two goals

I've decided to streamline my blog and focus on a smaller list of subjects. They are, in order of time-consumption:

1. Teaching
2. Cooking
3. Social exploits
4. Green Cleaning/Writing my thesis

Also I'm going to try to post more often. If past endeavors are any indication, you can expect progress on these goals to be sustained for a maximum of one week. Then, who knows, I'll probably go another two years without typing things. But at least I have a plan.

despues de la escuela

I just read my last blog post and laughed out loud at myself. It was like reading the words of someone describing having bamboo shoved under their pinky fingernail. That sucked, I hope it's over now. But just wait, friend, you have 9 more fingernails. And 8 of them are bigger than the pinky.

I get the same feeling when I look at my work ID card. The picture was taken the day before school started, when it was just the teachers in the building for orientation. My face is tanned and kind of plump looking, healthy... like the innocent, unsuspecting face of someone on You Can't Do That On Television... someone who is about to have a bucket of slime poured on their head.

Long story short, I had no idea what was about to happen to me. I read that post and thought, on any given day of this school year, a kid asking to take his shirt off would have been among the more "normal" things that happened that day. In fact, most days I'd be lucky if the kid, especially after gym class, even asked to take his shirt off (or walked in with it on in the first place.)

I have been screamed at, sworn at, berated, insulted and generally harassed by teenagers every single day this year. Some of the adults are not much better. I've been overwhelmed by traveling to different classrooms, unsure of my ability to do the job at all, and broken down in tears countless times, to other teachers and even in the classroom. My face looks gray and sunken compared to that ID photo. And somehow, on the last day of exams, when they all finally left and it was just the teachers again, I started to cry. You may be noticing a trend... It's true, all I did this year was f-ing cry. I'm not proud of myself.

I don't even know where I would begin writing about all the crazy stuff that has happened to me, and I'm sure it would be boring to anyone who isn't a high school teacher. (One thing I've learned is that school stories are interesting only to other "school people." I would like to thank all the non-school people who listened to my stories anyways and feigned varying degrees of interest.) So anyways, I'm not going to get into all that, I just want to say:

• I'm alive
• I'm glad it's over
• I'm really sorry I have been ignoring everyone's phone calls and emails for the past 10 months, and
  
• I'm now available to hang out, anywhere and any time (Sundays through Thursdays and weekends after work)! As the kids say, get at me.
  

fyi

I am alive. Mostly.

I am now a teacher, a shaper of young minds and whatnot. I have never worked this hard in my life.

I want to keep up with blogging because a lot of fascinating things happen to me on a day to day basis, but I barely have time to brush my teeth anymore. When I'm not teaching, I'm thinking about teaching or planning what I'll teach the next day, or the next class, or the next minute. And when I'm not doing that I'm going to department meetings or meeting with my kids' SPED liaisons to figure out how I can simultaneously teach 15 different classes. And when I'm not doing that I'm trying to find things to wear to school that are appropriate yet not so lame that the kids will make fun of me. And when I'm not doing that I'm spending trillions of dollars on school supplies. And when I'm not doing that I'm spending trillions of dollars on my car. And when all that is done, I'm left with about 4 hours every day, during which I sleep like I have never slept before.

But here are a few choice tidbits to tide you over until I can sit down and write for a while:

Me: Please take out your books and turn to page 10.
Student: Yo miss, why do we have to do this?
Me: Because that's where the lesson is.
Student: Fuck this, yo.

Me: Please take out your books and turn to page 10.
Student: Yo miss, it's hot in here. Can I take my shirt off?

Me: Please take out your books and turn to page 10.
Student: I don't have my book.
Me: Where is it?
Student: Why are you always up in my FACE, yo?

Me: Please take out your books and turn to page 10.
Student: Yo miss, didn't you wear that shirt last week?

new old post 3: on how I'm getting old

In my random internetty wanderings, I found this letter written by Katra, a blogger on Vox. Her blog is called "Freudenschade," which is a reversal of Schadenfreude (finding joy in other people's misfortune). So Freudenschade is supposed to mean being unhappy at other people's good fortune (see this article about a guy who felt guilty pleasure when they discovered the truth about that girl who plagiarized a novel in her college application).

