Trading Post

I'm sorry guys, I can't go to New York this year. I'm going to do Field Ecology! I'm going to the Florida and the Everglades for the week. I get to do stuff like collect birds and take wild animal's blood and track them and and talk to field ecologists! Holy beejesus! Joyce, Joyce, we even get to go to a reef to snorkel with the fish! Nina and our two dude friends down the hall are even going to spend the weekends teaching me how to swim so I can do it! They told me I could stay on the boat if i didn't feel safe, but I totally want to do it! I'll send you pictures of me making stupid faces at gators. :-D

I think angela already did this, and i did my shopping in summer, but to make things easier let's just list some things that we wouldn't mind getting on for XMas on our LJ's.

Me: Coffee Machine (because mine broke!! Cheap is fine.) A scarf because I'm cold and keep losing the ones my mom gives me out of the family stash. :-( (my current coat is solid-color maroon). A renewal to the saveur food magazine. A subscription to national geographic.

tell meeez.

...is always one of the better kinds. :-)

Just confirming one more recipient. Angela, you get yours?

To those of us with a blood-related geek to mind this holiday season, behold my personal approach.

Sent earlier to my brother.

Dear Kai,

Do NOT get Valkyria chronicles. I will obtain a gun from one of the junkies in the neighborhood surrounding my school and shoot you in the face if you buy it for yourself. You are welcome to buy any other game, even though that wouldn't make any sense because you left the PS3 at home and can't play it at school. I am going to get Valkyria chronicles for you this Christmas. You can't complain about the delay because i get home before you and if you like it will be waiting for you the day you come back and actually have access to the console. I would very much like to get you something nice that you actually like this year. This has not been able to happen before. Therefore you will humor your sister lest she have to leave her comfy dorm and seek out a murder weapon in the middle of finals week. Do not make me shoot you, Kai.

With much love,
Your sister.

Kelley is currently

Moody, getting her ass handed to her by all of her classes except art, expecting to work and study all through break, just found out her winter break will be one week shorter than last year's and figures it will consist of more studying if she wants less ass-handage, thinks that college dating partners will statistically always have more fail in thier natures than thier high school counterparts, is panicking about a midterm, misses writing and drawing, overcommitted to various things and coming up short on a lot of them, always seems to be complaining, feels guilty about eating and sleeping when I could be doing homework, spending too much money because the purse strings are loose when I'm not feeling my best, suspicious of too many people, is systematically shamed by the physical sciences for having such sub-par research skills even though I DON'T WANT TO DO THAT KIND OF RESEARCH and needs to work out her frustrations in some form of "beat the shit out of an inanimate object."

I think my period hormones exacerbates the problem.

I wish i knew how to cheesily break wooden boards.

And could drink without it making me feel so bad physically that the value of mental numbness becomes pointless.

And that I could be fucking thirty already with all desired degrees under my belt. Unless it's a bio PhD. To which I now scoff at more than I have before because i find that you have a mix of genius levels across the board in PhD candidates. Unless you are a science PhD. In which you HAVE to be a genius. And I am not.

Geezus!

>_

I know a pattern is getting set up here.

Nina already knows part of the story. Lady stood me up for our first date--I waited the entire day for her, and left messages and phoned other people trying to reach her. I searched the entire dorm several times because she said she'd be home all day. When it started getting really late and it really began to look like I was going to get stood up, I started suspecting that she'd forgotten me...She finally called me and said that she'd been out with a really close friend she hadn't seen in a while. I was still willing to wait for her and just get a really, really late start...I didn't eat, I just studied and waited. I didn't want to look too clingy, so I didn't say much.

9 pm comes around and I'm still alone in my room, so I decide to give it another shot...but she tells me on the phone that she's up in her room. When I get there she seems genuinely puzzled that I was expecting her, and says it's too late to go out now. Another person is there, so I run out with an excuse about dinner so I can cry openly. Nina spends about an hour consoling me about my girlfriend casually blowing off our first date.

