Quodlibets

I couldn't resist! And it's

I couldn't resist! And it's perfect--and I didn't answer this way on purpose!

Flip-Flops 63% Sexy Heels 57% Quirky Shoes 57% Classic Pumps 37% Sensible Flats 3% What Kind of Shoes Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

Via Bitch PhD

My sister got a cat.

My sister got a cat. I'm jealous. Searingly jealous. But my jealousy goes even deeper, because to get a cat, I will have to convince S that getting allergy shots for the rest of his life is a good idea. Right now, he emphatically does NOT like the idea; he also says he hates cats, though I'm convinced the love of a good cat would reform him. If S wasn't allergic to cats, I would probably make sure that in our next apartment is cat-friendly, and then the first week there, I would look for a cat to adopt. I love cats. My sister loves cats too. In another life, I'm pretty sure we could be crazy spinster cat ladies living together in a rickety house with piles of newspaper all over. You've seen those ladies on the news, or possibly you lived next door to one.
It's surprising that I like cats, though. If you know my tragic cat history, you are officially free to stop reading this post right now, but if not, you might want to read on for a scary cat story. Okay, maybe it's more scary if you're four. Which is how old I was at the time. I had a new Hello Kitty purse, see, and I wanted to show it to my across-the-street friend. I ran up the stairs (rickety wooden ones) to our rickety deck to get the purse off of the ugly brown linoleum that resided on our kitchen floor. I don't remember what happened after that, but I must have screamed, and my mom said she ran up the stairs, and I ran out of the house with the cat attached to my back. By her teeth. Smokey didn't have any claws, see, so her teeth would have to be it. People have suggested that maybe I stepped on Smokey's tail, or maybe Smokey was laying on the bag, but I don't remember. In fact, while I remember clearly wanting to show off that Hello Kitty purse, I don't remember anything that came after I got up onto the deck. My memory starts again when I went to the doctor and had to get shots. In my ass.

Shots are traumatic enough. Shots in the ass are even worse. I will say, though, that those shots saved me from the standard pre-K shots, so that made me feel special. I'm pretty sure Smokey was disposed of post-haste, and we never had another cat until Allie, the cat with radioactive shit. Literally. I loved Allie. And I had a cat briefly in college, but my ex got the cat in the break-up, and I've never forgiven myself for that. I loved that cat. Like the dickens. You know what? This post has helped me come a conclusion. I simply must have a cat. S better start praying he is miraculously cured of allergies, because if not, he's headed for a world of pills or shots. Pills or shots, baby.

I'm feeling vastly uninspired and

I'm feeling vastly uninspired and I just can't bring myself to do the next Februarium. Maybe that was a bad idea. Or maybe the HUGE quantity of food I just ate is fucking with my ability to think. Either way, I'm not talking about love anymore. I always liked the quote: "Talking about love is like dancing about architecture." So I'm done dancing about architecture.

As for the food, yes, I did eat too much, and yes, I'm paying for it now. My stomach is oddly distended and I feel gross right now. I feel like you can use x-ray vision and see all the food swimming around in there. S and I did our V-day dinner tonight, because he has to work on Monday. Pretty much the only way we celebrate V-day is to exchange goodies (we both like giving presents {shrug}) and eat a meal that might be too expensive for us otherwise. Tonight we went to a local fish restaurant (since good fish is usually out of our price range) and though S had a sinfully expensive, delicious steak, I had a WONDERFUL Fluke. It came resting artfully on a bed of leeks and asparagus, with a river of lemon butter surrounding the entire thing. Oh my god. Oh my god. I could eat this dinner every night. The fluke was perfect; S, not a fish fan, even liked it. The only downside to the meal is that lemon butter might not be so good for the diet. Anh. It was worth it.
And the cheesecake. Did I mention the key lime cheesecake? No? "Wow" pretty much describes it. It was luscious. I was never a cheesecake fan before S, but now I can't get enough of it. It's also not the best thing to eat while dieting, but oh well. Worth it.

And now, I'm sitting on my couch, in PJ's, and wishing I could go eat it all again. So good.

What I love: a few

What I love: a few of my favorite things

• Caprese. The rich, creamy buffalo milk mozzarella and the freshest tomatoes--all lightly splashed in some nutty yellow olive oil.
• Music. There's just something about it.
• Diet Coke. I've already waxed poetic about this.
• My mom. I can't remember if it's cool or not, to love your mom. But it doesn't matter, I love mine, and I can't remember a time when I didn't. I didn't even dislike my mom in high school, and it seems like that's when everyone does.
• Travel. Odd, since I hate planes and I hate change. But there is nothing like a trip to bring you home again. There is also nothing in the world better than:
• Rome. Too bad you can't get Diet Coke there; the Caprese probably makes up for it.
• Shoes and Purses. And I'm not embarrassed about it either. And furthermore, I love flip-flops better than any other kind of shoes. It's February in the Midwest and I already have 4 pairs of flip-flops for the summer.
• S. Even if he is a Halo-playin' weirdo.
• Oh.....chicken salad. I can't torture myself by thinking about it. I haven't had good chicken salad in months (my mom's is the best) and I pretty much can't eat it now.
• Pretty things. Like my laptop. Or my birthday present necklace from S from last year. Or the pictures S takes. Or horses. Or my black Kitchen-Aid mixer.