I think it's a pretty cool concept, and clearly, a feeling I have all the time. It's similar to jealously, but feels more justified. I guess it's because the Freudenschade-feeler is the unhappy one, and we have this idea that gloating at others' pain is bad but self-hatred is kind of noble. Or maybe it's just because of the cool German name.

Anyways, enough about the word, back to the letter. This girl is turning 30, something I am kind of preoccupied with. What if I turn 30 and still don't have a real job? What if I'm never done with school? So her terminal degree and "real adult job" make me feel a twinge of jealousy. But after all, I have almost four more years to sort that out... yay?

Dear Twenties,

As I am sure you know, the time has come for us to part company. It's been a long, lovely ride, but this is my stop and I am getting off. Goodbye to you, suckas!

Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of things about you that were truly good: I gave up vegetarianism, for one, and every piece of bacon I now eat tastes just that much more delicious for its long absence. I was For Real In Love for the first time, which was also a pretty amazing thing. In retrospect, however, I'd have to say that my relationship with bacon has worked out much better for everyone involved. Except the pigs, of course.

In my twenties I think I also got the friendship thing right: I managed to keep the really important friendships and ditch the toxic ones. Learning to recognize the toxic ones alone was a major accomplishment. For some reason, it took me a while to figure out that if someone's basic function in your life is to make you feel shitty about yourself, then that person is not a friend. An ingenious insight, I know.

On the other hand, a lot about you straight up blew, Twenties. The long-nourished infatuations with people who didn't love me back (so much wasted time!), the exchange of running for sitting at a desk or on a couch, the mounting student loan and credit card debt -- those are fun little mistakes I plan never to repeat.

I hate to tell you Twenties, but I think the Thirties are going to kick your ass up one side and down the other. I'm no longer a student now, for the first time since before kindergarten. I have a terminal degree and a real adult job and a dog. I am at the beginning of my real life now, looking forward to establishing myself professionally and starting to earn a Serious Adult Salary (soon, we hope, right?).

The friendships keep getting better and better and I'm sure the relationships will, too, now that I know what I want out of them. One lesson learned, relationship-wise, for example: It is not okay if your boyfriend thinks that sitting on his couch smoking pot while you watch him play Nintendo is a fun date activity. Not okay.

Twenties, I bid you a bittersweet adieu. I'd love to stay and chat some more, but I have a mission. I am off to meet the Thirties and together we are going to step out and kick some serious ass. Sorry, Twenties, but it's over.

Really, finally over,

Katra

the state of my blog

a few weeks back I was surprised to find that industrious little high school math students came to my blog seeking information on how to use a TI-86. well, things have gotten weirder. here are a few of the more interesting searches that have brought people to my illustrious blog this week:

1. "stansfield tires" (I guess that's not too surprising, but why would someone actually seeking tires check out my blog?)
2. "wooden nickels"
3. "henry miller FEMA trailers" (at first I thought, what in the good green earth does henry Miller have to do with FEMA trailers? But then I googled it and discovered that the famous writer shares his name with a FEMA lawyer - who I can't ever recall blogging about, but whatever...)

and my personal favorite:

4. "how to write a apologize letter for drinking beer in school"

well, my friend, I hope reading my humble blog somehow helped you write a well-received apologize letter. my advice: perfect grammar will get you nowhere, so don't worry about that, but stay in school anyways. well at least high school. just don't go to grad school - it sucks, and even drinking beer during class doesn't make it more fun.

roo roo's meme

What were you doing 10 years ago?
I was 15 and had just started working at my very first real (not my dad's store) job. It was a truck stop/diner/bakery on route 20 in Worcester. It was actually kind of cool, in the front we served meatloaf and american chop suey, but in the back they were making these incredibly elaborate wedding cakes. I started off washing dishes and eventually got to wait tables. ah, the beginning of my long and illustrious waitressing career. good times, free food, learning dirty jokes from gnarly truckers. then right before school started, I got fired because the owner's daughter was back from 'maternity leave.'

What were you doing 1 year ago?
It was my first summer off the Cape in 4 years, and it was motherfucking hot in Lowell. I had just inadvertently signed myself up for a world of pain, working two impossible jobs at the same time, yet still managing to accomplish very little. I was at the office for like 9 hours a day, the first three of which I spent on email or the phone with boss #1, trying to coordinate a seminar series that never quite went according to plan. The rest of the day I sat outside writing in a notebook, pretending to work for boss #2 and freaking out because she was coming back from vacation and I had done nothing in weeks, making phone calls and socializing with passersby.

