Today I went to Friendly's with my brother Dennis, my sisters Julia and Rachael, and our cousins Kristen, Patricia and Ricky. Out of the seven of us, four of us were stoned, and we were all laughing really loud and being completely indiscreet. Apparently Rachael looks more like Ricky than like us. Then Rachael made us take a family photo in front of the Christmas tree to give to Vovoa. Ricky's not actually related to Vovoa but she loves him too.

Earlier today my mother handed me an ugly bag and said "this is your stuff, look through it" and in it I found a linoleum-printed shirt I made in high school, a mix cd I made in 2004, one that pocky_slash made me in 2005, a pair of Trigun shoelaces that are going right into my pinstriped Chucks, and a deck of cards that is some CLAMP manga, I think maybe X/1999? but which will be useful for the game of Deliria that Shane is running next semester. Also a pillow made of felt stuffed with socks, so I'm going to give the rats socks to nest with.

I seriously need to buy another duffel bag to carry all my shit back to Wells with me. I'm not sure I can shove all my clothes plus the new stuff in the two bags + laundry basket I have. I wish I had done my laundry in the week before class ended rather than bringing it all home with me.

Did I already post about how I have to mail in my computer to be serviced so I won't be making podfic after all? I'm bummed about it. I was really looking forward to getting down to it, but with it overheating every 20 minutes, I just can't. At least it's still under warranty.

At least, before I mail it in I need to pull the Deliria rule book and all my WIPs about Connor and Riley and Zachariah onto my thumb drive, and maybe April will let me use her computer while she's at work. Otherwise... it looks like I will be finishing these six books after all. And if she does let me use her computer, I have to find a way to stay off Reddit. Because fuck, what a perfect timewaster.

Dear Livejournal, please tell me why I shouldn't spend my Christmas money on a grinder and a sweet handheld vaporizer, because I think this would really help me in my quest to get high in every academic building.

I mean, Zabriskie was easy, but Macmillan doesn't have a greenhouse, and there are smoke detectors EVERYWHERE in Stratton. Also, this is just a super sweet piece.

I have been spending way too much time on r/trees because this just seems like the best idea ever.

So my siblings want me to go back to Plattsburgh with them for New Year's and THEN go to Albany. This is untenable for several reasons, not least of which are: I don't want to bring my rats to Plattsburgh, and if I leave anything in New Bedford, I will not be getting it back before I go back to Wells, and guess what? I have basically all my clothes with me, so I can't afford to not bring them back to Wells. I mean, it would be nice to go to Plattsburgh, it would be nice to see Kelly and Amber and Kevin and Kristin and whoever else, but it just isn't going to work with the amount of stuff I have to bring with me.

Also, they want to leave on Wednesday, I was under the impression that I would be leaving on Friday. So this plan to get my laptop fixed is all kinds of fucked now. I called the place it's under warranty with and got a claim number, and they said they'd call me within the next three days to let me know what's going to happen. I don't know if I'm going to need to leave my computer in MA and have my parents mail it to me (oh my god no I would be so upset if I had to do this) or if they can arrange for it to be fixed in Albany or what the fuck is going on with it.

So everyone is fucking with all of my plans and I'm not well pleased about it.

The only reason I need to get my computer fixed now is because it was working fine without overheating for about... maybe ten or twelve days, and I thought maybe it was okay now, but last night and today it started overheating again. So, fuck. At least it's still under warranty, I bought it in March 2010 so there are still a couple months left on it. Good thing I bought the extended warranty, right? Right.

On the bright side, I took advantage of the Lush sale today and got 15 bath bombs/bubble bars for $70. Not bad. Now that I know there's a bathtub in Weld, I am going to put it to use. I bet I could have avoided my breakdown in November if I had been taking regular bubble baths.

Merry Christmas, everybody who cares to be wished one. Happy Isaac Newton's birthday, everyone else.

