Life in the Black

Well shit.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition always makes me cry. The episode I'm watching now has a 6 year old crying about her mom who just passed and it's basically turned me into a sobbing mess.

Today was the last day of classes for summer quarter. I finished the test first and went to walk outside. The professor stopped me at the door, asked if I was a psychology major, and upon my confirmation, offered me a job working as a research assistant during the winter and spring quarters.

Now I'd like to stop right there so I can laugh about this. In the spring, my class with Dr Reisner led to me getting an interview at the base earlier this week (they had no openings over the summer) and a job offer as of yesterday. During the summer A-term, I took a computer class which led to the professor asking if I'd be interested in being put on the list for TAs. (I was, and she put me on the list. At this point I haven't received a call or an email and if I did, I'm not sure I would still take the position. Time management!) And now, at the end of summer B-term, I'm getting yet another job opportunity from a class. It was all I could do not to crack up.

He said that I would be able to work evenings and weekends if I wanted to, and it's a ways off, so I told him I was interested and he said he'd send me an email with more information. (The base job will be primarily a morning job for me and it's not open on the weekends.)

On top of this, I have plans to take leadership positions within my Theta Phi Alpha chapter and our university's National Panhellenic Conference group. So it's looking like my senior year is going to be super busy! I'm definitely okay with that as long as it doesn't interfere with my GPA. We'll see!

For now, I'm focusing on enjoying my week off. After that is move-in week, which the Greeks are heavily involved with (and I signed up for everything--Jim will be in England, what else am I going to do?), and then school starts back up again. First meeting is September 6th. Exciting!

I had my 23rd birthday on Friday. I celebrated by waking up around 6pm, going out to City BBQ where my sister Trish works to be treated to a free meal, then meeting up with her and my sister Val for drinks later at Buffalo Wild Wings. A few electric lemonades later, I had just barely gotten myself to the giggly stage of drunk when the bar closed and we made our way outside. Trish had paid for my food and drinks while I was in the bathroom. Unfortunately that giddiness didn't last very long, but Trish was getting a huge kick out of it so I played it up for awhile.

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is redoing a house in Fairborn, so we hopped in Val's Mustang and attempted to sneak a peek. Of course all the roads were blocked off. We couldn't even go down our sister Karinza's road since it was in the same neighborhood. Boo! So we high-tailed it back to Val's only to run over a skunk. Val's a huuuge animal nut so she immediately started sobbing, and Trish and I were put in the tricky situation where we wanted to soothe her but were having trouble not laughing our asses off.

That was the long and short of my birthday. 22 was ridiculous in the sort of stereotypical birthday that you expect growing up. It was great but overwhelming because I've never experienced that before. 23 was much more subdued but very fun. I think I prefer 23 because the people involved are so close to me and there was no awkwardness from accepting presents--Trish paid for my meal while I was gone, and the only other birthday gift I got was from Jim. Which, by the way, was waiting for me when I woke up the night before: a little metal tin tied with a red ribbon and a note that said "open now or wait until midnight, your choice". Of course I opened it. Inside were Disgaea: Hour of Darkness and Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice. He'd heard me pining away after the original before and the newer one will add to our ps3 collection. Very nice!

Unfortunately I was overly cocky about my Disgaea skills and I kept dying. I don't know when I started sucking at video games but I would like to stop sometime soon.

So that was Friday. Saturday I woke up around 6pm again to Jim telling me goodbye since he's going to Columbus. I drove down to Piketon, arriving around 12:30. My parents got me some souvenirs from Las Vegas when they were there a couple weeks ago: some gummy candy shaped and colored to look like poker chips and dice (I wonder if they're weighted for legal play? hmm...), a package of lipgloss flavored like various Coke products that I was instructed to share with my sisters (and Mom made a point to show me the Vanilla Coke one!), and another scented Vanilla Coke shirt.

