merry christmas

i got a camera!

willie got mortal kombat vs. dc universe for the xbox

we all got german apple pancakes from mom

who can save us now that god's gone mad?

• From my brow she brushed my hair
  Like grass from tiny grave

i was going to update something, but apparently my dinner is ready.

• so bad, baby dee

route, draft 1

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no nightmare!

I didn't have a nightmare last night! I slept on the downstairs sofa, and I woke up with three cats pinning me down under the yoga blanket that was keeping me warm. Maybe the cats are like dreamcatchers....hey, now that I think of it, the dreamcatcher that's usually in my room seems to be missing. Hmmmm....this could explain everything! Everything except why dreamcatchers work. That's a mystery for the ages.

Trying to be inspired by Katia's ability to work on a paper while granddad-sitting. Especially when much smaller thing seem to defeat me--e.g. the existence of brownies in the house, the playing of pedal steel guitar downstairs, the fact that I don't want to write the paper.

The couch was very uncomfortable, and now I have a stiff neck. I can't possibly write a paper with a stiff neck. But I have a conference call in 2 hours.

weird

OK, is this too weird? An nightmare of an existential crisis + scary skeletons? I feel like I'm still dreaming this matches my experience of last night so exactly:

http://www.cracked.com/article_16913_kids-say-most-existentially-terrifying-things.html

you have no (0) undead messages

OK, tonight, I will not dream of death. Promise to myself.

nightmares

oh for god's sake. this is at least the third night in a row i've been woken up by a nightmare. last night it was multiple nightmares. tonight's somehow translates into this all-encompassing existential horror, so not only am i filled with sorrow at my own body's hopeless decay around me, but i'm terrified there's an already-decayed reanimated corpse under my bed, waiting. to reclaim its life.

ukulay-lay

This should be the ukulele show. It is probably my favorite that I have recorded. I made my whole family listen to it.

I got another TA appointment, for the next level of quantitative analysis! Working for someone who may be the future mayor of Austin! Woah! Lucky me, except I'm a little freaked that I don't know anything about this class. It would be easier to TA for undergrads. But this appointment will certainly be simpler than my previous appointment.

Home is still lovely. Drank a bitter margarita as my brother and I shopped on Magazine. Failed utterly at Jeopardy. Made my whole family listen to my radio show. Lunched with my mom and her friend. Will go to work with my mom tomorrow (teaching at a school) and will hang out with K tomorrow night probably. But at some point, I need to write up a 20 page report during all this. Oops. Should have planned better. I guess I could be doing that right now, but I'd rather read Dead Until Dark.

This blog is a liability. No one should be able to find out how irresponsible I am.

Got home, crashed by 10, and, typically, woke up at 3. Terrible nightmare. But interesting. Can't decide if I should try to go back to sleep (after 2 truffles and an apple and a few TV shows) or just stay up till yoga in 6 hours.

There's this bizarre whirring noise in the neighborhood. I can't figure it out. Not that I'm going to go out and check.

Special thanks to Andy, Nora, my family, my insurance company and Katy for talking me through the sleepiest parts of the drive. And of course to Mika's music. God that album is just fantastic!

Xander is so thrilled to see me it brings tears to my eyes. I should never have left him.

internet i hate you! god damn you, i hate hate hate hate hate you. you're an abusive lover i'll never escape, even though i know what's good for me. i would like to throw up on you, but that is physically impossible. i hate this proposal, which forces me to surf you endlessly. i hate the claustrophobia i have from being hungry and having nothing in the house to eat, and not being able to sleep.

trying to face this damn situation, and i can't.

ugh to today.

not only have I not finished my project, I have avoided it with dull diversions, such as True Blood and internets. ('internets' is so passe, but remains funny to me; no one understands the joke of the article-less "internet" when I say it). I sometimes would stare up at my bookshelf, with a dull thought in my head, like "what are those for? better keep surfing the internet. i'm sure there's something important on there NOW." i did reserve a bunch of books at the library to take home with me (and potentially leave in New Orleans for massive fines one day), mostly about road trips, but one about cars.