She calls me and I go up to her room to talk. We sit facing each other across the room. I tell her that all I need from her is to just be there when she says she will, but she says she's never had to think about another person before and that she lives day by day so it didn't occur to her that going out with me was supposed to be all that important. She doesn't like that I planned the day around her. She also says doesn't want to "date" officially because she's not comfortable enough with that side of her sexuality. I'm trying everything I can--telling her we can take it at whatever pace she wants, that I'm Ok with her making friends her top priority since it's her last year, and that I'll hear out what she thinks we should be doing if not going out on dates.

I'm crying and eventually she says that she hates getting people upset, doesn't know how to be in a relationship, and doesn't want to be in one. I tell her that in relationships you're willing to be upset by the other person once in a while because you care; that's why you cry in the first place, because you care so much. She says she can't handle that and that she can't talk about it anymore, so I leave and spend the next hour and a half getting comforted by Pam and Pete while crying my eyes out.

The entire time i was talking with her, even though her words got more and more unpleasant to hear, I still wanted her to sit next to me and hold my hand, hug me, anything. Even though Pam and Pete (who know her better) explained very clearly and convincingly that she's not confident or self-sacrficing enough to be in a relationship... even though I know I'm comfortable with who I am, and that I'd make time for her no how crazy my life, and that I could give up my entire day and seeing off a friend going to Army boot camp for her at the same time she forgets me... even though I now know she's at least as crazy as all the others, I still like her. I'm more heartbroken than I've been in a long time. If she asked me tomorrow to try to make up, I'd probably do it, even though I'd do it knowing I'd never be able to fully trust her to be there for me. There was so much I admired about her, and now so much I know that I didn't before that makes me feel sorry for her even though I feel like I was the collateral damage to her issues.

Of course I'll be fine. I know it wasn't me, and that it's precisely because I'm already relaxed and secure about who I am that it didn't work out with someone who isn't there yet, and is too into partying to commit to plans with a girlfriend. I am heartsick, I'm am OK with myself and I will get over it.

-Kelley.



I'd

Hoh-K, uh, this is a pretty confusing (and...ditzy...) error on my part.

By now I might have give you two some garbled sense of the idea that I didn't know I was "coming-out" to you guys because I thought I'd been outed like the uncommon bellybutton for years now. I am (and for the most part, always have been) so comfortable with it that when it became clear in my head I never bothered really going INTO the closet...if the subject ever came up with people in my high school, I'd go "Yes, me too," and then things spread cooly through word of mouth so the general pop in contact with me just knew. But my school was so laid back about that stuff (Gay principal, super huge GSA, 1 in 10 kids being gay, any one?) that I never felt any pressure to keep it low-key, or make it high-profile as a matter of principle, for that matter (no pride, no shame?) I think during those sexuality-crystallizing years I learned to think of it as a casual thing, not this high-strung prissy business of whatever kind of tendencies and rules and doctrines that some other parties are adhered to. So, um, yeah...that's probably why it slipped my radar that I hadn't told my 3 childhood buddies directly...thought it just melted into my ID because that's really what it did...the last thing was supposed to have a no-frills "resumed dating" tude to it.

But since I've been operating 2 years minimum under the wrongful assumption that my bisexuality was a mundane fact like "tofu is made from soybeans," I guess I should uuuuhhhh make a NEW official announcement that I am now open for business for things like questions like 'when and how did this happen' and hearing any comments of 'this does make me feel a little awkward' if you two are so inclined. But once again I was oblivious to the nature of announcement and I'm sorry for any jangling it caused. *bow*

Thank you for the support thus, then. <3

Erm, yeah, I'm aware that you guys both know, but I suppose there's always that official update. Really, I wanted to tell you guys myself, but I think Nina was catatonic, and at that point I hadn't yet deduced that I was ill enough to take a day off to study, so saving my ass on this test. Translated: I was in crazy-test-mode and an announcement needs two people minimum.

