we've been putting this off since november 28th, 1923

i take it back. good thing friends have swimming pools, because i don't understand this heat! but goo sprained both her ankles in a Freak Accident and is now more dependable than the weatherman. daily calls to check if it'll rain. he was talking, i was listening i swear i was listening but my eyes were too tired, i guess i'd be offended too. my sister fucked up her grad party big time. there is an art to holding hands, and it does not involve clutching sweaty palms. a checklist with nothing crossed off. need to remedy that. "hey, how are you feeling?" "like 9/11". and last night we sat around on a big open deck in extremely uncomfortable chairs watching the cars go by and talking about all the things we feel that no one else understands. 'IT'. crosswords and that number game that's apparently real popular in tel aviv. 100 free-zee pops. seedless watermelon. freezing fingers and suntan tan. the only tv show i watch is full house, and i learn a moral lesson each time. for some reason this weekend was marked by inability to articulate anything, maybe because we read minds.

will my job make me dumber?

the motherboard celebrates casual fridays

i love it.

today my sister graduates.
tomorrow my family gets waaaaasted.
saturday i attend an anonymous nerd's graduation party.

at work i write down all the funny names i come across. these will be duly affixed to inanimate objects on "hello, my name is" nametags and placed in strategic locations around mike's house.

i'm so used to filling my head 24/7 to try to ignore the time that when i really focus on the minutes it's slow but interesting. i wonder what i'd do without the constant noise.

ssc denver!!! wahoo.

orchard park law enforcement got sick of chasing down renegade sk8rz at the middle school, and so put the money in to create a small skate park by green lake. well, i think it's pretty clear that fate is telling me "sk8 or die," and i never back down from a challenge.

to paradise in a lauren-and-devin basket!

we'll give it the old college-intern try

although it's definitely lamentable to be spending the best 8 hours of the day in a cubicle, i find that it increases my appreciation of the simple pleasures in life. for example, when i was stapling checks to mortgages, you couldn't find a happier girl than me in all of buffalo when the staples didn't get all warped and i didn't have to pull them out and restaple. it's not unusual to find me celebrating a mistake-free Accudata Transmission, or tabulating numbers of my electronic calculator "just because".

last night was a discouraging blow to the megaevent hopefuls, but luckily mike came up with a really great name: Van Gogh to This Thing!. it's wittier when communicated orally (try it). i'd gogh.

does anyone know if paris got the 2012 olympics? or when we will know? i hope they get it; i mean, they threw a party just because they want it, and got a really terrible band to play under the eiffel tower. anyway, i heard that the chinese want paris to host the games, so i'm assuming this panel thing is just a formality. if china's backing them, they can't lose.

remember when we went to sea world?

ohhh and UPDATE! my parents cracked. assuming i'm accepted, in less than a year's time i will be in senegal! with this concession came the painful reality of my parent's unforgiving, unfounded, unreasonable closed-mindedness. i find my dad's viewpoint of the whole of africa (which he conveniently lumps into one entity, forgetting the fact that africa consists of over 50 distinct countries) to be really an extremely ignorant one, which is an adjective i have never before associated with the two well-informed, intelligent individuals with whom i have largely agreed on a multitude of topics. so.. with that nathaniel-hawthorne-esque paragraph of a sentence, i mean to say "check ya later, north america!"

take off your clogs and let's get craazy!

anna karenina, which was once a fresh and fascinating glimpse into russian culture and thought (in the first 400 pages), is now becoming a weight on my soul as i fight to reach the end of a novel i've committed so much time to reading while wishing i was enjoying one of the stack of five other books i foolishly checked out from the library the other day.

earrings shaped like birds and a venezuelan man to teach me spanish. all in one place!

last night we attended a 'cuban-flavored party'. a man who had been nursing (by 'nursing' i mean pouring it down his gullet) a bottle of tequila while talking low-carb cooking or real estate or Che Guevara with an equally inebriated fellow began to dance, and it was beautiful. but what was even MORE beautiful was when he bit a pink rose off its stem, held it in his mouth, and tried to pass it over to monika via a passionate kiss. though she pushed him away, he kept his dignity by spitting the rose into her drink. i have to say, i loved every minute of it.