Kelly had just had Croix, so that was pretty exciting. there was a girl from Spain who had just arrived to live at my house for a month. Amanda and I spoke drunken Spanish to her at the Folk Festival. she kind of sucked, but there were way better foreign exchange students to come.

Five snacks you enjoy
1. string cheese
2. granola bars
3. string cheese
4. string cheese
5. string cheese

Five songs that you know all the lyrics to
1. "shoop" - salt n pepa. no self-respecting girl between the ages of 23 and 33 will ever forget a line of that one.
2. "ripple" - grateful dead. same as above, except by "girl" I mean "hippie"
3. "meet me in the morning" - bob dylan
4. "el baile de los que sobran" - Los Prisioneros
5. all of Remain in Light - Talking Heads

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire
1. buy a regular car
2. buy the house I live in right now
3. quit my job
4. go to Morocco
5. do something, uh, philanthropic with the rest

Five bad habits
1. spending money I don't have
2. vanilla kreme donuts
3. chronic, debilitating procrastination
4. constantly indulging my desires to escape (from the house, the office, work, thesis, responsibilities, awkward situations, consciousness, etc.)
5. self-indulgence part II: drinking, smoking, eating and sleeping as much as I want, pretty much all the time

Five things you like doing
1. road trips
2. iced coffee
3. writing
4. frolicking, preferably in nature
5. escaping/eating/drinking/smoking/sleeping

Five things you would never wear again
1. champion sweatshirts over white turtlenecks
2. jelly shoes
3. bodysuits with the snaps
4. blossom hats
5. legwarmers. kidding!

Five favorite toys
1. coffeemaker
2. coozies
3. cell phone
4. the internets
5. my brand new mortar and pestle

various internets

I spend a lot of time sitting at a computer pretending to work, but others don't have that luxury. so just in time for Monday morning, I wanted to share with you, the kind taxpayers of the Commonwealth, a few of the things that have been keeping me "busy" while I'm getting paid to reduce toxics. some call it webjunk, I call it a way of life.

• Erowid: a website about drugs, "providing access to reliable, non-judgmental information about psychoactive plants and chemicals and related issues." we're talking all 'psychoactive' drugs, both plant-based and chemical, legal and illegal: alcohol, MDMA, caffeine, morning glory, cannabis, heroin, chocolate, opium, LSD, and all manner of pharmaceuticals. the stories in the experience vaults are pretty f-ing fascinating.

• Gröûp X: thanks to Mr. H for bringing to my attention the best (and probably only) fake Arabic rap group ever. The Mario twins: they look so goddamn the same, if I ask them if they want an ice cream, they BOTH say yes!

• Personal DNA: it's that colorful little box in the sidebar. You take a long-ish test (good for when you're serious about procrastinating but want to feel like you just "did" something for the past hour) and it gives you a personality analysis. Then if you're really bored, you can Psych You/Psych Me and take tests for other people. No more work, EVER!

• The Sublime Philosophical Crap Test: like the Spark tests I used to do instead of writing my undergrad thesis, the people who wrote this are pretty funny, but you get that sinking feeling that they really do know what they're talking about. They give you a painfully long analysis - the very short version of mine was: You scored 55% Non-Reductionism, 11% Epistemological Absolutism, and 100% Moral Objectivism! You are an N-S-O: a metaphysical Non-Reductionist, an epistemological Skeptic, and a moral Objectivist! yay?

notes from underground

this may or may not come as a surprise to you, but I simply did not do any work this week. I last blogged on Monday, a day that was completely devoted to useless introspection and worrying about not doing any work. The maxim of the day was:

1. Write a crap thesis
2. Edit it

After blogging about it and washing some dishes, I called [GERTRUDE STEIN] and broke down, hysterically returning to "I'm a confused young child and I need my mother" mode. [GERTRUDE STEIN] is a professor with many misguided students of her own, but she was a little taken aback upon discovering that I have no "goal for the future." Oh well. We set up a meeting. I went out drinking in Nashua and saw some good live music.

On Tuesday I slept late, accosted [MARV ALBERT] and told him about my dilemma. He left me with the following:

Motivation does not cause production, production causes motivation.

Seemed like a good idea at the time. Then I had my meeting with [GERTRUDE STEIN], who assigned me a single task to be completed by the next day:

Make a list of things to do.

