roboppy.net

1, 2, 3...

BOOM!

I thought something would explode. So far, this seems to be working alright. (However, most of the links on the left don't work right now. I didn't bother with them because I was completely immersed in the task of making this stupid thing work.) The template tags in Movable Type make me want to...not use Movable Type. But I used it anyhoo. Otherwise you may not get to see this BEAUTIFUL display of webdesign I lay before you!

...sarcasm, yes. I'm not colorblind, so the muticolored sunshine palette I based this page on was done on purpose. BWAHAHA! I mean, I designed this page before deciding that the easiest way to implement a blog would be to stick an unsightly iframe in the middle, and at that time, it looked somewhat acceptable. Kind of like if you drop a piece of food on the floor but pick it up a second later, dust it off, and deem it still safe for human consumption. It would have been better if you didn't drop it on a germ-infested floor in the first place, but hey, what can you do about gravity? Maybe I would be better off if I were colorblind...

So what happened to this site? Well, it went on a little vacation for a while ...in website heaven. Whatever happened to the Web Hosting Factory, I have no idea, but I hope lightning strikes it and fries its organs nice 'n crispy. So I've moved to EHost Pros and so far it's the most amazing thing in the world. It's kind of like that time I won the $100,000 prize in a fly-fishing contest, except I didn't win anything and I don't fish, so...this is in a league of its own. Because of the mind-boggling features that come with a reseller package, I developed the desire to scoop up domain names by the truckload (or scoopload) and take over the world. That plan didn't work, so I just bought two new domain names; beckbeckbeck.net and evenmagnet.net. For less than $10 a year, you can own a name! Not just a name, a name-dot-something!

Yup, I'm easily gratified by buying domain names. And the "dot-something" is, in my case, always ".net," which gets boring after a while. But that lovely ".nu" costs a bundle that I'd rather spend on something else, like underwear.

...are you still reading this? Holy crap, you are! Hm. I guess I will continue blabbing on.

So Robyn, what have you been up to lately? Poking mud with sticks?

Maybe I have, maybe I haven't. Okay, I haven't. I've been writing in my livejournal as a way to cope with being blog-less, but not I am un-blog-less, which makes me...blog? I'm BLOG! Other things I've been doing are getting loads of junk for college, wondering how to sell some poofies, ridding myself of mucoid plaque, and working on other websites (as you can see, I haven't gotten very far). Today actually ended the question of banishing my mucoid plaue to septic tank hell, woohoo! I wasn't supposed to eat any solid food today (was just supposed to drink juice and take my herbal tablets and junk four times a day) but I cheated and took my tablets and junk three times while eating a substantial amount of food. It wasn't like I was even hungry, but that feeling of eating is just so gratifying. And that's the weird thing about this past week of not really eating anything; I didn't feel hungry. I felt the same as I would have on a regular day, except I had a few more hours that I would have spent eating to do something else. Like poking mud with sticks!

You know what fruit is really good? Figs. FIGS! I didn't even like them before, but I've been eating a lot of them lately because my mum really likes them. And now I do too, mmm. They're not very sweet, but when you bite into one, it just tastes fresh. I don't get that feeling a lot from other fruits...I mainly get it from other vegetables, like some fresh greens or peas. If you've never had fresh figs before, try em!

This morning my house had a cable modem installed thus upgrading my household's Internet surfing ability up a notch from "abysmal" to ...to...

Well, I haven't figured it out yet. It's fast, yes. It could be faster, but heck, I've been using a 56k (at best) modem for my entire life. It could only be faster if my computer weren't on a wireless connection. Anyway, stuff just magically appears in a instant instead of me drumming my fingers and pulling out my hair as that little loading bar in the bottom right corner of IE taunts me...getting longer..and longer...and sometimes (I swear) getting shorter and dancing around until the whole bar has been filled and I arrive at a website called "The page cannot be displayed."

Testing out this lovely thing called a cable modem hasn't made me pull out my hair yet, but at a few points I would have liked to chuck my computer out the window. For some reason the connection kept stopping and going as the little green bars in the bottom right hand side of my monitor flickered between saying "Robyn, you have the pow-ah!!" and "Robyn, I disconnected you because you suck. Go away" For the time being, things are going semi-smoothly besides that I can't change between any of my programs with ease (I have to minimized everything for some reason). Now everything in my toolbar is blinking...hm. That can't be good.

And just so you know, I do manage to screw up most mechanical things. So it's great that I just got a new iPod, eh? I wonder how long it will last. I didn't really ask for it, but I can't say I don't mind having one. It costed about $314, a very good price for what to me is a 15 GB portable drive with "extras" like an MP3 player and mindless games like Solitaire and another one where you shoot down parachuters. (Why you have to shoot the parachuters, I don't know. They could just have easily made it a game where you had to shoot flying muffins or something.) I'm not sure how my brother found it for so cheap (relatively) but I think he got it through dell.com. I decided to pay $150 because I really can't afford to pay for all of it, but I shouldn't be a freeloader either, right? I already got a new camera and thought that was a lot, so I decided to make it my birthday present. Supposedly I'm entitled to a graudation present as well, but really, what kind of accomplishment is graduating high school? I mean, of course I was going to graduate, so I don't see how I deserve anything besides the freedom of getting to leave high school.

Crap, my connection is sucking. Even though it keeps stopping, it's still faster than before. I downloaded 10 megs in less than 2 minutes, I think. Yet I already find myself becomming inpaient...that can't be good. Oh, my FTP program crashed, that's nice. It's been doing that ever since I started using the cable modem and right now I'm attemping to upload TONS of website stuff. All of diskobox.net takes up nearly 400 megs and all of beckbeckbeck.net takes up nearly 300. It's because I decided to put my Mum site at diskobox.net and the mp3s for that amount of 200-something. I'm also adding a bunch of music videos to my Beck site, which take up a load of space. I'm sure I'll have a heart attack when I see how much bandwidth is taken up after I finished uploading everything, but for now I'll pretend it doesn't matter.

I got a nice package today called NEW MAGNET ALBUM IT'S REALLY GOOD (actually it's called "On Your Side" but you know, same diff). I got the Japanese import because of the three extra tracks, which is more like one new song and two other previously released songs...except the previously released songs are slightly different than the ones that were...previously released. It's such a slight difference that I don't even see why there is a difference. I got a Libido single yesterday and there's an album track on it that is also just slightly different from the one on the album...but still, it makes the song almost completely different. But not. ...anyway. I gotta type up the new lyrics to put on my website. I was delighted to see that my name actually is in the liner notes. Completely mind boggling, but cool all the same. Home of Magnet just put up a links page and my site isn't on it though. :) Well, my site isn't done yet, so I guess that's alright.

I WON! Woohoo! I was refreshing like nuts. I finally get a keyboard, wee! I also wanted this since it's smaller, but $50 was a bit much for me.

For the past two days I've been learning how to crochet while listening to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I bought this crochet kit geared towards kids that was supposed to end up being a hat. I figured if I could do anything, then it would have to be a kid's kit, and if I couldn't do it, I would forever be utterly hopeless and unable to hone in on some yet-to-be-discovered talent of crocheting. Anyway, I ended up with a hat that looked like it regurgitated on itself. It made no sense, but i somehow managed to make some kind of flipped-out circular thingy. Erm. Yeah. So I took it apart, bought a new book from Kinokuniya and make a new hat-ish thing. It's not done yet but it's coming out a hell of a lot better than what I made yesterday, all with the help of a book that isn't even in English. Japanese books are amazing, I mean...it would help if I could read them, but the illustrated directions are very good on their own. I also bought a magazine about interior decorating for teeny-boppers or something, as it was filled with photos of Japanese teenage girls' rooms, which were many times stuffed with Winne the Pooh memorabilia. Why, I don't know, but I swear it was some kind of running theme. The magazine comes with lots of ideas of how to organize junk and how to display all that wonderous Winnie the Pooh stuff you bought in a drunken haze wandering the streets of Fantasyland, or where it is that Winnie the Pooh (I wrote "Poog" first...WINNIE THE POOG!) comes from. The 100 Acre Wood?

Another notable thing going on in my life is that I've been eating a lot. Today has been the second day of "feeding" after my cleanse and I've already gained back a pound, which isn't a bad thing. I have a set point of pounds that I would not like to go over, and it's pretty reasonable. Anyway, yesterday I ate three bananas (two of which were frozen) which wasn't a good idea (in addition to all the OTHER stuff I ate). I cut down a little more today but I did end up buying some yellowtail sashmi from Mitsuwa...it's so good! And it was only around 3 ounces, so I don't think it's anything to be afraid of. Yellowtail seems to be my favorite sashimi as of now.

So far I've had three orders from my poofy shop...not too bad! I was hoping for more, but anything's good really. The website itself is getting a lot of hits, yet hardly anyone leaves comments on my comics, signs the guestbook, or buys anything. Who are these people?and Better?

I had previously titled this "Why does it smell like popcorn?" but shortly after stepping out of my room (aka "dungeon of doom and stuff and lack of sunlight and fresh air") after writing the first draft of this entry, I found the scent so powerful, so paralyzing, that I came to the conclusion that popcorn must had been popped at some point during my consciousness. I went to the balcony overlooking the family room where my brother was sitting.

"Did you eat popcorn?"
"Yes."

I know that any regular person would have figured out that the smell of popcorn was indeed coming from the fluffy morsels of starch themselves, but I didn't think we had any popcorn. "Popcorn cannot exist in the Lee household; it cannot be true!" Yes. I don't know what's wrong with me. Anyway, the scent had lingered for about 4 hours, and I felt like I was swimming in a mist consisting of microscopic popcorn molecules and their butter buddies. (shudder)

And now I return you to our regularly schedule program. This program is entitled "If It Smells Like Popcorn, It Is Popcorn, Doofus". It stars me as the doofus in question. And all other characters are played by...me. [Stuff that looks like this has been added as a commentary for you to follow along with. How fun it shall be!]

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I ask the above question only because I really do not know the answer. For the past few hours sitting in my room in front of this laptop (not a good habit...oh well!) I've noticed a popcorn-esque scent in the room. Huh? What the...where is it coming from? I know it's not actually popcorn [apparently, I didn't], but what else smells like popcorn [...popcorn]? It seems to be a mixture of my sweat and paper products and...the computer. [ew]

Anyway, I haven't been going online much lately.

::gasp!:: So what have I been doing?

WELL, I'm glad you asked. Otherwise I'd be talking to myself. (tumbleweed rolls by)

...I've been crocheting like I've never crocheted before. And I'm not just saying that; I've never crocheted before. Well, I did mention crocheting in my last entry, but you know what I mean. That's what I've been doing for the past few days, and I've gotten some pretty good results. Here's a collage of stuff I've been making lately (not all crocheted stuff...bag ideas came from flamingo) and here are photos of me and some stuff I just did the other day (crap, it's Monday already, isn't it?). Strangely enough, I'm starting to vaguely understand how to read crochet patterns...although I'd still need to look at all the abbreviations and junk.

The other day I saw Dirty Pretty Things with Cristen. While waiting before the movie we went around to a couple of stores, one which was called Copabananas. The storefront immediately caught my eye because it had Uglydolls! I've always wanted one,but I guess not to the tune of $30. :| I'm sure it's worth that much though, they're so cute! AND SOFT! And squishy! Anyway, I really enjoyed the movie and it wasn't anything like I thought it would be. Then again, I didn't have many thoughts about it in the first place, but I thought it would be this very dark drama type thing...and it kind of is, but it's happy too. Here's a nice recent synopsis of the movie. I'd recommend seeing it if it's playing anywhere near you.

For an extended period of time my cable connection was actually working pretty well! I mean, one would assume it should work well and not die every two seconds, but that's what I've been dealing with lately. It's still kinda crapping up, but I guess my connection is a lot better from in my room than in the basement. And it's so freakin' fast, I've already uploaded a lot of my pages. I could measure the time to upload my Mum site in minutes instead of DAYS (really, when I uploaded it on my dial up connection it me hoarding the Internet 24/7 while hoping stuff wouldn't crash after being left on for hours).

I could have sworn that I had more things to say... ... ...hm. Oh yeah, I think I will actually start drawing more Poofy comics. I sketched out five of them in the past week just out of boredom in my journal before going to bed. I'm also planning to applique a green t-shirt with felt to look like Bork just because...well, I got a green t-shirt and I have a lot of felt. The best place to get cheapo new t-shirts is a craft shop, I think. I went to Michaels and got a bright kelly green kids small t-shirt for $4. I don't think I could find a shirt like that and that cheap anywhere else even if I wanted to. Then again, it was probably made by slave labor in Mexico or something. (sigh)

This entry was pretty boring. Next time I will try to make things more exciting. Like maybe when it's not past 3 AM...jeez, what's wrong with me?

By the way, there's still a popcorn-esque smell in the air...[and would be until the sun came back up]

[PS: Alright, this is where I shall reply to previous comments. I SHALLL! Uh. Anyway! I use Photoshop and ImageReady to design my websites and then Dreamweaver to make everything into HTML because I don't know how to deal with computer languages, and even with my minimal contact with actual HTML (as opposed to a WYSIWYG editor) sometimes I feel the need to bash my head against a hard surface.

I checked out this software discount site and...yeah, big discounts! Cool! But not enough for me to buy them, although a legitimate copy of Photoshop would be nice. Having pirated software feels a bit iffy, but then shelling out hundreds of dollars for the same program that I already have in a sense seems silly. Oh well, can anyone spare $400?

...I've just realized that an iPod is not much cheaper than that. As to what is more valuable...eh. Well. My iPod has been extremely useful as a way for me to transfers gigs of files from my desktop computer to my laptop very quickly. I haven't actually had much use for it as an mp3 player yet. :P But now that I think of the Adobe program package in comparison to an iPod, it doesn't seem that bad.]

There's a Nabisco factory on the side of the highway (route 208?) that you pretty much have to go on if you want to get to anyplace worth going. There's always a baking smell wafting out and permeating the interiors of everyone's automobiles/brain cells and I kind of like the smell, but I wondered if I'd like it if I had to smell it everyday. How about the people that work in the factory? Do they get sick of the smell of cookies after a while? Something weird I recently noticed is that for most of my life I was never able to smell the baking smell coming out of the factory, probably due to mucus nomads deciding to permanently colonize my nasal cavities for a few years, but now I always smell it. AHH, refreshing! Then again, having a stuffed up nose had its advantages; I couldn't smell anything bad. I could be ignorant and ignore people farts, or whatever it was that happened...

So I've been doing a lot of cookie smelling a lot lately since my mum and I have been going out...a lot...lately. A few days ago we went to an IKEA that recently opened and...my GOD, it's huge! It's huge and crowded. The store is in it's own little section on the side of the highway that has been pretty much untouched for 10 years. I swear that weeds had grown into full fledged trees during that time. At some point loads of road construction was done around that area with ramps going everywhere (the Garden State Plaza is on the opposite side of the highway from IKEA) and not a bunch of those ramps go straight into IKEA. I was surprised by how quickly they built IKEA because...if I remember correctly, it wasn't too long ago. Just one day these huge structure sprouted out of nowhere and I thought the apocalypse was coming or something.

I've been to IKEA once in my life, and I was really small and remember nothing except for the Swedish meatballs (that used to be one of my favorite foods). I was blown away by all the stuff they have because its just SO MUCH STUFF here's a small sampling of it)and its SO CHEAP it's scary. Really, some of the stuff is ridiculously cheap, I don't get it. The store is so huge, you could spend your entire LIFE there. Just sleep on some of the cozy beds! I didn't look at the cafeteria, but I'm sure there you can get them Swedish meatballs. There was also a little grocery area where they sold chocolates, jams, and a lot of seafood-related items.

Speaking of seafood, today my mum and I ate at Legal Sea Foods because they have great salads and...great seafood. One of their dishes is a blackened tuna "sashimi"...not sashimi, "sashimi." It's like sashimi, but it's not because they wanted to slightly cook the outside. Of course, I think that's completely nuts; why even go through the trouble? It's practically raw! So my mum asked if she could have it completely raw and the waitress said no one had ever asked for that before, but the cook said it was okay. It was DELICIOUS, they should just keep it that way on the menu. I guess I'll have to remember in the future to get that and ask for it to be completely raw, which is easy enough. There is no absolutely raw fish (or unquoted sashimi) on the menu, which is weird considering they must have the freshest available fish any restaurant could have. My mum said that raw fish probably isn't that appealing, but then that doesn't explain the Japanese restaurant explosion that has occurred around where we live (and just about everywhere else) because obviously, a significant amount of people must be ordering sashimi for it to be on the menu. So...anyway, if you ever go to Legal Sea Food, get the tuna and ask for it completely raw. My entree was clams (or were clams...well, one entree, many clams, you know what I mean) which was really nice too. I really like clams/oysters because eating them is like taking a dip into the ocean...and then eating the ocean. Eating some ocean essence, maybe. And then ingesting sand from the ocean, because there's always some little particles of something in the clams. I personally don't really enjoy going to the ocean though...

Random thing: here's a collage of what's on my desk. SO EXCITING AHH you are writhing with anticipation...or not.

Man, my Poofies are so unloved. Nobody wants them! They are all stuffed in a crate, it's kind of sad. Then again, they're all so happy looking, so...so...they don't care. I have to admit, even thought I tend to assume the worst and that my stuff sucks, I really did thing I'd sell poofies to people out there in Internet land (I sold some to people that I know, but that doesn't really count, although I value my friends' business, of course). I did manage to sell some buttons, but only one set to a complete stranger and another set of different buttons requested by someone Cristen told my site about to. If my poofies don't sell at cut + paste then I'll ...well...I dunno. I guess I'll get them mailed back to me and I'll just keep em for myself. The poofies are pretty much the last thing anyone would see on the site, but...(shrugs). Poofy.net has gotten a lot of hits from the site, but I really have no sense that anyone is visiting the site. No on leaves any comments or notes in the guestbook and no one e-mails me, except for the girl who requested certain buttons. When I first started the site a lot of people I didn't know would sign the guestbook or contact me, and it didn't even get that many visitors! Since I didn't change the site much since then, I haven't a clue what I'm doing wrong. I guess I have to write some more comics before going to college (I don't think I'll be making a whole lot of em there).

And speaking of college,it's coming up soon! AHHH! NO I WANT TO STAY HOME, this sucks. At least I got my dorm information; I'll b e with Kathryn in Raymond House, 305. I guess I should be glad I'm not on the fourth floor or something. Aaaand here's my new mailing address:

Robyn Lee
Box 1026
Vassar College
124 Raymond Avenue
Poughkeesie, NY 12604-Box 1026

I don't know if you have to write "Box 1026" at the end...I mean, I don't see why you would. It's already in the beginning of the address, and that last bit is just for the zip code. That's how it's written in the mailing I got though. Everyone else who's going to college, tell me your new mailing addresses! Then I can write you letters on weird Japanese stationery with loads of BUNNY STICKERS!

Ah yes...BUNNY STICKERS!!! My mum and I went to Morning Glory just to take a look, but there is quite a lot of cute stuff. Their stuff isn't as cute as San-X, but the MG bunny characters are cute. Just take a look at these stickers; blue bunnies and pink bunnies! I bought those today, along with other bunny stickers that I can't find on this website. Crazy, probably. I also got a Miffy highlighter and a rabbit pen/pencil thingy...er, yeah, this is perfect stuff to get for college, right? I seem to be digressing into my childhood...

I did something really stupid. Okay, that's not a newsflash...but I will continue to tell you about my stupidity anyway. BWAHAHA! I bought this Libido single because I thought it was by ...Libido. That makes sense, right? But it's not Norwegian Libido, it's ...another Libido! I DID know there was another band called Libido, but seeing that that CD was meshed with all the other Libido singles, I figured it was something else that I had missed. Thankfully, it didn't cost much, but...still. Er. Poop!

I must get this. The only problem is that I don't need 144 of them. I mean, it's reasonably priced, but...that's a helluva lot of Bobs. Will anyone buy them from me if I get a case? Because if anyone's interested, I'll buy a case and sell them 4/$1. :)

Yesterday I spent the day in Manhattan with my mum, mainly around Nolita, Soho and the East Village. I wanted to go because of The Market NYC, which I've wanted to go to for months but was always too lazy to do so (how not-surprising!). I used to go around that area quite a lot with Diana just for fun, but this time I saw loads of stores I hadn't seen before.

First stop was The Market NYC. It was easy to find and was situated in a church gymnasium (see a photo collage I made here. It was filled with the works of "young designers" (my mum said "I guess if you're old you'd have a hard time selling anything,") in the form of jewely, clothing, and handbags. The first clothing line we checked out was Sampleline, and while I liked the designs I think my mum liked them even more. Luckily, we can share clothes, so she got a skirt and a pair of pants. I tried on a very short skirt (probably for the first time in my life) and I liked it, but then I couldn't think of too many situations that I'd wear it in. Another vendor was selling screen-printed shirts and tank tops that I liked a lot, so I got one of those. My mum got an interesting denim jacket from this guy and two very nice bags with drawstrings (although not necessarily drawstring bags...does that make sense?) from this designer. She also got a nice silver bracelet with semiprecious stones in it, and while I like jewely too, I mainly like to look at it. I mean, I don't mind looking at it...it's not like I find looking at jewely a very time consuming activity that I can find joy in. Actually, now that I think of it, my mum used to go to the jewelry department at Nordstom ALL the time because she had a friend that worked there (and she really liked buying jewelry) and I found it very boring. So. My point is, I'm not very into jewely. At least that may have been what I wanted to say a few miles back...

Another place I wanted to go was the Camper store because I needed to get new shoes. Did my life depend on it? Probably not, but my mum said the shoes I have right now are probably soaked with bodily fluids and god knows what else. I look at them and see shoes; she looks at them and sees a hot bed of bacterial infestation. I've had the same pair of Camper sneakers for about 2 and a half years, so I guess I am entitled to a new pair before the other one becomes totally ingested by microscopic beasties. The layout of the store was very cute and simple; no racks, just a raised platform on one side with all the shoes strewn out on it, with huge, wide brimp lamps hanging overheard to light them. On the other side of the store is where you can sit to try on the shoes, basically a long ledge with air-filled cushions (they felt like sitting on balloons...squish-ploop!) to rest your bum on. Everything was on sale and I managed to get the last pair of some nice red sneakers. I've never had red shoes before, but...well, now I do. RED SNEAKERS OH BOOOY! Oh yeah, when my mum was paying for the shoes, the cashier folded up her receipt and put it in a little plastic pouch about the size of a business card. I've never see that done before! Is it more sanitary to put the receipt in plastic or something? How big is the "receipt poncho" market anyway? "Are your receipts always getting wet and grimy? Protect your receipts from the harshness of the outside world with RECEIPT PONCHOS!"

Some other stores we went to were Lunettes Et Chocolat (a store that sells sunglasses and...chocolates? My mum bought a box...well at least she won't have any competition from me), Karikter, Kate's Paperie, Scholastic Store, and Stackhouse. Stackhouse is a pricey place that has lots of nice designed t-shirts and stuff like that, but the main thing I noticed were some crocheted caps they were selling for...a lot. I don't remember how much, but I was thinking it would be truly crazy to pay that much for something that was probably made with less than $5 of yarn in addition to not being that hard to make. Lunettes et Chocolat also sold some crocheted hats that costed a lot. Jeez, I can crochets hats and caps, and they're really easy, although they may take a few hours. I don't mind shelling out a large amount of dough for unique designs and visible effort, but sometimes I see things and just don't understand why they cost so much.

We walked from the area around Prince Street to Quintessence, which is at 10th Street near First Avenue. When you look at a map it doesn't seem that close, but walking around there is easy. One of the reasons I initially wanted to live in Manhattan was because I thought I could do with the incidental exercise that comes with having to walk wherever you want to go, but it doesn't make up for the awful air quality. Still, going to Manhattan from the suburbs, one of the first things you notice is how much slimmer everyone is. In this sense it's a much nicer place for my mum and I to go clothing shopping at than the mall, but I feel kinda pudgy walking around Manhattan. I need more exercise, YES. We could have taken an annoying subway route to Quintessence but it was much nicer to look and whatever was on the street. St. Mark's Place reminded my mum and of Taiwanese night markets (except Taiwanese night markets are dirtier and...um, scarier) and there were lots of vintage stores. One store was selling LOADS of t-shirts, really, just...mountains of stuff. If I had any idea what I could do with the shirts, I wouldn't have minded looking at them, but there were already loads of people around there. When we started walking in Cooper Square, I saw a guy wearing a Stink-O-Man t-shirt (and I'd like that one, now that it's on sale)! STINK-O-MAAAN! Come to think of it, it may be surprising that that was the only homestarrunner clothed person I saw...

Oh yeah, back to Quintessence. I love Quintessence since they've just got such yummy food, and since everything's raw I can try anything I want. While I've been there two times before, my mum had never gone and wasn't really into the idea of eating there since she doesn't think eating raw food imitaing cooked food makes sense. I had to keep telling her it was good and delicious and it's not really like the raw dishes are trying to emulate cooked food, but the cooked food serves as an example of something you could make without haaving to cook anything. The raw counterparts don't really taste like the cooked ones; they're completely separate! That kinda makes sense,right? Anyway, she ended up really liking the food! :) We started off with a sampler appetizer and for my entree I had "spaghetti" that was really squash cut into long, thin strips with diced tomatoes, marinated mushrooms, and olives on top. My mum had an entree that sampled a bunch of the other entrees on the menu and had falafels, hummus, a nori roll, and some "ravavioli" made of thinly sliced turnip. Mmmmmmm. I also ordered a coconut shake, which is coconut and coconut water blended together. It's SO SO SO good...coconuts in general are just so yummy. Of course we couldn't go without eating dessert, so we each got a different pie; I got fruit cheese and she got three layer fudge. Man, that stuff is so, so, so yummy...so it's probably a good thing that we don't live that close or else we would eat there too much. Take a look for yourself; here's a photo of some of the stuff we ate!

I managed to finish a bag I've been crocheting for the past few days. I didn't use very good yarn though, so I have to keep a note to myself that cotton yarn is good for bags, and acrylic is ...not as good. It looks pretty greenish but the yarn is actually a whole bunch of colors wrapped together. I guess green stands out the most though.

Since today is Sunday, I've just been lazying around doing laundry and some website junk. I'm also working on another crocheted bag, using a pattern for the first time and actually understanding it (it's exciting)! My brother was away in Washington DC for the past few days but he just got back home today and some of his friends are over too. It was pretty nice just having my mum and I in the house for a while...

I recently got the new issue of 1-Up Zine and came across the heading in the letters section "Pong Slumber Party". I thought, "Haha, that sounds like me!" Then I read it and thought "Haha, that sounds like me!" And then I realized "Oh no, that is me!" Because I wrote a silly e-mail ...here's a photo. And I must have signed my e-mail with Rob, doh! Hopefully people will figure out that I'm a girl, or else it may sound funny that I talk about girls having sleepovers.

I got an e-mail from my old friend from Taiwan, Krystin, who now lives in Greece! She has a website of photos (warning: it plays music) from ages ago. You can probably figure out which one I am in the 4 year old+ photos from her 14th birthday party. Glasses and a beret...I dunno what I was thinking.

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Hey Allie, I know just what you mean about going blah when something stinks...my BROTHER stinks, and I gotta live with him. Haha! I guess it's mean for me to always tell him "Dude, you smell," so I've stopped doing that. Kinda. He really has pretty bad BO though.

Man, I wouldn't want to be a doctor or a lawyer either. Anyone who's lifelong dream is to do either of those is...kinda crazy. Not that it wouldn't be useful to learn to be a doctor or a lawyer, but to actually be one? Ah...nah, not for me! Right now I'm planning to study anthropology, but I really don't know how far I'll go with that. I know what I'm definitely not doing...anything related to math. I think. :)

Peaches have a tendency to go bad very quickly. So what do you do, as a peach seller, to sell those less-than-perfect peaches?

Make em boo-boo peaches! I think they may as well give em away for free, but the sad face evokes a bit of pity. BOO BOO PEACH! You know what that sounds like? Some kind of San-X character, or any kind of random Asian character for that matter. Wait, no one take my idea! I SHALL CREATE BOO-BOO PEACH, market it, and have it end up here. (I have this, this, and this, is that bad? And what the heck is with this beer-chan thing? Wait, I take that back...what the heck??? Come on, get your own creepy microbe to remind yourself that the human body is a hotbed of disgusting diseases!)

Well...that was amusing. Microbes. Anyway! Back to my day. Uh. Boo-boo peach is going to take over the world! The end.

...anyway, my mum and I went to Poughkeepsie to go to a farmer's market near Vassar College and on the way there (it's about a 75-90 minute drive) we stopped at one of those rest stops on the highway and that's where they wre selling some fruit! It was funny to see come people walking out of the rest stop building carrying huge cups of soda and plates of fries stare at the mountains of fruit...and keep going. Fruit isn't for everyone I guess, but my mum and I couldn't resist. We bought lots of plums and nectarines, all delicious of course. We bought a bag of dried apple and it was deeeelicious. It's a shame that most stuff in stores come with preservatives and junk.

[random link: holy crap, it's sheep-a-licious! And hammieland-a-licious!...man, I wish my site were cuter.]

Oo, this site is so cool! I just made an icon for poofy.net! Bookmark it to see. :D

Okay, I got totally sidetracked there. My mum and I had a lot of time to just walk around before going to the farmer's market, so...we did. There are a lot of Japanese and Chinese restaurants in the area, apparently. At least I know I won't ever run low on sashimi. There was also a pizza place, a bakery, some cafes....lots of places to eat, generally. And there was a very nice little bookstore full of...well, books. The only books I was really interesting in were the children's books. They're the best!

With some more time to kill, we went on the campus to the dorm that I'll be living in by the end of the month: Raymond House. How old does a building have to be to use a "V" instead of a "U"? Isn't that a really old English (olde English?) thingy? Or did they just think it looked better? Oh well, looks like a BUTTLOAD of FUUUN! I really hope it is, at least. :|

The farmer's market was chock full of fruits, veggies, more fruits, more veggies, and other stuff that I didn't care as much about because they were neither fruit nor veggie. I don't know why I didn't take any photos of the fruits, but here are some veggies. I bought some carrots (only four...I have no idea why I didn't get more, that was really stupid) and they were delicious! They just had a different texture from what I would get from the supermarket. The crunch even sounded different. We also got loads of peaches, plums, and nectarines. This guy was selling raspberries that had been picked only a few hours ealier, so we got a pint of that and ate it in the car. :)

Fresh fruit from a local farm is definitely the best. Yummy, inexpensive, and the fruits don't have those annoying stickers on em. WOO!

Lately I've been eating lots of various peaches, plums, and nectarines, and they've been having a drastic effect on my digestive system. I don't know which fruit is responsible, or if it's all three, but really, my digestion has never been better! Last week I was just constipated so I decided to cut out dried fruits and nuts, but then I also started eating loads more peaches 'n stuff. So for the past few days I've been pooping 3 times or more a day. Today I pooped about 1 and a half hours after I finished eating...man, that stuff goes by quickly! I am completely amazed that I can literally eat buckets of fruit and not gain any weight. Tomorrow (technically today) I plan to eat at Quintessence though, so that might change...

Oh yeah, I completely forgot to mention a huge thing that happened today: massive blackout! It was really weird because my mum and I had gotten home at around 4:30 when she noticed the lights kept dimming. I went to the bathroom and noticed the lights were dimming in there too...and then all the electricity went out. If we had gotten home a few minutes later we probably wouldn't have been able to even get inside the house (at least, not in the garage). The blackout continued for the next 5 hours or so, and in that time I actually did some productive things...kind of. I made these tiny poofies as requested by CJ (they're cute, but after this absolutely no more tiny poofies, haha!). I know they look pretty funky, especially the bigger one, which looks like a really skinny poofy, but...I don't know what happened. When I drew the template, that's what it ended up looking like. :| I also made this black poofy (yfoop) for Keli.

Aaaaand...I sold a Poofy today, so I gotta start making packages. HERE I GOOO!

...oh wait, I'm actually going to do the Friday Five this week. I've hardly ever done it before!

1. How much time do you spend online each day?
It depends. Lately I've been on for hours on end...really unhealthy. :(

2. What is your browser homepage set to?
Google.

3. Do you use any instant messaging programs? If so, which one(s)?
I have Trillian installed on my computer (on which I use AIM, MSN Messenger, and ICQ) but I hardly actually ever use it. I would only use it if I thought I had the brain capacity to communicate with others, and I find that I usually don't.

4. Where was your first webpage located?
Geocities, when they gave you three MB and...it really sucked. :P

5. How long have you had your current website?
A little more than two years? I'm not really sure. The URL has been the same but the content has gotten messed up with webhost changes and junk like that.

--- comment replies! ---

Rebecca: How did you do crocheting in rounds? It shouldn't be too hard, although the first project I ever did was with rounds and it came out awful. :D I added more stuff to the bottom of the page...man, those little thingies are addictive. Kind of. I always thought they were silly until I found one for FRUIT! And a little poo.

Okee, I revised the evenmagnet page a bit...or a lot. The layout is the same, but I changed the colors and I think dark is better, mainly just for the sake of my eyes. Then again, I should have made THIS page less bright as well, but...oops. I find myself having to lower the brightness on my screen by one or two notches when I use it, and seeing an all-white page kinda hurt. So...um..hm. How's dark green?

Diana: This journal has been up for a while!...kinda. I didn't really publicize it or anything (not that I'd want to subject people to reading it...THE PAAAIN!) sooo I guess it's alright that you just found it? :D

Simple pages are good, yeah. I think there's too much empty space in my page, but...OH WELL, I want to get it done before college starts so I don't have much time to fiddle around. Wah!

I took your advice and made all the links open in new windows. It's much better, thanks!

Really, tell me that you wouldn't do the same stupid thing I just did.

I had (well, "have" since I'm still doing it) copy two audio cassette tapes for my Japanese class and I thought "Okay, this will take three hours then." So I'm sitting here, reading my Japanese book (pp. 6-13, my homework...I'm having trouble understanding what a "mora" is) and thinking "Man, three hours. This sucks." 45 minutes later, the first side of the first tape is done. It felt like a really long time and I was dreading doing the other side. And the other tape.

At around this time I realized that I was sitting in a room FULL OF TAPE RECORDERS. Yes. Robyn...where is your brain? Not in the skull. Not even near that part of the human body. It's in a swamp somewhere down in Florida. I popped my other tape into another recorder and saved myself the pain of having to sit through three hours of....well, sitting. But I did waste 45 minutes, which kind of sucks.

So anyway, don't do what I did. Not that you would. I mean, who would? I'm SURROUNDED BY FREAKIN' TAPE RECORDERS!

By the way, I'm a college student now. It's hard to tell, I know. Sometimes I wonder if I left my head in elementary school, kindergarten to be exact. Remember how easy that was? "Count the apples!" Yeah. (sigh)

So today I had my first class and it wasn't that bad. My "Elementary Japanese" class has about 15 people in it. So it's nice and small, but then the classroom is pretty small too. Some people will probably switch to the earlier class, which has a lot less people at the moment. I would if I could; my Anthropology class on Tuesday and Thursday coincides with it. It's a short, 50-minute period so we didn't get to learn very much. We just went over the three types of alphabets and how to address people and...yeah. I really really want to succeed in learning an Asian language for once in my life and I hope this is the way to go. I saw some people I recognized in that class, which was cool. Simon, one of the people across the hall from my dorm is in my class (when asked why he decided to take Japanese, he replied, "Why not?") but he's switching to the earlier class. Which means...um...more oxygen for me? In the basement! (The room is on the basement floor, room 011. I was a bit confuzzled at first.)

After my class I picked up my laptop, which I'm typing on right now in this room FULL OF TAPE RECORDERS (I really can't get over how I wasted 45 minutes sitting here...it's a small part of my life, but one that will live in infamy as "that time I sat on my butt for 45 minutes while moths invaded my brainmeats"). I guess my laptop is not virus free (with a new lemon scent!) which is nice. What is not so nice is that only one of the two Ethernet ports in my room works. At first I thought my computer was still pooped until I switched the jack with Kathryn's computer and it worked. D'oh. The Internet is being pretty poopy right now, and I hope that doesn't last because it feels slower than dial-up right now. The little "Network Connections" thingy says it's going at 10 MB / sec or something like that...erm, no.

I spent probably too much time on the Internet, still keeping up with Neopets. Yes, it's awful, but I want to reach one million neopoints. It's a stupid goal that really doesn't amount to anything, but it's my stupid goal. MIIIINE! Must rack up fake points for my fake pet! I don't understand the psychology of it either. I was amused when I heard someone blaring Hail to the Thief and then Kid A while I was online. I couldn't even tell where the sound was coming from...it was more like vibrations than sound anyway. But anyhoo, woo for that!

After that I decided to go to the college store to pick up some cassette tapes to record on and maybe find some raw nuts. The only raw nuts that were there were pecans, but that's a whole lot better than nothing. There's also tamari almonds and junk like that, which isn't bad, but...poot. There are also organic raisins and dried apples, so I could live on that for a while. There were a lot of people at the store getting their textbooks, but I figured I had to get the tapes a some point (then again, if other people in my class got the tapes they'd have to record them too and there's absolutely no one else here) and so I waited. A few minutes later a buttload of people filed in from above (the store is below...um...it's below, period) and the line became quite long. How long? Too long. At that point I felt pretty lucky.

Upon exiting the college store I decided to go to the Retreat and see if there were any peaches (sadly, no) and I passed by a poster sale that was going on. Lots of posters. I would like some posters because my room is still lookin' drab. I didn't see anything that I really wanted though. I was thinking of going to to the dollar store to see if they had streamers and crap like that; they'd be easy to hand up in the room because there are a few huge pipes snaking around the ceiling (a nice touch, eh?). Well, I was going to go to the store before I found out I'd have to sit here for a long time copying these tapes.

And now I'm just here. Sitting. Scratching my head (it itches...whyyy). After I finish copying these tapes I'll dump my crap back in the room and go eat dinner. I need vegetables; I've been living on nuts, dried fruit, peaches, apples, bananas, and carrots for the past few days. That's not bad or anything, but I haven't had any green veggies in a while. What do they taste like? Hell, I forgot! I'm just thinking that I need some minerals.

Yesterday was the last day of freedom. From now on, ETERNAL HELL! Maybe. My student fellow told Kathryn and I last night that it would be out last moment without homework. A sad, sad moment, yes.

For a Sunday I actually woke up kind of early, around 9:30 AM, because I wanted to do my laundry. The laundry machines are pretty spiffy here, although the basement that they're in is not. The basement is just plain freaky here, but it's kind of supposed to be like that because during Halloween it gets converted into a haunted house that I've been told repeatedly is the coolest event on campus all year long (I guess most of the house houses hold dances, but Raymond House has insane people so it holds a haunted house). It sounds cool but I'm not sure if I want to take part in it. Well, I get in for free if I do. Anyhoo, yesterday I did laundry in the fun fun basement (one of the rooms is really kinda freaky looking because it used to be a smoking room before NY law make it illegal to smoke inside the buildings) and after that I went to the activities fair to get sucked into various clubs. I didn't sign up for a ton of things, but I don't remember everything that I signed up for. I remember signing up for some Asian Film club, which generally just watches Asian movies and anime...that doesn't sound bad. I also signed up for "The Miscellany News", and maybe, just maybe, Poofy and friends will make their mark in it.

[sidenote: If I hadn't sat on my butt for 45 minutes, I'd be done now. Poop!]

Another thing I was intersted in was the campus radio station, WVKR, so I went to their little informational meeting. I know I wouldn't be much of a great radio DJ, but I just wanted to see what it was about. The meeting ended up beeing pretty intimidating, in my opinion at least (and another girl i was talking to thought the same thing). Okay, what was so "bad" about it? It wasn't horrible, but it just seemed like such a long process to possibly get a show in the wee hours of the morning, and you COULD put a lot of work into trying to get a show and...not get it. First off, you had to work the phones for two two-hour shifts during pledge week (this week) and I didn't even get that far because by the time I got to the sign up sheet there weren't any slots open that weren't during my classes. (I have other options, like listening to a bagillion CDs, but as much as I like music, I think I'm too choosy for that.) After doing the four hours, you have to make a 15-song mix tape/cd. As for the artists you put on the cd, the more obscure/indie, the better. I can understand that, but ...well, it wasn't explicitly said that ALL ARTISTS MUST BE OBSCURE but none of them could be really well known. I could pull that off if I just ran some electronic theme, but...meh. I don't listen to enough obscure, indie stuff. Screw me. Anyway, after listening to the CD the staff would do a casual interview with you and then you have to do a "your space" thing where you do something creative most likely to show them that you are...creative? Cool? There was a section on the Vassar application for that and I didn't do it. I know it doesn't matter now, but I wish I had done it (I don't think I met anyone who didn't do it). I didn't do it because I didn't think I had even the slightest chance of getting in. Anyway.

So after all of that stuff up there, you may or may not get a radio show. If you do get one, it'll probably be at a crappy time, like 3-5 AM. I wouldn't mind doing it as long as I could play anything I wanted, but all that work to get up to that...well, they want to see that you're devoted. Once you are allowed to be a DJ though, you are guaranteed your show until you graduate, which is cool. I can try to get a show again next year, if I really want to.

I went to a meeting for the Miscellany News after that and it was must less intimidating, very nice and relaaaxed. I wanted to find out info about their comics section and apparently it's not a big deal. So maybe, MAYBE I can draw Poofy comics for it! There's only enough room for four-panel cartoons, so they'd be like "Mini Adventures in Poofyville" but wouldn't that be cool? I have to give em some samples. Four little panels...I've never tried that before.

Last night I attempted to be more social. And I kind of was. Maybe. I was trying to think of something to fit a four-panel comic when I heard Simon and Kathryn in the hallway talking about playing Beatles songs on the guitar and they wanted to play "Across the Universe" but couldn't figure it out. I thought I knew how to play it, so I jumped in, but then I found out I...didn't. Oo well, I got to play Simon's guitar for a bit, which made me wish I had my own guitar even more. I went online to find the chords and then we finally figured it out. So we had a small Beatles sing-along in the hallway. Kathryn was taking some photos and she has a photo fo me but hasn't given it to me yet. Simon made up a really funny song about our student fellow, Maura, and her basket. It's an inside joke, not that I'm really in on it, but I understand it. I think.

And that was my attempt to not be in my dorm room 24/7. TA DAAA! (cue confetti)

Today is an absolutely, dreary, depressing day. And what a way to start off the school year! Not only is it rainy and crappy but it's also a national holiday! Oh boy. I used to love rainy weather, but now it feels sucky. And the sweater I wore this morning smelllls funny now (but maybe things are supposed to smell funny in a college dorm). I wanna see some SUN, not get hit by raindrops in 50-something degree weather. Less than a week ago it was sunny as hell and I got sunburned. WHAT IS THIS ATROCITY!?

(looks over at the tape recorder)...crap, I think I still have 30 minutes to go. Or more. Probably more. It feels so deserted here; I guess Chicago Hall isn't a hotspot teeming with students excited about languages.

Oh, I found out something interesting about Vassar the other day; the students publish their own pornography magazine. Swell! I haven't looked through an issue, but it's just one of those interesting things they don't tell you at the prospectice freshmen weekend. And I don't think they list it in their brochure as one of the campus's student activities.

-- comment replies! --

Allie: I know I'm lucky because I don't really have to worry about paying for college. At least, that's what I've been told. :P I personally don't know how much money my family has, seeing that my parents don't actually work, but ...supposedly I don't have to worry about anything. So I'm pretty sure it's enough. And I don't think I would qualify for any extra money anyway. My brother gets a bit of scholarship money from his school though, which is nice. I think if I couldn't afford Vassar I would have just gone to Rutgers, which isn't a bad school, but ...eh.

Lea: I think you beat me in the category of "terrifying new experiences"....! I don't think I've met anyone who feels the same way as I do, but then I haven't talked to many people, which is the problem in the first place! Ahhh well, I'll see how this week goes.

Rebecca: Yay, I have some mail to look forward to! Thanks!

Ralph: You are strange too.

Judy: More mail, yaay thanks!

Alex: Yeaah gotta push those poofies! I haven't gotten orders since I left home! Hmm. Maybe Vassar carries bad poofy-selling vibes. I feel like the whole...tons-of-stores-n-junk around here is like Paramus. But I'd prefer Paramus. I mean, you've got this one huge mall, and then a lot of little places. The residential areas aren't really similar though. Wayne still kinda freaks me out, hehe...I don't know why. It's just SO MUCH SPAAACE, at least the part I kept driving through. I'm curious to see Ramapo now after it looked pretty dumpy last year with all the construction. :P

Fannio: More mail? Woohoo, thanks! I used to hate driving to the post office in my town because getting out of the parking lot was a pain in the butt. But I'm poopy. YOU CAN DO IT!

The bathroom has some smells that my nasal passages have never had the opportunity to meet before. In other words, my nasal passages were pretty peachy keen and happy not knowing the smells associated with a college dorm bathroom. But now...well, who knows. Honestly, what are some of those smells? When you can feel a smell, you know it's bad. It's like some weird massive invisible cloud that you can't escape, but the freakin' toilet stalls are so tiny that you're just trapped. The bathroom stalls on my floor are for some reason really small compared to ones on other floors. I mean, I'm a pretty small person, but I feel cramped in there.

So there's my rant about toilets. Nice, yeah? Yeeeah.

And now I feel like I can relax because it's Thursday and I only have one class tomorrow (Japanese). I think I spend most of my studying time on Japanese...I MUST LEARN IT! Or try to. I mean, it takes me a while to think about how to write Hiragana (we've learned "a" through "ho") but it's a whole lot better than when I tried to learn Chinese (of which I remember practically nothing. Buh-puh-muh-fuh-dingle-doodie?).

