shroud ourselves in the cosmos; let the music play

Dear Shoe Boy,
You're still gorgeous, but the after-hours drop at the library is meant to be used after hours. There is no bin there when we are open, which you could clearly see, because that wall is floor-to-ceiling windows. When we are open, you are meant to come the fuck inside and return your books in the inside drop bin.

Not as indulgent as you think I am,
Sigma

Composers, I swear.

Today when I looked out the window of my flat it was frighteningly hazy, and my chest was tight enough that I needed to use my inhaler without doing anything more than walking to the window, so I decided to delay today's run. Hopefully the air will be clearer this evening? If it isn't, I'll take today as a Day Of Rest and nudge the training schedule back a day. Or until I'm no longer afraid to open the windows. Granted, I'll likely have to regress to a smaller run-to-walk ratio, but that's okay. I'd rather not breathe smoke.

Yesterday I finally started my grad school research. I'm still running with this (admittedly baseless) idea that Chicago is A Place I Want To Be, so that would mean Northwestern (technically in Evanston but not prohibitively far from Symphony Center eh?), Roosevelt, or DePaul. From there I jumped to check out the New York schools (god the Manhattan SoM sounds fantastic but I'm a little afraid of NYC and I'd probably never ever get in anyway), and I'm working my way westwards. The idea is that I want to go to school far, far away. And apparently my parents want to have a Serious Conversation about that with me, which will be joyous, I'm sure. I know I was talking a lot a while ago about going to grad school in Europe, but... I dunno. It's proving difficult to find information on what schools are even "good," especially information in English (because I just don't have the patience to wade through real-life German right now), and I'm pretty sure I don't want to end up playing with any kind of European "sound," although the German sound is miles better than French or even English bassoon. And Europe might be prohibitively expensive right now. Plus I have latched onto Chicago-in-my-head, which is kind of undercutting my motivation to investigate European schools. Eh. Musicians (er, Amanda), where are the other schools I should be looking at? How have I studied music in college for four years without knowing this? How have my friends found out where they should apply? (Of course, now that I'm looking inside the U.S. I imagine my teacher will have a lot more info for me.)

Also! I just spent a good long while chatting with Former Dungeon Master Ben about schools and teaching and sci-fi (he's reading Asimov for the first time; I've been DVRing Star Trek TOS & TNG and overdosing on Torchwood and reading all sorts of interesting meta about Sci-Fi and Television and Issues) and just... life. And I loooooove Ben and I miss hanging out with him, but inside my head (probably not inside his) the spectre of J hangs between us and I definitely still want J to Die In A Fire. I definitely felt a lot less awkward today than a few months ago, though, which is comforting. Because we are, in fact, friends on our own merit and not just through J. I <3 Ben. (and god damn do I miss playing D&D. *pout*)

In other news, one of my fellow Library Assistants suggested putting honey in coffee, which I had never considered before (because honey is for tea!). I tried it today, and it was actually quite good. *shrug* Who knew?

To Do This Evening:
- run if the air is decent
- practise (despite kitties hiding)
- put a new bag into Mom's Badass Canister Vacuum (which is now MY badass canister vac because she got a fancy new one just like it but better and a different colour!! YAAAAY I LOVE MY MOMMY SHE GIVES ME HER CAST-OFF AUTOMOBILES AND HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES) and vacuum the shit (NOT LITERAL SHIT YOU GUYS) out of my bathroom and the kitties' scratching post and cat carrier, which have been outside de-fleaing and de-Raiding for the past week and are probably now covered in ash.
- make pesto??? -- my basil has gotten pretty large -- and pasta go to with :)
- hang out with Dory, who asked this morning if he could crash on my couch. Yay! I hope he's not allergic to cats... Not that they'll be on him or anything, they sleep with me with the door shut, but still. Dander and all.
- deal with more of my Desk Heap maybe? I got a little bit of it sorted the other night -- or at least, it's now an orderly tower of stuff on top of the printer instead of a jumble of crap all over everywhere. I'm finding myself with a shocking lack of space for papers and things, though, and I don't really know how that happened, because I can't imagine where all these papers used to be hiding. I don't know, Abergavenny? oh god torchwood in my brain
- Pow-wow with Flatmate re: rent, which is due, to find out how we're adjusting for her doing automatic deposits for the cable. (know what SUCKS though? the building manager called me this morning and informed me that the pet deposit will be $400 which is a lot more than I anticipated. Aaaaarg.)
- OMG CUT TIES WITH PAC PROMOS. Which means finding the original paperwork. Which reminds me.

