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| 07:23pm 27/11/2005 |
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mood:  tired
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it's been almost three months since i've logged in to livejournal. i'm such a bad friend. the most interesting part of returning to livejournal so far has been reading about charlotte's misadventures with the government. i can sleep a little easier now that i know that our tax dollars are funding this preoccupation with such dangerous criminals.
i just came back from thanksgiving in peoria. the beginning was pretty good, but the end was like something out of every hackneyed sitcom holiday. there were lots of tears. but i did get to see andrea and spencer, and i got an invitation to come out to denver anytime to stay with my aunt. and to bring kevin too. yes, they maybe they all are tyrannical and mean-spirited bitches who are taking out their disappointment with their dull bourgeois lives on the rest of us, but my family is usually pretty generous and hospitable. score.
when the semester ends i'm going with kevin to see his parents in northern lower michigan. this makes me happy and nervous, but mostly happy. then i'm coming back home, and on january first i'm flying to new york for a week with kevin. he's coming back out to michigan in late january, and in early march i'm leaving for berlin, where i'll be until july 28th. kevin's coming to berlin to visit once for sure and maybe twice. is it just me, or am i married? it's really best not to think about it because i am happy. very happy, even. until i realize that, yes, i'm pretty much married. oh well. when it all gets old we'll just break up. it does seem pretty pointless to worry about it. |
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| 09:59am 05/09/2005 |
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mood:  thoughtful
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so.
kevin is coming to grinnell in october to teach my german class. derrick invited him to teach a class on beethoven and constructed heroism and the political implications of copyright law and whatever; i don't really know what the deal is, actually. i'm no expert on german classical music. i think it will be fun to have kevin come and lecture. i love it when he lectures at me outside of the classroom, so i'll probably like it inside the classroom too. but i seem to be, out of the three of us, the only one who's more than just a wee bit concerned about the situation. kevin and derrick are both thrilled about this, and i wouldn't ask them not to do it, and i do want kevin to come, but it's inevitably a little bit strange. kevin and i spoke today very briefly about it (he just left about an hour ago to go back to ames ... sadness), and the word "discreet" was mentioned, but we still have more to talk about. i want to really get this nailed down and be comfortable with it, and i'm not quite there yet. close, but not quite. but there's plenty of time to discuss it, and it will just have to be a bridge that we cross when we come to it.
hm. |
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| 12:06am 29/08/2005 |
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mood:  hopeful
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this weekend i stayed with kevin, and we went to the zoo. we saw flamingos, 80 year-old tortoises, lions, a tiger, some giraffes, and other cool animals. it was really fun. then we saw the edukators, which seemed reliant on a sense of irony over its heavy-handed politics that was lost on me. it's the same kind of irony you see in every european movie these days, the irony that doesn't really exist, which i think is intended to be the actual irony, but it just didn't work for me. the truth is that, politically, europe remains a plodding dinosaur. otherwise, the movie was slightly disappointing but still interesting, exciting, rather funny. i got to practice my german, at least. and i got to eat at that fantastic vietnamese restaurant on high street in des moines again. really terrific. i left on friday evening and didn't come back until sunday afternoon, so i did a lot of reading today. it was okay. kevin is coming out to grinnell on friday but flying out to tennessee on saturday morning. boo. it will be the second time he's come to stay with me, though, so i can't complain. i wouldn't dream of complaining about kevin anyway . . . since it's an almost miraculous accident of fate that such a wonderful man thinks so much of me. four months and still better and better every day; it seems like a good sign. |
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| 01:14pm 24/08/2005 |
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mood: contemplative
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back at grinnell. |
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| 08:04pm 12/08/2005 |
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i haven't updated this in months. funny thing, that.
