The Christmas Blog, In Which I Give My Opinions on Various Yuletide Details

On Christmas music:

It starts on the radio a few days before Thanksgiving, and since my parents listen to country music, for almost a whole month my ears are inundated with aural manure. Let me give you this lyric example:

Christmas in the Northwest is a gift that we can share/Christmas in the Northwest is a child's answered prayer/Something Something Something, Something Something Something/Christmas in the Northwest is a gift God wrapped in green.

Hm, I can't remember the last time I decided to share weather or holidays with somebody. It kind of just happens. Believe me, if I could, I would put all the sunshine and hailstorms and Diwalis in a box and selfishly hide them in my closet. No Halloween for chu! Then I'd sit at my computer in my Sailor Moon costume and browse the Internet every October, for no real reason. Every Independence Day I'd get arrested. The line that really gets me, though is the one about the child's answered prayer. Gu-huh what? I was born and raised in the Northwest, and if I ever prayed for a grey sky, perpetual rain, squishy lawns, grody-looking cars and houses from all the mud, and still, somehow, a need for gloves, earmuffs, and other snow trappings, DESPITE THE LACK OF SNOW, may I be struck off this earth.

Oh, look. Still here.

I could do a whole blog on crappy contemporary Christmas songs, but I can't bear to think about them.

Why College is Hard

College is hard because everything that can go wrong will definitely go wrong. La la la, you say to yourself as you skip past Todd field on your way to work. Bam! You twist your ankle! Tweedle dee dee, you hum as you walk out of the exam you just finished early. Bam! When you come home the professor has sent you an email assigning everyone a thousand page paper! Dum tiddly dum, you twiddle your thumbs, only to find that the innocent cough your housemate had over breakfast was not, in fact, the result of a miscalculated sip of orange juice, but instead horrific pestilence, and you and the rest of the House sits in the living room wrapped in blankets, passing around a bag of cough drops. We blow our noses in harmonic unison.

College is hard because everybody lives together in tiny houses, and gets sick at the same time, and everyone also has to turn in giant projects and papers for every class at once, while being sick. Last year I had a professor who told me that the reason people go to college in their late teens and early twenties is because they are young and resilient and capable of pulling all-nighters. I guess so, but I'll say this: if I have to pay the government back for this college education, somebody better pay me back in hours of sleep.

Tonight I went to Shari's for dinner with Rachel. We were eating when suddenly we realized we were five minutes from missing our bus back. We threw money down on the table and high-tailed it out of there, me clutching my biscuit and munching as I ran down Union. We barely made it onto the bus, giggled the whole way home, and when we stepped off at our stop, lightfooted and cheerful, another biscuit in my pocket, I was struck by an odd feeling. What is this? I thought. Oh. It was carefree jolliness.

Wait, what? How did I not recognize freedom from worry? Am I some kind of wrinkly radioactive worry monster? What are the future implications for my nonsense-free life? And now, as I worry about this, is all my non-worry going to be tainted by worrying about the fact that I noticed I wasn't worrying about anything?

I am sorry to report that although Rachel and I kept our fish going for a solid ten months, Gabriel and Dr. Vanilla Ice both went to the big rice paddy in the sky last week. ¡Que lastima! But in a way this can be good. It opens us up in the event that we are able to acquire a rat or maybe a kitten. A kitten named Baxter!

I can't really explain why I get so hung up on the name of a pet, but I can say this: I love animals with people names. I've had birds, fish, cats, dogs, and for a brief while I had a snake, all with people names. Why people names? I don't know, maybe because if you think an asinine name like Spot is clever, you need your lobotomy reversed. Or maybe because I am more inclined to like an animal with a person name. Just like I am more inclined to like a person with a person name.

Although I can see myself becoming great friends with a homeless man named Pepper.

Wade, my handsome boyfriend, wants to get a kitten with me even though we don't live together. I told him I certainly wasn't going to raise a kitten as a single mother. It takes a village to raise a child, and since kittens are basically infants with claws and motor skills, I'm sure my household as a team can handle it, but I certainly can't. Besides, one day I'd have to sit my kitten down and say, "Baxter, you have a father." And then the poor kitten would just be confused. Not to mention I'm hoping I can make it to my death without having to sit ANYTHING in my care down and tell it it has an estranged father.

In any case, I should really go to bed before I construct an elaborate scenario that will eventually incorporate pirates, as I am wont to do when weary. Good night, foolish readers.