I'm dating a girl named Lady, who lives in our building. We got into the open about our crushes on each other during a Birthday/Halloween party on Friday. She's very sweet and pretty (She sought me out to give me tea when I was sick. :-)) And for once, not f'nuckin insane like the people I tend to date. (I don't choose them crazy, they come to me and then sllooowwllly come out crazy. Or in the case of the last one, right away. Let it be known; you may THINK you're open-minded and accepting, but then you realize people who were raised with all the right things can STILL turn out mildly sexist, racist, religiously uptight, and fetishistic. I admit I still feel pretty gross from that one. And that he made me give up heterosexuality for a while.)

I'm hoping that this will work out. She's worth so much more than a lot of the people I've had the misfortune to date in the past. Wish me luck :-)

PS, this PROBABLY goes without saying, but neither her family nor mine know about our sexuality. Shhh to parents, ok?

... I forgot to plug the ends of seven tanks and let fish escape. That was bad. That's pretty much one of the worst things you can do on this job. Um. Agh.

My work place is having a fly epidemic. They are not fruit flies, which could have been explained by escapees from the fly lab. The fish geneticists scientifically determined they are not the kind of flies used in the other group's experients by looking examining thier genes. But as one lab tech put it "They can't be fruit flies because their maggots are drier." I.e. there's less white puss when they're squished to death. They like humidity and abundant food, such as the clumps of fish gunk I have to clean off the tanks. He showed me how to crush them (pop them like zits) so "They won't crawl up the sink and hatch. Because, because, that's how they get the upper hand."

Guess what I spent three hours doing for my job on Friday?

I love me job.

<3

Hey y'all

Thank you, thank you, thank you Angela. I managed to gloss over the amazing tidbit about a "planet denser than lead" and get straight to business on what's going on.

Nina gave me a candy apple because I was too time-deprived to go to a second year social where they were giving them away. If they had publicized the apples and shut up about the need for human interaction I would have gone and stolen people's apples. (Thus increasing my social interaction with people. Many varieties of people. Some of the tackling kind. Some of the law-enforcing kind.)So thank god that incident was avoided. I am now eating the apple gloatingly, which followed a meal of self-curried noodles and baby zucchini/eggplant from the farmer's market.

I JUST REMEMBERED OUR CHEESE. We bought 18 dollar-a-pound honey-almond-apricot brie. Joyce, even you would like this. I strongly strongly suspect that you don't dislike cheese. There are so many varieties of cheese with different flavor that to name all of them unpleasant is akin to hating every type of fruit. I shall try to find your cheese love. But I've already determined any yellow kind is not your type. I need to eat that brie. Nina, we shall steal apple butter and eat brie.(Hm. I've been suggesting theft a lot lately.)

Ok, so, I just completely fucked up a chem lab, as in my solid never appeared and my other solid was contaminated (mixed melting point). I got used to being sucky at chem-lab last year though, so I'm looking forward to explaining the possible ways I didn't do it right. If I'm going to fail I might as well fail for actually failing instead of being all kinds of incorrect on the lab report. I also got 50% on my homework, which is...average for all years before this one, but apparently, we have a nice smart group this year, so it's 60%! But I've never been average for chem, so I'm happy pretending to be average with the last class.

I am taking care of fish for my job. They say it's a lab job but I don't go near a lab. I'm in the fish facility cleaning all day. They gave me the babies to take care of--mostly because I might as well be dyslexic at fish feeding for how fast I dump food into the thanks. Tapping a bottle is harder than it looks. I try not to smile too much when I tell them we have to kill fish (they get fish-version scoliosis). It makes me looks bad because all the other assistants were so darn devastated. I find culling funny for no reason. Like how someone in this dorm once found stupid women attractive for no reason. It discredits us both.

