some things

I spent three hours today traipsing about in the cold wearing a gorilla mask and offering various individuals (and animals) a banana. This was all for a class project that will be worth 20% of my grade, naturally. The academic life is silly!

I called St. James Catholic Church and the answering machine message said, "If this is a life-threatening emergency and you are in need of a priest, please hang up and call (insert #) immediately." 911 vs. a priest? I don't know... if I was experiencing a life-threatening emergency I don't know if I would think to call a priest first.

It is very very cold outside and I am sort of sleepy, but in a content way 'cause I'm indoors with hot tea and the heater on.

DEAR WORLD:

THIS IS MY BOYFWEND.

(and that is my amazing unicorn hat for cold/rainy days, obviously)

I'm slightly delirious from sleep deprivation, guys. I think I'm going to go eat some frozen yogurt and try to stay alive now.

I want a puppy and a week to retreat to the countryside. With some writer friends and a crate of wine. LE FIN.

I want banh beo so bad right now, I think I would kill for some.

Also, all this eating+stressing+lazing about is taking its toll. I can't fit into some of the clothes that I wore mere months ago, aaaaaaaaaaah. FATS. :*(

What does one buy a 16-year-old (almost 17!) boy for his birthday?

So far, my ideas are:
-a football
-various restaurant gift certificates
-shit for his van
-...a cute Asian girlfriend?

Ugh, I hate shopping for my little brother. ANY IDEAS, PLEASE?!

Allergies (and the appropriate medication for them) are going to ruin my life. I'M SO SLEEPY AGAIN.

Also, I have about 3 pounds of ash on my forehead. Thanks, crazy priest man with weird intonation problems.

I am giving up Facebook for Lent, in case you didn't know. I guess this whole season's about figuring out what you can control versus what you let control your life. So... obviously social media was the natural choice for me.

I want to watch this. I also want to know why Dakota Fanning is narrating it.



Also, today is Ash Wednesday! Hello, Lent. I almost forgot about the meat-eating ban. I just put out some pork chops to defrost too. Damn it! Oh well, maybe I'll do salmon. Pescetarianism counts for fasting days, right?

I have never been so excited for finals week in my life. ONE FINAL and it's take home, bitches! I'm dying pretty hard of stress, allergies, lack of sleep, etc. I keep checking the pollen forecast and it looks grim. I am going to die as soon as i set foot outside, ugh. Also, can someone please tell me why the health center appointment system takes calls starting at 8 a.m. every day EXCEPT on Wednesdays? TERRIBLE.

Also, this news story just made my morning:

Granny Gives Robber a Beatdown

IT'S THE YEAR OF THE TIGER.

I'm excited. And itchy. Ao dais are uncomfortable to wear.

reasons I'm excited to go to little saigon for new year's

:)

Things are looking up!

Welcome to the new year, everyone. I'm sitting in bed, wearing fleece leopard print pajamas and packing my bags for our 4 a.m. departure. Life is quite delightful and I think I may just be the luckiest girl in the world.

ALLERGY SEASON ALREADY?!

Oh no... :(

I guess it must be spring?

I think I've heard about 20 different versions of this song in Vietnamese, since my people just seem to steal+translate music from other cultures instead of creating their own. The French are a big one, due to colonial influences, I guess.

Anyway, been listening to this on repeat, and omg, I LOVE HIS HAIR. It's so flippy and shiny!

Hi I'm Teresa and I'm delirious.

<3

:(

I CAN ONLY EXPRESS MYSELF VIA EMOTICON NOW. I don't want to read anymore. I don't want to write. Some NyQuil would be great. I'd like to pass out for a while. Like, until the end of this godforsaken quarter.

bear with me:

An oldie, for nostalgia's sake. LE SIGH. I can't believe I'm posting (reposting?) this, but it's one of my secret faves.

La la la, I need to write a new poem for class this week. Maybe I'll finally finish my bear-skinning one!

sparrow girl

don't ask me what this is, scribbles and lost words
the fumbling wings of a gray cotton cardigan, my
pigeon feet and nervous affections.

i am scared, i am scared -- it is august, a grimy
sort of morning, the streets are cruel
to pedestrians today, i'm tripping and the
gusts from the grates and gutters smell
so sweet, in the worst way.

oh, but you are the most beautiful thing! -
i've seen in a hundred summer nights, and why?
i could chalk it up to a wry smile, nostalgic streetlamp,
tapered pantalons, the usual culprits, i suppose, though...

my attention is a ball of twine threaded through
wooden chair legs and twisted around bedroom doorknobs.
trip a line, anywhere, and i'm yours. no, i couldn't explain it either.

or let me try this -- there was an old tale about a girl
who loved a boy simply because he passed her window on
warm jasmine evenings, whistling a sorrowful tune.

through great lengths (and folkloric magic), she turned
into a sparrow, so that she could follow the boy with a
fluttering heart. but no, maybe i'm not that kind of lover.

and, anyway, tonight i'll spill coffee down my blouse, the
peculiar feeling of a hot liquid cooling against my breast.
this is not disappointment but misfortunate habit.

and that sad story -- i think it ended with the sparrow girl
dying, the boy unaware. if he never knew,
was it still a love story? is this a love poem?

Ummm maybe I'll pull an all-nighter tomorrow instead. Headache's starting to set in (residual from the one that was destroying me Friday, I think), and I can barely concentrate. I keep falling asleep on Dugg and startling awake five minutes later. Five hours? Six hours? Shouldn't hurt my GPA too much, right?

UGH. I'm just going to finish this page of "perfect" prose and get to bed for a few hours. And then wake up in the morning and trek to the library. No more complaining -- I'm a college student; this is my LIFE.

Pretty sure this week is going to break my spirit.