Jazzzzzzzz Dance!

I signed up for a jazz dance class this semester. Why? Probably due to some kind of cranial injury. I hit my head on the pipe in my dorm room last year while I was signing up for classes and all the brain cells that knew I am not a good dancer were killed off, and the next thing I knew, I was running across the dance room with my knees bent. I'm pretty sure this is how wars start--one minute you're like, "Eh, I could take a dance class. Try something new." and the next you've got a machine gun in one hand and the steering wheel to a tank in another.

You guys might not know this about me, but I am not a good dancer (I actually said that in the last paragraph. So you should have known, and if you didn't I am now calling you out for skimming). My legs are kind of like Maria in the Sound of Music--adorable and short-haired. The rest of my body is like the nunnery, staring sadly at my legs going in the wrong direction while wondering how it got stuck with this. My ankles actually knock together when I run, which explains the clicking sound that always seems to follow me everywhere. I also have very poor balance when called upon to use it suddenly. Give me a few minutes to think and I can stand on one foot, but shout it at me in a hot, sweaty dance room when I'm trying to also remember to bend my knees and smile, and I'm lost. Not to mention, I am supervain. You guys might not realize this about me but I am so vain that occasionally I forget a step because--get this--I was admiring how great my hair looks today.

What? It does look great.

The worst part about the class is that I didn't realize I hated to dance until after the drop date. Actually, that's not the worst worst part. The WORST part about the class is that I had to audit it so that I could also be in choir, and I audited it before I realized I hated to dance. True, I could just stop showing up. There's no grade. And yet, auditing a class is supposed to imply that you REALLY WANT TO DO IT. So badly it hurts. I'm pretty sure she wouldn't mind if I just stopped coming, because, let's be frank here, it's been five weeks and I still look like an idiot. But what kind of person is like HURR I WILL JUST AUDIT THIS CLASS and then doesn't show up? Why even bother auditing then?

So I have to learn to dance, there's no getting around it. Maybe I can utilize my amazing skills to finally make some friends--I've heard those are good. In case you're wondering if I'm referring to amazing skills or friends, I am talking about both.

You're handsome/beautiful/fun personality. Readers, I love you more than I love corgis. Have a good day.

Emily Does Show Biz!

For those of you who do not pay attention, my long-term career goal is to become an archivist or librarian. If you didn't know about that, seriously, are you even listening? Libraries are all I talk about.

Anyway, last year I had a work-study job shelving books, a job I also held in my hometown library. I have to clarify here: I love libraries but I hate shelving, partially from overexposure, but partially because shelvers are the peons of the library world. When your child smears his poop all over Horton Hears a Who, shelvers clean it up. When you wander into the library with a three-day old beard and fall asleep on one of the couches, shelvers wake you up when the library is closing. Not to mention art books and oversize books are regularly hoisted by our skinny, malnourished college arms. I thought, after a solid four years of shelving books, my passion for Information Technology could be utilized better elsewhere in the library. Enter the Archives job, a mythical position I heard about from everybody except the people who could actually hook me up--the Career and Employment people and the head of the library. No matter! I said to myself joyfully. I will probably land that job by virtue of interest and not actually need to exert myself anymore.

WRONG-O. James, the nice man that had to give me some disappointing news in Career and Employment Services, completely shut me down on the archives thing.

It went like this:

ME: Are there any positions open in the--?
JAMES: No.
ME: I was going to say ar--
JAMES: Definitely not.
ME: Archi-
JAMES: I don't think that will work this year.
ME: ARCHIVES!!
JAMES: I'm referring you to the costume shop in the theater department. Do you know how to sew?

Before you pity me and feel disappointed that I didn't get into the archives, think for a minute. I'm a costume stitcher in the theater department. I sew clothes. They are paying me ten bucks an hour to do a job that half-blind children do in third-world countries for ten cents a day. Yeah boy! No, I don't really know how to sew. But hello, the position title is costume STITCHER. Not costume SEWER. Besides, I'm sure they'll train me. They said they would...so if they don't I'll be stuck putting labels on boxes of fabric scraps when showtime rolls around, and won't they be sorry that they don't have an extra pair of hands when all of their chorus girls suddenly pick up the Freshman Five Hundred and need their costumes let out.