Last time my mom was in Atlanta, she returned with a cute brown tshirt that had a cheerful looking can of coke and a vanilla icecream cone grinning at each other with a pink and red heart between them, and "Vanilla Coke" scrawled underneath. It's supposed to be scented like vanilla, I think, but the scent gives me major flashbacks to the Strawberry Shortcake dolls from the late 80s. Anyone else remember those? Regardless, it's pretty excellent, and at spring initiation I was running around having all my sisters smell my chest, haha.

This one is yellow with a really faint argyle pattern. "Vanilla Coke" is written in white with a drawing of a vanilla flower on either side. It has the same Strawberry Shortcake smell from my childhood. Too cute. :) I'm excited to wear it to class and get a headache from the scent. I'm MORE excited to wear it around my sisters at our first recruitment meeting (in less than a month!) and see them all roll their eyes at me and my obsession. It's a beautiful thing.

So, how is 23-year-old-Meagan different from 22-year-old-Meagan? Well, I have a cat (didn't get Santana, by the way--instead I got a little guy we eventually dubbed Critical (for his love of rolling dice) and who is steadily growing to be the size of a small panther) and I place a much higher value on the act of flossing. Like, it's a ridiculously satisfying activity now. I looove to floss.

I asked my parents for a vacuum cleaner for my birthday and I believe they're obliging by passing their old one down to me. Next I'll probably subscribe to a newspaper and worry about dusting the house or something. So practical!

While I would listen to the radio growing up, my mom was in control of the dial and it was always set on soft rock or pop. The concept of actively choosing bands to listen to was completely foreign to me. I didn't start really listening to music until I was a sophomore in high school. I became enamored with the song Days Go By by Dirty Vegas, and when looking it up to listen to online one day in my computer applications class, I ran across ruv.net. This site is nothing now, but at one point it had a small collection of music. I didn't really notice any sort of common theme. I guess they were songs that the webmaster found interesting for whatever reason and chose to slap on there.

I loved the acoustic Days Go By they hosted, of course, but I also loved Pepper by the Butthole Surfers which was in the same folder. Also in the folder was Closer by Nine Inch Nails, incorrectly labeled "I Want To Fuck You Like An Animal", which was enough to scare me away from ever listening to it. Sixteen year old Meagan wasn't ready to hear Trent Reznor say those things anyway. In a different folder labeled "classical", I found the Apocalypse Chorus mix of O Fortuna by Apotheosis, which I adored (and managed to find a few years ago without knowing any of the details... I'm not sure how I pulled that off). They also had some internet radio loops. One of them I liked to listen to because it had two memorable songs: Flake by Jack Johnson (which I happily rediscovered on Pandora tuned to Pete Yorn) and Sheep Go to Heaven by Cake.

At the time I thought this song was the funniest thing I'd ever heard. It was pretty far along in the loop, so if I started playing the "station" as soon as I got into class, I'd get to hear it.

A couple months back I was driving and thinking about my time in the computer lab in high school and I remembered the song. I loved that song. "Sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell!" Haha, that song was great. I wonder who the band was? Probably someone no one's heard of. I quickly forgot about it.

Awhile later, I went to St Louis, and one of the things I did while down there was borrow a lot of music from kerobaros, 'cause he's awesome. I put some Cake albums on my iPod as I liked a few songs of theirs. Then, driving home from Wright State one day with my iPod set on shuffle, I was surprised (and thrilled!) to hear Sheep Go to Heaven start playing.

And the grave-digger puts on the forceps
The stone mason does all the work
The barber can give you a haircut
The carpenter can take you out to lunch

I just want to play on my pan-pipes
I just want to drink me some wine
As soon as you're born you start dying
So you might as well have a good time

Sheep go to heaven
Goats go to hell
Sheep go to heaven
Goats… go to hell

It was the last of my high school songs that I hadn't identified and tracked down. Just thinking about it makes me want to clap my hands in childish glee. Thank god for the little things.

Can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes I see Vincent. My alarm is set to go off in two and a half hours and my upstairs neighbor has been walking laps around the apartment since 1:30 and I'm being haunted by the ghost of boyfriends past.

