my new best friend

I'm probably going to regret this since I'm typing after I've had four and half (and counting) Jack and Cokes, but my new best friend is Mr. J.D. I think it started when Todd, Aron and I went to Finn Mcool's after fiction workshop and since it was Tuesday, JD's were only 2 bucks. That was enough for me and I think that's where this trouble all started. I don't make my famous "alcohol face" which I usually don after chugging anything bitter, sour or both. But this, I tell you, is pure heaven. That must be a problem right? But every writer needs a drink of choice. Faulkner, Hemingway... Concepcion damnit!

wine and whine

Last night I went over to Josie's for her "experiment in community." She wanted to gather people together in her new (and oh-so-chic) apartment and see what we thought of community. It also gave people reason to bring tons of food and drink and a reason for me to break out the six-year-old bottle of Chateau St. Michelle I've been hoarding. The party/experiment was a mix of my senior seminar classmates and those who studied aboard in Bangalore.
The food was heaven. Brandon made something Indian. Cheryl brought in her homemade cheescake. Dee made pasta with feta cheese. And Keane brought in 400 cans of Coors Light.
I got into a great discussion with an urban-planning major named Kalle. We talked about gentrification and how unfair it is. There's something strange and oddly wonderful about seeing classmates outside of the classroom setting. The inhibitions are slightly lowered. After 8 weeks of talks on pedagogy, race, class, gender and privilege, we're familiar with one another. A larger discussion began about what community means. Should we continue gatherings like this? What does community look like? The best quote out of it: "We need to have a balance. Too much intention is too stiff. Too much drink is just drunk."
No one drank my wine, though. So now it's back in the fridge.

fun fun fun

Happy Birthday Odawni!

Happy Day

In what could be the greatest compliment I've ever received from a teacher, my genius professor asked me to wait after class. I was worried that he was going to comment on my Tale of Two Cities paper. This five-page heap containing my hemorraghed but respectable arguments about duality and duplicity came back to me with a 4.0 on it. So I started thinking back to it while I waited. Did I misuse transitive verbs? Is he going to take back the grade and hand it to someone more deserving? Maybe he'll give me a 4.2! But then, once the class filed out, he said, "Have you applied to any of the English department scholarships?" I said no. "You should. Do it and I'll write a letter for you." Just like that, without any request of my own, I get a recommendation letter.

I'm going to float on the clouds for a little bit. The weather's good for it.

What I like about my engagement ring

As I walked back from Tack's apartment, I created this mental list:
What I like about my engagement ring:

1. It can be used as a weapon. Not saying that my new fighting move isn't unstoppable as it is, but it does beef up my Chamorro Touch of Death.
2. It wards off predators, namely, the skanky guys who hit on me. One wave of my left hand and they melt like butter.
3. My man gave it to me. Seriously, that's what I love about it. Aside from being able to break glass (another fighting move), it was really sweet of him and everytime I look at it, I melt. Like butter.

slacker

I have this huge project to finish and I would have had it done today since I got out of poetry class early, but I didn't do it. I went for coffee with Tack and Anthony. Those guys are hilarious; they should have an act. Since we are not native Seattle-ites, we are afforded the privilege of judging those who are. Take for example the intellectual snobs. I swear, there isn't anything that annoys me more than people who throw out cryptic quotes or latin phrases (lux et veritas = light and truth, a phrase my genius professor who unsnobbish mentioned in class earlier this quarter) so that they can seem smart. This, we all agreed, is annoying.

And to further prolong my project's completion, I walked with Tack for about a hundred blocks to his apartment so he could burn me a CD of Ginsberg reading poetry. And I walked back.

Now I'm here, listening to poetry, cooling off my poor feet and writing this.

Red Sky

Mike and I met my friends Anthony and Tack (nickname, a clever one at that) at Red Sky, the oldest open-mike poetry reading on the West Coast. I wasn't too impressed with any of the poets, including the featured reader who brought her harp along. Seriously. There was one poet who should have read for 1-900-POETRY. She read in a deepened phone-sex voice and talked about lovers and fairies, which I never thought went together. In any case, I thought the four of us were by far the best. Anthony and Tack were hilarious and my man was brilliant as always. Two people stopped me on the way out and told me I had talent. Sometimes I wonder about poetry, if I could really focus on it in grad school... my poetry is definitely stronger than my fiction... Decisions, decisions.

Spongebob quote

Patrick: I don't want to be an adult! Besides, I don't get jazz.

Tangent: If Spongebob Squarepants gained weight, he'd be Spongebob Roundpants.

hey pot, kettle's on the phone

Earlier this month, a woman backed into me in the Safeway parking lot. I tried to beep, but she kept going. And there was a little *boom*. She got out of her car and looked really angry, like it was my fault that I was in her car's way, when she had more than enough orienteering room and all she had to do was *look back*. I told her this as I parked. She started crying and saying that she had only four hours of sleep. I figured that I should be the calmer person in this ordeal. We exchanged information and I told her I would be giving her a call after I got some estimates. After I got four estimates, I gave her a call. I called for about two weeks before Mike got really pissed about it and left her a message saying that if she didn't call back in 48 hours then we would report it to the police. (My man has my back. He's my hero!)

