5.13.2006

listening to: s&g, blues run the game

do you guys ever do a thing where you've heard a song before and you've always been kind of indifferent to it... oh sure, you like it, but it's not your favorite? and then one day you hear it at just the right moment and it's suddenly a perfect song and you can't stop listening to it?

today that song is simon & garfunkel - blues run the game. you should download it; i bet you'd like it. it's perfectly mellow and sweet and jangly.

to best recreate my listening experience i recommend you follow these steps:
1. make it rain.
2. put on pajama pants with ducks on them.
3. curl up in bed with a mug of coffee.
4. pretend to take notes on midnight's children.
5. play song. (repeat).

wherever i have gone
wherever i've been and gone...

posted by ~renata~ (3:52 PM)
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wtf where is my lizard watch?! my mom JUST sent me a new one because i lost my old one and she's amazing, and now it's lost too?!

i've never lost a watch before this! i've broken a few, but i don't just LOSE stuff. and especially not watches--they go on my wrist, and i take them off at night and set them on my dresser. where else could it beeee?

(and yes, i looked on the floor by/behind the dresser, and in the dresser drawers in case it fell in there. it DIDN'T.)

grr-pants.

posted by ~renata~ (3:00 PM)
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listening to: lee press-on & the nails, enjoy yourself

(hi keith!)

i dreamed that the draft of my history paper that i turned in yesterday had all these stupid little notes to myself still left in it and it was really bad! oh no!! but then i woke up and remembered that i didn't do that. although maybe my draft is still really bad. it's not good, that's for sure, but i don't think it's really bad. not like nightmare bad.

my mental health might be better this year but it's still not great, it would seem!

oh my gosh, i have meals left and i just checked the brunch menu and there are THREE of my all-time favorite dining hall foods happening at the SAME MEAL:
- belgian waffle bar
- tater tots
- chocolate scotcheroos!

yesss.

yeah, too bad i've been up for almost an hour and a half and have done NO work. guess it's time for a brunch break!

posted by ~renata~ (11:39 AM)
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listening to: tori, 59th street bridge song

still on repeat-one. woot.

i am maybe a little drunk?

maybe.

also sleepy.

anyway. oh, i ended my last post on an overly-dramatic note! i had to go because molly and tim showed up with goldfinger. which we watched. and also we went to jake's party. and jenny and i sang total eclipse of the heaaaart.

the history picnic was soo cute. professor silva has two really, really cute kids. and we played "go fish" but with famous paintings. and we played a game where all you did was say words. and the older one (she was 9) kept reciting portions of redwall. and i ate food. oh, and we got our t-shirts which are awesomecore. i'll have to take a picture. and post it. on the internets.

i should go to bed, i have to do woooork tomorrow. and laundry, omg laundry.

la la la, i'm dappled and drowsy and ready for sleep.
let the morning petals something something,
life i love you,
all is groovy.

posted by ~renata~ (12:19 AM)
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5.12.2006

listening to: tori, 59th street bridge song (feelin' groovy)

i refuse to reveal how long i've had this song on repeat-one.

oh, awesome, i just got an email saying that the amazing history candidate is accepted a temporary position here. it was seriously the best candidate lunch ever. we talked about the lincoln museum and how awesome/ridiculous it is, and about the print shop he runs in the amana colonies, and I HAVE TO GO NOW.

posted by ~renata~ (8:47 PM)
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listening to: s&g, homeward bound

after extensive experimentation, i've conclued that simon and garfunkel is my ideal paper-writing music. for awhile i thought it was NO music, but then i realized that then i get bored even more quickly with writing and spend more time on actual distractions. s&g is mellow and chill enough that it can kind of happen in the background without me really being aware of it.

good.

this morning was so ridiculous. i woke up at in a state of panic and looked at my alarm clock, convinced that my alarm hadn't gone off and i'd missed professor kapila's office hours and OH GOD WHY. but then i noticed it was 6:30am. and then i did the exact same thing at 7:30am. and then AGAIN at 8:30, when i remembered that i had set my alarm for 8:45 so i laid in bed for another 15 minutes and then got up.

this line from the camp letter makes me laugh:

check in june 3rd, 4:00: tink, zelda, giggles, rebecca, and kaitlyn

it's just such a great list of names. tink, zelda, giggles, rebecca, and kaitlyn.

anyway! editing paper, awaaaay!

posted by ~renata~ (10:48 AM)
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5.11.2006

listening to: tori, hotel

technologies are confusings!