talked to both j and l on the phone, friends I hear from too rarely. Put together a cat tower with A. had 1 coffee and 3 donuts. and 1 apple. made a list of the people i will see in new orleans; found that their initials can spell "cracklin'" kind of.

c
r
a
k
k
l
l
n

one of my all time favorite pieces of music. can't stop listening to chopin today. also, can't stop pronouncing it "choppin'" in my head.

still have not completed accursed proposal. i propose that i fail the class. is it worth $1500 to me to not finish this project? no... maybe.

donuts!

this subject of this update has to do with 1) that i finally ate like a million donuts, after virtuously swearing off them for several, err, days, and 2) i wanna go fast! i'm hoping dad lets me drive his car over winter break. i've been downshifting to accelerate my car for the first time in my life these past few months, and speeding up feels awesome! i feel in better control of everything when I shift down to third gear on the interstate. I used to hate that roaring sound it makes.

Problems I have with the show True Blood: Anna Paquin's Louisiana accent. That their fangs are too close to the front--they look like bunnies. Some of the acting. The fact that Sam is so clearly hotter than Bill-the-bunny. But I am enjoying the books.

Music: Enjoying Shearwater more and more. Also finally got the M.I.A. album, and The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir, which I haven't listened to all the way, but which is fantastic at first blush anyway.

i was delayed i was waylaid

I can't believe I got a project done 24 hours in advance of when I thought it was due (it turned out to be due 24 hours earlier than I thought). But it's such a relief!

Now I just have to get my funding proposal for India together. But I have no desire to go back. No desire whatsoever! I just want to take a road trip and get some money by working, not by writing this crappy proposal and then blowing it all on 16 hour plane rides. Ugh.

Talking with my brother's former GF now. About surfing movies.

here's the snow show. i'll upload the ukulele show sometime. This show isn't very good. next semester will be better. of course in my mind, my best show was the one that failed to record.

My internet is patchy at best. Even the stolen wireless is crap. I can't tell if it's the service or my computer. I will blame TimeWarner for the time, and let that be my excuse for late payment.

I finally got back online, after rabidly trying to for about an hour. After I got on, I immediately began aimlessly surfing the internet, bored already, wondering why I'd wanted so badly to get online in the first place. I can check my email from my phone. And I can waste time by reading the Southern Vampire series. Yes, vampires and more vampires for me. Sexxy. I'm also making a mix for tomorrow's show that is of songs about snow. I'm missing all my different genres, though. I need five. I have one and a half. I'm not worried about the new music, or the Texas artists music. But the genre count is always my weak point.

It remains cold today. I finished an exam today. I went to a chiropractor and a therapist today. I printed out a map of the United States today highlighting places I would like to visit. The square states. The M-states (specifically, Montana and Minnesota). Hot springs in every state. That big red lump in the middle. What is there? What does "badlands" mean? What do people do for fun there? How many people can I fit in my car?

conversations with my dad

Age 4/5

Me: I like asparagus!
Dad: I liked asparagus, too, when I was a little girl.
Me: ...
Dad: Yep, I ate asparagus all the time, and it turned me into a little boy.
Me: [eyeing asparagus warily] Really?
Dad: [mouth full of asparagus] Uh-huh!