Surely enough, she called back in 10 minutes with some excuse about how she was on vacation, someone was sick, there's no need to go to the police... blah blah... (Insert the "whatever" sign here) We decided to meet at the Starbucks inside the Safeway to go over the estimates. Mike had to be in North Seattle, so I sat there alone, trying to remember what she looked like. When she arrived, she had her boyfriend in tow, which was perfectly expected if she thought I was bringing Mike along.

Women, go figure.

I remained calm either way, since I had two people against me. We went over the figures and she started saying, "I should only have to pay for part of this, since I only made part of the damage." (There was a side scratch, which I pointed out to her that night) I thought, great, this is exactly what I need: more drama. But I didn't say anything and I took both of them out to see my car. She looked at it and said, "Oh, this is it? I thought it was purple!" Her boyfriend examined the bumper and agreed with my explanation that her backing-up into me caused the paint to start flicking off. I was willing to split the costs and had begun to divide the figure when she said, "Should I write you a check?"

And out of all of this, despite almost screwing me over and toting her boyfriend as an intimidation prop, she didn't seem that bad. We had the same kind of black Kate Spade purse (though it wasn't appropriate to discuss accessories). Her voice was a few octaves too high for her age but she could have been my sister's classmate. Maybe in a different setting we could have been friendly, but still.

She backed into me, after all.

fun with words.

If you spend enough time in the UW libraries, you�ll see the occasional homeless person waddling in with their rolled up sleeping bags and personal effects stuffed into Rite Aid sacks. Today, I was trying to finish reading A Tale of Two Cities when a mangy-bearded man who had been quietly rifling through the reserved books sections started saying, �Get on the bus? Get on the bus with what? You f�ng c---k s----r! Get your head out of your ass and get the f�ng money.� Then he began to transpose �s--k� with �c--k� and had all kinds of vulgar grammar play.

It happens.

A joke in reference to Hors'doeuvres

"Horse divorce? I never even knew horses got married!"

thief.

In my dream last night, I was on Saipan. There was a school of American students staying at one of the hotels. The girls were unloading their luggage and left much of it open. I started taking whatever I could and shoving it into my car - bags, blouses, dresses. All was fine until one girl passed by my car and noticed one of her dresses. The rest of the dream entailed me running from them. My mother was in the car with me at one point and I hit a pot hole and the whole car flipped over.

My dreams turn dark when midterms hit.

my v.d.

So last night I dreamt that I missed my meeting with my professor. This is how I know that I'm stressed over school. I'll dream that I'm either late for class because 1) I'm on the other side of the country or in another country entirely or 2) I slept through my body clock (which never fails me) or 3) a combination of 1 and 2. Either way, I had nothing to worry about. I thought I was late for my conference and I walked into his office and he said, "You're early! I saw you running up the stairs!" I went through my whole revision process with him, telling him how I took his advice on taking out the stanza which targets academic fellows and highlighting the last stanza's emphasis on sound. So he liked it, *very much*. Whew.

I bought Mike a small tres leches cake from the neighborhood Salvadorean Bakery. The woman was so nice to me and wished me a "Happy Valenteen's Day!" Yes, Valenteen's, not Valentine's. It was sweet.

Mike and I had dinner on Alki. Last year we ate at Salty's, which was packed so tightly you needed a shoe horn to get into your seat. The view then was gorgeous and it hasn't changed. This year we opted for low-key seafood. I tried to take a picture of the city skyline, but I kept getting blurry lsd-shots which no one likes. I like this one, though.

He also gave me a single red rose which my cat Lilo promptly tore (and by *tore* I mean practically ate and clawed) through while I wasn't looking. I think there's something not right with that one...

Japanese?

This guy stopped me today on campus and started talking to me in Japanese. I gave him a blank stare and he said, "Oh, are you Japanese?" Ethnicity is always a bit difficult to explain, so I said no. I gave him money, though. He asked me to sign my name and I noticed that people had given like 50 bucks. Where do UW students get their money?

poem

I wrote this.

Dreamboat

the man I want carries a switchblade
instead of a library card and has hands fit
to change a flat or work a jackhammer

he woos me with dirty stories of what
he�ll do with his workboots off

he harbors a past under his skin
stories of hitchhiking through the desert
fill in the gaps in employment

to be romantic he lifts me up like
a child carried sleeping from a car
and we spend the night at Motel 6

in the next room teenagers dance
in cheap pastel dresses and rented tuxedoes
their rap songs and raucous sex
pump through the walls

on this bed he reels me into his smell and sweat
his hands spread over my ears like flattened stars
and together we shut out the sound

weird dreams of late

1. It was in the evening and I saw a cliff diver of Acapulco lowering himself down on a rope, a few feet from the rocky side. When I looked closer, he was holding onto a skeleton.