This morning I had my second anthropology class and I think I'm a bit screwed in that class seeing that I have to think (as opposed to my astronomy class, which is just facts and...that junk). My class is pretty big and the classroom is set up with these four long tables that kind of make an open rectangle and then there are two more tables behind the back table and the right table. So if that makes any sense to you, just imagine all the seats being taken and it feels like a lot of people. Of course, I can never think of anything to say seeing that in my entire learning career I've never been one of those people to speak in class unless a teacher forced me to, which usually didn't happen. I enjoyed anthropology last year probably because my class only had 9 people, but now...bloop. I think my teacher is really cool; he speaks very easily and in an animated way, which is good at 9 AM. But....but. Well. I hope I survive.

After anthropology I have 45 minutes before my next class, but with the time it takes me to get back to my room and then leave for my next class it's about 30 minutes of free time. Sooo I cram some Japanese info into my head (we're going to have a quiz every day from now on I think) and go to that. And...yeah. I think I like my Japanese class the most so far because everyone in the class is on the same page; we're not Japanese and we don't know Japanese. It's also a small class and my teachers (the main one and the assistant) are cute. Because all Japanese women are cute for some reason. The teacher puts this really cute stamp on our homework that has little fishies and a penguin on it. :)

Although I only have ten minutes until my next class, astronomy, it's in the building right next door. Woohoo, I'm lazy, so that works well. (It takes me about 5 minutes to walk from my dorm to Japanese, and 10 minutes to walk fro my dorm to anthropology.) Astronomy is an interesting class mainly because of my teacher. He's...interesting? I mean, the way he speaks gets a little annoying sometimes (he kinda stutters but kinda doesn't...I don't know how to explain it) but he knows what he's talking about. I think. Anyway, today he was using a doll's head to represent a person in a model of the "celetial sphere" and that was kind of odd. "We're going to stick Barbie's head until the celestial sphere and she'll see constellations of purses and cars and things like that..." He also showed us some pictures of galaxies and fun things like that on this biiiiig screen that rolls down over the blackboard. A nice thing is that I found out someone (well, another person) from my floor is in the same class so we sat next to each other. She wants to be a music major, which is pretty cool I think. Another cool thing is that since today is cloudy we don't have to do our astronomy lab at the observatory since we can't...see anything. YAHOO! But we have to do it on Sunday. Night. From 11PM-12AM. No, that's not fun.

Oh yeah, I'm planning to go home this weekend. YAAY, home! I haven't even been away from home for two weeks but I already want to go back. I'm sick of school already, HAHA! Uh, wait, that's bad.

After astronomy I came back to my room and ate lunch (I always eat in my dorm room, is that a bad thing?) and practiced some Japanese. Since the Farmer's Market was today I went there and picked up four kinds of fruit (four quarts in all) which I may have eaten half of already. Wait...okay, maybe not, that sounds like too much. Well, it was a lot of fruit until I started eating it (three peaches, three nectarines, maybe 12 plums...12 little plums, not the regular ones). Oh yeah, yesterday I went to a nearby health food store and found that they sell RAISINS and RAW ALMONDS so I bought them, of course. The raisin container says it has 15 ounces, which is scary because...there definitely isn't much left. Yesterday I was eating raisins without even thinking about it and later I didn't feel so well. I think I did the same thing today. The almonds are really yummy, but they're really expensive for some reason so when I go home I guess I'll stock up on some more.

Okee, so I eat a LOT of food. I was initially losing weight when I was here, but in the past two days I've gained a pound. I guess that's not a bad thing, but I'm definitely eating way too much dried fruit. And so I figure I have to drink a lot of water to compensate, but I don't drink that much, yet I still have to pee a lot. So...it's okay. Especially in the morning, that's when I really have to pee, and of course I don't WANT to get out of bed just to pee. But then it gets to the point where it's just really uncomfortable and my bladder is on the brink of exploding its contents outside of the barrier created by...erm, all the other junk in my body. BLAST PAST THOSE ORGANS, YEAH! So. Yeah.

My last class of the day, English, was at 4:35 so after getting more fruit and studying more Japanese I went to FUN FUN ENGLISH CLASS. It's not bad, but I'm pretty much the only person in the class with nothing intelligent to say. And not just that, but nothing to say, period. Like I said before, I'm just not one of those students that talks. Or breathes. Or is human. Hm. So...yeah. But we get to read "In A Sunburned Country" by Bill Bryson so that makes it all worth it. Bill Bryson rules but that book in particular is a plus for me because I listened to the entire thing on tape during the summer.

Since school has started I've been staying up pretty late each day doing homework. It's not like I do homework all the time, but I feel like I'm doing it a lot. I mean, there isn't much else to do...if I stopped eating then I'd have LOTS of time to do stuff, eh? But no. I seem to be the only person here to take advantage of lunch AND dinner...my roommate usually skips a meal because of time constraints. She also said she's too lazy to even get food. For me, the desire to eat definitely outweighs laziness. I kind of got around it though by buying a lot of food at once and then hoarding it in my room for a period of time. Anyhoo, so we stay up late a lot and it sucks. And since I'm the antisocial person, I really could care less about what goes on late at night and WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE TO TALK SO MUCH AT NIGHT. I mean, I really don't mind the other freshmen in my hall, but...it's hard to concentrate when they're all goofing off. (sigh) Also, I'm like the only one who doesn't fit in. Kathryn is really good friends with the guys across the hall and another guy on the floor so they all get together and she likes to leave the door open...but I keep thinking "door...close...please." Dammit. Oh well. Everyone is so nice, I really don't have issues with anyone. I just wish they wouldn't be so loud sometimes.

I also wish the INTERNET WOULD WORK! It does work, technically, but right now it's not. It just stopped working while I was chatting with Cristen. :( For some reason it's still iffy, but I guess I should be happy that it DOES work and that I have my laptop and blah blah...it still sucks.

...okay, the Internet JUST started working again. I'm not kidding. Just as I finished typing that. ....creepy. So I got to upload some photos from last week, woo! They're not very exciting, but there you go. Also, we've been trying to decorate the room more, so yesterday I put up streamers and today Kathryn put a sheet on one of the walls. Lookie!

I figured I'd update this thing because it's late and I really shouldn't be updating this thing.

On that note, I'm going to update this thing. See, my brain has already starting to degenerate into a soup of fat and nerve endings or something. I learned something about the brain last year in psychology, although obviously, I haven't remembered a great deal of it. I can tell you one thing; the brain needs fat to work, specifically good fat.

I can assure you all that I am getting lots and lots of good fat. And lots and lots of carbs. And lots and lots of food. But it's not really a good thing because I am just pigging out a lot as I have a stash of dried persimmons, dried figs, almonds, pecans, and pine nuts in my closet. At least, I did have a stash. Today I finished off my bags of pine nuts and pecans, but I think I have another bag of pecan somewhere. For a while the taste of pine nuts disgusted me, but I tried them early this week and decided they were like crack. Not that I've had crack, but if I did, it might be like eating pine nuts. Or not really.

Well, something is affecting my brain. Anyway, the moral of the story is that if your children are pecans, almonds, or pine nuts, keep them away from me or else I may eat them. There's no self control...none! IT'S CRAZY!

Now that I've sufficiently labeled myself as a "crazy" I can talk about other things. Like finding a banana in a cup outside my door. Alright, it wasn't really a cup, it was one of those foam things you use to insulate cans. But the banana thing is real. There were two hot pink post-its attached to it saying I shoudl treat it as though it were my baby. Or something. I don't really remember because I didn't read it very carefully, and I didn't read it very carefully because it was a banana in a pseudo-cup. You can't really expect people to take such a curious combination of objects and regard it with care and awe. "This ripe, speckled banana of love is my bundle of joy!" I haven't a clue why it's outside my door, but I decided to leave it there. I mean, it's either that or eat it.

Today was alright class wise. I'm starting to feel overwhelmed by the assignments I have to do though, not that it's a whole lot, but I stress out easily. I don't think I show stress easily, but I can sit for extended periods of time looking okee-dokee when inside my organs have actually rearrange themselves so my bladder is somewhere about where my lungs ought to be, and my lungs ...well, I don't know what happened to those guys. So while I may look serene, I'm actually experiencing a total body meltdown.

So! What's coming up? Next Thursday I have two essays due. Of course, it doesn't help that I've had one assignment for more than a week already but haven't started it. As for the other essay, I'm lucky to know about it now because for our first two essays my English teacher would tell us the topic on Tuesday so we could hand it in two days later. This essay is longer though, so we get an extra weekend. WEE! How I do love writing...in the same way mosquitoes enjoy flying into electrified bug zappers. I also have an astronomy test next Thursday and today the teacher gave us a sample test. It didn't actually look that hard if you actually knew astronomy. However, I lack this knowledge because I suck and I'll need to start cramming, oh, now. Today one of my classmates, a guy on my floor, fell asleep in class. It's not that it's actually that boring, but I guess he was really tired.

I have no intention of falling into the nap-attack routine. I guess I'm not all that tired, for one thing, but I do feel sluggish right now (I'm attributing it to eating obscene amounts of food today due to going to the Farmers Market and eating lots and lots of fruits and veggies, including a quart of raspberries...people will argue that everything I eat is nice and healthy, and, well, it is, but it's easy to overeat and it's not good to overeat even healthy food). My roommate took caffeine pills yesterday and managed to not take a nap. While I'd like to think it's good she managed to not take a nap, getting by on drugs isn't much of an alternative. Oh well, no one is willing to take the raw food route and I know there's no use in even trying to convince anyone. As long as no one bothers me I guess I'm okay.

Some neat things have been happening lately. I got an e-mail from a woman at Puremusic saying she wanted to incorporate one of my photos of Rufus in an interview they're putting online. Not really just my photo, but she's going to mix it with another photo...anyhoo, I don't care what she does with it; the photos I took are pretty bad. But maybe the perspective makes it different? I also got an e-mail from a guy at cyanlabs saying he liked my threadless designs although he didn't say which one. I think they're all pretty bad, but I tend to end up hating stuff that I do after a while. Except maybe Poofy. I must say, I still enjoy Poofy...

Someone has asked me to make a big Poofy. Giant. 2.5 feet. I'm going to try it out this weekend when I go home and I'll update this if I actually get anywhere with it. And if I don't, I'll still update this. Without a giant Poofy.

Speaking of Poofy, here is my first published comic and my first contribution to the Vassar community (I am contributing to the decline of IQs everywhere!). I know, it's not really funny...I'll have to work on that. Working with four panels when you're used to eight is something to get used to. Either that or I'll just continue making crappy comics.

Yesterday I went to the library for the first time since classes started and it absolutely left me dumbfounded. The place is just so huge and has so many books you'd never think anyone would read...I could stay in there all day and hardly get through anything. The periodicals alone (lots of nutritional journal in case I want to read about the nutritional value of different kinds of rice cooked in different ways among other things) would take lifetimes. I read slowly, by the way. I kept coming across books written in Russian; I wonder if they have anything written in Japanese (I'm thinking no...they might create a Department of Japanese here though, which means you would be able to major in it).

Alright, now it's really time to go to bed, or study, or pretend to study.

Last weekend I discovered how delicious raw corn was. I knew it tasted good before, but since becoming a raw foodist, I didn't see the point in eating corn. It isn't really known for being healthy, but it's a staple. Anyhoo, last week when I went home I picked up an ear of corn at a farmers market and it was absolutely delicious. It's juice and sweet and I haven't a clue why people cook the thing. I mean, if you want hot corn, then I guess you'll have to cook it, but I really see cooking as a very destructive thing. When people ask me what's the difference between eating cooked and raw food, I think "Well, let's compare a dead person and a live person..." I don't actually say that, but that's what I really think in my head! All you need to do is compare a living thing to a dead thing and you tell me what the difference is. It's not like I think people who eat cooked food are crazy, but when people really don't see why I eat just raw food or think that it's not as healthy as cooked food, I don't see how there can be an argument.

So there's my little intro. I've been asking people about whether they've eaten raw corn or not, and nearly every time people have said they've never tried it. They usually go on to say that they don't want to try it (and sometimes they say, "Corn is meant to be eaten cooked," and...well, I'm not going to go there). I don't understand why people's minds are so closed off to such a little thing. I mean, do people really think it's going to kill them or that it's any worse than the other things they eat? I really don't get it! I'm talking about people who are my age, figuring that teenage minds are more malleable than an adults. Anyway, it's not like I think about this day and night because it's no big deal, but it's something I find hard to understand. Come on people, IT'S JUST CORN!

...erm, anyway! If you do want to try raw corn, eat it the first day you get it. The sugar turns to starch over time...rather quickly.

I'm actually not loaded down with work right now, which is a huge relief. Yesterday was my "so much work I'm going to die" day...but hey, I'm still alive! Uh! Yay! I guess! Yesterday I did an English essay on The Road From Coorain and I polished my anthropology essay about the function of a bathroom (this makes sense...trust me). I also had an astronomy test that did not go too well. Probably because I'm not good at astronomy. But honestly, it was a pretty awful test. I know there are people in my class who do know what they're doing, but I'm sure a large number of people are like me and quite unable to retain information well. It wasn't even a really difficult test, if you had studied enough. And...I didn't. I think I got Newton's Laws right and maybe something about why there isn't always a lunar eclipse at full moon, but moo. I almost don't want to know what I got on that.

The nice thing about finishing my test (besides...well, finishing it) was that I got an e-mail this morning saying I got a package! YAY MAIL I LOVE MAIL, I'd like more of it but I've realized that I need to write letters to people before I can expect to get mail. And I have this in my mind, so I will write letters to people...someday. Anyway, the package was from Audio Dregs for three albums that I bought: Pavilion (Lineland), Kiwi (Dim Dim), and Computer Recital (Lullatone). Mm yes, I love Audio Dregs. I like all the albums and while they're similar in a way, they're all different too. They're all similar in that they are fun, cute electronic music ish stuff. And they're all different because the tone feels different for each one. And why not, there are different kinds of fun and cute! "Computer Recital" feels very childish, like preschool, and it's soothing, as though for a baby. "Pavilion" reminds me more of elementary school and playing lo-fi video games. I'm not sure what "Kiwi" is...it's like another dimension of strangeness. A very colorful dimension.

Last night I tried to study for the astronomy test with a friend on my floor, but we didn't get very far. My roommate and another girl on the floor came to the room and we all ended up very far from studying. Okay, I didn't really think it would be productive, but I guess it was nice to not be alone in my room for once. Today I even went to the farmer's market with a girl from my Japanese class, although I was taking a while to pick fruit and then she had to go to the bank. Oh well, I am making little attempts at being social. Except I thought I might go to this thing called the Aula Coffeehouse, or Aula After-Hours...something like that. It's a thing where people play music and you watch them. Or just sit there like a log. I was a little interested in going, but I'm not too interested in going alone anymore. So! I'll sit here.

I ate dinner at the ACDC today because every Thursday from 6-7 there's a Japanese Language Table where Japanese students eat together and talk about Japanese things. Not that I talk, but that's the idea. Today people brought Japanese music with them, which was interesting. I can't say I've ever been interested in Asian music...I mean, Asian pop music. I seem to like music of European origins the most, but I don't know why. So I went to the table-a-majiggy, but I basically had no one to talk to, so I don't know if I'll feel like going to that again...

Staying in my room a lot with a stash of nuts and dried fruit has definitely been taking its toll on me, weight wise. I haven't gained 15 pounts yet but...who knows what'll happen! HAHAHAHA...okay, I'm really going to cut down on the dried fruits and nuts, even though I think I ate three ounces of almonds today and a bunch of pecans and lotso f dried figs and raisins. I also eat regular, good ol' fresh fruit, but you can't really snack on fresh fruit. Mm...snaaack...

I went through English class today not saying a word. I guess that's going to be the trend. Mm. Last Thursday a very odd thing happened in English class; my teacher kind of paused and said he wanted to ask something. For some reason, and I really don't know why, I knew he was going to ask me a question. He never asks specific people a question, but usually general questions for the class, yet in my mind his timing and tone of his voice told me he was going to ask me a question. After he asked me what I thought of In a Sunburned Country, he asked another guy who never said anything what he thought too. But ...I was first. I automatically felt dread when he called on me and I went through those classic emotions: embarrassment, "everyone is looking at me", that type of thing. I guess you never grow out of that. But I wouldn't even feel like that in high school because I was somewhat comfortable around my classmates. I'm not that comfortable yet, and...blech.

BUT, thankfully, I didn't have to say anything today although I had the feeling my teacher wanted me to. I felt like I was in a weird position because out of the class's 75-minute discussion, hardly anyone talked about what my entire paper was about. Now, I already thought my essay was pretty bad, but now I'm wondering if I read the same book. Yes...I did...why didn't I find the same meaning in it as other people? I skipped over a lot, apparently, but I went up to the 750 word limit. I really don't want to rewrite the paper...

Yesterday we were supposed to vote in the student elections, although I didn't know who most of the people were so I didn't vote for them. OH WELL! But I did vote for this guy...well, he was the only choice, and I actually know him. He's in my Japanese and English class and he's an interesting, funny character. I don't know if I can say much else besides that.

Today I submitted another comic to the Miscellany News, hoping that I made whatever deadline they have. I should probably figure out when the deadlines are...erm. Well. Anyway! I have a comic in this week's newspaper (comic number two!) so that's exciting, yes? Somewhat...maybe.

Tomorrow I have a Japanese test. I'm not really worried about it, although I definitely should study. Maybe I will even write some letters? I really gotta pee right now, soo...yes. Some other fun news is that I got tickets to see Travis at the Beacon Theater with Diana. I got lode seats, row E, seats 21 to 23. So that's pretty nice, considering I just found out a few days ago about the concert (which is during my October break). The tickets with all the extra charges came out to about $50 each though. I mean...that's pretty pricey, isn't it? I guess I'll have to expect rising ticket prices from now on. The most expensive concert I went to was for Bjork, but ye know...that was Bjork. With fireworks! Oh well, I better be blown away by THE CUTENESS OF TRAVIS!

I know I'm a human, and most of us are...human...but I just can't understand so many things. I really can't. So while I guess there's nothing wrong with me, the world is very very odd. Or I am very odd. Actually, how would you know if you're crazy or if everyone else is? YOU CAN'T! HAHA! MHEWAHHDASH *spittle*

*cleans up spittle* Erm, yeah, so I'm obviously in the right state of mind.

Alright, my computer just crashed after I had written a long paragraph already...*sigh*. I'm not sure what's wrong with this computer. It doesn't crash in school so I guess it has something to do with the cable modem connection and my USB adapter, maybe. The thing is, I do save what I type a lot (in Wordpad) but sometimes it doesn't actually save, such as when I open my file after my computer crashes and nothing is there. I mean, I can't do much better than saving, so what is the purpose of it?

Bloop. Anyway! (ctrl + s) Today I went to Starbucks to see some friends from high school that went home for the weekend for Rosh Hashanah. I guess I felt a littel out of place because I didn't have anything interesting to say about college. I noticed a big difference in our lives is that they live near major cities (Boston, Washington DC) and my school in a town that's deader than home. Which is pretty bad if you ask people who live here. I mean, I know there are things to do on campus, but I've been mainly too lazy to go to any or not present when they happen.

Anyway, one of my friends mainly talked about her new boyfriend, and while I was a little surprised to hear she got a boyfriend so quickly (she was my only friend in high school who had one) at the same time I wasn't. And now I wonder what is the psychology behind those people who must have a boyfriend/girlfriend and those people who don't. She mainly talked about how cute and buff he was, which to me sounded very superficial. I'm not saying I'm not superficial, but aren't there more interesting things to say about a person? What if someone described you to other people as just having certain color eyes and being a certain height and having a certain kind of build? Isn't that like describing a show dog? I guess I sound like I'm exaggerating, but I'm not sure how else to describe...it. So what kind of classes is this guy taking? What are his hobbies? I didn't ask these questions because I figured if she wanted to tell us, then she would tell us. She told us that he's very sweet and nice, which is...well, good. I can't imagine that she'd want to go out with him if he wasn't. I'm glad she's happy with school now, but I just wonder certain things. Am I being silly?

I still hold onto my belief that relationships are more trouble than they're worth. One of my friends told me about how she and her boyfriend break up and get back together a lot, and it's just one of those things that's part of the relationship. If there weren't any ups and downs, then it would be boring. I think if there weren't any ups and down it would be stable, but hey, that's my opinion. The thing is, I hate stress more than anything (except maybe giant mutant spiders) and will do just about anything to avoid it, or get rid of it (run over the giant mutant spider with a steamroller). On one e-mail she wrote me she was in a bad mood because she had "broken up" with her boyfriend, but a few days later her e-mail was nice and chipper again.

So after talking to my friends about college, I felt even more antisocial than I already felt. I've always been incredibly shy, yes, but at the same time I think I just give off some kind of chemical that makes people avoid me. I mean, talking to people is a two-way thing. Other people could just as easily talk to me as me to them (not that it's actually easy, I mean we have the same ability to do so). Other people seem to avoid me as much as I avoid them. So what's the bottom line? It's all my fault, of course. Hooo hum.

I don't really mind not having much of a social life, but I feel like I'm supposed to. It's just one of those things that comes with college. Or not. Maybe 99% of the time or something. Maybe I'll just be happy to be in the other 1%. I know people aren't criticizing me for not being social, but telling me, "You should stay in school, talk to people, go to events," doesn't help because yeah, I already know. I mean no offense to people who have given me advice, but it really doesn't matter. It's like telling someone who smokes they shouldn't smoke. They already know, and if they wanted to stop smoking and could stop smoking they would probably stop smoking. Does that make any sense? I don't think I make much sense anymore even though I try to type somewhat...well.

Another bit of this "Humans Are Strange" entry is about a family friend who is very near death. It's insanely, INSANELY depressing. She is so sick and was pretty much born that way. I'm just mad because I feel like a lot of her doctors must be incompetant...it's no newsflash that many doctors really shouldn't be in charge of a human life, or even the life of a ant, but people put so much trust in them. I heard a joke that MD stands for "minor deity" which is true for many people. Whatever a doctor says goes. (Just so you know, I know there are very good doctors out there who really know their stuff, but just not as many as there should be.) This friend has had stomach cancer, then ovarian cancer, and now back to stomach cancer. This is after having lots and LOTS of chemotherapy, of course, and now her husband is starting to get suspect of chemotherapy, thank god. I really think chemotherapy is crap, not that I think it can't ever help people, but it shouldn't be used as much as it is now. Anyway, besides all this cancer, she has blockages in her stomach, kidneys, and intestine, which my mum and I figure are scar tissue but we don't really know. :( Overall, she has lots of tubs and such coming out of her because of all the blockages and she isn't too keen on life anymore. I mean, I wouldn't be either...apparently a doctor said she could live a "half decent life" if she gets through her treatment. What the heck is a "half decent life"? Is that some kind of reassurance? Argh, I'm just so ...I don't know. While she had cancer and was really sick she was being fed stuff that I wouldn't even want a healthy person to eat, which makes me angry and sad. It's not like they had to give her an all raw food diet, not at all, it's just...nutrition is important. I wish this was a more important idea to most doctors instead of just drugs and things like that. After going through so much treatment she also went to a psychiatrist who would give her drugs for certain things. You just can't get better with so many drugs...

So that's what I'm annoyed with right now. Well, a few things. Maybe I'm not human and I'm giving off "anti people" rays and I don't want to attend any funerals. I'm really glad I had an assignment in psychology last year for which I had to interview senior citizens about their lives or else I may not have gotten to see that family friend in a long time. And it wasn't just seeing her, I got to talk with her for a long time.

Okay, this entry was a bit of a downer. I don't really feel that bad right now, although I wish I did have happier things to talk about. Hmmm. Well, today I got a new olive oil cruet for my dorm because I don't want to eat nuts anymore but I still need a source of fat. Nuts and dried fruit (which I'm also phasing out) are my ultimate mindless snack foods, practically poison when you're stuck in your room studying for hours. A bag containing eight ounces of pecans becomes four very quicky. I also got a little dipping dish for the oil, which is actually a creme brulee dish, but hey, whatever works! :) I also bought lychees from Mitsuwa because they didn't look too icky (when I see lychees in supermarkets they usually don't look too fresh...because they aren't) and they tasted pretty good! I don't absolutely love lychees, but I wanted to try them. I bought a hair style magazine from Kinokuniya (alright, that's not really a Robyn-ish thing to do, but I really don't know what haircut to get unless I have some pictures to look at, not that it ever looks the same anyway) because I feel like my hair is getting a bit longer. Not long, just longer.

For some reason I looked on ebay for Tamagotchi things and I ended up buying three packs of these Tamagotchi stickers. That translates to 15 sheets of stickers. I just figured that they're pretty cheap and it can't hurt to have lots of stickers! And I can give some away to people who were Tamagotchi crazy like me (this pretty much just translates to Rebbie and Karen, heehee). I'm also thinking of getting this Tamagotchi bag because I've actually been looking for a bag that's small but big enough to hole my wallet, camera, and phone (I asked the seller about the dimesions and he said it's 10 x 8 inches). It's not the most discreet bad, but I think it's safe to say I won't mistaken my bag for anyone else's. There's something else that I want but there aren't any on ebay right now: a wave ufo. It's not a Tamagotchi, but it's something I used to have before my mum got rid of a bunch of things in my virtual pet collection. I think Karen got it for me while we were in Japan and I was sit in the hotel room so she went shopping with my mum. I had absolutely no idea how to work the thing, but it would change when you held it near a TV (and probably anything else emitting death brain-melty rays).

Speaking of Japanese things, I saw Lost in Translation yesterday (technically two days ago) with my mum. It made me want to go to Japan so so so badly and I felt this weird nostagia towards Japan even though I went there five years ago and don't remember much about it. It's just such a surreal place...it's a bright technology happy city (referring to Tokyo at least, Kyoto was different) but it's like another galaxy. Really. That's the impression I got at least.

Oh yes, as for the movie, I really liked it. I like it more now that I'm thinking about it. It was funny in a low-key way, cute, happy...and sad. I mean, the happy parts were really nice, and then it ends rather sadly. I guess the whole movie is pretty meloncholy, but those staring-out-at-lights parts and just sitting in the darkness were nice. Go see it!

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Woohoo Rebecca, all that comment lovin'! :) I can see the "cooking killing microorganisms" argument, but then there are so many things people inhale/ingest/touch each day that are much worse than the microorganisms, and I wonder if they realize that. Probably not. Today I found a chocolate covered coffee bean (most likely) between the cushions of the sofa we were sitting on in Starbucks and everyone else refused to touch it. My god, it's obviously chocolate, there are so many worse things you touch and eat in a day. The paranoia some people have really gets to me sometimes. It just seems so...silly.

Yay raw corn! I hope you like it, but if you don't then that's okee. Raw corn isn't a necessary thing, but maybe just overlooked?

I actually read that article in the link you posted! My mum printed out a lot (or possibly all) of the articles on that site. It's good to get all sides of the raw food "debate" so our minds aren't set on one thing. We still believe in eating all raw or mainly raw...I don't think people can really be 100% raw (I love eating seaweed and if it's toasted I can't let that get to me...it's just SEAWEED!) and I don't believe there are any real vegetarian animals. But I would disagree with a lot of things in the article, and then my overall idea is what is the point of trying to refute raw food? Why say it isn't necessarily a natural diet? The website has good articles but some of the psychology articles made me feel like I'm a bad person or something...

...four apple. So far I've eaten four apples today. Yesterday I bought ten McIntosh apples from the farmer's market. Another really good one is ginger gold and they're not as tart as McIntosh. Look at all the lovely nutrition facts of apples! MM FIBER YEAAH! My roommate takes fiber pills; maybe she should just eat apples. :D I must say though that I don't get any kind of energy boost from apples (or any fruit for that matter), but I am awake, so...yeah. That's a plus. My roommate is sleeping right now. :)

I also bought carrots and kirby cucumbers at the farmer's market and they're so cheap. I think I got 10 medium sized carrots and six cukes for $1.70 or something. I mean, that could last me ages...if I didn't overeat all the time. EH WELL! I think this is the apple picking place we're going to tomorrow. WEE!

So what has been going on? When did I last update this thing? Hm. Well...(thinks)...on Monday night I went to a local Japanese restaurant with a friend I went to high school with. What did I eat? Sashimi, of course! :D Yes, fish...I do eat fish, you know. I ordered a la carte and underestimated how much an order of sashimi is. It seems ot vary between three pieces and two pieces, or maybe I counted incorrectly? Anyway, I'm pretty sure now that I don't like salmon or tuna sashimi (those seem to be the most popular though!) and I really like fluke and yellowtail. My friend ordered sushi a la carte not knowing how much an order was either, so she got three and ended up with 18 pieces of cucumber sushi. :D She took some back to her room, of course. And she was in for a little...uh, surprise when a bit of wasabi touched one of the sushi pieces (the first one, how lucky) and, never having eaten wasabi before, was...well, if you've ever had wasabi, imagine the first time you tried it. I remember wanting to puke every time I tried it. She described it as a little alcohol-ee, which I've never noticed before. Anyway, I do eat some wasabi now just because I think "Hell, why not?" but it's very little and I mix it with soy sauce. I still remember an episode of "The Nanny" where Fran was at a Japanese restaurant and being told that wasabi was just like mustard, she ate an entire blob of it at once. She immediately started making choking motions and keeled over; when she regained her composure her voice became clear (her character has a very annoying, nasal voice).

During the rest of the week I did homework and fun junk like that. Actually, I don't feel like I'm doing a whole lot of work. I did spend a really, REALLY long time trying to write my thesis statement for my English essay and in the end it came out really bad. I'm glad I don't see what letter grade I get in that class because it would probably just freak me out. The essay we have due next week is a creative one where we just have to write an autobiographical fiction. It's really wide open for anything, which means I actually have to think about what I'm going to write. I mean, I just take something that happened in my own life, change the names, maybe add some stuff that didn't really happen...maybe I can write about my 12th birthday party in 7th grade during the typhoon in Taiwan. That was interesting. I have no idea how I pulled that together because my dad basically drove me around Taipei, picking up friends and then somehow fitting everyone in our apartment. I wish I remembered it a bit better...actually, I don't know it enough to actually write about it. Maybe I can write about going to Japan with Karen in 7th grade, except I don't have a very good memory of that either. Wow, I suck. I NEED IDEAAS! Oh yeah, the paper is supposed to be 750 words, which isn't very long. Each essay gradually gets longer. That's bad because my last essay was 850 words...erm. I forgot it was only supposed to be 700.

Damn, what do I write about? Think, think, think. Oh man, it'd be great if I wrote it about 6th grade camp. I actually HAVE a journal from it because it was required for English class. But IT'S AT HOME AND I'M NOT GOING HOME THIS WEEKEND dammit, what do I do? Work from memory I guess. Crap. It would be perfect if I could get it. (sigh) Maybe I can ask my mum to read it to me and then I can get an idea of it...

I'm interested in going to this Stella comedy show at my school, but I'm not actually familiar with the group and it seems like it may be hard to get in. I don't know how many people you can fit in the ACDC, but it's kind of...a lot. Or not. Okay, maybe not.

Right now I'm thinking that I really have to pee. But I'd rather finish this first rather than lose my train of thought. Not that it's much of a train. More like a go-kart. Wait...more like one of those little red wagons with a handle. My red wagon of thought. That is currently sitting in the garage in a pile of dust beneath the unused sled. THAT ONE!

I got my first anthropology paper back yesterday; a B! Thank god. He warned us that the grades may not be as good as we would like, but I knew mine was kinda not so good. Because I just couldn't analyze my junk very well. And look, my English sucks. I'm looking for my teacher on Vassar's anthropology site but his name isn't there. Huh. He doesn't seem to exist in the directory. ...does my class even exist? AIEE!

Erm. So! I'm learning more about grammar in Japanese now, which is oh so exciting and confusing. So if I wanted to say "Yesterday I didn't study Japanese" in Japanese it would be more like "Yesterday, I Japanese didn't study" which would be fine and dandy if I had been born Japanese in Japan and never knew English grammar. I still have trouble remembering the placement of the main subject and the describing noun when you use "no", like if you said "Robyn's cat" it would be "Robyn no neko" but if you said "student at Vassar College" it would be "Vassar Daigaku no gakusei" er...wait. Huh? Wuh. Well at least in Japanese there's no capitalization and junk like that. I think. Well, there's your little Japanese lesson of the day in romanized Japanese because I don't have the right language pack to write in Japanese. Maybe I should download that now. (googles)

Well I found something that says it'll let me type in Japanese...its 52 MB though. Er. Uh? It better work.

I just found out that someone wrote a message for me on the white board on the door. I think I've been here all day, I wonder why she didn't knock. Then again my roommate wrote on the board that she was sleeping and someone left a message for her...we wouldn't have known anyone wrote anything on the board if one of my roommate's friends didn't knock and basically get her up from her nap.

I was outside of my room for a small period of time, but I know the message was written later than that. I had to pick up a package from the post office...yay! I love getting the e-mail that tells me I have a package. I picked up my Tamagotchi stickers and now that I actually have them to hold in my hands, I realize that it's a buttload of stickers. I was wondering why the package was rather large just for a bunch of stickers, but...yeah. There's 15 sheets, 6 of one design, 7 of the other. Since they're the kind that change when you look at em from a different angle they're kinda thick, I guess? 15 sheets for $10 (including shipping) is a good deal from Japan though so I just had to get it. Mweeheehee. Would anyone like a sheet? I think I can afford to spare some. Or one. I also got this package yesterday. The shirt fits perfectly, so I'm happy. :D Yeah, I can't really pull off a youth small...medium is good though. I do have some youth small shirts (like my Bork shirt that I made) but they're just a tad too small. I still wear my Bork shirt though. They'd be more comfortable if I didn't have breasts...but I guess I'm supposed to produce milk for the children I could, in theory, give birth too.

...OR NOT.

---comment replies!---

Alex: I think the magazine was $8.70 or something like that? Not bad for a Japanese magazine. At least it's not like an American magazine where ever other page is covered with ads. :D And your mom RULES!

Judy: I CAN'T WAIT FOR THE BAG! When I got those e-mails saying I got a package I thought it would be for yours and not the stuff I got on ebay...well, Australia is a bit father away than Japan but the stickers got to me in five days. Maybe tomorrow? :)

Yes, the PRS is setting in...ahhh! It's not a bad feeling, I just feel this surge of Radiohead love. I neglected them for a while. :( I remember a few years back I would watch Meeting People is Easy over and over and over again. Not only that, I made other people watch it too. I even kept track of how many times I watched it. I think I've only seen it nine times though, which isn't an obsessive number of times. But those nine times were probably in a short time period. I think I'll watch 7 Television Commercials for a while...man, I need a live Radiohead DVD or something. Or an extended version of this.

So...yeah. I ate some yummy apples today. Now I am eating dried mullberries, which I swear are the yummiest things ever, or the yummiest thing I happen to have right next to me. I had a huge bag when I came back to school, but now there isn't much left. Uh. Uhoh. That's not good.

Actually, I don't have much to say. Erm. Um. Well I think I'm going to redo my concerts section because it looks like crap. When will I do that? I don't know, but I've already started: LIVE (concert things and such). I never wrote a list of all the concerts I went to before...it looks like a lot, but it's not really. Well. Imagine if I lived in NYC; THEN I'd go to more. Yikes. I didn't go to much this summer, eh? How sad. I also worked on a little design for my Vassar site (titled "students.vassar.edu/~robynlee"...yup, doesn't get much more exciting than that!) with bright colors so I can blind more people. Yesss!

The mullberry supply is getting smaller and smaller. Nooooo!

I got this depressing e-mail from my mum:

Barbara's husband Don called today after I got home to tell us that Barbara was in such bad shape last week that doctors thought she would die. She has kidney bleeding in addition to the previous stomach, intestinal, kidney blockage, and her white blood cell was very low last week. However, her white blood cell count came up some and doctors decided to give her an operation on monday to put a tube in her liver to drain the bile (it is blocked also), so she can be well enough to receive chemo therapy (which she is not looking forward to at the moment) for her stomach cancer that came back. Now the doctors again feel that if everything work out she has a chance of leading a half decent life afterward.

This weekend was pretty uneventful. I mean, what can top a Radiohead concert? NOTHING! I did go to the Poughkeepsie Galleria just for the heck of it. I ended up buying a pair of pants and three plain, solid colored t-shirts from Delias...yes, that place. Delias. Not that it's...evil. But I used to get their catalog all the friggin' time and think, "Why don't I like any of this stuff?" Because it didn't have a 50% off price tag. HahaHA. Really, the t-shirts are all cotton and lovely soft...why am I talking about how soft my t-shirts are? You know I've run out of things to say, eh? I plan to do stuff to them, maybe embroider one, put some junk on the other, and maybe get some iron on fuzzy letters to make an "I LOVE MAGNET" shirt that no one will understand because they'll think I have something for magnets when I'm talking about Magnet. And that'll make it so much more fun!

I can't think of anything else to say right now. Euh. Um. Happy Columbus Day!...I think?

What time am I talking about? Well, PERSIMMON SEASON, of course! What else could excite me so much? Two days ago when I was in Mitsuwa, I saw persimmons in the produce section for the first time since last winter. I jumped out of my skin. Figuratively. $1 for a persimmon is fine with me. Yesterday I went to Han Ah Reum where they had loads more of persimmons for 3/$1. AHH. I got two cases (48 persimmons) which are now neatly stacked on plates in the dining room. I ate four persimmons today, but I'll probably eating more tomorrow. They're so delicious!

Since I've been home (this week is my October break...what the hell is October break?) I've been eating up a storm. Yeah, SCREW IT, I'm home and can finally eat more than apples, carrots, and nuts. Actually, those are all yummy foods, but I wanted a little more variety than what food I hoarded in my dorm room could offer. So far I've eaten a bunch of sashimi I got from Mitsuwa and last night I got two wedges of raw cheese from Whole Foods. I wouldn't have gotten cheese if they didn't have a little platter of free sheep's milk cheese to sample from...so it's definitely a good idea for grocery stores to give out free samples. Anyway, I guess it's weird for me to eat cheese after saying "DAIRY SUCKS" so much, but at least it's not the barely-digestible rubbery junk on top of pizza. Let's just say it's a far cry from what I'd see in my dorm; processed, bright orange cheese in a jar or "Easy Mac" which I'm not completely sure is food. I wouldn't object to eating most foods in their raw states; I object to grains and some legumes because they're just not very digestible in the raw state. You can soak/sprout legumes to make them more digestible. As for grains, I don't think those are very good raw.

I don't have anything against eating raw meat, although the only raw meat I've even eaten is fish and I'm not jumping to try something like beef since it isn't usually raised with the intent of eating it raw. Some people feed their dogs and cats raw beef/chicken though, and that seems to work well for them. Of course, it makes sense to feed your pets raw meat and when I think about all the dogs and cats eating canned food I wonder how healthy they are. I've never had a pet so I can't really say anything from my experience, but two of my friends have pets and they aren't/didn't do so well, sadly. One of my friends has two cats and while one of them looks somewhat normal, the other one is really, really fat. Incredibly fat. She knows this, but I don't think she sees this as a health problem. All I can say is if a human were proportionately the same weight, it would be an obvious health problem. My other friend used to have a dog, but they put him to sleep because he was having seizures and loads of problems in general. He was also incredibly overweight and it was kind of sad because I used to play with him when he was a puppy and incredibly energetic. By the end of his life he was pretty docile, just walking around and sniffing people. :|

Erm...back to what I was saying! What was I saying? Oh yeah, food is yummy. Kimchi is delicious. But this doesn't come to mind when I eat it.) I used to eat kimchi somewhat on a regular basis, and then I stopped for a long time. When I went to Han Ah Reum I decided to only get a small container's worth of it and at dinner my mum and I ate it all. So the lesson is, do not get the smallest container. I plan on going back and filling a tub (if they have a tub...hell, I'll bring my own) with kimchi and lugging it back into my dorm room. Mm. I ate it by wrapping it in nori.

I haven't been up to much last week, so I'm not sure what else to talk about...damn, this is sad. All I could talk about was what I ate? Oh, I bought some CDs! Woo! Make CDs cheap and people will buy em; I got Take Them On, On Your Own and 12 Memories for $9.99 each from Tower Records. I haven't been to Tower Records in a long, long time, but it was on the way to Barnes & Noble so my mum suggested we go. So far I am liking both albums, but they're not striking me as "WHOAAA" albums yet (you know, the ones that make you go...whoaaa! ...that was stupid, yes).

Anyway, I wanted to go to Barnes & Noble to look at their sales annex. That place rules. Cheap books galore, even some in Japanese! I didn't buy any Japanese ones since I couldn't read them, but I were taking French or Russian I would have had lots of stuff to buy. I ended up buying My First Xylofun because it was 50% ($5!). However, THE THIRD NOTE IS FLAT! Okay, that's probably why it was so cheap, but I can't imagine that every book has the same flat note. Maybe I'll go back with some kind of mallet so I can test em all out. It might look a little weird, me banging on all the books, but come on...I want my $5 worth! It bothers me. At the very least though it's perfectly flat so that I have a minor scale (click here to listen). It's just that you can't play the songs in the book because of that. I guess I can make up my own, minor dinkly songs though.

Speaking of fun, kiddie instruments, I bought this $1 10-note electronic keyboard at a flea market near my house on Saturday. I took one look at the strawberry and penguin motif and thought, "This is something I must have." I mean, it costed a freakin' dollar. I also had the choice of getting one with a banana and a bird, or one with an eggplant and some other kind of animal. Who thinks of this stuff? Cokeheads? Honestly! It sounds like what you'd expect a $1 keyboard to sound like, but it has 7 built in songs, which is pretty impressive considering it's a $1 keyboard. (Click here to listen to "Happy Birthday"...some of the songs have notes that are too low to be played on the keyboard.) Today at BJs I saw a $15 kid's keyboard that was actually pretty cool (the $1 keyboard is 1-note polyphony...not surprising, and after finding that out I thought I should have bought a few more so I could play chords) but I resisted buying that. I would have gotten it if I was sure it had a "line out" but it had this port that said "AUX/CD" which makes me think it was a "line in", but who the heck would use it for that purpose? Eh. Well. I'll go to BJs again sometime and it'll probably still be there. I also bought Christmas lights at BJs to decorate my dorm room with. It'll be a-glowin' this winter, hooyeah!

So it's very nice to not be in school and to not have to wake up at 8 AM to drag myself to anthropology. It's not a bad class, but it's a 9 AM class, which is never fun. I want to take a dance class next semester early in the morning just to wake myself up. Of course, I might end up falling asleep and fall on my face, but I think the chances of that happening are slim. In Japanese class we learned a bunch of new grammatical things and how to say the numbers and use them to tell time or say the cost of sometime. It was all terrible confusing, and I don't think I'll ever get a hang of the numbers, but I can try. The grammatical stuff confuses me because I don't always know when to use ga, wo, he, or ni, but I have some kind of idea. It would just take me a while to figure it out. Meh.

In English class our assignment is to read My Life as a Fake (My teacher is friends with the author so he got the whole class reviewers copies...woo, free books! I haven't found many errors in mine though, just a few spelling mistakes) over the break. I've read about a third of it so far and it's so, so strange. I would never read it if I didn't absolutely have to, and it's not like its written badly, but it's just such a weird, random story that, in my opinion, doesn't have much purpose. Maybe something groundbreaking will happen in the other 2/3rds? Hm.

Last Thursday I went to the dollar store near my school and got this hilarious ring (4/$1) that one of my friends had also bought. We both think it's one of the greatest things ever, but we're kind of alone on this though. IT HAS GOOGLY EYES FOR CHRIST'S SAKE! What else can you get for 25 cents? I also bought a pack of four double-ended highlighters, of which only two worked, and the green ink in one of them is so gross looking that I would consider that unusable as well. Alright, it was only $1 so what could I expect? I also bought some funny signs for my roommate because I thought they were fitting for her (one was about stress, the other one said "Get Happy!").

Last Friday I watched Radiohead on David Letterman and I hadn't watched TV in a while, so what I noticed most prominently is that late night commercials are 99.9% about drugs and cars. Is that what people want most? I mean...it seemed so sick. Ever other commercial was for a new prescription drug or a new car. I find that extremely troubling. And late night TV is targetting the 20-40 age group I'd guess...so I can understand them wanting cars, but all those drugs? AHHH! Well. Anyway, I generally like David Letterman (more than Jay Leno at least) but the show wasn't that funny. First off, there was only one guest (Darrel Hammond, who was pretty funny) but they gave maybe 3 minutes to Radiohead after having two "Will It Float" segments and...argh! Radiohead doesn't even like David Letterman (at least Thom doesn't, I think) so it must have really sucked. It was a good performance though. I was planning to watch it by myself, but one of my friends (who's in my astronomy class and lives on the first floor; I live on the third) came into my room and noticed my Radiohead poster. So we talked about them for a bit and I brought up that I was going to watch them, so we watched it together and it was more enjoyable than watching it alone. :)

I will end this entry with my new hair cut. WOOEE! Nice n short. I spoke in Japanese to the hairdresser (because it was a Japanese hair salon...otherwise, that would have been pretty stupid) by saying 「ありがとう　ございうます」 and she understood me! Thank god! THen she taught me that in reply to that, you say, 「どいたしまして」 (I probably spelled that wrong...could be 「どういたしまして」？) but anyhoo...yeah. So that was nice. :)

[this was written Wednesday night/Thursday morning; separate entry for today is at the end]

Travis is ...GLEAT! I mean great! I mean. Hooray for Travis and their bouncing about!

But first I must say that traffic in midtown Manhattan at 5 PM is sucky suck suck. It took half an hour to travel 10 blocks. Well...it was something like that. I got so impatient (because I was supposed to meet Diana at 5 PM but it was already past 5:30) that I got off the bus at 38th St and 10th Ave (or wherever the bus was...thank god it's relatively easy to walk around!) and walked to our designated meeting place (near Applesbees near 42nd St). I should have learned my lesson before, but I swear I've never been stuck for that long for such a short distance. Blah!

So after finally meeting up with Diana, we went to Quintessence because it's my favorite restaurant. :) Much good food to be eaten there. It's weird to think about how much money you could save by not eating, but then after a while you'd probably die. It'd be a long while, but it's something to think about. Or maybe that's the kind of think only I would think about. Hohum. You could definitely go at least a week just drinking water. And then you can spend that extra money on things like MORE CONCERTS!