PSA TIEM!!!
If you are approached by a representative of PAC Promos, Inc., DON'T LET THEM TALK YOU INTO ANYTHING. RUN THE OTHER WAY. This mostly applies to ladies who have cause to be on a college campus in SoCal, because that is where they approach people (that is where they approached me).
The discounted salon services sound really nice but they charge you $20 a month and they DON'T STOP. I ended up not even being able to make time for any of the salon trips before the offer expired. At the time, I figured, "Oh well, whatever, I am allowed to make poor choices with my own money" (and $20 a month is definitely my own money, and not my parents') and assumed that they'd stop charging me once the offer expired. NOT SO. Which I did not notice until yesterday. Fuck me. And all the reviews I've read say that cutting ties with them is a huge hassle, which I'm not looking forward to.

... Hooray! Or not.

Let me go on, big hands I know you're the one <----- I hear this line, I look at my hands on the steering wheel and the gearshift, and I have such a "this song is about MEEEEEEEEEEE" moment, haha.

Except apparently not, whoops.

You know, somewhere out there is a nerd whose dream girl is me, and someday I'm going to meet that person.

Until then, as Dan Savage keeps telling me on his podcast, All your relationships will fail, until one doesn't.

Could not sleep last night. Ugh.

Not until practically 8 in the morning, when I should have been up eating breakfast, did I actually feel sleepy... so at that point I took the 2 hours of sleep that I could, and skipped the errands I had planned. Well, mostly -- I didn't make it to the drugstore to see if they would develop my cameras, but after I figured out that I'd be late to work anyway (forgot my student ID to get cheap cheap bus fare in my apartment, but after I'd gone back for it, it turned out that the cheap cheap student bus fare only applies during the year. fail), I dropped by the post office to mail a letter and buy one-cent stamps on my way to the bus.

The reason I'm taking the bus, by the way, is that my car is in the shop. My car has been in the shop for nine days. We, in fact, dropped my car off at the shop before we left for Maui, with the understanding that when we returned to California yesterday, they would have finished working on my car. Not so, apparently. We called yesterday morning and they assured us it would be finished by the end of the day. So then we called a bit before they closed and they assured us it was nearly done and that they would call when it was. They did not call. So then my mum had to drive me to my apartment last night, and whenever my car is ready to be picked up (hopefully today!) she will have to drive back and pick me up so that I may drive myself back again. This is absurd. And highly inconvenient.
Dear Norm's,
You've been good to my car in the past but this is Not Okay. I need my car back.
Disappointed,
S

The bus was interesting, though. I like walking places in my new environs, and I found out that I don't even have to go all the way to the end of the street to get to the post office (which is across the alleyway from my bedroom window, BTW -- or at least the top of it's parking is, and post office employees drive loudly in the mornings), because the customer lot has an entrance on the alley and I can just walk through from there to the inside. Cool! And the bus stops pretty close to my building, about three blocks up and one or two over. And a cute boy sat by me: tall, lanky, glasses, auburn dreads. Flatmate (and probably malikamalisha as well) would scold me for not trying to chat him up or something, but I do find that it's nice to just smile on the inside.

So, errands and practising this evening and tomorrow, and hopefully this evening I will be able to get my car back as well.

I'm not allowed to have fun for the next two weeks, because concerts and my recital and homework are all conspiring to kill me with exhaustion. So I will either become a posting fiend, or I'll be absent from the internets entirely (guess which is more likely).

On an unrelated note, I have spontaneously become completely boy-crazy... I've decided to view this as A Good Thing, yes? At least... more steps forward.

There are stories that probably aren't actually interesting that I could share but I won't since I should really be doing shelving or homework right now. Yay!