I got exactly what I expected for Christmas: all the clothes I bought on Black Friday. I am going to need a new duffel bag to get all of these clothes to Albany. Plus some little things from my sister (mints and a stuffed dog), a Hot Topic gift card from Ricky (Julia held up the copy of Metalocalypse I gave her and said "Here's your Hot Topic gift card."), $10 off Victoria's Secret which I will probably use tomorrow at their buy one get one 50% bra sale, and a chocolate Advent calendar. So I guess I'll be eating that through January. Also cash monies. Lots of cash monies. Like $260. Which would go into the bank tomorrow if there was a Key Bank in MA, but there isn't, so I'm going to be trying to live frugally off that while I'm in Albany and see if there's any left to deposit when I go back to school. At least not having it in the bank will keep me from spending it online. Which is for the best because otherwise I would be blowing a lot of money on Lush tomorrow when they start their BOGO sale on holiday gift sets. There's one $60 box that is full of the best-sounding bath bombs and bubble bars and I want it SO BAD. Agh.

I'm probably going to give my parents some cash so I can use their credit card to buy Shane's b-day/Christmas gift. She likes cute socks, I found cute socks, let's do this thing.

Julia liked the pipe I got her very much. :D I'm super glad. It's really unique, I thought she would find it cool.

I have spent a lot of time on r/trees on Reddit lately. Like, a LOT of time. Days. I like it there. Stoner humor makes me happy.

Anyways. I'm going to go putz around the house. Maybe take a bath. Peace out, mes amis.

My brother came home yesterday and gave me my Christmas present early because he can't exactly hand me a 20 bag in front of my parents. I'm just stoked I'll have something to smoke while I'm in Albany. I thought I was going to have to go the month without. And he can open his bottle of Jager in front of my parents, he's old enough to have it.

I have basically spent the entire break sitting on the right side of the couch near the Christmas tree, dicking around on the internet. I rediscovered Reddit and burned the entire past two days there. I have put off podficcing until I make it to Albany and have Brian and April's house empty while they're at work. I can get a lot of recording done and then edit it at night, during the week, and then have fun with the Januarymas parties on the weekends.

I also came to the decision that I won't be coming home for the week before classes start after all. I really like spending time with my mother, but my father's getting on my nerves, and everybody has been yelling, and I just don't need it. I'll be better off in Albany, actually relaxing before I go back to school. Although my father can still harass me on Facebook, but I can ignore him when he's being ignorant.

The only thing I'm disappointed with myself for is not getting more reading and writing done. I started Cryptonomicon the night I got here and haven't picked it back up again, and the only thing I've written (besides those poems a couple of days ago) is my character backstory for the Changeling game. I thought for sure I put my thumb drive into my bag before I left campus, but I can't find it, which is sad because I found all my notes for the Sunset Initiative series I was going to do in 2007 and I could totally pick it back up again, if I had the notes with me, which I don't seem to. Also I could be writing about Connor and Riley and Zachariah, but being among my family really kills my porn-writing drive.

Oh, never mind, I just found my thumb drive. I'm very careless, aren't I? Maybe I can get something done now.

My father has guilted me into going to see my grandmother by telling me she's passively trying to kill herself and she might cheer up when I tell her about my grades.

I really don't want to go see her. She's been a horrible bitch to both my parents. She hasn't been a bitch to me, but treating my parents badly is enough reason for me to hold against her. God forbid I become such a miserable old woman if I live that long.

Anyways, on the bright side of the day, it was like 55 degrees out this afternoon, so I went for a walk on the beach and wrote three sonnets. metaphorliteral, check them out if you like beaches. Or if you want to make me happy. I don't know whether to send them to Professor Bennett or save them for the semester starting. I should probably save them.

I've been awake since like 7 am. It's not even 4:30 and I'm tired. Bleah.

Oh LiveJournal, why so fail? I'm backing my journals up... this journal alone is going to take almost two full hours to back up on Semagic, do you think I have posted enough in the past ten years?

I don't want to have to move to Dreamwidth. I already have all my journals there set up, I just never use them, and I don't want to have to-- even though my LJ participation rate has plummeted since the beginning of the semester (I've been busy, okay, when I have the option of spending time with people IRL I take it), this is still where I live on the internet and I don't want to give it up because the Russians are dickwads.

