last day of the year.

Today is the last day of 2008 and I have managed to totally blow it. I was supposed to paint today, but I couldn't sleep last night, so I ended up getting 2 hours of sleep before my alarm went off. I woke up, was still in bed, but I was so ready to get up and go to work. Then somehow I fell asleep again, because I suck at waking up and not sleeping forever. I woke up at 7:30am or something and had to text the boss telling him I overslept. I am a terrible person. He said they'd be okay without me today so I didn't go. I put on some coffee and sat on the couch for a minute. This was my chance to be up early and fix my sleep schedule. I couldn't even keep my eyes open. So I went back to sleep and woke up again at 3:15pm. Now it's 4pm and the sun is setting. There went my day.

2008 hasn't really been the best year for me. Half of it was spent being injured, going to physical therapy, and going to classes that couldn't have been more boring. There were some good things that happened this year too though. It hasn't been all bad.

I need to get my shit together and not blow it in 2009.

Wish me luck.

coping with winter.

wilson.

lists of things

SOME THINGS I LIKE:

My metal bedroom at the basement apartment.

Arizona, complete with mountains and trailers. (and cacti)

Coffee, with soymilk.

Hand-feeding walnuts to squirrels.

Lego candy buildings.

Fritz, when he was still alive.

Skateboarding.

Skateboarding, with friends, in the summertime, in 2002.

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SOME THINGS I DON'T LIKE:

Snow. 

Cy Twombly

When my cat pees on my stuff.  Especially my red cowboy boots.

Getting terrible burns from motorcycle exhaust pipes.

White pants.

Traffic.

Meat of all kinds.

i don't know anything about editing...

Today at the ramp fun was had by all. Mark and I filmed this on my phone, so it's shitty.

Zoe and Mark clip off zoe's phone from Mark Szymanski on Vimeo.

christmas eve

I'm staying over at my parents' house tonight for, you know, Christmas.  I took the train because I didn't want to deal with my car getting stuck in the snow/ice again.  

Anyway, on the way from the train to their house I was looking down, minding my own business, trying to avoid the massive patches of ice infesting the sidewalks.  I was concentrating pretty hard on this ice-avoiding business when I heard knocking from somewhere.  I thought maybe it was my imagination so I ignored it for a second.  Then it got louder and more sporadic and I had to look up and around for the source of the knocking.  Turns out, it was a man knocking on his window across the street.  It was a big window, he was standing in perfect view. He was wearing a full Santa costume, and waving at me.  I stopped in my tracks, almost slipping on a patch of ice that I would have seen if I hadn't been interrupted by santa.  Of course I waved back, for a while actually.  For some reason this dude brightened my day a little bit.  I'm not a religious person at all, so ignoring that part of this situation, this guy is dressed up as Santa, standing in his window, waving at people on the sidewalk... being a good person.  At least I think that makes you a good person.  He was trying to bring some cheer to people slipping on ice and freezing their asses outside.  It definitely worked for me, hopefully some other people were lucky enough to get waved at by Santa as well.  

Tomorrow afternoon my parents and I are going to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  We see a movie every Christmas day for some reason.  I think it's a jew thing, even though my dad isn't jewish.  My jew relatives are going to see that hitler-killing movie- Valkyrie or something.  Go figure.  I think that's hilarious. 

the RRST pro model.

also this:

I'm just psyched that I can do disasters again.

christmukkah?

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and I still haven't gotten my parents any gifts. I am a terrible daughter. A terrible procrastinator also.  I even bought my cats presents, but not the parents.  What do you even buy for parents?  Gift certificates to Red Lobster? Or what?  

In the holiday spirit I have made vegan gingerbread men. I used to make gingerbread women too, but I guess the past few years I've been too lazy to go through the trouble of adding hair and a skirt to the men, I guess making them more gingerbread trannies than gingerbread women.  Whatever, my cookies aren't PC, deal with it.