well the big news is that kevin and i have spent the whole summer together on and off. he's been racing around the country and the world (working on his book in germany, lecturing in canada, visiting old friends in new england), and he's been back to michigan four or five times to see me. this afternoon he left to go back to iowa after staying here for five days, and now i am very very lonely. sadness. and we are continuing to see each other in iowa, but there are discussions that need to be had about the whole situation. it is a little bit complicated, but we're working it out. and kevin is pretty much perfect for me, so we had better be working it out, as far as i'm concerned :)
my parents are not happy about kevin. today my mom (just like the bitch she is . . . she is many wonderful things that i appreciate, but let's not kid ourselves: she is also a world-class bitch and an arrogant tyrant) told me that she thinks kevin is way too old for me but that her concern over his age is at least mitigated by his immaturity. why would a person say that right to my face? what possible motivating force except cruelty could be at work here? i would like her to explain to me what good she thought was going to come from that comment and what she was anticipating i would say to something like that. and believe me, i didn't have any illusions about my parents welcoming kevin with open arms, but i at least expected that they would be both civil and respectful to him and to me. once i already understand that they disapprove (which of course i do understand quite well), i can't see how there's anything else to say on the matter. i've been rather amused, though, to see my mother so threatened by kevin's intellect. she's been playing a dirty little game her whole life of always being one step ahead, and her insurance is that she's surrounded herself with people who can't quite keep up with her. but kevin is extremely brainy, and there's really no way she can deny it. it's just hilarious (and really really infuriating too) how she'll remark sort of condescendingly that kevin knows a lot of trivia. yeah sure, mom.
i do sometimes still wonder how this happened to me. i'm really glad it did happen, but i'm just as aware as anyone how strange it is. he is fourteen years older than i am, and he is a professor, it's true. but he's quite handsome and smart and funny, and we really just get each other. and whenever we go out, i can see how proud he is to be with me. i met one of his former colleagues from way back when he was teaching at the university of michigan, and it just made me so happy to see kevin delighting in showing me off like that. AND to see him showing off not just my youth and my smile but also my brain. this is something that i don't want to give up, whatever the obstacles that stand in our way. and i realize that these obstacles exist; i'm going into this with my eyes open, so no one has to worry too much. but to know that he's choosing me, that he thinks he's lucky to have me, when his whole world of friends and former boyfriends consists of worldly, beautiful, and accomplished princeton or humboldt phds . . . how can i do anything but stay with him? |
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| 10:54am 16/05/2005 |
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Oh and by the way Andrea did come. We had a great time. :-D More happiness! |
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| 10:49am 16/05/2005 |
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mood:  excited
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phone call from Kevin last night
He had a really good time and wanted to wish me luck on my finals and tell me that he'll be in touch when he comes through Michigan in June or July. He's going to be on the move all summer doing research in Canada and Europe, but he's making time to visit old friends and family in Michigan, and he's going to call when he's there.
Ah happiness. |
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| 04:57pm 14/05/2005 |
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mood:  peaceful
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Yesterday I went out with Kevin. I had a really great time.
I learned how to use chopsticks at this Vietnamese restaurant, and if I had been willing to spend a long time doing it I could have eaten my whole meal using them. Rock. Then we had coffee at his favorite coffeeshop in Ames, and at ten we saw The Interpreter, which was really heavy. We went back to his apartment, and in the morning we had a too-expensive breakfast and a long talk about cars, and I was back on my way home to Grinnell by 12:30 in the afternoon. I'm pretty thrilled because Kevin payed for everything, so my only expense was gas back and forth, which was, unhappily, a considerable amount. We laughed about our ages a couple times, but it was never really weird. We even made fun of a kid who was out at the same restaurant with a woman who had to be much older than he was. Of course, people were probably looking at us and playing the Kid brother, student . . . probably lover? game, but I actually didn't care at all. 34 is not too old. And we talked about his job, and that wasn't weird either. He might be a professor, but he's not my professor, not even a professor at Grinnell, and neither his job nor my student status created any awkwardness.
