I had a REALLY SHITTY day (113th post. 13=unlucky number)

Today was supposed to be the day I would have gotten the Oxford application OFF my hands and into the air to be thrown at some British fellow's doorstep to be read and ultimately rejected. However, I've still got the application, recommendation, transcript, AND term paper all nestled safe and sound in my backpack.

I'll tell you the entire story of woe from the beginning.

So, my recommendation teacher wrote me "Ok, yes, I'll do the recommendation for you, it'll be in my mailbox early afternoon to be picked up." So I figured, "Ok, I'll go after work to pick it up at 2:45, and go to the post office and have PLENTY of time before the express is taken away at 4:15."

I got to the post office and there was a line out the door, so by the time I got to the counter it was 3:20. There was 3-5 day shipping which is way too long...I could put my application in a bottle, throw it in the Atlantic, and have it arrive in Oxford before that. So I decided I'd pay the extra $10 to FedEx the envelope, only you need a phone number for that, which I naturally didn't have. So I take myself to the library, get the phone number, go back, and while I'm waiting to get it FedEx-ed, I realize I don't have the $20 check for the school. So I go over to CitiBank and tell them what my problem is, that I need a money order or check or whatever, and they're all "Oh, you can do that at the post office for a lot cheaper," so I go BACK to the post office, and then the lady tells me "Oh, we do money orders to everywhere EXCEPT England."

By that time the bank had closed, so all I could manage was a whimper "Wow, things really aren't going my way," before I started crying FOR THE SECOND TIME IN PUBLIC AT SCHOOL.

Damn PMS or something. I don't know what. Exhaustion? Too many applications I STILL have to turn in?

So I decided I'd fax the stuff I can and write the people a very nice cover letter explaining that the stars are aligned against me and I can only get my application in a day late. But I had every (excuse me) fucking fax machine in the entire damn universe conspiring against me, too.



















Multiply THAT 12 times and then, only then, people, will you taste utter failure and unfathomable bitterness towards every machine and person in the entire world. I wanted to either rip my skin off, or play a pin the tail on the donkey with a machine gun and on all the customers in Kinko's.

Even on the way over to Kinko's I ran into some random kid who was in my math class last year, I don't even remember his name, and I basically latched on to him with "OH MY GOD, I'M SO MISERABLE AND GIVE ME CHOCOLATE BEFORE I EAT YOU!", and he probably thought I was insane. I did get chocolate, though.

So, I currently hate:
The post office
Citibank
Oxford
Fax Machines
Kinko's

But I do not hate all these as much as I hate myself.

Oh, yeah. I was also wet while this happened because I didn't think it would start snowing/raining today, and took nothing waterproof with me.
(Side Note: Yes. It is just an application. Cool it, Adrianne.)

A mighty big banana indeed

This is what I excavated from BJ today:


























































and then...I ATE IT ALL

111th post, make a wish!

Right now, there are no less than 4 sticks of gum in my mouth.

Am...having...a...standard...mental....meltdown....

(shit, that bubble popped the wrong way)

What it amounts to is that I'm applying to all these things for NO REASON, because I'm not going to get them.

Main one on my mind: Oxford.

Due: The 1st

Currently have: No recommendations

Missing: 2

Must turn in: A term paper. Preferably a good one. In the subject I want to study.

Present state of mind:

Basically, I didn't know it existed until yesterday, because it's not through the school, and I've got A TRILLION other things to do. I've got an EGYPTIAN QUIZ I DIDN'T STUDY FOR, CAN I PLEASE TAKE A VALIUM, and 90 pounds worth of papers to read, write, get through, chew through, and overall just process in some way.

I have ingested so much shit (entire box of Godiva chocolates...Havarti cheese slice upon Havarti cheese slice...bad coffee...parfaits....Hershey syrup) in the past 12 hours that I'm a walking, talking advertisement for The Bernstein Bears and Too Much Junk Food.

At least I am blowing some super, empty bubbles.

I am now emailing the head of the art history department to ask for a recommendation. I think recommendations are STUPID. NO ONE READS THEM.

I AM STUPID. NO ONE LISTENS TO ME!

