Thank you all for the s, I really appreciate it!

Buenos noches! Haven't been around since I moved into my dorm- totally weird. Anyhow, I thought I'd pop by and see how things were going here...

Living in the dorms has been... How shall I put this... A FREAKING NIGHTMARE. It suuuuuuucks and I seriously can't believe I'll be stuck there for another 7+ months. I can't even tell you how bad it is. My window faces the football field, which would be cool if I enjoyed sports at all, but such is not the case. So, I'm woken up as early as 5 in the morning when football practice starts. And when there's no football practice, I'm woken up by 7 when they start construction directly below my 3rd story window. Something about putting in new steam pipes throughout campus. Lots of banging and screeching and yelling, and on more than one occasion I've woken up with the legitimate belief that we were being bombed. Then there's the bathroom situation. I never realized what a luxury it was not to have to get dressed to go to the bathroom. Not to mention not having to straddle the toilet to close the stall door, or not having pee leak out the bottom of the bowl and onto your shoes. And, for those of you who have your own bathrooms, please know how lucky you are not to have to wear flip-flops in the shower. What's even better is that PSU decided to install low-flow shower heads to "conserve water", which means that not only do I have to literally bend over backward to reach the shower head in the first place, but then I have to comb shampoo/conditioner out of my hair section by section because there is no more than a trickle of water coming out at any given time. Other exciting aspects to dorm life include not having hot water in my room (so I have to do my dishes in a sink that is not only a full foot shorter than I need to comfortably wash dishes- and I'm only 5'5, mind you- and is too small to actually fit my plates under the faucet, meaning that I have to swirl the water around in a skillful maneuver designed to rid the things of soap, but also has only water so cold that it numbs my hands), needing to make sure not ever to leave the fire escape window open or else the local homeless population will climb in and "harass us" (nobody will tell us exactly what that means), and getting to listen to the fire alarm in the empty room across the hall go off for a solid five hours before anyone finally goes in and turns it off.

Oh, and did I mention that last weekend, when I was coming back from work with my arms full of groceries (it's a two block walk from the parking garage, though admittedly that's generally not bad), I'd forgotten that they were turning my building into A HAUNTED HOUSE for the night, so I wouldn't have been able to actually get to my room without walking through the entire setup (after paying an entrance fee), arms full of aforementioned groceries, and then just hoping that nobody would claim that I wasn't allowed into the area of the building with my room? Needless to say, I went back to my car and slept at my mom's house that night.

Basically, I'm paying $600+ a month to live in a 118 sq foot room with no hot water and no bathroom to speak of, being woken up consistently before 7 AM, with no option of backing out.

And, I'm pretty sure that my radiator is haunted.

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Okay. I had to get that out.

Because, as shitty as the entire situation is, it's really nice that my longest commute is the 7 minute walk from my dorm room to my Spanish classroom. Seriously.

I've been staying at home on the weekends, at least on nights before I have to work. That's where I am now. It's nice to get away.

James has spent the night a couple of times, but the bed is so freaking small that we both wake up with cramping necks and arms in the morning from having to contort to fit on the bed. Actually, *I've* woken up with cramping arms and such (mainly neck/shoulder from sleeping on my side)- James really isn't able to sleep at all. Which is why he's only stayed over twice- once because we thought it would be fun and domestic and couple-y, and the second time because we were watching The Office way too late and I was too tired to drive him home.

I'm failing Chemistry miserably, and I'm not doing much better in Biology, either. I'm doing wonderfully in Spanish even though I feel like I'm constantly behind, and I'm the teacher's pet in Family Studies, if only because I'm the only one who will actually talk during discussions- which is really frustrating, because I don't like talking during discussions generally, but it just gets so freaking awkward with her standing there after having asked a question which nobody feels the need to even pretend to respond to. My chemistry professor is a joke, and I hate him so much that I want to cry. My chem lab TA speaks with such a thick accent that I can't understand a single word she ever says, and she can't understand any of us, either. My chem lab partners are dumbasses who decided it would be cool to just fake the data for an experiment the one time I was gone (I had maybe-swine flu), and then actually tried to pull the same shit again when I got back except that I refused. Which was good, since it turned out that the first data set was total shit and that if we hadn't done the other trials we would have failed the lab.

My biology lab TA is a graduate student who works in the bio lab studying "sexual selection in jumping spiders" which is the coolest job title I've ever heard. I want to be him. Also, the bio lab room has a pet turtle named Ninja who spends the entire class swimming from one end of his tank to the other, looking at us through the glass. I love Ninja.

All this has further confirmed why I want to be a biologist, not a chemist.

Apparently my Spanish instructor is a graduate student, because she lives 4 doors down from me. Which is weird. But okay, I guess.

