Fellmama

Read this:
http://www.harpers.org/StabbedInTheBack.html
Weep for our country.

Edit, 5:04 PM EST: Ugh. So Dad and I cruised around the Cornell campus. It is freaking huge. You could fit most of Whitman into the Arts Quad. I only looked at three places (a few fell through). Of those, two were way too expensive for their condition/location. The third was really nice. It's the attic floor of a private home, currently undergoing renovation. The house and lawn are beautiful, and it's maybe three blocks from the history department. The apartment itself is pretty big, it will be newly renovated, it has the internet and a washer/dryer, and it costs an obscenely small amount of money. The downside? I would need to pay my own utilities, and there's no stove. Hmmmmmm.

I'm getting a cell phone. This may come as a shock to those who know me as something of a Luddite. What's shocking to me is that I'm getting a cell phone tomorrow. My father is infamous for snap decisions (he surprised my mother with a new lawnmower once), and he decided Thursday that we would all have cell phones. The research is done, the plan is purchased, and the phones will arrive inna mail tomorrow or the day after. Damn.
In other news, I'm headed to Ithaca to look for housing in a week. Fun fun. It will be nice to get a look at the campus, but I could do without the plane. I don't like to fly. Of course, driving there will be even worse . . .

So um . . . During the course of cleaning some crap off my harddrive, I somehow managed to delete the Internet Explorer icons from both the desktop and the Start menu. I can't find a way to restore them (although I have obviously managed to make the program run, the way I found is tedious and inefficient). Can someone suggest a solution to my problem? And I will provide a swift kick to the nuts/ovaries of the next person to suggest "download Firefox lol." I do not wish to download Firefox, and even if I did, I would still desire the restoration of my desktop to its former state of being.

Edit, 12:42 AM: Haha, victory is mine! Thanks to the excellent advice of Casey and Dan, I have once more restored Internet Explorer to my desktop. Thanks!

In other news, I have actually managed to have something of a social life for the last week or so. Andrea and I watched "Monk," and then Saturday night we went out with Rachel. Then Sunday I went for coffee with Sierra and Catherine in the afternoon, followed by serious boozing that night. Well, serious boozing on other parts. I only had a Cosmo and a few sips of beer--a good thing, as it turned out. Tuesday, I watched Red with my friend Ed. A very peculiar movie, but I liked it. Finally, today I went to Spokane with my brother and two of his friends. (That was a bad idea, but beside the point.) I spent WAY too much at the Bon clearance center, but I have tons of pants, a pretty skirt, and a very nice winter coat. Now, I revert back to my antisocial ways.

I went to Boise for Rach's graduation. The graduation itself was incalculably tedious (as these things always are), but the rest of the weekend was amazingly fun.
Otherwise I have done nothing of consequence.
I used to be so . . . happy. I go back and read old journal entries, and . . . I dunno. Even the ones where I'm pretty sure I was faking it are far more cheerful than I have felt for a really long time. Is this adulthood? Am I chemically unbalanced? Or will I just never be happy again? Inquiring minds want to know.

Edit, June 7, 11:46 AM: Sadly, this sense of malaise hasn't appeared since graduation. It has persisted for something like a year and a half.

Here I sit in Moscow . . . Still not all moved, though. Mom and I are venturing to Walla Walla tomorrow to get the last load of my crap. However did I end up with so much stuff?
There are no stairs, though. At least for me. Poor Nicole.

Did you ever have something that bothered you, something little that you kept thinking "I should do something about that," but you never did? And then you fixed it, just like that, and it was so easy that you got depressed because you hadn't done it before? That happened to me just now.

Also, college graduate. WTF. I'm not a college graduate. I can barely tie my shoes. (I'm not joking, by the way; I never learned the "rabbit goes 'round the tree" thing. Rachel tried to teach me once in high school, but it didn't take.)

Next step: I think I have FINALLY figured out how to apply for housing at Cornell. Here goes attempt Number Three . . .

Greek papers blow. The really sad thing is how much better this one is than the last one.

If you listen to this song, it's guy + synthesizer. And then, at the chorus: BOOM, full choir in the background. WTF.

A confession:
I love bad soft rock, the kind from the 80s where they have the synthesizer and the fake drums. Bruce Hornsby, Marc Cohn, Billy Joel, even the grimmer moments of Randy Newman's Land of Dreams album. (The Master Man and Baby J? What were you thinking, Randy?) Even FOREIGNER. Okay, I can only stand to listen to "I Wanna Know What Love Is" in small doses. But still. I should probably be put in an institution.
. . . "Tell me, are you a Christian, child?" And I said: "Ma'am, I am tonight!"
Oooh, this is even better: Darlin', I don't know why I go to extremes!

Edit, 7;57 PM: Also "Don't Fear the Reaper." More cowbell!

Haha, I just closed Word after making the final changes to my thesis . . . at the same time as the closing chord of "Let It Be." A sign, I tell you, a sign.

Ugh. I may have *written* a thesis, but that doesn't make me *done* with a thesis. Kyra was all: "Rewrite this." And I was all: "Crap." So of course, I spent the entire weekend NOT rewriting. Double ugh. But . . . I persevere. And David Sedaris tomorrow, eeeeee!