I'll be the first to admit I'm not the brightest box in the crayon

Recently, Julie has been getting a grand kick out of something I said, namely, that I thought killer whales were sharks. This came up over the weekend when we were talking about killer whale (sharks), and I mentioned how I thought they were sharks. Since then, I have been inundated with pictures such as this:










All sent by Julie, in order to educate me about the fine nuances between sharks and whales.

Behold: the one on the LEFT is a WHALE, the one on the RIGHT, is a SHARK.

Each day, she periodically breaks out into wee giggles in her corner between translating Arabic and doing her homework for next month in the Dynamic Earth and Environment, saying:

"Shark....teeheehee...whale....teeeeeeeeheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee."

However, I was not the one who just struggled for 3 minutes to open up a vitamin container.

Also, when I change my "screensaver," I don't actually go and change my "desktop."

That's right. I might not know the difference between a whale and a shark, I might have been pronouncing "vaginal" wrong my entire life, but I do know what my desktop and my screensaver are (Julie). I've also known since about 2nd grade that mechanical pencils are indeed retractable.

You can go take that picture of a killer shark (whale) off your screensaver now. Or OOPS, do I mean your desktop?

Welcome back to the land of the living, Kris

I have something really pathetic to announce.

My nightly excitement has been reduced to taking out the recycling. I LOOK FORWARD to walking out our recycling to the down-the-hall cess pool. It's not that I like taking out the trash, because I abhor it, but the recycling spontaneously regenerates itself with newspapers, cans, and scraps o' paper, and it's an excuse for me to get out. I guess no one else in the room has discovered this spectacular pasttime. Usually, the chemistry crew is inhabiting the lounge when I take the trash out, because I think they rarely spend a waking moment not working on their science together there, and so I'm able to make some small talk when I take out the recycling like:

"How are you reacting tonight?"
"What's the CO2 doing now?"
or
"Do you need to rehydrate with some H20?"

Tonight, there was actually no one out in the lounge to talk to, and I seriously reconsidered turning around with my full trashcan and taking it back to the room to take out at a later time when there might be a greater possibility of running into someone.

I lead a lonely life.

I also have a new thing to do when walking, aside from tripping over every crack in the sidewalk. This is picking up random stuff. This is my latest acquisition:





















Pretty, no? Looks mildly like what I used to draw in sosc last quarter. I feel bad for Sharpay, though. She'll never find out what she is like as Ellie L.

This is dedicated to all the anonymous artists out there who will never, ever be recognized.

And to Kris's much anticipated return to the internet, or to as much of a life as he can get. Sorry I can't get the fireworks on such short notice.

I'm a VIP member of LOVE FM

Evolution really screwed up when it decided to let feet continue their jobs of being pains in the asses.

For one, toenails. Who needs toenails? We could have just had toes without the nails, as the rest of our body seems to do fine without nails. Imagine if our bodies were covered in nails. Imagine how long a manicure would take.

Moving on...

and then there are the toes. If I could design humans, legs would end in stumps and we would be clomping along merrily like pirates. Or if we had to have feet, I would have made them webbed so we wouldn't have to wear shoes. And so that we could swim through the puddles that's inundating school right now.

Anyhow, Sunday I was in a rush and decided I had no time to dig out knee highs or stockings or whatnot, and by the end of the concert I had a bloody little pool forming in the toesies of my shoesies. In classes today I spent as much time as possible with my shoes off.

If feet gross you out, don't continue.















BLISTERS! and flat feet! and nailpolish ready to be removed!















Bloooooooooodyy
















Ok, you can't see the damage here. But the little piggy that went to market should have just STAYED THERE because the nail is killing me, the little piggy that stayed at home should have gone to market with the former, I'm going to make roast beef out of the middle one because it keeps on smashing in between the others, the one next to it did well not getting any roast beef because it's already so fat, and the wee wee wee one...I've decided it's entirely useless and it's got the mutant toenail which my roommates will heartily confirm when I say it's one of the most screwed up toenails to ever grow out of a pinkie toe.

In short, I used to feel feet were one of the most underappreciated parts of the body. They spend most of their life covered up or being told they're ugly, when really you just need to put a cute pair of shoes on it to make them automatically stunning.

