congraduation

wish i had some photos of graduation to post, but, er, sadly i was the least devoted significant other at the ceremony (i think there were 4 or 5 non-participants in the audience) and left my stupid camera charging at trevor's apartment. hey man, the ceremony was at 9:30 AM the morning after finals. everyone was out getting smashed the night before; my plane touched down after midnight and i had to roll my suitcase into a bar to meet t.

thank you. we hid my suitcase behind a large plant and ordered me a drink.

oh wait, thank god for f*cebook. one of the students uploaded her graduation album. that was nice of her. don't mind if i do...





pic doesn't tell ya much, does it?

after the ceremony broke we all boarded a nice little bus and went to this restaurant whose theme is based on the foods served to chinese royalty in ancient times. the staff wears reproductions of period clothing and it's in the gardens of what used to be the royal prince's palace. don't ask what dynasty, i didn't get that much detail. but it was a trip, pretty cool. we ate a salad made of flowers, to make you more beautiful, and goose liver, the goose itself, duck, and tons of other rich food. i did manage to take a couple of phone-camera photos of the waitstaff, but i just spent an hour trying to reinstall my bluetooth application and for some reason it's not working, so fuck it. MMS also not sending from my dumbass mobile device that i am mad at right now. i illogically blame it all on china mobile.

the rest of the time was essentially drinking, eating, or recovering from both. i feel somewhat guilty having such a carefree weekend when this upcoming week of the brand launch is going to be hellish, but i guess i just chalk it up there for 'why do i give a fuck since i just resigned.'

i wish i could be so callous. i dream of being so callous.

anyways, yeah, all of the non-participants except for moi were running around with high-powered lens cameras and snapping away. i snoozed until trevor's speech and clapped a lot to make up for how lame i was in the recording-significant-moments arena. i mean, people were taking hundreds of photos during a ceremony that lasted less than 90 minutes. i wanted to make a big foam finger to wave during the ceremony, but after seeing how small the room and actual graduating class was, i'm glad i was too busy at work to actually do it.

bah. i have a lot of thinking to do and so i will now give my brain a 7-hour rest.

afternoon headaches

up late-night. stressing over some triflin bullshit that won't matter to me in about three years. stress headaches are back but the only thing that gives me some peace is typing, and typing must be done on a computer.

the general mandate of humanity deems compassion to be a good thing, a worthy thing, something to be valued. damned if it doesn't just make your ass the weakest link in the world of business. in this whole mess of resigning and leaving the country and following the hearts-and-flowers path instead of the stress-and-paycheck option, i vacillate between wanting to hide from the real world of dog-eat-dog and pretend all i see are rainbows and angels... and wanting to crush those angels and then sell them some expensive furniture. free delivery.

right now the latter is not appealing to me. i went this weekend and did what i used to do when struck with a dilemma: jumped into a pool and tried to swim myself into submission and my mind into focus, but i forget how much leaner i used to be when the physical aspect of the repentance would last as long as needed in order to bring around the mental . i barely cleared 1000 meters before the physical part of me went kaput and the mind was still in turmoil. and the physical wanted thai delivery.

plus there were no pull buoys or a time clock or flags at the pool and it was really throwing me off. you can only placidly breaststroke for so long in 1.2 meters depth without thinking about pad see ew.

called trevor, who was oh so unfortunately stranded at a bar, but receiving half-sober bar analysis failed to lull me to sleep. you're on your own, sister.

to continue with my griping, sometimes i feel that i was granted half-talents. there is no one thing so keenly developed in my brain, nor so deeply entertaining that i'll throw all of my energy into honing the skill, and so i feel that i fall between kinda wanting to do this but knowing it'll eventually be annoying, to maybe falling back on that bullshit i used to do way back when. what was it again? oh yeah, buying sheets for people or something.

clearly, having a path of some sort matters to me - why else write about it to a cheering crowd of about 4.3 people - but i'm not convinced that the junctions i've visited have involved an interstate of deeply compelling potential goals. i'm in a minivan and it corners like a horse cart.

anyways... enough complaining. there's enough of the middle-class or middle-management or gen X malaise to thickly spread every bagel in the factory, and the truth of the matter is i need to be somewhat alert tomorrow so i can negotiate my way into what will likely be a big fat shaft in the quadriceps. mine, of course. the good thing is that my quads are so under-utilized lately that the shaft will just slide in, easy as butter.

