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July 5, 2008

I Know I Must Belong Somewhere

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I made the last two posts private because I realized that I was being overly harsh.

I realize why in the past, through high school and a lot of college, I chose anger…. everything is too complex when I try to actually figure it all out; it’s a lot easier just to be angry.

I think it’s why I don’t really know what to do with affection, how to react, how to be emotional.  Except for anger.  I’m good at being angry, I did it for so long it’s my fallback emotion.  My baseline state.  At least, outwardly.  But beneath that I’m just as confused as everyone else is.  At least, I assume everyone else is confused as well.

And by nature I am suspicious and uncomfortable about change.

And all of these things conspired together to (I fear) motivate me to act horribly while I was here this time.

It’s not my intention to drive anyone away.  Not from me, not from my dad.  It’s all just my twisted attempt at self protection, some weird instinct that kicks in, that I can’t control.  For some reason I just think everything will be a lot better if I build a whole bunch of walls around myself and the people I’m used to.  That I can magically keep everything exactly the same forever by just making myself into a human barrier.

I just hope, genuinely hope, that I haven’t done anything I can’t reverse.

Will I always go through my life feeling like such an idiot?

 

March 16, 2008

Georgia Disaster Relief

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Hey guys.

So, I don’t know if you all heard, but it’s been on the news lately - horrible tornadoes ripped through Georgia and South Carolina yesterday and last night…

In addition to the Georgia Dome and CNN Headquarters, my partner Liz’s home town of Jefferson County, Georgia, was completely decimated by tornadoes last night.

Several other counties in Georgia were badly hit, along with many in South Carolina. We’re going to try to head down to help with the repairs and clean-up ASAP, but tonight and in the next few days I ask for your prayers and thoughts.

Please donate, if you can spare them, clothing, school supplies, anything at all, to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Committee, or various charities working with the communities most badly hit.

I remember the devastation a tornado can cause, we used to live through them every Spring, but for those of you who haven’t been south, tonight I ask that we all remember what we have in common, and that a lot of good people lost their homes and everything they own, so please send your thoughts and prayers and, if possible, help out the Red Cross providing water and food in Jefferson County and surrounding areas.

Thank you,

Alexis

 

December 22, 2007

bad places

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This is not a good time of year for me.

Right now… well, I’m not in a good place.  I’ve been trying to get that across to the people I love, and the best I get is, “I’m sorry things aren’t going well right now.”  It’s like, standing in nuclear winter and saying “it’s cold.”

A short excerpt from my locked online journal:

I am SO UNHAPPY right now. Really. I want to go away, alone, someplace quiet, and just sort my shit out for a while. I can’t take all this, I really can’t. I need some peace and quiet and space which I do NOT HAVE right now. I’m really going to lose it, and I don’t think the people really close to me respect that enough.

This is not a sustainable situation. I’m better than B’s, I’m better than mediocre, I’m better than living my life on the edge of losing my fucking mind. I think it might be time for a change.

I mean, I’m really not one to crack under pressure - I’m not.  But so many things are harassing me at once that I feel like my head is going to explode (really - words can’t describe the crushing headache I have at the moment)…

Grades coming in (I really, really ought to have done better than I did), general stress, waiting for law school applications to come back to me - I deserve to be doing better than I am, and I let myself down by giving that up.  The truth is, there’s a lot in my life that I think needs to change, and I think it’s time for that to happen, soon.

