Bullshit bullshit bullshit.

You know when you reach that point when all the bitching and hate and shit you spew on a regular basis starts to sound old even to you?

Well, despite having an amazing capacity to bitch and hate and spew shit and moan and listen to myself and still think it all sounds ridiculously justified and SO TRUE, I think I'm tired of it.

So, instead of the usual "MD Sucks Major Sweaty Balls" rant, I've decided to write a little ditty. And by "little ditty," I mean a tuneless, dirge-like, whiny chant. I still haven't decided on a title, but that will come with time, I feel. Anyway, here are the first few versus.

Maryland really sucks,

Maryland really sucks.

Bullshit bullshit bullshit,

Bullshit bullshit bullshit.

It's flat and ugly

Like Janet Reno.

Bullshit bullshit bullshit,

Bullshit bullshit bullshit.

No mass transit

But lots of traffic.

Bullshit bullshit bullshit,

Bullshit bullshit bullshit.

Grad school is shit,

And I hate everything.

Bullshit bullshit bullshit,

Bullshit bullshit bullshit.

It's obviously a work in progress, and where it says "bullshit," you actually say it. I didn't just write it because I hadn't thought of a good refrain. That is the refrain. You say bullshit because it's true. What's that? You don't believe me? Well, all I have to say is it took FOUR WHOLE DAYS for the state of Maryland to remove enough snow so that traffic could flow as normally as possible in this wretched place. Bullshit bullshit bullshit, bullshit bullshit bullshit.

I'm writing a PAPER

...AND MY NAME WILL BE **FIRST** IN THE AUTHORS.

Hells yes. I have endured over the last week some very subtly nasty commentary from an unsuspected source that has rankled. Basically, the questions came down to "I really don't think you know anything at all about anything you've done, and you're a total idiot, so I'm going to treat you like an underling even though I have nothing on you." So I've been mad. But you know what they say? That whole living well is the best revenge? It is. It SO is.

I started writing today, and after 4 hours, I'm on the second page (single spaced) which for science writing is very good. No idea how it compares to other kinds of writing, but I'm feeling smug. When asked how/what I was doing and I shared and displayed my handiwork, the look I got was priceless. Priceless, I say! Shock and awe. It was along the lines of "[Advisor] thinks you have enough data to begin writing?" "Yes." "When did you start?" "Oh, about an hour ago." Silence, eyes wide, walked away. That is a lesson in how to give a bitch slap without lifting a finger.

Fuck the lot of them.

Huh.

Every so often I come up with a really good idea, like the title of this blog which is a reference to the immortal comic duo Laurel and Hardy.  Another fine mess, indeed.  

Speaking of fine messes, in my infinite wisdom, I picked an awesome topic to write my independent proposal on, but I have to give an open-to-the-public seminar on it (omg omg I'm gonna die), a closed-to-everyone-but-the-collection-of-oddities-that-is-my-PhD-committee oral defense of  the proposal, as well as a 3 page progress report on my actual experiments that I'm doing now.  I am resisting the urge to slit my wrists and claim disability or get my tonsils removed so I can't talk for several weeks.  

I am very unhappy right now, although while wallowing around in my pit of despair, I remembered a 5 lb block of white chocolate that my aunt pressed upon Danny and me.  It is SO GOOD.  I don't know why it's so good; it isn't even chocolate.  But if you have to pick something to take down into a pit of despair, white chocolate isn't so bad... at least it won't talk back to you.

The last of the (____________).

So, I got an email addressed to everyone who started in the biochem department with me in regards to our upcoming Independent Proposals.  All the bullshit about scheduling the proposals aside (and trust me, there was a lot of it), I read that list and realized 40% of my class had dropped out.  

24 hours later, I still can't decide whether it means that I'm really smart (as in "woohoo, I'm making it where all these people failed!") or really, really stupid (as in why didn't I say "who the hell needs this shit??!?!" and peaced out 6.34 quarts of cortisol and stomach acid ago).

I hear Obama's been brought in to make Nascar even more popular.  He said it's quintessentially American, or something.  

What does that mean?  

I'll tell you what it means.  It means we've taken something from the Europeans, Formula 1 racing, decreased the level of skill required to do it well by moving onto a track, so really you only have to know how to turn left and you can't possibly get lost.  And as long as it means we burn insane amounts of fuel doing it, it makes lots of noise, and we can eat tons of fried shit and sit on our asses, then yes, it's quintessentially American.  