Do I really love all these things? Yes, I guess I do. I mean, it isn't "true love," I'm not "in" love with these things, but yes, I love them. There's probably a million other things I love--like cross-stitching and books and clothes and Aveda hair products and on and on. But I'm getting kind of bored of this post. So that's it.

I stumbled across this idea

I stumbled across this idea on a blog called "So the Fish Said" and it seems right up my alley. For five days, I'll post on love, on the given topics at the first link. Today's topic is to write a letter to someone you love. Here goes.

Dear Me,
I know this is rather strange, and I've been sitting here arguing with myself about doing this. But S knows that I love him, and ditto my family. But sometimes, I don't know that I love myself. Sometimes I forget that I can't love anyone fully unless I love myself enough. I've done a really good job of forgetting that, especially this last few months.
This is hard, too, because this is the kind of love you must have for the rest of your life. It's so easy to give up on love; almost too easy nowadays. But you can't give up on this. Oh sure, you can give up on yourself, but it's not a good way to go. Part of the challenge of being human, it seems to me, is coming to terms with yourself. Learning to love yourself completely, to accept who you are.
Sometimes it seems so easy to love someone else. It's so easy to overlook S's faults, because I know that underneath it all, he's an amazing, wonderful, beautiful human being. But me--my faults--are so hard to understand and accept. Why can't I be better? Why don't I look better? It's so easy to berate yourself, and so hard to compliment yourself.

And yet, at times, I feel like I barely know who I am. It's so hard to love someone who doesn't know who they are! I know that this is the hardest, longest relationship I'll ever be in. I know that some people constantly break up with themselves, constantly abuse themselves, constantly hate themselves. I try not to turn this relationship into that. I'll have to make that effort for the whole of my life. The thing is, by doing that, by making the effort with myself, I am halfway making the effort with S, and my sister, my mother, my father, my brother, my best friend--with all the people who I care for most in this world. And don't get me wrong, it would be so easy to write a love letter to those people. I have very concrete ideas about what I love about them. About why I love them. I almost wrote this letter to my sister, because even though we fight, I prize her approval and love almost above all others. I could have written this letter to S, because I feel almost sure that without him, right now I would be immeasurably poorer.
But sometimes, you just need to tell yourself that you are enough. That you actually do love who you are, when you know who that is. That the effort required to keep yourself from hating yourself is well worth it. That people will love you better if you love yourself better. We cling to these things. I cling to these things. And ultimately, I need myself. I know that. It's important to love me. I know that too.

Manogirl

Okay, I admit that I

Okay, I admit that I had fun at this site. I'm not going to tell you my ingredients, because I think that they were especially lame. So instead I plugged in about fifty million other names of people I knew and chortled over the results. Apparently, it takes precious little to amuse me.

Via profgrrl.

Half of me is

• Half of me is very tempted to post some sort of progress report on my weight loss. Half of me wants to kill the other half of me for thinking that.
• Half of me is very tempted to post a link to my Amazon wishlist on the sidebar; maybe someone would buy me something! Half of me wants to tell on the other half of me for being so greedy.
• Half of me is very tempted to sign up to be an Amazon affiliate, or an iTunes affiliate, or with Google AdSense to try to make some money off my little blog. Half of me is appalled that someone who loves writing so much would half want to do that.

Which halves correspond? I think that's easy to figure out. I'm a greedy, proud person. Obviously. Still, I might post a link to my wishlist, just because then you could see the kind of nerdy things I love. I don't really expect anybody to send me anything; I've never sent anything to anybody who posts their wishlists. But I look, because I find it interesting. It's like the opposite of rooting around in someone's garbage.

And now, a list of some random thoughts:

• I like tests. I'm excited about a test in my cataloguing class. How nerdy is that?
• I cleaned the kitchen today. If you can believe the WW point system, cleaning for 30 minutes is worth 2 points.
  
• Johnny Depp is in "Lost in La Mancha," the documentary about Terry Gilliam's failed "Don Quixote" movie. Now it's watchable.
• 'Superstition' is the best song ever to shake your ass to while cleaning. In case you didn't know.

And, yes, I did eat rice for dinner. It was brown rice though, which I've never actually eaten. It was crunchy. Is that normal? If it's not, I ate it anyway because I was hungry and it takes a long time to re-group after 40 minutes of rice cooking. Also, I put garlic salt on it and it tasted good, even if it was crunchy. Also, although I liked turkey sausage in an omelette, I don't think I liked it alone. It kind of makes me queasy to think about eating it, so I'm going to stop now. (You know what else makes me queasy? Thinking about the tuna salad I made with reduced fat mayonnaise. Reduced fat mayonnaise is an abomination. Mayonnaise by definition an emulsion of egg yolk and oil. Trying to make it reduced fat is like changing the definition of mayonnaise. Ewwww. Quease.)

