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2009 3 March :: 2.19pm
I get e-mailed "breaking news alerts" from the Sacramento Bee. I like to keep aprised of what's going on in my hometown. For the past few weeks, all I've been getting are things like this:
CALIFORNIA DROUGHT CRISIS
GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER TO DECLARE DROUGHT STATE OF EMERGENCY
WATER SUPPLY TO LOCAL FARMERS CUT OFF DUE TO DROUGHT
and today, I get this:
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE ISSUES FLOOD WARNING IN SACRAMENTO
When it rains it pours, I guess -- for real!
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2009 22 February :: 4.12pm
:: Music: NCIS soundtrack
Academic woes
Although I'm apprehensive about my prospects in finding a fulfilling and lucrative career after graduation (I don't feel that I have any particularly specialized or honed skills to offer, nor that I even can find a field that I'm both qualified for and interested in...but this is all a story for a different day), lately I've been feeling that it can't come soon enough. Maybe it's that senior year is exponentially harder than all the rest; maybe it's that I picked the wrong major, and so the literature-intensive courses I'm taking aren't well suited to my abilities or interests; either way, week after week I feel less like I belong at university and I wonder more and more what I'm doing there and why I've been wasting my time. It's honestly like pulling teeth. It seems like everyone I have class with gets something that I just don't get. I try to convince myself it's that literary criticism is a bunch of bullshit, but more often I end up blaming my own naivete or lack of intelligence.
Of course, I've never had confidence in the intelligence other people tell me I've got, which contributes in large part to my growing disillusionment with academia as a whole.
Perhaps it's just been so long since high school that I don't remember what senioritis feels like. In any case, the light at the end of the tunnel doesn't seem to be getting much closer much faster, and it's ironic to me that I should feel closer to giving up now, when I'm almost at the end, than I ever have in the past.
I decided that, since I've almost completely finished the requirements for my major already, in spring quarter I'm going to stay as far away from literature classes as I possibly can. I'll be taking global politics, to satisfy one last gen ed, and evolution of the universe, because I've always had more interest in the sky than in foundationless analysis of hidden themes in book that the authors never intended in the first place.
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2009 5 February :: 9.16am
I'm writing a paper about a related topic and I'm curious what you guys think. If language is technology, what does that make reading?
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2009 18 January :: 11.28pm
Last weekend I finally confessed to Nathan how upset I was about his mixed messages on whether we'd be living together after graduation. On the one hand, he kept saying things like 'I hope someday we can make this permanent' and 'maybe it would be fun to move to Oregon with you after all,' but on the other, he would always speak hypothetically ('if we're still together, maybe if we're living together again later,' etc. etc.). It was driving me crazy. It was getting to the point where I felt like maybe I ought to just break up with him because we wanted different things -- and since I didn't want marriage, I felt like it was wrong of me to demand any other kind of serious commitment. Still, the thought that maybe our relationship was based on convenience rather than a real desire to be together ate at me.
He heard me out and then he apologized, and he explained that he was shy about commitment because he had been confusing 'long-term' with 'permanent,' and not thinking about them as separate things. He said that his opinion had changed since our original conversation, where he'd flat-out refused to go with me somewhere simply for the sake of staying together, and said that now, if I'd have him, he wanted to follow me if I left.
I was so relieved I cried.
So it looks like we'll be moving to Oregon at the end of the summer. We're not sure where, yet. I wanted Eugene, but he's hesitant because it's apparently hard to find work there. He said Portland, but I'm not convinced there because I might be forced to socialize with the awkward family I have there. I'm thinking maybe Corvallis or Albany, now. We'll just have to see what happens. Maybe over the summer we can drive up and visit a bunch of cities to see where we think we'd fit best.
I'm just so excited that this is happening.
4 Memories Made |
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2009 4 January :: 12.31pm
I went out to lunch with Jeff yesterday. When we don't talk politics he's actually quite nice to be around. I was afraid that it would be awkward, but we never even close to ran out of things to say to each other. Maybe it won't be so hard to get back in touch with my high school friends.
After lunch I went to my grandparents' house to download a font for my grandmother. They paid me in chocolate and had me help them finish a crossword puzzle.