I feel like a stalker. I haven't seen nor talked to him since he moved last year but I still think about him every day. I no longer have nightmares about him, not since January. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever truly shake him, if I'll ever stop loving him, if I can make myself not care. I hope he's happier now that I'm not in his life. And I hope those brown eyes will stop haunting me. It's always the worst when I'm alone like this. I feel like I'm watching quietly from the shadows, trembling, hoping he won't notice I'm here but at the same time praying and dreading that he'll glance my direction.

I forgot his birthday. I remembered that it was my cousin's but I've disassociated it from Vincent. I hope that's a step in a positive direction.

Isn't it pretty? It'll get in on Tuesday, then Mom has to have her number on it for 24 hours. Wednesday it'll be mine and I'll finally be in touch with the world.

I always thought I wouldn't be able to live without the internet but over the past week it has become VERY apparent to me that I am crippled without a cell phone. Now that I'm used to receiving a little over 100 texts a day, not hearing from anyone ever makes me feel very... weird. And lonely. I have no idea what anyone's doing at any given moment, nor do I have any way to contact them and ask to hang out. It's like pre-sorority days all over again--just sitting at home, not really talking to anyone but Jim and not doing anything more exciting than occasionally going to a movie. There is no more spontaneity short of seeing one of my sister's cars and leaving a note on her windshield.

I mean, I love Jim, but he makes a terrible middleman. I think it's the ADD.

We're about 90% sure that my roommate's girlfriend has been stealing from me. I never lose things. Three weeks ago I lost my Big Sis necklace that my little gave me. I figured it accidentally went down the sink. The next week I couldn't find my camera. It might have been missing for awhile, though, so maybe I left it at school. This past week my phone went missing from where I had it on the couch. The only people in the house were Jon and Stefanie. My necklace also went missing after a visit from them.

We sign the lease today. We are not telling the roommate. It will be a nice surprise for him. Kind of like the nice surprise of losing $800 worth of my stuff in the past three weeks. His rent will also go up since I'm not on the lease--Jim has generously been paying 2/3 of the rent but legally he's only obligated to pay 1/2 and that's what he's going to start doing.

When we moved in I got in a wistful phase of looking up cats on Petfinder to adopt, and Jim promised me that as soon as we got our own place I could have one. At that time there was a cat in particular that would be a good match for him, and he told me today that if we get a cat, it would have to be a good fit for his personality, "like that one cat you were looking at before".

I went cruising through Petfinder and lo and behold, look who I find--the same cat I was considering before! It kind of makes me sad because it means he's been there for awhile. On the other hand, he can't go to a home with cats, and people rarely own just one cat. That would, however, be perfect for me since apartments generally only allow 2 animals--and no way in hell would I ever give up Maggie. Also, Jim is inexperienced with pets and can be a little heavy-handed sometimes with petting and playing. It says this cat would be good for a family with children which I take to mean that he could handle attention that's a little rougher than intended.

Jim's gung ho about it. Friday we're moving. I have a sushi date in the evening with my little, then I'm driving back home to spend the weekend before summer classes with my parents. I think when I get back and Maggie's fully settled into the new place, I'll arrange a visit with mister Santana.

It's really hard to top "Uranus" for quality lols. Maybe something that starts with the "my" sound to mix the jokes up a little. Or Yermom. So many possibilities!

When they start talking about the credit crunch and start throwing about those huge numbers, remember that

A million seconds is 11 days
A billion seconds is 32 years.
A trillion seconds is 32,000 years.

QFP

Gives things some perspective. I get used to seeing so many zeros that the numbers lose their meaning.

Finals are over! Eleven days of sloth and gluttony! I'm starting my break off with a game or two of laser tag tonight with my lovely Theta Phis, staying up until 8am on Friday to try to rearrange my school schedule when people get dropped from classes, then driving home (after some sleep) to spend some real time with my family for the first time since Christmas.

My dad's been in poor health lately, so hopefully he doesn't fall apart while I'm down there. Also, we should be hearing results from my grandpa's tests soon. Good thoughts, please.

P.S. My sleep schedule is fuuuucked. I'm back to sleeping for maybe three hours at seemingly random intervals.

"Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive."

Sometimes it's difficult.