I think this is the end for real. Ben's senior recital was tonight, and Jay was there. I walked in and he was sort of standing in the middle of the room. I decided to just be stone, and so I wasn't going to look at him, but then he was like, "o hey" and he started to smile which just -- no. No. So I said, "Don't talk to me," and I didn't even break stride. I sat next to Dena and he retreated to the other side of the room. D. was proud of me. Hell, I was proud of me.

I couldn't stick to my guns, though. I started feeling really conflicted in the middle of it. So afterwards, I stopped him in the hallway. I don't know what I thought would happen, but how it actually went down, well...

Me: Jay. I... I'm sorry for, uh, snapping...
Jay: (repeatedly) No, no, you don't have to apologize. It's your right to feel that way.
Jay: I don't have it in me to do this right now. I have nothing to say to you.
Me: See, that's funny, because I have a lot to say to you.
Jay: I don't have the energy to do this.
Me: No, I need this to happen now, so STFU for two minutes and actually listen to me for once. I was the best damn thing ever to walk into your life. I was so in love with you.
Jay: I never meant to harm you --
Me: No, but you didn't give a shit that you did.

And I walked away.

And it felt really good. And then I got really depressed about it. But then I came home and told Flatmate (Roomie is in Brazil right now... :c ) and her friends, one of whom got dumped by her boyfriend yesterday, and now I feel good about it again. I guess it's just... There's no going back now. I guess there hasn't been for a long time, but now I feel it, instead of just knowing it intellectually. And I am always sad for loss, and I... miss what was, even though everything has been terrible for the last four or five months.

Maybe this is the closure I need. Maybe I'll be able to move on now.

In other news, there are a lot of very very attractive men in my comparative literature course, and two markedly hot guys in my section, and yesterday we did group work and I was in a group with both of them. c: One is named Benjamin and he is buff and has an accent I can't place... I suspect it might be Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa.

Remember this post in which I recounted a conversation I had with a male friend in which he asked me whether Jay was good in bed? So, he was in town at the beginning of January and there was a party and so, with the aid of some very strong G&T for liquid courage, I asked him why he had asked that. And he said something to the effect of, "I was honestly curious whether a guy like him would be a good lover." And I almost replied, "Tall skinny nerdy guys? Or did you know back then that he was only looking out for himself?" And then my ride went home and one of his roommates (and, incidentally, also (formerly?) a good friend of Jay's) proceeded to try and get in my pants and that was sort of horrifically uncomfortable, especially since he kept trying to have meaningful conversation except I was drunk and trying very hard not to be miserable and neither of those things is conducive to meaningful conversation and he was very well aware that I was in no place to be able to deal with friends making moves on me anyway.

Good times!

i suspect they're back together or will be or something and i just --- i don't understand, i can't comprehend

why why why would he go back to her she CHEATED on him and he was a mess and she was crazy and from what people have told me maybe even emotionally abusive to boot and why would he do that? why when i was nothing but good to him when we were together and at worst, clingy and unstable now we're not and why would he go back to her when he won't come back to me

i don't understand. i love him. and he told me, long ago, that he loved me and that i was everything he wanted and ... just. why?

i miss you so much i miss you and you won't acknowledge me and i don't have words for what i feel but it twists my stomach and makes my throat burn and my hands ache and it makes me do all of those things that girls do that i despise them for and it could be lovely and you've ruined everything and i am so utterly, utterly destroyed.

take me back take me back take me back take me back PLEASE

i meant something to you, not so long ago
how can you not care what you've done to me?

The thing about having booze in one's home is that one tends to drink it. I don't overindulge, I'm not drunk right now, but damn do I like me some fine gin. Making a g&t at 1.30 is very theraputic for those times when you realise that your flatmate's culinary ventures have splattered on the kitchen floor again and she seems disinclined to mop, or understand the workings of the gunk-catcher in the drain of the sink, or use some bloody scouring powder. I am not tidy by nature, especially not in the bedroom -- I have started about three new piles of clutter on Sonja's unoccupied bed since last week, and the old piles of clutter haven't decreased for the past month -- but I suppose I am a tad fastidious, a bit of a fussbudget. So probably tomorrow I shall re-wash the dishes that Stacey didn't do thoroughly enough, and scour the fuck out of the sink like I have done every few days since I bought the Comet, and perhaps even sweep and mop. But probably not that last bit. Just like I probably won't actually put away the pile of shirts that go in the chest of drawers in the closet. But I may put away the brassieres that have been accumulating just out of the line of sight from the bedroom door.