Sigh.

Anyways, I did get a few good years out of my permanent account... definitely worth the $100 in high school for all the use I got out of the maximum icon spaces and the unlimited thread tracking and never seeing ads.

Anyways. Next semester McKenna is running a game of Changeling: The Lost, and I've never properly played a World of Darkness game before, but I came up with my character in the past day or so and I really like her. I never get to play a vamp, I'm going to live it up when I finally can do so. This is the first female character I'll play in a well-run game (I don't count the Serenity game of 2010 because they did nothing to incorporate me in the plotline, and I don't count the games from high school because those were not well-run), so I'm looking forward to it.

Also Shane is going to run a game of Delirium, which I don't know anything about except it uses a deck of cards instead of dice to determine how things happen, but it's going to be set at Wells, so that will be interesting. McKenna's game is also set at Wells, but it involves faeries, so it's different.

And I'm still going to be playing Spirit of the Century, and if Phillip runs Little Fears again I might be down for a second campaign. So I will potentially be playing four RPGs next semester, which I can totally pull off because I managed two and writing a thesis and I got As in all my classes this semester, so clearly I am made of awesome.

Tabletop roleplaying is fun. :D

Saw Sherlock Holmes and The Sitter tonight.

( minor spoiler cut )

Now I have to sleep in Rachael's room in case her cat starts having kittens. I really really hope she does not have kittens while I'm sleeping in there. She needs to wait for Rachael to get home.

I finished Christmas shopping. This year I got almost everybody something to do with a vice. I got Julia a cute little chillum in Ithaca (and also the first season of Metalocalypse on DVD so I can give her something in front of our parents), I got my brother and my cousin nice gift sets of Jager and shot glasses, and I got my dad a bottle of wine. (Rachael is getting perfume. My mother doesn't want anything.)

Usually I like to get my friends gifts too, and I really should get something for Shane (whose birthday is the 22nd) and Mary (whose birthday is the 25th), but I don't know what to get either of them. Felix was relatively easy to get gifts for last year, but "bombs and Nixon" isn't a guideline any more.

Anyways. The only friends I actually have anything for yet are Brian and April, and I still have to wrap those. I will try to figure out what to get for Shane and Mary with what little money I have left, and hopefully I can come up with something nice. I hope.

ozfroggirl, I just got your card and the scarf! Thank you so much, it's really cute and I'm going to start wearing it immediately!

♥

I just got the last grade I was waiting for. Bennett still hasn't posted my Poetry Writing grade, but I know it's going to be either an A or an A+.

But Lohn posted my grade for Gender Power Lit and Film. And it was an A. Which means I got an A+ on my final exam and an A on my last paper, or the other way around, but something evened out the A- that was my first grade in the class.

Which means that I pulled straight As this semester. My GPA is a 4.0. Which I did while writing my thesis. The thesis I got an A on, which was the highest grade they awarded to any Psych thesis this year.

I AM MADE OF AWESOME.

I spent today being mildly bored and rereading delicious long plotty Dresden Files fanfiction. I've been sort of grey and blah all day long, which is what happens when I don't have anything better to do, and then about a minute ago I realized that being at home all day long and not having anything to do means I can record podfic again FUCK YEAH. So I'm going to try to remember all the things I promised people I would record, and start doing one of them tomorrow.

I almost forgot the things I used to do when I didn't have anyone to hang out with. Good job I remembered that those things do exist, or I would have been terribly bored this break.

Step One:

* Make a post (public, friendslocked, filtered...whatever you're comfortable with) to your LJ. The post should contain your list of 10 holiday wishes. The wishes can be anything at all, from simple and fandom-related ("I'd love a Ron/Hermione icon that's just for me") to medium ("I wish for _____on DVD") to really big ("All I want for Christmas is a new car/computer/house/TV.") The important thing is, make sure these wishes are things you really, truly want.