I'd like to see Kevin again, but he's pretty busy next week, and then I'm going back to Michigan. He's actually from Michigan, so he's going to be back there a few times during the summer, and he said he would call me when he passes through, but I might have to wait until the fall to see him again. Eh. Timing . . . what are you going to do? |
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| 01:09pm 05/05/2005 |
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mood: hopeful
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I talked to Andrea today for about two minutes, but she was on the other line with Spencer, who's in New York right now. So he took precedence over me. She said she'd call back later today, which I'm hoping she actually does because: she said she might come out to Grinnell next week! Rock.
Problem: the Monte is making a weird sound, and she gets really spooked by car noises that she can't identify. I hope she gets over it and comes out. It's only a couple hours from Beloit.
I shouldn't be letting myself get excited about this, I know. It is always a let-down when you wait for something like this, but I don't think I could stop myself from being hopeful, which I guess is the only reason you ever get excited about unrealistic things anyway. If we could help it we probably would. :) And I'm not quite prepared yet to say that it's unrealistic for her to come, just that it's at best a 50/50 shot.
If Andrea came it would make my whole year; it really would. |
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| 11:36pm 03/05/2005 |
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update:
And now it's been hours since the fire alarm rang, and I just noticed that the fire hydrant outside is spraying water. I guess it's probably been doing that since the alarm? Until tonight I'd never seen a fire hydrant actually spraying water. . . . It's pretty hardcore. If I weren't so mad about the whole incident I might almost be turned on. |
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| Brandstifterei! |
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| 11:00pm 03/05/2005 |
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mood:  hungry
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The fire alarm in Younker rang today, and I actually left the building. Last year (ugh, in Norris) the fire alarm rang all the time, at least once or twice a month. And I always just stayed inside. But this time I thought I'd better leave because . . . well, you know, I've just been a little spooked since my building almost burned down this fall. So I evacuated just like I was supposed to . . . for all I knew the building could have really been on fire again. It was a false alarm, of course, but I hate that I had to treat it like it was serious.
David took his computer with him. Not because he was worried it would burn, but because of all the water damage that occurred during the last fire. People's computers got totally messed and ruined. And the I'm pretty sure the College paid for them, but I'm not in a big hurry to lose my computer, my music, my whole hard drive . . . whether I'm getting reimbursed or not. I thought it was a little silly of him because there was obviously no fire on our floor, and there might have been a fire somewhere below us, but the sprinklers were probably not going to be set off up here. And I would hope that the previous problem of the sprinklers just running for hours is fixed now. I'm sure it is, so. . . . I can't really fault him for paranoia though. I was a little paranoid too.
In other news, I am starving. Starving. I just haven't found much time to eat for the past day or two, and consequently my stomach is now eating itself. I might ask Claire to fry me an egg tonight. That sounds good. Mmmm, egg. |
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| 06:47pm 01/05/2005 |
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mood:  blah
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I am obsessed with Tom Waits.
I want us to get married.
What else is new in my life? I complained a couple weeks ago about Spohnholz giving me a B- on my first paper, but he gave me an A on the second one. I think they were exactly the same (I actually think the second one was weaker, to be honest), so I'm just resigned to accepting whatever grades Spohnholz decides to assign me. I won't understand why I get what I get, but oh well. It's happened before.
My life is somewhat confusing right now? But not as busy as it could be.
I'm reading Elfriede Jelinek's Die Ausgesperrten right now. It's creepy, could be compared to A Clockwork Orange. It's about Austrian teenagers who try to infuse their lives with meaning by committing random acts of violence. Yeah, yeah, yeah . . .
I am starting to feel distinctly asexual. I don't know why this is happening, and I'm sure it will pass, but for maybe a week or two I have just been completely lacking the sexual part of my being. This is not of great concern to me, as I really have not been putting my sexual being to much use these days anyway, but it's kind of weird.
I was depressed to learn today (and I can confirm that it's true because I took it directly from the EU's website) that almost every citizen of the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden can speak more than one language. And in each of these countries about 80% of citizens speak English. Only 47% of EU citizens can only speak one language. I don't have the relevant figures for the United States, but I think it's a safe bet that they're pretty shameful. Now admittedly, there is a much, much greater practical need to speak multiple languages in Europe than there is here, but we could be doing a little better than we are now, I think.