 

December 6, 2007

the sun is setting…

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 RE: The Omaha Mall Shootings… (the sad part is, this song will, I think, always be relevant to our society).

the sun is setting on the century
and we are armed to the teeth
we’re all working together now
to make our lives mercifully brief

and school kids keep trying to teach us
what guns are all about
confuse liberty with weaponry
and watch your kids act it out

and every year now like christmas
some boy gets the milk fed suburban blues
reaches for the available arsenal
and saunters off to make the news

and the women in the middle
are learning what poor women have always known
that the edge is closer than you think
when the men bring the guns home

look at where the profits are
that’s how you’ll find the source
of the big lie that you and I both know so well
by the time it takes this cultural
death wish to run it’s course
they’re gonna to make a pretty penny
and then they’re going straight to hell

he said the chickens all come home to roost
malcolm forecast the flood
are we really going to sleep through another century
while the rich profit off our blood

yeah it may take some doing
to see this undoing through
but in my humble opinion
here’s what i suggest we do
open fire on Hollywood
open fire on MTV
open fire on NBC and CBS and ABC
open fire on the NRA
and all the lies they told us along the way

open fire on each weapons manufacturer
while he’s giving head to some Republican senator
and if I hear one more time
about a fools right to his tools of rage
I’m gonna take all my friends
and I’m going to move to canada
and we’re going to die of old age

{ani - to the teeth}

 

November 13, 2007

and i just want you to understand

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she taught me how to wage a cold war with  quiet charm
but i just want to walk through my life unarmed

oh oh oh.  life sometimes doesn’t agree with me.  sometimes i feel like i got hit by a train, and it’s like, damn, what just happened?!  are these pieces of my life in my hands?!  ouch.

man, i suck.  i’m sorry.

 

November 1, 2007

it’s unsportsmanlike to win on a technicality.

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Ok I am SO FUCKING MAD that DC United just lost to the Chicago Fire on what was so clearly a BAD CALL.

Basically in the extra time that would have tied the game and taken us into overtime, the goal was called off as a handball (which it was not) and we lost 2-2 with Chicago having an aggregate of 3, nudging us out of MLS post-season and bringing Chicago forward to play either New York or New England in our own RFK stadium depending on which of those teams wins.

Damnit!  I watched that replay like 12 times and NOBODY’S hand touched the ball.  The announcer said the only thing to go by was the Chicago goalie’s reaction to the goal - he didn’t flip out, therefore it must be a handball.  Oh, awesome.  I stood up and screamed at the top of my lungs.  We could have fucking won that game.

The Chicago team, as evidenced by the fact that they whined, pissed and moaned over every little baby foul, are a bunch of pussies and we should not have lost to them.  We played Madrid, dammit!  We’re better than that!

I am going to wait a while and find that picture of the so-called “handball” and prove to the WORLD that we did NOT ruin that goal.

 

October 26, 2007

life is full of frustrations.

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So that project I was talking about…. turns out the other research assistant had already done everything I was up late doing, and she never told me about it until after I turned it all in.  Awesome, right?  And of course, since that was the last thing I wanted to hear at 8am when I had just stayed up finishing it, a cat-fight ensued, for which I got taken off the project.  Score one really big win for me I guess.

Actually it’s not that traumatic, the meeting I had with my boss went well, mostly because he’s a fantastic guy and a great professor, and he basically told me to let it roll off my back, that this battle wasn’t worth my time or effort, and he put me on another project.  One that has a sooner publishing date, which is awesome because now instead of getting my name on a project that will be published in a year, I get my name on one that will be at the presses in January.  And if the “very nice and lovely” (read: things I don’t want to say on a public blog) other research assistant wants to do all that tedious work by herself, well then, as my people say, mazel tov.  Enjoy it.  She wanted me off the project from the beginning, and now I am - so I hope it’s everything she ever dreamed it would be.

This frustration seems to go with the weather.  Being from Seattle I thought I was acclimated to rain, but damn, I guess 6 years on the East Coast have softened me.  It’s been pouring rain and freezing for the last 4 days here and I am about to lose my mind.  I’ve asked my dad for a sunlamp for Hanukkah, and he said I was part lizard and should get a nice flat rock to go with it.  Ha.

So in honor of the crappy weather I have done a couple of things to lighten the mood.  1) I have created some original artwork expressing my feelings (see below), and 2) I will post about something funny happening in DC in just a few moments.

rainraingoaway.png

 

October 24, 2007

omg.