Age 6/7 (Christmas morning)

Me: I made coffee for y'all last night! I made it extra strong like you like.
Mom: How did you make it strong?
Me: I put it through the filter twice.
Dad: How do you know that made it stronger?
Me: ...
Dad: How do you know that didn't filter some of the coffee-ness out of the coffee?
Me: [feelings of failure]

Age 12

Me: Move out of the way. I'm going to throw up. I'm really nauseous.
Dad: No. You're nauseated. Nauseous is something that causes nausea.
Me: I'm so nauseous, please move out of the way!
Dad: You're nauseated. You've been known to be nauseous sometimes.
Me: [glare of death] I'm nauseated, and if you don't move I'm going to throw up on you.
Dad: There. Was that so hard?

freaky weather

this afternoon my car battery died. as the guy was replacing it, and i was on the phone trying not to cry about things (first to my mom, then to my brother), i was dripping sweat as i waited. ugh. i couldn't stop thinking "that's because you live in fucking texas, carrie."

now...omg omg omg omg! it's snowing!

if it's the last thing we ever do

I just traded up donuts for a baguette. Sooo unsatisfying. But maybe the cherries will do. Good ol' cherries.

I think I'm closing up shop here soon. No one updates their blogs, and no one but a handful of people read mine, so I'm not sure what the point of having a public blog is. I've started writing most stuff to myself, and (as you may have noticed) putting the internet detritis up here.

Tomorrow night is happy hour with the class I TA'd. I set up a SurveyMonkey survey to determined "Where will drinking happen?" In the emails back and forth, there were some running gags about a) one student being a stripper b) me being an alcoholic (because I said "You guys better come to happy hour becuase if I end up at C&A drinking alone....it'll be just like every other Tuesday, I guess."). I think the latter joke is most hilarious since I won't drink. Tonight I need to finish a lot of things, which I've been needing to finish for a while (I'm just going to keep blaming the Twilight books for all my problems as long as I deem necessary).

Meeting someone at the grocery store name "Caddy" made me hate Austin for some reason. But it may have been influenced by the fact that I could smell the oak in the air today, and it was a beautiful day, and I wanted to curl up in a ball on the stone bench outside because I missed New Orleans so much.

slipcover

mom made me a couch cover with some fabric i brought from india. it's double sided, and this is the fabric she picked out here in austin, but i like it a lot. i need to lose the awful pillows, though. but i thought i'd at least put one picture up.

today is a winter sunday

• the soul of my brother is pure though he doesn't think so

for some reason, it's all my head will sing me at night, and i can barely get the sound out when i try to hum along. it's the saddest little song.

• one for sorrow, two for joy; innocence mission

home stretch

• Did you love this world? And did this world not love you?

It's that time of semester and year, when the ache of being so close to done distracts me from the fact that it's not actually done yet. there is so much that i could say, but i'm afraid of saying it like the twilight books, so i better not say anything at all.

i will just once again call attention to the squallor of my life: 5 coffee cups and a salad bowl on my nightstand.

• he's simple, he's dumb, he's the pilot; grandaddy

true story

Person 1 (knowingly): Are you a Virgo?
Person 2: Hell no!
1: Sagittarius?
2: Nope.
1: Cancer?
2: No.
1: Aquarius?
2: No. Leo.
1: That makes sense.

the strength of 5 go-rillas

in the middle of the most boring morning class after 3.5 hours of sleep (holiday traffic made the drive almost twice as long as it should have been). the cats are in new orleans. i didn't sleep well because of 1) coffee 2) teen romances (damn you, stephenie meyer, with all your chuckling, rippling muscles, and smoldering eyes; you are too easy to digest when my boyfriend and i read out loud to each other, eagerly and sarcastically flapping our hands: OMG THEY'RE GOING TO PROM!).

i could make this again another new yorker style abstract of my week. but again, all i can think of is "nothing." probably this class i'm in is not helping.

the needle in my neck thing went ok. it did hurt, and it was hard to talk with a numb neck. the lump is still there though, which is disappointing.

i waaaaant to sleeeeeeeep. i can't.

i might start eating fish again, to be more healthy. i didn't realize how reliant i'd become on it for protein, and there's only so much tofu i can take. it will make me stronger. it'll be better than cookie dough, at least, the main staple of my diet the last few months. but cookie dough's brand of guilt is a different kind of guilt than hook-in-mouth-of-suffocated-creature guilt.

well, i guess i'll get back to examining the guy in front of me's computer, where he is planning his next world of warcraft character. sad!