And I'm not the only one half-assing Christmas. This is my parent's idea of a Christmas tree:

I am not much in the holiday spirit this year.  I'm over holidays and obligations.  I'm also over winters.  If I never saw snow ever again I would probably be fine.  I could also do without shoveling my car out of snow and getting stuck on piles of ice.  I could do without a lot of things.  The internet, however, is probably not one of them.

fuck winter.

Fuck winter, fuck chicago, and fuck snow.  Also, fuck -4˚.   

I got stuck on the snow/ice not once, but TWICE today.  Two fucking times.  The first time I had to call Grant to come push my car off a mound of ice, and the second time my mom and cousin had to push me out of a parking spot because my wheels wouldn't grip the ice.  

So stupid.  I'm going to Arizona soon where I won't get stuck in the snow.  Also I won't be freezing most of the time.  Also there will be cacti. So much cacti.

christmas comes early.

I went to my parents' house to do laundry today.  I felt like I needed to get out of the house, you know, do something. Anything. Anything productive.  I slept until 4pm. I'm pretty sure I went to bed at 1am.... so if my calculations are correct I slept for 15 hours.  That's shitty.  What's even shittier is I had so many dreams, all of which were either frustrating or just plain sad. Or sometimes both. I had so many dreams. 15 hours is a lot of time. 

Anyway, the point is I had to do something, so I went to do laundry for free.  While I was there I was asked if I wanted to get some little early holiday presents, or if I wanted to wait for Hanukkah and/or Christmas.  I said I'd like to get them now, because I needed some cheering up.  Just little things: hand lotion, a polka dotted bath towel, a little bag of Swedish Fish.  

Then I unwrapped this:

I was confused. A BRITA filter that didn't go with my sink attachment thingy... where my filter had run out a while ago but I keep using anyway.  At least I can pretend I'm drinking filtered water.  Anyway, turns out I was also given a BRITA pitcher.  That the filter went to.  It all made sense. 

Yeah this wasn't very interesting I know.  But check out the sweet bow on my head.  I'm resourceful as you can see... I turn ordinary present-wrapping ribbon into sweet hair accessories.  Just kidding I totally took it off soon after I put it on.  Bows are gross.

murder ballads.

So yes, the show went pretty well last night. I was nervous before, during, and after it, but it was fun and I’m glad some friends showed up. Yeah. Here are some pics from last night:

They spelled school wrong.

Colin took this one on his iPhone. Awesome.

Yeah I guess that's all I have right now.

Oh right, so earlier, I had the song "La Cucaracha" stuck in my head.  Except instead of cucaracha it was kitten-racha.  Sort of like, "La kitten-racha, la kitten-racha, da da dada dadada..."  Just that line, over and over again, in my brain.  And sometimes I would sing it out loud.  But it's gone now. Phew.

blarg.

Today I woke up with an eye twitch. I called it. Nervous.

Also, today at physical therapy I was told to jump from side to side over a small box. After doing this for 30 seconds I felt terrible, lightheaded and nauseous. Then I puked. It was gross. It was coffee and bile puke, because I hadn't had any breakfast. I probably should have. I felt terrible for the rest of the session. Add that to already feeling sore from Monday, and Paul has no mercy whatsoever, so he was pretty much getting pleasure out of seeing me suffer. So now I'm double sore, and I have PT again tomorrow morning. Triple sore?

My getup for tonight is ridiculous. I mean, if it fit well it wouldn't be, but I look like a young girl in a grown man's clothing. Which is pretty accurate. Yeah. The adult small shirt could be a dress on me. A weird weird dress. The pants fit though.

Have I mentioned yet that I'm nervous?

can't sleep, i wish i was a cat.