(For the record, I spent the last 10 days sitting on my ass/shlepping around eating tons of fruit and vegetables, and I lost weight.)

Blue Man Nude

I just got back from Israel, and before I even try to organize my thoughts, I would like to make a statement.

What the hell is the movie Watchmen supposed to even be about?  I watched it on the flight back to the US, and aside from an anatomically correct, naked, glowing blue man and some intrigue, I couldn't make head or tail of the actual plot.  Maybe it was just the slight hypoxia.  Oh, and then it got REALLY weird because there was a very, very explicit sex scene (I don't mean choreographed Hollywood dance-fucking, but actual grinding, thrusting, and humping along with facial expressions, head to toe sideways body shots, etc).  I'd say it definitely surpassed softcore, but because there was no visible genitalia, it wasn't quite hardcore.  That has got to be the most awkward thing to watch on an airplane.  EVER.  I mean, there are children running around!  Or you're just that pervert in the seat in front watching the closest thing to porn you can find.

Weird...

Creative drain

Last night I went to fencing. In and of itself, that was a great way to spend an evening, other than the now-undeniable fact that I need to wash my gear. Febreze will only take you so far, kiddies. There comes a point when everything is so sweat-drenched and revolting when you actually need to wash yo bidness. My gear is at that point.

Anyway, I fenced some (literally!) world-class fencers and lost to them, which was ok because I'm not that good. Yet. I was able to go down with a fight, at any rate. But I was talking with my coach after, just trying to think how I can fix my game so I don't make all the same mistakes next time. He said a couple interesting things, some good, some to think about.

The thinking first. It wasn't out-and-out criticism, and I definitely wasn't smacking my head into the steering wheel the whole way home going, "IIIIIIdiot!!" He said I wasn't creative enough with my actions on the strip. Now... that was the body, mind, and soul of my game when I started out with epee at NYU. I learned how to parry, I did point control, and then they let me loose on a strip and said, "Hit the other girl. Beat her. Feel free to make her cry." Check, check, and check. The good bits about that (lack of) strategy:

- I was a total wildcard. No one knew what the hell to do with me.

- My timing and footwork were brilliant because I couldn't do anything else. My counter-time stop hits were like lightening. I learned how to flinch and simultaneously extend my arm and usually score. At the very least, a double touch. Super-aware of where every part of my body was.

- When I got angry, I LET myself get that way, then I just beat the shit out of whoever got on the strip in front of me. I was unstoppable. And kind of crazy. But I won a lot of bouts pissed off.

The bad aspects of my old game:

- To be unstoppable, I had to get furious. This is hard to just do unless I'm having a really bad month PMS-wise. I had to lose to really bad people and feel like shit about myself before I could get angry enough. This is neither a healthy nor a sound reliable strategy.

- If someone could read my bullshit, I didn't have anything underneath it.

I decided I was going to revamp my game from the bottom up, which I've been doing. For instance, I was going to stop frenetically bouncing around because ultimately it's a waste of energy, and I'd also stop leaning forward. So, I tried keeping my back heel down a little more and sitting more upright in my en guarde. Leaning/frenetic bouncing = gone. I did find a middle ground, because if you sit too upright and don't bounce at all, you lose a lot of mobility. Paired with lots of rope jumping, it's becoming very effective in keeping me grounded - literally - but mobile.

Generally, I think it's going well, because the good bit of the convo was about how I don't have any compulsive tendencies on the strip in a bout situation, save for relaxing a little too much when I retreat. Some people have a tendency start with their blade high and then cut over and finish low. So you nail them over their shoulder. Others compulsively take a given parry when offered the blade. So you know they're going to do it; you disengage and score. Another great thing about last night was I angled my blade the tiniest bit, and all of a sudden, I was landing wrist touches again. Wrist touches over the blade, under it, on the side... it was awesome.

