Category: Journal

(Originally at 7:15 a.m.) I slept thirteen hours last night.  Basically without waking.  It’s awesome.  I don’t feel nearly as bitchy.  I do miss Kyle a whole lot though.  I think he was about the most prevalent character in all my dreams last night.  I really wish he was here to hold me and see things with me.

(At 9:21) Well, I’m no on the bus tour.  We’re all better rested and things today.  I’m excited to be on the trip and I think we’ll get to relax and joke and have fun.  Plus, we all get along so well.

This secret part of me loathes travel.  I mean, I like seeing other things and going places, but I don’t handle an ocen of separation well.  I can’t buy a phone card cos I have no coinage and the internet here is a frustrating and long process.  I’ll have to figure it out later.  I know it will get taken care of in the next few days but I hate waiting.

Paris is alright.  We went to the city center today.  I could see the Eiffel Tower and that fountain in all those postcards  plus the Egyptian Obelisk.  It sucks cos its not the kind of day where I feel like doing anything.  I’m crampy, tired and cold.  No good.  Luckily, we’re in for the night so I can just go to bed and wake up feeling better.

Oh, new notebooks are so exciting!  even though i failed to finish the last before i lost it, i’m excited to see the direction this one will take.  yikes.

The trip so far is going well.  OUr trip out of KCMO was delayed quite a while on the tarmac.  I have no idea how long though.  Prolly an hour and a half after we boarded and it was an hour late eboarding.  Ugh.  Fuck subsidized airlines and their dumb business models.  I slept for most of the time and kept waking up confused that we weren’t in the esky.  It didn’t complicate much… We arrived and deplaned at 8, just in time to run across EWR to snag our connection to CDG>  The flight to CDG was good.  I arte Indian food, slept and read some of We Wish to Inform You Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With OUr Families.  It’s excellent.

It’s summer. Really, truly. Today is my first day without obligation, except I did have obligation which sort of belittles the joy of summer, doesn’t it? My weekend was fun though, so let’s start there. Yesterday, I bought Animal Crossing. It’s an awesome game and I’m pretty much addicted to it. I spent like 5 hours playing it yesterday and about 2 today. It’s so cute. And I kind of like just wandering around and being bored in a little 3d universe with talking animals rather than this universe with no animals who talk. It was mother’s day and so we did china inn over the dinner table with the family and then I went out to chipotle with Thomas. That was pretty much fantastic, it’s always nice to catch up with him. His sister’s pregnant again so we talked for a bit about that! Babies are so exciting, I think. She’s due in November. This is me taking note. After dinner we went and harassed Kandy at Barnes and Noble for a bit, threatened to have a book fight between US History books and WWII history books but it never matriculated, in part cos we were worried about getting into trouble by someone else… ie not Kandy. That would be devastating. Later, I went to Mle’s and discovered the nintendo wii. Oh my. We played Rayman’s Raving Rabbids and it was fucking awesome. They make one for DS but I read a review of it and it turns out that it doesn’t have any of the mini games. Uggggh. I want it. And I want a Wii. But I think if I got both I’d probably fail next semester.

This morning I went to school at 10 for a meeting with bearman’s class thing. That was mostly just boring. it was nice to see people and it’s nice to have itineraries and be excited about the trip but 10 a.m. is just too early. fuck. so i sat there half-listening to all the important stuff about our trip which is this wendesday and then we went to lunch at planet sub and shoe shopping. in typical jess fashion, i left my credit card in the back pocket of my capris which i wore out last night but not out this morning. eegh. i looked adorable today though, in my black tubetop and sarong. whee. i love the summer, have i mentioned that? i’m also addicted to mcdonalds sweet tea. i’m gonna have to drink as much as i can before i leave the country. i’m sure no one will mind though. oi. i also moved out of the apartment. i mostly just had like 4 or less articles of clothing, some boxes of books, and a bunch of furniture. we got everything moved out. it made me really sad. i guess it seems that moving out would make anyone sad, but really it makes you think about moving in… and how happy things were then and how not happy things are now and it’s just a little bit overwhelming. i’m hoping that this trip to europe does really good thing for my friendship with joe, but who knows. i’m just gonna try my hardest to make the best of it and hope that by the time we get back we feel like it’s a good idea to keep in touch through the rest of our lives.