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2009 2 January :: 4.53pm
My grandfather is improving slowly. We spent a lot of time at their house over the holidays, helping out with work. I fixed their TV and DVD player and helped them put together a jigsaw puzzle of an antique world map.
I had a CAT scan today, to make sure it isn't cancer or some other structural problem causing my chronic headaches. They gave me a prescription for some preventative meds when I went in initially a week or so ago, though, and I've felt much better since, so I'm not too worried.
Nathan got his journal out to write something yesterday, and as he sat down on the couch next to me and opened it up I happened to read the first line of his most recent entry. "Lily and I got in a big fight last night." I'd mostly stopped thinking about that -- it was one of the worst fights we've had -- but accidentally reading that brought back all the insecurity and the despair over how he says he wants to be with me but won't give definite answers or make any plans for the future together. I don't want to think that our relationship is based solely on convenience and if he's going to keep implying that he hopes it's permanent, can't he stop speaking in ifs and maybes? I spent the rest of the night morose, playing flash games on the internet.
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2009 1 January :: 3.06pm
101 things
Instead of making resolutions this year, I've made a list of 101 things that I'll hopefully have accomplished in 1001 days, by September 29, 2011. Got the idea from an LJ community.
Here's my list. Read more..
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2008 21 December :: 10.23am
My grandfather may be dying. He went to the emergency room twice the other night due to pressure building up in his heart. They gave him some medication to help control it and reminded him that he's only mortal. Not the kind of thing that it's particularly encouraging to hear from medical professionals.
Yesterday I was at a high school reunion which was actually a lot of fun. I'm coming more and more to realize that I occupied an uncommon position, socially, back then. Most of the people I wandered over to talk to last night complained to me that the same cliques that excluded them in their high school years were still in effect. I never really felt reined in by clique boundaries because I never really felt myself in one. I just talked to whomever I wanted, and they were chill with me. Every time I see people from back then that I've lost touch with, it surprises me all over again how happy they seem to see me. I was less alone than I thought.
Probably because of the reunion I had a disorientingly lifelike dream about Dria. We talked about what had happened between us and I finally got to pour my heart out to her about both how I feel I handled things badly and how it wasn't entirely my own fault. And she was really listening. I thought for a moment that maybe we could even rebuild the friendship, and for the first time ever in a dream about Dria, that prospect didn't frighten and distress me. In all of the other cases, we've never addressed the problem directly, and so what was in line to be rebuilt was not the friendship but the dependancy, I suppose.
I woke suddenly as we were on a bus going somewhere and was both shocked and disappointed to realize that it had been only a dream.
1 Memories Made |
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2008 8 November :: 9.40pm
Anybody here on Twitter? I just joined but I know nobody. =( My username is socksocksock, so you can find me and add me if you are so inclined.
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2008 3 November :: 9.46pm
I actually ended up getting that job I talked about blowing the interview for last entry. No idea how that happened. Maybe they didn't get a lot of applications.
My first day was today -- they took me into a buzzing, air-conditioned room filled with racks of servers and explained to me what each one was and did. It was explanation after explanation using horribly complex terms like "asynchronus versioner somethingorother" and I went back to my desk feeling properly cowed. I thought as I was sitting there that my life has been a long stumbling from one thing that I want to do but am ill-equipped for to another.
But then I spent the rest of the shift updating programs and operating systems on the organization's laptops, which I could probably do in my sleep, so who knows. Maybe I was what they were looking for, after all. At least the servers had funny names. The main one responsible for hosting all of the user profiles is called Flashy.
The winter rains have begun. It's been wet and gray since last Thursday. Everyone complains but me; I love this weather. Except when my feet get wet. Time to retire the thin canvas shoes full of holes until the spring.
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2008 24 October :: 10.47am
:: Mood: embarrassed
I just went for a job interview. It's left me feeling rather low -- I don't think I made a very good impression. They were asking a lot of questions about things that I don't really know how to do. (It was a tech-support, computer-related job. I thought it would be like my old job at the library, but it's not really.)
I guess it all comes down to my worrying that they'll feel like I wasted their time. But they didn't tell me yes or no yet, so...I dunno. We'll see what happens, by Wednesday of next week.