James and I are still good. I love him, he loves me, blah blah blah.

The "J&K Wedding Dance" video on youtube makes me cry every time I see it. Even if I don't mean to. I can't help it.

Adam Lambert's new single For Your Entertainment is actually freaking amazing. He's a guilty pleasure of mine the same way Lady Gaga and Katy Perry are. Delicious.

I went bra shopping today, at a specialty lingerie store, because my boobs are too big for my body. Seriously. Normal stores don't carry cup sizes big enough, with small enough bands. I have to mix and match and it really doesn't work, though it results in some fantastic cleavage. Anyway, when taking down my information the lady at the store said, "Oooh, Katy, like Katy Perry!" - first time anybody ever made that reference. Shocked it took so long, honestly. There really aren't many of us.

I had to shop for fancy clothes today for The Evening of Lights. The annual event at Al's where customers come and get drunk off free booze while listening to Christmas music and enjoying Christmas lights. Employees have to dress up, which would be fine, except that it has to be "work appropriate" which means no cleavage of any kind. Which is hard when, like me, you're basically half boob.

Which means that, each time this even rolls around, I have to shop in the old lady section. That's right, I'm talking about the St John's Bay section of J. C. Penny's. Think shapeless, with lots of mock turtlenecks and large rhinestones. It sucks. Bought an outfit that I might actually be able to wear outside of the even this year, though, which is a little bit better.

No Halloween plans. Have to try to get caught up in Chemistry. James is playing a house party god-knows-where, and I work until 6.

The feminist in me is horrified that the girls at Hot Topic are required to work while dressed up as sexy versions of otherwise respected professions this time of year.

The lesbian in me thinks it's kind of hot.

But mainly, the horrified part.

James wanted to be a Gay Zombie this year- extended-armed double-wrist flick: "Buh-raaaains!" It would've been hot, y'all.

Personally, I'm a big fan of AJ's costume of choice- being a werewolf. See, you go in your normal clothing, and if people ask why you're not dressed up, you just say "because it's not a full moon [dumbass]!" I think that maybe the "dumbass" is implied, but you get the point.

I didn't realize how much I had to say. Well then.

As much as I've bitched in this entry, things really are going well. All the crappy bits and pieces are just manifesting as added stress. So I've been really really stressed, but still good.

Oh! We found out yesterday that after Kem drained our bank accounts and took all of our furniture, leaving my unemployed mother wondering how we were going to afford food, he took my brother on a week long vacation to Cabo. He's nothing if not classy. Oh wait...




Really, though, things are good. James and I are starting to look at apartments downtown, so that as soon as I'm free from this whole dorm fiasco we can move in together. For the same price as I'm paying now, we could be living in a place 4x the size with its own kitchen and bathroom. HEAVEN.

Zombieland was freaking amazing. So was Whip It! actually. I refuse to see Paranormal Activity because just hearing about it from my mom has consistently freaked me out at my dorm.

By the way, have I mentioned my deep, deep love for Taylor Swift? Because it is there. And her new singles (all 6) are really awesome.

I really do want to know how the homeless people will harass us, though.

Goodnight, loves.








-July 25th: Work @ Al's, 11-4
-July 26th: Work @ Al's, 10-6
-July 29th: Work @ Al's, 9-5
-July 29th: Ditty Bops Concert
-July 25th: J and I have been together for 3.5 years <3
-Sept 19th: Move-In Day @ PSU

___________________________________

Thank you all for the s, I really appreciate it!

I made the mistake of neglecting dA for a couple of weeks and now I have several hundred deviations and way too many comments to sort through, haha. In addition to my addiction with Twitter, I've become addicted to GoogleReader, tracking the RSS feeds of my favorite blogs (180 of them total), and haven't been remembering to check other sites. I do have =ShiftingWaterz's photo stream linked to the reader, which has been pretty sweet, but otherwise I haven't been keeping up on dA artists' work.

In the midst of working a ton and moving (I move into the dorms into a week, if all goes as planned, and we're putting the house on the market around the same time so life has been CRAZY), I've decided that I finally want to start the blog I've always talked about and never actually set up. I already own the domain name, have paid for the webspace, have installed Wordpress, and have created a dummy banner for the time-being. Now I just need a name (because "Katy's Blog" is SO not going to cut it).

I've been inspired by the GoogleReader RSS feeds (I mainly follow local artists and craftsters), as well as the ADORABLE/HILARIOUS/FABULOUS book Julie and Julia by Julie Powell, and have decided to finally just DO IT.

