1:30am is not the best time to start writing a blog entry, but I have been long remiss in updating here; and, since I have spent the entire day in the apartment doing various lazy things, I have had plenty of time to think today.
First off, school is over, over, OVER, until January 15th. Sweet freedom, she is mine. I took an easy final on the 20th and then went to an advisor meeting and the end of the semester school party on the 21st. I am still in a weird state vis a vis most of the people at school, so finding people to talk at parties etc is a little strange, but I have found that I often end up gravitating towards the kids (playing with trucks > talking to people my age?), and the other people who do the same thing make good company. In particular, I was impressed with one guy who spent most of the party playing with someone else's two year old, even going as far as to sit with the toddler on his lap during our school's violin virtuoso's performance. Toddlers, it turns out, are not so appreciative of classical music, but the image of the wee little child sitting wide-eyed, with the boy-student's skinny body bent around him -- it sticks with me.
Before that was a great deal of sitting around in the apartment with dear visiting friend IK, introducing her to chu-hi while she introduced me to the first season of "Veronica Mars". After the last day of school was more of the same, but added to it numerous day trips to Tokyo (plus one to lovely odd touristy Kamakura). I have now been to quite a few more places in the nearby metropolis than I had before -- I probably doubled my time spent there, if not more, in four days of touristing. It was cold, definitely cold, and sometimes expensive and sometimes painful and sometimes boring. Other times, of course, it was wonderful. Particularly great was one evening when the two of us, plus a friend of mine, ended up in a small grill place in Ueno. Behind a main bar, a plethora of fresh ingredients surrounded a grill made of heated iron tubes, over which two chefs were at their work. Although Japan is usually hell on the vegetarian, we were able to order many delicious vegetables one at a time, eating our fill and drinking hot sake. We were sitting right inside the restaurant next to the door, so every time it opened we'd get another wintery chill before going back to stuffing ourselves on grilled potatoes, eggplant, asparagus, japanese mushrooms. I take back what I've said (out loud, and in my mind) about hating the food here.
I also finally went to Harajuku. I wish I had more time to explore all its weird little by-ways, where it seems a hundred tiny cafes and art galleries and independent clothing shops flourish, just a stone's throw away from the goth kid shop-havens.
And of course, I was in Japan for Christmas. Which was weird. Without family and presents, of course, it felt essentially like any other day, to the point where it is almost as if it hasn't happened yet. I went to a Christmas Eve party, I made a nice dinner on Christmas Day, but I don't yet feel ready to start having holiday traditions of my own while my family does their (our) thing on the other side of the planet.
Luckily, except for the price of the plane ticket, I will be going home for a week and a half after New Year's Day. I feel pretty irresponsible about going home on the one hand, because I can't afford it by any stretch of the imagination. But, at the same time, my sisters are getting older and I don't have the best idea of how they're doing right now. And my mom was going to all try and be brave about not having me home, but I felt guilty anyway. So I hope this makes up for whatever bad-daughter karma I need to counteract.
It seems like sleep is upon me. Lately, I have been having strange dreams, particularly about my(male, scholastic) nemesis, but I suppose interesting dreams help make up for days spent in pyjamas watching video clips from The Office, right?
Right.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Monday, December 10, 2007
Here I go, here I go, here I go again!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UKaVBVikysw
Well, let me bring you back to the subjecttttt.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Alone Again Or.
I am, as of a few hours ago, once again living on my own. As of yet, I have not really ventured over to the other side of the apartment; there are a lot of nice things over there, like a real desk and an extra couch and a place to sleep that isn't also a couch, but they don't quite feel like they belong to me.
Besides that bit of sentimentality, I pretty much ditched out of doing the "goodbye" thing. This morning as I was getting ready for school, I found out that my roommate wouldn't still be in the city when class ended, as I had originally thought. I said I'd be willing to go to Tokyo to meet him for a farewell dinner, but my heart wasn't really in it. Instead, after school, I sent him a text message to see what his progress was, then coughed myself into a sleep (I've been sick the last few days) that lasted past the point where he'd still have his cell phone; since it's a rental, he had to return it once he finally got to the airport. I did get a reply text, and I will probably write some sort of email before I go to sleep tonight, but right now all I really want is to not hear from or about him for awhile. At least a week, and possibly much longer.
The reason for that is, of course, that the random trouble with my classmate dating my roommate came to a head last weekend. On my birthday, even. I should sit you down sometime and recite the parade of crap my last four or five birthdays have been. It was last year's birthday letdown that brought this blog into being, after all.
Birthday number 24, which consequently feels far older than 23, seemed to go fairly well. I had lunch with seven other people, at least four of whom I was not expecting to show up for the event, and afterwards went to study with two of my classmates. I bought special 'birthday' coffee and a new pair of earrings, and although I didn't get a lot of homework done, it was more productivity than I usually manage on a Sunday. Little did I know, however, that while I was off wandering about the city searching for things I could buy for myself, my roommate and the girl were having a pow-wow about my various evils. Which, to be fair, I guess I am sort of evil, some of the time, maybe. I did tell my roommate that there was a good chance this girl was emotionally messy/crazy, after all, and that is not a terribly nice thing to say. In my defense, however, I was totally right: anyone over the age of 15 who thinks that Facebook is a good venue for expressing anger is at least a little cracked.