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2008 1 October :: 10.15am
Back at school now, and having more trouble with my schedule than I ever have before. I guess it was courteous of the bad luck to wait until my senior year, when I'm the most familiar with the system and better able to deal with hiccups.
I was taking Japanese for a day before I got kicked out of the class, because I enrolled very late and the teacher said it wasn't fair for me to get the spot before any of the waiting list students. I understand that, but I was still disappointed about it. I went for a long walk in the woods until that mostly dissipated. Part of what bothers me is that now, for the first time since kindergarten I won't be studying a language. At least I can return the books and get my 78 dollars back, which will be helpful.
I'm also trying to find a job which isn't going particularly well. I should be getting a call sometime today from my old supervisor to let me know whether or not there's room in their schedule for me to come back to work. Keeping my fingers crossed, because I really liked that job, but I don't have a whole lot of hope. Nobody else I've sent an application to has yet replied. I may have to start searching off-campus, or quickly learn how to do web design. It seems like everybody wants that these days.
I can hear seals borking from my apartment. Nathan and I went over to the wharf to see them one day, and discovered that it's mostly just one seal that WILL NOT SHUT UP, and occasionally the others that join in when they get irritated at his noise. We named him Larry for no specific reason, and they all have such different toned voices that now when they bork I can tell whether it's him or not.
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2008 20 September :: 7.18pm
The horse didn't work out. I realized, after thinking about it, that it was too much of a commitment for me to make, in terms both of money and of time.
I'm moving to Santa Cruz tomorrow. Looks like Nathan is going to be living with me for a while because he still hasn't found a place of his own. School starts on Thursday.
Despite being 21, I still have not purchased any alcohol in the United States. I did order alcohol at a restaurant for the first time today, though.
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2008 1 September :: 5.56pm
:: Music: I've Got a Golden Ticket
Home at last
Today is the anniversary of my arrival in Berlin. I have been home in California for about two weeks now, and I love it more every day. My fair California.
Exciting things are in the works. In September I move back to Santa Cruz for my fourth and final year at the UC. I'll be in a studio apartment right across the street from the beach, which is everything I was hoping for.
I might also be taking a horse, which is my current project. My sister was given a pony for Christmas last year, and she keeps it at a stable that's run by a member of the Bureau of Land Management. He often has wild mustangs at the stable which he then adopts out to people. Last week he got a new one, a two-year-old, which Sadie told him I was interested in as a cover for getting some mustang adoption brochures.
I met that horse today. It's a bay, one white foot, and not at all shy which is rare for those mustangs. It will already let me touch its nose and feed it carrots and alfalfa cubes. And so it turns out that I am interested, just like Sadie said. He's twenty-five dollars total. Can't really go wrong with that.
Of course it will be a sizable project -- he's completely untrained, and hasn't even really gotten used to humans yet. But it's a prospect I find thrilling, raising this baby mustang myself, training it myself, and someday having a well-trained, good-natured horse that I can proudly point to as the result of my hard work.
I'm trying to find a place for him to stay in Santa Cruz, and inquiring after some help with boarding fees from my horse-crazy aunt, and if those things work out then I'm going to do it. What an interesting conclusion to my lifetime of wanting a horse -- buying a mustang fairly spur-of-the-moment for twenty-five dollars.
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2008 20 July :: 10.13am
:: Music: Music from "Rurouni Kenshin"
Have I really not updated since April? For shame.
Things are better now than they apparently were then. I've almost finished my last semester in Berlin -- classes have stopped meeting but I still have two final papers to write and grades to collect before my academic obligations are taken care of for good. It's starting to dawn on me how little time I really have left in Germany, and it's somewhat bittersweet. On the one hand I'm looking forward to getting home -- I've never been this far or away this long before. On the other hand, my friends are already starting to dissipate and scatter, and while I hope that I'll see them again, given their far-flung origins and the weakness of the US dollar, there's really no guarantee. A couple of them sound interested in someday coming to California, which makes me happy.
Speaking of California, I discovered yesterday that it was on my birthday in 1848 that Mexico sold California (among a few other desert states) to the USA. What an auspicious day of birth I have.
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