On blessings

I'm such a whiny little bitch sometimes, that I completely fail to take into serious consideration the good things in my life. So, here goes nothing:

The Good Things in My Life:
- Fresh strawberries
- Chocolate
- Whole-bean coffee
- Funny coworkers
- My car (though it DOES have a tendency to attract spiders...)
- Learning how to dance to country music
- Food cooked by mom
- Sunny days
- Rainy days
- Strange dreams
- Kicking ass
- Friends I would kill for
- Family I've come to love, regardless of everything

There. Now I can go back to whining again.

On falling in love

People talk about being afraid that they'll never find their better half, their soul-mate, their match. Me, on the other hand? I'm afraid I will, and I'm afraid of what will happen after. All my life I've depended on two things - me, and being hurt by men (and as a result, I've become a bit of a misanthropist). So what happens when I no longer have that grudge to carry? I wouldn't know what to do with myself.

I don't know how to be happy with someone. To me, it's a foreign concept, uncharted waters, and what-have-you. It's unknown, and I'm afraid of the unknown.

The statement "I'm afraid of being happy with someone" sounds absurd, and perhaps it is. But not all fears are rational. And what's so absurd about being afraid of the unknown?

What's so great about love, anyway?

"If love's so great, why do you fall into it? You fall into a puddle. You fall into the mud. You fall into the abyss.
"It is not very promising company."

No, it isn't. It's an act of insanity.

On five months

Has it really been exactly five months since I've last updated this blog? Clearly, the answer is yes, since the previous post is dated September 16, 2009 – but I'm still having trouble believing that a) so much time has passed and b) I neglected to write for such a span of time.

Then again, I probably shouldn't be so surprised – I haven't been in the mood to write for a while now. Disheartening thought, actually.

That being said, I'm back! So my journalism hopes have been dashed into thousands of teeny-tiny irreparable pieces – so what? I can still write for myself. For now, that will have to suffice.

In the five months that have passed, I've acquired a permanent position at SDSU Research Foundation, I came dangerously close to being in a relationship (okay, so dangerously may be a pessimistic/negative/generally displeasing adverb. I'm a generally pessimistic/negative/displeased person), and… well, that may be it, actually. Family is about the same, friends are about the same – life, in a nutshell, is about the same. (Maybe that's why I haven't written in five months. Not much to write about, really.) I've been looking at the bright side as much as possible (the bright side of what, exactly, remains a mystery as, aforementioned, I am generally displeased), and for the most part, it's been working. Great friends, great city (yes, I'm somewhat contented with the fact that I'll be in SD for at least the next year, probably more), great love-life (it's nonexistent, which makes it great from my point of view). Not much to complain about, in other words. (Yet I'm still generally displeased. Hm.)

First things first – the job (i.e. the reason why I'll be in SD for the foreseeable future). This harkens back to the whole "I'll never be a journalist, woe is me" thing: I'm essentially back to square one, and trying desperately to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. Option A: Pray that my sister's business gets off the ground soon. Option B: Project Management. Option C: Win the lottery. I'm not a gambler, so at the moment, I'm shooting for Option B. And, as luck would have it, I'm in the perfect atmosphere for project management, since that's essentially what the people at the Research Foundation do – manage the professors' projects (to a certain extent). If this is the road I choose to wander down, I couldn't have stumbled across a more opportune place to be. I don't want to stay here, since this isn't exactly the type of project management I would want to do, but the experience will be (in)valuable.

My favoritest (as in, least favorite) holiday, Valentine's Day, has come and gone, and I can say with completely true enthusiasm – it was the best one yet. I spent the day with amazing friends – Jessica M., Taylor, Kolbe, Erika, and Allison – and I really could not have asked for a better group of people. We girl-talked (Kolbe napped through that part, and I think Taylor zoned out), we played Imagine Iff… (don't know why that board game needs to spell "if" incorrectly), and we went out for Thai. It was a great mix of new and old friends all on their best behavior, and if we concentrated hard enough we could forget that we were all there together because we were all single. \

The good vibrations from yesterday will keep me going for this whole week, I think – it was THAT good of a day. They may soon be negated by my coworkers going on and on and on about the cakes they baked for their boyfriends, however. Were cakes trendy this year, or something? Whatever happened to going out to dinner?

I'm not bitter.

So earlier, I lied. (Yes, I realize I said I wouldn't. Whatever.) The love-life isn't exactly nonexistent. It's non-nonexistent. It doesn't exist, but it doesn't quite not-exist. (If you think about this hard enough, it makes sense. Or it gives you a headache.) Long story short – I met a guy, I was interested in him, he was interested back, I DIDN'T RUN AWAY (yes, you read that correctly!)… and he moved to Seattle. Second long story short – it's happening again (but with a different guy). I guess I can't shorten this story, since it's still in the works; we'll just have to see how it unfolds. And if the universe still hates me. And if I still fail at life.

So – that's what's happened in the last five months. See you in July! (I kid. I think.)

On cold weather

I want fall weather. Badly. The hint of fall we had these past couple of days only make me want more of it. Hence the new colors of my blog; I'm trying to encourage fall to come by sooner rather than later by using autumnal colors.

Summer, I love you, but I don't want you to linger for all of eternity.