1. i put this song on repeat-one and then couldn't figure out why it was lasting so long?
2. i upgraded firefox and now it's somehow easier to add things to the bookmark bar, but i haven't figured out what does it and i've been accidentally adding stuff to the bookmark bar like mad. and then it knocks blogger off the bar and i have to scroll over to get it and... whyyyy.

anyway... omg, the office season finale was so intense!!

also i am downloading this week's house. i get to watch it when i finish my history paper draft. ideally this will inspire me to work efficiently but probably i'll keep checkin' my email every five minutes anyway.

in case anyone was wondering, my mom is doing fine after the robot hip surgery. yep.

keith: yeah, my parents are into motorcycles and whatnot. well, really my whole family. except me. well, i learned how to ride a dirtbike when i was 10 but i haven't tried in a long time, i don't think i remember how. but yeah we used to take trips by motorcycle pretty frequently. my parents are even bmw motorcycle owners association ambassadors!

megan and julia: hell yes, my mom is part robot.

devon: thanks for the offer of housing! i think we'll probably end up going to milwaukee, not toledo, if everything works out. and if we did go to toledo, like you said... probably we'd stay somewhere not 3 hours away. but still, thanks! and yeah, talking to cats on the phone is awesome.

harold: jk rowling's secret woman code is spreading anti-abba propaganda!!

priscellie: it's true, women don't have senses of humor :(

posted by ~renata~ (9:14 PM)
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5.10.2006

listening to: ps, armistice day

the history department is adorable and i love it. we just had our study break and we ate food and drank coffee. the professors made us baked goods. and they were delicious. and we talked about how great the history picnic will be on friday. because it will be. so great.

i waffle back and forth wildly about which is my favorite major; today it is history.

(a couple weeks ago when i was living in the burling third stacks, it was english.)

i emailed a dinosaur comic to professor savarese. i was unsure as to whether this was the proper course of action: i am reasonably sure he will think it's funny but he MIGHT be offended. i guess... i'll find out when he reads his email.

oh! and ever since i stopped using aim, sam has yet to crash. i'm crossing my fingers that that was the culprit, because i really wasn't looking forward to having to get him fixed (and having the apple people yell at me for using an old computer).

also, my dad called...

dad: your mom's surgery went just fine, except that part of the saw blade is still sticking out of her leg.
me: what?!
dad: i was just kidding about that last part.

also apparently my mom asked the nurse if they would let her keep her old hip. and the nurse said, you know, in 25 years no one has ever asked that, why would you want it? and my mom said, well, i want to mount it and put it on the wall. like antlers.

(un?)fortunately they refused her request, so my mom will just have to make do with the actual antlers we have on our wall. (she got them at a garage sale... like anyone in my family has ever gone hunting for reals.)

aaand molly just called and we're going to finish watching octopussy soon. GROOD.

posted by ~renata~ (10:03 PM)
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guys. i didn't think that my plans for this summer could possibly get any more awesome or exciting. but. kait and i are possiblymaybehopefully going to go see friggen paul simon?! in either milwaukee or toledo.

oh my gosh.

how can i do schoolwork when i have so many exciting things to daydream about?

also, there are some full tracks of paul's new album on his website. you can listen to them theoretically, although it does not seem to work very well on my computer?

eta: oh, it's working now. wow, i really like "outrageous." which is the only one i've listened to so far. oh paul simon, i like you so much. also, it's mildly political. take that, bush. paul simon doesn't like you.

ps: whoa, paul simon is ANOTHER ps in my life. how... statistically improbable.

posted by ~renata~ (1:35 PM)
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ahahaha!

from overheard in new york:

Man at black-tie cocktail party: So all Alan Cumming wanted was a bag of weed.

--Marriott Marquis

oh, alan cumming.

posted by ~renata~ (11:12 AM)
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oh shit you guys, i think octopussy just took the prize for MOST RIDICULOUS BOND MOVIE EVER.

i mean.

