saturday, july 22

•••    (general bitching to follow; you have been warned)

I really don't like it when I can see people dividing me up into two pieces - face and body. I am one person, everyone. I'm never going to have my tummy tucked or my breasts enlarged, so get over it. you can not mix and match parts of people. my face is attached to my head is attached to my neck is attached to the rest of me. I am in damn good shape considering my own immune system is my worst enemy. I am proud of that and I won't let any conventional beauty standard take it away from me.

besides, it shouldn't matter what kind of diseases I have to make excuses for me. I am not exactly out to combat human nature (at least, not in this case), but the thought that I am not only being mentally undressed but also mentally sliced up and judged based on my parts is just icky. honestly, would you want me to do it to you? just stop it and learn to live with people the way they already are.

(that may have been semi-incoherent, but it felt good. I'm done now.)
11:19 PM +

•••    I'm waiting for you to come over
chicken is in the fridge and my heart is breaking

(I have nothing to add.)
10:00 PM +

•••    have you seen the trees are my friends commercial yet? I am always surprised by websites that have tv ads. somehow it seems like they are never professional enough. on the other hand, trees are my friends and the website is reasonably full of content, so I'm glad I saw the commercial.
6:50 PM +

•••    last week a young man who lived in my neighborhood was killed when he was hit by a car on the side of the highway near my house. the spot has become an impromptu memorial; flowers and stuffed animals and mementos are smothering a tree trunk, the sidewalk is spraypainted red with messages of love and friendship, and the fence is lined with posterboard where people have come to say goodbye. there are notes from everyone from family to strangers, including one in bright pink pen that reads, "yo dogg - i didn't know ya, but rest in peace homey." right next to that is a message from the thirteen-year-old brother of the man who died.

jason, your chicken is in the fridge
I'm keeping it for you

people are so amazing.
6:07 PM +

•••    :)
1:26 PM +

•••    waxed paper + crayons + microwave + my favorite 4 year old = melty art fun!
1:18 PM +

•••    if I've remembered my dates correctly, one of my heroes is a whole year old today . . . happy birthday, fiona, wherever you are.
12:21 AM +

friday, july 21

•••    this is how my dad starts a dinner conversation these days:

"so, let's talk about lobotomy."

we went out to eat at a really great little tibetan restaurant. when it's just me and my dad (like now), we don't see much of each other, but we do go out to eat at some ethnic place or other at least once. and we always end up talking about science and literature. he comes from the investigative reporter side, and of course I'm an astrogeek with a purely academic physics background . . . we have good conversations. no basis for identifying with each other at all as father and daughter, but intellectually we are a great match.

and yes, we talked about lobotomies. ;)
10:16 PM +

•••    I've been working on a painting for the past few days. it's a big canvas - I stretched it and primed it myself, and for some reason when I was doing that I decided to make it really big. I think because I like gesso so much. anyway, since I am only an occasional artist and my mom uses oils, I don't have a huge supply of paint. predictably, I am already almost out of white and I only have half a tube of black left. the challenge will be to see if I cave to my artistic sensibilities, of if I can find some way to finish the whole thing without using any more white paint. this painting is much more about the process than the result (it's too freaking big to ever frame and hang up, so it will probably end up wrapped in plastic somewhere), so I'm tempted to just go with straight-from-the-tube colors. I'm having fun. :) (lucky for the world I'm bucking the family trend and getting a science degree, isn't it?)
6:42 PM +

•••    it occurs to me that none of my most embarassing moments have anything to do with my body, the way it looks, or any of the things it does. in some ways that's really weird; I do have some major major objections to casual physical contact that wouldn't bother most people, and I refuse to participate in any of the public nudity things involved in certain rugby traditions.

I think the thing is, though, that once you've been fifteen years old with tubes coming out of you everywhere (okay, almost everywhere), needles in both sides of both your hands so you can't do anything to bathe yourself or wash your hair, and more doctors and nurses than you can count coming to do something to you every other minute, you get over any sense of being embarassed. you'd blush yourself into a permanent state of crimson otherwise. and in my case, some of that carried over into daily life. (it helps that I still have to strip and wander around hospital hallways in onesies every few months.) stuff happens. I shake my head, roll my eyes, and get on with life.

(I would be remiss if I didn't mention that it is incredibly easy to make me blush, and my friends have a lot of fun observing that. compliment me and I'm a goner. :P)

so, most embarassing moments? all of them involve crying in situations where I really don't want to be crying. I've gotten good at pushing through it, and it seems that if I ignore my tears other people are more inclined to follow my lead and ignore them as well. when I was a high school freshman, I had an evil history teacher. he was, I felt, unnecessarily prejudiced towards certain members of our class - initially, that didn't include me. but once I started standing up for them, he started picking on me too. there was one day when I got into a nasty argument with him, he yelled at me and told me I was no longer welcome in the classroom, and told me to go out in the hallway.