On anti-social behavior and family

I'm not sorry that I've been feeling anti-social as of late. It is my firm belief that people are entitled to alone-time and personal space, and right now, that is exactly what I need. I am sorry, however, that some of my friends seem to be taking this personally, as if my aim in isolating myself for these past who knows how many weeks was to injure their feelings. I love you, but no. Do not think that this is me being petty, or me being flaky. This is me needing some goddamn time to myself, and it has nothing to do with you.

Please take that as a compliment. I'm not trying to avoid you. I'm trying to avoid EVERYONE. You may not agree with my methods - in fact, I know that some of you don't - but this is what I need to do for me. And if you can't understand that, when I'm feeling down and out I like to spend some time alone and sort things through, then you aren't the people I thought you were.

On another note, I'll be home most weekends, starting from this past weekend to at least the end of this month. I plan on being here every other weekend in October, since that is my birth month, and I'd like to celebrate with friends (I'm thinking game night!). The reason for this is that my mom recently had an accident and underwent surgery; she is currently in the recovery process, and her surgeons have ordered her to do as little as possible, lest she suffer a setback (like she did this past weekend). In order to make life as easy as possible for my mom, whose business demands likewise that she be on her feet nearly all the time, I will be going home to chauffeur her around, as well as to cook and clean and all that jazz. Please understand that my mom comes first, and right now, she's not doing very well. If my going home on the weekends to care for her bothers you, then again - you aren't the people I thought you were.

You, however, being the people I thought you were, will hopefully understand that I am sorting through my life as best I can, while also offering unconditional support to my mother. You will understand that I mean no harm, and that while I may be avoiding social interactions, this in no way means that I don't still love you, that I don't miss you. I do - I just need to take care of me, and I need to take care of my mom.

I love you all!

On reclusive behavior

No, I'm not dead. I'm just being reclusive again, that's all. There are some big changes in my life that I'm doing my best to deal with, and at the moment, it involves being anti-social.

Life's a bitch, you know? And we all have our ways of coping; hiding from society a la Criminy and his stacks of books is mine.

I'll see you when this all blows over. :D

On having really, really bad vision

This, my friends, is how poor my eyesight truly is.

Below is a screenshot on a normal day. Obviously, it's been shrunk down to size, but use your imagination. My computer screen is pretty effing big:





Now today, I happened to wear my glasses; wearing them for too long, however, makes me a little headache-y and they start to feel like they're about 20 pounds of steel trying to crush my nose. So I took off my glasses and zoomed in on the site - and this is how far I needed to zoom in in order to read what was on the screen:





540%! And even then, I still had to squint a bit.

The moral of the story? I have really fucking bad vision.

Edit: Unfortunately, IE only lets me zoom out to 1000% - and it was still fuzzy around the edges.

On Sunday afternoons

Twice in one day? That’s right, lucky readers (whoever you are)! You get not one, but TWO updates from me in the span of one day – mostly because this post didn’t really relate to my work post.

Yesterday, I spent the day with my dear friend Jessica M. We watched a movie (He's Just Not That Into You, which reawakened my inner Bitchy Single Woman), bought some cake (the damn confectioner’s club or whatever was having its annual cake parade at the LJ Village Square shopping center) and Chipotle, and took ourselves to Mission Bay.

I forgot how amazingly restful that place it. Jessica took me to Paradise Point, a little resort hidden off of the bay, which had this big man-made pond covered with ducks – the friendliest, most tame ducks I’ve ever met. One cheeky little fellow kept waddling around our gazebo, pecking at the ground and staring longingly at my burrito. I kept scolding him, since I’d stuffed his maw full of bread only a few moments earlier (and you should have seen them flock to us!), but the bird wouldn’t leave us alone until we turned our backs and resolutely ignored his cuteness.

After we’d finished our lunch (late lunch, really, since this was around 4pm or so), we crumbled up some bread for the ducks in that part of the area before leaving for another spot. I also left a little trail of crumbs on the gazebo, leading toward some rice that had fallen out of my burrito.

They’re hard to eat, okay?

At the new location, the ducks literally clambered out of the pond and onto our feet – Jessica got stomped on by an overeager male, and I was splashed on more than one occasion. It was adorable, though; Jessica got one of her little friends to do tricks for his bread, while I catered to an especially patient mallard who was a little too shy to climb out of the water like the rest of his friends.

After we’d run out of bread, Jessica and I wandered down to the dock, where we chilled – literally. It was damn cold. From the dock, we could see a park that lingered on the edge of the bay; since there wasn’t much to see at the dock, we decided to leave and explore the park.

We got ourselves a bench right on the water’s edge, and sat out there for probably close to an hour. We met a retired stewardess with her little male Bischon who was actively exploring the sand. We saw boatfuls of half-naked men paddling out on the bay. We watched people cruise by on their little schooners.

And we saw an otter! Who knew that otters liked to hang out in the bay? He was adorable; he would dive under water, then surface a few feet later, and dive again – clearly on a mission, but to where? Was he visiting his friends at Sea World? Was he going for a meal at the dockside restaurant (which had pondfuls of ugly fish)? Was he striking out for freedom?

Who knows? He sort of made our day, though, just because he was so darn cute.

Oh! And at one point, while we were still on our gazebo, we saw two ducks humping. I couldn’t tell if the female was pleased or not; she seemed like she was trying to swim away. Little dude was into it, though, pecking at her head feathers and everything.

Probably more than the BSW in me needed to see.