* If you wish for real life things (not stories or icons), make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it's your address or just your email address where Santa (or one of his elves) could get in touch with you.

* Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your LJ so that the holiday joy will spread.

Step Two:

Surf around your friendslist (or friendsfriends, or just random journals) to see who has posted their list. And now here's the important part:

* If you see a wish you can grant, and it's in your heart to do so, make someone's wish come true. Sometimes someone's trash is another's treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don't want or a gift certificate you won't use—or even know where you could get someone's dream purebred Basset Hound for free—do it.

* You needn't spend money on these wishes unless you want to. The point isn't to put people out, it's to provide everyone a chance to be someone else's holiday elf—to spread the joy. Gifts can be made anonymously or not—it's your call.

* There are no rules with this project, no guarantees, and no strings attached. Just...wish, and it might come true. Give, and you might receive. And you'll have the joy of knowing you made someone's holiday special.

1. Fluffy holiday fic. Especially with trios.
2. "Not a single fuck was given that day" fandom macros.
3. Anything off my wishlist.
4. Music recommendations. (Here's what I listen to already.)
5. Any fantasy or science-fiction books you care to send to me.
6. Tell me what you think of my poetry or I'll throw you out the airlock
7. Recipes for amaretto drinks.
8. Vegetarian recipes so I can make something nice for Shane and Mary next semester.
9. Help me figure out where I want to get the Sappho quote tattooed on me. (Let there exist for us not one single further sorrow.) I'm not sure if I want it on a forearm or on my back or what... ideally I'd like to be able to see it, but I also already have a lot of really visible tats and I don't know if I want one that will be even harder to cover up...
10. Add me on Facebook and play Words with Friends or Scrabble with me.

After seven hours in the car, I am back in New Bedford. I am surrounded by pets and family. I feel kind of nauseous from being in the car for so long, but aside from that I'm fine. I just got to snuggle Butcher, I'm okay.

Last night McKenna was lonely, so I invited her over and we watched a movie and split a pomegranate. The movie was Legend, which has a young and pretty hot Tom Cruise in it. You know, back before he was crazy.

I miss my friends already. I miss Shane and we only parted ways eight hours ago. I don't miss the dining hall, or the classes, or the cold (it's a little bit warmer in a coastal town), but I miss the people a lot.

Now I have to haul all my crap up to Julia's room and make enough space for me to stay comfortably for the next two weeks. And do a bunch of laundry. And take a fucking bubble bath, I've been looking forward to THAT for months (even though I just found out yesterday that there is a bathtub in Weld, nice to know).

My N key is only semifunctional. I have to hammer it to get it to register. Maybe they can fix that when I have them replace the fan, even though it has pretty much stopped overheating, it's still a two year old laptop and a new fan is probably a good idea, especially if my father is paying for it.

Oh. Also? I am pulling a 4.0 for the semester with three out of five grades in. I know one of the remaining grades is going to be an A or an A+. I would like to earn an A or an A- in Gender, Power, Lit and Film, but it's going to take a while to get that grade because I only just handed in the final yesterday. Still: I am definitely on the Dean's List this semester. Go me!

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I celebrate Christmas, in a loose and nonreligious kind of way. I hate Christmas carols, I think most decorations are tacky (though I do like a tree decked out in white lights), and people who insist on saying "Merry Christmas" instead of "happy holidays" make me want to punch them.

I like Christmas food. I like coming up with ideas for gifts for my friends. I like getting things. If I could turn Christmas into a event where you invite your friends over for a potluck dinner and exchange gifts, that would suit me just fine.

Actually, I do celebrate two other holidays in December: Crunkmas and Chronicah. Crunkmas mostly involves getting drunk with people you like. Chronicah involves getting high as fuck with people you like and also exchanging gifts. I came up with Chronicah in... 2006, I think? I was the Chronicah Fairy and stole gifts for all of the like twenty people who showed up. It was beyond epic.

Anyways, my December holidays > your December holidays. Even if I can't celebrate them any more. I might throw an impromptu Chronicah celebration with a few people before finals are over.... I mean, I have all this weed and so many people to smoke it with.