Anyway, this new and foreign job will be an adventurous experience, no doubt. Organizing tunics and clerical robes sounds delightful! Cutting up yards of fabric sounds delightful! Sneezing in the costume shop and being attacked by the ghost sounds like a blast! Bobbins ho!

Emily Does Civilization

I have found the transition from my cave-like basement dorm to my cinder block house an easy one. They share enough qualities--claustrophobic rooms, musty smell, spiders--that I don't feel completely out of my element.

The house is pretty sweet though, I have to say. We have a KITCHEN. I am cooking! Kind of. Campus is right across the street but I still feel like this year I'm going to be more isolated--I only have to go on campus for classes and occasionally to use the library, so instead of campus being home, the house is home. This seems weird on the face but when you consider that pre-college, school was school and house was house, you realize this is just a regression to that.

Driving

I'll be the first to admit that I can be a defensive driver. By which I mean, try to pass me and I'll skin you with a hunting knife. I cannot allow people to act like idiots on the road. It grates me. I have to punish them.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately since I scared the hell out of my friend Katie by going twenty miles per hour on a highway in an effort to piss off the lady behind me, who had honked when I stopped at a red light instead of blazing through it to take my free right like any other free American. Actually when I say I've been thinking about it a lot lately, I mean that I realized my poor car isn't up to road rage anymore.

It's a 1997 Mercury Sable ("Oh, so you know me!"). Its name is Stella. And while Stella and I once tore up Lundeen Parkway, me red-faced and white-knuckled, gnashing my teeth at some idiot on a phone, Stella darting in and out of traffic, barely clearing the space between two semis like a champ, I'm sorry to say that my reign of terror over our public roads is going to have to end. Or at least be seriously cut back on. Today, I was driving back from the gym, full of endorphins, when a van driving behind me pulled into the lane next to me. Sure, she could have been getting ready to make a right turn. But I had a creeping suspicion that wasn't what was going to happen. She was going to try and pass me.

Let me make one thing clear: I was driving the speed limit. I was in fact driving a few miles over, as a courtesy to faster drivers, to stay with the flow of traffic. And if there's one thing I can't abide, it's people who try to pass me when I'm driving the speed limit. As she pulled into my blind spot, I knew, with the practiced eye of a defensive driver, that she was going to try and pass me.

NOT IF I HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT, I thought to myself and kind of mumbled out loud, and with the practiced foot of a defensive driver, I began to accelerate. I didn't want to completely leave her in the dust. I just wanted to hold our relative positions so that she would realize that there is so reason to pass me, since I am going the speed limit, and drop back into the lane, behind me. That's all. I generally like people. I'm not a mean driver. Just a defensive one.

But what was this? Stella was NOT speeding up. I could feel the car struggling to accelerate and yet the can was rapidly overtaking us. The van crept up to my passenger side window while I struggled furiously to time my road rage so that I succeeded in my mission without shooting through the upcoming three-way intersection and into yonder farmland. Still, the car couldn't do it. In a final burst of acceleration (unnecessary, I thought. A kind of final slap in the face from Miss I-Drive-A-Golden-Van-with-bedazzled-seats), the van overtook my car, and got in front of me, just before the light.

As I seethed, I couldn't figure out why my car had let me down. I checked the gas gauge and made sure the parking break wasn't on. That's about all I know how to do. My conclusion? My car is too old to rule the roads anymore. This blog announces my retirement from being infuriated while driving. At least until I get another car.

Also, if you happen to drive a golden van with bedazzled seats, you're at the top of my list.

1 August 2010--countdown to Emily Does Sophomore Year

So now I can start blogging again, what with the school year getting revved up again. Will I ever, I wonder, get on board with a standard year, one that starts in January? I'm making plans to go to grad school so probably not.

Anyway, I'm moving into a house next year. I can't advise for or against it because a) I haven't done it yet--I haven't even seen the inside and b) it's not really a real house with a rent and a key and all that. It's technically a house but it's owned by the University so to live in it, I just pay the housing cost I would have paid to live on campus. So I can't be like OH YEAH GO GET A HOUSE GUYS only to have someone email me and say they tried to get a house but due to some sort of real-world issue (student loans don't go towards rent) were unable to.

It turns out there is a whole lot of crap you need for houses--things like dishes (I have dishes!) and cleaning supplies, obviously, but also things like a bike so you don't look like you're doing a Walk of Shame (we are right behind the frat houses so the misconception is easy to come by), and possibly a toilet brush. You may say, "But Emily, the toilet brush counts as cleaning supplies." Not when you and your roommate are using two of them as lightsabers, it doesn't. So anyway, this summer has been spent cruising garage sales for cookware and getting house things for my birthday.