There is a guy named Travis in my archery club, a girl named Tiffany in my dorm, and a guy named Chris in my sosc class. I would like to know them all better because, respectively, he rides a unicycle and knows enough chem to be a grad student (plus the balloons he threw at me came apart), I would like to have someone else openly bi and not uncomfortable with the fact in our dorm, and he is a first year like a puppy meaning he's super enthusiastic and genuinely happy to be doing what he's doing ( from my observational standpoint, SOSC
) although his very behavior is what anchors a puppy as a puppy.

Angela--I was wondering where that hat went. Seriously. Does it still have that inappropriately pearlescent ribbon?

Joyce--They just don't want you to drown...It doesn't look like I have the cardio of an obese man, but, well, I do. You probably don't have a real problem, but maybe you don't know how to blow into the instrument... like those goddamed crunches that gave me two quarters of gym class. Try blowing up a balloon with your first breath. I say if you can do that your breath's plenty tough. Maybe you had a lung cramp or something. And...maybe try moving Another exam that you have more wiggle room on? Such things are rough.

Got really freaking sick of my old layout. Pink doesn't work with anything! Especially not an orange-based icon. But neither does this one. So I changed it. Go overhaul.

Hm. Now that I look at the time i really need to get reading. But here's snippets for a promised longer spiel.

Joyce: I want to save the polar bears. They're eating each other up there. :-( I'm just going to send a little money for now, but if the Republicans get into office I'll have to start planning an alaska detour for my junior year research trip. God, they sounded stupid during the convention. "Drill baby drill?" What can endangered critters do against a petty pep rally? I think that's what I'm doing. Endangered animal conservation, or along those lines.

Angela: Thanks. How much do you recommend using curtain fabric to make clothes? I am very seriously considering it. And I can still splatter your frames--forgot about that. my club is on me to get some distinguished academic peeps to speak about Japanese culture or anime or something...if you have a god-awesome teacher who would not be cowed by a typical albeit small scale convention, and would be paid to visit Chicago, gimme a heads up.

Nina: ...Hey. How's living with me? I can't find our waffle iron.

WTF, WTF_Nature.

I'm actually not a complete slouch. I actually check this thing about three times a week to see if anything's new with the trans-city crew. Thing is, I can never freaking tell because I subscribed to this really cool community about near-supernaturally wacky animals (covered in a quite intelligent manner) that floods my friend page with about 25 entries a day. And then I read them because they're good, but after a few I get fed up with not seeing your accounts that I duck out.

This will be remedied, assuredly. I.e. I am no longer using this friends page for...friends. I'm just favoriting your LJ's. Or if there's an option to alert me to journal updates via e-mail, I would very much like to know of this.

Yes. This journal is entirely about that. Yes. But I am also going to update on many things. So heads up and you will get personal messages.

Hey guys. I wanted to read Joyce's comments on crackers, but I can't seem to find it...

Anyways, I'm having a little bit of a rough time. My grandfather on my dad's side just died. I don't know if I ever talked about him. I didn't know him very well and by the time we met  in China he was already sick and not completely lucid, but I had a lot of respect for him. He was a very well-known photographer in GuangZhou and he did incredible work, especially in a time when artificial photo enchancement wasn't possible. There's this family story about how my dad was being a sneaky bachelor in America before his dad decide to see him married to a girl who was good at taking care of people. So as my mom puts it, he "chose" her to be the right wife for his youngest. The idea is that he was very happy and grateful that his youngest settled down, so he got to see all his children as fulfilled adults.

My dad went to China as soon as the docters said that this was it, but in reality his father had already been in an unresponsive coma for about a week. My dad arrived at the hospital with his sister that came with him from America, and then half an hour later my grandfather died peacefully in his sleep. They made it in time in a way, and also missed him in a way, so I'm still thinking about it.  