tonight people are gathering at the state lake, so if its not raining i might go out there, but i’m not really sure. i didn’t get enough sleep last night… so it seems like my best option might be to get some rest and try to get over this head cold before i leave for europe. wish me luck 🙂 also, for those who don’t know… my itinerary in europe looks something like this:
Day 1: Fly from Kansas City to Paris
Day 2: Walking Tour of Paris, until you all collapse from jet lag.
Day 3: More wallking in Paris, focusing on the rise of the university
and a visit to Notre Dame Cathedral–discuss the rise of Christian
Humanism.
Day 4: Transfer to Geneva on the TGV, walking tour of Geneva.
Day 5: Geneva–birthplace of Calvinism.
Day 6: Transfer to Florence, birthplace of the Renaissance.
Day 7: Florence.
Day 8: Transfer to Rome via Assisi (visit the Bascilla of St. Francis).
Day 9: Guided tour of Vatican City.
Day 10: Guided tour of Rome–take the overnight train to Munich.
Day 11: Guided sightseeing of Munich.
Day 12: Transfer to Erfurt via Watburg Castle (where Luther hid from
the Emperor). Tour the university town of Erfurt.
Day 13: Transfer to Berlin via Wittenberg. Guided tour of Wittenberg.
Day 14: Guided tour of Berlin.
Day 15: Fly back to Kansas.

I packed yesterday. I’m taking a single bookbag. I hope it weighs less than 20 pounds just as a point of personal pride. Inside of it? 14 shirts. 5 skirts. 3 pairs of shoes. 2 dresses. 1 belt. 1 scarf. Some bobby pins. And less than 3 oz. each of shampoo, conditioner, hair lotion, super-hair-lotion and deodorant.

I just got back from a week in Carbdonale which was nice and relaxing. I got to spend time with Kyle and company and i finished up my semester in high style. Yay. We played a lot of guitar hero and mostly just spent time together, which I enjoyed. Ahh ahh ahh. You know how it all goes… it’s so … relaxing. And I’m so incredibly happy with him. I like how well we get along with each other’s friends. We hung out at the royals game with the history department last friday and then the next night we went to Davis’s going away party and then to Lacey’s cinco de mayo party. Lacey’s party was pretty great. It was a good group of people that I don’t see a lot of and it was nice to just drink and relax together. I had an awesome time, and Kyle enjoyed himself too. I really love having a boyfriend who is social enough to go out and not just be some sort of accessory to me the entire night. I’m glad I got out of the habit of dating people who were shy a few years ago.

After Lacey’s we woke up with bad headaches and laid around until about 1 or 2. Then, we went to his parent’s house so that we could get ready to head back to Carbondale. We got into Carbondale in time to watch Entourage… and that we did. I’m really becoming a fan of that show. I need to watch a whole bunch of episodes of it as long as I have season one here at the house.

This past week, I was able to get my blog stuff pulled from movabletype in the few minutes that chaostasis.net was working so I imported them to wordpress. I’m really impressed with wordpress so far. I wish that I could have the extended entry privacy I enjoyed on my domain… because i could have a journal entry and then a private journal entry, but that’s not so much of a hassle on wordpress… I just have to have two entries now. and the nice thing is that i can have different passwords for different entries. So the things I want to keep private I can share with whomever I want to when I want to and its not like giving someone complete access to my private journal. that’s exciting news. It’s also set up to export to facebook again and I think i’ve decided i’m going to keep comments open. Hooray.

Agh, I’m too tired to really finish this. I leave for Europe in a matter of days though. I’m so excited. And i’m excited that I start moving into my apartment tomorrow/monday/tuesday. Kyle, James, Dad are going to help me move in shifts. And I get to see Thomas tomorrow for a little while too, it’s been quite a while so it’ll be nice to get to have some dinner and chat.

chaostasis.net is fixed!!!!! YAY!

Today I get home sort of anticipating a lecture/fight about my financial situation with my mom. Instead, I am delighted by some of the most hilarious conversations of my week.

First, I walk through the door and mom’s watching the news. They’re talking about this Virginia Tech shooting which is of course captivating the country because it’s so sad. And it’s just weird. It’s weirding me out because I’m so desensitized to these sorts of things. Probably because lots of people die every day and we always hear it on the news. Either that or all that Zoo Tycoon DS that I play has me unconcerned with humans. Anyway. I walk in and talk to mom about that for a little while. Her remark is “that’s why you have to be careful about who you date.” What could that possibly mean? I try to inquire about what it is that she’s suggesting and she doesn’t really have much of an answer. I think she just thinks it’s likely that I’ll pick the kind of guy to shoot up my dorm and the engineering building if I break his heart. Tsk tsk. I’m just going to try not to break any hearts. What a strange, strange woman.

I’ll warn you that the next conversation is not for the faint of heart or the remotely prude.