Sleeping until 3:30pm and then drinking coffee is apparently a horrible idea. I wish I would have known this about 11 hours ago. I could have speculated, but I was probably too busy being mad about my cat pissing all over my clothes this morning. Jack Bauer the Cat, most snuggly kitty ever, is also a huge asshole. He loves peeing on my stuff, whether it be my couch, my bed, or any unattended item of clothing on the floor or APPARENTLY also on my dresser. Because he loves peeing on clothes on the floor, I pile clothes on top of my dresser, thinking it's safe. I guess that is no longer safe. It has been up until this point though. Anyway he peed on all of my clothes that were up there, including my favorite sweatshirt and a new pair of pants. I washed them today, but I think the sweatshirt still smells like cat urine, which let me tell you, is NOT a pleasant smell. It's like bad B.O. and ammonia mixed together. Oh boy is it smelly. But enough about cat pee.

The point of this was supposed to be about not being able to sleep. So yeah. I can't sleep. I tried to read but my mind kept wandering and I found myself reading the same sentence multiple times. I gave up on that about 30 minutes ago. Then I spooned with Jack on the couch a little, but he got tired of that pretty fast. So now I'm just sitting here on the couch, blogging, being totally useless. Tomorrow is the show and I'm nervous. Nail-bitingly nervous. Really, really nervous. Thirsty and nervous. I could be more nervous though, because my eyelid isn't twitching. It'll probably start up tomorrow.

For some reason I just felt like eating cake. Not wanting to eat cake, but I felt like I was actually eating cake. Weird. It passed though. Now I'm just thirsty again. Thirsty and tired. But I can't sleep.

I wish I was a cat.

running out of tricks is horrifying now.

chicago is shitty.

You know it's true.  Fuck Chicago. It's always cold, or if it's not cold, its raining, or if it's not raining, it's windy, of if it's now windy, it's hot and humid.  Right now it's snowing, which means it's extra shitty.  Also whoever the genius was who decided it wasn't necessary to plow or salt the side streets anymore should be shot in the fucking face.  

Anyway, enough about that I guess. I just hate snow. It makes it hard to do anything, ever. I need to go run errands but my car is buried under snow and I probably wouldn't be able to find a parking spot when I came back because someone would have claimed it as their own with plastic lawn chairs and fisher price big wheels.  I need to go outside and wipe the snow off of my car pretty soon or it will probably freeze overnight. That means I have to go outside. In warm clothes. And boots.   I haven't been outside at all today because I am a terrible lazy human. I went to bed at probably 2am the latest, it might have even been 1am, and I got up today at 3:30pm.  What the fuck?  My cats tried to wake me up multiple times but I shooed them away.  They probably thought I was dead, and were just making sure I wasn't.  They probably wanted to eat my corpse. 

Tomorrow the band I'm in is playing a show. We are called Red River School of Taxidermy.  Ummm... I play the drums. Badly. But I play them nonetheless.  Also if you're reading this you should come to the show.  We play at 10:30 at the Subterranean . Which is you know, that place on North Ave. right by the Milwaukee/Damen intersection.  You know the place. You should come though, it should be pretty fun.  Or if it's not you could make it fun by making fun of my horrible drumming.  

I can sort of skateboard again.

artstuffs.

    Some art stuff I've done this semester:

today.

Today is my first day of freedom. Sort of. The school semester is over. My first semester of college, ever. In celebration of this momentous occasion I slept until 2pm. Just kidding, I totally would have done that anyway.  I sleep way too much. I think maybe I should go get a blood test, again, and see if there's something wrong with me. There won't be, there never is. I just sleep a lot I guess. 

Yesterday I was chewing on my lip all day and today it's all swollen and annoying. Also drinking coffee stings the hell out of it.  ALSO I still can't stop chewing on it.  Stupid. 

It is now 3:20 pm and the only things I have done so far today is drink coffee, solve a rubik's cube, and do a crossword puzzle on the internet.  At least I'm using my brain a little bit.  

I'm going to finish my coffee, take a shower, attempt to stop chewing on my lip, and then take pictures of art stuff that I did this semester. You know, to post on this blog later.  Nobody will see it though.

cats

What makes them feel the need to take one paw and slowly nudge things off of other things?  If it's light enough for them to move, they will push it off of whatever it's on. Why? WHY DAMNIT?!

Next time: Why do cats pee on everything?