Oh LJ, I have been neglecting you.

Wednesday was good, Wednesday from midnight to 5 AM I spent in the computer lab with Shane and Mary and Cody and Phillip, writing my last paper for Gender Power Lit & Film. Nine pages in about five hours isn't too shabby. It didn't hurt that I had a little chemical assistance besides the tea, but hey, that's just my friends stepping up to be my own personal superheros when I need them to. I didn't even ask this time.

Thursday was pretty epic. There was a therapy dog in the library all day, so Peter and I played with him for a few minutes. He's a golden doodle named Kirby and he was super chill. I went to work, and I didn't have enough money to make holiday cards, so Amy treated me to doing the letterpress. I ♥ my boss. Then I had the steak dinner I won at senior auction, which was spectacular, and I walked back to campus in plenty of time to get excellent seats to the Henry's VIII concert, which was out of the park phenomenal.

Friday was also pretty awesome. I got my disorder paper done, and JCC had their bonding night, which is delicious sushi and other Japanese food, and because there are so few people in the club Mary extended me an invite to the dinner. It was super delicious and I got to help make the sushi. I really, really love adzuki bean mochi. SO tasty.

Saturday was GREAT. On Saturday Shane and I went into Ithaca so I could get Julia's Christmas present, and they were doing ice sculpture carving on the Commons so we walked around and looked at the sculptures and the sculptors, and then we went to this awesome restaurant called Rogue's Harbor and it was just a really nice date. Then we went to the Whirligigs concert, which actually was pretty bad compared to the VIIIs and I kind of wish I hadn't gone, and also one of their interstital skits made a joke about date rape so I sent the Dean of Students a concerned e-mail and now he wants to talk to me today, so I'm going to go up to his office before I go to work.

Sunday... I barely remember, even though it was yesterday, because I spent a significant portion of it asleep. I know I played two games of Scrabble, came in third once and last once. I had one cup of tea, or maybe two. I was worried about my friends who looked like they hadn't gotten any sleep, and apparently people were also concerned about me because I looked exhausted. I took two naps on the Faculty Parlors couch, went to midnight breakfast for maybe 45 minutes to help with the Sex Collective bake sale, and then came back to the room and passed out by 11.

I woke up when Mary came back around midnight... I woke up around 1:30, and again around 3:30, because her monitor light does interrupt my sleep, though it's not as much of a problem as it was with my first roommate. And then I woke up, I'm guessing, around 4:45 or 5, and spent the next hour and a half or so trying to get back to sleep before giving up on it. Now I'm just waiting for the sun to come up so I can see in my room without turning on a light, so I can get my stuff together and take a shower. I'm probably going to come back here and try to finish writing my "robots in love" biopsych paper (which I don't think I'm going to get a very good grade on because I'm not bringing in principles from the class because WE DIDN'T COVER THIS IN CLASS), and if I don't finish it before I go to work then I can finish it at work, turn it in at 1, go to Auburn at 1:30 for my appointment at 2, come back, work on my EnvSus final paper, and then after dinner it's the last session of the semester of SPIRIT OF THE CENTURY! which I am really looking forward to.

So I have kind of a busy day ahead of me. Kind of. It'll be good. I've been having a lot of good days lately.

Saturday was the Day on Broadway. I got to see Avenue Q, which was fucking hysterical, and to walk around New York City with Mary and Sarah, which was a lot of fun despite feeling like I was going to keel over for a significant portion of it. We almost went to MoMA but it was too expensive, we almost went to Chinatown but it was too far, but we did go to the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop and Mary and I got Salty Pimps, which were yummy, and then we went to an awesome Japanese restaurant for dinner.

All in all, it was totally worth it, but... fuck, 12 out of 24 hours on a bus is just way too much time on a bus.

Today was the choir concert, which went swimmingly, after which Shane's mother took us to dinner at the Fargo, and the last session of Little Fears, which I actually survived, and so did my entire family, so... go team Tony.

I should be happy. I should. I really should be happy.