Second, my dog destroyed my vibrator while I was in Canada. This isn’t that surprising because she destroys all of my nice things when she’s mad at me and when I leave the country she gets mad at me. She has a tendency to go for things she knows I’ll be more upset about… IE expensive panties… et cetera. But this week I apparently had that within her range when she goes through my closet. I have a suspicion that she goes through my closet and sorts things so they’re easily destroyable whenever I sleep somewhere other than home. What a bitch. So i have some forewarning of this because I come home and find the battery pack/speed adjuster back on the floor. Sammie is in my room at this point probably delighting in her realization that she can sleep instead of staying up all night slaying Francesca and I look at her and go “you are such a bitch. why did you do that?” she just grins. and i say “i can’t believe you.” and then she starts growling because she doesn’t like getting attention without affection. I was kind of hoping that would be the end of it. Of course… with my family… it’s not.

It was a really nice day out. Like 74 degrees on my way into work which means probably about 80 at the day’s peak. I go into the dining room after eating my delicious dinner of tofu and udon because muffin is being all dancy. Combined with the look of fresh cut grass outside, Muffin convinces me to go out and play with him. Plus, Samarama has refused to come inside most of the day because she loves the weather. So I go outside and toss a stuffed animal that Sam has destroyed around with Muffin. Sammie refuses to play at first because she’s trying to dissect a different toy but eventually knowing that Muffin is winning gets to her and she joins us. We play for about 15 or 20 minutes and then I head in and talk to my parents about how they’ve gotten lazy.

This is where things go terribly awry. So my parents start talking about how Sammie destroys everything. And how she missed me a whole lot. Then mom asks if she usually runs all over the room all night. I say that I don’t know because I just sleep through it, but that I wouldn’t be surprised. Mom and Dad remark that they didn’t sleep at all when they slept in my room to keep the dogs quiet because the dogs kept running all over and Sammie kept destroying my things. This is where I start to get awkward because I know because I can’t find anything but the battery pack cap of Francesca that they surely have to have found it and thrown it away. Then Mom just brings it up… “She also destroyed something else of yours.” Me: “Yeah, I figured as much.” Mom: “…which I threw away.” Me: “That’s cool.” Mom:”because i figure that makes it unsanitary.”

At that point. I decided the conversation would be over. So I went back to my room. Giggled. And called Kyle to tell him the story. His response was something along the lines of “Well… I mean… They had to know that you… That’s weird.”

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Again, the good news is. I love awkward. Love, love, love, love, love awkward.

Oh, Canada. What joy of joys. calgary, in all reality, was a little bit boring. the problem with it being that everything closes down at like 6 p.m. because we were downtown. and there’s just no convincing us that we’re going to spend 2 dollars canadian to get in the cab plus 20 canadian cents per every 150 m. We don’t even know what a meter is. We are from America!

Luckily, Bearman and Cara and I are about the perfect travellers because we don’t know what stress means. So we just get there and we do things like take naps and go on walks to random places and eat based on my bizarre demands. and i show up without any money by accident and we get that all worked out. it was awesome. i have some really good stories from the trip though, of course.

first, our plane was super delayed. we got there at 8 and our plane didn’t even leave till 12:10. What assholes. So we end up there really early, after my not getting to bed until four+ because I spent the night with Kyle (not what you think, mostly, it was just a long conversation about our pasts. that’s really a different story, but i’d just like to say that it’s amazing to have a boyfriend who has such a smiliar past as you. it’s nice to not feel like someone is able to hold anything over your head, even if they don’t understand it. so i’m really happy about that). Anyway. I’m exhausted when we get to the airport. Kyle, being such a great guy, sticks around and talks to the three of us for about an hour or two before he has to get his dad his car back. We fly to Chicago and that’s where we meet our first story: The Chinese People.

The Chinese People followed us everywhere we went once we got to Chicago. They followed us onto our plane to Calgary. Then, they followed us to the hotel. Then, they went to the same conference. Then, they followed us back to the airport. The best thing about these people was that the woman one wore really traditional chinese clothes made in american styles. so she had the shirt with the silk embroidery stuff and the silk closures and they were all put on weird quilt fabric that was very american. this didn’t change throughout the conference, either. everytime you saw them, they were in these strangely concocted chinese-american clothes. sheer brilliance.

Next, we went to the conference where we met Tim. Tim is a friend of Bearman’s. He was our moderator and the chair of the History section of the WSSA. He was awesome, but took his work so seriously. He was constantly micromanaging everything in the best of ways. Like, I know that just because he was there we could basically wander around aimlessly and know that if we were supposed to be doing something else, then we’d do it.