I'm a little sad, obviously, but this was a natural end for my grandpa, who lived a good life with a lot of success. I'm sad about that a little, but I'm also a little sad about my dad not being here before I have to go back to college. With my mom working and I working, he's been looking after us domestically with things like washing the laundry and cooking dinner. It's been a long time since I've gotten along so well with my dad and as soon as he comes back I start a very strenuous work schedule installing the project I finished a few months ago. I'm also sad not so much about me not being able to attend the funeral, but that my mom, whom my grandfather adored and compared to his deceased wife up until a few years ago when he lost clear memory of my mother, can't be there either. Meanwhile, my mom tells me that since he was a respected regional artist, the funeral date hasn't been decided yet because the funeral home has to prepare for a big public showing. So people like his old students will be able to attend, but not his daughter-in-law.

Meanwhile, kind of like what's going on with my dad, there are some other people in my life who are going through hard things, and that all just adds to feeling...a little sad. It's good that I'm doing so well that I know that things are just a little sad. I liked my grandfather as a person a lot but it wasn't a personal relationship. My job is enjoyable and looking forward to going to school for the most part. But I'm sad about the imperfections about his passing, and I think I miss my dad a little. I am doing very well, but for now I'm just a little sad.
 

Sometimes it's good to remember to that I read things other than comic books. On with the pretentious "classic or literary value only" list of damn, I need to start building a real-person library soon.

1. Salome by Oscar Wilde with, specifically, illustrations from Audrey Beardsley
2. The Joy Luck Club
3. Sula by Toni Morrison
4. Thier Eyes Were Watching God....cliff notes. The book is in my house but I'll be damned if I can decipher South speak.
5. A book of Pablo Neruda's poetry. (!)
6. A book of whoever wrote "Vienes Volandes"...thought that was Neruda, but s'not, apparently.
7. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

I wasted a three-day weekend and I don't know why and now I have four art reports to pound out before 1 tomorrow and I can't read my crappy handwriting from when I did the visits noooooo.

Okay.

So, news. 

The video of my stupid antics on stage at the anime convention is now on Youtube. Here. That is my voice, only deepened artificially. I tried winging it for reals by pitching it low but I couldn't act and strain my vocal cords at the same time. The girl that sounds like me had her voice artificially highered. So the contrast would show between 10 year old boy and 20-year old woman. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Su2h69OOU Er...if you don't understand the references, it's okay...

We didn't win anything but we were featured on a site that has no direct affiliation with the judges. So that's complimentary enough and my club members already have another prepubescent boy lined up for me to impersonate next year. He will NOT have blue hair, but he will be from the prohibition era and I will get to wear one of those hats that look like melted hamburger patties. Fashionables (in men's stuff?) help me out here.

You will NOT get to meet Geoff because we broke up amicably due to extreme difference in life philosophies. We're still cool with each other and we've got club together but we realized that which amuses you are a friend will make you want to absolutely keel your bf/gf. in fact when it came down to it, we simultaneously went "Please god tell me you don't like anymore.Yes? Yes? *SIGH OF RELIEF* Woo hoo no one leads on anyone!!" So yeah. handled very pragmatically. On another note, I want to join kendo club next year because of my puny body. i am lifting weights in preparation. 

I don't want to crap out on my assignments. T_T

Why hast thou forsaken me?

It's not like my assignments are even hard. They are actually rather cool. But sleeping has become a hobby of sorts. I crapped out on a math final and a set design project because I was like... don't feel like concentrating! Sorry!

Ugghhhhh. Want. Out. 

Want. Next year. With replenished moxy.

I need my muse too. I haven't even been a able to procrastinate productively. No art no writing.

I did have a wicked awesome time at ACEN, though. My nekkidness is now online and i had a blast being a sober while everyone else was drunk. We all play-hit on  each other in between them having whiskey, rum, jim bean (whatever that is), gin, beer, vodka, sake...

...and me taking a sip...

Me:  This tastes like fire!
Club pres: If it tastes like fire, don't drink it. What exactly did you put in it?
Me: ? *points to bottle* 
Club pres: ...You drank that plain?
Me: You're not supposed to?
Everyone: *Gasp* *hug* Poor baby! We will school you in proper drinking skillz!

Did anyone else know that you're not supposed to drink hard liquor straight?