We got to the concert a little late (if only I had been on time) and buying some merch (what am I going to do with a Travis t-shirt in the wintertime? It's not often that I find shirts in my size though) we saw the opener, Rooney, play a few songs. I thought they were nice, but not very memorable. I didn't even know there was going to be an opener until Diana told me beforehand.

And theeeen...TRAVIS! Yaaay! Diana and I had a clear view after moving over a seat...empty seat! *gasp* Why oh why. Oh well, it was better for us because otherwise we would have had two tall guys right in front of us. The evening was relatively cigarette/substance free except one short time when I think someone was smoking marajuana. Compared to other concerts I've been to though, that was very tolerable. Yay Travis fans!

I haven't a clue what the setlist was (should've written it down, dammit) but here's what I can remember in no particular order:

Why Does It Always Rain On Me?
The Line Is Fine
All I Wanna Do Is Rock
Peace the Fuck Out
Re-Offender
Quicksand
The Beautiful Occupation
Love Will Come Through
Happy to Hang Around
The Humpty Dumpty Love Song
The Fear
Writing to Reach You
Turn
As You Are
Sing

I may have added too much stuff to that list, actually. I haven't completely aquainted myself with the new album yet, as far as remembering the names of the songs. I like the new album so far, but not as much as the other ones since it's just not as happy, not that it has to be happy in order for me to like it, but I associate Travis with stuff like that. I think the last song they played was Why Does It Always Rain On Me? and the first one was Quicksand. Fran also played a song by himself dedicated to Elliot Smith, which was very nice. Before playing The Beautiful Occupation he told us that it wasn't meant to be a political song, but could be interpreted as that...and then Peace the Fuck Out is a message to Tony Blair and we should apparently peace the fuck out. Mm...peace! It's yummy. They were selling a t-shirt that said "Peace the Fuck Out" on it, although you could just was easily make one yourself. :)

All I Wanna Do Is Rock was probably the most enjoyable song. First off, it's just a great song, and everyone was going a bit nutty (except for Neil...well, what can he do?). Fran, Doug, and Andy were climbing on things and Andy jumped off the top of his speakers. Actually, now I'm not sure if Doug was climbing anything, but Andy is definitely the one who likes to flail around and lie on the stage and things like that. :) Fran also likes to hop around and stuff. He was wearing the same thing as what he wore in the Re-Offender video (What's up with that video? It makes me sad!), so it was like looking at this glowing, white thing in the middle of the stage. The suit looked a bit too large, as though Fran doesn't already look small enough already? :D There was a sheet behind the stage that only came down for a few songs, but it made the background nice 'n pretty. There was a whole rainbow of colorful lighting during Sing, which felt very nice and happy.

I didn't use my binoculars much during the show since we weren't obscenely far away, but early in the show I used them and saw that Fran's head was very sweaty. This was only after a few songs, so I'm figuring by the end he may have been drenched. There was much towel wiping going on. He said after playing Peace the Fuck Out during one show, he threw his towel into the audience and people started fighting over it. Not very peaceful. Fran, you just make people go nuts!

When people come into my room and see all the fuyu persimmons I have, they usually think they're tomatoes. It's perfectly understandable, as sometimes I have mistaken tomatoes for persimmons when in the grocery store during the persimmons off-season when I desire persimmons so badly that I become delusional. "Persimmons in August?!...dammit, it's a tomato." Anyway, the other day two guys from my floor saw my persimmons while visiting my roommate (one guy said something along the lines of, "Someone here has a lot of tomatoes") and wondered what they tasted like. My roommate, who's Asian and likes persimmons too (I say Asian because we now joke the lack of persimmon knowledge as a "white person" thing...is it?) and I weren't sure how to describe it, so I cut one up for them to try. One of the guys initially tried to cut the skin off with a fork...mm, yeah, anyway, a sharp knife is much better for cutting than a fork, just so you know. :) So one guy said they tasted kind of like an unripe mango and the other guy said it smelled like sweat. So overall it's like a sweaty, unripe mango. HAHAHA! Great description. I don't know if I agree with it though.

So that's what was on my mind. How sad. Well, there are other things going on in my brain too. First off, I got my period the other day. It's the shortest one I've had since February or March (4 weeks). I think this is a direct result of my INTENSE CHEESE EATING that happened last week. It would definitely make sense; why else would I get my period? I guess this is a sign that cheese is definitely not good, although I'd think that cooked cheese is ever worse, if you want to keep that in mind. And I think it also means I will really not be eating any cooked food or dairy products (maybe cut out the sashimi too) since I can almost immediately see what effect they have on the body. It's kind of scary, but I really think that having your period is a sign of "toxins" in the body. The longest time I went without getting my period this past year was when I was a vegan. I got my period after I may have eaten some raw fish, although it wasn't immediate. I also got it again when I was going through an intestinal clease, which was completely unsurprising. And now I'm not surprised again. But no more cheese. Boohoo. :(

I've been having more thoughts about my raw food diet and thinking...yes, this is definitely what I want to do, but at the same time, especially being in college, it kind of sucks. Hell, I'm shy and have a tendency to be antisocial anyway, but being a raw foodist really supports my staying-in-my-dorm-all-day habit. It's just easier for me to eat in my room than to bring it with me and eat with other people. I have made the effort to eat out with other people sometimes, but I think I'm sick of eating from the salad bar. Fruit is definitely yummier. Also, I can't connect with other people when they talk about what they're eating, or what they want to eat. "Oh yeah, I used to like chocolate." Well, it's not that I don't like chocolate actually, I just wouldn't want to eat it. But it's easier to imply that I don't like it anymore. Can you imagine having to say "I don't eat that anymore," which needs a bit more explanation. Eh. Neh.

I've decided that retaining my health is much more important than just letting it all go and being more social. It's kind of depressing too, especially when everyone goes out to eat late at night and I just wouldn't want to do that...but...mm. Also, there's a Japanese Culture Day coming up and we can help my teacher cook curry and stuff like that. I think I'll help out, but it'll be depressing too because Japanese food used to be my favorite. I mean I can deal with not eating the stuff, but I don't know if I really want to cook it and not eat it. I want to help out my teacher though. Maybe I can do something else.

Last night while I was writing a letter to someone, a bunch of people were in the room talking to my roommate and they were basically planning how much alcohol and what kinds of alcohol they'd want this other girl on the floor to get (she's supplying everyone, I guess?) and it just sounded so...so...stupid. I just don't understand. Maybe I'll never understand. My roommate says it's fun to get drunk, although the next day you "feel like shit," which in my mind doesn't sound worth it. Besides the morning after, it screws up your body. Why don't people realize...oh, nevermind. Despite all the unintelligent things other people do, I'm still stupid compared to most of them, which doesn't make what I do look very worthwhile. Really, my body sucks a crapload; I can't even handle raw cheese. I know all people are different and some people can handle eating really unhealthy things, although I don't know if that's good or bad.

I'm at home right now, but I'm going back to school tomorrow (technically today) to go to my dorm's annual haunted house. I might help out too, depending on what I can actually do. Then again, it's in the basement and it's really, really hot down there. Each floor does a separate room and my floor's room is this black room with mirrors and some scary movie some students made being projected on the mirrors. I haven't a clue how it's going to turn out.

Today I saw Kill Bill with my mum and I gotta say, I really liked it. It's just different from anything else I've seen, which is refreshing, and it's an interesting story. The style of the movie feels really smooth; everything just flows well. I really liked the music too. There's lots of blood and decapitation and stuff like that, but it's rather comical after a while. I'm looking forward to volume 2. I can't imagine anyone else could play Uma Thurman's role; she's really good. I just set this as my wallpaper. :)

My angelgotchi is still alive. Dammit. I don't want to just ignore it so it "dies" but I don't want to take care of it anymore either. After it fully grows up, there isn't much else to look forward to. "Oh, it's hungry! Oh, it pooped! OH BOYYY!" I just like watching them grow.

I got some great zines from crackers and honey on Thursday. Now if only I had an industrial strength sewing machine, I could sew little bookets too...poop!

Yesterday I went to the ACDC and saw that they had bananas. YES, THE POWERS ARE ON MY SIDE! Now how many to get? One? Five? 20? I settled on 12. That should last at least four days. They look horribly unripe at the moment but it's better then eating a brown, mushy banana.

I don't know why I started this entry with bananas, but I couldn't think of a good title (not that I ended up making a good title) and when I looked to my left I saw a bunch of bananas. So there you go.

I meant to write an entry earlier but then I didn't. Why? WHY? Because I was being poked by giant bunnies. I mean, I was lazy. Same difference.

I love getting e-mail from the school post office because it means I got a package, which in turn means someone actually sent me something!, although in most cases it's because I bought something online and totally forgot about it. Today I got an RHPD shirt (this one to be exact) and I think it's the mark of a truly nerdy Radiohead fan. But I think it's a cool idea. It'd be cool to have a little sheriff badge that says "KARMA POLICE" on it as well...okay, maybe not. Anyway. I'm a nerd.

Yesterday in the mail I got the new Strokes album (so far, so good; sounds like the other album, whoa...on another note, you know you're old when you can say "When I was your age, amazon.com only sold BOOKS) and an awesome Radiohead DVD of their performance in Glastonbury. I can't imagine going to a music festival like that, but some day I gotta try that. Except it'll probably never happen in the US (too bad Field Day didn't pan out, not that I would have gone anyway). It's not DVD quality but it's great considering there aren't any official RH concert DVDs to buy. What the heck is up with that? I know I have a concert of theirs on a video tape somewhere, but...uh, maybe not. Beck doesn't have ANY DVDs, and he could make tons.

That's the extent of "exciting stuff I got in the mail" because I haven't been getting many letters. I still have to reply to Sandy and Alex though; sorry guys! Your letters are right on my table. Must...reply...

My roommate is sleeping. She skipped two classes. When I came back after Japanese at around 12:15, her alarm went off. She didn't sound very well either. :( I don't know how she could have gotten sick, besides not very healthy living habits that most people have anyway. She is tired a lot...I'm sure she could change her habits, and I'd help her with it, but only if she wanted to. I haven't missed any classes yet and I hope I never do.

Speaking of Japanese class, it suddenly became very confusing. It was already confusing, so imagine what it's like now. We're learning about the dictionary format of verbs and junk and...wait, I'm not Japanese, and I may never go to Japan again, WHAT AM I DOING? Crap. On Monday I had a Japanese drill session and it was awful. I just couldn't remember anything and the instructor was probably thinking "What the hell is wrong with you?" Okay, maybe not, she's a really nice person, but it must be hard to have to listen to all these really American people attempt to speak Japanese. She's not the one who gets frustrated; I am!

Yesterday I had my second, crappy ass astronomy test. Astronomy is definitely not my thing. There were so many freakin' essays on this one and I DIDN'T KNOW THE DENSITY OF THE EARTH but I don't know when that would ever be important. It's not even that interesting! The nebular hypothesis is interesting, but I just don't give a crap about density or neutrons or active optics. Alison, my classmate who lives on my floor, wrote on my door's whiteboard "I hate astronomy. Fuck a duck." Well, I wouldn't say the same thing, but close enough. I studied for a long time on Monday night with Liza (also a classmate, but lives on the first floor) which I'm sure helped, but I'm still not confident that I did well. I know I passed though. OH THE JOY!

The new Matrix movie came out today. If I were still in high school I'd probably go see it today...after school. Someone in my Japanese class totally skipped class to see the first showing. Now that's devotion. Or fanaticism (is that even a word?). I wanted to see it this weekend with my mum, but (get read for this)...I'm actually staying in school the entire weekend. It'll be the first weekend I've completely spent in school since freshman orientation. Kind of sad, but oh well.

Oh yeah, the weekend...what happened? Well, I "worked" as the annual Raymond Haunted House by sitting on a small table where the computer equipment was to make sure no one stole anything. Woo! Out room was the "mirror room" in which there wre a bunch of mirrors (no, really?) and a weird scary movie some students made was being played. The table I sat on was hidden by sheets of black plastic so no one knew it was there. Anyway, a tiny space surrounded by black plastic with heat-producing machinery is not the best place to engage in repiratory processes. I think oxygen was non-existent. But I only had to sit in there for 30 minutes while my student fellow was in there for hours. Yikes. The haunted house was pretty good, although it didn't really freak me out since I saw them making it and during the break the "crazy mental hospital patients" and "zombies" were just hanging around.

Sunday was definitely interesting. Actually, it was the completely opposite, but that made it interesting...maybe. I stayed in my dorm all day. I didn't even bother to change out of my pjs. I didn't think there was much point. I felt pretty depressed by the end of the day and thought about how I'd be screwed over these four years of "higher education" but hopefully I'll do something this weekend. Liza convinced me to stay, so I better put some pressure on her. "So, Liza, ENTERTAIN THE HELL OUT OF ME!" Hehe....wait, I don't want to scare people. But really, I talked to my mum that day and said something about transferring...no, I don't think I'll transfer. First off, I found out last spring that all other schools hate me except Skidmore and Rutgers, neither of which I'd be too excited to go to. So I should thank Vassar for even letting me in. It's like taking in a sick, dying cat because it's so pitiful. Yes!

On Monday morning for some crazy reason I woke up at 7:45 AM to go to the gym with my roommate. I've never really been there to work out before, so I guess it was a good thing I went. It's like having a free gym membership (besides that school costs many thousands of dollars already) so I should take advantage of it. It was an insanely hot day though, considering its already NOVEMBER and shouldn't be in the 70 degree range. Now it's rainy and crappy and back in the 50s. Stupid, crazy weather!

E*rock is awesome; he looks out for his customers:

i was checking my old emails from when i was on the road and wanted to make sure you got these CDs.

[after I said I got the CDs...a while ago, hehe]

okay cool. i found the order in my inbox (which usually means i need to do it still) after trying to get caught up this morning and was like oh no, maybe i forgot!

I didn't buy his album. Yet. I am hoping for a new issue of Thumb someday.

It felt really cold yesterday, despite not actually being that cold (or else it would have snowed instead of rained). So, of course, I was drinking a smoothie while walking in the 40-something degree weather. I needed to wear gloves to hold the cup. Something was sorely amiss.

OH WELL! I went to the gym and it was actually fun. I used this machine for about 30 minutes while listening to The Raveonettes. Their music has almost the perfect beat to go along with working out. So the Raveonettes are my new work-out music. I wasn't planning to get a smoothie, but Kathryn did and it looked yummy. I didn't know that a smoothie had ice in it though, so maybe I can ask for one without ice. Then again, it probably needs ice to be a smoothie...? Or else it's just a banana mush thing. Erm. Well, I'll find out.

I forgot to mention something very important that happened. The family friend that I talked about in this entry as being near death passed away last Friday. :( It's not surprising, but it's just awful. Now her husband doubts the doctors who kept pushing various medications and surgeries on her. She died in a hospital, connected to all kinds of machines and not fully aware of her surroundings. If she died in peace that would have at least been somewhat better. She wasn't even that old, in her 60s I think. Both of my grandparents are in their 80s and they're not seriously incapacitated. However, they are definitely not cool people, don't really do anything with their lives, and eat crap. The family friend was really cool and nice, although she had health problems since she was little. It's not like I wish death upon my grandparents (I can't honestly say I would care very much if they died, though) but it's just one of those unfair things about life. I guess.

I have a bit of a tummy ache. I decided to try a mixed fruit cup from the ACDC for the first time, even though I knew the fruit couldn't be that good and mixing a bunch of kinds of fruit isn't a good idea. It tasted good at first (mm, pineapple) but then my mouth felt weird (wah, pineapple) and after eating an apple and a persimmon, I started feeling funky. It could have been the addition of the apple and the persimmon. Yesterday I felt so cold that I didn't have an appetite for lunch, but then after staying in my room for a few hours I thought "Me hungiiiiee" (in a Homer-like fashion) and ate dried mulberry bits with a spoon (my spoon is not too big).

I asked a question at Insound and they replied to me in less than an hour. Or 30 minutes. I asked if they were ever going to have a "wishlist" type option and they said they're working on that and other types of things. I think it'd be a lot more convenient to have a wishlist, but then it'd probably make me buy more stuff. Since they have a 15% coupon for this week, I racked up a bunch of stuff that I would like to have but don't really need to have:

• Mum - Please Smile My Nose Bleed
• Styrofoam - A Heart Without a Mind
• B. Fleischmann - Welcome Tourist
• The Album Leaf - One Day I'll Be On Time

Muuuusiiiic...I don't listen to a lot of music anymore. I found out yesterday that a guy down the hall (freshman, also in my astronomy class) likes a lot of the same music as me. It's not everday (or ever, in my case) that someone asks you if you like Mum. He likes a lot of good stuff (Radiohead, Bjork, Sigur Ros, Flaming Lips, Beck) but I lent him my CD case so maybe he will get hooked on other good stuff, because that's what I wanna do: get people hooked on STUFF! That isn't drugs. Stuff. Magnet, preferably. :)

This morning I had a Japanese test and it was really awful. のほんごのしけんは、わるいです。 (Japanese test is bad.) The listening part really confused me and the rest was not too great. So overall, it basically sucked. I wanted an A for the semester, but I will probably get Bs in all of my classes, if not worse, so you know, it's time to lower my standards. I don't really know what's going on with my anthropology paper and I'm going to have to write an English essay about a poem. I can't think of many worse things to write about besides poems (I'm not a poetry enthusiast, sorry) so I'm sure that'll be a hellish experience! Exclamation marks make life fun!

I think I've decided what classes I'm taking next semester. Take a lookie:

1. MUSI-101-51: Fundamentals of Music; MW 0130PM - 0245PM
2. ANTH-120-51: Human Origins; TR 1200PM - 0115PM
3. BIOL-106-53: Intro/Biological Investigation; F 0900AM - 1015AM; T 0130PM - 0530PM
4. JAPA-106-52: Elementary Japanese; MTWRF 1100AM - 1150AM

I still think I want to major in anthropology. I wasn't too big on taking biology, but my mum persuaded it to me because if I'm really interested in health, then I have to take bio. I'm sure waking up at 9 AM and having a four hour lab will make my heart will with joy at the thought of bio. We'll just have to see. Unless my brain snaps and I become psychotic.

My tummy ache has gone away, so I actually feel like eating again. Ergh.

Well, I at least like it more than Poughkeepsie, although that isn't much of a comparison.

Okay, let's go back further. Much further. Or not too much further. The plan was that Kathryn (my roommate), Abel (guy who lives across the hall), Dan (guy who lives down the hall), and me (...me) would be going to NY using the Metro-North Railway 7:33 AM train to Grand Central Station. Kathryn had to work on a paper all night, and for some reason I couldn't go to bed either. So instead of attempting to sleep only to wake up at 6 AM, we just stayed up all night. For some reason we both got the munchies (actually, I was having serious munchies...I'll talk about my Friday morning after I talk about today) ar 4 AM. I had some fruit (no duh) and Kathryn had ramen (or as another girl once called it, "ramden"). So we were up to see the sun loom over the sky in that wonderous thing called "sunrise" during that time of day called "morning" usually not seen by college students. Whoaaa.

So we all left at 7 AM to take the train. I had more thoughts about the sun ("Wow, it's rising!") and such things. A roundtrip ticket to Grand Central Terminal is $24 (during off-peak times) which I guess is good. Then again, it used to be less, just like the DAMN SUBWAY TICKETS. Anyway. The view was very line along the Hudson River and there were some weird sights along the way, such as what looked like a prison just in the middle of the river and this weird castle looking thing on a small island on the river. It was almost like a toy castle, except it was...well, big. I mean, it looked surreal. ...After doing a little googling, I can point you to the Bannerman Castle website...because that's what it is. Hm. Alright then.

It was a nice 110 minute or so ride to NY. It's much nicer than a bus; no traffic! When we got to Grand Central, we waited for one of our schoolmates (who lives on the same floor), Annie, since she was the reason we all decided to go to NY. She had to go to the Metropolitan Museum for her art history class. When I first decided that I wanted to tag along, I thought I would go to the museum as well, but when I realized we'd be in NYC from 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM, I thought "Hey, I can do whatever I want!" We met up with Annie a bit later than expected, which worked well for me because I wanted to go to the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, which opens at 10 AM. It was blisteringly cold (that might not be a real word), which I wasn't expecting. Damn wind. Air displacement crap. So anyway, we all got off at the 86th Street subway station and then parted our ways.

As I walked to the NDM, everything felt very peaceful and clean. There is some satisfaction in just wandering around in the early morning. Even though NYC is polluted like the inside of a smokestack, when you're next to Central Park it doesn't feel like that. It's almost surreal to have this huge park plonked right in the middle of a sprawling city bursting at the seams with humans. I didn't actually get to go into the park, but someday maybe I'll try it out. :)

The NDM is very nice and compact, which is how I like my museums (aka, no matter how nice it may be, the Louvre will never be my "thing"). It was formerly a house, which is probably why it felt so nice and cozy. I was interested in seeing the "Inside Design Now" exhibition since I've heard of some of the designers, and it was very nicely done. Jhonen had a really small blip on the wall though, along with a TV playing an episodeof Invader Zim, but I was surprised to see him there at all. I mean, the show isn't even on anymore, but it's nice that he gets a nod from the museum community. Or maybe that's weird. It'd be neat to see an ehibit based on his comics. Besides Jhonen there was also some neat stuff by Geoff McFetridge on some walls which also displayed skateboards with his designs. It's so easy to like his designs, but they're not easy in themselves. (Same thing with Paul Frank...sometimes I hate myself for liking those things, but they're cute). There was lots of other cool stuff, like robotic flowers and a weird glowing car. There was another funky thing with a bunch of things dangling down...wow, that couldnt have been much more vague, eh? Or maybe it can. "There was a thing with stuff coming from the thing." I've outdone myself. Well, back to what I was saying (or not), there was also a nice room put together for Nest (ultra-cool magazine) where you coudl sit down and read their backissues. I tried to sketch the room but it came out awful because I don't know how to draw. Oo well. I tried to draw what was on the chairs too, which was a simple line drawing of a bunny giving birth patterned all over the chair. Mm! Splendid.

I probably only spent about 30 minutes in the museum. Or maybe it was more. Well, definitely less than an hour. I browsed around their shop and was delighted to see an open copy of Pictoplasma 1 & 2, and now I am sure...I want those books. Either one. I've wanted the first one for a while because I heard it was good, but now that I've seen it, I'm definitely interested in it. It's pretty much a book filled with different characters, but it's neat to look at. I'd love to have a great webdesign book, but I tend to not like those as much. I'd like to figure out how to create good characters, although I think Poofy is as good as it's going to get. But hey, people really like my animal buttons for some reason. ...Okay, I should stop with all this design crap because that's almost definitely not what I'm going to do when I get out of college unless I can make a fortune off of Poofies and fishies that think they're moist.

After leaving the NDM, I decided to go downtown and check out Jubb's Longevity. I was really planning to eat lunch at Quintessence, but my friend Jen, who goes to Parsons School of Design, got back to me after I attempted to make very last minute plans to meet her (in addition to wishing her a happy birthday; she turned 18 today!) and we got to meet! But! Before that, I went to the Lower East Side and came across a clothing store called Lord of the Fleas. Not sure where this name came from, but it's cute. I'm glad I passed it, but I'm kind of not glad at the same time because I spent something like $70 there. Erp. (Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not sure how much the shirt and the shirt I got costed; the socks were about $10. Jesus, I'm going to turn into a really reckless consumer if I go around shopping by myself, NOOO.) Well, it's a nice little store, although I apparently went to their warehouse and not their more store-like...store. I was just looking around when I touched this incredibly soft black long sleeved shirt with a huge poofy neck (I have a photo; it will make more sense). It's synthetic, but...hohum. And I got a...*brace yourself*...black ruffle-ee miniskirt. Why? Well, it looks really nice, not that it looks that great on me, but it could potentially look good. (Note to self: must go to gym more) The guy running the store had a British accent (always a plus) and was very nice and helpful without seeming overhelpful. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes people are really helpful and it freaks me out because they seem like they're too enthusiastic. Oh, whatever, I could obviously never be a clothing salesperson. So the store and the dude who runs the store are cool. I also bought above-the-knee socks to go with the skirt, except I think I'm too short to wear a miniskirt plus the socks (because normal humans have longer legs) but I'll do it anyway.

...whoa, what the hell am I talking about? Uh. Anyhoo, the guy told me that if I go to the other store I could find a pink soft poofy shirt in my size. The store's business card is actually on an outer paper case for a free condom. I find that very funny. And I'm glad I didn't go there with my mum. Then again, we'd probably find it funny. Also, it acts as a 10% off coupon. And, of course...a condom (it says "MAKE LOVE NOT WAR" on that packaging).

When I was in the store, Jen called me and that's when we made plans to meet. I had time to kill because she had just woken up, so that's when I went to Jubb's Longevity. That. Place. Is. Awesome! (Or to make this into super corny chowdah: RAWSOME!) It was a little messy because the store owner had just opened a new restaurant, but it was still great. I really wanted to try the cakes and treats on display, but I didn't want that to be my first meal of the day. The woman running the store (not that young, but looked quite beautiful in that radiant, happy way...I wonder how long she's been on raw food) gave me and another customer samples of her flax seed cracker and it was absolutely delicious. What's in it, I don't know, but must be some yummy spices and things. She also made something else from...well, now I don't really remember, but it was really good too. Another cracker-type thing that was supposed to resemble corn chips. In my opinion, raw food imitations of cooked food never really taste like the cooked food, but just act as a guide and in the process creates a completely new type of cuisine. I love it. Just can't eat it that much. She also gave us samples of the brazil nut milk she made; wow, absolutely delicious. I ended up buying a cup of that and a bag of the flax seed crackers.

I had more time to kill so I went to Air Market just to look at the odd Japanese things and the too-expensive clothing (I saw this after I splurged at that other store...?). They've also got lots of mumbledolls which I used to be interested in, but now not so much. I think I'd still like an Uglydoll but ...mm. I have so many freakin' Poofies. (I entertained the idea of going into one of these kinds of not-tacky novelty stores and asking if they would sell my poofy dolls...maybe someday.) I managed to buy a birthday card for Jen and a tiny (really tiny) crocheted dog for my mum because I think she might like it. While I was finishing up paying, my phone rang, which was good timing since the store did not allow people to talk on their cell phones inside.

From Airmarket I walked to 6th Ave to meet up with Jen. Yay! YAY! So happy! It's just cool seeing someone you've known for so long (out parents were friends before we were born) in such a big city. She was pretty busy but we spent some time in her dorm room, which is for four people. I feel better about my room now. The ceiling in my room is higher and it jsut feels roomier than way. Her room felt impossibly cramped, even though it's larger. At least I think so. Also, her room was really messy. I would never be able to live in that room. The funny thing is that when we were in there, one of her roommates was still sleeping. She was still sleeping by the time I left, which was around 2...something. Past 2:30, I think. We spent the time just talking about how school is and such...man, art school sounds killer. 3+ hour classes? She says she's going to have a 9 hour day next semester. I wouldn't be able to handle that! I guess I shouldn't think I have it bad then.

After having to say goodbye, I decided to eat that meal at Quintessence I had been looking forward to. When I got closer to the restaurant though, I noticed a store next door that I swear I had never seen before. I actually can't remember the first time I went to that Quintessence, which is weird, because I'm sure it was with Diana and that I must have taken some photos, but maybe I didn't take that many. (looks for photos)...wow, I have absolutely no idea. Well then maybe it has been a year since I've been there? (Help me, Diana! My brain is dying.) The store next door is called Live Live and it's a raw foodist's dream/nightmare. Why this combination? They have the best, most delicious raw junk food. It's like my heaven, except it will make me fat and blech. Raw junk food is mainly cookies, crackers, and anything people can invent to be dehydrated (the raw food way of baking) and it all tastes delicious in a way unlike cooked food. I bought $30 worth of stuff, including apple-date cookies, granola, some sort of nutty candy, and oatmeal cookies (they are DELICIOUS, although I forgot when I bought them that they have oatmeal in em...no duh. Oh well, it's probably soaked or something). I could have easily spent $100 there, but I stuck to buying things I've never seen online before (for instance, they had just about all the stuff from Glaser Farms, although I really wish I had bought some because those things are really tasty, especally the brownie). Now I want to run back there are get more, more, more! The raw nut candy was really, REALLY good, and I can't even compare it to anything else. It's got its own taste; not like any sort of conventional candy, just delicious. I was given little container of homemade lip balm, although it was really fluid and when I put it on my lips, I more or less ate it. Tastes like banana. :)

After indulging way too much (well, I'm eating half of everything; going to give the rest to me mum, of course!) I went to Quintessence (for further endulgement). I've never eaten there alone and am usually accustomed to going the whole nine yards: appetizer, entree, and dessert. However, I noticed that I was pressed for time and that I did not have a bottomless stomach, so I got a sunburger with marinated mushrooms. Man, sunburgers are really good, although I forget what the patty is made of. Mainly sunflower seeds, I'd suppose, although it doesn't taste like sunflower seeds. Patties for sandwiches, like crackers and cookies, are also made by dehydration. The burger was phenomenal and I would never see how cooked food could be more satisfying. Even after eating so much, and knowing I ate a lot, I still felt fine. However, I knew I ate too quickly. :|

By this time it was a little past 4 PM. The plan was to meet at Grand Central at 4:45 PM. I wanted to go to one more place, Etherea, and then I realized I was doomed. Actually, I wasn't that doomed, but I had being late and tried to go down the 6 or so blocks as quickly as my little legs could possibly take me so I could look for some CDs I wanted (I ended up buying three CDs and the new issue of Magnet...oh jeez. Well, the CDs sound pretty good; Polmo Polpo - The Science of Breath, Barbara Morgenstern - Vermona ET 6-1, and Solvent - Solvent City). End price? Roughtly $50.

Now came the tough part; going back up to 14th Street. I love Etherea, but it's in this dead spot where it's not particularly close to any subway station. TIME TO RUN! Or run, hack, cough, walk, run. I'm so out of shape. I called Kathryn to tell her I would be late, and after hobbling onto the L train, leaving the L Train, running to catch the 4, 5, or 6 train (I'm really getting a hang of subways now, thank god), wait for the 4, 5, or 6 train, getting on that and running (very slowly) into the main concourse of Grand Central, I made it just about when I said I would (4:50 PM). We were still waiting for Annie though, so maybe I didn't have to do the half-assed running.

That was basically my day, in a very large nut shell (perhaps a nut tree in this case). It was a lovely day and I'd do it again.

[I have many photos...just not now]

Friday was a rather busy day as well. I didn't have Japanese class because it was Japanese Culture Day! WOO! We got to do a bonduri dance, which I actually got the hang of after a while, and we got to tabemasu nihonryori. I thought I could fast since there wouldn't be anything for me to eat, except there was a huge salad bowl and a fruit salad bowl. Crap. I ate lots and lots of salad, which I'm sure increased my body's water percentage and nothing else. Will I ever learn to fast? Not likely. And if you're wondering, no, fasting is not unhealthy; starving is. Do you know how long it takes to starve? Quite a while, figuring you are a semi-average person from an industrialized nation. So. BACK TO JAPANESE CULTURE DAY! We also watched an Ikido demonstration, which was somewhat amusing. Just another one of those things I will never do.

After that, I went to the gym for some intense workout-ing, WOO! I used the elliptical for 30 minutes and the treadmill for 20 minutes. I can run 3/4ths of a mile without dying! Keep in mind that this is at 4.5 mph, but I had no idea. I used to have awful asthma that would prevent me from doing the simplest activities in physical education class, such as "change into your gym clothes", but I'm much better now. (What is with all this weird information about asthma? It's generally known as being incurable, but a lot of people have cured their asthma, I think. Mine just seemed to get better as I got older.) I really want to make it a point to go to the gym at LEAST three times a week, and while an hour would be optimum, 30 minutes would be okay too. I wonder if I can pull this off...

Yesterday I went to NYC ...again. I wasn't planning to go at first (after going last week I thought I definitely shouldn't go) but one of my classmates was going to see some friends and I figured I may as well go so we can travel together. I wouldn't have felt so compelled to go to NYC to travel by myself.

We got to NYC at around 12:30. What's that time perfect for? FOOD! My first stop was Bonobo's Restaurant, a recently opened raw food establishment. It wasn't totally done being open yet, but they had some pretty nice stuff: various soups, lots of salad ingredients, puddings, and a zucchini spaghetti entree. I got the spaghetti, which had a spicy soup/sauce on top along with sunflower seeds, and banana-almond pudding for dessert. It was too much food, I found out later, but...mm well. Good pudding. That's what they should eat in Poofyville. RAW FOOD! Hey, the pancakes might even be raw since they come out of a tree...it doesn't make sense, but you know what, it's POOFYVILLE and nothing makes sense. :) Erm...so back to reality. The restaurant is in a pretty big room and it wasn't that busy when I went in, although when I left a line had formed. I'm sure people get interested in what the restaurant has due to the signs on the outside which proclaim the LIVE UNCRAPPY FOOD! Mmmm. And that was some good pudding. :)

After that I took the subway to the New Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibition didn't interest me very much, so I was glad the admission was free (18 and younger, woo!). Their store chock full of books and magazines was more interesting, although I didn't stick around for that long. After that I went to Zakka where, as usual, I bought nothing. There are always interesting things to get, but then I think "Well I can get this stuff for much less on amazon.com." Yeah, there I am supporting my local vendors...okay, not very local. There were a bunch of people in there browsing and such. I saw lots of little toys in boxes, but I wasn't curious enough to buy one. If they had a cute bunny of some sort that would be neat. The t-shirts they have are neat, although they're mainly in men's sizes, and they're really expensive. I mean, they're not that expensive compared to other articles of clothing, but I don't equate a t-shirt with having a high cost. Which leads me to an idea I've been having: would anyone be interested in buying a Poofy-related t-shirt? Because I could design one, or maybe pick a funny panel from a comic and put it on. But I don't know if anyone's interested in that. Well. Let me know. If I got at least 10 orders, I could order them and sell them for maybe $12. Well. Anyhoo.

After Zakka I think I took a subway up to Other Music, where I bought Like Hearts Swelling and picked up a copy of The Onion. I've been to OM a few times, although I never talked to any of the clerks before. One clerk asked me if I needed any help, so I asked if they had any new Barbara Morgenstern albums. They didn't, but he looked around a while to see if they did, which was nice.

I took the subway to Union Square, intending to take the L train to 1st Avenue, but the L train was not in service. POOP. Alright, it's not actually a long walk, but I'm lazy. I went to Live Live and bought too much stuff again. There was another customer in there when I entered and she asked me if I was a raw foodist. I told her I've been doing it since January and she was impressed! I think until I get to the 1-year mark, it hasn't actually been that long, but she remarked that it's almost been a year. Mm..yup, finally! She said I looked good too, which was nice, although most people in NYC do look good. (sigh) Another customer came in later and the woman who runs the store gave us lots of samples of some new raw food treats, like brownie and cookie type things. Hey, I'm not going to refuse a taste test! :) Some things were pretty good and some things were just okay (I wouldn't buy them though). The one that tasted really good (the other customer and I liked it) had hazelnuts in it. Mmm. A while later, Dan, the owner of Quintessence popped in (the restaurant is right next door) and got in on the taste testing. Heehee! It was fun.

After that it was onto Jubbs Longevity where I would eat way, WAY too much. I ate my dinner there and had fun talking to the woman who runs the store, Miranda. She was talking about how nice raw food is and how important it is to keep your body healthy, which I completely agree with, of course. It's interesting to talk to someone who really understands all this stuff, although I'm sure she's more into it than I am. If I were more conscious of my digestive system, I wouldn't eat so late and mix so many bad things. I really think that eating raw food and realizing how important your body is to not drink coffee or alcohol or eat really beyond-dead processed food is a simple concept. Then again, I didn't know this until last year. I know that most people won't have the same idea as me, but...I don't know, it really does get frustrating after a while. It was a nice relief to talk to someone who feels the same way. I told her that I wanted to eat my dinner there, so she told me to watch her make me a raw pizza. What is raw pizza? The base is a big flax seed cracker type thing, on which some tomato sauce and this other sauce is put on along with sunflower seed "cheese". On top of that you pretty much put whatever veggies you like. I had lettuce, onions, tomatoes, avocado, and some seaweed. In the end it was this HUGE thing, and I ate the whole thing somehow. It was tasty, of course. And I think it was only $7 or $7.50, which is a really good price. I knew I shouldn't have eaten dessert, but their cakes/pies are very enticing, so I tried an apple-berry cake. I don't know how they made it, but it was really delicious. I didn't eat all of the crust, but the inside was really nice. I bought a pack of some dehydrated sweet cereal thing before leaving.

Eating all this yummy and processed raw food isn't something I'd do all the time, of course. It's a big, BIG indulgement. When I'm in school I eat mainly whole fruits, sometimes salads, and nuts and dried fruit, or in other words, very basic foods. I just have a knife in case I need to cut off some bruised parts. That's how people on a raw food diet should eat. I would say the occasional "gourmet" raw food dining is okay, just like for regular people occasionally drinking alcohol or something isn't going to kill you if you enjoy it.

I pretty much went back to Grand Central after that to meet up Alison at around 5:45 PM. Then...back home. Bye NYC! HELLO POUGHKEEPSIE!

For some reason when I got back to my dorm, despite already having eaten so much I decided to eat even MORE. A lot more. I ate various raw food junk food I bought online and from Live Live up until 9-something PM, after which I felt like a beached whale. Today I ate until 9 PM too, although I didn't feel as whale-ish.

Oh yeah, what happened today? Well I found out I gained 2 pounds, which is no surprise, but it's still a little alarming. Unlike past Sundays during which I would do nothing and stay in my pjs all day, I decided to go to the gym and exercise a bit. I can't seem to run as far as before...I did 1.25 miles running on the treadmill and 3 miles on the elliptical. Then I tried some of the weight training equipment, which I desperately need to use. Man, I'm weak. Seem like the most I can do on any machine is 30 lbs. I gotta get more buff! (Man, can you even imagine me being buff?)

My roommate Kathryn planned to make a Thanksgiving dinner for some people on our floor and some other floors, so she was busy making food for most of the day. In the end she made four pies, baked a 20-something lb turkey, made a huge vat of mashed potatoes, cooked string beans, and prepared canned stuff like yams and corn. Lots of food, overall. She was afraid there wouldn't be enough, but it was no problem. :) Me being the weird person that I am thought people would like to have salad, so I decided I'd use some of my ACDC points to get lots and lots of salad. I filled up 5 big plastic containers with salad, which was about 3 too many. I put lots of apples in the salad because I thought people liked apples, but...no, not really. Well, not everyone likes apples, I guess. One guy said he took them out, and in the end there was just SO MUCH SALAD LEFTOVER! I'm not going to eat it either because my mum said it would rot in the fridge. Hm well. What a waste. :( Kathryn bought veggies because I thought I'd make the salad myself, so I guess I will eat the veggies. Overalll, the dinner was a big success, besides the salad. Everything looked good, especially the pies. For some reason, three vegetarians (including me...I'm practically a vegetarian) were sitting by the turkey. Bad planning on our part. :D

I can't believe the weekend is over already. I didn't have much homework, thankfully. I have to finish up an English and Anthropology essay, but I hope that won' t be too hard. I'll have photos from NYC later. If you want to see last week's, go here.

Rufus is great! Not that you needed me to tell you that. But I'll say it again. RUFUS IS GREAT! He sings, dances, burps...oh yeah.

Does anyone want to see him on February 13th at the Beacon Theater with me? Actually, these tickets are really expensive. Rufus is good, but $50...well...um...ANYWAY.

I was accompanied to the concert by my friend Jen, who unfortunately for lost trying to find Town Hall. Ahh! I'm sorry! :( it was funny because she called me while on the wrong side of Broadway and going in the wrong direction, asking me if I could see certain places, to which I would keep replying "No...um...nope...um, I'm across from Urinetown!" You don't get to say that very often. (By the way, Urinetown is a really funny musical and it's closing soonish, if I remember correctly, so see it!)

There were people trying to sell their tickets before the show and one guy actually just LEFT his tickets in one of the frames outside of the venue that has information about upcoming shows. I didn't need them, so I didn't see the point of taking them. Some other guy did though, just as I was going to see what seats they were. Well I hope someone who needed tickets got them!

We were a little late to the show, but we got to catch some of Martha Wainwright's acoustic set. I don't know why I didn't get into her before, but I think I really like her voice! That's saying a lot because for some reason I'm usually not very into female artists. I mean, I could list the ones I listen to right now: Beth Orton, Bjork, Gemma Hayes, and Mum, if you want to count them. Martha's voice is pretty cool. She was wearing a cute dress too.

After Martha, Rufus came onstage pretty quickly. That was such a relief after going to other concerts where it takes an ETERNITY for the main performer to set up. Of course, Rufus looked like he always does: cute and...cuter. I thought we had pretty good seats, and they WOULD have been good if they were on the other side of the stage. The piano was on the far left of fhe stage and we were sitting on the far right. Apparently, that's what it was like the last time I saw Rufus...I didn't realize that. Oh well, still good seats!

Apparently, there were three empty seats right in front of Rufus. He went into his "diva" mode and demanded the seats be filled. :) Later in the show there were some other empty seats in the front row, which he pointed out and subseqently got filled in. Where were these people? Ahh!

What did Rufus play? Buttloads of stuff! Not that I remember the order:

April Fool's
11:11
Oh What a World
I Don't Know What It Is
Millbrook
Beautiful Child
One Man Guy
Poses
Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk
Dinner at Eight
California
Grey Gardens
Want
Movies of Myself
Vibrate
Natasha
14th Street
Harvester of Hearts
Go or Go Ahead
Pretty Things
Gay Messiah
a French song whose name might be "Nuits de Miami"

Rufus sang impeccably, although he did burp at one point during Millbrook. Of course, it doesn't matter. (I have a recording of this, shall put it up at some point.) It's something Rufus can do and and not be weird. Is that weird? Hm. He said that in Japan he would say jokes, which no one understood anyway, but when he burped the audience laughed like hell. So he burped to get people laughing. Hey, if it works, why not? During "Oh What a World" everyone was somewhat dance-ee or swaying around. Rufus was doing little motions and such, and at the end of the song (when everything dies down with all the horns) everyone onstage kind of started falling down to the ground and it was really funny. I have a video clip of it (strangely enough, the only video clip I have, which I started taking before the whole "let's fall to the ground" bit). He said it had to do with the Wicked Witch of the West saying "Oh, what a world!" and dying. Or something. I can't say I'm very familiar with the Wizard of Oz. But RUFUS IS!

He didn't talk as much as the last show I went to, although he did talk a bit. He explained that he wrote "Gay Messiah" with regard to the absence of homosexuality in the Bible, not that they shuned it but that it just didn't exist. He commented on some of his songs being very dark and gloooomy, and some other ones being...not. Noo nothing is dark and gloomy when Rufus is around! The last song (the French one) was a duet with Martha and was lovely, not that I could understand it but I'm sure it was lovely. I was happy to hear "April Fool's" since it's just such a nostaligic song. The first time I heard it must have been around the end of 1998 or early 1999. Holy crap, it's nearly 2004! I feel as old as dirt.

On a completely different note, today is Thanksgiving! Which is some kind of a holiday! My roommate e-mailed this to me and I thought it was cute:

TWAS THE NIGHT OF THANKSGIVING, BUT I JUST COULDN'T SLEEP
I TRIED COUNTING BACKWARDS, I TRIED COUNTING SHEEP.
THE LEFTOVERS BECKONED - THE DARK MEAT AND WHITE
BUT I FOUGHT THE TEMPTATION WITH ALL OF MY MIGHT

TOSSING AND TURNING WITH ANTICIPATION
THE THOUGHT OF A SNACK BECAME INFATUATION.
SO, I RACED TO THE KITCHEN, FLUNG OPEN THE DOOR
AND GAZED AT THE FRIDGE, FULL OF GOODIES GALORE.

I GOBBLED UP TURKEY AND BUTTERED POTATOES,
PICKLES AND CARROTS, BEANS AND TOMATOES.
I FELT MYSELF SWELLING SO PLUMP AND SO ROUND,
'TIL ALL OF A SUDDEN, I ROSE OFF THE GROUND.

I CRASHED THROUGH THE CEILING, FLOATING INTO THE SKY
WITH A MOUTHFUL OF PUDDING AND A HANDFUL OF PIE.
BUT, I MANAGED TO YELL AS I SOARED PAST THE TREES....
HAPPY EATING TO ALL; PASS THE CRANBERRIES, PLEASE.

MAY YOUR STUFFING BE TASTY, MAY YOUR TURKEY BE PLUMP.
MAY YOUR POTATOES 'N GRAVY HAVE NARY A LUMP,
MAY YOUR YAMS BE DELICIOUS, MAY YOUR PIES TAKE THE PRIZE,
MAY YOUR THANKSGIVING DINNER STAY OFF OF YOUR THIGHS.

My mum and I were planning to go to NYC tomorrow, but apparently it's supposed to rain ALL DAY. Crap. Well, I can partake in Buy Nothing Day at least. I will probably just stay home and do homework. I have a lot of reading to do for English and Anthropology and I have to study kanji for Japanese. Man, Japanese is turning into a poopie crap, whatever that is. Like kanji will be read one way, and then another way, and you just have to memorize it. Gah! Oh well, at least I kind of have hiragana and katakana down. I tried to read a Japanese Beck book I've had for a few years and now I know how to write Beck's name in katakana: bekku! BEKKU! If I have a kid, I'll name him/her Bekku. And he/she will be made fun of forever and ever. Right now I have a 93% in Japanese, which is good, but it's been going down because the tests have been a-killin' me. わたしをしにります、にほんごむずかしいですから。 That's probably completely gramatically incorrect, but what I was trying to say was "I die because Japanese is difficult." In itself that doesn't even make much sense, but you know...I can only do so much with my tiny brain.

I bought Frame Magazine yesterday in NY (I've never seen it before) and it's a really nice magazine. In my opinion. Because I like nice looking things. Why am I mentioning this? I have no idea. I want to subscribe to it since it's cheaper for students. Ooooh.

