urbane renewal

I have a lot of catching up to do. To all three of you people who actually read my narcissistic ramblings, I hope you haven't been crying yourself to sleep every night, asking The Lord why He has not answered your prayers for more blogging from me. I also hope that my lack of blogging hasn't caused anyone to get more work done while at work. As you know, people died so that we could slack off and read blogs at work.

Now then, where to begin? Let's go back, way back in the day to Christmas. It was good. I decided that "finishing my final papers" was a pipe dream, asked my kindly professor for an extension, packed up my most festive belongings, and went to Worcester. Only one of my Woo peeps was around so I was forced to spend a lot of quality time with my family. They have recently given up hoping that I'll get married and resigned themselves to Single Anne in some very interesting ways. Case in point:

Yes, that's me with the awesome set of Tupperware my parents got me for Christmas. Their line of reasoning, as my mother so tactfully explained, is that normal people get Tupperware (et al) as wedding gifts because they are "setting up house." Since I won't be getting married anytime soon, it logically follows that I won't be getting any wedding gifts. I do, however, need Tupperware just as much as a married person might. Despite many key differences, I have a few things in common with married people, namely that I Cook Food, Eat Food, and Put Food In The Refrigerator. Other notable presents included a nice set of Pyrex, a cookbook, and a double boiler. My brother got games and money and other fun stuff, but I'm not bitter.

So while at my parents' house, one of my traditional favorite activities is to go through the drawers and closet in my old room, scrounging for stuff that may be useful to me now that I'm a starving Rad Student. I found some good books that I never read when they were assigned, some shoes I'll probably never wear, some age-old chocolate that I totally ate anyways, and... my old diary in the drawer of my nightstand...

Now, finding an old diary could be considered a happy occasion - it's fun to look back and remember all the crazy shit you did when you were younger. Reading my old diary, however, my nostalgic giddiness was soon replaced by a feeling of extreme panic. This diary, chronicling my last year of high school and first year of college, had been laying around in a drawer in my room for seven years. About two years ago, my mother began sleeping in my room occasionally because my father snores loudly. About five years ago, my parents began moving random crap (the Nordic-Track, appliances, etc.) into my room. Most importantly, about twenty-five years ago my parents began going through my stuff at will. I'd be very naive to assume they never happened upon this old diary, and I'd be even more naive to assume that if they found it they'd say "Oh, look, it's Anne's old diary. We'd love to see what's inside... But no, we have the utmost respect for my daughter's privacy, as well as the utmost faith that there's nothing in there that she wouldn't have already told us! We're walking away now, bye-bye Anne's diary!"

It's pretty likely that given a whole seven years they've read that thing at least once or twice, and I am officially mortified. My only hope is that they got distracted by a phone call or fire alarm right before they reached the deflowering episode. Needless to say I put that thing right into my overnight bag and brought it back to Lowell, where it can't do any more harm than it's already done.

Well, I'm not doing a very good job of catching up here, but I have a Grad Student Association meeting to go to. I love being part of an organization whose members are so f-ing cool that they meet on Fridays from 5-7pm. Peace!