To be honest though, and I think pretty much everyone will agree with me, I'm ready to be back at college. Seriously. I love my family and all that but I have nothing to do here (see previous blog post for what I could have been doing--sweet yacht party...sigh). Not to mention my brain is dying from lack of use. I talked on the phone with someone the other day and he said after reading a book he felt like he had gone jogging for the first time in months. No kidding, I said. Aside from the lack of intellectual simulation, I also bought a planner, which I should have left off doing until the last minute--because it's now filled out for the entire fall semester. I can't leave a planner un-filled out. It's a sick compulsion to schedule things. As a consequence I am anxious to start school and get back on a schedule so I don't have too many blank spaces in my calendar.

The Blog Wagon Has Lost Another Wheel

Part of the reason I stopped blogging is because I went home for the summer. And this blog is called Emily Does College, and should-duh-be about college. But really, this is my first summer back home, and I'm going to say it's tough to find a job. By which I mean I've completely given up on the job, and had to turn down a sweet sounding road trip to see a marimba band on a yacht in San Francisco (this may not sound cool to you, but as a favor to Jeff, who thought I was going, I'm going to highly recommend the Ande Marimba band. Google it.).

So instead of working this summer, I've been learning Swahili and trying other new things. The Swahili keeps getting put off, for no reason other than I'm a little lazy, but I do know how to say hello and ask how someone is. And so on, and so forth. The other night I tried mashing up an avocado and yogurt and putting it on MY FACE. For instance. It actually worked out well, although it was drippy and tickly and tasted awful, my skin looked better after I took it off and it still looked better this morning. I would also recommend avocado face masks.

Other things I have attempted this summer
1) Getting my eyebrows professionally waxed--way better than waxing them at home, but I did break out everywhere she put the gunk, hence the avocados.
2) Making an orange cake. Which I will talk about later.

Declaring your major in college

And why the music major is nothing like any other major.

So after a semester and a half of music theory breaking me over its knee, I decided it would be better to change my major than go insane and ram an oboe into my eye. Hello, art history major!

I wish that I had decided to do this art history thing from the start, not because I secretly wanted to the whole time, but because of this list of things I had to do to get into the music program, versus the things I had to do to get an art history major.

1) Start learning the required audition pieces a year before the audition--that is to say, my junior year of high school
2) E-mail Dr. Hulbert, my piano teacher, to make sure my audition pieces were acceptable
3) Discover my audition pieces weren't good enough and learn an extra minuet and memorize it in about two weeks
4) Audition for ten minutes
5) Get accepted into UPS and the music program, realize I don't have enough money to attend
6) E-mail Dr. Hulbert again
7) Come down to Tacoma again for a lesson, aka WE WON'T TALK ABOUT IT BUT THIS IS YOUR SECOND AUDITION
8) Have five thousand dollars magically added to my aid package

Or:

1) E-mail Dr. Hong expressing my interest in the art history major
2) Receive a response e-mail that says WELCOME TO THE ART HISTORY PROGRAM

So that's a pretty obvious decision. Don't worry, fans of Me, I will still be taking piano lessons at least. To be honest, I don't really have a choice. I said, "Oh hey Dr. Hulbert I'm changing my major" and he said WELL WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING YOU BETTER NOT LET IT INTERFERE WITH YOUR PIANO LESSONS. Then he added me to his piano roster for next semester. Oh okay.

To be honest, when I started this blog I had no idea how I would end it. Peace out.

Springtime! For Hitler!

Good Lord, I can't believe I only made ten blog posts before I fell off the blogwagon. This post isn't one that's particularly inspiring, but I want you all to know I'm not dead.

Things that happen in Washington as soon as the temperature hits fifty-one degrees:

1) Tiny shorts, sundresses, and sunglasses appear, whether they're necessary or not. I don't really understand this. It's like they hope that if they act like it's summer, it will be summer! Well I've got news for you. Eating the cake batter won't make your cake bake faster, dummies. That said, I applaud their bravery. Everyone's a little weird the first time they bare their legs after a long, dark, hairy winter.