Alright, I think I'm done for now. It's time to..CROCHET! I mean do homework. ...nah, I meant crochet.

The title is not a metaphor. I really have broken out in some sort of a rash. *itch itch* Do I think it's a bad thing? Not really. On top of having my period, I must be getting rid of a lot of junk. I lost a few pounds after getting my period (which I've probably gained back due to eating....um...food...more on that later) and that was mainly water. Last Wednesday I used the Ion Cleanse and I wonder if that's why I developed a rash. I've never had a rash before, even though it's a common effect of detoxification. Until now, that is. I just have a few small red dots on some parts of my skin...I guess for your sake I won't get into any more detail. But anyway! I have no idea how the Ion Cleanse works, but it does do something. When I used it the water turned orange-ish, which means "detoxifying from joints"...I really don't know what that's about. I've never had a problem with my joints. There were also small white particles, which are supposed to be yeast particles...not that makes sense, considering how many carbs I eat. My mum did it too and she had a LOT more white particle junk and the water was a darker orange. Ooh.

So enough of that weird junk. What did I do this weekend? Uh. Um. Man, my brain does NOT work. Need omega-3 oil.

My mum and I were planning to go to NYC on Friday but it was rainy and kind of stinky, so instead we stayed home and went to Treasure Island to get yarn and things. I ended up making a scarf, woo! It's a fun soft scarf and the yarn is all fuzzy so I could make lots of mistakes and they wouldn't show. THAT'S THE BEST KIND OF YARN. I also worked on my ladybug beret and I'm almost done except for two dots and the eyes. I thought my head was a lot bigger, but apparently it's not. It's about 21" in circumference. I forgot that kids have huge heads, it's just the REST of their bodies that is small. So I'm going to have the most rockin' (or stupid) looking hat!

The next day we went to NYC to shop around and see The Triplets of Belleville. It was definitely an interesting and imaginative movie, and now that I've had more time to think about it, I think I liked it. I think. Hm. Well, it was a good movie. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're into...animated movies. And French things. If you like action and...erm, dialogue, do NOT see this movie. It's very, very slow. This isn't necessarily bad...I mean, some people will interpret the slowness as being bad, but it really portrays the feelings of the characters in the movie. I think the guy who did the movie was influenced by miming or something; there isn't much speaking in the movie. There's some singing (by the triplets) and a little bit of dialogue in English and some other dialogue in French. The story is pretty strange, but it's...um...funny. Not in a ha-ha way. There are funny parts though. If you're wondering, I'm very, very bad at writing reviews for anything, whether it's movies or music. I wouldn't recommend that everyone see this movie, just people who might be interested in animated, foreign movies. My overall feeling is that it's been over-hyped in a way and I was probably expecting something different. So it was good, but not the kind of movie that I thought it would be (ie, not so slow and maybe with more dialogue and more plot and...uh...hm).

After seeing the movie my mum and I walked up the East Village, which my mum thought was pretty slow compared to other parts of NYC. Maybe that's why I like it there. It is pretty slow, although if you walk up far enough then the calm and slowness immediately changes to bright lights, lots of cars, and Starbucks. Starbucks is pretty much the sign that you're in tourist-ville, it seems. *sigh* We went to Jubb's Longevity and ate a delicious dinner; I had a wrap and my mum had a casserole. For dessert I had the most DELICIOUS pumpkin pie and my mum had "cheesecake" that didn't taste like regular, heavy cheesecake because it was much lighter and nicer. :) Man, I love pumpkin pie. Who needs a cooked pumpkin pie? Just puree some pumpkin, put in the right spices, make a nutty crust, and mm. I love raw food, although I am indulging way too much. Right now the way I'm eating raw food is a BAD example...DO NOT DO THIS! Then again, if all you ate was that pumpkin pie, that would be so much better than "normal" cooked food fare, like breads and pastas and hamburgers and ice cream, at least in my opinion. It's saddening to think that the things I worry about food-wise are a lot healthier than what most people eat and my idea of an indulgence is a dehydrated raw cookie or pie make of nuts and fruit.

We also went to Live Live and got LOADS of stuff. How long these things will last, I do not know. But not very long. We got a bunch of things from here; they're EXCELLENT! They're so much cheaper if you buy them from the website though. Then again, shipping costs a bit. But anyway, if you could entertain the idea of trying some raw food snacks, the temple balls, brownie, and flax seed crackers are delicious. The essene bread is pretty good too, although it tastes SO much like a cracker, it's scary. Actually, maybe not; It has sprouted wheat in it and I believe that wheat is unhealthy, so it was probably stupid of me to eat. Actually, my mum wanted to try the bread, and I ended up liking it more than she did! ACK! We got lots of other stuff too, like flavored almonds, cookies, and granola. Eek. It's a good thing I don't live in Manhattan, I guess. I've only been there three times now but I feel like I've become a regular customer. The woman who runs the store told my mum (it was her first time there) that I was really sweet and a good customer. :)

We weren't planning to go to St. Marks Bookshop but while we were passing by I saw Quimby the Mouse, which I've wanted for a while, and figured I may as well get it. I also got Neomu, which is a great tax-free way to spend a dollar. :)

So that was my day in NYC, pretty much. Mucho fun, except that today it is Sunday and I am back in school. (sob) Not that school is awful, but I don't want to, you know, do WORK after having a nice relaxing 4-day weekend. I think I have to work on an English essay outline about a poem. I read a bunch of poems for English class last night and barely understood any of them (if at all). Damn...poetry...CRAP! JUST WRITE NORMALLY!

I didn't know a buttload of snow was going to suddenly come down in ridiculously massive quantities until Saturday. And that was because I witnessed the gray haze of moving (horizontally) bits of snow outside my window (click here for some visuals). Needless to say, I stayed in my room all day. Then again, even if it didn't snow, I may have stayed inside all day anyway. Well, it was a good opportunity to fast.

I fasted for 48 hours. I don't know if I've fasted that long before, but I guess after you fast one time, the second time is easier. Today I probably ate too much, but I tried to chew much more slowly than before. If you're curious what a typical Robyn-day of eating is like, here's basically what I had:

3 oranges
2 persimmons
1 banana
35 almonds (a little more than an ounce, which is all you really need)
6 dried figs (mm...sugar)
lots of dried apricots (ie, more than 10, possibly much more)
a bit more than a liter of water (all my water bottles have a liter in them, which is how I know. Otherwise, I'd have no clue. How much water does one really need? Well if I didn't eat any dried stuff, I'd say that I didn't need to drink any at all.)

I doubt anyone who doesn't know me would be reading this, but if you don't, listing what I eat isn't really an obsessive thing. I used to do it on my raw food journal, which is now dead. I guess I could use this as a pseudo raw food journal, but I'd also put info about raw food and natural hygiene in the other journal. Annnd...I'm too lazy to do that now. WEE!

My stomach/digestive system feels pretty funky today. I don't have a stomach ache, but it's almost like...having bubbles popping inside of me? Like air is being moved around. I did eat last night, quite a lot of fruit actually, but maybe it's out of my system already. The thing is, as soon as I ate the dried stuff today, I could immediately feel the effects (ie, flatulence...it's a damn good thing my roommate isn't here right now). Crap, I'm sensitive. I can get fat in other ways by putting olive oil on things, but nuts are so much tastier. I really don't think it would make sense to eat for one day and then fast the next over and over again, but until I REALLY decrease the amount of food I eat (and face it, most people in this society excluding ANOREXICS eat way more than they have to) I don't think I could be comfortable eating two days in a row. Well. I say that now, after I ate dinner.

I feel okay. Pretty ...good-ish. I started getting some pimples, which (in my not very scientific view of things) means my body is getting rid of toxins and goo. I think the reason that teenagers are so prone to getting pimples is NOT the whole over production of oil, or whatever it is we learned in school, but that it could partially be due to teenagers' bodies being more capable to get rid of bad junk, unlike adults whose bodies have undergone much more wear and tear. It seems to make sense, kind of. But then not getting pimples could be a problem too, perhaps signifying that the body is incapable of getting rid of the junk, which in turn would just build up. Overall, having pimples is good if you look at them as a warning sign of health and don't just slather some medicated junk on them to get rid of them (which unfortunately seems to be the popular thing to do).

Eh, I don't really like getting into these health bits. I mean, I'm open to other people's ideas about health, but the thing is that I'VE PROBABLY HEARD IT ALREADY since I was brought up with the same conventional health ideas as most people. I don't believe every big of living foods health advice I hear, but some things make sense. And. I'm going to stop talking about health now. I'm certainly not the epitome of health. I'm still unable to do anything about the dark circles under my eyes; they're always there.

It'd probably help to get more sleep. Well, today I woke up at 8 AM because I could not, for the life of me, fall asleep. As much as I would have loved those extra two hours of sleep, I was totally awake. Eh well, tomorrow I'll probably be tired because of the heavy dried fruits and nuts I ate. Which is great since I DO actually have to wake up at 8. Damn, I get my Anthropology ethnography back tomorrow...screw me.

I've been spending way too much time drawing Poofy related things using paths in Photoshop. I didn't really know how to draw with paths before, but I've been using the vector shapes for ages. And then I figured it out...just make a new paths layer. Duh. Don't ask me why it took me so long to figure that out. Most of the things I learned about Photoshop are trial-and-error, which is why I don't know that much. Anyhoo, a Poofy t-shirt is probably in the works and may look something like this. The shirt can be a different color. Other ideas are this and this (and maybe even this. Other ideas are NOT this or this. Too much Poofy-ness.

Yesterday I went to the mall because I desperately needed something more suitable for the snow than the sneakers and sandals I already had. I got a nice pair of Sporto (sport-o! sounds Japanese) boots which would be great if my feet weren't so malformed. The tip of my feet is a bit squished, but the heel is too roomy, thus causing my boots to make a dragging sound when I walk. The next size was too large though; my feet probably would come out too easily. They're waterproof, cozy, and warm, so I guess my toes will just have to deal.

Another thing I wanted to do at the mall was get gifts for people. Well...that didn't pan out. I didn't have enough time because I'm very, very slow at finding boots. I'm not big on shoes and I'm annoyed that most women's boots have ridiculously high heels...DUDE, you're walking in snow and possibly ice, hoe impractical could that be? Of course, heels aren't for practicality. I've rarely worn high heels in my life and walking around on them feels very awkward. It's so unnatural. Of course, many things humans do are unnatural (as Rufus Wainwright said, cutting your grass is against nature) but some things, you know...you know...moo.

Okay, so even though I didn't get gifts, I did buy greeting cards and tissue paper in which I can wrap the invisible gifts. I also went to Delia's, which is...well...I guess I didn't like it before, but they have a lot of basic stuff and for some reason there's always a buttload of stuff on sale. I bought some cheap knee high socks (they really do keep your legs nice and warm, which is nice for those of us who don't seem to grow leg hair) and a skirt that is unfortunately too small, but it has an elastic band so I can fudge it. Or maybe I'll lose weight. There's always weight to lose...I'm very unmuscular. Need MUSCLE!

I can't say I'm very motivated to go to the gym now that there's loads of snow and my boots are only semi-comfy. I probably won't go. I may as well just rest and fast then. WEE! I think I just lost a lot of water I was retaining. There isn't much other reason for losing 6 pounds in a week. Maybe I drink too much water sometimes.

I hope no one thinks I'm being unhealthy...if you want to see unhealthy, talk to the other people in my dorm who eat ice cream in the middle of the night, take drugs for their colds/flus, sleep at weird times of the day, and so on. Okay, not a lot of people do that. I wish I could help my roommate with her health somehow, but she's one of those people that would never change because she likes regular food too much. Of course, I wouldn't want to push anything on her...she's a really nice person. And if she REALLY likes you, then she's mean. Anger = luv. It's fun. :)

Going back in time, on Saturday since I was in my room all the time, I worked on diskobox.net to give it a much needed makeover. It looked like crap before. SO MUCH CRAP. And I didn't really realize it until I went for my Media Cloisters interview. It looked embarassing, in my opinion. I also worked on my English essay, and I feel bad for Bill because it's very, very bad and he has to read it because he's my writing partner. Okay, technically he doesn't have to, but he will. And then my words will be so atrocious that all his bodily functions fail and tomorrow in English we will wonder where he is.

I really have to work on my astronomy homework now. I'm less confused after asking my teacher some questions about it, but I'm still confused enough to hate it. Joy!

If you're bored and have a lot of money, would you like to buy me something on my wishlist? No? I didn't think so. If YOU hav a wishlist, please tell me about it, or you won't get anything! :)

As you can see from my title, I had the most thrilling holiday ever. Kind of. Maybe. Not really at all, but maybe if you squint...

My holiday was okay, although obviously not much worth talking about or else I would have updated this thing sooner. I mean, it's 4:30 AM right now, what am I doing? I took a nap today and now my sleep cycle is a bit off. Today I woke up late, ate a late lunch, took a nap, woke up and ate a really late dinner, wrote some letters, sewed some Poofies, and...now I'm here. Hm.

Yesterday (well, two days ago) for Christmas we had an old family friend over and at the last minute, two of my cousins and one of cousin's husband. I guess it was nice to have a lot of people over for the holiday who weren't annoying (on Christmas Eve we had my mum's aunt and her husband over, but she doesn't like them very much). My mum had to cook a lot more stuff than originally planned though, and I'm glad she got to relax today. I don't understand how my dad can just invite over whoever he wants and not actually do anything to help prepare for the dinner and things like that. I mean, he really does nothing. My mum had a bagillion dishes to clean. And even stupider (maybe) is that he asked my mum to invite over another family we're friends with on Sunday. Because Sunday is that special December 28th holiday! Erm. No. There's no point, and my mum JUST finished destressing from the past few days of having to entertain. We might invite them over for New Years Eve, but I'd rather not have to get together with people, even though I like the other family. It just seems really stupid that my dad can do whatever he wants but not actually have to do any of the dirty work. Actually, I don't really like my dad so I'd probablhy criticise anything he does...and I know he's not a bad person, but there's nothing very likeable about him.

I'm getting pretty attached to cheese. I've never sought good cheese until now (as opposed to when I ate mainly cooked food and ate weird mozzerella sticks and cheese singles...okay, those things are definitely NOT cheese, and I would question their digestibility). Manchego is especially yummy in my opinion; it's not too salty, but has enough that there's some flavor, and it's a bit chewy and hard but not too chewy and not so dry that it crumbles. I had a very tiny goat cheese that my mum bought and it was really dry. It seems like goat cheese isn't as chewy as sheep or cow cheeses. My mum and I had this other goat cheese that was really fresh, but was more like a block of cream cheese than a regular harder kind of cheese. Also, it barely tasted like anything, which isn't a bad thing, but it was coated with a bunch of herbs that tasted funky. ...anyway, CHEESE! MM! If you buy cheese, get the good stuff.

...man, did I just write that much about cheese? Eek. Well. I ran out, so I didn't eat any today. I've been eating a lot of butter lately, just for the heck of it. Why not, I never ate that much butter before. Nope, it's not raw...can't find raw butter. :( What is butter good for? Fat, pretty much. FAT IS GOOD! As long as it's good fat. I'm not really low on fat in general, but I'm having some weird circulation problems (I don't know if that's even related). Sometimes my toes and fingers are ice cold, and it feels pretty weird sometimes. My mum is much warmer than I am. :( And it seems like the more I use my fingers (like now when I'm typing), the colder they get. Is that supposed to happen? Oh well, if I keep everything in perspective, cold hands and feet are much easier to deal with than not being able to breathe through my nose and having asthma.

My cousins really liked my Poofies (maybe I should add that they're both females in their late 20s)! I had a bunch of extra ones and it took me a while to realize that I should give them each one for Christmas. I still have two big Poofies left that I guess no one wants...*sob*...so maybe I'll sell them through cut + paste. My cousins also picked some buttons and gave me $5...aw. That was nice. Today I got my Poofy stickers and they're great! They're printed on vinyl, so they should last a while. And speaking of Poofy, I just updated the comics with some that I did while I was in school. Oooh!

Lately I've been making lots of skirts. I've grown fond of skirts lately because wearing them makes me feel like whale-like than when I wear pants. DOWN WITH PANTS! I still like pants though. Anyway, I've never really worns skirts until this year, which is weird...maybe. I would never be caught DEAD in a skirt in high school, don't ask me why. It would have been very un-Robyn-like. But now I wear skirts without really thinking about it. And I can wear fun stripey socks with it. SOCKS! YES, SOCKS ARE GREAT! But you knew that already.

Well, I can't think of anything else to say now. Sad that just about nothing has happened in this past week, eh? I still haven't seen Return of the King for a second time...must...do...that! AND THEN I CAN SEE PIPPIN! HAHHAHAHEHEHA! Uh. No, I'm not scary at all...

Sometimes I skip a day of writing thinking, "I'll remember this stuff tomorrow. No problem." And then the next day I realize that my brain is full of holes and I can't even remember my own name (right now, my name is...Poomie!).

But I'll try my best to recount what happened yesterday (by this time, the day before yesterday). I met Diana in NYC to get together and walk around. This is what people call "hanging out", yes? (Is it obvious that I don't hang out much?) We went to Soho to look at some interesting stores, Helmut Lang in particular. For whatever reason, a lot of the stores looked deserted besides an employee or two. It was a bit creepy so we ended up not going into a lot of the stores. It would have been fun just to look around since we obviously couldn't afford anything, but with just one other person in the store...eh, no. A few stores looked more like galleries (one was actually a Diesel gallery) and some other ones were dark and uninviting. Eh well, they're not really inviting people into them. I really liked the clothing in Barneys Co-op, but jeeez that stuff is pricey! I'd rather buy food. I don't think I should buy anymore clothing because I definitely have enough, and I'm not a fashionista. I have to admit that I like looking at clothes though. I pretty much go through all the clothing and mess up the nice displays, MWAHAHA! Okay, not really. I heard that in Europe people don't browse shops that way at all and it can be very hard to buy clothes because of the intimidating nature...don't suppose anyone could shed some light on this?

Soho feels like a weird place because a lot of the stores are the same ones in my local mall, but they just look nicer out on the street instead of a ridiculously huge mall. The main streets were crowded, but where we were walking around (Greene St?) wasn't. I like the cobblestone roads...they have a nice feeling.

After that we went to the East Village for some GOOD EATIN'! First I wanted to go to Treasure Trends, a thrift shop, to pick up some cheap shirts that I could possibly do stuff with. I got two shirts with some interesting designs, although I'm not sure what I'm doing with them yet. I'll make some kinds of skirts, I guess. We went down to High Vibe, a recently opened raw food store, and I went nuts. It's a good-sized store compared to other raw food places I've seen, and they carry just about everything (the only thing I wanted that wasn't there was kim-chee). I mainly bought snacks that I had never seen before, like stuff by Gopal's Health Food and Larabar. One of the yummiest things I got was a pack of chai raweos. They're a bit chewy and they have a pleasant taste...chai, I guess. :) The Larabars are really yummy too, and they have very few ingredients. If you ever look at the ingredient list for regular snack bars, they seem endless. I can't imagine eating those things, even if I ate cooked food. I've never heard of the Larabars before, but it'd be nice if they could sell those in Whole Foods and other regular grocery stores. I also bought a pack of raw nori because it had a good price (50 sheets for $30). And...eh, got some other stuff. My total ended up being quite a lot (eh, I won't say). I don't know if it's a waste to spend so much money on food...it's like eating my money. MM WASHINGTON IS YUMMY! Or not. But when I go back to school I'm sure I won't be eating all this stuff. Gotta get back to basics. But for now, I can indulge a bit, eh? The guy who owns the store was pretty cool, although I felt silly when he asked me for my e-mail address. "Neatoperson?" YES! I'm doomed with that e-mail address (I've had it for about six years).

Anyhoo, this store rules. Beside all the snacks they have (there are a few refrigerated sections that have nuts and oils and perishable snacks), there's a great selection of health related books. I'd think that any book you'd want about raw food would be there. They also have supplements, but you can probably get those cheaper somewhere else.

I decided that going to High Vibe was enough raw food stuff for the day, so then we went to Caravan of Dreams for dinner. it was a bit crowded when we got there, which was around 3 PM. I had a yummy salad with hummus and flax seed crackers and Diana had noodles with veggies and mushrooms. Of course, we had to get DESSERT too. I had a carrot cake and Diana had spelt pancakes with soymilk ice cream. The carrot cake was okay, but it's not something I'd get again. I couldn't tell what it tasted like, actually. Okay, CARROT perhaps, but it didn't have a strong carrot-y flavor in my opinion. As for the pancakes, Diana couldn't finish them, but I'll assume they weren't that bad. Pancakes are cute. :) I'd recommend Caravan of Dreams to people who...uh, like food. But skip the live carrot cake.

We went back up to Midtown and I wanted to check out the Times Square Toys R Us but it was crowded as hell! Scary place, man. Just tons of people walking in and out and no room to really move anywhere. So that visit lasted about two seconds. We also went to a magazine store near the Port Authority Terminal and I got the latest issue (November? Erm...) of The Ecologist. It is SUCH a good magazine and I'd recommend you read this issue if you can find it (like if you are living in a dimension that's two months behind). There's a big article about sugar and how it sucks. I could say more, but...I'm lazy. Maybe later.
'
Today I woke up late. Mm...sleep. My great aunt and uncle from Staten Island came over to eat lunch with my parents. My aunt gave my brother and me some gifts in the form of...erm, books that her son wrote! There's nothing wrong with that of course (she and my great uncle are pretty cool), but I don't know if I'll find a history of Asian cinema very interesting. Or really just Chinese-derived cinema? My brother got a Jackie Chan book, which I read before when it first came out and I really enjoyed it. I only read it because I got it for free though. :P But if you think he's interesting at all, I'd recommend reading the book.

I went out for dinner to see some old friends from high school, which was nice. I guess I wouldn't have seen them at all if one of my friends didn't plan it. Honestly though, I didn't really want to go. First off, I don't like doing things in large groups (because I'm usually that person who's singled out...or...something) and I just wasn't that excited about going to a restaurant. I don't like eating out at regular restaurants, obviously, but it wasn't that bad because I got a broccoli salad, which was as mono-food as you could possibly get in a restaurant besides perhaps just drinking water. I looked really awkward there though because everyone else was getting big, meat or carbohydrate centered entrees (we ate at Baumgart's, which is an interesting place because they have lots of nice Chinese food and American food plus loads of ice cream and all I ordered was a $4.50 salad. And THEN everyone ordered dessert, of course. I don't know what the waiter thought of me, but while everyone else was eating their desserts he brought out a big scoop of half chocolate/half vanilla ice cream for me that was free! I knew I couldn't turn it down because it's not like they could do anything with it, but I was really dumbstruck. I didn't want the guy to think I wasn't eating it, so some of my friends tried a bit...although there was still half of the scoop left. I just shoved my spoon in it a few times as it sadly melted and drowned in a puddle of its own creamy soup.

I wonder if my friends are still amazed that I'm doing raw food. One of them asked if I was still eating nothing, or something to that extent...haha. Yeah. Right. If only these people saw me eat and knew how easily I gain weight. It's a problem. It just seems unfair that I gain weight so easily, but that's how my body works. And then the only way to lose it is to not eat, or something to that extent. And she asked me if I still had my teeth. It's just a joke because her mum has a friend who did raw food and lost some teeth I guess, but I've already heard of people losing their teeth and it coul dbe due to the body trying to release acid too quickly due to detoxification and the body then having to balance the pH by taking calcium out of the teeth. I could have made that up. Anyway, it's not like all raw foodists lose their teeth and cooked food eaters have loads of problems too. It's just that people seem to accept these things as normal and so they don't criticise them. That bothers me just a bit. "Yeah, I know some cooked food eaters and they all died horribly." Okay, that's not realyl true, but anyone close to me that has died didn't go naturally. It tended to be in hospitals...

After dinner everyone wanted to do something else, so we went to a nearby movie theater, which wasn't playing anything good besides ROTK. No one wanted to see the movies, so the idea of going to a bowling alley popped up. I didn't want to go and neither did Aliza, so she came to my house and my mum brought us to Borders. Aliza had to buy some late Hanukkah gifts, so it was a useful trip for her. :)

I really have to go to sleep now because I'm going to NYC again today to see Tori! WEOO excitement! Hopefully the rain won't make the day suck too much.

Yesterday was definitely strange. But not in a bad way. I'd say it was a mixture of good and bad. SO, let's start from the beginning...*dramatic music plays*...

I went to NYC to meet up with Tori. I met her back in April at the Vassar prospectives weekend (for colored people...erp?) and although she decided not to go to Vassar (sniff) we still kept in contact with each other. Luckily, NYC is in semi-close proximity to both of us, and what better place is there to meet?

We met at Grand Central and walked through the market. So much food in one little place! It rocks. We pretty much said "AHH I love that!" to everything and planned to return later. I had my eyes on the cheese.

NYC is a great place, but when it rains, it just sucks. I foolishly did not wear enough clothing, thinking that the weather would be warmer than when I went on Friday. However, it wasn't RAINING on Friday, and it was probably less windy. I think I poked a lot of people with my umbrella. Doh. Anyhoo, I wanted to bring Tori to Bonobo's Restaurant but when we finally arrived there we were met with a "WE'RE CLOSED" sign. Great. :( While I figured a lot of stores would be closed on Sunday, I was hoping restaurants would at least be open. Of course, I should have checked before whether or not it would open (and what a great, information website it has, without listing its opening hours!).

We walked around a JAS Market that was right by it (sells a bunch of Japanese things) and laughed at the awful Engrish (although not awful enough to be on that website) while being amazed overall at what lovely Japanese foods there are. I wouldn't choose to eat any of it, but it all looks nice. All those cute snacks and cakes and mochi...I used to eat it all! Yikes. Tori is super-slim and looks very healthy to me, so I don't think she has to worry about what she eats. :)

Tori suggested that we go to the Pearl River Mart so we took the subway down and walked around that area for a while. We went into random stores on the way (because for a long time we just couldn't find the place!). We went to Urban Outfitters, which I reluctantly say I still like. I don't like everything they have, but a lot of their clothes just looks very comfy without being plain. The problem is that it's a bit homogenizing...I saw a skirt that I liked that was on sale, but decided not to get it; after leaving the store, I saw someone wearing the same skirt on the street! Yikes. Anyhoo, none of their stuff was really cheap enough for me. They had a great selection of miniskirts from reconstructed tees, but if you have a sewing machine you can probably do the same thing. And you don't really need a sewing machine, although it would make things much easier. The skirts were pretty pricey considering that they're made of t-shirts and aren't that big, but if you can't make them, I guess you have to buy them. I'm going to try and make some more stuff before vacation ends.

The Pearl River Mart had the cutest lamps I had ever seen that looked like square shaped animals. If they had a penguin, I would have flipped (speaking of penguin products, look at this). They also had sushi-shaped candles and lots of random snacks, one of which had the ingredient "honeypee" (we couldn't figure out what that was). Fun store, and much nicer than when I went to the one in Chinatown.

We went to the East Village to make our way towards Quintessence to eat lunch. There are so many markets and organic food places there. IT'S WHERE I BELONG, yes? Oh well, someday, maybe. I've pretty much had everything at Quintessence by now, except for everything on their brunch menu, which they were all out of! :( But anyhoo, still yummy food. We shared a mini pizzette with pesto sauce and avocados, and it was delicious. I could taste the pine nuts...mmmm. I had a sunburger for the entree (I love those things) and Tori had the squash pasta. The waiter was very nice and told us that he worked with Bamboo Industries (he was working at the restaurant on the weekends to learn how to prepare raw food...man, I'd like to do that) a clothing label that Tori really likes! :)

And around this time was when something happened. (Well, technically something is always happening...mm, anyhoo.) Two people had came into the restaurant, and you pretty much notice everyone who comes in because the place is really tiny (similar to my dorm room, now that I think about it). One guy looked eerily like Rufus Wainwright...oh duh, because it IS him! Only once in my life had I actually seen a famous person in NYC (Ton Green counts, right?) and this time it happened to be someone I really admired. I had to go to the bathroom, which gave me some time to think about what I would possibly do. In case you don't already know, I'm very introverted and anti-social. I cringe when I have to speak because I'm incredibly inept at forming the right words or gathering my thoughts (so I end up saying the same thing over and over again or taking forever to figure out what I want to say and ultimately sound like a moron...you know, that kind of thing). Even around my best friends I'm like that, so it's just worse around people who aren't my friends. (I can speak better around my own family members.) I've never gone up to musicians I like after concerts because the idea of me having contact with them horrifies me, even the time that I was mere feet away from Even Johansen and debated about whether to approach him, decided that it would be better to flee.

But...I did it (this being one of the most un-Robynish things to do, EVER). This is my proof and will probably haunt me. I knew I'd regret it if I didn't approach him, but I'm still horrified that I went up to him during a time that he just wanted to eat, AND he was with a friend! I guess it wouldn't have been as bad if he was alone...although if he was with more than one person, that would have been worse, possibly. His friend took the photo of us, which was very nice. And Rufus was very nice; I wouldn't have been able to tell if he was annoyed with me or not. I hope he likes the attention. AHH whatever, I'm sure it's nothing. I'm glad I actually did something non-wussy for once, but I don't want to have to do it again. I'm almost afraid to go back to Quintessence! WHAT HAVE I DONE?!

Tori and I wanted to go to Live Live, which was supposed to open at 2, but they changed the sign on their door so it said it would open at 3. Oooh! Evil. :) (I noticed that "live" backwards is "evil", haha.) We roamed around a bit and went to Jubb's Longevity for a really tasty slice of marzipan cake (I think they have better desserts than Quintessence). Live Live was opened when we returned, and we both both a few things. I didn't go all out crazy like I did at HigH Vibe, don't worry! :) High Vibe has better prices, but although Live Live is smaller, they have some products that aren't at High Vibe.

We went back to Grand Central to roam around their shopping area and go to the market, where I got some raw cheese (which means its made from unpasteurized milk, although some of those cheeses are heated while being made, so you have to know which is which...although I don't actually know). Yup, I do like cheese and I haven't decided that it does anything really bad to me. There is a very big difference between good cheese and most of the stuff you find in regular supermarkets, just as there's a huge difference between good and regular chocolate. (I hope I don't sound too food-snobby.) I got two raw cheese: Brin D'Amour and Isle of Mull Cheddar. I tried the Brin D'Amour, but not the cheddar...I want to try it! Eek.

Around this time Tori and I departed. She took the train home and I went to the Port Authority Bus Terminal...I caught my bus JUST in time after taking the shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square. For whatever reason the underground path from the Times Square station to the PABT was closed. Doh.

When I had to drive home from the Ridgewood bus stop, I did an extremely dangerous thing that I had never done before; I nearly drove all the way home without my lights on. And it was raining! And I almost ran over a guy! I'm stupid, yes. The lights on the dashboard were on, but I didn't realize that my headlights were off despite not being able to see the road and thinking, "Gee, this is weird, maybe I'm going blind." Thankfully someone flashed his lights at me and then I realized my lights weren't on. I hope to never do that again, it was freakin' scary.

Today I did nothing because I got sick. I don't know what my sickness is though. I'm glad I got sick because then I had to rest all day and eat less, but the really weird thing is that my brother got the SAME exact thing even though out lifestyles are pretty different. Of course, we live in the same house but we eat completely different things and he spends most of his time in the basement while I...don't. And I went to NYC a few times. The sickness we both got was just having a hard time to breath, kind of like having asthma all day long. I used to have asthma but I've forgotten how awful it is to have such a hard time breathing.

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I just took a very long hiatus. I got hungry so I ate some various citrus fruits (easy to digest, I hope) and I started making more Poofies while watching LOTR: FOTR (lotter fotter?). Good times. If I can't sell my 15 Poofies (actually 17 because I still have two from the summer I never sold) then...I'm gonna have a LOT of Poofies.

Wanna see a really bad site? And I mean really bad? Just head on over to Pork4Kids where young'ins can learn all about pork and the basic food groups and how to make salads with bacon. The cartoon is priceless. It's just so awful, you wonder if anyone got paid to make it. Hopefully not. Peggy the Pork Chop needs to get a grip on things. And she creeps the hell out of me.

It's too bad that the Tig Fanlisting isn't accepting any new members. There are just too many tig lovers, dammit! I just watched the commentary for LOTR: FOTR and that was definitely one of the funniest bits.

I've been searching for fanlistings just because I haven't really been in any. Now I'm starting to rack up loads of little icons to further make roboppy.net look like a dump. Hoo-yeah! Or maybe it gives the page personality. Actually, I just wanted to have the icon of the bunny butt. I'm not sure where I'm going with the site yet, but with the plan I have in my head at the moment, I'm going to have to redo pretty much all my pages and add some other junk. This doesn't sound like a very pleasant task, so perhaps I'll just...um...play some tig!

So this is what I'm doing in the last moments of my vacation. I have a week left, during which I'll either do nothing, or I'll prepare my NYU application. Yeah, I really ought to start that thing. I remember what a relief it was at the end of 2002 to be finished with all my applications (and subsequently be rejected from half of the places I applied to, woo!). Applications are even more annoying for transfers. I'll have to go to my high school and have that transcript sent out, and then I'll need my standardized test scores too. Oh yeah, I'll need recommendations too, lovely! I was looking at a book about colleges and it said that four history classes from high school are required. Well, I didn't do this, but I don't imagine that they'd outright reject me based on that. One annoying thing about NYU (or most unis/colleges) is that there are a number of core curriculum classes. Luckily, I'll have fulfilled most of these by the end of my freshman year, but one US history class and a non-US history class are required, neither of which I have much interest in taking. Non-US history, perhaps, but US history bored me out of my skull. *sigh* I hope I'm doing the right thing by applying to NYU (to become a nutritionist), but then again there's no guarantee that I'll get in. They rejected me before, which was pretty disheartening. They say they don't take into account what school you're coming from as a transfer, and not that Vassar is an extremely difficult school, but is it on par with a community college? Then again, if I went to a community college, I'd like to have the same chance of getting in as a transfer based on my effort as anyone else.

While I definitely could have tried harder this past semester, I'm pretty happy with my grades. I got an A in Japanese (my teacher must have curved the final), a B+ in Astronomy (my teacher must have curved the final by 50 points) and Bs in Cultural Anthropology and English (no surprise there). I was worried that my grades wouldn't even be good enough for me to apply to NYU, who recomments a B+ to A- average. I'm toward the lower rung of the ladder, but it's not too bad. ...god, I do NOT want to fill out any more applications. It's on the floor right next to me at the moment, and it's saying, "Even thought I'm just some mashed up, flattened tree-pulp, I will make your life miserable."

Would you like to make my life less miserable? PRE-ORDER A POOFY T-SHIRT! So far I have five orders, so I only need 20 more, ie 400%. ...which is kind of a lot when I look at it that way. Help make Poofy t-shirts become a reality! Make the world a better place! (Those two last statements aren't necessarily related.)

This week I went to NYC a few times and probably gained a few pounds (which is a reason why I shouldn't live in NYC, but my default I'd have to walk a lot more than I am now). I went on Wednesday with my mum to go to a transfers meeting at NYU and it was pretty nice, although a bit discouraging because it made me feel like I wasn't qualified. Heck, I don't feel qualified for ANYTHING. I've thought about this, and it's not just a factor of modesty or low self-esteem; I really don't believe I'm good at much. I know people tell me that I am, and I'm very grateful for such praise, but at the end of the day my head fills with thoughts such as, "Well you're really screwed when you get out of school because you won't be qualified to do anything," or "You're dehydrated," which is a totally different thought, but my brain is stupid and doesn't tell me when I need to drink water. Actually, my body is telling me something right now; I must take a leak.

*doodeedoodeedoo...random-bathroom-humming...lalala*

Anyway. I bought some new underwear (because I suppose you should do that every once in a while, although my mum had to remind me) and they feel a bit odd. Maybe they're supposed to make your crotch feel weird. THANKS JC PENNEY. I think that's the first or second time I've ever bought anything from that store before. I also bought new socks from Nordstrom; I never knew they sold so many socks before. I bought some knee-highs, which I've just discovered can keep your legs really warm, although I must be really short because they go past my knees. I also looked at some Super Lucky Cat stuff because it's generally stuff that, in theory, you could make on your own. I figured I wouldn't have been allowed to take photos of the clothes, although I could have taken it into the dressing room and snapped away. Having to rely on my own memory definitely does NOT work. All I can really recall is that I saw skirts and...they were made of stuff. About as helpful as watering toast (which just doesn't make sense).

Back to NYU. It was bitterly cold, so my mum and I didn't stick around NYC as long as we would have liked to. We got to see the library and a dorm room, which looked loads nicer than what I'm in now. How could dorms in Poughkeepsie be smaller than dorms in NYC? It doesn't seem to be fair, but then again, my dorm costs are thousands less than at NYU. Dorms at NYU have the added bonus of getting their own bathroom and not having to bunk their beds. Of course, what I'd REALLY like to know is what they're classes are like and whether I can actually do well in them. Ehhhhhh.

Mum and I went to Life Thyme, which will be the death of me if I live in NYC because they have the best raw food entrees and desserts I've ever had in my entire life. They're also the least expensive ones I've ever seen. Definitely try places like Quintessence at least once, but then just go to Life Thyme (Sixth Ave between 8th and 9th Street). They put soy lecithin in some of their stuff, which I'm not sure is good or not. It probably isn't that harmful, at least. They're desserts are unlike anything I've ever tasted before, and my favorite is the spirulina earth pie. MM, algae is tasty, I tell you. :) They also hav ea good variety of raw food snacks, some of which are cheaper than High Vibe, which is already less expensive than Live Live. High Vibe still has the widest selection, though.

I wish there was a website where people rated all the raw food places. There are enough of them to actually have choices on where to go, but not too many that you wouldn't be able to visit all of them. Maybe I should start a site! Ooh...*scratches head*...I certainly have an array of photos to share.

I also went to NYC on Friday with Cristen and her friend Mary, who goes to NYU. We went to Life Thyme where I picked up some raw pizza and slices of pie to bring home, along with some really good dried mango. We went to a nice pet shop (the nicest I've ever seen, at least, but I've only seen the ones in malls) with really adorable, although semi-psychotic dogs. One was a dalmation that kept whining when the other animals were out of their cages. He/She hawked a loogie too. Hm. Pleasant! There was another white dog who's quest was to eat the layers of paper lining his cage. Really, this little guy kept ripping away at the paper and trying to eat the cage itself. And there was another dog who was sleeping and kept twitching and fidgeting...must have been dreaming. There were some cute cats as well, which I'd love to take home. Actually, what I'd really like is a small bunny, but other than that, kittens would be nice too.

We visted Mary's dorm, which was even nicer than the one I saw on the tour. The view from her window was of the backside of a brick building, but she said other rooms had nice views. :D

Last night I made a new scarf. It looks pretty scraggly, but it only took a few hours...HOURS THAT I WILL NEVER GET BACK! MY LIFE IS A FAILURE! *sob* Erm. Anyway! I messed up because each of my rows was one stitch shorter than the one before, but I couldn't really tell because I was doing it lengthwise (so it's made of five really long rows, two alternating colors, done in double crochet). Eh well, still good. I haven't gotten to use it yet though because I stayed inside ALL DAY today. Oo.

OH CRAP, my laundry is sitting in the dryer! I need to go get that!

And...lastly, Rufus is playing at Vassar on Valentine's Day! Man, if I had known that when I met him, I would have said something. Or not. I already decided I wasn't going to the Beacon Theater show the night before. OH MAN, I need to give him a Poofy! OH MAN! AHH RUFUS! AHH! Okay, I'm done freaking out.

As soon as the phrase "back to school" popped into my head, Billy Madison's voice also wormed its way in there. How warped is my mind? I've seen the movie a fair amount of times, although it doesn't compare to Happy Gilmore, which I must have seen...*counts on fingers*...too many times.

Well, I'm back at school. How is it so far? It's okay, but the dislike is growing. My biggest peeve is that in my little end of the hallway there is a large amount of noise going on in the middle of the night. Then again, maybe I was trying to go to bed too early. It probably took me two hours to fall asleep last night/this morning and while I was trying to focus on sleeping I was also thinking, "Well now here's something I don't like about Vassar." Of course, by putting things in perspective I can see that not being able to fall asleep is a very minor problem considering what other things could be happening to me, like being sued by Microsoft or getting stuck in a chimney. Last night I did think about jumping out the window though because three stories up, it wasn't likely to be fatal (actually, maybe it would), but it would probably knock me out so I could GO TO SLEEP.

If you ever want to lighten your mood, just listen to the song Half Fling. You can download it at the bottom of that page, or you can buy this CD. I think I'll just listen to this song though. By itself, it would seen pretty odd, scary maybe, but knowing it's Elijah and Dom just makes it funny. Kind of.

Today I got to put up my 2004 The Two Towers Calendar. I'll have to wait until August to see Merry and Pippin sitting on Treebeard though. Right now I'm looking at Frodo in his "staring-into-space" mode that he has in pretty much all the movies. He doesn't seem that spacey in the book in my opinion. I've gotten to the part in the book where all the hobbits got captured by the...um...you know, I just can't remember these names. They were all put in white robe-things and had swords and jewelry or something? And then Frodo summoned Tom Bombadil and he saved everyone. I could be totally wrong here. I didn't really bother to remember the names of all the characters in the movies until after seeing ROTK.

If my brain can't handle the first 200 pages of FOTR (less than that, actually), then I have no idea how I'm going to function when classes start. That's TOMORROW, by the way. I've got all my books and I've cleared out my old binders to make room for more funtastic note taking and suffering! YES! I know classes aren't that bad (high school was worse), but...but...no one really likes going to class, right? Yup. If you do, then I'm sorry to say...you're just a freak of nature. Ask your parents; they'd know.

Okay, that's harsh. If there's one thing I'm sure I like about this school it's that my teachers are good and classes are not unbearably mindnumbing, at least not in the sense that I feel like I'm getting stupider. I usually feel like everyone else is smarter and that I was admitted into Vassar by mistake (I still kind of think this). I decided not to switch my biology class to chemistry as I had originally planned because chemistry just takes up too much time. Not counting the lab, it's 150 a week and it's only worth one credit. Biology is 75 minutes a week and is also worth one credit. I don't know why...the math seems a bit iffy, eh? If chemistry were worth more, I'd be more inclined to take it. I am switching from anthropology to psychology though. Hopefully already having taken a psychology class will help me just a bit, even though that class was really easy and this probably won't be. I read that psychology is something you should take if you want to go into nutrition. I remember learning last year about associated certain feelings with food...well, of course people do that, right? Or certain activities just go with food, like seeing a movie and getting popcorn even if you're not hungry. Those are obvious things though.

My roommate got back today before noon, which was good because I actually got up before noon. Yesterday I rolled out of bed (not literally or else I'd crash to the floor and probably break something) at around 12:30 PM after going to bed at 10 PM the night before (and waking up a lot during the night because of all the noise outside my room). Now I'm not all alone! Then again, I'm pretty good at being alone. It's nice and quiet when no one else is around (besides the heaters making ungodly noises during the night and day). I don't mind when other people are in the room, but it can get distracting. If I lived alone I'd probably never have people in my room, which is a reason for me to either always have a roommate or to transfer. If I transfer to NYU I'll have a roommate anyway....

I haven't told anyone here about my plan to transfer to NYU yet. I figure if I get in I'll just send out a mass e-mail ("mass" being less than 10 people...har har). I'll have to tell ONE of my teachers though so that she can write a recommendation for me. No biggie.

I think a bunch of people are going out to eat dinner now. That's my cue to eat my dinner...oranges! Mm. I thought I'd try to fast, but neh, I'd rather not. It's easy for me to gain and lose weight, but losing is harder just because in my opinion (and others, I'm sure), it's hard to decrease the amount of food you eat. Yesterday I had some clementines, an orange, and a grapefruit. That sounds safe, eh?

Today I got some exciting mail! (REAL mail, not e-mail...e-mail tends to score lower on the excitment scale, but it's still good.) I got a great package from Linda with some cute stickers, a Bjork single for Hunter, and a little plush penguin! Linda gets a BIG HUG! *squishm* Emily sent me an adorable postcard with lots of cute bunnies on it. ANOTHER SQUISHM! I also got some clothes I bought from someone on livejournal that I requested more than a month ago, but hey, better late than never. :) I got a skirt and a zip-up hoodie. I definitely have to stop buying clothes. I KNOW I don't need any more, so what's wrong with me? Two days ago I went to Delias with my mum and I got a really nice pair of pants and a cute shirt because they're having a massive sale at the moment. Those damn sales! I got some other things too because my mum brought them to me today. She had to drive up here to drop off my passport, which I needed to fill out some work papers. I'm very lucky to have such a nice mum, especially since she just started the Ejuva cleanse. Thanks, mum!

Now I'm all alone in my room. What will I do now? READ! Yes. I'm a nerd.

I'm still reading FOTR...well, it's kind of long. The first time I saw the movie I remember thinking it was very long and a bit slow, but now I feel like it's the book on fast-forward with big chunks cut out. I don't mean the book is a poor interpretation of the book, but it's interesting to see what had to be changed and cut out. The book doesn't feel slow to me, or else I probably would have stopped reading it by now.

So I'm bad at home after my first week of classes (really just three days) and I am very happy in the sense that I'm here and not at school. In the other sense, I feel like crap, but I ought to count my blessings. First I'll try to remember what's happened since classes started...

Wednesday. I had Japanese and music theory. Japanese is okay since it's just a continuation of last year's class. Music theory looks like it'll be incredibly boring, but I can't really tell yet. One thing that I do know is that if I didn't already know how to read music semi-decently, I'd be totally screwed. My teacher seems nice, but incredibly boring. Aren't music teachers supposed to be strange and eccentric? Nearly all of mine have been, except for my piano teachers... ...oh wait, this guy is a pianist. Is that it? Obviously my regular band teachers and non-piano teachers knew how to play the piano also, but maybe people who primarily play piano just aren't that interesting. I'm talking to myself now, sorry.