Julie and Julia, by the way, is the book Julie Powell wrote after deciding to start a blog called the Julie/Julia Project, where over the course of one year she decided to cook her way through every recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Fine Art of French Cooking"... Julie is absolutely hilarious, and although the book IS about cooking, it's totally non-cook friendly. I don't cook, and neither did she, at the start of the project. I can't descibe how/why it's so good, but it is. Her sense of humor comes through in the pages, and her relationship with her husband is very similar to the relationship J and I have. It's like reading a letter from your best friend- very personable.

Anyway. I'm writing this because I need to come up with a name for my blog.

I'm going through some of my favorite books for ideas.

The list:

From The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan:
Words in the Margins
How Precarious

From ,Said The Shotgun to the Head by Saul Williams
Moon Marked and Sun Sparked
The Gradual Process of Crystallization
The Moon's Imagination
I've Made It Up (but it shall be, from now on)
Subject to Seasons
Extended Parentheses

From Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Hanging Onto the Words

Various Vintage Book Titles:
Word Attack
The Eskimos Knew
How To Make A Miniature Zoo


Other Odds and Ends:
Something To Do With Eskimos
Suspect Happenings
City Skies and Power Lines
Never Quite Like This
Tiny Interesting Choices (from XKCD.com)
Making Up the Future (from XKCD.com)


Random words I could possibly come up with a title from bc I love them:
Knit/Knitting/Knits
Stitching/Cross-Stitch(ing)
Craft/Crafting
Polaroid/Camera/Photography/Photo/Film
List(s)
Clothespins
Tea
Lavender/Lavandula
Herbs
Science
Cells
Clockwork
Vintage/Indie
Brains
Psychology
Astrology (Cancer/Libra Rising/Leo Moon)
Nerd/Geekiness
College/Youth




OH MY GOD THERE ARE SO MANY CHOICES. PLEASE HELP.


EDIT: I've started to strike things out as I decide against them.








-July 25th: Work @ Al's, 11-4
-July 26th: Work @ Al's, 10-6
-July 29th: Work @ Al's, 9-5
-July 29th: Ditty Bops Concert
-July 25th: J and I have been together for 3.5 years <3
-Sept 19th: Move-In Day @ PSU

___________________________________

Thank you all for the s, I really appreciate it!

Hey y'all! Just checking in briefly. Things are good, working a lot, excited about moving out in September. Kimber's visiting my grandmother in Missouri- has been gone 3 weeks and won't be back for another week yet. Mom and Kem's uber-messy divorce is certainly making life interesting. Things are going to be fine, though.

If you haven't seen District 9 yet, go see it. It's incredible. Funny people was decent, but not great. Can't wait to see The Time-Traveler's Wife (the book was incredible), 9 ([link]), and Surrogates ([link]). Movies have been really good this year!

I've been watching NCIS constantly lately. It's fun to have a new show to enjoy with so many episodes I haven't seen.

Next year's going to be crazy- going to school 5 days a week- taking 17 credits (spanish, chemistry, biology, multiple labs, and sophomore inquiry courses), and working most saturdays and sundays. It'll definitely be a new adventure.

Hope things are going well for all of you. Talk to you later, loves.








-July 25th: Work @ Al's, 11-4
-July 26th: Work @ Al's, 10-6
-July 29th: Work @ Al's, 9-5
-July 29th: Ditty Bops Concert
-July 25th: J and I have been together for 3.5 years <3
-Sept 19th: Move-In Day @ PSU

___________________________________

Thank you all for the s, I really appreciate it!

Have y'all played with the portfolio builder yet? It's actually pretty cool!








-July 25th: Work @ Al's, 11-4
-July 26th: Work @ Al's, 10-6
-July 29th: Work @ Al's, 9-5
-July 29th: Ditty Bops Concert
-July 25th: J and I have been together for 3.5 years <3
-Sept 19th: Move-In Day @ PSU

___________________________________

Thank you all for the s, I really appreciate it!

Next year I'll be living in a 188 square foot (about 10.8 feet either direction) sleeper on the third floor of Montgomery. I'm excited and nervous and it is just not going to come soon enough. I'm making endless lists in order to fight off any sense of panic. I can't wait to go shopping!

Seriously, though. It's going to be fucking tiny.

But I can have J over for SLEEPOVERSSSSSSS.

3.5 years. It's about time he was able to spend the night. Damn.

PS, I owe the library $60 and I don't know why.








-June 13th: Work @ Al's, 11-7:30
-June 14th: Work @ Al's, 10-6
-June 16th: Work @ Al's, 11-7:30
-June 18th: Work @ Al's, 11-7:30
-June 20th: Work @ Al's, 11-7:30
-June 24th: Work @ Al's, 9-5
-June 25th: J and I have been together for 41 months <3
-June 25th: Work @ Al's, 11-7:30
-June 26th: I turn 19!
-June 27th: Work @ Al's, 9-5
-June 28th: Work @ Al's, 6-9 (?)
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