Things I've achieved thus far tonight:
-Storyboarding assignment
-Page of perfect prose (almost!)
-CFC grant application for Nameless
-1/2 critiques for 100F
-3 pages of Roxana or something really pathetic like that

I want to light illegal firecrackers. And then sleep. Forever. GOODNIGHT.

the direction things are headed in:

My cousin Tracy: "GOD. Our kids are going to be practically white. Or in your case, LITERALLY white."

I just want to go home and get fed and sleep enough and play video games and I swear I'll be happy forever and ever.




PLEASE?!

DEJA VU

AAAAH, this is so a repeat of finals week Spring Quarter 2009, complete with UTI, unfinished portfolios (or theses) and dinners with the beloved gay boys.

Feeling way better this time though. Also have more time to get through this massive pile of schoolwork (but only barely). Thank god!

It's the same combination of stressors that always makes me sick. IT'S RIDICULOUS. I should just learn to better anticipate my illnesses, because really, it's quite formulaic.

I think I could watch this forever

I was just procrastinating at the library by rereading all of these journal entries that I wrote over a year ago, and it was just a very odd feeling, like running into someone you used to be best friends with but now no longer talk to.

It's strange to read all of the things that I freaked out/was anxious about because now I know the outcome. It makes me think that I should just stop worrying about narratives, about linearity. I'm very tired right now. I have SO much to get done this weekend, but I'm pretty resigned to it. Everything's going to be just fine, ya know? I'm convinced of this.

I am also homesick for the first time in a loooong time. I think it's about time, really. I've been feeling a little under the weather lately, and my mind keeps drifting to being at home with my parents, or playing video games with my cousins and brother. I've been thinking about New Year's at Grandma's for a couple weeks now -- the mere thought of it is often enough to get me through the day. I can't wait! I'M SO TIRED.

"I mean, it was just a big old mess."



Honest words from an honest friend. I wonder how many of our memories/experiences will fall into that category?

OH BREAK MY HEART, WHY DONT YOU

"He nearly called you again last night. Can you imagine that, after all this time? He can. He imagines calling you or running into you by chance. Depending on the weather, he imagines you in one of those cotton dresses of yours with flowers on it or in faded blue jeans and a thick woollen button-up cardigan over a checked shirt, drinking coffee from a mug, looking through your tortoiseshell glasses at a book of poetry while it rains. He thinks of you with your hair tied back and that characteristic sweet scent on your neck. He imagines you this way when he is on the train, in the supermarket, at his parents' house, at night, alone, and when he is with a woman.

He is wrong, though. You didn't read poetry at all. He had wanted you to read poetry, but you didn't. If pressed, he confesses to an imprecise recollection of what it was you read and, anyway, it wasn't your reading that started this. It was the laughter, the carefree laughter, the three-dimensional Coca-Cola advertisement that you were, the try-anything-once friends, the imperviousness to all that came before you, the chain telephone calls, the in-jokes, the instant music, the sunlight you carried with you, the way he felt when you spoke to his parents, the introductory undergraduate courses, theinevitability of your success, the beach houses, the white lace underwear, the private dancing, the good-graced acceptance of part-time shift work, the apparent absence of expectations, the ever-changing disposable cults of the rural, the family, the eastern, the classical, the modern, the postmodern, the impoverished, the sleekly deregulated, the orgasm, the feminine, the feminist, and then the way you canceled with the air of one making a salad.

You would love the way he sees you. He uses you as a weapon against himself and not merely because you did. He sits in his car at traffic lights on his way out sometimes and tries to estimate how many times he has sat here, waiting at these traffic lights on his way somewhere without you, hoping to meet someone with the capacity to consign you to an anecdote, to be eventually confused with others. He thinks of you when the woman lying next to him thinks he's asleep. It would not surprise you that there are many women. Do you remember you thought him beautiful? You never told him. He had to assume it. He was beautiful and is now, some nine years later, even more so. The years have refined him so that once-boyish good looks have evolved into a clean, smooth charm. Not always though. First thing in the morning or after he's been drinking the charm disappears. The drinking is not really the problem at the moment though, not right now. Of late it has been no more of a problem with him than it is with your husband, which is to say, of late the quantity itself is no cause for alarm. But there is a secret need in both men to have their inhibitors inhibited. In Simon's case this is merely the tip of an older and more fundamental iceberg."

---

The opening passage from Seven Types of Ambiguity, by Eliot Perlman. READ IT ALREADY, PEOPLE.

oh hai, high school!

I used to listen to this every day and equate it to college applications. I REALLY DONT KNOW HOW.

OMG

I just filed for graduation and for the L&S Commencement Ceremony!

IT'S SO FUCKING TERRIFYING. I feel lame -- I'm just sitting here in my living room on my computer and my heart is going berserk. It's all coming to an end. I don't think it really hit me until this moment.

I'm registered as an English major, btw. So we can all sit together :).

I am super tired. Also, my hair is in desperate need of washing (but that can happen after badminton). And my honors thesis + midterms + papers + 100f rewrite = serious lockdown this weekend. I'm thinking no social engagements and an affair with the 24 hour reading room.

Whattabout job applications? God, at this point I'm ready to give in and tell my parents that I'm taking a year off to study for the LSAT. I'm sure they'd be thrilled. But I'll find something! I just checked out the careers tab on the Rockstar Games website. Heyyyy GTA. I'm going craaaazy.

Anyway, I better make some toast and change into athletic apparel. See you all later! Study dates, plz? Anyone?

TOBY IS A TRUE NINJA

Thanks for the fudge, baby! Definitely made my day. Now onto the rest of this stressful, stressful quarter.

I am so ready to be DONE.

UMMM...

WHO THE FUCK LEFT THEIR UNDERWEAR AND COTTAGE CHEESE IN OUR APARTMENT?!

I'm so confused.