Meeeeeeeeeeh

You know, moms are usually right. Especially in two things:
1. You should have gotten it when you saw it
2. You look like a clown wearing that.

Case in point:
















I was reading the evolution of Islamic architecture while painting my nails, which I NEVER DO to my fingernails on my hands, but then again, how often do you read about Islamic architecture? and when I was done, I gazed down, horrified, at what I had just done.

I look like a third grader playing dressup with her prostitute mom's nailpolish. I'm just not a polish-on-the-hands girl. It's like those girls who can wear ties: some people can, some people just look like loons doing it.

Is this important enough to merit a post? Not really. So I'll elaborate with some things I did this weekend.

Oh let's see...
Yesterday: Spend 45 minutes trying to translate an Egyptian particle that is not supposed to be translated, which I have been using since only the second week of school, and which I kept on dividing up in the wrong way because I do not use the brain God has given me.

Today: Concert. Homework. Breakfast. Not quite in that order, but whatever.

Friday: Coffee, food, work, homework. Again, not in that order.

So, let's SEE Adrianne's weekend, well, in part.










































NEEEEEEEEEERDS.

And one more for the road...















Mary Kate told us to make stupid faces.

I can't figure out what looks stupider: me with this nailpolish on, or me in that picture.

Awkward conversation #4 of the day

On the bus to boy I met last week

Me: Oh! You're Diana's friend, aren't you?
Boy (Completely serious): Not anymore.

I have no idea what to write about

Say hello to Chimo.

(Hi Chimo!)

Tell Chimo you love him.

(I love you Chimo)

Now tell Chimo he's got a super hairdo

(Chimo, you've got a super hairdo)

Finally, tell Chimo he's perfect.

(Chimo, you smell like a giant fart)

How can you do this thing to me?

Snippets of Today:
There is no falsehood in my belly.
I stretched my feet out in order that I might know what I could eat.
My friends and I like to go see non-English movies.
We are hungry. The town people have started to eat each other.

(three out of the four sentences are from Egyptian)

It's just been one of those inadequate weeks so far. So inadequate in fact that I decided I'd take the C bus home tonight, even if it meant walking farther to the dorm, just so that I could have the odd bus driver. I don't even know what his name is, but as I got on the bus, I gazed fondly at the white crotcheted doily hanging around his neck, his bling bling, his enormous rings, and got the first positive remark of the day from him: "I'm lovin' those ID cards, I'm lovin' those ID cards." The rest of the bus ride was spent baskin' in his lovin' with his booming reassurances that everyone on the bus is INDEED a winner and to remember that God does INDEED love us all.

And then I passed about 6 people in wheelchairs on the way home.

There are tons of things I wish I could somehow verbalize just to see if other people feel the same way as well. I generally just wish that giving someone I care about a blood transfusion would inextricably connect us and I wouldn't even have to say anything for that certain person to automatically know why I decided I'd sit down there and why I decided not to smile when I should have.

Oh, what's that you say? That's what's called a SOULMATE? WRONG!

However, what am I complaining about? I mean, those wily Egyptians also had huge problems on their hands.:

There is no falsehood in my belly?

They thought their soul was in their belly. If that were the case, I would be able to communicate freely and clearly through belches and hiccups.

No matter what, though, no matter how stupid and unintelligent I start to feel in my art history, Egyptian, Spanish, and Sosc classes, I will take comfort knowing that the bus driver of the C bus thinks I'M a superstar.

Some decisions I had to make today:

1. To stop tutoring Frankie. It's not worth my time, nor the money, and the work I should be doing seems to take up 8 times more of my time. If I want to listen to some people complaining about how much they don't want to do homework, I don't even have to leave my room (HI ROOMMATES!)

2. To apply to study abroad for a year, in addition to other, shorter programs. Yeah, maybe you won't remember me after a year, but if you forget about me, I probably forgot about you too.

3. To do this daunting pile of dishes.















Granted, I'm not sure if I made that decision, or if it was made for me, but what does it matter, when I've got a neon pink flamingo to keep me company.
