My favorite part of the trip was probably the dinner with the history section of the WSSA… in part because it meant being around historians. Dinner started a little bit slow but I got bored of just talking to Bearman and discussion moved to alcohol and travel on the other side of the table so we quickly opened it a whole group discussion. It was mostly awesome. I drank Canadian beer (Alexander Keith’s which was alright) and we took turns telling stories about our travels around the world. I like how comfortably i fit in among historians. it was also really awesome that the whole conference was really open to Cara and I even though we were undergraduates. They treated us no different than someone would treat a colleague or something. I had a great time.

I need to update the world about my trip to Calgary.
Let’s put it this way:
Conferences rock.
Being poor doesn’t.
Sandwiching a conference with seeing Kyle, amazing.

I listened to the decemberists on my way into work today while operating both chopsticks and a moving vehicle. do my subtleties ever cease to amaze? i think not.

i’ve had lots of funny conversation with tyler tonight:
On seeing Kyle wednesday…
[19:49] Tyler: why wed?
[19:56] tasteslikeveg: well i leave town thursday. and he doesn’t really have any obligations thursday and will have to miss his friday classes anyway for that parli tournament in KCMo so he’s coming in early to spend a night with me in Blue Springs
[19:56] Tyler: awww
[19:56] Tyler: thats precious
[19:56] Tyler: it reminds me of a momma black widow eating her mate
[19:56] tasteslikeveg:
[19:57] tasteslikeveg: Black Widow references shouldn’t actually bring a smile to my face. But they do.
[19:57] Tyler: lol
[19:59] tasteslikeveg: What does that say about me?
[19:59] tasteslikeveg: Other than I hate patriarchy?
[20:00] Tyler: you envy hitler
[20:02] tasteslikeveg: hahaha. I wrote a short story once that claimed he was assassinated by Eva Braun
[20:02] tasteslikeveg: instead of killing himself.
[20:03] Tyler: hmm
[20:04] Tyler: you need to get an evaluation

He drives an interesting point. Maybe I’ll tell my therapsychiatrist about this fascination with the black widow. i’m sure he wouldn’t think anything of it. i also thought about how black widows have really pretty red hourglasses and that would be a fun tattoo to have. then i realized that people might find it odd. and i also realized that it’s kind of odd to be so into an animal it isn’t even safe for me to touch. it’s liking thinking raccoons are cute, accurate but dangerous.

Rachel shared the picture on the left with me. I laughed for a very long time. No one gets knitting jokes, though, so I haven’t had the joy of sharing it with anyone who really gets the joke. Instead, I shared it with Tyler to rub it in that he’s not getting the hat I was making him.

I read more of The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene tonight at Lola’s while drinking my single cup of tea because they didn’t have enough for my free refill. Delicious. I’m not even kidding. It was so good. And the book is awesome. It makes me think a lot about how relative everything really is. We read this article in the NY Times science section for my science class and it was pretty boring but it talked about how time is really different on earth compared to other planets, which makes it difficult for the author of the article to imagine life on these other planets. The book kept making me think about that. It turns out Orson Scott Card is right: If Ender travels at the speed of light, he would not age but his sister would. Brilliant. In a very beautiful, lonely, romantic way it makes me think that it’s both possible that we live completely absent the interpretations of other people. Making us wholly individual, unique. While, at the same time, our perception of distance from others is really just that–perception. It turns out that everything is just a matter of how we experience it. Isn’t that beautiful?

Last week I called several members of the Washburn faculty ignorant to their faces at a committee meeting. I’m quite proud of myself about this. Bearman’s taking credit for teaching me everything I know… but I am fairly certain that I’ve always been a badass. Some things are just innate. And I don’t think any of them understood that I was calling them ignorant. Because they’re ignorant, probably. Saying insults that people understand at faculty meetings to the face of people with doctorates = something to work toward. Let the record show that I had plenty of good reason to call them ignorant. They were treating GPAs like some be-all-end-all standard of merit at university. All a GPA measures is yr ability to pick classes/professors well. Either way, Bearman and I lost the meeting. It seems. What assholes.

I also hung out with the debate squad over the weekend. it went better than some might have predicted. all-in-all, i don’t think a return to the squad next year would be the end of my life. so we’ll see how things go with the coaches and get that all sorted out. i also went to dinner with shanna which was very enjoyable. we had kiku’s. then i rented more 24. awesome. it turns out i really miss a lot of those friendships. i’m happy to start trying to restore them.

In 48 hours, I will be with Kyle so he can take me to the airport early Thursday morning. In 72 hours, I will be in Canada. My week is not shaping up too terribly.