I'm a big girl now!

I finally got myself a bed. A real bed. A queen-sized bed! With a boxspring an' everything!

Nevermind that I got it for pennies on craigslist - this feels like a big step for me.

I realized that I'd been sleeping on one one country or another's version of a futon for about two and a half years. Honestly, at this point, the springs in this mattress are a bit disconcerting.

Before the futons, I managed on twins and twin-extra-longs (ah, dorm rooms), and although sleeping alone on a twin is fine, sharing can be pretty ridiculous. Now there's so much extra room on my bed I don't know what to do with myself. My capybaras will probably start multiplying.

half asleep

I am absolutely in love with this song, by School of Seven Bells. It's sort of pretty and lilting and a little shoe-gazey, but it reminds me of certain prolonged fits of ennui that I couldn't escape in college.

And how cool is the band? Identical twin girls, one of whom is a lucid dreamer, and a dude, who took their name from a "mythical South American pickpocket training academy." (sez Wiki)



Sometimes I go whole days
listening, bored, half asleep
I won't say anything
that's worth a thing to me
One day, suddenly,
time took a turn that once felt so brief
I blinked to see polite ghosts fading quickly

What begins as an unguarded
train of thoughts slowly can become
an addiction
to the slumber of disconnection
and the resonance of
memory that no longer has a shape
but keeps you numb through
the hours till gone is another day

Be aware, my darling
these things I say I mean
are just traces of something
I long to feel again
I see our time expand in the air almost forcibly,
spreading thinner till it dissolves completely

sticks, balls, pucks, etc.

I tried a new thing this weekend!

I wouldn't call myself a mini-golf regular, but I go often enough...maybe once a season. On Friday I scored a pretty sweet victory over my date at Golfland, so on Saturday, of course, we had to go to a real driving range...just to put me in my place.

I'm often averse to trying new things because I hate being told, scrutinized, criticized, and also generally sucking. But as it turns out, I'm pretty okay at firing off balls with a crazy bent stick. Using a 7- or 8-iron (who knows!), I managed to consistently thwack the ball out to the same 100 meter mound...without shattering my wrist or the club! My left hamstring got all tense, though, and I felt like I had tennis elbow in my left arm. Still, being decent at something the first time you try it is an Awesome feeling! I honestly don't know how I ever stuck with snowboarding, because that first day was so incredibly embarrassing.

There's something bizarrely satisfying about what I will euphemistically call "precision sports" - sports in which you have to get a particular object into a very particular place - e.g., darts, pool, bowling, mini-golf, archery, skee-ball. If I were to compare them to contact sports, I guess their appeal lies in the lack of direct competition and also the zen/robot/sniper state of mind you use (even when under the influence!).

Oh, but speaking of contact sports, I went to my first hockey game this week. Call me a poser, because I'm jumping on the bandwagon now that our team is #1 (fuck yeah Sharks!). Even better than our team being awesome and full of hot, burly (but not TOO burly) men who remain mind-bogglingly graceful (yet manly!) on the ice, I got free pizza because we scored all over Tampa Bay. How sweet is that?! Football can eat a dick.

branching out

My BFF and I have started a new blog, dedicated to the good things in life - namely, appealingly-packaged impulse buys (usually boozes) and the bad movies that make them seem like excellent choices in retrospect.

If you notice my beer belly growing and my brain cells struggling, understand that it is all for the sake of good blog communiqué.

label whores
(name under construction and open to suggestion)

Progress

I just enrolled in classes for spring. I'm a student again! Wheeee

It felt strange and exhilarating to be walking on a new campus yesterday, especially one so close to home. Classes aren't in session, but there were still quite a few students milling about and badgering the counseling office - like myself (n00b). It being a community college, the population is really diverse in both age and ethnicity, which is refreshing and more than I can say for UCLA.

Only when they asked me to bring my diploma with, did I remember that I never picked up my diploma. Whoops! What was on my mind that last year of college? GET THE FUCK OUT.

So, anyway, it feels so good to have something lined up in my life, finally. Although winter break was The Best, my friends (and my sister) have returned to their respective locales for school or work, Mom is off to Taiwan at the end of January, and soon it will just be me and Dad again. I love having the house to myself, but if not for classes, this is probably when I'd hang myself.

The one other thing keeping me alive and kicking is, of course, the snow! ...And a new friend who shares my love of the snow and has the car and gear to take us to the mountain. :) Right now we're having a rash of sunny days, but we'll be headed up to Tahoe as soon as the weather gives us a rainy little nudge.

I'm finally going to try some freestyle stuff. And split my head open like a sad little melon.

Other things we've got planned for warmer weather: rock wall, shooting range, archery range, skydiving, paintball. I'm documenting it here so I won't forget or pussy out on any of it. Spring is gonna rawk!