No, not really. I don't

No, not really. I don't love the bomb. But I do so love procrastination. The old-school college Manogirl is back. That's right, I've discovered that the amount of work that I actually have to do to get an 'A' is way less than I thought. Hence, leaving projects to the last minute, or, and this is an absolute aberrance, being as I am to my very soul a reader, only doing a skeletal job of reading the chapters, just so that I can answer the questions I need to answer. God, sometimes I hate myself. I'm such a slacker. It's just hard to get motivated by a class that isn't teaching me things that will be useful at all. And the homework that I'm supposed to do today is from that class, at least according to the ambitious and not-to-be-followed schedule I've set for myself.

Oh, who am I kidding? I'm following the damn schedule. I've already done one of the two things on the schedule, and as a bonus, threw in another item (calling the eye doctor). But really, I don't want to do the homework. Which is why I'm sitting on the couch in my workout clothes doing this.

You know, I always thought that it wasn't possible for teachers to be self-indulgent, but I've now learned that it's absolutely untrue. I have the most self-indulgent professor in the world. The class, the absolutely un-useful one, does have certain uses, I suppose. If you weren't going to be a librarian, but a businesswoman, maybe. Keeping this class in the curriculum is just a way for this teacher (oh god, I'm now going to hell and failing) to keep her pet concepts as part of the LTA program. The emphasis on technology isn't bad, in and of itself. It's the technology that is emphasized that is the problem. I need to learn how to troubleshoot machines we're not even learning about--printers and computers, copiers, microfiche and microfilm machines and god, barcode scanners. Things like that. I bet that those items are among the most heavily used at your local library. Knowing how to use a document camera is nice, but will it help me? It's just so much goddamn work for an absolute zero of a class.

You know what I wish? (And this came upon me like a revelation, right now.) I wish there was an LTA Honors program, so that those of us who can move faster, and like to move faster, could. I mean, the shock and awe I get for doing this program in a year (and I am by no means the only one) is astonishing. I'm not used to being the only one ready to push harder and further. I guess I went to a college where the lowest level of work was harder and faster than this; I don't remember being utterly bored except in maybe a very few classes. I also remember being pushed really hard by the other students in the classes, and pushing right back. Maybe it was my program; maybe it was the school (which, although ass backwards in too many ways, did have some fantastic classes and instructors. I loved most of my profs, at least the ones in my major; and I formed some incredible friendships with a few instructors, culminated in me TA-ing a class). All I'm saying is that I'm not really used to people asking for things to slow down; I'm not used to moving slowly through topics and assignments.

I should be in grad school. {{{sigh}}}

Now, I know that theoretically,

Now, I know that theoretically, Paul is the less respected Beatle. Isn't there some famous quote where John said he would take one George for ten Pauls? I think it's something like that, disrespecting Paul's skills. And I also know that in real life, Paul is somewhat of a pop whore. I mean, he writes pop songs and is actively courting the adoration of the world. Cool rock stars just don't do that. (And don't even tell me what's-his-face from the Rolling Stones isn't like that; he's as much of a pop whore nowadays as Macca.) So yes, the conclusion we draw is that Macca isn't cool.

But if I had to pay $150 to see him in concert, I would do it right this minute. Maybe I'm the typical Paul-loving chick, but that's okay with me. Seeing Macca in concert was one of the maybe two religious experiences I've had in my life. I'm an ardent worshipper at the altar of Macca. And you can't embarrass me about it, because I know it's lame.

Where nothing seems to get

Where nothing seems to get done but it seems like I'm way ahead on my work. And then I look at the syllabi for my courses and realize, hey wait, no. I'm not ahead on anything. I've got one project due on Feb. 28, and three MAJOR productions due the week of March 14th. Two I could have started. Also, two midterms next week. I have (sort of) begun one of the long term projects; I'm also not super-worried about the midterms. Both have open book portions, and that usually saves me from any baaad mistakes. One is actually completely open book, which removes, to me, any chance I would have at fucking up. So. This week, I have to set a really ambitious schedule, and try to knock down as many of the components of these projects as I can. That means possibly sporadic blogging. This is really getting hectic, and I feel calm, but I shouldn't. It seems like I might be back-sliding into some of my more procrastinatory habits. I have to actively seek out and destroy this impulse, because although I could pull all-nighters in college, there's not a chance in hell I'd survive one now.
There is one project that I just know I'm going to be doing at the last minute. I have to visit a library technical services department and observe the flow, and I'm having a bit of a hard time figuring out that one. I contacted a library, but they're very reluctant to help, so now I'm kind of at a loss. I ABSOLUTELY REFUSE to contact the library in my town. My town library is an awful place, filled with evil people. I went the other day to check out some books, and even the smell of it gives me an INSTANT headache. So now I'm going to give it one more shot, and then I'm going to panic. Panic and I, we're not so good together. This cannot be allowed to happen.

I'm feeling even more compulsively that I should go and start some more homework. (Though it's very hard with S yelling at Halo in the background.)