2. My man's ex is in our apartment and the two of them are talking. I'm dressed in an oversized man's shirt that still shows my heart-covered thong. She's wearing a business suit and is nice to me but not particularly friendly. (Somehow this is the only thing that makes sense) My mother calls and everyone listens to me speak to her in Chamorro. The ex has brought her maid and her maid's seven asian children who all seem to cling to me. The maid is toothless and tiny. And insists on talking to me.

3. I'm in a basement classroom and I realize I'm in the wrong room. I've missed my huge conference with my poetry professor but I know I'm not ready. The class begins to fill up. I'm suddenly in the back of the class, trying to make my way out, but I've spilled oily salad over the floor. I'm trying to scoop it with my hands, but the salad dressing is flowing like soup. They're talking about Tale of Two Cities. Someone talks about a murderer named Gaston and I think, I don't remember that part of the book.

*This can be easily explained by last night's events. Odawni and I met each other for dinner, drinks and catch-up. She's awesome and has such amazing strength. We drank wine (white for me, red for her) and toasted to strength. Not as cheesy as it seems since the conversation matter afforded it. We had black bean cakes over a spinach salad and lightly salted edamame. After that, we headed to Red Sky for the open-mic poetry reading, but we were late. We stood out in front and noticed that the only way to get in was through the front door and literally in front of the reader (they need to rearrange the setting). Everyone looked at us gawking through the window wondering where my classmates were and if there was any seating. We were going to wait until the woman finished reading, but she was apparently reading an epic poem. It was too cold to wait.

I want some mendel, son

What does a sister have to do to get some brie around here? I went to Safeway yesterday and was tempted to buy a triangle slab of brie but it felt melted. Is that the way it's supposed to be? There's frost on my car and I have to plan for spring. May will be busy with travel. My work wants me to go to Providence for a conference so we non-profiteers can have a face-to-face meeting. Why can't we just do conference calls? I like taking calls while wearing my tracksuit and secretly sending emails. I want my cheese firm and my conference calls short. That's all I'm saying.

technology

There's one professor I have whom I believe is a genius. And to top it off, he's funny. Today I felt bad for him since he couldn't get the VCR to work so we could watch a French Revolution video (which I taped because I'm such a pet). He fumbled around with switches and cords and of course, in my institutionalized patriarchal impulses I nudged my classmate Todd to go over and help the man. It didn't help though. And if we don't watch the tape, how else will my professor be eternally indebted to me? Christ, I need a game plan.

turning tricks and treats

As much as I hate to admit it, I have learned a few tricks from my brother. When I was 12, he taught me to wake up without an alarm. All I needed to do was to focus on the time, the specific number, in my head and repeat it like a litany. It works, every time. Unfortunately it's also worked a little too well since I've been waking up at 3 this week to finish the video and now I'm up... When I worked at the gym, I had the opening shift so I had to wake up no later than 4 in the morning in order to get dressed, drive over there and open the place up... When I started, the members (not the staff) told me that it was a high-turnover job. I lasted eight months, which was seven months longer than the girl who preceeded me. And in all that time, my body clock failed me only twice... Since there was no one on the road, I would usually clock in at 80 mph and I was never caught. I was never caught for other things, like drinking protein shakes and eating mint-chocolate protein bars... The pay was crappy and well, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do...

money money money

When I was in the fifth grade, I was obsessed with British television shows, especially Absolutely Fabulous. The main character Eddy was a drunk PR exec/ex-hippie whose daughter Saffie was her level-headed science genius polar opposite. Saffy told her once, "You move from self-induced crisis to self-induced crisis!" Sometimes I think I'm the same way, that I bring a lot of stress upon myself. This week I had a enormous project to finish, two books to read and a five-page paper to write. I think I need Yoga or a life-sized punching bag, preferrably in the shape of the guy who stole my parking space today. Yesterday, I presented a video I've been working on to a group of 80 Seattle officials and non-profiteers. It was for a 50 million dollar fund which relocates businesses affected by the building of light rail. I had finished it on Monday, but the staff wanted changes, which was fine since it's their project, but still... They all loved it (after I had changed it fifty times), which isn't the point, but important to me because I had lost so much sleep over this. (like now, when I've accidently trained my body to wake at 3 in the morning...) And to add sulfur to injury, last night, the Executive Director told my boss, "Monica did a great job." I didn't say anything but my boss said, "Yes, but her name is Mona." He shrugged and smiled. I also lost four pounds this week, which I want to credit to my new attempts at nutrition but I can't say for sure.