But that thing about needing to be more creative on the strip. I was talking to Danny, and the truth of it is that at the end of the day (and even the end of weeks) I just feel so drained and beaten down mentally, that summoning the effort to be in any way creative is so Herculean, I just can't. To try to think anymore than absolutely necessary, to try to be more than just a functioning body is nearly impossible. Day in day out, I'm working on the same problem in lab. I've been running these wretched experiments for going on 4 years now. It's very hard to describe the incredible lack of desire to do anything at all. The most incredible boredom and laziness combined with feeling like the world owes me huge for the trouble I'm going to. I'm not saying these feelings have anything to do with fairness or logic, they're just there, and it sucks when I want to do well at fencing because they're quite a hindrance. It's one thing to not like what you're doing and feel beaten down at work, but why does it have to bleed over into my general well-being and infect the things that I really love?

Oh well. Try harder, I guess... because that's about all I can do.

Wack.

I had to work on Sunday.  This means rolling out of bed, grumbling, donning various stretchy spandexy items of workout clothing, and trying to pretend I'm driving into the glorified truck stop of a college town for a workout, and oh yeah, by the way, I'm also going to drop into lab and do some work.  Me, working on the fucking weekend for the equivalent of minimum wage 4 years ago, Pushing The Boundaries Of Humankind's Knowledge.  

What utter bullshit.  

This fall, I'll be starting my fourth year of graduate school.  After a particularly impassioned rant to my advisor, he is 100% on board with my need to publish something, anything at all really, so I can start to gain some science cred.  We had a weird discussion Friday.  He said I should shoot for a publication in JBC, the Journal of Biological Chemistry (full disclosure: I had to look up the acronym when he said "JBC" because I'm useless remembering shit like that).  He described JBC as "reputable, but crappy."  After trying 4 possible definitions of "crappy" in a bid to figure out just how fucked I am, it turns out he meant conservative, un-groundbreaking science, and I had a moment.  

A moment, when I almost did a double-take to his face, because people, NO ONE outside of maybe 20-something people in the whole world give a rat's fart about what comes out of this lab.  Like, hello, you are the principle investigator of this lab, are you not?  You dictate the direction of all of our research, am I right?  Have you NOTICED how completely arcane the subject matter is that you are studying?  Let me put it this way; we are not curing cancer here.  But a publication is a publication.  I don't care, but to describe JBC as crappy because it publishes conservative science?  Whaaaat.

Anyway, that's why I was working on Sunday in a foul mood.  I slouched in wearing my nubbly Adidas slide-on sandals (they are truly magical; it's like having a foot massage as you walk), and I noticed this professor as I walked down the hall towards my lab.  He is always sitting in his concrete cube looking ancient, and if he's not in there, he's shuffling around the building staring at the floor/walls avoiding any and all eye contact, still looking ancient.  One time I spoke to him because his -80 C freezer was beeping in a way that signaled its imminent failure.  Mainly I was glad it was his freezer and not him.  I see him literally ALL THE TIME, and try as I might to just make eye contact and smile, nary a word passes between us.  

So he's sitting there, on his office door is an NYU sticker, and I thought to myself, "Hey, we share an alma mater, maybe I should start a conversation," because I was wearing an old pair of NYU standard-issue shorts, and, you know, we could bond over the purple or something...  And then I thought, why bother him?  Obviously he's here, sitting in a concrete bunker sans even a window on an uncharacteristically gorgeous, cloudless, warm, dry Sunday in late July, for a reason.  As I plated my cells, I mused on why the hell he'd opt for a weekend like this.  Maybe he's henpecked.  Maybe his plumbing is getting fixed.  Maybe this is a form of mental illness.  

That's when it struck me.  The academic ideal IS a form of mental illness.  What joy can someone get, closeting themselves away from the rest of the world WITHOUT EVEN A WINDOW every single day for the rest of their life?  What kind of person does it take to do that?  Who do you have to be to be willing to obsess over one problem literally for the rest of your life?  Because that's what you're SUPPOSED to do if you're a good academic.  

Granted, the stereotypical tweed is lovely, but that's quite a price to pay to wear tweed.  And no one does, at least not here.  It's bad sneakers, even worse khakis, and polo shirts.  Unless, of course, you opt for socks and sandals and ill-fitting jeans and the odd Hawaiian top.

I did make it to the gym after doing the plating and prep for Monday.  Hopefully soon, I'll be writing a paper.  Hopefully not too long after that, it'll be thesis + graduation time, and I'll be done with this idiosyncratic hodgepodge of questionably sane people before I start looking as antique as my fellow NYU alum down the hall...