- dude, it's called octopussy
- 009 IS A CLOWN
- AND SOME GUYS CHASE HIM THROUGH THE WOODS AND THROW KNIVES AT HIM BUT HE STILL KEEPS HIS BALLOON
- AND THEN HE STUMBLES INTO THE BRITISH EMBASSY AND DIES WHILE GIVING THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR'S WIFE A FABERGE EGG
- james bond disguises himself as a crocodile
- a snake charmer plays bond's THEME SONG, and bond recognizes it and calls it a "charming tune"
- james bond tells a tiger to "sit" AND IT DOES
- james bond hides in the corpse room
- the crazy guy has a deadly yo-yo
- there's an elephant chase
- there's an ape chase (ape like, the 3-wheeled italian cars, not like a monkey. ... molly and tim spent a semester in rome and are now kind of obsessed with them.)
- seriously, OCTOPUSSY.

i can't believe those things happened.

i mean, they didn't happen. but i can't believe they even fake-happened. holy jesus. AND we didn't even finish all of it, i think we have another half hour or so left.

i can't wait to see if it increases in ridiculawesomeness. i don't see how it can, but if anyone can do it... james bond can.

posted by ~renata~ (12:14 AM)
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5.09.2006

(x-posted from my plan)


phone conversation:

mom: oh, one of the cats just walked by, i'll put him on for you.
cat: *purrs*
me: oh, that's one of the black ones, right? one of the ones that's not tyrone? (they have very distinctive purrs, like way louder than normal cats?)
mom: yeah, i think this one is marky mark.
me: what?
mom: yeah, they have names now. we took them to the vets for shots and stuff and i didn't think we could tell them that they just sort of showed up one day and we can't reallly tell them apart so we never named them. i think this is marky mark. the other one is.... what the hell did we name the other one? oh, toenofur. anyway, the other one's on the roof.

later:
mom: oh, toenofur just came in, he wants to talk to you too.

aww, kitty phone purring.

also, my parents, brother, and grandfather are taking a motorcycle trip to vermont this summer. and i can't go because i'll be at camp. but mom said she'd bring me back some syrup and a howard dean. so it's okay.

also, the carpet people screwed up our carpet again, after they ripped out the first messed-up carpet and replaced it.

also, my mom is having robot hip surgery tomorrow.

okay, now you're all up-to-date on my family's goings-ons.

(all-new blog content!)

professor kapila's dinner was deliciouscore. yes.

let's see. we're doing bondage (the rest of thunderball and also octopussy) in like 20 minutes, so... i won't actually get any work done in that amount of time, but MAYBE i will clean a little.

my room basically looks like a printer and a shoe store got in a fight. and while they were fighting they started eating dried fruit and drinking diet dr pepper. yeah.

posted by ~renata~ (9:24 PM)
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listening to: tori, for mark

last night i kept subjecting kait to a series of historical quotes that entertained me as i worked on my paper; today, the WORLD.

or, you know, MY BLOG READERSHIP.

"But a woman, obsessed, generally, with a natural awe of actual things, can not bear to see them disposed of so disrespectfully. Her poetry will employ them, and discover relevances for them.” what does that even MEAN? "a natural awe of actual things?" what, like "whoa, look at that CHAIR! it's so... ACTUAL! i cannot even believe that there are concrete objects in this room!"

also: “Fiction is to-day mainly written by women; and it is already possible to compile an anthology of words and phrases used and understood by women alone."

hell yes, secret woman fiction code. BOYS CAN'T READ HARRY POTTER, THEY WON'T UNDERSTAND JK ROWLING'S SECRET WOMEN PHRASES.

one more for good measure:

"The statement that women lack a sense of humor has been resented by them, and
justly so. But it cannot be denied that an enjoyment of the Hundred Collars type
episode lingers longer in the cultivated man than it does in the average cultivated
woman."

you know, it's so true. as a cultivated woman, i find Hundred Collars type episodes to be almost entirely not funny. (oh, i just looked it up. apparently "a hundred collars" is a robert frost poem. wow, and it's not really funny. it's mostly just creepy. i guess, as a woman, i would say that.)