muggy

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/magazine/15parenting-t.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5087&em&en=04b9e97c4ed5ef60&ex=1213502400

just finished this article in the ny times magazine. been interested in the media coverage on gay and lesbian marriage dynamics since the very very recent ruling on gay marriage in killa-cali. experts believe that same-sex marriages make good role models for hetero marriages (mixed-sex marriages?) whose members are concerned with equal roles in the house. this particular article is about equally shared parenting. have a read, it's worth it.

guess this has been top of mind because i'm coming up on a move-in with the bf in a few months. i know from past roommate experiences that i'm super partics about things, and trev is, well, trev. he thinks water coolers are great for hanging your coat on, and doesn't bother to check which toothbrush he happens to be using. a toothbrush is a toothbrush, and it's located near him, so he'll use that shit. when we first started dating, he tried sitting on my bed with his jeans on. uh uh. he learned about that one real quick.

most people reading this who know the extent of my OCD about cleanliness and hygiene are shaking their heads. no way, girl, you trippin if you think this relationship is going to last through co-habitation. but in imagining my future apartment strewn with law books and coffee cups and holey socks, feel like things might be alright. trevor, being a big picture kind of guy, is pretty concerned about how i like things done. he learned the no-outside-clothes-in-bed rule with a rapidness that impressed even my mom (who's been struggling with that one for over 35 years). we've had successful tutelages on his weekend shaving kit - aka plastic grocery bag - and where his items go on the bathroom counter once the trevor tornado hits the placid peaceful calm of carolynville. trevor is much less stubborn than me and my kind. it's a good thing - a somewhat foreign thing - but good nonetheless. we thinks we might be able to work with this material.

fresh water well

children get up early. we have 6 new folks downstairs in my neighbor's 'apartment,' as it were, relatives of the sichuanese wife who lost their home in the earthquake. two of them are kids - two boys around 9 and 11 - nice kids so far but weekends sleeping in are bye-bye. they roller blade in the courtyard, play swords running up and down the stairs, you know, kid stuff. noisy, thumping kid stuff.

life after the quake is simmering down. the two flat-screen tvs on every bus has stopped playing new daily slideshows of photo footage set against sad music. my company - as most companies - has gathered donations from employees, matched the total, and sent them to the red cross. the three minute moment of silence, which was not silent at all but filled with screaming air-raid sirens - has come and gone, the three days of remembrance is over.

clinton lost. i wonder if, when running for president, someone on staff is responsible for counseling the candidate about the possibility of a loss and how to manage. i wonder if preparing for losing is part of the game; or if the candidate is treated much like a coddled athlete and shielded from anything that might affect the mental state needed for wins.

sherry and i scoffed when we heard clinton and obama were in a runoff. america would elect a black man before a woman, and although i wasn't totally convinced, damn it if we weren't right. i am sure that sexism played a part in it, just as i'm sure that the clinton name was an enormous hurdle - we californians love the clintons, it took me a while to understand that just as we love them, many many other people loathe them - and her confrontational stance, her tenacity that translated negatively in the press. i do not personally support girl-power rhetoric, i find it to support negative generalization and to not be representative of my views, but as a girl, i am positive that it would have been enlightening to have a woman in office. gender matters, even if we like to believe it doesn't. in this race, there were many aspects to her personality, and obama's, that led to the results as we know them today. his ability to appear transcendent, just as she appeared to be rutting around in the bi-partisan dirt, was as legitimate a factor in the race as her faultlessly impressive preparation. i wanted to support the practical - her strong foundation of experience and provision - over his idealism, but in the end it was the practical interpretation of that practicality vs. his optimism that forced my hand. his platform of transcendence, as gossamer as it sounded, translated into leadership, and that is what will matter in the bi-partisan election. facing off a rottweiler with a pittbull isn't a guarantee. maybe a unicorn will work better?

i can't say that i ever would have believed that before. so i suppose we will see.

subvert

watching 'the wire' makes me feel like a future of my horn-dog husband strutting around town and nailing everything that walks while i wait at home with 3 kids and some tired-ass hair is inevitable.

i mean, i know, i watch chris rock. a man is as faithful as his options. but it's sad to think that some people believe that once you have kids and/or are married for more than a decade, you need to put a tracking device on his ass just to make sure he keeps his pants on.