you've misplaced something and it should be right there but it's not and you've looked behind and under everything, and in all its usual places, and then you start to lose sleep over it, because not only is it somewhat valuable, but it affects the orderliness of your mild ocd, and then you start to get all creepy suspicious of everyone else? yeah, me too.

pms or...?
being on vacation was great. not only did i get a chance to relax, and have a chance for others to serve ME alcohol, but i got to be outdoors, in god's great creation, waves crashing, sun shining, sand between my toes, wine on my lips, etc. but it's making it all the harder to be at work. at the club. actually, at any of my jobs. because nothing has changed. i don't know why it should have. *i* was the one who went away to this amazing place.

but didn't i say i was going to have a better attitude? i don't think i am. i think i smiled like three times tonight.

and those damn 5am birds! argh!