oh, gender roles, you are hilarious.

i'm hungryyyy. but my poco lit class is going over to professor kapila's house for dinner. i anticipate: deliciousness.

and then molly, tim and i are having some emergency midweek bondage-- we have 4.5 bond movies left to go and we're so determined to watch them all! i anticipate: hilarity and explosions.

posted by ~renata~ (5:19 PM)
mind the gap (3)

5.08.2006

listening to: tori, 59th street bridge song (feelin' groovy)

sometimes it's nice not to have a roommate; there is no one to hear you gasp ridiculously loudly upon discovering, for example, certain live tori amos cover songs.

yays! (it's up at collecting bees if you're interested. which i assume you are.)

at cb there is a thread right now called "best days ever" where we're just talking about random awesome days we've had. here is what i posted!

- In London I picked up Paul Simon's album Rhythm of the Saints at a secondhand shop for pretty cheap, and I put it on my iPod and listened to it for really the first time while I was walking around Regent's Park, which is really, really beautiful. I just walked around and listened to it (I really love the album) and smiled a lot.

- Also in London, one day my friend and I went to Kew Gardens to see the Chihuly glass exhibit, and it was beautiful and we walked around and revelled in the beauty and startled a peacock and visited a giant badger hole and wondered about a vaguely castle-like building in the distance and laughed at Victorian Britons.

- Last summer at camp, the last day we were there, it was just the staff doing cleanup sorts of stuff, and one of my best friends and I hiked up to this place called Pine Haven, which is basically just a little fire circle in the midst of a bunch of, well, pine trees. It was very beautiful and then later that night we had our staff banquet and last campfire and we all sang and cried.

- Two(?) years ago I visited my friend Kait for a week and we went into New York City almost every day, which was all very cool for me because I'd only really ever been there for about a day before. The days kind of blur together but there was one when we saw both a matinee of Movin' Out and then the evening show of Avenue Q, and another where we saw the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Rent (and I met Scary Spice and was so excited!) and we were basically ridiculous and... yes, those were a good series of days.

- I've had a lot of good days on family vacations. One that still stands out even though I was maybe 8 or 9... we were in the Great Smoky Mountains national Park, and we got up early for a sunrise hayride thing, and it was beautiful and we saw an old cemetary and my brother and I were junior rangers. This may have been the same day we saw an old working mill or maybe it wasn't, but that was cool too.

- My sixteenth birthday was pretty amazing. As dorky as this sounds, Megan and I and our families were in San Francisco and we saw Rent and went out to dinner with Curtis Cregan, which we thought was impossibly cool, and met up with my friend Keith who I'd known on the internet for a few years but had never met in person.

I'm kind of a dork, it would seem!

posted by ~renata~ (8:21 PM)
mind the gap (1)

listening to: anne heaton, you can't take him away

graaaah, dining services just emailed me to say that the list of p-card numbers i gave them for the history picnic wasn't enough, i need to make an excel spreadsheet with the name and the number. the first time all they said was "a list of p-card numbers". wtf.

oh well, i remain basically cheerful.

i met with professor savarese and he said my 2nd paper is way better than my 1st. probably because now i realize that he is looking for "ambiguity", aka papers that say both your argument and also the opposite of your argument, in case your argument isn't right. also, like, i smiled at something he said and he said "i see you do that all the time in the back of the class, your mouth freezes in that position and theeen you smile," and i was like, what?! it wasn't sketchy at all, although i realize in writing it might kind of sound that way? but it was just weird. especially because mostly when i smile in that class it's at dumb things other people say. also he was like, "can you believe the semester is almost over?" and i was like "YES." because... this semester has gone soo slowly for me. but it probably sounded kind of like, i don't know.

oh god, i am so awkward and 95% of professors are so awkward and EVERYTHING IS AWKWARD.

also, i'm so in love with adium. i'm definitely going to keep using it even if sam keeps crashing. which he hasn't, yet, although that doesn't necessarily mean anything--last week, he went a few days without crashing and then did it twice in an hour. still, it's encouraging! also, since this consolidates my messaging systems, you can also yahoo!message me at teleute5. if you want. (i've had that sn for a long time, but i was always too lazy to sign into y!m. but now... might as well.)