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I’m finished!  This data set I have been working on since JANUARY is DONE.

This is HUGE man.  Fuckin huge.

And now I’m going to go pass out.

kthx bye.

 

October 24, 2007

if living is the problem, well then that’s just baffling…

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we’ve hit the 4am mark, and i promised lyrics, so here they are:

  I had one friend in high school recently he hung himself with string
His note said
“If livin’ is the problem, well that’s just baffling.”
And at the wake I waited around to see my ex first love
And I barely recognized her, but I knew exactly what she was thinking of
We sat quietly in the corner whispering close about loss
And I remembered why I loved her, and I asked her why I drove her off

She said
The slow fade of love
Its soft edge might cut you
And our poor friend, Jim
Well he just lived within
The slow fade of love

A woman calls my house once a week; she’s always selling things
Some charity, a phone plan, a subscription to a magazine
And as I turned her down, I always do, there was something trembling in her voice
I said
Hey, what troubles you?
She said
I’m surprised you noticed
Well, my husband, he’s leaving, and I can’t convince him to stay
And he’ll take our daughter with him, she wants to go with him anyway
I’m sorry I’m hard to live with, living is the problem for me
I’m selling people things they don’t want when I don’t know what you need

He said the slow fade of love
And its mist might choke you
It’s my gradual descent
Into a life I never meant
It’s the slow fade of love

I was driving south of Melrose; I happened upon my old lover’s old house
I found myself staring at the closed up door like the day she threw me out
“Dianna, Dianna, Dianna I would die for you
I’m in love with you completely, I’m afraid that’s all I can do”
She said
“You can sleep upon my doorstep, you can promise me indifference, Jim
But my mind is made up, and I’ll never let you in again”

For the slow fade of love
It might hit you from below
It’s your gradual descent
Into a life you never meant
It’s the slow fade of love
{Rilo Kiley - A Man/Me/Then Jim}

That song is just so amazing.  I had it blasting on repeat in the car all day today.  Been in that kind of mood I guess.  Nostalgia always gets the best of me, no matter how hard I fight, and damn, this is a nostalgic song for someone who’s had her share of relationships.

Anyway.  Back to work.

Currently playing: My Favorite Highway - Calendar Marks 

 

October 21, 2007

gifts and givers

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I smoke a cigarette in today’s honor.

So I have acquired been gifted several rather unbelievable things in the past couple of days…

Firstly, an iPhone, which I’ve been dying for; it’s cooler than I ever could have imagined and even though it means canceling my contract with T-Mobile and going over to Cingular (again, even after the incident of being sent to collections for $0.77), is pretty much the best phone ever in the world. I mean Liz and I have been enthralled by the satellite maps (we each found sattelite pictures of our houses on the phone!) and I could sit and play with the touch screen for hours on end. It’s really only the second iPhone I’ve ever seen up close (my good friend Mel has one, but she works for Apple so, duh.) Yeah, totally unexpected gift, but I’m certainly not complaining.

Also in the gifts department, a brand new iMac with a ginormous screen so huge it’s actually bigger than my TV and when it’s hooked up to my rockin’ stereo system it’s basicallly bedroom surround sound. It’s great, I got it expressly for the purpose of being able to run my data sets for my job, but it can do so much more!

I run STATA and SPSS (if you don’t know what those are, consider yourself lucky), sometimes both at a time, plus a massively huge Excel data set file, and hundreds of PDF documents with voting data in them~ my poor little laptop is wonderful but she can’t handle all that at once and the screen is too small so I have to keep switching between one and the other. My new iMac though can have all those programs/windows open with room to have them up at the same time, AND it can do this with STATA and SPSS running regressions in the background! Whoo!!! So exciting.

Er, and yeah, I may have also gotten the Adobe Design Premium Creative Suite CS3 upgrade. Which means I kind of rule the world.

It’s true, I’m awesome.

 

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