Thursday. I had a 9 AM class for psychology, which I added to my schedule to replace anthropology (human origins) because it didn't fit into my schedule as well as I thought it did. I like my teacher, so that class seems all good except that the room is in the basement of an impossible-to-navigate building. I swear it was built as a joke. If there weren't signs everywhere saying where the classes were, I would have been completely lost. I also had Japanese, which was okay as usual. I went to the Media Cloisters to see what I had to do as my job, and I'm still totally clueless even after talking to some people who worked there (well, they were saying stuff to me and I just...listened). Now I'm thinking that I'm way over my head and I should have never applied for a job there. I should have never made a website on the school server because then none of this would have happened. Now I think that I really have no skills and I'm not qualified to be there. Someone asked me if I knew CSS and...well, I use it, but other than that I'd say I know very little. I usually let Dreamweaver do all the work for me. And I still don't understand what I'm doing there. Later I had a meeting with my Japanese teacher, who just wanted to catch up on things with all the students by asking us what we did over vacation and how we're doing so far. I basically screwed that up big time since I suck at Japanese. I got my final back and I didn't even do very well on it, so I have no idea how I got a good grade overall. Luck, I suppose. I just learned how to say luck in Japanese, but I forgot...

Friday. Another 9 AM class for biology. Boy, am I screwed. Now I have to rethink whether I can actually be a nutritionist or not, because if I can't even get through bio, there really isn't any point. My teacher seems nice, at least, and I do know someone in the class. Hopefully we can be lab partners. At the end of the class the teacher asked us to write down what we knew about meiosis and mitosis and I remembered absolutely nothing besides a few weird diagrams I drew in 9th grade (which was the last time I took bio). After that I had Japanese. And then....and then...I GOT TO COME HOME!

Since then I haven't done much besides decide that living is not my thing. It's not like I'm a suicidal depressive maniac, but maybe I'm just a composed suicidal something-or-other? I've been thinking about what I could possibly do with my life and nothing is coming to mind. Even my mum said that I'm strange (not really saying the word "strange", but...anyway) and that I remind her of someone she used to know from college who ended up killing her children. Okay, thanks! I love my mum, of course, but she can say pretty funny things. HAHA! She asked me why I don't think I can do anything...well, I honestly don't see much evidence that I can do much. I'm not really that good at anything.

My plan was to transfer (well, APPLY to transfer) to NYU so I can be in a nutritional program, but after spending a few hours reading my bio book for homework (and spending way too much time on the homework, which was just about allelle stuff...the stuff that everyone's done. I don't understand what "epistasis" is, and that's some kind of question I have to answer) because I read incredibly slowly, and it just made me sad. None of it makes sense to me. My mum, the bio major (and she did bio in grad school) doesn't understand how biology can be hard. "You just have to memorize lots of stuff." She says that she could never do very mathematical stuff though, which I find...well, not EASY, but not impossible. Except for physics. Anyway, I was a poor bio student in 9th grade and I guess not much has changed in four years except that it'll be even harder to understand now.

So...I might not transfer to NYU after all. But then where does that leave me here? I don't think I would be very happy at ANY college. What makes college life enjoyable? Is it the freedom thing? Because I don't really care. I had freedom at home. The difference now is that I'm stuck inside a school campus all day because there isn't anyplace around school that I really want to go to, and there aren't any people I desperately want to hang out with. It's surprising at all that I have friends, but I think I could count them on one hand. But that's not the issue...the thing is, now that it's the second semester, I truly think that there aren't any people here I can relate to. There are few people in the world I can relate to, actually.

What is good about college life? I'm really asking, so give me some answers. I can tell you the things I don't like to do: go to parties, watch movies (I like some movies, but overall I'm not a big movie fan), "hang out" and talk (I don't know the last time I did this...middle school?), drink alcohol, watch TV, and I'm sure the list would go on if people gave me suggestions. I DO like discovering new places in NYC or visiting places that I like and going to concerts. If I didn't like music, I'd probably never go anywhere, so thank god for that. I probably sound really boring right now.

In the end, I'm sure it's all my fault. It's my personality to be boring; however, I'm not actually bored. There are loads of things I like to do, but they don't require the presence of another person. I was hoping to do something this weekend, but I stayed inside all day today (still in my pjs) as my mum is sick and I had lots of homework anyway. Actually, it just takes me a really long time to do homework that a normal person could probably do more quickly. Being lonely is kind of annoying, but not a big deal. If I really had problems with it, it would show.

I guess a strange thing (or not) is that my ...uh... strangeness doesn't show. I can stay in my dorm room all day, but I don't appear very strange (at least that's what I hope). People probably don't know how little I think of myself. I guess I don't have any drive to do anything. I don't have any real goals. The nutritionist thing would have been cool, except I don't have a science-mind, I guess. I don't have a literary mind either. I'm sure this entry has been written very poorly. ENGLISH IS MY FIRST LANGUAGE, if you can't tell. Actually, it's my only language. No, I don't know Chinese and I never will!

I'm glad I'm at home because I got my period yesterday, which is 3 - 4 days early. I haven't gotten my period early in a long time; it tends to come late. What does this mean? I have no idea. I've eaten way too much this weekend since I spent the four days before I came home just eating citrus. It was okay, but by the time I was able to buy some nuts and dried fruit, I was eating pretty much everything. I have no idea what's up with my body and hunger. I can easily NOT eat a lot, but only if there happens to be no food around, just because I'd be too lazy to buy more. And even though I know I'm much better off now eating mainly raw food (I cheat when I eat Govinda bars, which are partially raw and partially not...yeah, screw me) instead of cooked, but mentally, I don't feel that great. I know my period would entail more suffering if I ate cooked food and that I'd probably have worse allergies and get sick more, but I guess my personality just sucks.

Doodeedoo...I think I'd be better off just going to a business or vocational school than a four-year college. I know that may not be the most ... ... crap, I can't even think of the word. Something in the vein of "not that highly regarded." But I'd rather know something practical that stuff that will make me well-rounded, or whatever it is that college is supposed to do to me. On Friday I got a survey from Dover Business College and I really don't think I'd mind going into computer programming/web design and then just getting a job. The thing is, in a way only smart and not smart (I don't want to say "dumb" because...that's just not true) people can not go to a regular four-year college. Or something. Ish. Okay, that's not conclusive, but you know what I mean, hopefully. And I'm not really either. At least I don't think my parents would be happy with that, especially my mum who comes from a scholarly family. I keep forgetting that her dad was a language professor. She must be really used to...intellectual things. She wouldn't be happy living a carefree life in a little tropical place with a farm or something like that, but I wouldn't mind.

The main question in my head that no one can answer is what could I possibly do with my life. I've been led to believe that it'd be easier if I just died, because then I wouldn't have to think about it. Honestly, what better thing is there to do? For the most part, I've been feeling tired all the time since school has started. And now I'm hungry...stupid digestive system. And I still have to take notes for psychology on a chapter that will never end at the rate that I'm going. I'm not necessaril sad or depressed or happy, but I can't think of the right word... ... ...oh well, nevermind that. My Weatherbug says that it's 6 degrees outside.

I didn't get any fresh air today.

Actually, I change my mind from that other paragraph; I am sad.

Actually, I can control that by reading TheOneRing.net, which sets me back in neutral mode.

...oo, the Elijah Wood episode of SNL is on tonight? Maybe that'll make me feel a bit better, even though I don't like SNL. Or television. ... ...or maybe it won't. Hm.

... ... alright, I'm done now.

Everything smells like oranges because I keep eating oranges and getting orange pee on everything. It's all over my hands...OH GOD WHY?

So I've been eating! Always a good thing. I over-ate at home this past weekend so I've been cutting down at school, although not really. I was too lazy and miserable to buy food on Monday, so yesterday I pretty much ate everything (everything being oranges, apples, and pears). Sandy can attest to the fact that I kept eating despite saying, "Okay, I'll stop eating." 12 pieces of fruit later (5 oranges, 5 apples, 2 pears), I ended up losing weight anyway. So there's one way to lose weight and stuff yourself silly. I'm sure that I eat too fast because my stomach region felt a bit odd while I was eating today (actually, "eating" isn't the right word...maybe "inhaling" would work), so I'm probably gain weight tomorrow. But hey! It's fruit! And despite it all being just fruit!, I still get gas. DIGESTIVE SYSTEM = SUCKWAD.

I feel a bit better since my last entry (heck, i feel better since yesterday), but I really think I have the opposite of the Midas touch. Like the anti-Midas touch. Yes. Everything I touch turns into crap. Or if I try to make something, it turns into crap. I really don't like any of the websites I've made. I know they're not the worst pieces of crap on earth (websites that sucks is a great place to visit; this is truly god-awful), but they're not very good, by my standards. In a way I have really low standards so I don't disappoint myself too much, but in other ways my standards are unattainable. There is NO way I will ever make a website that I really, really like. They'll either be so bad that I have to change the layout every once in a while or stay there and make me feel like my website is a terrible burden to the world, including those people without the ability of sight, which is pretty bad. Their other senses are probably heightened...they can SMELL my website. Smells like sweaty socks.

I am strange. I'm sorry. By the way, a whale exploded. That's what I get for leaving Taiwan; they start exploding whales left and right!

For some other random news, ROTK got 11 Oscar nominations (I don't know why I'm linking to the BBC about Oscar noms...but I am)! And you know it's going to win best picture and director, because if it doesn't people will probably riot in the streets and set buildings on fire and eat babies and, you know, typical angry-people things.

[random digression: I'm going to change into my pjs, because they're more comfortable, which makes me wonder why I don't just wear pjs all day long.]

So yeah, I still suck, but I can face that. I CAN! And I think I'll try to go into "food studies" rather than be a nutritionist/dietician. I guess food studies is for people who are interested in food but not very science-oriented. The thing is, all throughout high school the only classes I took advanced levels in were math and science. But I still suck at them. It's just one of those funny Robyn things. So laugh! Ha ha! Oh, all that laughing is making my tummy ache. Or maybe it was that pear I ate. Probably a mixture of the two.

Graphic designers, I need your help. I spent a few hours fiddling around while "working" (occupation: professional fiddling around..er..person) in the media cloisters to make a poster for an upcoming lecture. And this is all I got (here is another possiblity; I do love photoshop and how easy it makes it to change hues). Sorry it looks like crap, but I had to stare at it for about 3 hours in various stages (it looked so much better in my head, but I guess this is why real designers probably draw stuff out first instead of relying on random firing between neurons). Anyway, this is a lot worse that posters I've seen around campus and I don't wanna eff-up my first project (I don't swear...well, kind of), so any suggestions would be great. Like "hit ctrl+a and then del" would be okay. Maybe. My main problem is with the title of the lecture; I didn't know how to make it stand out. But the shadowing doesn't fit in very well with the other type, which isn't shadowed. And there are only so many colors I can use. And and and. ...Damn, I still have gas.

[Don't you wish I went back to being all depressed and stupid? How do you deal with me talking about my digestion?]

I need to get the new Air album soon. Maybe this weekend? You can see their new music video on their site, and since it's got some porn, it's probably the only place you'll be able to see it. Good song.

My music class is getting a bit more interesting. My teacher still seems a bit odd, but that's okay. At least he knows what he's talking about. I'm surprised I was even able to grasp music theory when I was little. I still can't immediately recognize all the notes (mainly when they're really high or low), but I'm getting there.

I had my first bio lab yesterday and it went okay. It wasn't actually four hours long, for one thing. GOOD. The lab was to test six strains of white clover plants and test them to see if they are cyanogenic or not. Which reminds me, I have to actually figure out which plants were cyanogenic. Mm, cyanide. I used to like the faint taste of cyanide in almonds, but then I had some bad experiences with almonds that had too much cyanide. Those tasted beyond disgusting. *shudders*

Oh, I can't believe I didn't say this yet: thank you ALL for your great comments and what-not. Even if you didn't leave a comment, you are cool anyway. Because you're reading this. Actually, that probably makes you less cool, but...I still luv yous. Yup. Even if I don't have any good friends here that I can be totally comfortable around, that's okay. ...I might change my mind about that later.

Actually, I've realized that I'm really, really strange. Why can't I be more personable? I swear that I'm not THAT sucktastic, but when I speak to people that I don't know well (and some that I do), I sound...well, I think I may sound uninterested or spacey or "meh". I don't like how to change this, so I suppose it's just the way I am. It's not like I can go, "HEY AHH HOOHA!" because then people would think I'm psychotic, and I guess that's worse than seeming flat and tired.

Wow, I haven't been doing homework. I really should be doing that. Hohum.

And now...I must pee. I'll be home in two days, so that's something to look forward to.

UPDATE: Here's a newer version of the poster. Better?

While I would usually put stupid ranty type things in my livejournal, I'd like to start writing more often in this blog too. Whether that's a good thing or not, I don't know, but maybe I should write more frequently in shorter entries.

Anyway. I suck. That's my rant. Everything's my fault. Yup, I'm back in that state of mind. No matter where I am, whether it's Vassar or some other place, life will suck because I'll make it suck. That's just the kind of person I am!

Well then what's the point of doing anything at all? Why don't I just throw myself in front of an oncoming truck? All my mum keeps reminding me is that college-educated people are just different from non-college educated people and ...well, of COURSE they are, but I guess in most cases it's a bad thing. "Do you want to get an entry-level job and rent a little apartment for the rest of your life?" Well, isn't that what's going to happen anyway? And if life sucks so much, why don't I do the truck-thing ...um, again? If it's possible to do twice?

I probably sound really stupid right now, and I guess I should because I feel stupid. I didn't do any homework today, and now that's its past midnight I guess it means I didn't do any homework yesterday. God knows I could have. I should read my bio textbook, even though I think bio is hopeless. As for Japanese, I don't know what's going on. There are counters for everything apparently, in strange categories, so the counter for a bottle and a tree are the same because they're long, cylindrical things, although if you saw a tree-sized bottle, that might be weird. I can't remember all this stuff, but if I stay in this school I think I'd major in Japanese.

My mum said I should look at schools that offer a major in web design so ...I am. Dakota State University, anyone? Maybe I should, it's only 1% Asian. Average ACT is 22....damn.

If a school's website doesn't work very well or look good, it doesn't really make me want to go there to major in it. Vassar's web site is pretty nice, but then again a website for a univeristy would be much larger. So anyway. Blah. Nevermind.

Oh yeah, I'm having a bunch of problems with food, kind of. Or not. I don't know. I have eating problems I guess. I must treat food differently from most people because nothing I eat is really a stand-alone meal (unless I go to a raw food restaurant) thus I snack a lot. Actually, with the schedule I had today, I couldn't snack that much:

9:30 AM - 10:00 AM: Check bio lab with partner
10:00 AM - 10:20 AM : Go to health food store
11:00 AM - 11:50 AM: Japanese
12:00 PM - 12:30 PM: Meet bio partner and try to do homework and not get anywhere
1:30 PM - 2:45 PM: Music theory class
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM: "work" in media cloisters (can't say I did much)
6:00 PM - 8:00 PM: see Derrick Jensen lecture (it was pretty good)

And in the past FOUR HOURS I've barely done anything besides get mad at the Internet for sucking, buying stuff at Eat Raw, and talk on the phone with my mum for a long time, which was just confusing and made me feel guilty about buying anything (I spent about $60), even though my mum was saying how I SHOULDN'T feel restricted about anything. I don't, but I feel guilty anyway. I feel guilty about everything.

But life could be worse. I guess that's a consolation. Or something.

...yeah, being a snail would be worse. For my bio lab we tested if snails would eat cyanogenic leaves. Answer? No. So they have some kind of sense of what has cyanide in it. Goodie.

Being a snail would suck. It's only slightly worse than being me, I guess.

Two entries in one day. Two...

You know what, I should be able to swear in this thing because I'm not speaking. These are my thoughts, not what I'm saying. I don't know why I have a hard time swearing in real life (I admit, I say "poop" and "crap" a lot, which is crude but not censorable, right?).

Man, you can already tell this isn't going to be good. What's wrong with me? I'm not really depressed or angry, although I might seem that way. How would I describe myself...hm...apathetic. But not really, or else I wouldn't have any emotion at all, right? Kinda?

I ate shitloads of food today. YES. I'm not sure how many kg that equals to, but I feel okay, besides knowing how much I ate. I bought an 8 oz bag of cashews yesterday and I finished it today, so I probably ate around 4 oz. Supposedly, cashews aren't even healthy for you (but I figured I'd try em anyway), and you only need 2 oz of nuts a day. I think that's for a normal person, and considering I'm kind of small, I probably don't need that much. I also had about two ounces of almonds. ...god, all I smell are bananas right now. If I'm crazy, I'll eat one.

I don't know what's up with my body. It's not hungry. There's no way. Something's wrong with my brain. I woke up this morning at around 8 and the first thing I ate was (were) CASHEWS. I didn't get any stomachaches though, thank god. How the hell do people eat bacon and fried potatoes in the morning? Ack. Anyway. During the whole time I was just thinking, "WHAT AM I DOING? [munch cashew]" but I did it anyway.

I don't expend that much energy in a day. I don't have good metabolism. I'm just going crazy. And it's bothering me. Any dream I had to lose five pounds by the end of next month seems quite implausible unless I get some kind of parasite. So screw that. But WHAT'S GOING ON? ERRRGH!

Cashews are made of crack. That's it.

Fuck it, I just ate a banana. In about five seconds. Or a minute. (sigh)

If you can believe it, food isn't even the biggest thing on my mind. ....okay, I might have to think about that a little more, but overall I really think I just suck. Maybe I just feel like crap after I work in the Media Cloisters because I hate, hate, HATE (okay, that's not the right word, but I'll use it for now) that people think I know more than I actually do. I'll admit that I tend to downplay my "skills" (I use that term loosely), but my knowledge is definitely not on par with the other people, and I feel like a completely dumbass every time I'm there. I don't CARE if there's no such thing as a "stupid question" because yes, there is. Definitely.

Okay, now I'm eating dried figs. I'm surprised I'm not dead yet. Or diabetic. Or whatever happens when you...eat...um...nevermind.

On a completely random note, I'm completely sick of all the opposition to letting gays get married. What can the opposition say about themselves? I don't get it at all. Homosexuals aren't as human as everyone else? I don't even know any gay people in real life (although statistically, I think I'm "should", and statistically I wouldn't have so many Asian friends) but...okay, that was a complete digression. Just a random thing I was thinking about after reading about it in Time. I don't know who they polled, but more people said they were unlikely to vote for a presidential candidate if they supported gay marriage, or something like that. Swell.

I should register to vote, eh? Eh.

Oh yeah, back to feeling shitty. I don't offer anything in this life. Yeah, it's my fault, so what am I going to do about it? No idea. I gotta redesign this page so I don't make people puke, for one thing. Other thing...um. I really have to study more, although I don't know if it'll help my stupidity very much. Could I go to art school? Would I like that? Why can't I just be really good at something that do that? Or why can't....blah blah blah something or other BLAH! I'm going to feel awful when I tell my Japanese teacher that I can't be sure about majoring in Japanese because I might transfer. She's really cool and nice.

If I owe you an e-mail, I'm sorry, I'll get to it! Really! :|

I can't stop eating these damn figs.

I have to do my laundry.

This entry sucked, I'm sorry. I'm not usually like this. Maybe cashews make your brain suck.

---

I just remembered something that I've been thinking about for...quite a while. If I hear someone outside that sounds close to my door, my heart jumps for a split second, like some kind of panic attack. This has happened enough times for me to think it's pretty abnormal. Even if it didn't happen a few times, it'd still be weird. I just remembered it now because it happened. I DON'T KNOW WHY. ARGH.

---

I just realized a few minutes ago that I hadn't checked on my Neopet in five days. That has never happened before. My mind is obviously mushed.

And I changed my mind about being apathetic. I am sad.

Alright, I'm exaggerating a bit. I've never been obese, only overweight (although as to what a normal weight should be is debatable). For some reason lately I've been unable to control how much dried fruit and nuts I eat and it's really bothering me. However, all I do is sit here and stuff myself sill while thinking, "Gee, I shouldn't be doing this." So in the end, I know it's all my fault, but why? My body has no need for copious amounts of nuts and dried fruits, but I can't turn that sense off. All I can do is use up my supply of nuts and dried fruit (which will only take another day or two) and see what happens. I won't say how much I weigh now or how much I used to weigh before doing the whole vegan/raw food (and now non-vegan raw food) thing, but I've gained nearly half of what I lost two summers ago. Fun? No.

As for non-vegan foods, I had Japanese food with Sarah, a friend from high school, last Thursday. That was the first time I ate at a restaurant since winter break. Sure, it hasn't been that long, not even two months, but it's nice to get out and eat somewhere other than my dorm room. The dinner was kind of random, but not really...I don't mean it in a bad way. I saw Sarah at the Rufus concert last week and she suggested we get together. She's really cool and unique, and I think I'm lucky to know her. We were casual acquaintances in high school and can recall those fond memories from AB calculus... .... ...yup.

Other things I did last week were freak out about bio, freak out about psych, and freak out about Japanese. Thank god I don't freak out about music theory. [Sidenote: damn, these pants are getting tight. Screw me.] I had to write a bit of my manuscript-thingy for bio, thus telling me that BIO IS NOT A ROBYN THING (although to be honest, most things aren't). I can think of loads of things that would make bio worse, but it's bad enough now. The only good thing that happened was that last Tuesday we all got laptops to use to work on spreadsheets and I used it to check my webmail, only to come across a message saying that my package from eatraw.com had arrived in the shipping building. First, I thought, "Crap, it's closed already," but then I realized "No wait, I have five minutes! Five minutes to run like hell!" The thing about the shipping building (which is where all the non-USPS packages go) is that it's one of the farthest places on campus from anywhere else, which I'm sure would suck if you shipped a sofa to yourself. However, the bio building isn't too far away, and I got to the counter just as it was about to be closed. Woo! I carried around my package of dried fruits and nuts like a first-born child.

And all that sweet sweet delicious food has contributed to the sharp increase of my girth in the past week. Damn! Yeah, I obsess over weight, probably more than other people. I know I shouldn't. But I'm not sure what kind of eating disorder I have. It's not something easily identifiable like anorexia (oh man, there's one thing that'll never happen), it's just...well, I enjoy eating. People tell me they enjoy eating, which is why they can't be raw foodists. No, no, I really enjoy eating. Maybe I'm so removed from the cooked food lifestyle that I can't understand other people's views anymore. There's going to be an "eating disorders workshop" on campus tomorrow, and it sounds kind of interesting, but I don't want to hear about people who DON'T eat. You don't get to hear obese people talk about being overweight much, do you? If you ask me, the number of people with the "disorder" of overeating is much higher than those who eat too little. If whatever I'm saying now sounds really stupid, then forgive me, because I've never known anyone who was anorexic. I'm not trying to be unsympathetic or anything. Oh, something funny (or not) is that in this e-mail about the eating disorder workshop, it says that refreshments will be served. I can understand that since refreshments are served at EVERY function possible (even the ones promoting hunger strikes, I'm sure) but it just seems a little ironic. :)

Friday felt like the longest day ever. I woke up at 8 AM for bio, like every Friday, and after my Japanese class was over, I met up with my mum to go shopping. We went to Borders, but I didn't find anything I wanted. Then we went to some grocery stores, where I did find things that I wanted. :) I got a few containers of those young greens salads (mm) and some nuts (bad idea). I also got some organic oranges, which I must say do taste different from regular ones, at least the ones I can get in school. I'm not sure how they taste better, but they do. We also went to a Christian bookshop since from afar I thought it was a regular one. Damn. I'm not against religion, I mean...well, whatever floats your boat, as long as it doesn't make you sink other people's boats (I have no idea what I just say; some neurons aren't functioning) but there was this one book that sounded so ridiculous to me. It was written by some pastor (or someone like that) who had gotten cancer. The exerpt on the back of the book said something along the lines of "At first I thought, how could I have cancer? I've been so good to God! I'm here to tell you that you can get cancer too." Well, that's not what it said, obviously, but it was just as ridiculous sounding. This guy just sounded a tad ignorant. You can' abuse your body just because you have faith in a God.

Something I noticed is that despite my loading up of my body with hard to digest foods like dried fruit and nuts, I haven't been lethargic or sleepy. I was disappointed that I couldn't sleep for more than 8 hours at a time this weekend. I went to bed at 4 AM and woke up between 11 and 12. I've also been waking up a few minutes before my alarm goes off in the morning each weekday, which I find really freaky since the times I have to wake up aren't the same every day. My digestion has always sucked, so I'm thinking that my body isn't using up loads of energy digesting because it just doesn't know what to do. It says, "Screw you, we're not dealing with these raisins. We'll just pack em away in this little part of your intestines and make you look like you're in your second trimester." Oh, okay, thanks! Well, at least I can wake up before the sun starts to go down.

I didn't finish talking about Friday yet. Um. Um. Erm. Oh yes, my mum and I went to places, one which was a spanish grocery store. I've never seen one before, so it was interesting. They had a whole aisle of dried chiles. Also, they had small packs of nuts, which was a big difference from the build half pound or one pound bags I saw at Stop and Shop. Oh, another thing, the Stop and Shop had shopping carts that you had to pay to use, which I've never seen before. It makes the Stop and Shop I worked at look so...ghetto, for lack of a better word (and the one I worked at was called a Super Stop and Shop? I don't know what the "super" means, although I've been trying to figure it out). Friday night I saw Whale Rider with Megan on campus (the film league puts on good movies). I saw it before with my mum, but it's a really good movie so I wanted to see it again. After that we saw the HEL (Happily Ever Laughter) comedy show, which the two guys across the hall were in. It was pretty funny, with surreal humor. Now I think the guys across the hall are really, really weird. They're really nice guys who you'd never know are so odd. And then you see the "Mr. Pokey" movie...nah, I won't get into that, but it was reallly funny. Many talents, ah...yes.

On Saturday I thought about doing something, but instead I stayed in my room all day. I also worked on this website...you like? I got this far, but as for doing all the other pages on my site, I don't know what I'm going to do. Paaaain. I want to become a CSS MASTAAAH (as opposed to the lowly, CSS MASTER) but I can't remember all the damn tags. It's so nice to not have to deal with crazy HTML anymore. I can't believe the crap-ass websites I used to make where I'd format every single paragraph of text with font and font size and all that crap. And tables are a bitch, so I'll try to stop using them, if possible. I really want to redo the evenmagnet tour page. I'm working on the pictures page right now and it's going...alright. Considering how slow I am, at least.

So just as a warning, a lot of the stuff on this page isn't going to work. I'd be surprised if anything does, actually. COMMENT! DO SOMETHING! :)

"Exploding Nematodes" would be a pretty bad name for a band. Unless it's a band of bio geeks, in which case it's just awful.

Today in bio I saw three nematodes explode through my microscope. Nematode heaven received many new occupants today. In my bio class we just started a new module in which we're observing C. elegans doing...erm, stuff. Not sure yet. We watched videos of the worms slithering about and having sex, which didn't look very enjoyable (just a little info: there are only males and hermaphrodites). The worms themselves are absolutely tiny, which freaked me out a bit as if I had 100 of the little buggers on my hand, I probably wouldn't notice (well...it wouldn't be like having a leech sucking your thumb, which isn't much of a comparison, but there you go). The most annoying part of the lab was picking up the worms from off of the agar with a thin metal pick. At least, it looked thin at first. Then it grew into a gigantic silver shiny dagger of doom as I tried to coax the worms to jump onto it so I could dump them on another petri dish of agar or onto a slide, to which I go no response because they're worms and couldn't give a poop about me. They were too busy brainlessly slithering around or having sex with each other (or themselves).

Whenever I prodded one of the normal worms, it wriggled away in a frenzy. I'm not sure how I eventually got two of em, but a lot of the class was having trouble, I later found out. The mutant worms were easier to deal with because they were pretty much rendered unable to move. Boy, that helps! I poked and prodded away without any problems. "MEET MY SHINY DOOM DAGGER!" Actually, it was sad looking at the mutants because they could only slightly move their heads. Otherwise, they just lied on the agar, and most of them were squished against each other. Why? I don't know. Maybe they were having orgies.

The explosions happened when I looked at a bunch of the mutants under the microscope. All was fine and dandy, until all of a sudden...whoa, the ovaries just plooped out! And kept on plooping. It was a little depressing, but also cool, especially under the 10x magnification. Due to the dark lighting of the slide, the worm kind of looked like a celestial being in the middle of the galaxy (the multitude of dust specks served as stars) and the explosion was like the outgassing of matter. "Matter" probably being eggs. I witnessed three of my worms explode (because they dried up) and it was painful to think of that as their last moments of life. Just imagine being all find and dandy with your ovaries and such (or whatever reproductive organ you have) and suddenly having your abdomen or posterior end explode as all your organs and internal fluids gushed out and pooled around your dead, writhing body.

It's sucks to be a nematode. That's what I learned in bio today.

Oh man, how could it be 8 PM already? My internet connection isn't even working right now, so who knows when I'll upload this entry. Today was alright, can't say I have much to complain about. I'm even semi-appreciating the onset of my period today because I've been gaining mega-tons lately and I know I'll lose weight today or tomorrow. I tend to retain weight all the time, but even more so the days before my period. OH JOY.

The grapefruits from the ACDC are really yummy. Mm. Water. Sugar water. That's basically what it is. The interesting thing about bio (among many interesting things, I guess) is that I'm learning about all the important...things. Like how calcium causes neutrotransmitters to travel to the next neuron. Potassium and sodium are really important too though. So now I'm wonder, what the hell am I eating? Sugar and water? I mean, it's more than that, but those are the main points. I also take multivitamins, so hopefully that'll help my interneuron functioning. I need lots of it.

I got a B on my psych test, thank god. I could have done a lot worse. Now I know that my teacher practically puts all the questions on his website, so I won't have to freak out next time, unless he decides to do something radically different. And that would just be mean.

Internet's still not working. Damn! I can't even do my Japanese homework because it's a listening assignment and I have to download the files from the school site.

It snowed today. WHAT. WHY. ARGH. I want the snow to stop and now I want to go to a school somewhere in the west. Despite that, I've done more for my NYU application...well, of course I did, but now I'm wonder if I really want to get in. I do, but I also don't so then maybe I'll be forced to do something else.

Man, I have to pee again. ARRGH! STUPID BLADDER!

Last thought: If you've never listened to Grandaddy, maybe you should. I'm listening to "Underneath the Weeping Willow" right now.

Okay, another random thing: There's a little bit about Vassar's porn magazine, Squirm, in the latest issue of Time (like a sentence, but there's a little picture as well). I've never actually read it, although I've heard that the stories in it are really poorly written. Isn't it kind of sad that such an English-centered school can't churn out decent porn literature? Huh huh? I guess those people don't use the Writing Center.

Last last last thing: I want to go to the Air concert, but I decided not to because it's on a Saturday night. But now I'm thinking about it again. It probably costs a lot though, so that alone would deter me. $20 to get to NYC and back, for one thing. Doh.

A lot of you already know about my raw food diet, but I was writing an e-mail to another raw foodist who goes to Oberlin and it might fill in some people here with info about my diet:

I've been raw for about 13 months now, and I know I'm much better off health-wise, but I wouldn't say raw food is this miracle that makes you feel like a million bucks. Unless you were really bad off before. :| It's great that there are so many people who can say "I'm full of energy and mentally better than ever!" but for me, it's not like that, and I'm pretty envious of the other people. Or I don't notice. Mentally, I guess I was never that bad off, but I'm like...one of those stupid smart people, if that makes sense? Emotionally, I'm still kind of messed up, but not so much that I'd be put in a psychiactric ward, and energy...well, I don't take naps anymore, so that's a big plus. I wake up easily in the morning too. My mucus used to be BEYOND awful, but now I have no problems with it. I was hoping to get more into exercise, but I guess some things never change (I've always hated exercise, and having to take gym classes all my life probably hasn't helped that situation).

I guess one of the biggest pluses with raw food is that my period is very easy to handle. When I see what my peers have to go through (taking drugs and feeling like crap, I guess?) then I feel lucky. But I don't know why I end up gaining weight so easily and...blech, it sucks!

Your blog is interesting! I used to have a raw food blog, but it totally died. Here's my regular blog, in which I talk about food a lot

But other non-food things too. I can tell you what I ate today though:

2 oz almonds
2 oranges
1 grapefruit
3 sheets of nori and 2 oz of baby greens (the bag had 4 oz, so I think i ate half) and some olive oil
3 oz of cashews (which I know aren't really raw...but damn, those are good! I shouldn't buy them)
6 dates
too many figs, unfortunately. A few oz? I'm addicted to those as well.

The way I stop eating is thatI have to decide that it's too late to eat anymore. It's not so much that I'm not hungry, but 8 PM is the latest I'll eat. I try to finish earlier, but sometimes I just go on and on (like today).

Totally random thing: I got my Poofy shirts today! Check this one out. I'll take a picture of the other 23 shirts too. They're in two trash bags by my closet right now, hehe.

Happy February 29th! How did you spend your leap-year-day? I spent all day inside my room. And the bathroom. Oh, the joy! There wasn't anywhere that I had to go, and I woke up at around 1:30 PM so I decided just to stay in my pajamas all day. Sundays are for being lazy.

I'm so removed from the rest of humanity that I semi-forgot about the Oscars. First off, it's never this early in the year, right? And I stopped watching TV a while ago. But I am excited this year because of the LOTR frenzy. I'm reading Fannio's Oscar Blog right now to catch up on things. :) I'm also watching the Return of the One Party webcast, not that I can really understand anything. But people sound excited!

Oh, apparently they had a big screen up in the students center showing the awards...doh! Mmwell. Thank god for the Internet!

This weekend was rather uneventful. Yesterday I spent six hours in the student center with Jason, my lab partner, to work on our manuscript. What could be more exciting than how freezing temperatures and herbivory affect cyanogenesis in C. elegans? WHAT? I don't know.

Holy crap, I must've missed something; everyone in the webcast is cheering a lot now. A lot-lot. But I can't really understand anything...OH okay that's because ROTK just got Best Picture! WOOHOO! Thank you, Fannio!

[the screaming continues]

I should listen to the ROTK soundtrack and get in the mood, eh? CONGRATULATIONS TO PETER JACKSON AND EVERYONE INVOLVED IN LOTR! You guys are awesome. And you all made me so happy. SO HAPPY! :) :) :) :) :)

So yes, six hours of attempting to write a biology manuscript was JUST how I wanted to spend my Saturday. And that's what most college students do, eh? When I finally left, I thought, "I don't remember what fun is!" I spent the rest of the day in my room doing...god knows what. I don't even remember, to tell you the truth. Isn't that sad? I guess I was eating stuff...

My mum dropped some food and things off for me on Friday. She said that I'd probably have some food left over to bring home at the end of the week. Erm! Wishful thinking on her part. ;) She brought me two 9 oz containers of almonds, another container of cashews, a 10 oz container of dried figs, two ten-sheet packs of nori, and a 4 oz bag of leafy veggies. Since Friday I've finished the veggies, the cashews, one container of almonds, and one pack of nori. And that's in addition to the loads of oranges and grapefruit that I already eat. Isn't that just a little frightening? I think so. God knows how much weight I'm putting on. I feel like I'm going to give birth to a bowling ball.

[I totally can't understand what's going on in this webcast, so I think I'll stop listening to it. Doooh.]

My mum also brought up my Poofy shirts! WOO! Here's a picture of me in my nice orange Poof-tastic shirt. Nice, eh? There may have been a few problems with the order though. I e-mailed the printing company about it and hopefully I can get them replaced, or maybe a little refund. I can't believe I didn't notice earlier how weird the mouth looked, but I can't do anything about it now so there's no point in dwelling on it, eh? Eh. I'm the type of person who dwells on things, but then I only ordered 24 shirts, so no big deal. If I ever make another one, anyone who ordered this one can get a discount, haha!

Crap, there's something wrong with my CD and the songs sound funny. Wah! No! :(

What the heck is up with this Oscar Gift Bag? "Included gifts are; a Z Electric Scooter, a gift certificate for a private island getaway on Fisher Island"...oookay. Man.

Great, now all I can think about is LOTR. I should watch ROTK again. YES! I mean, I only saw it three times, I think. Not a whole lot.

Man, I can't even remember what I'm supposed to be doing right now. My roommate is already sleeping, so I should probably go to sleep soon too. Only five more days of school until I get to go home! And I'll be in California in a week! EXCITING! But I don't know anyone who lives around Disneyland, so that kind of stinks. :| I could have met Rebecca if our spring break plans coincided. I hope that being in Disneyland will make me so happy that I will forget about eating and lose some weight. BWAHAHA!

(Note: none of the links come up in this excerpt, so you'll have to click on the "continue reading" bit. I'm not sure how to change that. Grr.) This wouldn't be nearly as cool if it were just a big hunk of colorless plastic. But it's CHICKEN-SHAPED! And you know what that means? IT'S SHAPED LIKE A CHICKEN! Amazing, I know. Here is my machine amidst the crap on my desk (that water tastes kind of funny, by the way. It's from "Frontenac Crystal Springs in the beautiful Thousand Islands, Clayton, NY"...well, you may be beautiful, but you taste funny). As great as the machine is though, you couldn't imagine my glee when I saw the so-bad-they're-good button designs that came with the machine. Here's a sampling of them, plus my own comments. Who wouldn't want a button with a blue whale saying "Happy New Year"? Huh? HUH? Only losers. Yeah, you heard me.

...okay, I'll have to rethink those last few statements. Those bad buttons have given me the idea to design some bad Engrish buttons (here's something from the button machine box). People might buy those, right? Everyone seems to like the animal thoughts buttons at least. I'm making new ones now about different kinds of weather featuring happy/sad/angry clouds. I could make more animal ones too I guess, but it's a lot easier to draw clouds. Hellloooo overlapping circles!

This week has been rather good so far. Then again, I've only had two days of school. Tomorrow shouldn't be so bad though: wake up at 10 AM, go to Japanese, come back to the room and eat lunch, take music midterm (which I'll cram for), "work" in the media cloisters for two hours (I can't help to feel guilty about that), come back to my room and...yeah, that's about it. Yesterday had some amazing weather and today wasn't as nice, but still a great relief from being pelted with freezing rain/snow/squirrels (come to think of it, I haven't seen squirrels for a while). I would daresay it's sweltering now in this 40-50 degree weather. Yes, that's sweltering for the time being. When it goes into the 80s and 90s, I'll turn into a puddle of human mass.

The trip to California is coming up soon! Disneyland! Yes! I'm probably a dork for getting excited about going to Disneyland, but I was brought up on Disney theme parks since my youth (youth starts at approximately 5 years of age). I still remember the first time I went to Disney World, which actually wasn't that enthralling since I was woken up in the middle of the night so my family could visit our cousins in Tampa and go to Epcot center for one stinkin' day, but it was still good. I guess. The last time I went to a Disney park was in 9th grade, during which I actually went to Disney World and Disneyland, the first because of a school band trip and the second as a family trip with my mum and brother. At that time they were doing loads of construction as neither Downtown Disney or California Adventure had opened yet. They got rid of the Oriental Garden part of the Disneyland Hotel, which we had always stayed at, to make room for the new commercial paradise. ...okay, all of Disney is like that, but now there are more stores and restaurants. And a movie theater. Mmhm...anyhoo, I found out that the rides I like the most (Space Mountain and the Indian Jones Adventure) will be closed while I'm there. Joy.

For some other exciting travel news, I might be going to England this summer! It would be the first time I've been there, and while I've heard British people described as "like Americans, but with more sticks up their asses", I think I'll take my chances. I was chatting with an old friend from high school, Katherine, who's originally from England but lived in NJ for a few years and then moved to CA before moving back to England, and she decided to call me! I don't talk on the phone very often, so her phone call made me incredibly happy. Out of all the friends I've made in high school, she's the only I've kept the most contact with. I've also probably known her for the shortest amount of time. Funny how that turns out. And, of course, she ended up moving at the end of 10th grade. I still remember on the first day of classes in 11th grade when roll was being called in my gym class, her name came up. We would've been in the same class! I ended up hating that gym class with a passion, as I had no friends in it. Thankfully my teacher was cool.

Erm, I got a bit off track there. Well! I don't know how much the phone bill will be, but I think we chatted for about half an hour. She said I sounded extremely American. That makes sense, of course, but it's funny to hear someone else say it. I couldn't always understand what she was saying, unfortunately...well, I never could. :) I'm not sure when the topic of me visiting her came up, but it did. We'd like to travel around Europe together for fun. I want to go to Norway, particularly. I spent ages looking up ticket prices last night (when I should've been doing homework) and everything looks so expensive. Well duh, of course it's expensive. Maybe I should be glad I don't live on the west coast at least, since that would tack on some hundreds more dollars. I was thinking that if I didn't spend any more money, I could have a decent amount to pay for SOMETHING. However, I already asked my mum about it and she said I could go and not pay for anything since she would consider it educational. Well, anything could be considered educational, eh? "I must go to the Grandaddy concert because...I'll learn...some...thing...nevermind." (Grandaddy is/are (I never know which to use...damn, double parentheses) wonderful, but I don't feel compelled enough to go to this concert. If it was a Saturday, I'd probably go. $25 isn't bad.)

Getting way off tracak...wow, my roommate has been napping for a while. I don't know what's wrong with her, but I wish I could do something. I get bothered by people who always complain yet don't really do anything to change themselves. Then again, I complain a lot. I'd like to believe that the raw foodist thing was a big enough change, but I know I still get bothered by stupid things. The biggest debate is whether or not I should buy nuts...stupid, yes, but that's what I'm thinking. If I buy them, I'll probably eat half of the bag (4 oz) in one day, which is twice as much as I "need" but hey, I'm GLUTTONOUS! Yup, that's me, a terror to fruit and nuts everywhere. ;)

Today my mum and I went on a LA guided tour. We kind of planned it at the last minute as we've never really been there before and we may not come back to California for a while. It was a very nice tour during which we went through the financial district, the Hollywood sidewalk with all the stars and such, the Kodak Theater, Beverly Hills, the Farmer's Market, Venice Beach, and a wharf whose name I can't remember. You could probably guess that my favorite place was the Farmer's Market, which was chock full of FOOD. Crazy amounts of food. My mum bought some fruit and there was a vendor selling loads of nuts, so I bought half a pound of cashews and...other things. I ate way too much today is all.

There weren't that many people around the Kodak Theater and the Chinese Theater besides some tourists. I didn't know most of the actors and actresses on the sidewalk, although I guess my mum did. There was an Elvis impersonator and a Michael Jackson impersonator walking around. I bought a t-shirt because...well, I actually haven't bought any souvenirs here so far. I don't feel compelled to buy any Disney tchotckes (probably butchered that spelling) but cute t-shirts are always good. It says something like "Someone who loves me went to Hollywood and bought me this t-shirt" except I bought myself the t-shirt, so maybe that's stupid.

Beverly Hills is such a beautiful place. I wouldn't be able to live there though (besides the not being filthy rich part) because they have no grocery stores. Then again, I'm sure there's something nearby, but the whole place is just residential and I think that would bother me. It doesn't seem very fun to just get peopel to deliver groceries to your house, but if you're busy making movies or something, then...I guess that's convenient? I had fun at the Farmer's Market. We went past a bunch of celebrities homes and Chris Rock had a TON of cars just out on his lawn and driveway. It was kind of funny, but it wasn't something you could really easily see. I mean, all these houses are gated with lots of trees in front, so if you put loads of cars on your front lawn, is that pretty much just so you can see them yourself? Like "Hey, I have a lot of cars!" Well, okay. Jay Leno's house was easier to see, and it looked really nice. Versace's house was really nice looking and his family apparently isn't going to do anything with it besides just leave it there. We saw Aaron Spelling's house from a bit far away, but it was just ridiculously massive, looming over his country club or something. We passed by Tom Hank's entertainment home, not that we could actually see it since there were loads of trees and junk in front along with a security guard. Dustin Hoffman had a nice house. Joe Pesci too. ....of course, all the houses are ridiculously beautiful, but just makes me wonder what people do with all that space. If I had loads of money, I'd want to design my own house (well, I'd get an architect) and...something or other. I'd want to live in an apartment because it's less likely I'd lose something that way.

It got really chilly by the time we got to Venice Beach, which kind of sucked. It also got freakishly cloudly after the sky had been completely clear. Poo! Of course, the cold weather is nothing compared to NJ, so I shouldn't complain.

For dinner my mum, brother and I went to the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney. All the fun of being in the rainforest while you eat...euh, exciting, no? Every now and then a gorilla would make noises and there would be thunderstorms. I got a huge house salad since it's really a side dish, and it was good. It was the only thing a raw vegan could eat there though.

Now my mum and brother are arguing about going on the Grizzly Bear Run ride at California Adventure. It's a river rapids type ride and I don't want to go on it because I don't want to get wet. I might buy a poncho tomorrow just for the ride. Argh. I mean, my brother said you WILL get wet and you MAY get soaked. Gee, what great odds. I didn't like being cold after the Jurassic Park ride yesterday, on which I didn't even get that wet, so I can't imagine how wet I'll get tomorrow.

Sorry if this entry sounds poopy, but I feel tired and I had been constipated for three days (or more) prior to last night. Except I still think something is wrong with my digestion, considering how much I've been eating.

---

[next day] I ended up going on the river rapids ride and I didn't get as wet as I thought I would. But apparently it was just luck. WOO!

I know I have homework. Now that I've had two weeks of spring break to do it, it's the Sunday afternoon before classes and I still haven't touched bio.

Oh well. Today I was too lazy to get real food, so I figured I could fast for a while. But no...I brought dried fruit and nuts from home, so I ate that. I thought "Well, there's no way I'd want to just eat dried stuff all day!" HAHA. I have a 1 lb bag of cashews and I have no idea how much I've eaten so far. Argh! Stupid fake hunger! I'm still in my pjs, of course.