this is getting real wordy. degrassi season five coming soon!

done with all the fucking around

one thing that i missed in france was doing crossword puzzles. but it's become painfully clear that if i ever want to succeed at anything concerning that realm ever i must increase tenfold my knowledge of world rivers. i can no longer depend on the fact that every single time the clue is "copying" or something similar, the answer is "aping", nor the knowledge that everything concerning tennis is usually Andre Agassi. the colorado daily may play that way, but the new york times means business.

dkow and i may have an art gallery opening in august. not that we do art. one of those self-indulgent inside jokes out of which we get great pleasure while the rest of the world can't decide whether to feel awkward, condescending, or amused.

"do you seriously want to get into this right now?"

public transportation and tectonic plates

i believe in pop-culture vices. in that spirit, devin, gretchen and i will spend the evening celebrating the birthday of our favorite pair of hollywood twins: that's right, the olsens. the morbid fascination we have with them is impossible to explain; i've long since stopped trying at school. but nevertheless, it exists, it's unstoppable, and it's birthday 2k5!!/gretch broke up with her boyfriend/gina's going to new york tomorrow. in any event, a cause for intense sugar ingestion.

i found a $100 bill in a wallet i was about to throw away. quelle chance!

nothing more. buffalo is as buffalo was, though i always underestimate how much i enjoy coming back, torrential downpours and all.

stop! beyond here you are entering the land of the dead

since being in amsterdam, i have done a lot of soul-searching. unfortunately, all i've found is that my ideal shower temperature is somewhere around 44 degrees celsius, which is pretty hot.

this guy wouldn't let me look at "the israeli band playing canadian music" without "the stamp". the conversation went something like this:
him: no, you can't go in
me: why?
him: you don't have a stamp
me: oh, but i paid for this part of the concert
him: it doesn't matter, you don't have a stamp
me: well why do they have stamps and i don't?
him: i don't know
me: well can i get a stamp?
him: not from me
me: can't i just go in?
him: no
me: why?
him: you don't have a stamp. orders.
me: so how do i get a stamp?
him: i don't know

BRILLIANT. mazz, i'm going to be aroudn town a lot today but if you want to try again to meet up, let me know when and where but i probably won't be back in the hostel to check until about 6:30ish. i mean..... 18:30ish

megapaaaarty (that's italian)

so. i've reached the end of my stay in paris, theoretically, but as usual i'm letting things trail off and extending my time a bit as a direct result of my aversion to right angles and definite plans. who knows... whooooo knooooows. right now i'm staying very temporarily and illegally-ish with two swiss guys and an australian but i do not know what will happen next. there's lots to tell but i'm not quite certain if this is the right medium. wait. who am i kidding? well anyways my family found a dead mouse in my room (in the US)... ha. i know nothing about it. absolument rien. but gross, tout le meme.

i like being in a big city a lot.

i feel really inferior because all the people i've met here from all over the world, though mostly europe, have at least 3 languages already and they're around my age. they can all speak perfect english, including slang, and know tons of other stuff too. i am freakin jealous. the only people who have less than three languages are, of course, the anglophones.

there is a texan here (a dallasian?), who has strategically dismantled all work constructed by selected members of aiesec austin in reference to my beliefs about l'etat de texas, which i am now even more convinced should simply succede from the united states, take the bushes with it, and form its own hypermasculine entity in the center of north america. that was a really long sentence. but seriously, this guy eats mcdonalds every day. in paris. riiiiiiduculous.

speaking of motexcoks, i had the unbeatable opportunity to take the illustrious phillip strawbridge lingerie shopping for his girlfriend. that guy.

i'm sick and when i'm sick i get really pathetic. cell phone separation anxiety was more physical than i'd expected, but that's in the past. laundromat, ahoy!