But I feel so goddamn discontent.

And part of it is my stupid, ridiculous, abiding, pathetic crush, which seems to wax and wane like the moon as far as my difficulty dealing with it goes. And part of it is that I have like 20 pages to write in the next two and a half days, and I don't know when I'm going to have time to do them all. And part of it is that I have had a headache for what feels like a week even though it's only been a couple of days. And part of it is that I'm ridiculously sleep deprived and that always makes me more miserable. And part of it is that my computer is fucking overheating again.

I wish I had fewer problems. I wish I could cope better with the problems I do have. I wish I could just sleep for a week. I wish I didn't have to go home in eleven days. I wish, I wish, I wish, and if wishes were fishes we'd be eating salmon every night in the dining hall.

Today I wrote a stupid poem, and a sonnet. The sonnet is about how much I don't want to graduate and it ended with an allusion to suicide. I'm so fucking cheerful.

Plan for tomorrow:

8:35: wake up
9:00: call The Women's Center, continue calling until someone picks up the fucking phone in the internship office
11:00: go to work
12:30: social sciences colloquium
1:30: final senior sem
4:30: group meeting for farm thing
5:30-ish: dinner
6:30: finish paper on bipolar disorder
8:00: bake a cake
9:00: go the fuck to bed so...

5:30am: wake up so I can go to NYC and see Avenue Q

okay, I got this.

Ugh. December.

No, I'm just bitching. I should have no problem with December. Today was fine. I did things today. I got the psych internship advisor to sign off on my internship, so now I just have to keep calling the Women's Center until someone will fucking talk to me, but I can do that tomorrow morning, and then maybe do the faxing of contracts and things when I go to work later in the morning. I also submitted the abstract of my thesis to the Eastern Psychological Association for consideration to present a poster, so I am like... officially an academic, now. Or I will be if I get approved.

My last poetry class was today, and it was good. No one had any criticism of my sonnet, and the free verse poem Bennett did some hack-and-slash line cutting that made it a lot punchier. And then the person the poem was about, who was supposed to show up to the poetry reading, did not come to the reading, so I could read the revised version. I wouldn't have done it had he been there. And the reading went well and a lot of people told me I did a good job and they liked my poems, so that was nice.

I just. Feel very flat right now. I want to be happy. I want to be okay. But I don't feel happy and I don't feel okay. I just want to curl up with my head in someone's lap and have them stroke my hair until I fall asleep. I want to not have anything to worry about any more. But when I don't have anything to worry about any more, then I have to leave and not see my friends for a month and a half. And I will still be worried, just not about grades.

I am more pathetic than usual right now. And I'm usually fairly pathetic. I want to be less pathetic, but honestly it probably makes me write better poetry because nobody wants to read poems about being happy. I would have written a lot less if I hadn't been in love with the wrong person for.. like sixteen months now. Which is a long time to be pathetic, really. I should do something about it. Something that won't result in my being miserable, preferably.

So much to do, so little time to do it all....

Tomorrow my group has to present our trial run presentation on dorm gardens. We have not rehearsed. We have done no division of information. None of us has any idea what we are doing. And we have no time before class to half-ass something together. We are collectively fucked. I am definitely not getting an A in this class. I can't bring myself to give a fuck.

I would like to be done with one of my Biopsych papers by Wednesday night so I can hand it in on Thursday. The weekend will be spent-- well, Saturday will be spent in NYC seeing Avenue Q, fuck yeah, and Sunday is teatime and probably the last session of Little Fears, but I would like to get one paper for Lohn done by Sunday night, I'm not sure if they're all due next Wednesday or just by the time of the final exam. I hope it's the time of the final exam because that will give me until the 16th and I can do a decent job on the papers instead of completely bullshitting two out of the three. My last test in Biopsych is next Tuesday, which is also when that other paper will be due.

Five papers. Uncertain due dates. Am I fucked? I may very well be. I am going to be spending a lot of time in the library, when I actually have time, because I am fucking busy, okay, I have a lot of shit to do in the next two weeks.

I should go to bed.