talia: woo, adium twins!

devon: i think adium is basically like trillian for macs. but with a duck. also, omg paul simon on snl, woot! thanks for letting me know, i probably never would have known otherwise.

sarah: i am not sure if eli asked about kerry's thoughts on kittens. it's okay though; as you said, we all know how he feels anyway.

julia: whoa, we should hang out and be moderately interested in nature together! also we could eat rosemary & olive oil triscuits.

joel: oh my god, it took you like 5 more minutes to do 10k than it took me to do 5.

ps: omg, ps and ps are awesome!

posted by ~renata~ (11:13 AM)
mind the gap (0)

5.07.2006

listening to: tears for fears, everybody

i'm testing my theory that instant messager is the thing that's crashing sam. i have no real proof or anything, it's just that i don't trust instant messenger.

i'm running an alternate program called adium. i like it because its icon is a duck.

awhile ago it made a quacking noise and me and i could not figure out why. i think that's the noise it makes when someone signs off?

OH MAN, when i hover my mouse over someone's name it pops up their away message for me!! no more right-click + get info for me! wheeeee

anyway, what i'm trying to say is that if you im me and i don't respond it COULD mean i'm not there, or it COULD mean that it's making quacking noises at me and i can't figure out why.

additionally, what i should be trying to say is: i'm working on my paper?

posted by ~renata~ (1:12 PM)
mind the gap (2)

listening to: aha, the living daylights

i listen to this song a lot more than i would if it weren't so high alphabetically, becuase i tend to open up itunes, set it to shuffle and just click something to start... and so i see this right up there at the top and go, "yeah, why not? CLICK"

listening to it reminds me of how the living daylights is an AMAZING movie.

also, whining about the films committee this year has reminded me of my three favorite movie genres: ridiculous movies, explosiony movies, and movies with alan cumming in them. this is why josie and the pussycats is the best movie ever, because it is the perfect trifecta of these three genres. (okay, it's not terribly explosiony, but there is definitely some intense action! and a plane crash. and a car that doesn't explode but COULD HAVE.)

goldeneye also meets these criteria, as do spiceworld and x2. grood.

anyway. what i was going to blog about was house! no spoilers, but, whoa! INTENSE. except for chase. i love how it was like,

house: OMGANGST
cuddy: OMGANGST
foreman: OMGANGRYANGST
cameron: OMGEVENMOREANGSTTHANUSUAL
wilson: OMGPERIPHERALANGST
chase: 'sup?

also, i was really excited when i thought house was going to catch a pigeon with his cane. and i was thus also really sad when he failed.

but house quoting alanis morrisette clearly made up for any other failings he might have had.

posted by ~renata~ (12:27 PM)
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asdjaskjasd i just watched part one of "euphoria" and all i have to say is akjasdad omg wtf foreman.

no, i have one other thing to say: wtf, why is it going to take an hour and 15 minutes to download part 2?! i want it noooow. i can't wait that long. i think i'll just go to sleep and watch it in the morning.

in other news, i totally didn't go see john kerry today. but my friend eli did, and achieved internet fame in the process!

INTERNET FAME.

posted by ~renata~ (1:31 AM)
mind the gap (2)

listening to: s&g, kodachrome

hello! i went to waltz for awhile, but then i realized that my feet hurt and it was crowded and my dress was uncomfortable and i was tired of people. so i left.

i think... i'm going to watch the first part of last week's 2-part house, which i just downloaded, and then i will either dowload part 2 or go to bed, depending on how tired i feel.

and i'm not going to set my alarm clock; i'm just going to get up when i get up.

life is... manageable.

the b&s seems to have enough articles, i'll just do the layout tomorrow. my history paper draft is at 7 pages, and i still have a week and tons of research that's done and typed up.

my poco lit bibliography is basically done, though i might touch it up a bit.

my trads2 paper needs to get typed up and tweaked, but i have over a week.

my poco lit paper is... not started at all, but again... time enough, time enough.

oh, mental health, having you is awesome.

posted by ~renata~ (12:10 AM)
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