Car stickers.

I very strongly suspect that all those people who run marathons "for themselves" are for shit. If that was truly the case, if they were genuinely running just for themselves, why bother putting those obnoxious as all fuck "26.2" stickers on their cars? And with the huge number of vehicles I see locally as well as on the I-95 northeast corridor sporting said proclamations of athletic expenditure, the premise that this unprecedented increase in marathoners is bolstered by strictly personal improvement is absolute bunk.

I was cut off in the Trader Joe's parking lot by some asshole with one of those stickers. Rotten bastard.

Oh, and all those other stickers loudly advertising obscure acronyms for various locales. How pretentious can you get? I really don't care how well-traveled some random stranger is if the best they can do is put a sticker on their car because they're going to cut me off anyway. Seriously, I want to get a random letter generator and make bullshit stickers that mean nothing. And cut people off.

Rainrainrainrain...

This rain is unbelievable. If you, like me, are situated in the mid-Atlantic/northeast region of the US, you are most likely growing mildew, like the 3-toed sloths in the jungle who move so slowly that their coats turn green due to algal growth on their fur. The only pro is that I'm hoping this trend will reappear this winter, with appropriately cold temperatures so there will be mountains upon mountains of snow instead of acres upon acres of mud and militant mosquitoes.

In anticipation of the winter and the snow, I found a cool pattern for a nifty-looking hat. Also, a while back my mom got me like 5 skeins of this random shiny mohair blend wool. ("It was $2 a skein!! I mean, $2! What a bargain! Here's five, I got another 5 for myself.") The lacey pattern looks very nice, and I think the shiny filamentously fuzzy yarn will rock. This will likely take me until it's cold again, anyway, given the amount of time I can actually dedicate to knitting.

Maryland really, really sucks.

The other day, I thought to myself, "Damn, it is humid out here, and it's only the beginning of June. What's this stupid swamp going to do in August when it's run out of humidity because it spent it all in June? How can this place possibly get even more humid than it already is?"

Well, Maryland weather happily obliged, answering my question quite enthusiastically. It can get more humid by actually forming clouds at ground level. It can be raining AND be misty/foggy AND be wicked sticky and warm. This brings me to another thing pertaining to the humidity; we do not have an exhaust fan in our bathroom. We do, however, have a window. But this window's sill happens to be below chest-level for me, and it opens from the bottom. So, I can't use while I'm physically in the shower with the lights on in the bathroom, we can't use it when it's freezing cold in the winter because who the hell wants to take a shower with an open window in the middle of a cold, cold night in January, and in the heat of the summer, I'm not sure where it's more humid, in the bathroom or outside. And who wants to waste the air conditioning?

So, we can only use this supposedly ventilating window if I'm dressed/not in the shower for a couple weeks before it gets wicked hot and a couple weeks before it gets too cold. This window is supposed to be a substitute for an exhaust fan. It is not. Our ceiling is covered in mold, and we have even begun to grow mildew in the toilet bowl. Dear lord, it is revolting. Oh, and we've already asked them to replace the dry wall around the tiles in the shower because it's gone completely moldy. We have requested an exhaust fan. We shall continue to request said exhaust fan and complain about the blatantly sizeist "ventilation window" that I can't use if I don't want to flash the inhabitants of this bloody stupid place.

Which I don't want to do. Ever.

You know what we have here that sort of comes with the territory of living in a fucking swamp? Mosquitoes. Stupid fucking mosquitoes. Mosquitoes and mold. Welcome to Maryland. That's what they should have on the license plates; mosquitoes and mold. They have a heron on one of them, and I haven't seen a single fucking heron since I moved down here. But mosquitoes? Oh yes, tons. Everywhere.

Feminism these days..

So, feminism... is it over?  

Absolutely not.  The past couple days I came across some articles online that really got me furious.  The first was a bullshit article from askmen.com entitled "Why Women Can't Be Bosses."  It's amazing that shit like this can even get aired.  What's even more amazing is that according to the comments, this trash can get 44% approval.  It's mind-blowing.  The only thing I could think of was, "Wow, our patriarchal society is literally imploding before our eyes.  The 'dudes' are getting desperate."  I realized that this utter crap will soon be turned on me full force, when I enter the workplace as a dynamic female scientist with a PhD.  