I made the list, divided the tasks into four categories of difficulty and time-consumption, and got ready to tell [JOSEPH STIGLITZ] that I had decided not to finish on time. He was, to say the least, not pleased. It was very awkward, I think he felt like has done all he can and failed. Of course, I'm the one who sucks, but I think deep down he knows that.

I went home, took a long scalding shower, went out drinking in Cambridge, and saw some good live music.

On Wednesday I slept late, and [GERTRUDE STEIN] stopped by my house to see my list of things to do. I showed it to her and we decided on some deadlines for things I should get done by our next meeting. She gave me some money and a foot-bath-thingy that she bought for my dead grandmother. Then I went up to Salem, dropped my vacuum cleaner off to be fixed, and went to the music store to see about my guitar. It would cost $150 to fix, a big expense considering I paid $25 for the guitar, so it's back to sandpaper and wood glue for me and my axe. The music store dude also tried to help me find a 4-track cassette deck with pitch control to slow down my interviews with, the cheapest used one was $180. I said to the dude,

I just don't have enough money to fix all of my problems in life.

When I got home I smoked a little [PLAIN OLD TOBACCO] and started rereading Notes From Underground. Let me tell you, there could not have been a worse time for me to get [PLAIN OLD TOBACCO] and read a narrative about inertia and alienation. The Underground Man said:

Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself.

So yeah, that was depressing. On Thursday I woke up early and got a phone call from my friend [JUDY BLUME], whose anti-procrastination advice seems to have failed both of us. I went to school and picked up the readings for the conference paper, put them in my bag, and proceeded along with my time-wasting. I did some emailing, checked out some phrenology charts, and considered doing radical brain surgery on myself.

[DOSTOEVSKY HIMSELF] approached me and asked how things were going. I told him exactly how things were going... He said that in the 13 years it took him to write his dissertation, the best advice he ever got was accept his own unique writing process, as different and/or crazy as it might seem to others. He told me he has noticed that I get myself worked up so much before I even begin writing, and that certainly adds to the amount of time it takes me to produce. A lot of people think that's my 'problem' because they can just sit down and write something. He told me:

Getting overwhelmed is the first step of your process, always. But in a way, you MUST work yourself up, so don't beat yourself up over it. Recognize that you do get overwhelmed, that you will get overwhelmed, and accept it as a part of your writing process.

That was some of the most sensible advice I've gotten so far. Everyone tells me to stop 'being hard on myself,' but it seems much more useful to frame it as accepting something I do and working with myself, rather than fixing something I do (or don't do) and trying to change myself. I also tend to believe that I ought to be hard on myself, considering that myself is a person who does very little work. Anyhow, that made me feel better and gave me the energy I needed to get through the rest of the day.

I TA'ed my butt off for the hour or two left before class, sharing some sage-ish advice about the group projects, while simultaneously trying to do the reading that all the actual 'students' had finished days before. Whatever.

To make a long story short, my thesis is no closer to finished than it was two weeks ago. But I got a slew of [hopefully] good advice nuggets in my travels, I have a dozen new articles to read and a new paper to write, and I did a lot of yoga, drinking, and live-music-listening. Now I have to go make some lentil stew, lest I lose my not-writing-my-thesis momentum.

deterioration and reframing of the plan

I hadn't had an e-crisis in days, then this morning I woke up from a thesis nightmare of epic proportions. I've been pretty much bipolar all day, vacillating between ridiculously happy and relieved and ridiculously depressed and hopeless as I seriously consider, for the first time, the fact that I probably won't finish on time to graduate in June, but more importantly, that I can consciously decide not to. April 19th, the day when master's theses are supposed to be submitted to the library, is paralyzing the crap out of me - I have the power to change that, but the repercussions could be very damaging.

If all I had to do was write my thesis, April 19th might not be so scary. I could make myself just sit down and write for the next 22 days and end up with something - it wouldn't be as good as I want it to be, but it would be done and I could get on with my life. Unfortunately, I have a few other obligations hanging over my head: my RA, my TA, a paper I'm supposed to be helping to write and present at a conference, and a looong-overdue project from the fall. While my boss/chair has given me permission to pretty much slack off on everything except the TAing, I can't help but feel guilty that I'm still getting my exorbitant (ha) RA paycheck and not doing much.