I have a feeling this neon pink flamingo is the only object in the room that is not pissed off with me now.

I hope everyone had a super weekend

I came home this evening and my roommates asked me if I had felt the small 4.0 scale earthquake at about 4:45 this afternoon while I was out. I told them, no, no, that was not an earthquake, that was the impact of me falling while ice skating. I fell so hard the ice cracked, the trees shook, I nearly peed my pants, and I was THIS CLOSE to proclaiming a couple of words the little 5 year old Michelle Kwans and Sasha Cohens probably use when they screw up their 8 point vertically horizontal flips executed on 2 inches of their right ice skates.

Afterwards, I saw stars for about 3 minutes, and I hung out around the edge of the rink where all the kool kids go.

So this is how I feel now.

And now, apropos of nothing, I present to you:

The Charming Trio: Adrianne, Julie, and Mary Kate

Here, upon Julie's suggestion, we were OBVIOUSLY imitating seals. An unfortunate few of you experienced first hand the love I had oozing out every pore of my body for man, mineral, and vegetable alike on Friday night. I apologize. This was the winding down.

New Glasses

Cat with glasses















Troll with glasses















Fan with glasses















Teapot with glasses















Spanish homework with glasses










Me with glasses in a very dirty mirror

I'm the only one in the room my new glasses fits, so I guess I'll wear them for the time being.

100th post on here

Everyone (by everyone I mean you 10 people) knows I work in a concert box office, right? UCP Chicago Presents. We mostly do all that boring classical music stuff everyone seems to like running past on the radio station, but occasionally we hit it up the hip end and sell tickets for people like...James Schamus.

Anyhow, it's a box office. That means we sell tickets.

Unfortunately, I was not genetically manufactured to sell tickets, which could hinder the process since, well, we sell...tickets.

In fact, I suck at selling tickets. Every blessed time I have taken a ticket order, I have turned cherry-tomato red, even over the phone, I have stumbled over words, I have had to ask people to spell their names 5 times, and I have done every other inane thing possible under the sun. I have taken 2 successful ticket orders so far:

1. When my roommates came in and bought tickets for the James Schamus event. They are my ROOMMATES. They have seen me in my underwear and have seen me barf into a toilet. It's not possible to be embarassed in front of them.
2. When someone called in and I made it through without ONCE screwing up the order of the steps, but then I later found out the tickets I sold her were supposed to be for my bosses.

Whoopsie daisies.

Today, after yet another failed ticket order where I managed to charge $5 for a ticket instead of $11, my boss left to go to a meeting and I sat there actually pondering how stupid it would be to start crying over ticket orders. Believe me, at that moment, it didn't seem like such a stupid idea. Then I just sat up and started stuffing envelopes, hoping the phone wouldn't ring for the rest of the day. I'm not too good for business.

Make me stuff envelopes with my feet while filing with my ears and printing out address labels with stamps, just don't make me take a godforsaken ticket order that would make money for the office.

I came up with a list of excuses I could use for each screwed up ticket order I am going to take.

• "Hi, Mrs. Hymen? Sorry I charged you $20,000 for your ticket, I just performed a lobotomy on myself with a dirty fork."
• "Hello Mr. Broch, I know I accidentally have you sitting on the roof, but my dog was run over by a truck this morning."
• "Oh, oops, sorry sir, you wanted the concert in February and not next year? It's been so hard to use the computer mouse since I've burned my hand saving that one baby in my dorm building."
• "How do you spell your name again? I've had trouble hearing since I've gotten mugged and beaten with a club."
• "Oh, it's 4288 not 4590? Sorry about that, my 4-alpha-hydroxyphenylpyruvate hydroxylase deficiency is acting up again."

All by myself

Today, everyone sat outside a 2-seat radius around me in my classes.

The teachers looked in the other direction when I spoke up.

When I sat across from my new art history teacher in her office to talk, she became so disconcerted she knocked over her cup and then tried to find someplace else to look aside from me.

No one sat next to me on the bus.

Everyone stood on the opposite side from me in the elevator.

This is because I've got a cold sore the size of Nevada on my bottom lip.