I got back to school last night at around 10:30 PM. My original plan was to leave my house at around 4 PM, but I woke up at 2 PM and didn't want just 2 hours to sulk around the house before going back to school. Need more sulking time! So my mum and I went grocery shopping and we saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I really liked the movie, but I wouldn't be able to bear watching it again because the camera movements were pretty shaky and made me feel like puking. Dancer in the Dark did the same thing to me. Good movies need to have non-shaky camera movements! For my sake! ME! Oh well. :) The movie is about Jim Carrey's character Joel erasing the memories he had of his girlfriend, Clementine, played by Kate Winslet, because she had her memories erased. There's a lot more to it than that (Elijah Wood plays a rather evil character, mwahahaha) but I think that's the gist. I forgot that there was a Beck song in it, but I liked it...and now I want the soundtrack. The music in the movie is really nice. The way the movie was shot is interesting...hooray for Michel Gondry!

I stayed up until 4 AM last night and woke up at about 12:30 today. Sleep is good. That's what Sundays are for. Today I've been trying to figure out what to do for my photos section and I made this up so far. Nothing flashy. Can't deal with that. Can't...design...stuff. Brain dead. Correct grammar non-existent.

I haven't updated this blog in a few days, but I haven't been doing many blog-worthy activities. I met my high school English teacher on Friday night, which was nice. There was a production being put on by the University Program students and I met her after that. She said she has a class of students this year who actually enjoy reading and things like that. She must be really happy. :D I mean, I definitely didn't experience that throughout my high school years. I always felt bad for my teacher for having to put up with so much crap. Actually, the same goes for all my teachers. Honors classes, CP classes, AP classes...99% of the time there was someone who made the class suck more than they already did. The only exception I can think of was my 12th grade psychology class. Everyone in the class was nice to each other and respectful to the teacher. *gasp!* Yes, I know.

Unless you live in Taiwan or are from Taiwan, you probably haven't heard much about the Taiwanese elections that just took place. Or the president and vice president being shot and the controversy behind that. I have no idea who was president when I lived in Taiwan. Actually, I had no idea what the president really did...I can't imagine being that clueless about the government in the US. Then again, most of the world seems to know what's going on in the American political system. Anyhoo, President Chen Shui-bian was re-elected by a very narrow margin which is pissing off a lot of people. I have no idea what the candidates are like, but my mum doesn't like Shui-bian, so I'm guessing he must be pretty bad. Which means my dad probably likes him. Ha ha. He got a picture of President Bush and his wife in the mail for supporting them...like what are we supposed to do with the photo? Eh.

I can't think of anything else to write at the moment, except that I must've eaten a lot of cashews. OH, I just remembered something. On Friday for lunch, my mum and I ate out at a buffet place we haven't been to in more than a year. We used to go there a lot and since they have fruit, we figured it'd be okay. I actually decided to try some cooked veggies. COOKED! GAAAASSSPPUH! I've been rethinking the raw food diet for a while and I figured I may as well try something cooked, as long as it's not deep fried cheese sticks or spaghetti or something. I didn't feel any weird effects from it and since it's already Sunday, I don't think anything bad will happen. So I guess if I had to eat out somewhere, cooked veggies would be okay. They're more filling than salad, at least. If it were up to me though, I'd only have to eat fruit. You can't get all your minerals from fruit though. :(

I really don't do much homework. Now I'm wondering what I do here at all. Honestly, in psychology we don't get any homework (not that I'm happy about having my entire grade riding on a few tests), in music we won't have homework for another week, in bio we...well, on Sunday I have to get together with my lab partner to work on our poster about worms and crap. And in Japanese we have homework every day, but that's not too bad. I don't know what I do with the rest of my time though, which worries me. I definitely need to study Japanese vocabulary more. Many times I find myself recognixing words but not having the slightest clue what they mean. I still don't really know what "omedetou" means! Alright, I'll just look in the dictionary now...it means "congratulations". In my class we made a giant card for our language fellow because she just got married and I didn't know what to write, so I just wrote "omedetou" like everyone else. ;D

I really can't imagine getting a regular job when I graduate college. Or just doing anything...very normal. I would love to be able to have an entire Poofy empire (mwahaha) but that's a far fetched dream. But then what else can I do? And why the hell am I even thinking about that right now? I called NYU to see if they had all my stuff and they said yes, so maybe I'll be a food specialist. Or something. Wouldn't it be funny if I had POOFY brand food? Raw pudding for everyone! ;)

Last night I was putting the finishing touches on some cloud buttons I started drawing a long time ago. Look okee? I'll probably add them to the Poofy shop. I changed the snowing one so that it doesn't have a scarf anymore and I made the raindrops in the lightning one lighter so they'd contrast with the background better.

Speaking of Poofy, I sold TWO t-shirts this morning to two classmates in my Japanese class. Awesome! The people in my class are the best. I guess that affects why I like that class the most out of all the ones that I've taken.

Right now I'm working on a Poofy book that compiles the first 50 comic strips. Sound good? It'll probably look kinda sucky since I'm using Word to lay out everything, but hopefully the quality of the printing and materials will be good. I'm going to use Lulu.com to print them.

I bought these two shirts from the Market NYC, although I probably won't buy anything. Oh, I also want to eat an Bonobos! Eek, all I can associate with NYC is shopping and food. ...then again, a lot of other people probably think that too. It just isn't healthy for me to think about food so frequently. (sigh) I'm not all that healthy.

Tonight I went to some *gasp* school activities. First was a showing of The Station Agent, after which I went to a comedy show. I didn't know what to expect, but I thought the movie was very good. It's not totally out of this world, but it's unlike any other movie I've seen. There isn't a concrete storyline to follow and it ends a bit abruptly...I wish it had been longer! If you have the chance to see it and aren't one of those people who only likes movies with car chases and explosions, I think you'll like it. It's a funny movie, mainly because of this one character who is overly friendly and hyper.

The comedy show was pretty funny. It had its weird, awkward moments, but also had some extremely random and memorable skits. Like the one with the business bear who couldn't sell diapers. That will be burned into my mind because the guy playing the bear (who lives across the hall from me, although I think he pretty much lives at his girlfriend's dorm now) was wearing diapers and...nothing else. Except makeup to make him skin browner. This guy in my Japanese class played a mole who was a custodian. Anyhoo, the point of the skit was that this company hired a bunch of animals to do jobs and then got mad at the animals for not being able to do human jobs. It probably sounds stupid when I say it, but it was really funny. Eh, what else...the opening skit was pretty funny. A bunch of the group members were using custodial equipment and trash bins to make rhymic sounds, like the show Stomp, and...oh, nevermind, I can't really explain it. I mean, I'm too lazy.

...and it's not even 1 AM yet! I stay up later than this on most school nights. WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME? Doh. This week, although easy going, has felt incredibly long. I feel like I've been here for two weeks already.

Today I went out of my room, even though I didn't have to. GASP! Yes. I thought it might not be very healthy to stay in my room for hours on end (I did wake up this morning at around 10:40 and went to the post office to pick up a package) so in the afternoon I decided to walk down to the lake and read there. By that time however, it was getting a bit chilly and windy, so I didn't stay out very long. I should remind myself to do all computer stuff at night and walking-around stuff earlier in the day when the SUN might be higher overhead. Blah. While I was sitting by the lake, I noticed this squirrel that was rummaging in the trash can nearby. It kept fishing out...peanuts (in the shell). It would take a peanut in its mouth, dig a little hole in the group, put the peanut in the hole, and pat some dirt on top. I thought it was really cute to watch, but I thought it was weird because I don't recall ever seeing that before and I've lived around squirrels for nearly all of my life. I don't usually sit outside to read, though.

About a week ago my mum wrote me an e-mail and in it wrote, "I made it back home at 12:01, felt like cinderella." For some reason I thought that was such a funny thing to say. In a cute way. I would've just said, "I made it back home at 12:01," and left it at that.

For the past few days (3, including today) I've been doing semi-24 hour fasts. That just means I eat one meal a day at the same time. Not a big deal, I guess. I'd think that by doing this I'd be cutting down the amount of food I'm eating, but my mum still thinks I'm eating too much. I probably ate too much today because on my way back to my room from the lake, I stopped by the Retreat and picked up some non-raw trail mix. Ooh, yes. Evil. It had raisins, peanuts, and cashews. As far as I know, peanuts aren't good for you, but I didn't get any weird reactions when I ate them before. Oh well, it shouldn't kill me considering how much trail mix I ate in Disneyland. So what did I eat today?

2 oranges
1 banana
7-8 oz of dried fruit and nuts (the trail mix I bought was 5oz, and I ate a bunch of almonds and some dried figs
1 organic food bar

That's kind of a half cooked/half raw meal, now that I think about it. That's way too many nuts. No more unsalted non-raw trail mix. (sigh)

I kind of have to lose weight before I go to NYC on April 10th since I'm planning to buy food and I don't want to be too depressed by what's on the scale. I shouldn't even use a scale...they just annoy me. But but but. BLAH. I think I have an unhealthy relationship with food, but there's not a whole lot I can do about it that wouldn't involve changing my body chemistry.

I've been thinking something stupid lately (yeah, I do that a lot). Sometimes it kind of pains me when people are really nice to me. It's stupid, yes, but there's a point. Kind of. No one is comfortable enough to be anything but really nice to me. It's not that people would be mean otherwise, but joking around or not being really formal about everything isn't something I encounter much. It's nice how everyone is so...nice, but it would be nice to be on the level of acting like an ass with more people. I have some friends, for whom I'm thankful for, but sometimes I think I'm missing out on something really huge. I just don't know what it is. Would life be any better in NYC?

About NYC, while I was seeing the squirrle bury the peanuts, I thought that if I live in NYC, I'll never see something like that, or get to sit in front of a big peaceful lake (that's full of toxic chemicals though). But that's not really what I'm into, I guess.

Back to what I was saying. The guys who live across the hall are some of the nicest people I've ever met, but they're also some of the most incredibly odd people I've ever met. Actually, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say about them except that it's like each of them is made up of two people...oh, nevermind. Everyone's like that.

Maybe the peanuts are making my brain rot.

unconscious mutterings:

1. Pitbull::dog
2. TD::table cell
3. Carter::Jimmy
4. Japan::Nihon
5. 50::feet
6. Streak::winning
7. Rifle::gun
8. Trap::mouse
9. Easter::Sunday
10. Mitt::baseball

I think I started just eating one meal a day last Thursday, so it's already been a week. What's happened since then? Well. I didn't lose as much weight as I would have liked, but I'm definitely better off this way. I feel like my digestion is better and (get ready for this) I didn't need my alarm clock to wake me up at all this week. WHOA. Whoa. That's never happened before. It's not like I'm hungry when I wake up (I don't get hungry until about 3 PM, and then I just wait until 5 PM or so to eat dinner), I just wake up and realize, "Whoa, it's time to wake up." It doesn't matter if it's a day when I have to wake up at 10 or a day when I have to wake up at 8. Isn't that odd? I absolutely hate the sound of my alarm clock (you probably know this already, but never use a song or sound that you like as an alarm clock because you'll eventually grow to hate it and wish you could cut the chunk out of your brain that memorized the sound) so it's nice to wake up before it jerks my brain into semi-consciouness.

Where the hell are all these people who said they wanted Poofy shirts? I haven't gotten any responses about them yet, but supposedly people want them. All I need is a minimum of 10 orders to get them printed. 10! WE CAN DO THAT! Make a legion of Poofy lovers in Poofy-clad t-shirts!

So. What's been going on this week? Speaking of Poofy, I sold a bunch of stuff to some people on my floor on Tuesday. One girl bought two small Poofies for her younger sister(s?) and a pack of buttons. Another girl bought a big Poofy for her little sister. Aw, how sweet! So bringing my entire Poofy shop inventory to school and storing it in a crate in my closet wasn't totally useless! That's good to know. I also gave a Poofy shirt to my Japanese teacher. She wanted to pay me but...god no! That'd be crazy. Besides, she wrote me a recommendation and I gave presents to all my high school teachers who wrote me recommendations, so I think it was a good gift.

Ah, Japanese class. It's weird because I enjoy it, but I suck at it. There's almost no way I can get an A this semester unless I study my ass off, which I'm most definitely not doing. I had a test on Tuesday and it was bad (shiken o warui desu!) and I had an interview test, which was also bad. The only good thing was my dialogue test. Hooray for rote memorization!

As for good things happening in class, I got an A on my bio manuscript! It's absolutely crazy though because my teacher graded extremely leniently. One of my graphs was completely wrong, or somewhat wrong, and I only got one point taken off. I had another point taken off for something else. But overall, I had two points taken off of a paper that kind of sucked, as far as I'm concerned. Oh well, I won't complain. I'm just not sure if that was the right grade...

Music class is getting worse. I'm not sure how to explain why it's getting worse, but I guess you have to be there. For one thing, we do a lot more singing now and I haven't even memorized "do re mi fa sol la si do" and what notes they correspond to. A lot of people in my class aren't used to singing so when we have to sing stuff, it comes out all jumbled. My teacher (I gotta say, the photo on that website isn't very good) is incredibly patient, but sometimes I wonder if he's laughing inside and calling us names while putting on a facade. ...probably not.

I'm going home this weekend! Wooohoo! I'll have to get my comics and scan em. 50 of them. Kill me. And I'll be scanning other things. Because I'm going to make the best damn Poofy book ever. And to achieve that, it'll be the only Poofy book ever! It'll suck AND rule at the same time. Which is awesome. Or stupid. Hell, it's BOTH!

HOLY CRAP I JUST FIGURED OUT HOW TO ACCESS THE MEDIA CLOISTERS SERVER...okay, this is stupid. I didn't know I could do that. If I knew this before, that would've save so much trouble. Argh! Now I'm kind of mad at myself. I don't know much about computers. :| I was looking at this page, which didn't help much, and then luckily got things to work by typing in "http://mcserver" and whoa, that worked. Ooh. Oh yeah, that's a big perk of working in the media cloisters; you get your own folder in which you can store as much junk as you want. Wee! Now scanning all those comics won't be as annoying.

I always feel like I don't know what I'm doing when I have MC meetings. Today I had to go to one and last night I had to go to one. It was all this CSS stuff and while I think the website we're working on has a cool design, it isn't necessarily the right one for what we're trying to create. What we're trying to do is make a very web-standards friendly css-driven cross-browser site that should be user-friendly...or something. But some parts of it seem hypocritical to me. For instance, the little window that has all the content in it is...well, little (actually, it's not little if you have a 1024x768, but using the really nice monitors in the MC, it looks tiny). There are loads of divs with set widths and junk like that. But a big thing that some of the other web team members are pushing is having relative sizes, like not defining fonts as a certain number of points but as small or x-small. I think if you want to emply relative sizes, then you shouldn't have a layout that's so completely UNrelative. I'm know I'm not really knowledgable about web stuff, or at least not as much as the other people, but this doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I'd rather that the content not be confined into a little rectangle that stays in the middle of the screen (and we'll have to change that bit because if your resolution is too low, like on my laptop, you can't scroll up and see the content that's in a negative margin) and I like it when the links bar is at the top of the page, not the bottom. I guess that part isn't so bad, but it doesn't work in IE, I think. I mean, the whole site looks like complete crap in IE, so if you want to see what it's supposed to look like, you have to use Firefox. Mozilla might work too.

...Blah. I think I ate too much. I have a problem with the 5 oz packs of trail mix they sell in the Retreat; every time I start eating one, I have to finish it. I can't even just eat half of it and save it for later. 5 oz is a lot of nuts and dried fruit. I also had two bananas just because. Why not? And three oranges. And an organic food bar. It's a lot of food for one meal. Calorie wise, I'm set for the whole day. I suppose if I gain weight, I'll learn my lesson.

I was using Winamp for a while to play ogg files, but everything sounded like crap. Not just the ogg files, but mp3s too. Eh? I have no idea why, but I downloaded Quintessential Player and everything sounds great. There are loads of free electronic songs in ogg format to download at observatory online. Right now I really like .Tape. and Satellite Groove. Yay for good music YAY!

You want to know what wild and crazy thing I did today? Do you? I ate cooked food at watched TV. Oh god, what is the world coming to? I have no clue. It's a sign of the apocolypse, I suppose. Most people do eat cooked food and watch TV though, eh? I've actually eaten cooked food on two occasions this week, but shush, don't want people to think that I'm giving up raw food. ;) Actually, I'm just trying to refine my diet. My body has been giving me signs that it's completely screwed up lately in the form of weird cravings (well, that might just be everday cravings for anything that's edible) and strangely timed periods (had some kind of mini-period a week ago, and a few days ago I got my real period only three weeks after my last real period, if that makes any sense). Overall, I feel fine, but it's still worrysome. I mean, if your nerve cells didn't work and you found that your arm had fallen off but couldn't feel anything, that would still worry you, right? I suppose the gushing blood would be a big giveaway...

I've actually been doing a lot of stuff this week, but every time I felt like writing an entry it would just be past midnight so I'd think, "Ah, I'll do it tomorrow." Or never. Something like that. By now though I can't even remember what I've been doing. Oh, on Tuesday I had the most fun bio lab that lasted about 4 and a half hours long. It's because I'm slow like that. We had a bunch of petri dishes with fungal and bacterial growth and we had to label and count all the colonies. Not fun.

Japanese has been kick ass fun lately. I mean, more fun than usual. And it's usually pretty good. (Something tells me that I need to take another English course. What's with all these weird broken sentences?) We've been doing lots of oral exercises and I've had to cram my head with useful vocabulary like "fuel efficiency" (nenpi) and "one's feeling while driving" (norigokochi). Because one day I'm going to have to say something like "While I'm driving this car I feel like the fuel efficiency is great," and I'll be halfway there.

I had a prospie (prospective student) yesterday and today and she was really cool. Thankfully she didn't ask me anything that would cause me to reveal (or lie) that I will be transferring. She was a pretty big Beck fan...I've never met a Beck fan (outside of a Beck concert, and even at those I don't talk to anyone) before! Awesome, yes. I hope she liked it here enough. She kept asking about what there was to do around here, which I'm not that fit to answer seeing as I used to go home every weekend without a second thought. I'm not planning to go home until study week (for some Clinic concert goodness) and I am finding things to do on campus, which is...good. Tomorrow I'm going to play tennis with Joan, after which I guess we'll eat dinner, go to the movie being put on by the film league (21 Grams) and then go to an all female comedy show.

Oh, I didn't even get to the eating cooked food and watching TV thing that happened today! Welll...maybe I should track-back a bit. On Tuesday I ate Chinese take out with Joan and I got some yummy mixed veggie thing. Nothing added like sauce or salt or MSG. Wooo. It would be weird if they just cooked it in MSG. Anyhoo, that was yummy, so now I'm thinking that I'll incorporate more cooked veggies into my diet, because that might be the only way for me to eat a steady amount of veggies. However, after eating this huge platter of veggies, I still wanted fruit and other things. So I'm kind of eating....a lot right now. I've gained 10 pounds since the beginning of the school year, which is pretty bad. Today I suggested we go to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant because I didn't feel like staying in my room, and that was pretty good, although I prefer the Chines take out because it was really plain. I'm sure I could have ordered something more plain at the Vietnamese place, but I got a nice dish of mix veggies in a spicy sauce. Mmm. What I noticed about cooked food though that I would obviously not be used to having eaten nearly all raw food for the past 15 months is that cooked food can also connotate hot food. I'm not used to hot food at all. It's not like my mouth needed to adjust to it, but really hot food just isn't pleasant. I wouldn't have minded if my dish had been completely cooled off, actually.

After eating dinner, I act some more fruit and goji berries (I'm a huge pig, yes) before going to Jewett to watch Friends with Joan. Man, their TV is really nice, alone with the entire building for that matter. It's a pretty big flat screen TV. Anyhoo, I hadn't seen Friends in a long time and apparently I saw a pretty bad one. It seemed short without much of a point. Fun! We went to the Aula Coffeehouse after that to see Chris Maher play, and he was okay...not really my kind of music. Actually, if Beck had sang the same songs, I'd probably love them, but I'd love Beck if he wailed like a dying cow. Maybe.

Of course, one of the biggest things on my mind has been NYU. I think I really want to go. I'm worried, a little nervous/scared, but I'm sure I'll get used to it if million of other people manage to live there. I'm a little pissed because only 26 of my credits transferred even though I took about 30. They only accepted one semester of Japanese because that's all that's required, or something? But...what? I still don't get it. On their website I thought it said that they required 1-2 years of a language, depending on how intensive the coursework was. So they only took one of my semesters? I'm losing four credits. :( This means I'll have to take on a full 18 credit schedule for the next three years to graduate on time, most likely. I mean, the maximum you can take is 18 per semester, unless you want to pay for more. I don't know if I can handle that...well, that's what I get for being lazy. And I think I have to take a class for no credit, so I dunno what'll happen...

It's really hot here. The weather is nice, but I wish it were a little bit cooler. Hohum.

Today I installed Movable Type on Joan's site and I think it took less than 10 minutes. Whatever it took, it wasn't long and it actually worked the first time I tried to load it. That has never happened before!...I think. Well, I don't know. I've installed MT maybe four times in the past. It's not hard, although the first time I did it I was confused beyond belief. I still don't know what I'm doing, but I can pretend that I do. There was also a media cloisters talkie-thing about css/html junk that I was supposed to take part in, but I just sat there and let other people talk since they're more knowledgable and I suck at speaking anyway. Weee fun! Yes! Only 6 people showed up, and none of them were students. Bwahaha.

Wow, I didn't know it had been so long since I updated this. My weekend was rather painful since I ate too many nuts and thus developed "balloon stomach intestine disorder", which probably has a real name but that's what I'm going to call it for now (BSID for short). I ate something like 8 ounces of cashews and hours later developed BSID. I don't know why my body would love the taste of cashews so much if they were bad for me, but there you go; my body is stupid. I was burping sulfur constantly, which my mum said was due to excess protein and fun junk like that. So I'm sure I've got enough protein to last me the rest of my life. Or at least the next week...

Well I haven't eaten any nuts since Saturday, so I hope my body is adjusting. I've been eating lots of fruit though, which could spell YEAST INFECTION, hooray! Health is a pain in the bum, yes. And this is why I'm going to major in nutrition.

I've been working on some websites, so check them out and tell me what you think:

Flaming Chef
Miscellany News

The Misc site is light years away from being finished. I just made up some kind of layout. The colors aren't even right yet. I volunteered to do the site because the current site is kinda crappy and not being worked on. I'm free, why wouldn't anyone not hire me? ;) I was forced to learn about css floats for the Misc site, so I see it as a good learning experience. Floats and clears are no longer uncharted territory!

I'm not sure why I randomly decided to talk about web junk, but I'll go back to health. BSID! Uh. It sucks! I was planning to go to a party on Saturday night but instead decided to stay in my room and deflate and attempt to puke (which didn't work). Sunday morning I woke up at 4, 5, and 9 AM with awful diarrhea. HOW LOVELY! Not. I took a nap later on and my mum came to visit me to fill out NYU forms and stuff. She took Joan and me to the mall to see Kill Bill 2 (awesome movie, yes) and we went to the supermarket where I got delicious tangerines. Or some kind of citrus fruit. Man, those were good.

Since then I've gotten better. Besides the constipation. I'm guessing that my intestines just emptied themselves out so despite the ridiculous amounts of soluble fiber I'm eating, it's not coming out. As long as I don't gain weight, I don't really care. Ish. I mean, I know the stuff I'm eating isn't that bad, although it's not a very large selection of food, which could be bad.

Today I went to a b-day part for a bunch of people in my student fellow group and I have to say, I felt kind of sad not being able to eat cake. I mean, of course I have the ability to eat cake and all, but I would really rather not eat cake. And if I did eat cake, I wouldn't want to eat at 9PM. I probably just seem too picky, but doesn't it mean anything that I even go to these little parties with no incentive, but just because it's someone's b-day and...blah? Oh well, I end up leaving early cos I have nothing to do there (don't have anyone to talk to...I mean, no one I really want to talk to). Those kinds of times made me happy that I'm transferring. I'm still kind of sad about it though...

I went through room draw (I was told to do so just in case) and despite my crappy draw number I still got a single. Hm. I guess someone else will have it next year.

Crap crap CRAP, I was just finishing up an e-mail to my mum when Firefox crashed. All the more reason for me to write all my e-mails in wordpad. It was because I was opening too many tabs at once though, so I guess I was asking for it. Still, computers should be smarter and be able to save my e-mail. Or something. My school's webmail system actually does that for you. If something crashes while you're writing an e-mail or if your session times out, you can get the e-mail back when you log in. Oh well, I'll just type this over again.

Today I went to Let's Get Personal right down the street to order some Poofy tote bags. Woo! Merchandising! EVIL! MWAHAHA! But if I'm not making money, is it really all that bad? The bag has this Japanese Poofy design in pink on off-white. Guys probably wouldn't want it. I ordered 25 bags for a little over $200, so if I sell them for $10, that should work out. I plan to give some away as gifts, so it's unlikely I'll make the money back, assuming I could ever sell the rest. I also placed my t-shirt order today through Brunetto t-shirts for 75 shirts, totalling $530. Not bad, eh? It'll take a while to make the money back, but it'll happen. I hope.

This past Saturday was Founder's Day, a campus celebration of...our founder. I heard it would be a lot of fun and while it wasn't un-fun, it didn't quite live up to the expectations. After I went on one ride (giant swings), I felt kinda woozy and that killed my spirit. I started the day by helping Joan with WVKR stuff she needed to sell at Walker Field, where all the festivities took place. By the time I walked to the bridge that connects the regular campus with the terrace apartment area, I found out that I had left my ID card in my room. Of course, that was the only time I had ever left it and the only time I really needed it. Great! After going back to my room and back to the field with my card in hand, I finally go to see everything. Which wasn't a whole lot. I guess there was a lot of food, and there was a stage set up for performers, but maybe the main point of the day was just to lie on the grass and do nothing. There was a big swing ride and a small ferris wheel set up nearby and, of course, a truck dispensing a seemingly endless amount of beer (if you bought a $10 mug, you could drink all the beer you wanted...uh, assuming you're 21+). Joan and I walked around and went on the swing ride (which was fun for the first 10 seconds and then lasted much too long) and the planetarium exhibit, which was pretty cute.

I wanted to

FUCK FIRE ALARM! NOO.

********some time later********

I hate the fire alarm. It's great if there's a real fire, but otherwise it's one of the most annoying, grating sounds ever.

So what was I talking about? Huh/wuh? Oh yeah, Founder's Day! Well! Joan and I got kind of bored, so we went back to our rooms before dinner. No food places on campus were open because there was an all-you-can-eat bbq by Walker Field, although nothing that I could really eat (unless you count burger condiments). Joan got some stuff but then was nice enough to come with me off campus to get some Chinese take out. Mm...cooked veggies. COOKED! BWA! Quite yummy. I wanted to see Ratatat play, but I was too lazy to go back after dinner. Besides, I'm going to see them this Saturday when they open for Clinic. I don't really like their music that much, but I love Evan Mast's solo stuff. So. Blah.

Before the fireworks show at night, Joan and I watched Spirited Away. That was the third time I've seen it, but it's always good. I need to watch it in Japanese though.

The fireworks show was really good! I wouldn't have minded if that were the only activity for Founder's Day. They played Charlie and the Chocolate Factory after the show on a screen across the lake, but I didn't stay for it. I wish I had though, because i heard it was really fun to watch with so many people. The screen looked really small so I didn't think it would be worthwhile. :\

Yesterday I pretty much just stayed in my room and attempted to work on my psych final. I didn't get very far though because I'm STUPID and can't answer easy questions. *sigh* Being unsmart is ungood.

On Friday night I saw a bit of the Sleater-Kinney show. It was good, although there were a lot of people and you know me...lots-of-people = OH NO. Haha. Ha. Lots of non-Vassar people, which was odd. Actually, it's odd that I'd find seeing non-Vassar people odd. It shows that I've been here too long, probably. Which is true. The last time I went home was a while ago...can't even remember. My brain is deteriorating.

...and I have a bio paper due on Friday that I don't know what to do about. Please kill me. KILL. If that doesn't kill me, than maybe the tons of food I'm eating will. Yesterday I only ate oranges and some seaweed because that was the only food I had, but this morning I ate breakfast for the first time consisting of melons, and I skipped lunch to go to to the printing place. For dinner I had a huge salad, four oranges, and a 5 oz pack of trail mix. Yes, I caved in a bought trail mix. I went one week without nuts, and even less time without dried fruit, but I was craving something with substance, rather than just water. Sigh sigh sigh. I know all the food I eat is pretty healthy, considering I don't have to worry about what other foods are mixed in because it's all pretty much whole (if something you eat is manufactured, thing about what others "ingredients" must be lurking inside!) and fresh, but I don't have super-health in any sense. I might be better off than most people, but still. ...

I wouldn't give up my raw food diet, but sometimes I wonder how much worse off I'd be eating cooked food. I think that I'd eat myself to death and become obese. Or maybe I'm being overdramatic. People think I have willpower to not eat cooked food (most of the time), but I really don't. People who see me eat know that I eat a lot and don't leave one crumb (er, or the raw equivalent to a crumb) behind. I need to change my relationship with food, but I don't know how. I tried getting off of nuts for a week, and that was okay. I went about three days without dried fruit. Not much of a battle won there.

That was just a little rant-thing.

It's over. No more freshman year. No more Vassar. I'm free to run crazy and wild and poke things with sticks.

Shall I do that "reflect on all the things I did/did not do and how much stuff sucked/did not suck" thing? I guess I'll start off by saying that college wasn't as scary or bad as I thought it would be. I wasn't one of those people in high school that looked at college as an exciting experience where I would learn new things and be exposed to cool people and experiences. It's not like the idea didn't enter my brain at some point, but I'm a pessimiste and my biggest hope was that I would survive the year. I wasn't as scared as I was going into high school (which was much, much worse than college) but I think it took me longer to adjust. And the whole picking a major thing threw me off, besides living in a place possible more boring than the area around my hometown (sidenote: I never knew my town had such an ugly website...it's not bad, it's just ugly. Man, I wanna redesign this thing). Actually, it wasn't that it was boring as much that Vassar can feel like a bubble/prison and it felt weird to not ever have to leave campus. I went home practically ever weekend during the first semester.

And that's when something in my head told me to transfer to NYU to major in nutrition and live in NYC, which is where I had always wanted to live. I went through the annoying application process that i thought I would never have to go through again after 12th grade, or at least not so soon. But it all paid off because I somehow slipped through the cracks (I attribute this method to how I got into Vassar as well) and was accepted. Woo! For a while I was almost hoping I wouldn't get into NYU because I became more comfortable in Vassar with some good friends, a high-paying campus job, probably getting a radio show next semester, and being in the best Japanese class ever coupled with a new Japanese major, but when I thought about how miserable I was in the beginning of the year and the second semester, I became set on transferring. Before transferring I would have to brand the school with poofy. ;)

When my roommate had left 13 or so boxes of stuff to put into storage, I was somewhat horrified. How could anyone have so much stuff? I take that back after having packed all of my things. I think I may have had more stuff than she had! I have no idea where all my crap even came from considering how small our room is, but I had tons and tons of junk (no photo, unfortunately) that somehow all fit into my mum's Jeep while having enough room for Joan to come home with me for the weekend. We just shoved everything in the back (finishing off the grand pile with my guitar and the 30-something pound pack of water bottles) and hoped it wouldn't collapse and kill something. I should figure out a better way to pack things. I didn't use any cardboard boxes because I didn't have any, but I think crates and bags are easier to carry. They don't stack well, but who needs stacking when you can just smoosh and pile everything on top of one another? "Smoosh and pile" is all the rage.

My two finals were not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Remember that I'm a pessimiste and equate everything to death, or at least look at the bright side of things by thinking, "At least I have both of my arms and legs and am not having my stomach poked out with a garden hoe and that I can walk and talk somewhat intelligibly without screaming random obscenities or POOP CRAP huh?" My Japanese final went okay, although I'm not sure if I made the 85% mark that I needed to get an A- for the semester. I waaay overstudied for bio, but I guess I'm glad I did or else I would have been more worried beforehand. Our practical consisted of 19 stations at which we had 3 minutes each (or 6 minutes for two of the stations) to complete a task and show our bio prowess. I really screwed up the Punett Square and somewhat messeed up graphing with Excel, but besides that I think I pulled a high B or low A. Our written part consisted of 3 questions, one of which was "What is biodiversity and why is it important?" or something to that extent.

The past week has been race to use as many meal points as possible. This involved eating three meals a day as stuffing myself to the point of thinking "I wanna puke and die and puke after I die and maybe do more dying after that if my soul can handle it". I've gained about three pounds in the past week and I've been eating despite knowing that I already overate and that I wasn't even hungry. Yesterday I got loads of stuff from the salad bar (not all raw) because I didn't have many Retreat points yet and figured I'd just get some more fun veggies and beans (beans are too tasty...damn them). After that I felt like a blimp. I went back to my room and ate MORE FRUIT, putting me into "puke/die" mode. Lovely!

So I gotta lose weight over the summer. 10 pounds, if possible. I've gained more than that since last summer and I don't think I can even fit into the clothes I bought last spring. Keep in mind that this happened not because of what I ate but because of how much I ate. It's probably better to eat a reasonable amount of cooked food than eating buttloads of raw food. I've decided that I can't handle eating even little bits of cooked food like I've been doing over the past week ("little bits" actually equating to about 24% of my daily consumption). It's sad to think that I put on so much weight (that isn't muscle) from eating such healthy foods (at least to the regular person's eye) but there you go...I'm hopeless. And eating a partly cooked and raw diet doesn't even work for me because to an extent, I have no willpower.

This morning I ate an orange and two bananas for breakfast. Damn. I've been eating way too many bananas lately, something like 5-6 a day. If that was ALL I ate in the day, it wouldn't be a problem. ...but that's in addition to three meals. Eh oh.

I woke up today at 9, which gave me about 6 hours of sleep. I don't know why I woke up so early and in fact, I've been getting less sleep now with the cooked food and such than during most of the school year when I ate nearly all raw food. I don't know if I burned out some of my organs or if I'm just screwed up.

Yesterday I walked to the TH (townhouse) that I'm going to live in over the summer. It was much more cramped than I thought it would be and since it's off-campus, it feels a bit secluded, but I hope it'll be fun. The houses out there look like toolsheds and the grass is way overgrown. It's a huge difference from the main Vassar campus despite it still being a part of Vassar. I looked at the schedule for my summer job, which is actually more like a media summer camp, and I'm schedule to do something, maybe a presentation, on two days. What? HUH? I have no idea. Gaaah! Noo!

I woke up nice and early today to go to Michi Beauty Salon to get my hair cut. I've been going there since 11th grade when I chopped off something like a foot (erm, okay, maybe not quite that much, but close) of my hair and banished my locks to hair hell (it's really annoying having long hair). So I drove about 45 minutes to get there and for the first time drove all by myself. Becoming a "big girl" doesn't stop at going to the bathroom by yourself (you'll be glad to know that I possess this skill), but also includes driving a long time knowing very well that you could crash and die/lose a limb/be covered in third degree burns. I drove to the Mitsuwa shopping center this past Sunday with Joan and while the drive there went okay, I ended up on the wrong highway on the way home. Crap. In the express lane. Double crap. I called my mum and somehow got back on the right way home (after missing yet another exit I was supposed to take) but now I'll never go the wrong way again. Hopefully.

After getting my hair cut I went to Kinokuniya to buy some books for my mum. She really wants to learn tole painting, so naturally a Japanese bookstore would be the best resource. ;) For whatever reason it's hard to find books about tole painting in regular stores, even craft stores, yet Kinokuniya has an entire shelf dedicated to it. I got my mum two books and ended up buying two books about myself about making stuffed animals and little figures out of felt. I perused the Japanese instruction shelf and picked up another kanji book. And a cute plastic katakana cheat-sheet. ;) I forget them sometimes and it still takes me ages to read anything, even hiragana. Katakana is worse than hiragana though.

I had a nice lunch at the nearby Whole Foods (a salad and too many cashews) before heading home in the rain and not getting lost. WOOHOO! On Sunday I ended up on route 80 (or route you-are-going-in-the-wrong-direction) and I felt bad for Joan because she probably though I couldn't drive. ;) Actually, I had never driven so much on my own until I drove Joan around to places. We had a lot of fun around the Mitsuwa marketplace, although Joan's favorite food is Japanese food and she ate so much that by the time we finished lunch she was sick of Japanese food. Oh noo! I'll get sick of a food for a while, but I'll still be able to eat it later in the same day. I eat everything...honestly. It's scary how much food I eat.

Today I went to see my English teacher who wrote me a recommendation and probably got me into NYU. I gave her a poofy tote bag and she started using it right away. ;) My old high school is really different from last year since there's a whole new wing in place of where the upper gym used to be. I got pretty confused and almost went into a construction area. Oooops.

I didn't finish talking about my weekend...and I know how much you're dying to know what happened! DEATH + YOU = CORPSE! I've learn my arithmetic, yup. I went to Minado with Joan and my mum. Minado = food heaven (more math). It specializes in Japanese food but they had the best salads I had ever seen before. It's relatively cheap considering what a nice place it is and how much food there was ...and how much I ate (something like 4 plates of oh so delicious salads). My favorites were seaweed, the bok choy, and green beans. Mmm. I gotta go back there again.

Yesterday I dropped off Joan at Vassar and went to my room to pick up the contact lenses I stupidly left behing while stopping by Megan's room to give her a little something and have a Kodak moment. So that was the last time I was at Vassar ...at least until next Monday when I have to go back! :( Not that I'll hate it, but there's so much I want to do. Today I started playing drums again and it was so much fun! I don't know why I never practiced over these past 3 years or so. I enjoy reading plain old rhythms without any kind of melody. Is that strange? Of course, I also like composing music when I'm not lazy or braindead, which hasn't occured in a while. I'm going to bring my keyboard and groovebox with me so maybe I can do something while I'm in school. There's so much I want to do...make more music, learn more kanji and beat the kanji I already know into my head so it can't escape no matter how loughly it screams and kicks my skull, learn some basic Norwegian because it's useful if you like Norwegian artists, update all my websites (okay, that's probably not going to happen) and learn something new about web junk. Like...anything. Database stuff maybe? Or something technical that is likely to make me want to cry and drown myself, like PHP, DHTML, or Javascript. Hooray!

Well. It's time to make buttons.

It was pretty cold last week (considering it's June) and now it's gotten humid and muggy. Lovely. Especially when you live in a house that smells weird. I can't even pinpoint what the smell is, besides "TH smell". That's not really a good thing. A lot of things aren't good, actually. ...nah, I won't get into some stupid depressed mode, although last night I felt like dying and all that fun stuff. If I didn't like my mum I probably wouldn't mind killing myself, but I'd have to really hate my family to do that. And I don't. *phew* Lucky me. Of course, suicide is a bad idea, unless you know absolutely no one and have no contact with the outside world, in which case no one will notice that you're gone.

On that note...hello! Today I ate five bananas, one orange, and one fruit cup. And a lot of honey, but I don't think that does much to me. It's quite yummy. In a week I lost about four pounds, but I think a lot of it (maybe three pounds) was just water. It's all good. In the first week of my cleanse I was already getting rid of weird intestinal crap. [shudders]

I saw Harry Potter on Friday with my mum and my first impression was that I was a little disappointed. I was really excited to see it and I thought it would be better. It wasn't bad by any means, but my expectations were probably too high. I haven't read the book in a while but I feel like the movie left out a lot (of course, it always will but maybe some other stuff could've found it's way into the movie) or changed things. I don't really recall, I'll have to read the book again.

On Saturday I went to an old house a faculty member bought to repair in order to do some house work, ie, deconstruction. One of my housemates, Ryan, came too, which was good because he's actually done the kind of work before. We had to toss a bunch of spackle and wood with nails in em that were ripped out of walls out a window and in garbage bins and roll up this huge ass carpet and lug it down the stairs to bring outside (the faculty member's daughter and her boyfriend were helping too). I got to smash a wall with a hammer to get more spackle off...quite fun. Surprisingly, my arms don't even hurt (my legs are still aching though). Ryan and I also had to take down a drywall ceiling, which was about as pleasant as you could imagine having lots of dust and dirt falling on your head could feel like. We had to toss all that stuff out of a window as well. In another room we did more tossing and it was completely dust filled...by the end of the day, I thought my lungs were coated in dust. We went through a few dust masks and we all got super heavy gloves and protective eyewear. Ryan and I made $80, but I don't think I'd be willing to do it again. I'm glad I got the experience though...so now I will never go into the construction business.

I'm not sure what happened all of last week. Not much? Trying to eat less (which didn't work today cos I had a bunch of bananas in my room) and not doing very well with current website making stuff. I'm just LAZY! ERGH! Still haven't put the new poofy shirts on my site cos my laptop can't connect to the internet right now (I'm using the communal computer each media studies hose gets...it's a nice powerful mac, although I don't know which one).

Today is Even's birthday! There's something to celebrate. Makes my day a little bit happier...but not by much. Not that today was a really BAD day, it just wasn't that exciting. Not that it ever is. What am I expecting, that a fairy will emerge in my room and start singing showtunes? That would be downright frightening.

It's frustrating to not really have anyone to talk to in real life. I know that's not really true, as everyone here is cool and would talk to me if I really wanted to, but I don't want to bother them. Last night a bunch of us were just sitting around and talking (I was half asleep on a comfy futon...not in this house, of course, which is kind of devoid of furniture) and it was kind of depressing because people were talking about things I had no experience with and am not sure if I want any experience with: alcohol, relationships, cooked food...okay, I have experiences with cooked food, but it's been a while you know? I haven't cooked anything myself in one and a half years.

God, something above my eyebrow is itchy. I hate it when that happens. I also started getting signs of my period today, which would be very alarming if I weren't on the cleanse. It has to be this cleanse since it's only been a few weeks since my last period. Arrgh...annoying. It supports the idea of menstruation that I believe in, in that it's a way to get rid of toxins and explains why so many people experience painful cramps and PMS and whatever other crap. THEY'RE FULL OF TOXINS! Get over it. That may not apply to everyone, but I believe it applies to the majority of people. And if you eat crap and have a crappy lifestyle and happen to have very painful periods, then...change something.

I could bitch some more. But it's too personal. Screw me. Lalala. I'm going to be up all night thinking about crap that doesn't matter.

I tried to teach myself some PHP today and it's fairly easy...some of it, at least. I could make a simple form. Check these out:

bad word
favorite fruit

Fun times. PHP reminds me of C++ except that now I'm not in school it doesn't scare me. C++ literally made me cry.

I had typed up a pretty long entry and then Firefox suddenly quit. By now I've learned to type everything in some external text editor, but since I'm using a mac I figured I didn't need to. Guess I was wrong. I've hardly every had program crash on me on a mac so you know...it's just my luck. Thanks. Today sucks a lot of ass. Now I wonder why I bother writing anything at all when most of the time I don't talk about the things I'm really thinking about. I don't even write about that stuff in my own paper journal. I think I'm too scared to even know what I'm thinking...

Uh. Anyway. On Thursday I went to NYU for a transfers orientation and to register for my classes. All six of em:

1. New student seminar - required, non credit class
2. Intro/food/food science - also has a lab, which is a cooking class...hehe. Nope, I don't have to cook.
3. Intro to modern chem - has a lab
4. Computers in nutrition - I might be exempt from this depending on how computer savvy I am...not very
5. Writing the essay - I heard this class is awful and it's a crapshoot whether you get a good teacher or not. I chose a teacher with an Indian name that I recognized...let's hope that doesn't screw me over.
6. Nutrition and health

I don't have classes on Monday and I only have one morning class on Friday. So I'm kind of afraid of the other three weekdays. I think I'll manage, but it'll be such a change from Vassar where I didn't have to commute anywhere (I'll practically be doing that since I'm certain I'll be living at the Water Street residence) and I only took four classes a semester. Also, nearly all my classes are in different buildings. I'm going to have to memorize how to get around Washington Square park and where all the buildings are. That shouldn't be very hard but still, it's just more stuff...to stress me out.

Besides registering for classes during the orientation, I also had to take a writing test. We had to write about the relationship between people and amusement parks, or something weird like that. I wrote an incredibly crappy essay, but I think it was semi-coherent. The school basically wants to know if we can hold a pen and if we know the English language. There were four other girls transferring into the nutrition major...woo, cool. The student who helped us get around campus was really nice and she's going to be a sophomore so I'll probably get to see her again.

I really hope that I don't get screwed over living in the city. I feel like I'm screwed all the time, or today in particular I feel screwed. Like I'll always be alone and such stuff like that. Swell. I just haven't really hung out with anyone today so I feel very much alone despite being surrounded by people. That happens a lot though...I could be in a crowd of people and feel like there isn't a person in sight. That doesn't happen much in the city though. Too many people? Hm.

I did other stuff in the city besides just go to the orientation since I had a lot of time to kill. I took a walk to the Visionaire gallery to see The Dunny Show. Those things look pretty cute online but in real life they're actually kinda scary. I also stopped by Zakka since it was close by. I got to buy the issue of Idea about Scandinavia that I've been wanting for a few months. There goes $45. While walking down West Broadway I went into a bunch of clothing stores for fun and I ended up buying two shirts from this one store.

I ate dinner at Life Thyme, consisting of a raw pizza and raw spirulina pie. Mm, now that is delicious. It was a big indulgence though, which is why I need to semi-fast now. Today and yesterday all I ate was my Ejuva cleanse herbs, water, and honey. I feel okay. So. It can't be that bad, eh? I guess it wouldn't be worth it to eat "real" food and screw up my cleanse for the moment. I can bear not eating for a few days.

Today I didn't do much besides go out for a few hours to lie by Sunset Lake and write letters and study Norwegian. Other than that I've been in my house ALL DAY LONG, and I haven't done much to show for it. I took a nap. I read. I listened to music. I'm listening to My Bloody Valentine right now. "Loveless" is a good album...dreamy and layer-ee. Another good thing (although unrelated) is Blankets by Craig Thompson. I practically read the whole book in a day (well, less than a day) but it's pretty easy. I was thinking that the story wouldn't have been that great if it were just prose, but with the drawings it was really beautiful. Or maybe I'm being too harsh because I'm not that into love type stories, but it was really good. READ IT!