On this note, it sometimes makes me mad to hear Europe complain about the United States' lack of international perspective. Well what exactly is Europe's international perspective? Europe only cares about Europe, and the fact that the continent is divided up into more countries than North America is doesn't really make them any better, I don't think. France and Germany and Italy are really not all that different from each other; they just speak different languages and eat different food. And they still can't get along. Maybe the United States has its share of problems, but so does Europe.
Nevertheless, Europe is cool. I am excited about going abroad next spring.
Iowa is cold right now! It snowed earlier today. Snow. On May first. What did we do to deserve this? |
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| ISU |
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| 10:02pm 18/04/2005 |
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mood:  rejuvenated
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Today I went to Ames.
The writer in residence for the German department, Elisabeth Reichart, was giving a reading of her work at Iowa State University, and I tagged along with Lisa, who's in my class, and Derrick. This day was awesome for a couple reasons.
1. I am way better at German than I thought. For a lot of the day, all of the people I was around were speaking only German, and I understood pretty much all of it. There were things I didn't catch here and there, but I totally had a functioning understanding of everything that was discussed. Now there is no way that I could take part in some of these conversations yet, but I understood everything. I couldn't believe it. And the department keeps reassuring me that when I get to Germany I will pick everything up really quickly, but I never really believed it until today. I guess no one believes it until it's proved to you.
2. My head over heels phase with Derrick might be over, but I still think he's really awesome and love hanging out with him. A day with Derrick is still a fantastic thing for me.
3. I love Elisabeth, and she seems to like me and think I'm funny and smart, if naive. She left me some words of wisdom today. Sigh. Plus, she got ashes (she is so European, so of course she smokes incessantly) on my new white jeans, which, instead of making me mad, made me giddy. Elisabeth Reichart's ashes are on my jeans. Hot. She's actually from Austria, which is neat, and lives in Vienna. She said the lilacs at ISU reminded her of home. And also, when she was asked at the reading if she often (as another taboo-breaking, limit-pushing Austrian female writer) gets compared to Elfriede Jelinek, she very matter-of-factly said, "Our styles are completely different. No one would ever compare us." She didn't say it in a pompous way, just in the way of stating a fact. Elfriede Jelinek just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Elisabeth, you make me weak.
I also got an email today from Gordon Pearce, who I spoke with personally last week about his Rational Christianity talk. He gave me his home phone number and said that he had been praying for me every day and would continue to do so. He said he enjoyed spending time with me and found me serious and thoughtful. I was actually really happy to hear from him because I just adore him. It would probably be poor form to call him just to chat, and I don't think I have much interest in discussing theology with him, so this might be goodbye for us. But oh well.
Diggity diggity. |
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| room draw |
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| 05:44pm 17/04/2005 |
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mood:  jubilant
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Today was room draw. Rock. That's all I have to say about that: rock.
Actually, I have more to say. Next year I'm living on Read 3rd, successfully making the transition to South Campus. Cool. It's this enormous single with a huge window that takes up almost the entire wall, and it faces out over campus and prettiness instead of out over East Street. The people who live there now told me that there was no way I would get a single on Read 2nd or 3rd because I'm only going to be a third year, but I think I showed them who's awesome and who's wrong. I got really lucky, actually. By the time the senior class had finished room draw there were no singles left on Read 2nd, and my single was the only one left on Read 3rd. Another one opened up later because someone who had already signed up backed out, but at the time I got the only one remaining. I am so happy about my room.
Pretty much everyone I know is living on South Campus too, which is kind of nice, but also kind of makes me mad, that we all had to just move as a group like that. It's not like it was planned that way or anything, but it's still a little annoying. |
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| 08:31pm 16/04/2005 |
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update:
My phone might have finally bitten the dust today. I might not be able to use it until I get my new one on (hopefully) Monday. Don't be distraught if you try to call and can't get through this weekend. I do like you after all; it's just my phone that doesn't like either of us. |
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| up from a nightmare that i could not stand to see; you were |
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| 07:02pm 16/04/2005 |
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mood: peaceful
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Today I got an email from Mrs. Porter with the phrase I respect you in it. Oh Mrs. Porter, it's silly how your opinion still matters to me.