I also like me some decent wine, very much in fact. Tonight we had a wine and cheese party at Zach's, with the fancy cheeses we bought at the Cheese Board in Berkeley this weekend.

Right. By the way, I was in the Bay Area to play in a concert for a composer friend this weekend, and there was miniature golfing and deer and quails and fancy cheeses and Deathly Hallows audiobooks and I made a killing at Scrabble until it broke Z's spirit and we didn't finish the game.

I am in a money-spending mood lately, it seems. American Eagle, tickets to see the Vienna Philharmonic at Disney Hall, and my projected expenditure for tomorrow: a DVD read/write drive, because my computer was apparently jostled a bit too much during spring quarter when I was lugging it around everywhere and now the disc drive won't work. So this way I can rip all the CDs I have accumulated (mostly from the library's duplicate pile, or OMGFREESTUFF), and burn a couple for Mia. And maybe *ahem* torrent the last couple seasons of Buffy so I can finally be caught up and burn them to disc.

I guess maybe what I ought to do is look into getting a new computer, but I love this one so much... I have so many memories with it. And I've got it just about the way I like it. Sort of.

And look at me, rambling on and on... I haven't even got to the juicy part about things that are probably terrible ideas that I go through with anyway because I'm fucked up and just a little inebriated like that and that don't feel like mistakes afterwards so that's okay and I'm pleased until I tell Z and he mutters unhappily about it because he doesn't like/trust certain parties involved. Suffice it to say, I will never be able to think of the Parking Lot of the Lord the same way ever again. Not that I mind. I still feel like this was Not A Mistake.

My mind keeps spinning round again to Highway 1, and road-tripping up it with Certain Parties. I want that. It would be absolutely lovely.

eta;; "Uninclined" is not a word, but "disinclined" is, which I realised in the shower this morning -- 29 Aug, 7.32

We are having a thunderstorm. I keep seeing flashes throught the window, out of the corner of my eye, and hearing rumbles.... but I'm never quick enough to catch them for real. The thunderstorm we saw on the mountain, though, from so, so far away... That was magic. Magnificent. I miss my Bassoon Mafia, my constant, secure, comfortable friends. It's strange and wonderful how, no matter how long it has been, we can fall into an easy friendship. It anchors me, makes me feel safe. I love you guys.

And, god, maybe I shouldn't, but -- I miss Jay so much right now. These past few days have been -- Well. Difficult. No idea why now, specifically. But I was reading and there were irretrievably lost loves and so much sadness, pain, despair and I just broke down and apparently that is what this week is about.

I'm so tired but I can't sleep so I have to distract myself with something because otherwise I'll think and being inside my own head hurts too much so I get so distracted that it keeps me awake. Fuck it.

It's been a while, hasn't it?
Let's take stock:

New relationship (geeky bass player <3 even if he is being neglectful lately *pout*) Scratch that. -- 13 hours later. maybe i jinxed it no it's been a while coming but i hoped, you know, i hoped --
New apartment (two streets farther from campus)
New roommate (& 1 continuing but she's up north right now & the new roomie for next year won't be moving in until august and there's a subletter but she hasn't been around & i haven't even met her still)
New job (well sort of. i'll be taking a week off librarianing to be a counselor for the ucla summer chamber music thingy. i have to be a dorm counselor this time which is both frightening and off-putting -- but it's good pay)
New obsession (Torchwood, a spinoff of Doctor Who, and you probably haven't heard of either one unless you pay attention to British science fiction telly, although i found the Whoniverse via spinoff novels in the Yolo County Public Library long ago)

and then a bunch of same-old, same-old.

But I guess I missed livejournal? so I'm back for now. Also, i'm trying to make a new lj for fandomy stuffs & general creative processes. 's not ready yet, though.