So. ... ...today was kinda depressing. I went into my "Why the hell am I here and why was I born and why don't people like me?" mode. I semi hung out with some of my housemates, until they started smoking pot and the smell was unbearable. But it was nice of the dude to offer to hang out with me. I generally don't like hanging out with people though because I think I'll bother them. People almost never ask me to hang out with them, so I just get really self conscious...it doesn't help that I live in a house where nothing happens. I keep thinking about how my summer would be going if I lived in the house I was supposed to live in originally. I guess I'll never know.

I think there are a lot of things I'll never know.

Unconscious mutterings:

1. Abundance::food
2. Casino::gambling
3. Shell::turtle
4. Overpriced::money
5. Cancellation::check
6. Eternal::sunshine
7. Lyrics::music
8. Faith::religion
9. Because::i said so
10. Wimp::weak

If you told me a week ago that I would eat cookies today, I would've said you were crazy. If you told me a week ago that I would be eating meat today, I would've said you were crazy. If you told me a week ago that I would jump off a 10-story building and live to tell the tale, I would've said you were crazy. ...okay, one of those didn't actually happen, but they're all pretty crazy. So what happened in the past week that caused the official Robyn Food Liberation Craziness? A book called Health Food Junkies plus a bit of beef in my broccoli.

On Thursday night, the last day of my month-long Ejuva clease and the day after my three-day honey "fast" (during which I ate more than two pounds of honey...if you're wondering, I felt find afterwards, which tells me that honey isn't all that bad, although I wouldn't recommend you eat a few pounds of it) some of my friends decided to get Chinese take out. I like food and after eating just honey for so long I asked for some steamed broccoli. One of my friends brought me the broccoli while I was in the WVKR studio and I noticed there was other stuff mixed in with the broccoli.

"Is that...meat?" I poked at it cautiously. A brave soul tried the mystery substance, which proved to be beef. Dammit.

After I was finished with the radio show and got back to my room with the broccoli and beef bowl, I finished the broccoli and ...stared at the beef. "Meat won't kill me. I'll try it." So I did. And it tasted just like it did before. I don't think I had eaten Chinese take out beef in more than two years. I've heard raw foodists say that cooked food doesn't taste as good if you try it again after a while on a raw food diet, but if you ask me it tastes just as good, if not better because you just end up appreciating it more or because your taste is somewhat heightened. After eating all the beef, I thought, "Good lord, what have I done? I ate the meat. I ate all the meat. And it's past midnight!" The next day I felt absolutely fine. Nothing happened.

I probably wouldn't have eaten the meat (or had ordered the take out in the first place) if I hadn't read that book. I read the book in about three days (which is fast for a person like me who doesn't read much) and I think it changed my view on raw food and obsessively healthy diets in general. First off, I didn't feel so crazy about my raw food diet after reading about other people who were hopelessly controlled by their diets. Secondly, there is much more to health than just what you eat. I was missing out on the psychological factor for the most part and I think I really screwed myself over during college, especially the first semester when I was in my room most of the time, eating practically ever meal alone in front of my computer. I knew I shouldn't have been doing that, and my mum told me not to, but at the time I truly didn't want to eat out with other people. I figured I would be uncomfortable eating with other people as they ate their cooked food and what not, or I would just stare at them as they ate. To avoid such situations, I stayed in my room. Joy.

Another thing is that while I wouldn't want to admit it, I had a sense of superiority about my diet, something I shouldn't have had. I didn't look at it that way at the time, but now I do and it's kind of disturbing. I would look at what other people ate and think about how unhealthy it was or how much better my fruits and veggies were. Now I think that as long as what people eat works out for them, it's fine with me. It only bothers me when people eat unhealthy food and they question their multitude of health problems or just don't give a damn. Those superior thoughts I had in the beginning were stupid and foolish. I don't want those anymore.

Today I went to Minado with my mum and my brother. I mainly ate salad but I also tried a little bit of beef that my mum said was delicious. It was, of course. Then I looked at the dessert table and ate an array of little cakes. I hadn't had any kind of regular cake in more than 1 and a half years. So what does cake taste like after that amount of time? Absolutely delicious. I tried just about everything, repeating, "Cake is yummy. Wow. This is really good," over and over again. I don't regret eating the cake and I just felt happy for not feeling so restricted. We also went to Wegmans where I got some cookies and once again...mass deliciousness. Cookies are little patties of joy.

Eating these foods that I would not imagine eating just a week ago have changed me in some way. They've made me realize what I've been doing over the past year and a half by refusing to eat so much food and spend time with others for the sake of my physical health. I don't regret what I did on my raw food diet at all, as I think I did become much healthier, and I'd like to stay int he 50%-75% raw diet range. But I don't want to go crazy trying to be nealy 100% because it's pretty much impossible and not worth giving up certain parts of my social life (I'm already introverted and anti-social enough!). I'm not saying that a raw food diet is bad, but I think I needed to loosen up. It almost feels like being a convict who's been let out of prison.

So about the book...well I think it was great for me, a person who barely touched the surface of orthorexia nervosa. The only bad thing I can think about the book is that anyone who is a full blown orthorexic (if that's the right term) may not heed Bratman's words. I'm still skeptical about some of the things he said (of course I'm biased as a semi raw foodist) but then again, he is the doctor and he's tried all the different diets. He drove the point home that you don't have to worry about your unconventional eating habits as long as it works for you and doesn't interfere with your life to a dangerous extent, but also explained how these diets (such as macrobiotics, raw foodism, being obsessed with vitamins and supplements) can have a negative effect on your life without you really being aware of it. I was aware of what I was giving up for my diet but I didn't think it was a big deal at the time. I'm starting life anew in a way, transferring to NYU, and I don't want to miss out going to restaurants with other nutrition majors or friends or not getting to eat the stuff I make during my foods lab just cos of the raw food thing. I had to break free from the raw food mantra that "cooked food is poison" (if it were poison, wouldn't everyone be dead?), which was a bit hard to do. I really used to be afraid of eating cooked food or certain kinds of food because I thought they would make me sick or something bad would happen. "Bad" describing...something. I didn't want to find out. I didn't even want to touch grain products but they can't kill me. Not right away at least.

So I will savour the cookies. :)

So I hesitantly weighed myself yesterday to see how much weight I gained in less than a week and it came to about five pounds. Normally this would freak me out, but I expected something like that. Actually, it should freak out any normal human being but I know it's my own fault. Also, I don't want to be obsessive about it...I used to weigh myself every morning and night and a gained of half a pound would freak me out. I would try to base what I would eat that day on how much I weighed, but I didn't have willpower so that usually didn't work (people think I must've had willpower to just eat raw food but I overate fruit and nuts, so I don't think I had much willpower). So. Five pounds. What do I do about that? Nothing? For now I'm not going to do anything. I'm afraid I'm going to turn into a fat, obses man in a few years (yup, for some reason I'll become a man) and then I'll have really screwed myself over...

It's not hard to eat delicious pastries and cooked food now, but it still feels a little weird. Like "Wasn't this poison just a while ago? How am I digesting this?" I'm glad to report that over about a week of eating cooked food and many, many pastries (my diet is something like 50% pastries now, no joke) I haven't had any weird health problems. I gotta say that I get a little asthmatic when I overeat, but that would happen with raw food too. I sleep the same amount of time and am not any more hyper than usual (which is usually ...not that hyper). Sugar really doesn't do anything for me, but I crave it all the time. Damn sugar.

I'll fill you in on my crazy diet over the past few days. On Sunday I went to Whole Foods and got some yummy blondie type thing and ate leftover fruit tart from Wegmans. And I'm sure I ate lots of fruit...hopefully. On Monday I went to the Country Pancake House in Ridgewood with my brother and had the most massive, delicious pancakes ever. I've never had pancakes there before and I haven't had pancakes in a very long time. They sell four gigantic pancakes (in over 100 varieties) for $6-$8. It's frightening. They automatically give you a carry-out container because no one ever finishes. After eating the free cornbread I could barely eat one pancake. I took it home and ate it as breakfast the next day while I was in the library at school.

There's an awesome bakery/cafe right next to the school called Babycakes and I plan to go there every day I can while I'm here. If I hadn't been a raw foodist all year, I would've gone there every day, if possible. So I'm pretty glad I was a raw foodist because their bakery items are heavenly. Today I had a mint tart and it had real mint in it. That shouldn't be mindblowing, but how many times do you eat something that's mint flavored and has real mind leaves in it? Real mint tastes totally different from artificial mint (eat a mint leaf to get the real picture). It tastes refreshing and ...plant-like. :) But that was just one of the things I ate from there today. I went there for the first time yesterday before dinner and got a small carrot cake and a scone. Both = deliciousness. I went to dinner with Nathalie, Tom, and one of Nathalie's friends to an Indian restaurant. I haven't had Indian food in a really long time, as they generally don't have anything raw. I stuck to the vegetarian entrees and my vegetable curry and rice was delicious. If I had my own choice though, I'd just eat fruit and pastries for dinner. Or for the rest of my life.

I went to Babycakes this morning for breakfast. For your information, I never ate breakfast even before I was a raw foodist. But...I couldn't resist. This place has awesome breakfast food. Tom came with me and I felt kind of bad because I told him to be up and ready to leave at 8:30 or I'd leave without him. My consciouness stirred up at 8:20 this morning because I forgot to turn on my alarm. That's the second time this whole summer I forgot to set my alarm. Dammit. I got ready in about 10-15 minutes and at 8:35, Tom was at the door...ah! Of course, no big deal but I felt bad for being the "puctuality is key!" person and then being late myself. I had counted on Tom being late because he never wakes up that early and I always do!

At Babycakes I had rocky mountain oatmeal, which is kind of like this oatmeal loaf. All the oatmeal goodness without the vomit-esque consistency. I don't like oatmeal mainly because of the texture; oatmeal cookies or dry granola type stuff is fine with me. The oatmeal was warm, soft, and deeeelicious. There was fresh fruit on it and a yogurt topping. After eating the whole thing, I felt...not overstuffed, which I guess is good. Tom had stuffed french toast and seemed to be really full after that. I want to try it tomorrow and see if I get stuffed, hehe. I bought a chocolate chip cookie to eat when I got back to my room (so, so good) and the mint tart. We bought a coffee and scone for Nathalie since she was still sleeping. I also made a Poofy for her last night, so she got a nice surprise in the morning...although Poofy ate some of her scone. *cough*

At around 11AM, a bunch of us media summer studies people went to Innisfree Garden for a little field trip brought together by Bert. He brought picnic food and I ate a lovely fruit salad...er, lots of fruit for lunch. I also tried...*gasp*, POTATO CHIPS. The ingredients didn't seem to know what kind of oil was in them, but I figured I should only be really worried if there was a question mark next to the ingredient. I've decided that potato chips are filled with crack because I'm not even a chip-snack person and I couldn't stop eating the damn things.

We walked around the garden for for about an hour, which ran along the perimeter of a huge lake. It was a really nice place that a lot of people probably don't know about. It's kind of weird because it's laid out but at the same time not laid out. ...yeah, that's not confusing, eh? There were water fountains misting water everywhere at some random points and lots of stepping stones. And of course, loads of plants. There were also lots of chairs although I couldn't imagine the place being crowded enough for them to get much use. I didn't see anyone sitting in them besides the people in my group.

Yay for sunshine and minimal exercise. When we got back to school, I went to the library to print more Poofy coloring books (20, which is 80 pieces of paper) and attempt to get some work done. I'm really screwed with my project cos...I need to do more of it. And yesterday I decided I didn't like the current design so much, so I worked on a new color scheme. ...

Oh yes, how could I forget? The big project this week was my Poofy book, which is now finished but not ready to sell. I'm not going to make it public on Lulu.com because I left the speech bubble blank on the cover so I could write different things. Here's the back cover. I filled out a form about buying in bulk because I'd like to get a discount on 150 copies, but I haven't heard back from them yet. That really worries me because I only have three weeks to get them before the convention. I'll probably have to use a lot of express shipping options. Hopefully it'll all even out since i'm buying 150 copies. So even if shipping costed $150, then that'd only be an extra dollar per book. ...hm. I wonder how much that would weigh.

I received an e-mail today about this raw food program. Uh huh...great. I don't think that would've helped me, but I just thought it was funny I got that today. :)

Oh, I'm not done talking about the foodie adventures! Uh...I went back to Babycakes for dinner. ;D I went alone time time and had a great black bean hummus wrap and an oatmeal cookie. Altogether I think it was about $6. Yay. And when I got back to my room I had the yummy mint tart. Food = so so good. I wish I could live in Babycakes.

...okay, now I'm done talking about my food adventures. By next entry I'll probably have gained five more pounds. HAHA...okay, that's frightening. It's nice that I can go to places with other people and eat with them now. It's such a difference from the isolation I experiences during school, not that I was necessarily locked in a cage, but life is much more fun this way. I honestly didn't realize how obsessed I was with the raw food diet and what raw foodist propaganda had filled my head beforehand. I used to look down at people for eating crap, and now look at me...I'm eating the crap! ;D I'm sorry if I ever made anyone uncomfortable about their diets, that wasn't my intention. If you think you may have orthorexia, figure out if your current diet is worth it. I honestly don't think I know anyone with orthorexia...does food cause you to not do certain activities or see certain people? Or do...stuff? That was me. I had nearly every symptom, except for number 10 (however, I still do number 2). Anyone who knows me well enough probably knows that I didn't hang out with people very much, except for my mum. And as for social activities, I hardly did those. I'm trying to care equally about the virtue and pleasure of what I eat (right now, it's more about the pleasure).

I still think that just eating raw food makes the most sense. I know cooking food is a human thing and humans aren't like other animals in many ways, but biologically we're not totally different. We live in a strange world though. And cookies taste really good.

Good lord, I need to update this thing more so you can feel my horror. Alright, I must admit that horror would be being locked in a small cage in the middle of the jungle while having your legs cut off by...something. Something you'd find in a jungle. A tiger. Wait, tigers can't cut off things. Well something in the jungle that can cut off things. ...okay, I have just been alarmed that there are cookies. The sugar is getting to my brain. What the HELL am I talking about? Can you see how i'm going crazy about things? I say this a lot but I mean it this time: my brain is made of mush. So very mushy. So much mush. In my head. Under my skull. Fraternizing with the gray matter, if any still exists.

Too much food. Please. I'm being serious and un-serious at the same time when I saw that I need my stomach pumped and a way to not eat when I am not hungry. I don't think I've been hungry for three days, yet I keep eating. I know, I'm not hungry because I AM eating, but I wasn't all that hungry before I started eating. What does this mean? It means I suck and I officially need my mouth to be sewn shut before I eat the entire cookie population. I think I'm getting a little better at this not-eating-buttloads-of-carbs thing but this morning I ate a lot of graham crackers and today I ate half a box of...graham crackers. And a granola bar. Basically stuff I never really ate when I was a cooked food eater, yet decided to pick up today at the health food store because the boxes were going "Buy usss...even though you will regret it...buyyyy" or maybe I was hallucinating, which is another possibility. Never rule out hallucinations. They're your friends. I mean...they suck. What? Yes.

So this food thing. I've been eating a lot in the past week and I'm sure by now my weight has gone up another five pounds, but I'm too scared to find out. You have to gouge out my organs (or do a less gruesome operation) to unearth them from my cookie-laden body and see how they're doing. How you doing, little buddies? My organ buddies? Yeah? Okay. Now I'm talking to my organs. Something must be done. Something involving a psychiatrist and a donkey.

I'm currently wearing pants I've had since 8th grade. They fit fine, but they're getting tighter. They shouldn't get tighter because I was fatter in 8th grade and I haven't grown much since then. I mean, I haven't grown at all. I don't think I could pass as an 8th grader but still, I'm a small person and should weigh at least 10 pounds less (less than...I won't say) considering I'm about 5 feet tall. I know I sound obsessed but I can't help it and you know what, I can't help it. I just said that, didn't I?

Honestly. What. The. Hell. Yesterday I bought a ridiculous amount of Chinese take out and ended up giving half of it to a friend. Today I got a lunch sized portion...much better. I also got a great hazelnut chocolate cake thing from Babycakes and all that junk from the health food store and now my stomach is huge. I took a nap for a few hours after dinner (brown rice and broccoli in garlic sauce, ooh mm mm mm). I'm turning into one of...them. THEM! Those people that need to sleep after they eat! And my sleep cycle is pretty much screwed...I tend to go to bed at 3 AM and wake up at 7:45 AM to take a shower and then I end up at the library kinda early because I have no life...

...except I need to finish this thingy. Yeah, you heard me...thingy. The thingy that I was supposed to work on all summer except things got a little backtracked when we couldn't actually do anything. The site looks a lot better on an apple than on my laptop. ARRGH IT'S SHITTY but...ARGH! I basically have two days left to make it suck less and then I'm going to be gone from Vassar forever, kind of. To frolick in the city and eat more crap, hell yeah.

I am serious. About. ...nevermind. I don't know. I need to stop eating. At once. Fasting is not such a bad thing. People cringe at the idea of not eating more than "Hey, I am gorging myself to death on food I didn't even really eat before...oh, and I want to fast." People GASP and go "NOOO NOO you will ruin your life you freeeak!" and I get confused because I have no idea what I just said. Something's wrong with the air here, methinks. It's in the 60s and it's JULY! CRAP.

This weekend I went home and hung out with my brother and his friend Everlyn and her brother Edward, whom we went to school with in Taiwan. I don't remember Edward but he remembered me. Odd? I haven't changed much in the 6 year time period that we hadn't seen each other though and apparently he grew a foot. Or two. Anyway, that was much fun. I just finished the leftover pancakes that we got on Saturday. No more pancakes. I can't handle them. Or any food. Or...I don't know, I'm freaking out here. Someone someone someone please tell me how to stop eating so much because I need to know.

I've been reading this book about how regular food makes your kids idiotic and fidgety and such, so I started wondering why I was never a dumbass in grade school despite not eating breakfast and not eating so great overall. I did eat better than most people though. Didn't eat lots of...sandwiches and weird meat or pastries in boxes. I ate lots of rice. Rice. I guess rice isn't that bad for you after all. But I never ate breakfast and I don't think kids should eat breakfast unless they're hungry. I must've had a better grip on hunger when I was little. I don't think I even ate a whole lot, but I was FAT, trust me. God knows what's happening...I spent the past two years trying to lose 25 pounds, which I had done after one year and now I think I've gained back half of it. Two years is like a 10th of my life! Did I waste that? AARGH!

I've been watching buttloads of Gilmore Girls lately because my brother lent me the DVD set (yes, my brother) and I need to do something while I make poofies. Is it just me or does that show revolve around food and relationships? The Gilmores eat complete crap (of course, they look healthy...!) and they eat a lot, or else you wouldn't get to see Luke so much, and they have that dinner every Friday night. And there's Sookie cooking the food and such. And. Wow, there is so much food in that show. And relationships. But not the kind that make me feel like puking, at least not all the time. Sometimes it might be puke inducing but you know...whatever. It's a funny show. Me like. And I've only seen the first season, not even all of it! Is Rory in college already? What the hell! The other DVDs better come out sometime soonish.

I've been thinking about relationship related things this weekend and it's crazy-go-nuts. ...but I can't say much else about it. It's PERSONAL! Of course, this is my blog where I talk about such things as...exploding stomachs. But there are some things that I can't talk to anyone about, and it absolutely kills me. KILL! DEATH! Deathie.

I want a cookie.

The title is self explanatory. I've decided the only way for me to stop eating is to either become an anorexic or have someone pay me to stop eating. It's more likely someone would pay me to stop eating than for me to become anorexic, so don't worry about that. It's just OUTTA CONTROL! ARRGH! I'm not hungry now but I'm thinking of eating dumplings. What kind of weird foodie disorder do I have? I knew I was in trouble when I tried on a pair of pants I haven't worn in months; I barely fit into it and it's too uncomfortable to wear. Last year it was loose. Yes...loose. That pair of pants used to be tight before I lost all that weight about 1.5-2 years ago. Did I just screw myself over? Probably. I hate how I can't stop thinking about food and how I'm blowing it all out of proportions compared to real problems in the world. Like hey, at least I'm not pregnant or a coke-head or afflicted with AIDs (some people probably have all three...good lord, that's scary) but I can't stop thinking: what's in mah INTESTINES? I should think about how my intestines are totally clogged with junk right now but it's not working...

So I'm trying to weigh the physical crapness against the mental crapness. I wasn't really depressed as a raw foodist but maybe I was able to bury all the stress deeeep down when I hung around people eating cooked food. Telling people it didn't bother me was a lie. It must've been. But I didn't notice it so much. At least I felt lighter because I was lighter. And now I've got physical and mental crapness, but I was really happy initially...before feeling preggers (I like the word "preggers" and shall use it whenever I can).

Sorry I am ranting so much about this stupid stuff. I'd have to be really sick to stop eating and I haven't hit that point yet. It just bothers me when friends say, "Robyn, food is good, don't be afraid of food, you should eat food," and then later go, "Robyn, stop...you're crazy." Today my mum said maybe I should just be afraid of food. I have to pick my poison. So yeah. I'm considering it.

Anyhoo, I am at home now! No more Vassar for me. It's kind of sad, but I had a great time this summer. I forgot to thank Ken...aah! Okay, I shall do that. He got me a job in the second semester and "made" me work during the summer. I'm forever grateful. I said goodbye to everyone and did a lot of hugging before heading back to Jersey. It's weird to think that I might never see Jeremy again, but I'm sure I'll see Anna and other MSSI people who don't have websites sometime. And my mum would like to go back to the Poughkeepsie area to stop by Babycakes and the Culinary Institute. Mm.

Yesterday I brought my mum to Babycakes and we ate yumyum stuff. I had a delicious waffle covered with whipped cream and something like vanilla pudding and my mum had a mozzerella and pesto sandwich. We also bought lots of pastries to bring home (which by now have all been eaten). I got an ice cream cone on the way out that was very good, but has reinstated the fact that ice cream is not so good for me. I think. Either that or being in Jersey isn't good for me. It seems like ice cream causes my body to go into mucus-production overdrive. Cheese never does that, so I guess it's not just a dairy thing. I have yet to drink a glass of milk though. Anyway, I suppose ice cream is really out for me now that this has happened twice. Last night I got some weird allergic reaction to something as well; itchy eyes and stuffy nose. Physical problems suck. This is why I did raw food in the first place...I should go back. Yes. Why is it so hard? Where's my brain? MY BRAIN!

Another weird physical problem I've found is that my blood doesn't want to stay in their tubes. Stay in your tubes, your tuuuubes! There's a bruies on my arm and another one behind my knee that look weird and blotchy. I'm sure they're not the result of banging into anything because they just appeared...maybe. Erghy.

On Thursday I was in this awful mood in the morning because of DAMN FOOD! A dinner was planned that night at the Beech Tree Girll for all the MSDP people (food that I don't have to pay for = good) but I wasn't sure if I should go. Let's see, eat a lot and get fat and spent time with friends or stay in the crapy TH and not spend time with friends but be less fat, maybe? I need to get my priorities straight. Jeremy thinks I've got major food issues and I agree. Hohum! So I did go to dinner with everyone and I had a great time. I seemed to be the only one who didn't feel like puking after dinner (because the food was yummy and people ate loads) which..frightened people because I ate everything. Jeremy was about to puke before dessert so I told him in all seriousness to order a dessert so I could eat two. Conveniently, his hunger came back so he could eat his dessert. Then he went back to feeling like death and wanting to lie down in bed and digest/die. HAR HAR!

Thursday night was my last show on WVKR and it was great. I played two requests and chatted with a buttload of people. Mainly friends, but yeah...it's all good. I dedicated a song to Diana and another to Cristen and I chatted with Ian and that was a run-on sentence. I got a phone call from a guy near the end of my show saying that he really liked it and that he was just hanging out with some friends listening to the radio. ...then he requested a Modest Mouse song, which is the second time someone did that. I have nothing against Modest Mouse but I've never listened to their music AND the first time someone requested them I couldn't find any of their CDs. Screw me. Oh well, fun show. I was getting kinda used to being on the radio too...boohoo.

Thursday night also marked some kind of dance for the SIG kids. It was bizarre because it's usually dead quiet in the college center during my radio show, not infiltrated with screaming teens and Britney Spears. It reminded me of middle school, which is...not cool.

I'm going to make a small list of cool things from the summer that won't make sense to anyone, but it's amazing that I have enough material to make a list out of. An....UNORDERED LIST! BWAHAHA! ...I dunno why I said that. I'm weird. Help:

• making friends
• Anna-cookies
• the Ken song
• sitting on a couch while watching Fahrenheit 9/11
• Babycakes
• teaching people CSS
• setting up blogs
• WVKR
• finishing the Poofy book
• Jeremy, DeVan, Tom, Nathalie, Anna

I'd say more but I don't want to complain about eating. Hm. Well. Pasta + pesto = mm. Actually, anything + pesto = mm.

:)

...and when I say "agreement", I mean something food related. This week has been hell, food-wise. To backtrack, yesterday I ate so much food I thought I was going to puke while the day before I stuffed myself with so much fruit that I thought I was going to explode in a shower of peach goo (ate something like 11 peaches, among other things). The day before I probably overate...something. If you've been reading my Livejournal (probably friends-protected entries, sorry) then you've read the never ending documentation of my whining and bitching. Wee!

I was planning to go to Minado on Friday as a treat for making it thoughout the week without killing myself, but I went yesterday instead. I weighed myself and found that I had indeed gained 10 pounds since starting to eat cooked food, but I thought it'd be worse so my family went out. I ate a lot. I don't really regret it...I think it was something I just had to get over with to decide was a bad idea. I went to Minado the first or second day on cooked food and it was fun. Now it's not so fun. I'm not even ...morbidly obese or sickly (well, I'll get to the sickly part soon) but I feel like I was a human being a few weeks ago and now I am a giant human-shaped waste-bin of crap. I don't mean to offend any fat people, but...my god, how do you feel? I mean, yesterday was the turning point for me. Ish. Not a full 360 and not because of the fat thing or else I would've stopped earlier, but because I realized why I did raw food in the first place.

My health apparently sucks compared to the average person. I am not the average person and I have to face that. The average person drinks soda, drinks coffee, eats ice cream, pizza, fries...I know not EVERYONE does that but you can't disagree with me here, eh? I eat fruit, veggies, pastries, and bread for a while, not bad quality, not really bad food, but I was hit with some scary-bad asthma and mucus-filled nose probablems last night. Now for those of you who have never had asthma (and I forgot I had it for the past two years or so), it sucks. That thing you like to do refered to as "breathing" becomes a bit of a chore and you wish you could stop, but if you stopped that would mean loss of bodily function and possibly a trip to the funeral home in the near future. As I would like to live for a little longer, perhaps until I get my first kiss by a member of the opposite sex that I'm not related to, I'm not willing to die anytime soon. My asthma has never been bad enough to kill me but I'm horrified and relieved at the same time that it came back so quickly.

My body sucks. But it's telling me to stop eating crap, or at least eat less of it. I ate less today than yesterday, but a horse could have accomplished the same feat (I wouldn't bet good money on it though). Now all I need to do is listen to what my body said and deal with it. What did I eat today? Unfortunately, not an optimum meal plan:

• 7 slices of bread (it's official: I cannot eat bread anymore. I finished the loaf I bought yesterday from the Korean supermarket (from a Japanese bakery). I must be eating it just cos I never ate it in the past. Even when I ate cooked food my family was never accustomed to keeping loaves of bread around; I was an English Muffin kind of gal. No bagels, muffins, donuts, or bread...just English Muffins for some reason.)
• a lot of cherries (and when I say a lot, I mean a lot.)
• 3 nectarines
• 2 mini red bean paste buns

It could've been worse. I mean, it's not even that bad, besides the 7 slices of bread, which didn't have very bad ingredients and was from an actual bakery (in addition to the mini red bean paste buns). At least it didn't have "WONDERBREAD" stamped on the bag, mmkay? Well! Anyway. I'm totally stuffed and got more of the asthma-ee feelings, so I think I need to cut out the bread at the very least. I still want to cling onto the desserts, unless I find out that my lungs have completely shut off, in which case I'd be willing to give them up. Am I allowed to have a vice? It's not like I do drugs or drink...I want my cakies! :(

Hey, I haven't had cookies since...well, it hasn't been that long I guess. But still! It's been a few days. Wee.

Something I want to get off my chest...I'm not talking to anyone in particular here (actually, this doesn't apply to most of you) but while I know my friends have the best intentions telling me that food is good and that it's not something to be afraid of (I agree with that), I personally cannot just eat anything I want. Because then I get that barrage of health problems I was blisfully unaware of during my raw food stint. Which was great. The social isolation was not so great, but the lungs and nose actually working bit was nice. So I know you're not trying to kill me when you say, "Robyn, you can eat that," because maybe I can't. Maybe my lungs will collapse. Not cool. Most people can eat whatever they want and not get weird health conditions but I'm not one of them and I have to face that. It sucks. And really, no one ever joke about getting me to smoke or drink because I think that would actually kill me. ;)

This morning I went to NYC with Cristen in the hopes of seeing The Boy From Oz or Avenue Q but they wree both sold out. Doooh! We entered a lottery for Avenue Q they hold for every show in which they give away 12 tickets for a discounted price, but we obviously didn't get that. Man, it's cutthroat getting Broadway tickets now. I haven't been to a show in a few years and it seems like they're a lot more expensive than before. I went to see Riverdance once, getting really cheap seats because I figured...why not (I've seen the show three times and sat in three different areas, hehe). I think the tickets were around $20 and while we sat in the back, we had a great view of everything. Money well spent, I think. Anyway, even Avenue Q, which as far as I could tell consists of lots of puppets (and their puppeteers and the orchestra) costs in the $90 range for nearly every seat. You can also get $40-something for the rear mezzaning, but who wants that? Makes going to concert seems less of an expense now.

I've been making lots of buttons with my button maker. WOO BUTTONS!

Sadly, the food drama never ends. I keep creating all this food related stress for myself and I don't know what to do. I could go to a doctor and ask How come I can eat so much and not puke? but I'd rather not. Eating has being almost this entirely mental exercise in self-control...but not. I know myself well enough to not buy large quantities of food, lest I desire eating two pounds of grapes (I did that a few days ago; the lesson is to never buy a whole bag of grapes). I don't know why I can control what I eat so easily yet find it nearly impossible to control how much I eat. Last night after midnight I ate two apples in addition to the three or four I ate earlier. Today I ate three apples at lunch time, which gave me a slight tummy ache (apples give me aches sometimes, but I don't know why). Now I've decided I shouldn't eat apples anymore because right now I don't have a great desire to eat. In addition to that, I don't have any food and am too lazy to walk to Chinatown to get some even though it's only about a 15 minute walk. Maybe I'm better off just staying in my room for the rest of the night. May as well, I have homework and no one to hang out with. And I don't want to hang out with anyone if ti involved FOOD, which is funny cos that's what I did just a week ago, eh? Eh.

I went home last night and came back this afternoon. Now my kitchen is more well stocked than before, except for a few strange things, like a full set of silverware but only one plate (I'm supposed to buy more at some...point. Maybe hit up K-mart or just wander around Chinatown). I also brought a Swiffer. Oo yes, the Swiffer has de-dusted and de-haired my room. Awesome. I love the Swiffer. Also got a huge pot suitable for making pasta (which I won't do) or steaming veggies (which I will do). And a new bottle of extra virgin olive oil will give me fat. ...no, I don't drink it, I put it on food, but I don't have any food so I guess today I will get NO FAT and my brain will deteriorate.

As you can tell, I don't really have anything against eating fat. I'm against eating crappy fat though, which is probably what most people eat. Since all I ate today were apples I know my diet was nutritionally unbalanced, but it's only been one day. No biggie. Tomorrow I'll get stuff, unless I'm too lazy.

I think for now I'm best off eating a fruit and veggie diet (and oil, maybe some minimal seasonings). As for going back to all raw, I don't know about that since I don't really want to eat raw broccoli. I found out I don't digest carrots well, whether they're raw or cooked. Actually, I probably don't digest any starchy food well, so I'm cutting those out for now. So. I'll eat most fruits and veggies. Probably not nuts unless I'm really craving fat. No dried fruit cos they're too...much. On Friday I ate two containers of figs, and the second one resulted in my tongue feeling like it had been horribly burned (some of my taste buds bled for a little while). No more figs. They weren't ripe enough but a fig would half to be nearly rock hard for me to not eat it. It's easier just to exclude them altogether.

I've cut out so much food, but it's still hard to not eat so much. I tried on some pants I wore less than a year ago and I can't fit into them at all. So I have to lose weight or not wear those pants. I'd like to wear those pants, but I probably won't lose enough weight to wear em until January. I do have other pants, I just don't want to buy any more clothing to compensate for my gluttony. Cos that'd be...kinda stupid. Yup.

Yesterday during chem lab, one of the TAs told my partner and I about a mooncake get together the Chinese club on campus was holding due to the Moon Festival. I also got an e-mail from the Taiwanese club about a mooncake get together they're having (in my own DORM). Yesterday I seriously though about going to the Chinese club mooncake thing, but after eating all those apples (also ate lots of veggies yesterday and some Raweo cookies my mum bought) I decided I can't. First off, I really can't eat mooncake because it'll be like opening a dam (at least, that's what I'm predicting, but I'd rather not try and find out). I didn't even know about a Moon Festival...I'm sure I took part in some celebration while living in Taiwan but it's been six years since I've lived there, so I forgot. I havent' celebrated in any Chinese related thing since then. Chinese holidays are craploads of fun if you ask me, but like any major holiday they like to focus on food. Mooncakes aren't evil, but I don't think I should allow myself to indulge in that. I've been indulging nearly all summer and I think it should stop. It almost makes me want to cry but it won't help me if I keep going on...

I feel stupid thinking about this stuff so much when there are much more serious things that people have to deal with. Like...having a place to live, going to school, being able to buy food, having clean water.

Oh well. Ergh, life. I could say more but it'd all come out stupid anyway.

Eating dinner while reading the food and drink section of the latest NY Press may not have been one of my best ideas. As you probably know, my brain is 50% air (or possibly jello) and the other 50% is obsessed with food. As for the 0% dedicated towards other things, like respiratory function and walking, well...I can't explain everything.

My diet for the past two weeks or so has been sans meat, dairy, and grains. Almost soy free too except one day when I ate something that had soy cheese in it. Today was my first day without any nuts as well, except for the day I only ate three apples all day (resulting in some weird apple/fasting hangover the next morning). I feel fine physically but mentally I feel like I'm missing out on a lot, ie, great little restaunts of which there are 5.2 gazillion of in the city. It aches me to read about numerous dumpling places. Dumplings = ooh yes. I don't know if I'm more attached to them because I'm Chinese but obviously craploads of non-Asians like dumplings. Actually, how could you NOT like dumplings? It's unthinkable.

Anyhow, way back when (as in more than two years ago) my mum and I used to make our own dumplings together. Much fun was had. They probably wouldn't have garnered any attention in a restaurant but food tastes better mentally after putting all that work into making them. We usually used pre-made wrappers but once we made them from scratch. Didn't come out as great as we would have liked (hell-o malformed dumplings!) but those were good too.

I digressed a bit there. Anyhoo, haven't made dumplings or anything of any culinary expertise (not that chopping a bunch of ingredients, food processing them, and putting them in little wrappers is difficult) in ages. For the past five days I've been steaming veggies, which to me might be easier than using a microwave. When I used to use microwaves (two or more years ago) it was hard to get my food the right temperature. I'd usually end up with some ridiculously hot dish that would cool off too quickly (dude, microwaves aren't good). Steaming is so easy; five minutes starting from the point that I turn on the stove is all it takes to steam my broccoli and green beans.

So that's what I've been eating for the past five days. Broccoli. Had some bok choy as well. Also threw in some green beans because I love them. I have no seasoning besides oil, so I've been eating steamed veggies and oil. Oh, of course I've been eating copious amounts of fruit, way too much but it's better than overeating bread (which I would be prone to doing if I weren't afraid of eating bread now, as it seems to trigger my asthma). I had a pound of almonds that I bought on Sunday but finished it in 4 days. I overeat nuts very easily, which is much more dangerous than overeating fruit, so I'm cutting it out. For now, at least.

Here's what I've eaten today (so far):

• 9 plums
• 4 persimmons
• 2 heads of broccoli
• 1-2 cups of green string beans

Yup. It's a lot of fruit. I'd eat more than 9 plums but that's all I had. Persimmons are absolutely delicious. I like them most when they're not ripe yet...crunchy and easy to peel with a knife. If they're too mushy to be peeled with a knife, that's fine too. The worst is when they're halfway crunchy and mushy so peeling them with a knife gets your hands all covered with persimmon goo and...it's not as good. But that's a personal preference. I spent $5 today on persimmons and plums for the day's total food expense.

I'm getting more obsessed with restricting my diet (because so many foods seem to give me gas beyond what I think any human should have to endure and skin eruptions and ...well, it's not cool) while at the same time reading about restaurants and such filled with food I can't really eat. I'm not deathly allergic to anything but giving in to any small treat would seem pointless. It would be such a fleeting happiness. I almost equate food to illicit drugs; to me, a lot of it is addictive (I can give it up easily though, in a way) and bad for my health. While walking through Chinatown I wanted to die seeing all the people with their moon cakes and passing by dumpling houses and stalls selling rice flour buns.

I need the restriction because otherwise I'd give into all those temptations. It's true. There are a lot of things I may not know about myself but some things I DO know are that I can eat a ridiculous amount of food and without restruction I can give into desires for chocolate, cake, cookies, pudding, etc. I haven't eaten any of those foods in weeks but you should've seen me when I first started eating cooked food (oh, 15 pounds ago). Crazy bakery raiding, many cookies lost lives, that kind of thing.

I guess it would make sense to just change my habits and not eat so much but for some reason it's easier for me to completely cut out some than to just eat a little bit of it. I tell people any food in moderation is basically okay. I can't do moderation. People may find the idea of overeating fruit funny, but I've done it. I'm doing it today, at least. Something I know about myself is that I feel a lot better if i don't eat lots of food, but I do it anyway. I just have to control what foods I eat.

God, I hate this.

...um. So on a happier note, Magnet is going to play some dates in NYC! If I were in Vassar I'd have to get my bum on a train down here. So thank god I'm already here. Anyhoo, buy his album if you don't already have it, mm kay? Good. This is all I have to look forward to, but it's a lot better than...nothing.

Okay, I don't have NOTHING to look forward to. I'm going to the Creativity Now conference this weekend. Stag. Not that you need to go to something that only requires sitting with other people. I might meet up with an Internet friend though, which would be cool. Sunday night is the Franz Ferdinand concert at which the Delays are NOT playing, I am all sad. FF is nice and all (just got their album yesterday and am listening to it now) but I really like the Delays. I've never been to a bad concert though, should be fun!

I have school work, but I tend to ignore it. Doh.

And as for school, I've been thinking about what I'm doing. Or what I want to do with life, which is what everyone thinks about but eh. Is food studies right for me? Is COLLEGE right for me? I guess I have no choice about college but I don't know if there's something I have a great passion for. If there is, I should pursue that. Screw everything else. I enjoy learning about nutrition but I have all these ideas about it that seem to conflict with popular ideas. Having so many little health problems myself, I don't think I'd make a good nutritionist. And then I have all these food issues that plague me every day. Being a semi-cooked food eater is almost worse than being a raw foodist.

I don't know what I have a passion for. The things I like don't see like things I can do for a living. Or I can screw all my food hangups and open a pudding shop. Or write comics like I should. Or design more buttons. Or learn more about making websites so I can do that and actually feel competant.

I don't know. I'm not using my resources to my best advantage and I'm lazy. I could be worse, but...I don't know. Not being able to find one's place is irritating.

So I'm sitting in my room on this possibly lovely Sunday afternoon. I wouldn't know because I haven't been outside yet. I went to bed at around 6 AM and woke up at 1:30 PM, although I had an unrestful night for some reason. I woke up at 9 AM to change from my shorts into long pants, which helped a bit. It's not even that cold...what's wrong with me?

[takes a peek outside]...it's cloudy. Lovely. I suppose I'm best off staying inside in my pajamas then. I'm trying to get work done, and I'm being semi-successful. I'm also trying to eat less, which has been working pretty well over the past few days, even despite the 12 ounces of granola I ate within a 24 hour period (aka, about 1200 calories). When I say I can't buy large amounts of food because I will eat it all (I ate most of the package within a few hours) I really mean it. I rarely go to supermarkets, but I wanted to go to one near my dorm with Mary that I had never been to before. It's a nice supermarket (Jubilee) but too tempting. :(

Food. Still having food issues as always, but I'm losing weight! Thank god. So I'm at about the same level as I was a few months ago, which isn't great but better than where I was a few years ago. My aim is still to fit into my pants that I wore last year, which wouldn't be a big deal for most people but I gained about 20 pounds over the past year. Uncool. Damn pants!

Today I ate two persimmons. As in, that's all I ate. I wouldn't recommend this in the long run but for one day when I'm essentially expending nil energy (I know I burn something like 1000 calories just by sitting here all day...meh). My plan is to eat persimmons for a few days, just enough so that I don't die from carbohydrate deficiency.

I'm still happy, but sad too. Oh well.

I want to go back to sleep.

I like sleep. Honestly, I do. So why am I still awake when I should be enjoying the normal human activity of sleeping? I have no clue.

Today was pretty long, as every Tuesday is. I had my chem midterm this morning: easy. Phew. And when I saw easy, I mean 6th graders could've probably done it. I left class about 40 minutes early so I decided to catch the shuttle back to Water Street. However, I had to be back to school by 12:30 as opposed to 2 because I was supposed to go to the new student convocation. Yeah, it's the middle of October and my school decided it would be a good time to have the new student convocation. I have no idea why. Anyhoo, that time crunch sucked ass because I decided I had to go to Chinatown to get lunch (not really the best idea) and the weather today is about a nice as...well, it's super craptastic. I mean, it could be wose but if it had downpoured I wouldn't have even though of going to Chinatown. It seemed a lot farther in the rain (15-20 minute walk) and my pants were getting nicely undried. At least I could've worn my waterproof jacket but instead I used my umbrella, which turned inside out every now and then because of crazy ass winds. Those winds hate my poor brolly.

So I did get food. I spent $3.10, which isn't so bad. As in, that's all I spent today on food. I first bought a black bean bun from a bakery on Mott Street that I had never bought anything from before. I tend to only buy stuff from Fay Da Bakery or Tai Pan Bakery but I realized I'd pass a bakery every 10 seconds or so (it's not that far fetched: Chinatown is a giant sausage overstuffed with bakeries), thus my new quest is to try all of em. Maybe. I mean, I don't have to try the same chain in two locations, although I'd probably forget after a while. Anyhoo, the black bean bun from the place I went to (possible Golden Fung Wong Bakery Shop) was a very yummy slice of heaven for $0.60. It's still be good even if it were $1. Now I feel like $1.25 is a rip off for a cupcake when I could get soft sweet little bean buns for so much less. ...of course, I have no idea what they put in em, but at least they made em there. Maybe I've been MSG-ed.

After the bakery I went to my favorite little bun/dim sum place on Grand Street and got two spring rolls and a mystery product. Well, not really a mystery but it was described as sticky rice with pork and pickled cabbage, or something like that. I figured, hey I'll try that! And then I realized what it was...it's that deep fried bread surrounded in sticky rice with teeny tiny bits of other stuff in it, in this case a teaspoon of pork and cabbage. Haha. I'm sure spring rolls and fried bread and sticky rice are extremely unhealthy (although maybe not as unhealthy as McDonalds) so maybe tomorrow I'll shape up. Or not.

By this time it was too late for me to walk back to Water St and get the shuttle, so I decided to walk back to school. It's only about 20 minutes but in the rain and such, it feels like death. Thankfully I was listening to On Your Side (I ALWAYS listen to that when I walk in Chinatown, at least I have been for the past...bagillion days). It makes the walk feel less craptacular. :)

The new student convocation was really pointless, in my opinion. A lot of people showed up, but I don't know if all the people from my group were there. It was just...I dunno, I was annoyed that I had to go. It's nice that they put something together but it would've made more sense to do it earlier in the year.

In my food and society something or other class we watched Super Size Me! WOO! I saw it before back in May but it was cool to see again, if anything to make me eat more healthy (despite that, I want to eat sorbet today). Honestly, I need to eat more veggies...I never buy frozen vegetables but I do like peas. Today in my lab my group made peas n stuff and it came out quite good!

Ah yes, lab...well, I always think it will be a disaster but it wasn't so bad today. I SUCK at cooking meat (hello tough chewy pork!) but at least I did it. And now I know it only takes a few seconds to sautee pork. Grilling...eh, I think I screwed it up. I was supposed to pat my pork patty dry and I just plopped it on the grill after I marinated it. I'm going to assume that's why it didn't brown correctly. Nancy, my other group member, made awesome potato pancakes. The other member, Krish, made...stuff. Stuff that tasted better than my stuff, haha. I'm convinced that I make the worst food. It's edible, but it tends to suck. I don't like meat a whole lot anyway. And is it just me or does pork taste like chicken? Okay, a lot of things taste like chicken...

I burned the roof of my mouth last Tuesday and further burned it last Thursday. Today it's been hurting somewhat madly, as in worse than before. It has a weird taste to it that I can't describe, but I don't think it means my mouth is happy. I'm going to scope out some vitamin C today because I swear when something's wrong, I just take vitamin C and it tends to help. That, or calcium. Maybe I'll get both. After I pay a visit to the ATM.