On Monday afternoon I'm going to Iowa State University. I've never been to Ames before, so this should be exciting. I like exploring Iowa. :-) I'm going with some of the German department to see a lecture, so it will be neat in both an exploratory and an academic way. Gonna double my pleasure on Monday. Rock.
Last night was Mary B. James, the drag ball. It's named after one of our dorms because Mary B. James is just too perfect to pass up. Come on, you know it's hiliarious. I have a link to some pictures up on my AIM profile. I wore a pretty green dress that belongs to Anna and made me feel summery.
Tonight I took a nice walk with Anna. The weather was gorgeous; it was almost 70 degrees, and right now it's almost 8:30 pm. I hope it storms tonight. It looks like it might. If it does storm, Anna said she might run and play with me naked. I'm looking forward to it.
Last night I saw The Phantom of the Opera for the third time even though I know it's bad. And let me just say that the Phantom gets hotter every time. |
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| 11:32pm 11/04/2005 |
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mood: tired
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Number one most common response from people who learn that I have a twin sister:
Oh that's cool . . . are you identical?
Derrick almost pulled that one today, and he apologized for even thinking such a dumb thing, even if he didn't say it. He doesn't realize that a very large number of perfectly smart, reasonable people ask that question before they get a chance to think. Not that it's not still annoying when it happens.
I've pretty much fallen out of my weird funk. My weird malaise. It only lasted a couple days, a week maybe. So that's good.
Der Mauerspringer is killing me. I do not understand this book. Ach, so.
In case anyone out there didn't already know, Interplay won Independent Open with a 96.15, or some other insanely high score. I guess you pretty much need to score that high to win, but still. It's intimidating just to look at it.
This is Pride Week at Grinnell. The events look boring and kind of irrelevent, so I'm not too interested. Pride Week gets on my nerves anyway; I probably would have a hard time being happy with anything that StoneCo did for it. So I'm back to being a bad homosexual again. I can't help it.
The weather has been amazing here. Today it rained, but it was still really warm. Take that, Michigan. Iowa beats you. . . .
(kind of)
And it's not that I don't love Iowa because I actually do. But the weather is one of the only things keeping me here at this point. That and my pesky degree, I guess. I kind of need one of those eventually. |
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| 01:56pm 06/04/2005 |
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mood:  irritated
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Today I had to park at the intersection of Park and Sixth Avenue. Arg.
Parking at Grinnell totally sucks this year. |
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| him |
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| 04:46pm 01/04/2005 |
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mood:  confused
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And I think my infatuation with Derrick is over. It had to end sometime. I guess I shouldn't be prematurely saying this before I get back to campus, but . . . yeah . . . maybe it seems premature, but why beat around the bush, right? The truth is that it can't be the same anymore, and it's just over. It was fun while it lasted. But it was silly, and I guess sooner or later it had to be replaced by something more real. It's funny how you don't realize what real feelings are until they blindside you when you're least prepared. But I guess that's why they're real . . . they don't happen very often. Haha. Ha . . . ha. That's how it is, like I can try to joke, but it's not even funny. I can try to make it seem funny, but it's not. I'm sad. I'm so sad to have to go back to Iowa. I'm really worried that I won't be able to enjoy being at Grinnell. What if I can't? I'm actually afraid of what's going to happen to me, of not knowing how to handle it. I keep telling myself that I've lived through worse and certainly will again, and I feel silly when I try to make it such a big deal like that. But I can't help it; it is a big deal to me. And nothing is ever a big deal to me. I don't really know what to do.
But at the same time I'm in awe of my incredible luck. How did something so lucky happen to me? |
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