Calling OT

Alright, any and all readers from OT. Here's your mission.

Convince me to stay. Please, please convince me to stay.

Addendum

Listening to: Gnarls Barkley - The Last Time

I paid $600 to get my car fixed. Ouch.

Also, there was aline at Five Guys practically out the door. I thought about Qdoba and opted against it, knowing there was a Chipotle nearby.

I did not find said Chipotle, and ended up having a bad bowl of soup and odd-tasting sourdough loaf at Panera. I usually like Panera, but it tasted crappy today.

::grimble grumble::

At least my brakes don't screech anymore.

Burgerlicious.

Listening to: Talking Heads - Artists Only

Well, off to get Isis fixed up today. I hope it takes under a couple hours - I don't want to have to haul ass to Ardmore, drop her off, take the train home, take the train back some time later, and drive her home again. That'd be annoying, although it's unfortunately happened before. Still, there's a number of things that need to be fixed ::frown:: I should have taken better care of her.

Oh well. It'll give me time to read Heart of Darkness while I wait. Plus, I get to go to Five Guys for lunchy goodness. I'll spend about 5 seconds telling myself, "Julia, you do not need a double hamburger with onions and A-1" and then I will buy it, along with the traditional BAG O' FRIES. All this exercising lately, so I can occasionally gorge like a crazy person.

I know people talk a lot of crap about Five Guys, particularly West Coast In-n-Out snobs. Well, you can all guy to hell - I love a good reasonable-priced burger and fry meal that doesn't come pre-glopped with ketchup and mustard and crap. Just onions and A-1, baby.

HEADACHE

Listening to: the pounding in my skull

OW OW OW. I don't know where this recent spate of headaches has come from, but I never want to feel them again. It feels like it's based in my sinuses, but then it shifts over to my temples. It's like my head is being crushed all over.

Reading plenty today. I keep reading Beans: A World History, but I know I have to get reading on Heart of Darkness soon, since it's due on thursday. ::sigh:: Beans are more interesting, methinks. Called the Honda dealership today, too, and set up an appointment to get poor Isis looked at. The brakes sound awful (my dad noted that my four years of urban driving probably caused this), and my back wiper's shredded. Needless to say, my car is looking and sounding a little haggared, considering it's only 4 years old. Poor dear.

Getting way pumped for my reading on March 6th and my vacation on the 9th. I can't freakin' wait. It's gonna be awesome! Colorado in March is always gorgeous, and by then, Steve's 4th nephew will be among us. I've already volunteered to cook and babysit. Must make self look like family member - they already consider me one, but we're the young, unmarried couple - I guess it's a compensation thing.

False meat

Listening to: The Commodores - Lady (You Bring Me Up)

Yow - this Big Brother is more terrible than I could have imagined.

Annnyway. Another long, listless Sunday. My accomplishment for the day was buying groceries at the Wholefoods, a whopping 3 block walk away. This is a good thing, since I can walk there - the angry-shoppers in large, large vehicles are all gunning for the very limited number of parking spaces, and since I don't buy too much at once, I don't have to deal with it. You can wait a good 10 minutes to park there (or just suck it up and park in the garage - I don't know why people have such an issue with it - it's a fine garage).

Everyone shoves you out of the way at the meat counter there. Said people's specific lamb-leg requires several adjustments which makes the line grow and grow. I wait quietly and patiently, and probably doormat-like. The meat is worth it - although in theory, I could just buy it at the Safeway. But they don't sell it in quantities I like, that is to say, very small. I'm cooking for one, after all.

There was a fellow behind me in the checkout line who scowled at my ground buffalo and chicken packages. This is not an uncommon occurance at Wholefoods. I am supposed to be buying false meat, just as the fellow behind me was buying seitan and Quorn (incidentally, Quorn, which is fungus-based, is not bad. Seitan, on the other hand, I find repulsive).

Think of all those mushrooms that were murdered for his Quorn.

Goo-noodles

Listening to: Genesis - Domino

All that talk about not-exactly-Chinese-food made me hungry for the stuff. I don't even like it much.

So I got some chow fun last night.

If it was gooey then, it's gonna be hell-of gooey when I reheat it.

Dammit.

Remember a kind word.

Listening to: Kenna - Goodbye to Love

I should note that I'm going to make a concerted effort to start blogging again.

So yesterday, I met up with a couple members from my community literacy class group to plot how we were going to tackle today's class (we were leading discussion). As usual, if the subject at hand is not My Writing®, I get flummoxed and have difficulty trying to make my point acute and understandable. I was having some difficulty sifting through the relevant material in the book, but I did manage to cough up a couple decent discussion ideas.

I had to post something on the message board for class, thus fulfilling one of the course's requirements, and as such, I did, and relayed my lack of confidence to my buddy Lia, who is in my group with me. I said something Julia-esque, along the lines of "I feel like I'm too stupid to keep up with academic discourse."

Lia responded that I am much too hard on myself and that it's a relief that I think differently, and use a different vocabulary. Essentially, Julia, you're another kind of smart, and give yourself some fucking credit.

And you know what?

It's the nicest thing anyone's told me in a while. I thought I felt good about my writing. Now I feel good about being a little slow in grad-school classes.

::glee for confidence::

In addition to said-confidence-boost, my story about mushrooms was workshopped yesterday, to overwhelmingly positive reviews.

I think I've come into my own. It's amazing.