Soooo, I had a crazy thought this morning... What if I just decided to be honest with myself and admit that this isn't going to happen? I could concentrate on the other stuff, feel good about actually getting something, anything done, and write my thesis over the summer. I'd have to justify my reasoning to a lot of people, and feel like I'm disappointing my parents and professors (whether or not it's true).

Would it be the end of the world? No, but I hestitate to give myself permission for something like that, because I'm notorious (in my own mind) for giving myself an inch and taking a mile. I know that if I make the decision to extend my deadline, I'll be taking one more step towards the precipice that is never finishing. Summer could easily turn into fall and then winter, etc., and the next thing you know I'll be 40 and still trying to finish my thesis. It's going to be especially dangerous if I get a job.

I just want to do a good job on this thesis though, I care so much about the topic that I couldn't fathom handing in something I'm not at least 75% proud of. I know I have to let go of some things, I know it's never going to be as perfect as I'd like, but I just can't help thinking that a few extra weeks would change everything.

It's probably nuts to think that, and I'll probably end up getting talked out of all this by the end of tomorrow. A part of me wants to get talked out of it, to be encouraged and told, even if it's a lie, that I can and will finish by the 19th. The other part of me wants to be told what I really want to hear, that everything will be fine if I take some extra time and concentrate on other stuff for a while. I guess either way, I just want someone to tell me that everything's going to be OK, and I want it to be true.

I've been running this seemingly lose-lose situation by various people today, basically looking for reassurance, because to be honest, I'm a very confused emotional weakling right now. A girl at school told me "No one will be disappointed in you" if I don't finish on time. It might not sound like much, but I was unbelievably touched by that, and if there hadn't been so many other people around I would have let myself burst into tears.

The only thing that gave me hope was a nugget of wisdom from a friend who has proved to be the most unfailing moral compass I know (and I seek advice, shall we say, pathologically). He has talked me through many an ethical dilemma, from what to eat to how to frame my thesis, and talked me down from many a ledge, whether he believes it or not. I will now stop being wishy-washy. Anyhow, I told him about all of this and as always, he had some good advice. I wrote it down:

Things to do:

1. Write a crap thesis
2. Edit it

So therein lies The Plan 3.0: I am going to sit my lazy ass down and write something (as soon as I'm done with this final procrastiatory blog post). It will not matter how crappy it is, it will only matter that it's a comprehensive skeleton draft of my thesis. Then I will edit it. This will hopefully give me some momentum, which I certainly lack right now. I will let the chips fall where they may with the deadlines and the other stuff, at least until I get that done.

The issue, I guess, is not whether I have a finished thesis by April 19th, but whether I commit myself to finishing at all. In my head I am committed, but without some actual product to back it up, mental committent will not be enough. The actual product doesn't have to be perfect or polished or even a whole chapter, but I realize I have to produce something. I've definitely decided to produce things before, with varying degrees of success, but I think, and sincerely hope, that this Crap Thesis idea might be concrete enough to work.

So I'm off to do, um, that. If I can get out of this funk, everyone will benefit. I'll have a better outlook on life and everyone else will get a break from reading this solipsistic crap I keep writing.

the plan

a few days ago I caught up with my friend Kelly from college; she had a baby a few months ago and I've been so bad at keeping in touch with her lately. She lives kind of far away, in exotic Deluxbury, and it's tough for us to see each other since she had the baby (which doesn't explain why I can't seem to find time to talk to her on the phone, but anyways...)

Sometimes I feel like we have less in common since she's "settled down," she's got lots of adult things to deal with while my life is unfettered by marriage, homeowning, baby-raising, etc. Besides the occasional pang of guilt for being incredibly irresponsible and short-sighted most of the time, I'm pretty much happy with that - I just really really wish I could procrastinate less.

I was complaining to Kelly about my time-wasting habit, which used to be something we had in common. In college we both wound up with majors that required us to produce mass quantities of writing every week, which is pretty much kryptonite to severe procrastinators. The two of us seemed to constantly be one-upping each other in that department: if one of us said "I've got a 30-page paper to write, I haven't even started it, and it's already two days late," the other would come back with somthing like "yeah, well I've got a 40-page paper to write, I haven't even started it or done the reading, it's already three days late, and I haven't slept in 72 hours." And unfortunately, it would be true. We were consistently behind, asking for extensions after papers were already late, never able to catch up. We never did our reading and we were always stressed out, pulling all-nighters and writing exclusively in long, cracked-out jags. When we graduated, and it was a miracle that we did, I was pretty sure I never wanted to write another word.