I hate hostile confrontation. I can put up with it for only so long, and then I fall apart. I made it as far as packing my things up, looking the teacher in the eye and asking for the homework assignment, closing the classroom door and staring really hard at the cinderblock walls for about forty seconds before I burst into tears. I cry quietly but somewhat torrentially. the teacher came out to give me a talking-to and was I think very taken aback to find me with tears streaming down my face and dripping off my nose. he gave me a tissue. I shredded it and put the pieces in a little pile in front of me. then I proceeded to tell him what I thought of the classroom atmosphere, he told me what he thought of my behavior, and the whole time I was crying and crying and crying. I willed both of us into ignoring it.

it still makes me somewhat embarrassed to think about it. there are of course much more recent incidents, but I am not sufficiently removed from them to write about them without getting myself all aflutter and panicky.

tampons, however, don't bother me. ;)
2:37 PM +

•••    I can go time-traveling just by going outside at night and looking up - but I suppose comets are just a tad more exciting than naked-eye stars.
1:54 PM +

•••    and the archives work again too, whew.
1:48 PM +

•••    okay. we have a new hard drive on the sccs server. lots and lots and lots of room - I shouldn't have to worry about my archives running out of space. we also have new redirection and search capabilities (don't worry about the ugly url, it should take care of itself - the old one still works). but jeez, if the webmasters keep changing things without warning us (or really explaining - I had to change a bunch of blogger settings), I'm going to send my rugby team after them. :P
1:42 PM +

•••    wumwumwumwumwumwumwum
1:24 PM +

thursday, july 20

•••    c'mon sccs - gimme my web-docs back. :P
11:53 PM +

•••    I just remembered that today is the big moon landing anniversary (I haven't been paying much attention to dates lately). viking 1 in 76, and of course apollo 11 in 69, both landmarks. even though the moon missions have become part of nasa history that we all sort of take for granted, when I actually stop and think about it, it is absolutely incredible to me that there have been humans on the moon. I want to go to the moon. . .
11:48 PM +

•••    big shiny green caterpillars in space! we should all be very, very afraid.
2:39 PM +

wednesday, july 19

•••    web-docs are down. of course, none of you will be able to read about that until they're back up, so I don't know why I'm bothering. :P
11:42 PM +

•••    the thing I like about running is that you can go in a big circle but still leave everything behind.
9:44 PM +

•••    I feel ever so much better now. yay for chocolate and popsicles.
7:47 PM +

•••    I feel like I really shouldn't like that wheatus song, "teenage dirtbag," but there's something so ridiculously sophomoric and yet unabashedly triumphant about it... I can't help myself, and I listen to it every time. what a weirdo guilty pleasure song. (she doesn't know what she's missing...)
5:44 PM +

•••    no more of that creepy chihuahua! woohoo! if we're really lucky, this will precipitate the demise of the whole taco bell franchise, and then I won't have to see any more of those disgusting commercials ever again. honestly, if the food is that unappetizing on tv, how can it even be edible in real life? (I admit I have never seen taco bell food. but the stuff in fast food commercials is fake for a reason - the real food isn't photogenic enough.)
4:13 PM +

•••    I see doctors all the time; I have upwards of twenty appointments just this summer. still, the one that is over the quickest still manages to be my least favorite. pleh. :P I'm indulging myself with chocolate now.
4:08 PM +

•••    am I total dork for enjoying everyone's twenty four facts so much?
11:43 AM +

•••    duh. of course the brain contains cocaine-like chemicals, same is it contains caffeine-like chemicals and meth-like chemicals. there's a reason the brain responds to drugs, isn't there? :P

anyway, aren't you glad to know nature provides for natural highs? I may not be allowed to take even over-the-counter drugs, but nothing can stop me from being an adrenaline junkie. ha!
11:24 AM +

tuesday, july 18

•••    well, this is a fun meme:

twenty four useless (I guess) facts:
1. I am eighteen years old, but I will be nineteen in less than three weeks.
2. I was born in manhattan, but I am an irish citizen. however I am still a european mongrel, having ancestors from austria, scotland and england as well.
3. I have very long light brown hair and grey eyes that take on the color of my shirt if it is anything in the green-blue range of the spectrum. I'm not supposed to go out in the sun, but I compromise by wearing spf 45 sunscreen every day of the year.
4. I live in cambridge with my parents, two younger siblings, and six animals: my lovebird, poppy; our guinea pigs, sweetie piggie popeye and cutie olive oyl; our cats, paisley and c.c.; our dog, cricket. I also live at swarthmore with my roommate, where we are surrounded by lots of animals but deprived of pets.
5. I drink red wine and occasional sips of my friends' cranberry juice and vodka.
6. I am an astrophysics major. I have nine years of education left before I finish my phd.
7. I ride a rusty blue raleigh hybrid bicycle. I avoid cars as much as possible.
8. I choose html as my programming language, but I'm quite proficient with c++.
9. I own one idiots book (BASIC).
10. I have an innie that is slightly off-center to the right, but it has a little freckle on the left for balance.
11. I wear shoes that pass inspection by my physical therapist.
12. I have many many many scars all over and a very round cafe au lait birthmark on my right hip.
13. I think the world is wrong, but I don't hold that against it.
14. I wear bikinis under my street clothes and briefs under my rugby shorts.
15. I own a lot of little paper notebooks. I wish I owned a palm, but I know it is a bad idea.
16. I have no use for deepleap, but I did give it a try.
17. I eat popcorn when other people make it, but only if it is plain and unflavored.
18. I think my real-life acquaintances are much more wicked sexy than any celebrity.
19. I like the dark best when it includes glow-in-the-dark star stickers.
20. I admire the music of igor stravinsky.
21. I hate coffee. I drink tea, straight up.
22. I believe that there are stupid questions, but not that they deserve stupid answers.
23. I haven't really cut my hair in almost eight years; before that, my mother cut it for me.
24. I think it's so groovy now, people are finally learning to accept me for the antisocial little bugger that I truly am.
10:00 PM +