And then I came across another gem, scans of a how-to book for anti-choice evangelists to bring the undecided over to their ban-abortion stance.  The thing that gets me is not their stance on abortion, because if you don't want one, that is 100% fine with me.  What's really disgusting is the constant reminders to fake concern for the woman, which implies that it's not natural for these dregs of humanity to consider the woman as a human being outside of her capacity to bear children.  Plus, there are gross scientific mistakes in it.  Eclampsia, for example.  Bedrest does NOT cure it.  If it's really severe, the only "cure" is an abortion.  

One good thing coming from this Dr. Tiller murder is that women are coming out of the woodwork and sharing their late-term abortion stories.  If it's a case of a detected anencephaly (the brain of a fetus failed to develop; see the wikipedia entry on it), conjoined twins, an infection due to leakage of water, thank goodness these women are speaking up.  My grandma told me that when Roe v. Wade passed, she felt an ineffable sense of relief despite being married with children.  For her, it meant that a huge burden was off the female population.  I believe that 100%.  

When I was 11 or 12, my mom told me that if I ever got pregnant, she would take me to have an abortion if I needed one.  It wasn't an invitation/permission to be wild and act irresponsibly (she made that very clear), but it was something that made me feel much more comfortable.  I had a backup, no matter what.  After that, my grandma told me that if I ever needed an abortion, I didn't even have to tell my mom or dad; she'd take me and wouldn't even tell my grandfather.  It was like huge, deep, soft pillows were always underneath me as I wobbled along growing into a sexually mature adult.  I didn't behave irresponsibly, but I always knew that no matter what, I always had a back way out.  I could always reclaim my life and walk away from a man, the same way men could walk away from an accidentally pregnant girlfriend pre-Roe v. Wade.  I would never be beholden to him.  I'd never be that person, as long as I took care of the being smart in school/productive in life thing.  I was on equal footing.  I could throw myself into the fray, and I was going to come up grinning no matter what because I was equipped to handle everything, even if I made a mistake.

It's just so... I don't know, improbably nauseating to think that there is a group of people who want to take that away from future generations of women.  Oh, and the anti-contraception argument?  I'm chalking that up to a crazy Puritanical I-must-suffer-life-is-a-veil-of-tears attitude that I can't for the life of me ever hope to identify with.

And I'm not sorry about that at all.

Lady Gaga

I officially love her.

Her music is pop with a dark kinky undertone, and I can listen to it without hating myself for liking it. She is absolutely fabulous, the best thing to happen to pop since Madonna back in the day. Lady Gaga has the most incredible fashion sense - it's like burlesque collided with Thierry Mugler, 20's theater, David Bowie, and a million other influences. It is bizarre and jolting, and I love the way it throws me off-kilter and generally surprises.

Oh yeah, and her music is nifty, catchy, and I will absolutely love listening to it now and in the future.

New York represent! :)

summer un-vacation

This is the end of summer vacations for me.  I thought that when I was working for Pepsi THAT would be the end of summer vacations.  But with top-notch BBQs (really, they were very awesome) every other Thursday and half-day Fridays, it wasn't half as draggy as grad school.  In grad school, everything's closed.  The co-op, where I can get my bean burritos and dried fruit and nuts to snack on should I get hungry, is closed.  It's so sad.  However, despite the lack of students and good hippy vegetarian non-mall-foodcourt food, there are still rarely enough treadmills in the gym.  I got stuck to the stinky guy who smelled like sweated-out garlic and curry and wayyy too much aftershave.  At least the smell kept me concentrating on not losing my lunch instead of how boring running is.  

Maybe I should just be thankful that I wasn't behind someone who had the running farts.  (You know, with every step, thhbthtbh, thhbthtbh, thhbthtbh... don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about because you do.  And if you don't, you're lying.) 

Anyway, I'm strongly resisting any kind of routine (which suits me).  That being said, I need to fit in a good sports bra shopping escapade.  Last weekend, when the gym was all but deserted Saturday morning, I sloped into the weight room with my jumprope.  In between sets, I jumped rope for 1 minute, and there's nothing quite like jumping rope in front of a full-length mirror to make you realize some pretty idiotic things.  