We had a picnic on my floor though. Nina cooked a wicked soup and I picked up baguettes from the bakery. We frenched it with apples and cheese and butter. The reason why we had it on a clean towel on the floor and not on the table is because the table is currently covered in toothpaste, leaves, dirt, coffee, and cheese wax (plus paint and pastel and the usual) for my art project.

Peace and see you if I make it out alive, yo.

Today is the first day of the infamous scav hunt. The campus is crawling with people in yukatas and umbrellas escourting pedestrians to class because that's one of the tasks, i guess. The theme this year, I hear, is "pure craziness". I believe last year's was "Harry Potter." Geoff (that's the name of the dude...) is a construction captain and mentioned something about building a walk-in kaliedoscope. Meanwhile, I'm trying to set penguins on fire with birthday candles for art class and making a mini-model of a live-bar scene during the Prohibition era for drama. And ACEN is next week, and I haven't perfected my chest binding yet. 

....I have a feeling that  for me right now, academics is what college is LEAST about. (With the exception of Chemistry. Whom I am bitch to, and mai favorite subject to bitch about. It's mildly clever. Laugh.)

Nina and I have just gotten our room assignment for next year. We were really high up on the lottery so we really could have gotten any room we wanted...Nina absolutely hated the room I mildly liked, and I only mildly disliked/was indifferent to the room she ardently loved, so she pointed out that there was a window in the bathroom and that I grow things in there and I was sold on her choice. Our RA suggested we part, since our lottery numbers were right next to each other and I could have picked the room I kinda wanted and just deal with living with a stranger freshman...but I told him off, comparing the seperation to him letting go of living with his beloved dog (and best buddy). he retorted that he'd fine with that if he knew the dog would be living in his own apartment 3 feet away. Smartass. 

But we're going to have a fine community on the fourth floor again. Funny story, funny story! (Or maybe not so funny... the feeling comes and goes). There's this guy we live who was very nice to me and acted a little shocked when I said I have a boyfriend. I asked him if...you know...there was something going on and after a loooonnnnggg pause he was like "uh...no....sorry I made you uncomfortable..." To survive the moment I babbled about how I misread because we have the same interests and that I have no good friends here (uh...not entirely true...i meant it more in the vein of not having friends with mutual bio interests...but I'm taking all my core, that's to be expected, I haven't met such people yet..)..and then my neighbor jumped out of his room with a watergun. (yay!) but now this guy's going to be sharing the floor with us. Aw, I screwed myself out of a guy buddy. Whatever, we have three years left to unfuck the situation.

My ear's infected. AGAIN. I'm getting surgery this summer. Before I turn 19 and actually have to pay for my medical expenses. It was crazy, for one day before I went to the doctor i was downing a painkiller every hour...one of my neighbors has an ovarian cyst (which they treat with birth control! Interesting...) and i was mooching drugs off of her (painkillers...not the birth control). she warned me not to take more than one of hers at once because it has codenine and if i take two at my weight I could DIE (well, not really...) but it STILL DIDN'T WORK! my temple and jaw were all puffy and throbby and the student care center here must have neglected a dozen students to death judging from the hour they put me on soft core muzac over the phone before they told me they had no slots until three days later. Rawr. My dad picked me up and took me to nina's aunt. She freaked a little how I have another bad one AGAIN, less than two months since I last saw her. Eyah.

Angela and Joyce are coming home soon! Come to our summer breeze festival! There be free food and rock climbing and stuff! Come! 

I woke up early today to get a jumpstart on my lab report. Instead i find one of my plants keeled over and encrusted with knobbly little mites. I spend the next hour killing them with alcohol and prying them off. But Nina made me pancakes. So it's all good.

I'm not kidding. I ate an orange one, and when it started to sting I figured it was just that citrusy-burn you get sometimes in artificially citrus-flavored foods. Now my nose is stuffy, my eyes are dry, and most of the skin on my face feels itchy.   

Jesus, this is like Nina's Neosporin allergy. These things in the world that are supposed to make you safe and happy...