This whole "Amy-sucks-let's-badmouth-her-together" party had, of course, some negative consequences for me. Now, for instance, I am on tiptoes when walking around school, lest I have some awkward run-in in the bathroom or near the fridge with my 'nemesis'. One of her close friends also seems to not like me anymore, which is too bad, because I thought he was a pretty decent guy. I am also sort of nervous about being badmouthed to more people. I don't exactly know how to run an anti-smear campaign. I feel like I should start bringing homemade snacks to school and leaving them in the kitchenette area, just to be on the safe side.
Another wonderful side to this story is that my roommate didn't tell me himself that he had decided he disliked me. Instead, I heard about it 3rd-hand, via text, something like six days after the fact. I was home at the time after having stayed in sick, and my roommate was sitting at his computer. After I read the text and double-checked by calling the sender, I reacted by starting to throw everything of my roommate's I could reach out of the apartment. This ended up just being his shoes, as they were closest to the door. I threw a shoe, looked to see if my roommate had noticed, then threw another shoe or two. My apartment is on the second floor, and I threw eight shoes, so you think he would have heard or seen something. But, no. Talk about the internet degrading the quality of human relationships.
After the failure of my shoe assault, I yelled at him to get out of my house and never talk to me again, but it turns out that that only works if the person is prone to listening to you when you tell them things. This particular boy is not, so instead he stayed in his seat, and we ended up "talking about it". Nothing really kills the joy of a righteous indignation like having to explain yourself.
In the end, he didn't leave, at least not for three more days (which brings us to today). He also promised to try to fix things between me and my classmate, at least to the point where I don't have to fear getting shanked in the school bathroom. He hasn't done that yet, of course, and the mode was downgraded from a face-to-face meeting to an email he promises to send, but.... At this point, would you expect any better?
If there is one positive outcome out of this whole nonsense, it would have to be that I am finding myself much more drawn to boys who seem both nice and as if they have their shit together, rather than the usual "please fix me" types I seem to gravitate towards. It's about fucking time, right?
Besides that bit of sentimentality, I pretty much ditched out of doing the "goodbye" thing. This morning as I was getting ready for school, I found out that my roommate wouldn't still be in the city when class ended, as I had originally thought. I said I'd be willing to go to Tokyo to meet him for a farewell dinner, but my heart wasn't really in it. Instead, after school, I sent him a text message to see what his progress was, then coughed myself into a sleep (I've been sick the last few days) that lasted past the point where he'd still have his cell phone; since it's a rental, he had to return it once he finally got to the airport. I did get a reply text, and I will probably write some sort of email before I go to sleep tonight, but right now all I really want is to not hear from or about him for awhile. At least a week, and possibly much longer.
The reason for that is, of course, that the random trouble with my classmate dating my roommate came to a head last weekend. On my birthday, even. I should sit you down sometime and recite the parade of crap my last four or five birthdays have been. It was last year's birthday letdown that brought this blog into being, after all.
Birthday number 24, which consequently feels far older than 23, seemed to go fairly well. I had lunch with seven other people, at least four of whom I was not expecting to show up for the event, and afterwards went to study with two of my classmates. I bought special 'birthday' coffee and a new pair of earrings, and although I didn't get a lot of homework done, it was more productivity than I usually manage on a Sunday. Little did I know, however, that while I was off wandering about the city searching for things I could buy for myself, my roommate and the girl were having a pow-wow about my various evils. Which, to be fair, I guess I am sort of evil, some of the time, maybe. I did tell my roommate that there was a good chance this girl was emotionally messy/crazy, after all, and that is not a terribly nice thing to say. In my defense, however, I was totally right: anyone over the age of 15 who thinks that Facebook is a good venue for expressing anger is at least a little cracked.
This whole "Amy-sucks-let's-badmouth-her-together" party had, of course, some negative consequences for me. Now, for instance, I am on tiptoes when walking around school, lest I have some awkward run-in in the bathroom or near the fridge with my 'nemesis'. One of her close friends also seems to not like me anymore, which is too bad, because I thought he was a pretty decent guy. I am also sort of nervous about being badmouthed to more people. I don't exactly know how to run an anti-smear campaign. I feel like I should start bringing homemade snacks to school and leaving them in the kitchenette area, just to be on the safe side.
Another wonderful side to this story is that my roommate didn't tell me himself that he had decided he disliked me. Instead, I heard about it 3rd-hand, via text, something like six days after the fact. I was home at the time after having stayed in sick, and my roommate was sitting at his computer. After I read the text and double-checked by calling the sender, I reacted by starting to throw everything of my roommate's I could reach out of the apartment. This ended up just being his shoes, as they were closest to the door. I threw a shoe, looked to see if my roommate had noticed, then threw another shoe or two. My apartment is on the second floor, and I threw eight shoes, so you think he would have heard or seen something. But, no. Talk about the internet degrading the quality of human relationships.
After the failure of my shoe assault, I yelled at him to get out of my house and never talk to me again, but it turns out that that only works if the person is prone to listening to you when you tell them things. This particular boy is not, so instead he stayed in his seat, and we ended up "talking about it". Nothing really kills the joy of a righteous indignation like having to explain yourself.
In the end, he didn't leave, at least not for three more days (which brings us to today). He also promised to try to fix things between me and my classmate, at least to the point where I don't have to fear getting shanked in the school bathroom. He hasn't done that yet, of course, and the mode was downgraded from a face-to-face meeting to an email he promises to send, but.... At this point, would you expect any better?
If there is one positive outcome out of this whole nonsense, it would have to be that I am finding myself much more drawn to boys who seem both nice and as if they have their shit together, rather than the usual "please fix me" types I seem to gravitate towards. It's about fucking time, right?
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