(1)  I look COMPLETELY RETARDED jumping rope.  

(2) I need better sports bras because if I put this off for much longer and continue jumping rope, my chest will be in my pockets by age 40 and in my shoes by age 60.

(3) I have some pretty tight calf muscles with some nice definition.

(4) The same cannot be said for my thighs.

However, I'm used to looking completely retarded and the rope jumping is a pretty brilliant and difficult workout so I won't stop.  Instead I'll keep jamming in gym time between experiments in lab, trying to fence, and generally hoping for the best. We shall see...

Oh, and I got my blades today!  They're all shiny and pretty and new, and I'm gonna hook them up and mess around with them!   I'm so excited.  :)  

I'm not dead yet....

I'm not dead, I've just been trying to finish this semester. Haven't had a weekend in 3 weeks. I'm sure my desire to blather on about nothing of import will return shortly. :)

You've got to be effing kidding me.

In "downtown" Bethesda, a DC suburb with a collective yuppie stick up its ass (and home to one of my favorite restaurants, Sasso), the purchase price of a "downtown" condo is LITERALLY ON PAR WITH MANHATTAN PRICES. So is the dearth of parking in that area.

Holy crap, people.

Be-thbthtbhtbhtbhtbhtb-esda does not equal Manhattan no matter how you rearrange the equation. Would you rather live in chain store yuppie central, where life stops promptly at 8 PM on weeknights and by 11 on weekends, where a ticket to the opera is $40 for the cheap seats, or in the middle of life itself, where you can get a good slice of pizza at 4 AM and the cheap seats to the opera w/ live orchestra are $17 (they are; check the family circle at the Metropolitan Opera)?

Dear readers, I take Manhattan! To drink and live in.

Bethesda: http://www.thechaseatbethesda.com/pricing.asp

Manhattan: http://realestate.nytimes.com/sales/detail/185-1711871/new-york-ny-usa/1-beds/200000-700000-price/PRICE-HIGH-sort/40-p/44-1408440--1501-0003EM--44-1529694--297-0016308--46-1044429--185-1711871--185-1629716--185-1698583--88-350990--46-1035272-ls/2535-t

I'm not looking to buy, especially not something at that price; I'm simply illustrating a point. Very vividly, I think...

Someone keeps cranking up the resistance...

Seriously. I'm on a treadmill, and as I adjust to each setting, someone cranks it up even higher. I had the WORST problem set EVER that was due today, and I had to give a 10 minute presentation on light scattering as it was used in a scientific article today. Before 9 AM.

And I was told - after the fact, of course - that my topic wasn't so great. I ran the topic and the article by the prof weeks ago. I can't go into the math and craziness in 10 minutes, AND teach everyone light scattering, AND explain the article, AND talk about how light scattering works in the article. WTF. Grad school is such bullshit.

It's been ~90 F for the last few days which has been really nasty because the apartment is on the top floor of the building with 3 large windows with southern exposure. The inside temp hasn't fallen below 85 F, even at night. We haven't been cooking much, which makes me kind of sad.

In other news, I'll be going up to NY to celebrate my grandma's 80th birthday in the form of a BBQ this weekend. I am looking forward to that. I also just rocked a sushi buffet for lunch, a small celebration because I finished my HW and that stupid presentation today. Now I want a nap. I will not get one, though. Instead, I'm going to make myself more plates so I can do more experiments this week. Yay. Then - to the gym with me!

Things I want but probably don't really need.

It's sunny today! Really honest-to-goodness sunny. This is nice, seeing as it's been miserable, rainy, and in the 40's the last few days. Actually, the fact that it was in the 40's was good, because it made me want soup, which resulted in a spicy coconut curry veggie soup that rescued 3 beets, the remainder of the chicken soup from my seder, 7/8ths of a completely wrinkly, dehydrated, small head of cabbage, and quite possibly my body from a veggie-less hell of my own making. I am midway through a gargantuan Passover recipe compilation on the other blog. Lord help me finish it. The soup will follow.

Anyway, with the sunshine came my annual hopefulness that THIS is the year I will find The Summer Dress. What is The Summer Dress (henceforth to be known as TSD)? TSD is that elusive item of clothing that I can vamp up with heels, dress down in flats, put a cardigan over, wear under a trenchcoat, and is in a nice print. This should be easy given the fact that stores are pretty much giving clothes away. It isn't.