Today and yesterday I met up with Stephanie and her boyfriend Tristan who visited NYC from Oberlin College for their fall break. I've been Internet friends with Stephanie since 8th grade so it was great to finally get to meet her. Being quite unsocial, it was nice to have a reason to go out and to actually hang out with people, even if just for a few days...dammit. They are awesomely cool funny odd people. :)

So most of what we did involved fooding and walking, but the occasional sliding occured as well. I'll get to that later. Yesterday night we went to Sweet N Tart for dinner. I had egg noodles with veggies and mushrooms, which was pretty good. We roamed around Chinatown a bit and got stuff at a bakery (because I just had to). Earlier for dinner I had also gone to Chinatown for lunch though and ...eh, ate a lot. I went on East Broadway and spent $4 on an egg custard tart, a melon cake patty, 6 mini pork buns, a vegetable sandwich, and four persimmons. Yeah, it's a lot of food for $4! Now I know, East Broadway is a good place to go. Anyhoo, I think I must've eaten too much or one thing didn't agree with me because I became in my intestines (aka diarrhea) after polishing off my ridiculously huge cookie from Maria's bakery. Then sometime very early in the morning I became sickly again! I don't know what's wrong. :(

Anyhoo, I don't learn because from experience, ice cream almost always gives me diarrhea. Guess what I ate today? ICE CREAM. Quite a lot of it too. For lunch, the three of us went to Khyber Pass. I've never had Afghani food before but it's pretty good. I had spinach, rice and some bread. We all got to sit in the cushy sofa-like area by the window, which was a good place to lie down and die from being full afterwards. ;D Anyhoo, we weren't really full cos then we went ice cream-ing. I brought Steph and Tristan to Cold Stone and they got the Birthday Cake Remix. Judging from their happy looks and ability to eat the whole thing, it seems like it was really good. They kept saying how the ice cream really tasted like cake batter. I can't imagine cake batter tasting ice cream, but I'm rather curious now. I tried a sample of their pumpkin ice cream and it was good, although not good enough for me to shell out the moolah to buy anything.

I was planning to go to Cones, an ice cream place on Bleeker that I heard was really good, but we passed Mary's Dairy (yes, I just wrote a review) first and the cute storefront enticed me. And it was obviously closer, haha. Mary's Dairy wins. ;) Anyhoo, if you read the review, it basically sums up what happened there. The hazelnut ice cream was VERY very good and I definitely need to go back. I want to try one of their exotic ice cream flavors. I tried a sample of the pumpkin ice cream and it was really good. Damn ice cream! Anyway, we all hung out there for a considerable amount of time (long enough for me to finish my cone; at one point my scoop plopped off the cone resulting in MASS CHAOS for a split second, but I caught it on my ...um, pants, so no harm done) taking silly photos and such. Thankfully it wasn't veyr crowded in there, although most of the other seats were taken. We took over the air-cushioned ice cream stool area. We couldn't believe it when the owner of the store (we think?) suddenly gave us the lemon square! Maybe he was in a good mood? Their pastries (cookies, cakes, brownie-things) looked really good, but definitely get the ice cream. Mm. They should get a website. I'd make one!

After pigging out like crazy we walked back to my dorm. It was a nice easy walk...always easier going back to Water Street than the other way around, I think. Then again, I doubt that exercise (which isn't very strenuous) did much. We stopped by Interpol Space, which I had been meaning to visit with Diana for weeks but we always went on the wrong days. I picked up a bunch of their free little metal clips (like the ones you get at the Met) and...yeah. We got on the webcam for a split second, haha.

Then finally back to Water Street. After the weirdest check-in procedure I had ever gone through, we stayed in my room for...about four hours. We internet-ed and I took a short nap, although I didn't know I had fallen asleep so when I woke up I was rather confused. "Wuhzuh? I had a dream!" We talked about random things that I can't remember and Steph and Tristan had much fun with my slippery floor. They dragged each other around, sliding on the floor, and convinced me to get in on the fun as well. I figured I wouldn't have the chance to be dragged on my own floor again so I did it. It's kind of fun, or maybe the ice cream got to my brain. They also had a baby step race from my door to the love seat at the other end of the room (quite a distance for one room). And they were just doing all these silly things on the floor since it's a BIG FLOOR and nicely smooothed. Sliding on floors is fun. :) I gave each of the a Poofy book (now I don't have any more, shall get Mum to bring me some) since they are Poofy fans and POOFY FANS RULE, YES.

We had eaten a lot so we finally went out for dinner after 8. Tristan kept talking about pho, which I haven't had in many many years, so we went to Pho Bang. Man, pho is yummy. I used a lot of the sweet brown sauce. SUGAAR! Some of the beef in the bowl was barely cooked but it was very tender and yummy (and it was cooked by the soup after a while). Even though it was a lot of soup, noodles, and beef, pho feels like a light dish. Light noodles, thin slices of beef, mung bean sprouts....mmm.

Tristan and I seem to suffer from the "lack of feeling full" syndrome, except he's a mega tall guy and I'm a mega short girl. I think I'm more disadvantaged, haha. We walked back down Mott Street and went to Tai Pan bakery. I mean, I wanted to go there cos I'm a pig and the others followed me into piggishness. Custard buns = the yum. Think about how much I had eaten thus far in the day (hell, in the night) and then try to figure out what was going on in my head when I decided to go to the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. I have no explanation; I just wanted ice cream. I heard the ginger ice cream was good and yes, IT IS GOOD. It tastes slightly gingery and it's cream and smooth. Not as dense as Mary's Dairy but it's still damn good. Next time I want taro ice cream, kind of reliving Taiwan ice cream parlors (I swear all of them have taro ice cream). ;) Tristan and Stephanie didn't get anything, which is good because that is the sign of a sane human. I dunno what I am at this point, besides full of crap.

But I'm happy! So that's nice. It's not like I went out for a night of binge drinking or partying; I hung out with two awesome, funny unique cute human beings (you should've heard Tristan's impressions and talking about Gaybo, my insane happy rainbow cloud, named by Mary, who is sometimes an insane happy rainbow cloud) and I had pho, a pastry, and ice cream. I'm a sugar freak, which is not a good sign but...I dunno, mentally I am happy. Of course, all the school work hasn't hit me yet (got a midterm on Wednesday and I'm semi screwed) but...man. Yeah, I suck. On top of that, I'm studying food and nutrition and I'm stuffing myself with crap! HMWELL. I dunno. It's not cool to stress out about food, but I was happy to lose weight last week. Then again it was due to me not hanging out with anyone, which isn't that cool, and being cheap, which ...isn't that cool either. Uh. Anyway! I'm going to miss my funny Oberlin friends.

So it's been more than a week since seeing Magnet. Sad! I want to see him again NOW! He recorded a song for the O.C.'s Chrismukkah soundtrack but it didn't make it onto the final cut (along with a bunch of other songs; the final tracklisting only has nine) so the O.C. is officially crap and evil! Kind of. I think they're going to play one of his songs in a show but still. Man. I was so looking forward to hearing "Let It Snow" or whatever it was he recorded. :(

As usual, I do not know what I'm doing with my life. WEE, how joyous. More joyous: I just got a free subscription to Filter by putting the Filter Top 5 Picks on diskobox.net. Woeee magazine! Not a lot of people visit diskobox.net but whatever.

Blorp.

Yesterday (or two days ago more like) I bought lots of food in the hopes that Grace would help me eat some of it. Or at least 1% of it. Anyway, I ended up eating a crapload of cookies (about 9 ounces of those Newman's brand of cinnamon grahams) and had a complete grain overload. I made the mistake of going to the Greenmarket at Union Square for the first time in more than a month. Actually, it's not so much that I went but that I bought a loaf of bread, something that I should never do. Within 24 hours, the bread was gone, into my belly to be absorbed by my small intestine. I have this problem where I keep eating despite knowing I'm not hungry, perhaps to the point that I feel like I'm going to throw up (I have yet to eat so much that I've puked though). I guess it's just a self control problem, but I really can't have extra food around! Argh! This morning I finished the last three slices of the bread and I never eat breakfast because I'm not really hungry. But the bread was there, so I ate it.

I guess my food issues now aren't as bad as when I was a raw foodist, but they're still there, making me more unhealthy physically as opposed to mentally. Today one of my friends from high school said she thought I was too skinny before and compared me to a Chinese African, as in a malnourished person from Africa. Now ...that's a little extreme, eh? I know she means well and it's nice knowing that people care about me, but I was far FAR away from being skinny. I would describe my previous self (as I am now a marshmallow puff ball) as being normal sized for a Chinese girl. By no means was I dangerously underweight or unhealthy. I don't think I would've done well in school and been able to function overall if I were really that malnourished. I think people got the impression that I might not be healthy not because of what I looked like but because they knew I was on a raw food diet. You can be slim by eating healthy, whole food, or by smoking and drinking and taking drugs. Of course, there are other things you can do...

I don't know what I'm getting at. I still want to lose about 20 pounds in the next year if possible. It's a long time span and I know I could do it since I did it before, but it seems impossible at the moment. Every time I lose some weight I gain it all back, throwing myself into a mental limbo that usually ends up being more happy than not due to stuffing my face with DELICIOUS PASTRIES, but I need to change. I'm planning to go back to the Greenmarket today after my chem lab to get more veggies, so maybe I will whip up lots of...veggies. And I will get some yummy cookies. Hell, why not? I think I should restrict grain products to pastries, which probably means I'll just increase my intake of pastries, but it makes me happy. Kinda.

Today was somewhat of a gorging day. My mum visited me with baking supplies in tow since I asked her to bring some (now I can bake COOKIES, which I haven't done in years). We went to Chinatown and ate dim sum at HSF (on Bowery near Canal St), which was pretty yummy although a lot more than I'd usually spend on lunch/an entire day of food. I took my mum to East Broadway, which I went to with Diana on Monday also. Seems like people don't go there or notice it as much since it's off the main part of Chinatown but it's full of fruit! And food. We went to a few bakeries (today I actually ate stuff from three bakeries; yes, I'm a glutton), the best being the QQ Bakery. They make thsee awesome "cakes" that are more like jello/pudding/tapioca with red bean or taro. Dude, it's the yum. And for anyone who doesn't know what tapioca is made of, it's from the root of the cassava/tapioca plant. I thought I'd throw that in there because people would ask me sometimes and all I could come up with was "Tapioca is made of tapioca." And that is basically it, but...um, yeah.

Anyhoo. Dim sum is yum. I had no idea my mum was such a big meat eater though; she got small plates of duck and shrimp, which she ate by herself since I'm not really into duck or shrimp. Then again, there isn't a lot of meat in the duck but shrimp is...shrimp. I ate some meat stuff, but not too much I think. After we collectively shared 5 different pastries and I got lots of persimmons, my mum drove back home to NJ and I did laundry. I filled out the absentee ballot she brought me and for a while I debated whether or not I should go out to mail it. I knew if I went out I wouldn't be satisfied just walking to the post office. What a waste of getting into the elevator and walking outside! ;) So I went back to a bakery on East Broadway that I like (King Wah Bakery) and for $1.10 got two deliciously warm buns (one with custard, one with taro). And that plus persimmons was basically my dinner. And some chocolate my mum gave me.

Yes, this must sound terribly unhealthy, and as a food studies major taking a nutrition course it's probably very bad and I will get cancer and blah blah. But maybe not. There are worse things you can eat. Actually, there are a lot of things I don't eat but I have such a strong taste for sweet things, probably because I have candida except I don't really have any of the symptoms. In fact, I'm eerily disease free considering all the crap I eat. It's not really a good sign if my body doesn't react to the food I eat. I haven't gotten bad asthma in a long time, something that I thought was triggered by gluten, and the ice cream I ate a week ago didn't make me sick. Very odd and suspicious...I almost wish I got sick. I don't even have sinus problems, which was one of my hugest problems before I went on the raw food diet.

Odd. Anyway. Magnet. Check out my Audioscrobbler page, it's kind of nuts.

Oh crap, I have class in less than 8 hours. Hm.

I'm going to turn into a human pastry puff if I don't start thinking about how most of the food I'm eating is increasing my chances of getting diabetes. I ate so much today (and yesterday) that I'm not sure where to begin. I went back to NJ Friday afternoon and arrived back here today at around 5:30. I strolled by Au Bon Pain, even though my plan was to not eat for at least 24 hours. I never go to Au Bon Pain so I'm not sure what compelled me to. And now I know they sell baked goods 50% from 4-6PM. Damn. However, now that I'm looking at the ingredients, I don't think I'll buy anything from there again. Unless they have a pumpkin muffin.

What tends to send me over the edge into feeling un-wellness is drinking a lot of water. Yeah, it fills me up and then makes me feel like puking, but despite that, I still have the desire the eat. Obviously I'm not hungry, but I'm just...piggish. Why can't I stop? How was I ever a raw foodist? WHAT'S GOING ON?!

Mm. Well. I've seen The Incredibles twice already: Friday night with my mum and last night with Sam, my new roommate. Now I know there's a movie theater a 15 minute walk away from here by the WTC site. It's a really good movie and I'd hate to spoil it so just see it. Yup. SEE IT. YAY MOVIES. I don't watch movies very much and as they cost $10.50 here, I don't think I will.

Last week I tried to eat less. I TRIED. And I semi-succeeded. I ate way too much over the weekend (on Halloween I made myself pancakes and ate a crapload of candy and some ice cream with CJ as we unsuccessfully tried to see the parade). Monday I ate a persimmon and an egg, Tuesday I ate some candy and stuff from my food lab (lots of fish, mashed potatoes, some rice...okay, a lot gets made in that class), Wednesday I had 5 bananas throughout the day, Thursday I ate a crapload of little sandwiches that I got from my new student seminar spring session advisement thing and ice cream, and over Friday and Saturday I just ate too much. If I can I'll try to fast today and Monday but I seem to be very bad at that. Ugh.

Weight must be lost! Diet must be changed! Sugar intake should decrease, but that's usually what I crave.

It's annoying to be obsessed with food in a stupid way that I have yet to be able to relate to with anyone else (my writing has been steadily worsening over the years, I think) but I guess it's better than what most regular girls my age worry about. School. The opposite sex. That seems to be it, mainly. I'm worried about becoming an obese diabetic, which is a valid thing to worry about. Right?

Um. I have issues.

And I want to see Magnet perform. That and worrying about food are daily thoughts. What is semi crazy is that the week that Magnet is playing in CA (12/12), I don't really have any classes. Cruel fate. If I were super rich I guess it wouldn't be a hard choice to go.

Man, what else happened this week? Um. Well! My roommate moved in so my room feels less empty. We're both a bit food obsessed but she dances and is almost surely healthier than I am. Or at least more fit. I guess despite all the crap I eat I may be semi-healthy.

Today: need to fast!

My thanksgiving report is here.

On a totally unrelated note, I've been listening to Levy a lot since yesterday. I love music. And food. The things I love the most in the world. Yes.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

...damn, I was so close. Merry Post-Christmas. If you celebrate it, at least. I updated the food blog with photos from my foodie Christmas (as though I do anything else but eat). I'm at home right now and without getting into any gruesome detail, it's okay. I'm not jumping and flailing and bouncing off the walls with happiness. I'm thinking about how a lot of people suck though and how it's important that when I graduate college and actually go into the real world I'll have to...I dunno. Figure out who's trustworthy, fend for myself, and stuff like that. Especially people in my own family.

I get wheezy too easily. This is a problem. My mum told me that when I was little I wouldn't always wheeze when I had asthma and she would be able to tell only because my rib cage would go far in and out quickly. And I guess I made some kind of noise, like "I CANNOT BREATH" noise. I don't think I've ever been close to dying from asthma but it still sucks. I got wheezy maybe three times today. If I cough, I get wheezy. If I sneeze I probably get wheezy. If I talk on the phone I tend to get wheezy, but it's hard to avoid talking on the phone.

Still obesssed with music! Since my last post I have acquired Rotten Love by Levy and LP! Digitalt Remastret by Kaptein Kaliber. Two totally different kinds of music, but both good.

I havent done this in ages. From Unconscious Mutterings:

1. holiday :: Christmas
2. fault :: mine
3. beep :: squish
4. bubble :: soap
5. needle :: thread
6. fare :: subway
7. treat :: cookies
8. express :: mail
9. webcam :: photo
10. capital :: letter and the place in Chinatown that has wedding parties, although that's actually "Capitale"

Yesterday I went to bed sometime after 7 AM. When the sun starts coming up then you know you've stayed up a tad too late. I was trying to install Blosxom (because what I really need in life is another way to blog) and it worked. But. I haven't figured out how to make it do what I want it to do. It's actually too simple at this point, until I figure out what plugins I need or WHAT TO DO, GOD DAMMIT or maybe I won't make another blog because I really don't need to do that. Um. Yeah. I'll do things the old fashion way of just making pages and uploading them and blargh. I think I'm too lazy to do all the bloxsom stuff (my plan was to use it for a music blog).

My head hurts. I've watched the first season of Futurama and almost all of the second in their entirety twice. No, I don't loaf around and do nothing while the TV spits out electrical rays, giving me brain damage in the process. I also made POOFIES! This is mildly exciting since I haven't made any since last summer. It's not a big money maker but that's part of the reason I'm making them. So for roughly a million hours of labor I can make maybe $200. Sweet. Maybe because I was watching TV or because I hadn't made poofies in a while, it took me between 1.5 and 2 hours to make each Poofy. I didn't stuff them yet so it's probably closer to 2 hours. That's sad. It's a small part of my day of course. Last time I checked there were 24 hours in a day which means in theory, if I were a robot and did not require sleep or food, I could make 12 Poofies in one day. Over the past three days I've made 7 (unstuffed) Poofies. Not too bad for three days. I used to spread em out so I'd do one each day. I know I've made over 100 Poofies by now but I don't know the exact number.

Damn, I'm procrastinating and pushing off sleep. I'm reading roadtrip.beimers.com and being completely fascinated in the process. Here I am doing essentially nothing but losing brain cells and these people went all over the US and saw a gazillion landmarks, met a gazillion people, covered a gazillion miles...a gazillion is a large number. So large, in fact, it's not even real. Maybe in the future someone will have figured out the numerical value of gazillion. Their experience with September 11th and being at ground zero is amazing but right now I'm looking at their cheap ass NYC tour. I'd consider doing this if I hadn't done almost everything on the list already. I haven't done numbers 1, 2, 4, 10 (I haven't been very close to City Hall but I've seen it, as I live near there, and I've walked under the Brooklyn Bridge a crapload of times by now), 12, 14, 16, 20, 25, and 30. So I've done enough, eh? Not in one day though and not recently. But I don't think I'll wanna do it all again by myself. IN ONE DAY. After reading that though, I feel rather adventurous and feel guilty for spending the entire day inside. I live in NYC and I didn't go outside at all today. That should be illegal.

So what will I do today? Probably wake up late and then be too lazy to go anywhere. Oops. What do I want to do...damn, I need more interests. I can't think of anything. On Saturday morning I walked down Broadway and everything was so empty, being New Year's Eve, except for the craploads of tourists (at least more than I'm used to seeing around here). It felt...just strange. Is my room the only place that doesn't feel strange? What the hell? I'm screwed. Maybe I need more friends. Yetta actually called me last night and asked if I would go to a taping of Carson Daly with her today! My initial reaction that I made after thinking for about half a second was that I wasn't interested in Keifer Sutherland or the other guests (not that I have anything against them, but I can't think of many [or any] actors/actresses that interests me enough to the point that I'd go to a TV show taping). After I got off the phone and though longer than a split second I realized that I probably should've gone just for the sake of getting out of my dorm and wandering around midtown, which may results in the purchase of FOOD but ...meh.

Oh, food. I looked in the mirror the other day and realized how fat I was getting. Very. I haven't weighed myself in more than a month (I used to weigh myself every day) because I'm too scared. :( I know the obvious thing to do is eat less but I didn't accomplish that today. I ate two persimmons, a pork bun, 6 dumplings, 1/2 pint of ice cream, two cups of hot white chocolate (because the mug fits that much), some chocolate, and a few ounces of snap peas. CRAP, I forgot to drink more water! Unless I eat something weird that makes me thirsty, I forget to drink water. Maybe I should eat drier food; that would get the message across.

I'm not unhappy but I'm not really happy either. Somewhere in between. I really need to lose weight. Oh well, at least I didn't eat any pastries today.

Actually, that's not true. There has been a lot on my mind in the past week but nothing I can explain in a cohesive manner. I don't know why this seems to be my most neglected blog. Actually, when I think about it a LOT has happened in the past week, such as the massive amounts of snow and actually going out sometimes and being completely food-stressed and somewhat doing well on my no grains diet. I slipped a little today because I went to Sugar Sweet Sunshine Bakery with Diana and wanted banana pudding, the least grain-based product there. Only problem is that banana pudding traditionally has vanilla wafers layered in it and when scooped out and splodged into a cup the vanilla wafers totally mix in. I was doing pretty well until the end when the bakery was closing and I frantically tried to get any other bits of banana or pudding into my system while avoiding the vanilla wafers that infiltrated every bit of luscious pudding. Not so good. I think I managed to eat a third of the cup. Great pudding but I just can't have it again. :(

Lately I've been having many doubts about school. I have no passion for it. ...I feel like I've talked about this before but it can be said again. School. Boo. I have nothing against education, I just don't feel like I belong there and nothing can convince me that EVERYONE is meant to go to college. The only reason I'm there is because my parents can pay for it. It's not like I didn't try at all to get in (I did well all throughout high school, although I did the minimum) but I'm not paying for any of it. If I had to pay for school I'd stay at home and go to Rutgers. Rutgers is a perfectly good school but doesn't carry the prestige of NYU, ooh, I care so much. If you want an education, almost any education is better than none. But what do I want to do?

The only thing I've done consistently for the past many years and don't totally suck at is web design. I wish I could do that for a living, especially when I see the table-laden websites that still plague the Internet in all their complicated HTML and such things but I know I can't with the limited web knowledge I have. I don't know about programming or databases and for god's sake I'M NOT GOING TO LEARN FLASH! Flash is not crutial to web design! I surely wouldn't mind knowing it but there are more important things. I hate seeing job requests for web designers or developers on craigslist and they never list anything about having to know CSS or web standards. I feel like these people are living in the past...as in, a year or more. One normal year is a gazillion Internet years. Many Internet generations have passed in that time period.

I love music as well, but that's far from being a reasonable thing to pursue. You can't do stuff you suck at. I may have found someone to collaborate with on music, which is exciting.

Food is still the biggest stress. At least it makes me happy sometimes but I don't know if it's worth it. School never makes me happy but may not make me as depressed as food. But at some point I'll stop going to school while I can never stop eating food. Until I'm dead, at least. No wonder eating disorders and such a...disorder. Not that I have one (not diagnosable at least) but good lord, I can't let my food issues go. Thinking about them make me want to cry sometimes.

This was random. Anyway. Long live non-grain filled foods and good music.

I've spent hours today on the Internet looking at websites related to food. There's a weird obsession here, obviously. Strangely enough, I don't feel depressed. I think I'd like to eat a lot of this stuff but I'm equally fascinated reading about it. Does that make any sense? Similar to how I love looking at cookbooks, I love reading food blogs, especially when they have photos. But do I get the desire to try the recipes or visit the restaurants people talk about? Sometimes I do want to visit the restaurants (Momofuku, via Amateur Gourmet) but in many cases the food I want to eat is "banned" anyway. I'm interested in going to Teany tomorrow (er, today) even though I don't necessarily like tea. I thought about it and last month I think I drank (well, ordered/bought) two non-water beverage -- a milkshake and hot cocoa (a lot of hot cocoa). I don't recall drinking anything adventurous in January (I did make my own hot white chocolate though...damn, that counts) so I'm averaging a few non-water beverages a month this year. I really don't care much for drinks except hot chocolate, of which I'm definitely getting this month, but if I get hot chocolate it better be damn good hot chocolate.

...anyway. I'm not sure what I mean to say besides that my obsession with food is really weird. I think it'll be much healthier for me to not major in food studies. I don't mind reading about it or looking at it but having to eat it would be ...not so good. It's nice thinking that all these great places exist in NYC, but I don't feel the necessity to try them all. First off, it's expensive (the food at Teany looks expensive but I have yet to hear anything bad about the taste. Reviews for the desserts have been overwhelmingly positive -- it's a good thing I cut out desserts. However, I haven't cut out candy, which I consider more of a snack. ...but I cut out snacky foods. Don't ask how I justify what I do or don't eat) and second, it's calorie health deathy...something. Actually, the second thing is more important.

I'm wondering how many calories I ate today but I don't really know besides that the 1 lb jar of kim chi (ie, 16 ounces of delicious spiced cabbage) was 160 calories (?! I guess veggies, spices, and whatever else is in there doesn't add to much but it's a filling, cheap dinner). I also ate 2.5 ounces of the raw granola, a few tablespoons of honey, an orange, and two persimmons. I dunno if that's a good day of eating. It could be worse. Oh, I also had half of a raw sardine. I went to Katagiri and they had a good selection of sushi/sashimi grade fish. I had tried a lot of them but I've never seen fresh sardines before. Anyway, they weren't like canned sardines; these were huge. Well, for a sardine. I personally love sardines (they're the only canned food I'd buy, although if I liked soup I guess I'd buy that too) even if they give me weird sardine breath.

Anyhoo (sidenote: this entry is much longer than I thought it would be, as in, I though I'd end after one paragraph), I met up with Diana in Times Square since she interns there and I was there because of Katagiri and lurking in Kinokuniya to pick up a present for Linda (oo you'll like it) and a magazine for my mum (this issue of TITLE, which has an amazing...really amazing section about chocolate). I also wanted a magazine about hairstyles but couldn't find any. Yeah, as much as I hate makeup/cosmetics (I don't have any. I do have a bar of soap though) I'm quite paranoid about hair. It's stupid. But it takes a while to grow and you wouldn't wanna be stuck with a crap hair cut. So I hadn't been to Times Square in a while and realized it's hella scary. Not in a "I'm going to pee my pants" way but the "Lights...everywhere...things...tourists...gerhhugi fdiuhierurg?" I've been to Times Square many times in my life and it was the only place I ventured into for ages, but it's a bizarre place. Diana and I (Diana being the first friend I've hung out with in seemingly AGES) went to a deli to eat our grub, which is where I tried the raw sardines. I assumed they were supposed to be eaten raw...I could've been wrong, but they tasted fine. Only problem was cutting into them with a plastic knife. Plastic knives don't cut backbones. Anyway, it tasted like raw fish, not that I was expecting anything else but different kinds of fish obviously differ in some ways. I don't know what to say about sardine yet besides that it tastes like raw fish. Maybe I'll cook one and see what that's like.

And now I'm back in my room, where I've been for hours staring at the food blogosphere. I haven't had chocolate in a week, which is by no means anything compared to the 1.5 years I went without chocolate before. Chocophile.com is pretty cool, although it can be hard to rate chocolate. I'd say it's easy to rate quality by ingredients (the less the merrier, in this case) but taste...well, my mum seems to like very subtle flavors but to me, if it's so subtle I may as well just eat plain chocolate. I like plain chocolate the most. There are lots of great chocolates infused with fruits, flowers or chili pepper (had one of those once; at first I didn't taste anything and a second later my throat was semi-burning) but in the end don't you just want plain chocolate? Yeah. I saw an 82% Lindt chocolate bar today and I really wanted. But...no! It's not the weekend! I can only eat that stuff on the weekend, if ever.

I'd also like to point out this blog: bread coffee chocolate yoga. Bread, coffee, chocolate...and yoga. Hey, if it works, why not? I don't like coffee and I've stopped eating bread (although I guess I can eat certain things with flour, but that depends) so chocolate is definitely my...thing. When I say that I mean...other people have beer or coffee and I have chocolate. ...yeah. Actually, my mum told me that just about everyone would be likely to obsess with alcohol, coffee, or chocolate because of a "bitterness" craving. I know a lot of people don't like bitter chocolate, although maybe they like coffee and alcohol. Anyway. Yup.

So things feel quite different than they did a week ago. I don't know why. My mum told me to stop stressing about food, to just eat stuff but not too much. I think maybe my stress will go away if I just admit that I really can't eat this stuff and there's no use in being sad over it. If something is worth eating, I'll want it so badly that I'll forgo any qualms about eating it. For instance, I want to try the sticky date pudding at an Australian restaurant in Nolita (Diana, this is where I want to take you! So I hope you're up to it Sunday afternoon...or rather, that I am also). Seeing as I will probably never go to Australia and I've never had sticky date pudding (which is more like cake; my classmates were describing it and it seems like no one has heard of cake-like pudding before) I would forget about the no-cake thing and try it. I'd have a salad for an entree though, despite that the restaurant is touted for amazing hamburgers (I don't like hamburgers enough to food-splurge like that).

As you know, my mood could change in an instant. I hope this lasts until next week, at least. I have a midterm for "conversations of the west" on Monday that I'm scared of but obviously not enough. I kind of don't care because I don't see how I can prepare that well unless I memorize the gazillion books I had to read.

I'm thinking of switching my major to communications with a concentration in graphic communications. At first, this sounded...not good. Advertising, marketing, ahh! Seeing as I stopped watching TV partially (or a lot-ly) due to commercials and I hate most ads (a new Calvin Klein one went up on Houston St and it basically makes me want to not buy Calvin Klein clothes...then again I wouldn't fit in them) it didn't sound like a good fit. But it's not like I have to go into the advertising industry. I can...I dunno. I can do something with it? That's number one on my list of future possibilities. )By the way, there's no number two, or three, or anything else.) My main concern with a new major is staying in school FOREVER...I know it's not forever but there's no way I'm going to graduate in 2007 at this rate. Not that I care. People who want to go to med school are much more screwed than I am.

Righto, this is much too long. If you read this far, congrats. On a side note, I spent too much money today: bought two M. Ward CDs and two tickets to his show at Bowery in April. That's something like $50, which comes out of nowhere. I'm thinking that I'll be able to pay my parents back for all this at some point...*sigh*. I feel spoiled by how much money I spend sometimes, especially when I used to eat out a lot more than I have been in the past 4+ weeks, but then I remember that at least I'm not traveling this break. I will never take the quintessential college trip to Florida or Cancun or wherever else could be part of an MTV special. (shudders) I wouldn't mind taking a spring break trip to Norway though.

...now this entry has officially ended.

Since I have the lovely assignment of writing a 500-word essay for my food communications class about my vacation, I may as well document it. I'll try to make this not-too-painful for the handful of people reading this.

My vacation started yesterday since I don't have class on Friday. Diana stayed overnight because we went to Pianos the night before to see I Am Kloot (more info at my music blog). I was feeling somewhat shitty due to food related matters. Ah...food. What was the problem? Overall I was feeling bad thinking about what I should eat, or what I shouldn't eat, or how I should organize my food schedule as to not bloat into an obese, Asian 19 year old.

My mum said if I weren't Asian I may be less conscious about my weight. I'm not sure about that, but it definitely doesn't help knowing that if I actually lived in Taiwan (ie, if my parents had never come to the US) I'd stand out among the hoards of slim Taiwanese people for my whale-esque likeness. Yes, I exaggerate, but not by much. I'm glad I can fit into the pants I'm wearing now, an old pair of my brother's, but they're a 28/29 inch waist and that's not much to brag about.

(insert sigh)

I kind of wish I could be happy and overweight but I don't think I ever could be after doing raw food and knowing I weigh 15 pounds more than I did a year ago. What went wrong? Would I be less insane if I never did raw food? I'll never know. At the very least I figure I should be able to fit comfortable into a pair of green, courduroy pants I purchased a few years ago before doing raw food in order to be deemed not insanely fat. Lately, I've been able to fit into them but not as comfortably as I liked. This means i have to lose more weight, but being at home has seriously thwarted my dieting plan because THERE IS FOOD HERE AND IT TASTES GOOD.

Example of the crazy food eating I've partaken in during my homestay that wouldn't occur in my dorm: there was some rice in the rice cooker that no one planned on eating so my mum told me to turn the rice cooker off. I asked my mum what to do with it and didn't get much of a reply. My dad had told me earlier to save it for later but I said I didn't want to do anything with it as I'd just eat it. (Sidenote: I haven't eaten rice in about 8 weeks.) So later in the night I see the rice and...I plop it onto a plate and eat it. I could easily eat plain rice but decide to rummage around for something to put on top. I found a bottle of barbecue sauce in the fridge that looked abandoned (I had never seen it before) leading to my lovely recipe of cold barbecue sauce + rice = late night snack. There was also a bottle of teriyaki sauce so I put a little bit on the rice as well.

Of course, I regret doing it. My life is full of regrets. Regrets are stupid, but so am I. Rice doesn't have much nutritional value and i wasn't even hungry when I ate it. It's just that I wasn't unhungry enough to NOT eat it.

Last night was a different story. I had eaten okonomiyaki for dinner and it made me strangely thirsty, causing me to chug about half a liter of water. As lovely as water is, body organs probably don't like being hit with that much water after having already been stuffed with okonomiyaki and other foodstuffs. My organs didn't feel like releasing the water, making me feel like a floation device. Despite that, I STILL ATE. Why? BECAUSE THE FOOD WAS THERE. What food? CHOCOLATE! What the hell? I wasn't even hungry.

Later last night I retreated to my room in a state of "oh crap, something inside me is going to explode" and I laid down on my bed in a state of organ failure-ness. I fell asleep while looking at a Japanese hot cake recipe book I bought the same day (looking at that didn't help much), woke up at around 5 AM realized "oh crap, it's 5 AM", somehow found my way to the bathroom and too kout my contacts, then plopped into bed.

I woke up at 2 PM today. Could've been worse. I took a shower while being horrified by my expanding girth (although it was worse a few weeks ago...[shudders]) and tootled to the kitchen wondering what to do.

My life is totally useless. I wish I were more depressed so I'd commit suicide. It would make the world a better place, maybe.

ALAS, I am still here. Besides food related things, today I went to Borders with my mum since she had some 20% off coupons. I'm afraid i'm going to return to the food theme as I saw this interesting book, Chocolate:A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light. I flipped through the book, reading an interesting account of the suckness of Valrhona's PR deparment, but their chocolate is so good (dammit) that it certainly isn't going to put a dent in their share of the chocolate market. A later chapter talked about chocolate places in NYC; I will vouch for the "it'll probably make you sick but drink it anyway" hot chocolate at City Bakery but I have yet to try Kee's Chocolates. I'm actually not that into truffles as much as plain chocolate bars or hot chocolate. Strangely, maybe, I'm into trying foreign or old-fashioned chocolate confections. For instance, a few days ago I ate Mallo Cups not because they're an amazing creation but because they're an old fashioned American candy that I've never had before (for great candy reviews, check out Writers & Artists Snacking At Work).

What can I say; I have weird tastes.

I got a bit off topic. I ended up buying a book about someone's fooding experience in Kyoto. Awesome. I went to Kyoto and unfortunately, can't remember much about fooding besides takoyaki. ...damn, went back to food.

Okay, here's something that I hope cannot be related to food at all; I donated to last.fm so now I have my own radio station. IT'S AWESOME. It's like putting my iTunes on shuffle except I can listen to this from any computer that has an Internet connection. All my mp3s are on my external hard drive, which I left in my dorm, so last night I donated $5 to last.fm to try out the personal radio. You can donate as much as you want so if you use audioscrobbler to record your playlists and junk then you may be interested in donating as well.

And...back to food. I've been interested in making chocolate covered potato chips for no real reason besides that I ate them twice in my life and I think they tasted pretty good those two times. My mum had various solid chocolates lying around and we bought a Valrhona chocolate bar from Market Basket on the way back from Borders. We didn't find out until unwrapping the chocolate bar that it wasn't solid chocolate but hazelnut-bit filled chocolate. ...so we threw that into the double boiler as well.

The chocolate just hardened as I made them a few hours ago. I just tried one of the small chips and it tasted like a thin, crunchy piece of chocolate. Which is what it was. Methinks I may have put too much chocolate on it. Ah well.

I need to something more productive with my life, which is ironic for me to say as I write this too-long blog entry.

Lastly: I played Taiko Drum Master today as my brother recently got this game and IT IS AWESOME. I mean, I enjoy it. It's the best game I've played in a long time. Then again, I like playing drums (I practice my drum set today and I still suck).

I decided to take the 9PM bus back to NYC after a less than enjoable day of not doing much beyond sitting on my bum in front of my laptop and eating calorically dense and nutrionally sparse foodstuffs. I felt awful mindless eating the "artisan" chocolate chips (I'm not sure how to refer to them as they're not of any brand but come from a local French chocolate shop) that had been in the fridge for months in addition to some chocolate covered almonds from La Maison du Chocolat that my mum forgot she still had. How one forgets she has French chocolate covered almonds is mindboggling, but then again...I'm weird.

(That wasn't much of a "then again".)

While on the bus listening to The Innocence Mission I drew pictures in my head of trees and swirls as Karen Peris softly sang about ...well, not trees and swirls, yet that's what I thought of. I'd draw them on paper but they would look disappointing compared to what I had imagined. My hands aren't capable of reproducing the images in my head (which aren't that impressive or creative to begin with).

By the time I got to the Port Authority Terminal I started feeling woozy and staring out the window on the A train with the tiles of the station walls whizzing by didn't help. All the shit I ate today culminated in a semi-nauseous Robyn, "semi" because I never felt bad enough to throw up but I couldn't help but hover over the toilet when I got to my dorm. Of course, nothing happened, so I retreated to my bed and huddled under my sheet. Every so often a rippling would course through my stomach.

I don't know what to do about my food issue, whatever the issue is. All I know is that it makes me cry sometimes, happy other times, and suicidal every now and then. Right now I'm not crying or suicidal, so all is well. However, I ate cooked food Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which doesn't leave any more "fooding" days for the rest of the week, this week being my vacation. Oh well. Not sure what to do about that. I cried today thinking about having to write a review for a Japanese supermarket for my food communications class. I already wrote one for last week's class but my teacher decided it was too far from campus and that I should visit another one that's closer. No biggie, right? Yes, it's no big deal for most people but it took me hours to write that first review (then again, that's because I'm stupid and slow) and I'm one of the last people that should ever go grocery shopping. My plan is to not bring my wallet with me to make sure I don't buy anything but it's depressing that I can't even enjoy going to a Japanese supermarket. I cried because I don't want to do the assignment, which will probably take me ages if I want to write it well, and I don't want to be surrounded by food that I'll want to eat but shouldn't eat.

I always feel fat. I know I'm overreacting as I'm not obese but I can't help it. I wish I could refrain from eating altogether but as I have to be in suitable standing-for-hours condition in order to attend Tuesday's Doves concert I'll probably have to eat something. If I had no plans I could probably stay in my dorm for a few days living off of books. Damn concerts.

I started reading Untangling My Chopsticks, a book I'd highly recommend to anyone who likes Japanese food or Japan. Before I tried veganism and raw foodism, Japanese food was my favorite. In particular, my favorite dishes were unajyu (grilled eel), tonkatsu (fried pork) and curry (I like sushi too but nowhere near as much as the aforementioned dishes...except eel sushi). Eel was really the best though and always my first choice at any Japanese restaurant. Sadly, I almost completely forgot about my penchant for Japanese food until reading this book. Since ending my raw food diet and living in NYC I've mainly been eating Chinese food, probably because I live by Chinatown and it's cheap. I tend to gravitate towards Asian food anyway but the difference between Japanese food and Chinese food (and culture in general from what I gather) is so vast....I ought to get back into eating Japanese food.

Then again, I have to stop eating so much. So maybe not. (sigh) I got the idea of eating unajyu while reading the book and was excited but I don't feel like I should. I don't deserve it. I don't deserve anything, actually. I'm under the impression that I don't deserve to live, which might make me suicidal but not in a normal sense (what is a "normal" sense of suicide?). I just don't see the point of living, or rather I don't think think I have any point in living. I don't see how my life is going to go anywhere with my continuing dislike towards school (which isn't reasonable at all) and lack of interest in human relations, two things that seem pretty important in life. Oh well.

I digressed.

I don't know much about Chinese culture but my overall idea of it is that it's not that great. It's a broad generalization; there's something great about all civilizations, I hope. It's just that when I look at the pieces of Japanese culture I have access to compared to Chinese culture, there are a lot of Japanese things that I like while there isn't much about Chinese culture that I appreciate besides steamed buns. Yup, that's it. STEAMED BUNS. I haven't even eaten a steamed bun in months. Oh well, I guess a lot of Americans don't like American culture so it's no big deal if I don't like Chinese culture.

It makes me sad that I'm not proud of my heritage, but I don't know a lot about it. I can't say I ever had to learn about Chinese stuff in school and I've never been to China. My parents are from Taiwan, which I guess isn't like China but it's more accurate to say I'm Chinese than Taiwanese, right? ...actually, I don't know. If you're Taiwanese (and came from China, not indigenous Taiwanese) then you're also Chinese but being Chinese obviously doesn't mean you're Taiwanese. I'm just blabbing here without any central idea.

After writing this entry I've come to the conclusion that I have too much time. And I suck. And I still don't want to go to the Japanese grocery store.

Do you ever wake up in the morning, look outside and think "Today is beautiful. I just want to prance around and hug people!" Well, today wasn't that day but I would rate it high on the scale of "day goodness", placing it around "especially good, enough so that I should make note of it." I spent most of the day by myself (surrounded by the population of NYC) fooding. Yes...fooding. Wasn't that the root of my problems? As usual, my mood has done a full 360 and then some since a few weeks ago. While that means that I'll surely fall back into a deep state of depression, it hopefully won't be tomorrow as that would just suck the crap.

I've been trying to walk more lately. Whether that will physically help me, I'm not sure as many times this morning (only in the morning; maybe it's weather related) I've gotten asthma attacks. It would be ironic if I died of asphyxiation from my asthma because I walked with the intent of improving my health and possibly getting rid of my asthma. Actually, that's something I have to look out for--asthma, that is, not gian flaming sharks. It's gotten worse lately, no doubt from the crap I've been eating, yet the crap has made me happy too. Hell, I got a REALLY bad bout of asthma in England but obviously I had a great time there. I just had to give up the biscuits.

I woke up early to get a doughnut. Yes. I went Doughnut Planting. I guess I'll just mention where I went as I like to put the food descriptions in my blog. Here is a funky map of my travelings starting at my dorm:

1. Doughnut Plant (Grand St/Norfolk)
2. NYU Tisch Hall computer lab (4th St/Greene)
3. NYU Silver Center (Washington Pl/Wash Sq E)
4. NYU expository writing center (4th St/Mercer)
5. Pearl Paint (Canal St/Bway)
6. two bakeries around Canal St
7. Bobst Library (4th St/Wash Sq E)
8. Steinhardt Building (4th St/Greene)
9. Something Sweet (11th St/1st Ave)
10. Old Fashion Donut (13th St/1st Ave)
11. Filter office (30th St/1st Ave)
12. Fried Dumpling (Allen St/Delancey)
13. BACK TO DORM (Water St/Fulton)

This all took place from around 7:30 AM to PM. I had class and meetings with people in between, one being with my advisor to finally settle on not changing my major and just getting college over with. I guess I have too much time or I wouldn't have been able to spend an excessive portion of my life fooding and walking, but I had fun. It was all by myself too, or maybe I would've done less fooding (or would've had someone to share my VERY TASTY FRENCH CRULLER WITH).

I'm not sure if the food made me happy or just being outside and doing stuff made me happy. The thing is, if I'm out then I will eat. I'd have to remove my stomach or staple gun my mouth shut to do otherwise. Whatever it is, I like it. Oh, I also met up with my awesome writing teacher and talking to her is always fun. So! :)

Filter-ing was good even though THE PROMO BAGS NEVER CEASE TO EXIST. I swear, some of the piles of stickers and such will go down but that pile of plastic baggies always looks the same. After 15 minutes of bagging I'll look down by my feet to see a very small pile of promotional bags that could be handed out in a split second. I have no idea how many bags I ultimately made but I'd say somewhere between 50 and 100. It's a bit of a range. The most awesome part was GETTING LOTS OF FREE STUFF and getting the exercise that comes with walking from NYU to 30th St. Mmm. Free stuff. Oh, I have Beck's new album, Guero, now! Yet another CD I don't have to buy (but probably will eventually for the DVD and book).

Overall, I definitely ate too much but I can still fit into my pants. It may be because I'm sucking in my gut, but hey, whatever works. I'm worried because I really went overboard today, but I spent less than $10 (although I ate more than $10 of food). Here's the list of noshes:

1. glazed doughnut with walnuts ($2)
2. curry beef pastry ($0.60)
3. rolled up rice noodle thing ($0.70)
4. macaroon cookie (if you've seen this before, it's two macaroons with some filling, and if you haven't seen it, these things are AWESOME; $0.75)
5. French cruller ($0.80)
6. 4 fried mini pork buns and 2 vegetable egg rolls ($2)
7. chocolate cupcake ($1)

That's what I bought today. It's a long list but doesn't add up to much, thank god. The other stuff I ate but didn't buy is a persimmon, a Giant Pocky stick and a bit of the chocolate bunny my roommate's parents got for me (they sent a package of easter candy). That was a nice addition to the overall goodness of my day after getting back to my dorm.

I'd love to have written a better post, but I'm planning to go more into detail about my fooding in the food blog (which makes me wonder what this blog is for). Sadly, I can't think of much else to say about my day. Walking around is nice when the sidewalks aren't covered in slush and the weather isn't crap. If you have the time, I'd recommend it.

This week has capped off in complete pootiness due to non-eating-ness, which I guess is also known as fasting. I ate too much. The end.

On a better note, school is almost over! And on a sucky note, that means final tests and papers are coming up! BOY, I'M SCREWED! HAR HAR! (cough) I should spent many late nights in the library. Hell, I should be there now but I can't draw myself out of my room. I woke up rather early for a Sunday morning, around 10:15 AM. Then again, it was because I went to bed early, early meaning before 2 AM or the next rising of the sun.

Lately I've been feeling worthless, although at the same time I want to take a bunch of summer classes. I'm going for Basic Graphic Design at School of Visual Arts and NYU's Web Development Intensive. I can do both if I choose the 6:00-9:30 class at SVA. Hmmdeedum. I think I'd rather take graphic design courses at SVA than NYU since that seems more appropriate.

I just slapped together a very non-graphic designy but very web-compliant (or semi) website for the Washington Square CSA. I'd think of joining if I lived in NYC but after school is over I'll be shipped back to NJ. In my mum's SUV. Bwaha.

I wish I had more to say at the moment, but I don't. Besides that I haven't eaten in more than 36 hours but i feel kindof okay. Except that I'm a little afraid to eat anything. Hm.