Bummer.

Ichiro is a little disappointed that he's not hitting first in the lineup this year. But in other news...BASEBALL SEASON IS ALMOST HERE!

This is REALLY not art

First, a disclaimer: the image below may be offensive if you've never seen poorly drawn genitalia before.

You've already heard about my neighbors' rather annoying lack of awareness that I can hear absolutely everything they say. You also know that when it comes to roommates/neighbors, I've experienced a lot (awkward sexual encounters, heroin dealers, domestic disputes, fecal samples in the dorm fridge, etc). This is something entirely new. A couple of weeks ago, I awoke to an interesting smell: paint. I thought, "huh, someone must be painting something." (Witness my keen deductive powers!) Sure enough, a couple of days later, large paintings started appearing leaned against the wall in the back stairwell (you know, the one that you're supposed to keep clear in case stereotypically attractive firefighters need to rush up the stairs and save me). These paintings were mediocre at best. Lots of splotchy colors, with no apparent theme or subject. Clearly I'm not an artist. For someone else, these were probably amazing. Anyway, my only real annoyance is that they kind of jam up the back hallways and they kind of suck. However, last week I noticed that the artist had added some black lines that appeared rather abstract. Upon closer inspection, they are not abstract at all:



Can you find the vagina? How about the penis?

City life.

Yesterday I had my first encounter with the phenomenon of having your car blocked in by morons who park too close. Thank goodness I didn't actually need my car (I just like to drive it around and flip off people who choose to drive fuel-efficient vehicles). So I dutifully walked to the places I needed to go to and on my way home ran into my neighbor, Mike, who was sitting on his porch enjoying a mid-day Four Loko and a cigar. He is pretty much the shit. He's about 50 and drives pizza delivery for a place downtown, and generally greets me by yelling from his porch something along the lines of "Hey girl, (insert comment about sports/the weather/my outfit here)." He was very sympathetic to my plight of having my car blocked in, and went so far as to tell me whose car had blocked me in from the front. In his words, the car belonged to "that girl that lives in #4 with her brother. They don't say much. I think they're Greek." And in response to my car being blocked in: "That's fucked up." Yes, Mike, yes it is. So I met the girl that lives in #4, she's really nice, and she moved her car. The end.

What did you do today?

Oh, not much. Just read more than I thought was humanly possible. Have you ever watched someone try to drink a whole gallon of milk in one sitting? It is possible to get it all down, but impossible to KEEP it all down. Which is how I feel with the absurd amount of information I'm trying to ingest these days. Look out, I might hurl.

The weather was briefly lovely here in the land of Too Many People Wearing Those Stupid Toms Shoes Even Though They're Made of CLOTH and it is Raining Pretty Much all. The. Time. It is back to raining, which frankly, I prefer. If it is going to be freaking gorgeous and sunny outside, it needs to wait until there is not a stack of obscure and esoteric readings in front of me and also preferably when there is more/any money in my bank account.

Yesterday's KILL YOURSELF moment was provided by the dentist's office playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata while I was bleeding to do death from my gums.

Have a great day!

This ALSO actually happened

I more than others should be painfully aware of the importance of not being an arrogant grad school student just because I'm in grad school. I can be arrogant for other reasons (cough cough IRONMAN ahem), but not solely for being in grad school. I railed against the ivory tower that so many of my friends happily inhabited for years before joining them in it. All of this said, yesterday in class a noted scholar was referenced during class discussion, the professor had a couple of power point slides about his work and then out of nowhere, some complete jackass raises his hand and says "I just looked up the wikipedia page on said noted scholar, and it says..." Uh. ABSOLUTELY NOT. This is a scholar that having clearly not read, you should go home and actually read, and I do not mean the wikipedia page about him. JESUS. Wikipedia? In grad school? Who do I report you to? Ok, fit of arrogance is over. Back to the mundane, like the fact that as I'm writing this I have one of those Biore pore strips plastered to my nose. Or the fact that one of my friends was so drunk the other night/morning that I received a text at 4:19 in the morning from them that was simply the letter 'o.' That should help you all feel real good about yourselves today!

Vote Mitt Romney.

This actually happened.

On one of my many "let's see if this bus will take me where I need to go" adventures last week, I was witness to what is thus far the Craziest Fucking Thing that has happened while I was on a bus. There is a lot of competition for this title, so I take it very seriously. I was attempting to take the 48 after taking the 44, but oops, the road that the 48 goes on was under construction, so I was wandering a little aimlessly until I saw a major intersection where I thought surely there would be a bus stop. There was! There was also a man being frisked over the hood of a police car in front of what I can only assume is one of those Chinese Buffet/titty bar/prostitution fronts that Seattle is known for. So I get on the bus, trying to figure out if this will indeed take me where I need to go, when I realize that the man sitting across from me is apparently blind and trying to reach across the aisle and touch me because I smell good. No, really. This is what is happening! He is blindly groping through the air in my general direction because he says that "someone smells good." Christ. The one day I shower AND put on deoderant, this is what happens. He gets pretty darn close to touching me so I politely ask him not to. Fast forward to the next bus stop when a blind woman gets on the bus and through some cruel twist of fate sits down next to the groping blind man. She appears to be a professional woman in her 40s, he appears to be mentally ill and in his 30s. She has an actual cane, he has some sort of stick he has fashioned into a cane. He proceeds to tell her about his "blindness" which is not actually blindness (seeing as when she asked where he lived he gestured to the neighborhood we were in which HE COULDN'T EVEN SEE), but I'm not sure that this woman realizes that because SHE IS TRULY BLIND. I am watching all of this with some sort of horror/amusement combination. And then I missed my stop.

What grad school does to people

So I just got an invitation to go see a movie that included the title of the movie, name of the producer, location of theater, link to a trailer for the movie, and link to other theaters and their schedules in case I want to see a different movie. Apparently going to see a movie=dissertation proposal. Ha!

In other news, I have been invited to join an indoor soccer team. The team name is "kegs for legs" so I think me and my giant thighs should fit right in. However, I think they actually asked me to play not because of my athletic prowess, but rather because the team likes to go to trivia night at a pub after the games but no one on the team is from the US. I have a feeling they may be a little disappointed...

As you can see, my social life is really looking up(ish). That said, classes were cancelled today and I didn't get dressed or leave my apartment at 8pm and I only left to go buy wine. Don't be jealous.