2) People study outside on the grass, which is still wet. The professors seem pretty understanding when they get homework that is soaked through. On the other hand, you're basically sitting in a widely distributed puddle if you think about it, and if I'm paying 8,000 dollars to live in a tiny room, I will stay in my tiny room. It's better than a big puddle by a long shot. It has a bed, and an electric kettle.

Sidenote! If you want to know what to bring to college, don't bother with an electric kettle. I love mine, but I mostly drink tea with meals, and I'm out and about all day and so I can stop at the SUB and get more tea when I run out. I don't drink tea in the evenings and I don't drink hot chocolate so my electric kettle is only useful on days when I don't feel like getting dressed.

That's it. Go outside and play.

Keeping pets in college

As much as it may pain you to leave your beloved dog or rat or snake at home, I'm going to say what everyone else says, and tell you to not try to sneak it into the dorm. It's way too stressful, plus when it's combined with your first semester of college (because I'm assuming that after a semester you'll know better and wouldn't even dream of trying to keep a pet in the dorm) you are pretty much guaranteed to develop an ulcer. Trust me. I had a cockatiel that I had to give away before I left, and yeah, it was very sad, BUT. If I had tried to keep him in a dorm, he would have annoyed everyone else on the floor and made so much noise someone would have wrung his little neck. Imagine what some drunk kid would do to your cat.

That said, Rachel and I marched ourselves down to the pet store on Sunday and bought two fish bowls, a bag of gravel, two jars of fish food, a bottle of water conditioner, a net, and two betta fish. Seriously! That's all you need! You may be wondering if a fish can really satisfy your need to pet something. Well. No. But they're quiet and you can get bettas that match pretty much any color scheme, so they'll fit into your dorm nicely. Plus they're cheap enough that if your RA gives you whatfor for having a fish in the dorm, it's not really a financial loss to just dump it over the edge of the curtain while she's in the shower.

Not that you would want to. I've gotten pretty attached to Gabriel in the um, two days that I've had him. He's a pretty chill dude. Mainly he just likes to sit and watch me type/watch him make bubble nests. The total cost of everything was about twenty five bucks. That's how much you'd spend on a pizza, Miss Freshman 15. Not to mention the entertainment you can get out of showing them mirrors. HA! He thinks it's another fish. What an idiot.

(N.B.: Rachel and I bought two fish, but if you weren't in such a hurry to get to the end of the sentence, you would know that we also bought two fishbowls. Do not, in an attempt to be as cool as I am, buy two betta fish and put them both in one bowl unless they're both girls. They will beat each other down until one of them is dead. That is what I deem uncool).

The first week back

Observations from my first week back at school:

Number one) Feeling invigorated does not mean I will go to bed on time

Number two) College math is what you make it. I have made it a joke.

Number three) I am especially especially excited for my new music! I will not tell ANYONE yet what I'm playing, but it's going to be good. My piano teacher says I'm being very daring. This is good. This is a step up from him thinking I'm mentally handicapped.

Winter Break

It's almost done. This being my first extended break while in college, but not my last, I thought I'd think about first impressions.

Things About Winter Break:
1) You will miss college more than you thought you would, or perhaps just as much as you thought you would, but you will miss college.
2) You will be bored. Winter break is long enough that you don't feel the pressure to hang out with all your friends every day but too short to get a job or do something useful, thusly after the Christmas decorations are all taken down you will be left to wander aimlessly around the house.
3) Your friends will have gone two different directions: exactly the same, leading you straight back down into the spiked pit that is high school gossip, or totally different, and either not interested in talking to you (bad) or really interested in talking to you about how smart they are, and how they've seen the light, and how being in 100-level classes with 400 students each has really enlightened them. They just want to make the world an anti-consumerist, anti-meat, anti-establishment, better place. And smoke a lot of pot. You know? (worse)
4) You will gain weight. Everyone gains weight around the holidays, I know, but for me, who actually lost weight at college, this was a nasty shock. I am rapidly declining into a Fatty McFatterson, and the worst part is my high school friends don't even realize HOW SKINNY I WAS.
5) You will see all your ex-boyfriends around town at some point. It doesn't matter where you're from. You will see them. All of them, including the one you dated in middle school when you were all braces and hair. Some of you may actively seek the rendevouz, hoping to get some winter lovin'. But if you're me and would prefer never to speak to them again, you'll see them anyway. In public. Their mom will ask you how you're doing as though you never sent her son home in the middle of the night in tears. It will be awkward. It will be a point in your life where there is nothing you can do. Every possible choice is awkward.