I keep thinking, "Oh, hey, maybe I'll find a light white cottony thing" (because it is my secret wish to wear one with a huge straw hat and crazy shoes to a garden party) and every time I try on something it looks like absolute hell on my body. You'd think this wouldn't happen, seeing as I'm used to myself in white; fencing uniforms are white jackets, protective white knickers, and white knee socks. Truth be told, I'm not even sure most of the time what body parts are throwing off the fit! It's the most frustrating thing ever.

I put the dress on, squint at myself, take off my socks, squint again, start at the bottom, decide it's too short, wonder how my butt can look so spectacularly hydraulic in a pencil skirt and look so sad, huge, and awful in this dress, how my boobs somehow look nonexistant because the straps place the bust too low on my chest, why did they cut the waist in the wrong place, and Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ on rollerskates, how can this all look so bad simultaneously??!?!?! Then I get back into my underwear, and while the view isn't perfect, it's what I remembered my body looking like from before I tried the offending garment on.

Then I contemplate nudity as a lifestyle.

I tried to go to Macy's the other day in a bid for Estee Lauder mascara (my mom got some in a gift, gave it to me, and now, damn it all, I can't tolerate drugstore mascara - but that's mainly because they don't stock Max Factor in stupid fucking MARYLAND), and to cruise the spring dresses, but the mall was closed for Easter Sunday. This is what I get for moving from NY where there are enough Jews to have things open on Christian holidays and enough Christians to run the show when the Jews are out. Damn the south. Damn the dresses. And damn not having mascara.

I ended up at DSW, and found 2 pairs of sandals (both in size 11!!) for ~$20 each on clearance. Maybe this weekend will look up in my bid for mascara and springtime versatility.

Phshshshhshshshshhhhhh....

That is the sound of me decompressing.

Thursday night drained me hardcore. I'm planning on a huge Passover seder post for the other blog (the food one), but I haven't been able to think about it yet without recurring feelings of panic. Instead, I spent this weekend being all low-key and shizz...

Saturday involved a nice 2-hr workout fencing and a very lovely afternoon at the local pub sitting in a dark booth and shooting the shit. We always end up dropping SO MUCH effing money there, but the food is really good and the drink is, too. I edited stuff for my adviser that night and got to bed early for a Saturday. Today, I went trolling for bargains at DSW, and found some very cool sandals in a size 11 (US) for an acceptable amount of money (~$20) which never happens.

Part of me is very sad that I don't work in a profession that allows me to exercise my full appreciation for beautiful shoes in a variety of heel heights and designs. Science labwork tends to make flats absolutely necessary because you're on your feet the whole day. 3 inch heels? No thanks, but I'll stare longingly after them as they're taken away. (I saw beautiful snake print wedges, where the wedge was carved into this beautiful sculptural design so it wasn't clunky at all, but they were at least 4 inches high. Very very beautiful, dramatic, etc.... and totally impractical. Sigh.)

Then we went to our friends' house for an Easter celebration. TONS of food and wine, pleasant company, and it suddenly dawned on me why intercultural relationships might be discouraged. You end up celebrating everyone's holidays, so you eat like a total pig twice as many days and you doom yourself to getting madd crazy fat.

Yeah. That's my deep thought for today. I drowned the rest of them in the wonderful Diana's sangria.

Ugh. Monday is tomorrow.

Candidacy: Seder

Another fine mess, indeed.  

Somehow I am in the position of hosting a seder at Danny's and my apartment for his whole family.  I also have an exam that promises to be no picnic at 8 AM.  

I am actually less worried about the exam than I am about the seder.  They are a judgmental lot.  I'm no slouch in the kitchen department, but holy fuck, people.  THE PRESSURE.  It's like candidacy again, just this time in holiday planning.  Fucking fuckers who fuck.  Thus far I've resisted the urge to throw up (which has passed over me periodically during the last 2-3 days).

I have a menu and a game plan (which includes finding kosher for Passover vodka to medicate myself), but this is really not cool.  I can't sleeeeeeeep.  Ugh.  Which bodes ill for this exam.  Hopefully I'll tire myself out in the next, oh I don't know, 15 minutes?

Right...