•••    I have always thought that I would never, ever get married. I might, maybe, live with someone - but marriage? me? not bloody likely. and if something really strange happened and I did decide to get married, I always thought I would do it in a courthouse in my pajamas with just one witness. (I have to be even lower-key than my parents, see; they got married because it would give them a tax break, without a ceremony or anything, but they did it in their clothes.)

I've been to some pretty strange weddings. when I was six, my godfather got married under a canopy in a chinese restaurant in a ceremony that was a strange synthesis of jewish, christian, and chinese traditions. my dad was the best man and my sister and I were both flower girls, so were all squished together under the canopy. later I got slightly sloshed and sat on my godfather's lap wearing flower sprays and a white satin yarmulke in my hair to watch him cut the cake. then I got even more sloshed and contemplated the plight of the silkscreened pandas and fish that decorated the restaurant.

anyway, my point was that none of the strange weddings I've been to, as enjoyable as they were (I wasn't drunk at all of them, I promise), made me rethink my anti-wedding philosophy. but patti's picnic wedding sounded so completely delightful that I almost think it might be fun to plan a wedding now. except, of course, that I'm not nearly that creative with my social life.
9:22 PM +

•••    sometimes I don't understand blogger one bit.
8:46 PM +

•••    this is the best rainstorm we've had since I've been home from school, I think. my windowsill is underwater. maybe the weather gods have been reading my weblog. (am I boring you all today? sorry - but you know, sometimes talking about the weather is worthwhile all by itself without being a stand-in for something else. I think the saying should be "if you can't say anything nice, talk about politics." :P)
3:50 PM +

•••    rain!
smells so good. mmm.
3:20 PM +

•••    taking the .plan to a new extreme...
my .plan, for those of you who can't finger me (on telnet, people), has to do with fortune cookies and secrets. :)
2:20 PM +

•••    it is so humid right now . . . my feet are sweating just sitting here, and my hair is in absolute corkscrews. I look like a poodle.
rain would be nice. :)
1:56 PM +

monday, july 17

•••    there's a station in the secrets of aging exhibit at the science museum that will take a picture of your face and subject it to computerized aging. what I found most interesting about this was the sign outside: "this demonstration may be upsetting to young children," with a crying emoticon. at first I thought it was funny, but after I thought about it I changed my mind. when I was little I was terrified of growing up, terrified even of becoming a teenager. (I got over that, luckily.) how sad is it that we never spend our lives resisting the idea of getting older and trying in vain to defy time? sigh.
8:37 PM +

•••    I'm posting this from the riverview reading room at the museum of science - how cool is that? (I think I'm making some little kids curious, too...)

I live really close to this museum, and I've been here more times than I can remember, but I never ever get tired of it. today I played with light for a good thirty minutes - just played with colors and mirrors and lenses, making art all over a tabletop. sometimes the low-tech things are the best.
5:27 PM +

•••    oh, just blame it on the pulsars . . . ;) is it their fault we couldn't tell how old they are?
seriously, I like it when astrophysics and particle physics get thrown into confusion (more than they already are by nature) - it means my education gets that much more interesting.
1:33 PM +

•••    hard to read, and even harder to write. really I have forgiven everyone in my life except myself, but I am not yet willing to admit it. still, every little bit of the story helps.
12:17 PM +

sunday, july 16

•••    the relatives took us out to eat at the austin grill tonight. something unexpectedly nice happened: when I ordered, I explained that I don't eat dairy products so I wanted my burrito without any cheese or sour cream. the waitress immediately said, "are you vegan?" it was such a surprise! and nice to know that she understood I wasn't just lactose intolerant, I actually didn't want any animal products anywhere near my food (which proved to be excellent). yay for informed and aware waitresses. :)
11:58 PM +

•••    a b2 stealth bomber just flew over my house for the second time this month (the first was on the fourth of july). these aircraft are really huge - moreso than you would expect. and rather sinister looking. I don't like military things. :P
4:02 PM +

•••    one those little silver folding scooters that have been making news headlines and clogging sidewalks lately turned up in my front hall today (I think it must belong to the relatives.) it's a razor (with green wheels) . . . of course I had to take it for a test run. verdict? I still don't see how they are good for actual transportation, especially when there are things like bikes and blades and skateboards, but they are good for lots of zippy fun. I was burning rubber up and down the street. :)
3:16 PM +

•••    my twelve-year-old cousin is a walking nike ad.
11:18 AM +