(Whoever hasn't noticed it by now, I am OPENLY ANNOUNCING THIS so that next time you'll be sure to stare)

(I might also be announcing this because nothing else happened today and I really need to start homework)

Maybe it's not that big, but it feels so irritating that I want to burn it off with a match. I want to use a nailfile to remove it from my face. I want to freeze it off, or just hold an icecube up to it for a good 3 hours. I want to a laser beam to come and laser it off.

God.

I.
Hate.
Coldsores.

Let's make an acrostic with Type 1 Herpes Simplex Virus, everyone! I think I'll abbreviate it, for the sake of time.

Herpes Simplex 1

Hellish
Eyesore
Reappearing
Periodically
Evoking
Shit

Surely
It
Might
Putrefy
Let's
Eat
X It! (X is ACTUALLY an abbreviation for "it")

because it's number
1

My work here is done. But not in Egyptian.

Sometimes some things just hit you

Today at 9:30 PM I decided to check if I had any reading to do for my new art history class, Medieval Art and Architecture of the Mamluks and Mongols. Just for the hell of it, because, you know, the last time I took an obscure art history class like this, we just had a list of "Recommended Readings" which was code for "It's Obligatory, but I'm just going to see if you're responsible enough to get to the library to check them out," so that means the final kicked my ever-sorry bum into 1st gear instead of just idling at neutral.

The syllabus for Medieval Art and Architecture of the Mamluks and Mongols has a mere 3(THREE) course requirements:

Throughout:
Participation: 15%

February 23:
300 word abstract of your research paper argument, 5 page outline, list of objects and/or monuments, and preliminary bibliography: 15%
If you are going to the College Art Association conference, get this done earlier.

March 9:
Research Paper (15-20 pages): 70%

15-20 pg. research paper

(blink, blink)

70%

(blink, blink, blink)

(mental shutdown as skin melts off my body in a total nuclear explosion)

Yeah, you guys might be used to it, but I'm not.

I'm also not used to having an amount of reading that could fuel a small city if I just burned the papers instead of reading them.

Last night I fell asleep within 5 minutes of my head hitting my pillow.

Glory be, the QUARTER HAS BEGUN! The stress-blister on my mouth has ALREADY started forming.

Newsflash:

The more I try to translate Egyptian sentences (I just wrote "Egyptians" instead of "Egyptian sentences.), the less coherent sentences I am able to actually piece together.

Listening to Dean Martin to keep myself from tearing my face off, and concluding it is better I go to class tomorrow with a list of questions instead of the measly sentences I cooked up over the weekend.

Tardy New Year's Resolution:
Try to be better at calling people back on my phone who matter, and if they don't call me, to try to call them at least once a month.

Lame resolution.

Feeling even lamer. Plus, with the music going, I can't really concentrate.

Assorted pictures

So the layout OBVIOUSLY isn't perfect yet

Criticize away. At least you can't make fun of the color scheme too much, since there's only so much you can do with black, white, and gray. Oh, and the glorious neon green links which still boggle my mind, but it's been boggled too much today and it's kind of ache-y, so I'll just leave the deciphering of the neon green for another day.

Anyhow, The Class Situation:
I got an e-mail back from the correct department head, and it turns out I can't take this quarter of Dynamic Environment and have it count for my core requirement along with a quarter of chemistry, and I'm not about to just negate my entire quarter of chemistry here and pretend it didn't happen. It happened, all right. I still get nightmares of test tubes, entropy (particularly entropy), and organic chemical reactions. Or something.

This means I have to get a fourth class, which will probably end up being some sort of art history class again.

Since coming back here, I've had some pretty serious problems with falling asleep. I'm inclined to think that it's because I haven't started working and studying in earnest, so I don't fall into bed in an exhausted heap, but if this continues, I'm going to be a serious looking zombie. Usually, I have no trouble falling asleep with noises, right? I mean, I was the one who fell asleep at a discoteca this summer.