Proving that the gods are indeed crazy, Kelly and I both wound up writing for a living, more or less. The other day on the phone when we started to commiserate about the evil that is The Deadline, I told Kelly how hopeless I felt about my whole thesis problem, how I was pretty sure I'd never figure out how to "get work done" like normal people. Then she dropped a bomb on me, telling me that she had quit procrastinating and had the solution. I was shocked to hear that my former partner in crimes of laziness had quit - it was like a knife to my heart to feel like I was now officially the only one with this, um, malaise?

Apparently Kelly's epiphany came when a coworker told her something very simple like "worry today doesn't solve work tomorrow," which somehow snapped her out of her decade-long procrastination funk. She didn't really elaborate on her exact strategy for quitting, but the fact that she did it, if only for a week so far, gave me a lot of hope for my own situation. More importantly, it made me realize that just how much the 'worrying' can hold me hostage - the dread of the blank page, the paralyzing fear of never finishing...

When I got off the phone with Kelly I felt ready to get all serious about work...and then I checked my email. Out of, say, twenty emails, five were spam and fifteen were completely pointless. Emails from people I talk to or see almost every day, useless communications that someone decided to CC me on, ridiculous forwards about guardian angels. Normally I would read each of these emails and reply to the majority of them, even though it would actually be faster to get in the car, drive to school or wherever, see these people in person, have a five-minute conversation and be done with it. So I decided to delete all of my non-essential emails, and it was so f-ing liberating. I can't believe it never occurred to me before, how much of my time I waste emailing, how much of other people's time I waste, and how much they waste my time.

I had a similar revelation a few weeks ago regarding my cell phone, and pretty much stopped picking up the phone altogether unless I knew exactly why the person was calling and really wanted to talk to them. That was really liberating too, but poorly executed. A normal person not picking up the phone is probably screening their calls and listening to the voicemails later on. Once I accumulated four or five messages, however, it just seemed too daunting to even listen to them, so I didn't...for like two weeks. As it turns out I missed out on some pretty important stuff, not to mention the fact that everyone started to hate me. People kept asking if I was avoiding them, and I was a little embarassed - but you can't just tell someone they're not worth your time, even if it's totally true. I'm addicted to human interaction in all its forms, but it's something I just have to lay off if I'm ever going to graduate.

Anyhow, the point of all of this is that I am going to take advantage of all these lessons I've learned recently and I'm putting them together in a new plan to quit procrastinating. This is a two-pronged approach, combining two strategies I've tried before to no avail: getting over the fear and living under a rock. I know from many past experiences that neither of these works for me on its own, but I'm hoping that together they'll create some kind of wondrously fruitful chemical reaction in my brain. So this week, my mantra is "over fear, under rock," and I plan to repeat it ad nauseum whenever I feel the urge to procrastinate.

On that note, I've been writing this post for a while now and I'm sure I could find a better use of my time. I'm not saying I will, but I could... I'll probably just go to sleep, I'm exhausted from a long day of green cleaning and talking to people, two things I'm not allowing myself to do for the next four days. I'm off to the little Walden Pond that exists only in my mind, where I plan to be very hermit-like, very self-absorbed, and very productive this week. So if you call me and I don't pick up the phone, rest assured, it's not you, it's me.

handy like what

today I used the following things:

• hammer
• power drill
• spade
• nails, screws, AND brads. yeah brads!
  
• picture wire
• wire cutters
• pliers
• yardstick
• pencil
• allen wrench
  
• level
• screwdriver
• pointy stick
• sewing machine
  
• studsensor (like I need one of those)
  

who's impressed? who's impressed that I OWN all of those things? I know I am.

and another thing...

I know, two posts in one day after a veritable lifetime of nothingness... Anyhow, I just wanted to let everyone know that my flickr is back in full effect (I had made it private due to some stalker-ish ex issues). If you like pictures of

cute babies









food









and me being a weirdo









then this is the place to go.

my new haircut

story to follow as soon as I have time to write it... this is such a lame post considering that I've written nothing since before Christmas, but I just have to get this out in public, so that I may ask the public: is this a mullet?