But NOW, the smallest rustle of my roommates sounds 8000000000000 decibals loud, and I sit there waiting for the sounds to happen next. What I've been doing to distract myself is imagining really depressing stuff in a vain attempt to go to sleep. Depressing as in making making Message in a Bottle looking like a comedy. Usually, I try to think of pretty romantic stuff (i.e. first date that will never occur, going travelling somewhere really pretty, all that), but I thought maybe if I imagined my mom, sister, AND Stacy were all murdered and I was in denial about it for 3 weeks, I might eventually get to sleep.

The result of this, I think, is that I just stay up feeling astonishingly sorry for myself and going "OH GOD MY LIFE IS SO MISERABLE...everyone is DEAD AND I CAN'T FALL ASLEEP!"

On a completely different tangent, I am pretty open on this blog, right? I share my miriads (myriads?) of failures, along with my...successes?

Did I ever mention anything I do right on here?

Well, TODAY IS THE DAY. This part is going to look dangerously like bragging, but no, do not take it like that. In fact, take this as a message of "If Adrianne can do something like this, then I can to." But in fact, I think everyone who reads this has far surpassed this accomplishment, since everyone around me are supergeniuses.

I wrote that one art history reasearch paper, right? The one where I was not really complaining about the writing process, unlike my sosc papers. THIS is the message I got back on it:

"Not a perfect paper, but you get points for unusual and ambtious subject matter and solid research well organized and except for a few glitches (see marginal notes) well written."

Right. I do NOT think that comment was grammatically correct (***note to self: it MUST be a good idea to write in run-on sentences if the teacher does, and not use commas when needed, such as after the paranthetical interjection, and also, I think "marginal" has a different meaning than "in the margins"***), but I was happy anyhow.

So, now I have to do my Spanish homework and see what additional class I should take.

James, sorry I did not see you. I didn't really want to, anyhow.

Ok. Pictures. Definitely.

What I found astounding is that there were still leaves on the trees. And the sky was blue in California.















Basically the only two friends I saw during break.
















This is the house Santa barfed over. It was not lit up, and that made me sad, but I had no choice. This was the last opportunity to take a picture of the house.

Since all you all are able to access my Facebook album, there are more pretty pointless pictures there, just in case you want to see how many different angles of the same thing it's possible to take a picture of.

So I guess I'll talk about my day today.

I went to "Dynamic Environment," along with almost everyone else in the school it seems. EVERYONE wants to get into that class because:

1. There are no tests
2. You are guaranteed an A- in the class if you get an "S" (satisfactory) on each lab
3. The lectures are going to be podcasted.

So, there's basically no hope for me to get in the class. And I want to go back to my old Spanish class because:

1. I like the people in my old class better than the new class. This means I would actually WANT to talk to the people in Spanish, as opposed to wanting to sit in class and sulk.
2. There's a big possibility I'm not getting in the "Dynamic Environment" class, and then I might as well go back to my old class.

Therefore, I emailed several people today about a few questions I had. The questions basically boiled down to:

I took chemistry last year, so I've already got half of my physical science requirement done. I know I can make this plus another quarter of a different physical science class fulfill my core requirement if I petition the department. Can I start Dynamic Environment in the spring?

The Dynamic Environment teacher's response was:

"Right...labs don't meet this week."

This is like:

Q: Is that shirt green?

A: It's not polyester.

I think he spent too much time in Antarctica. Check out his way awesome website though: http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~drm7/

So then, I e-mailed who I PRESUMED to be the department head, since I found him on the college website. This is the response I got:

"Ten years ago, when I was Master of the Physical Sciences Collegiate Division, I would have been the person to help you with this."

Sometimes YOU JUST CAN'T WIN.

Pictures maybe?

That's all it can handle right now. blah.

THANKS MARCO!

Since Marco is a GENIUS and fixed my computer by somehow doing what I did about a thousand times before, I am GOING TO POST PICTURES. However, not all the pictures I took during winter break will be gracing this entry, since I was forced to delete a lot of them when Stacy demanded I keep on retaking pictures of her during New Year's Eve because she thought she looked like "a hunchback." Stacy is anything but a hunchback, but she was holding a sharp knife for some of the time, so I was forced to comply.

All right. Blog is not letting me post pictures, but I don't care, BECAUSE AT LEAST THEY ARE ON MY COMPUTER!