::asian freckles::

Sometimes the radio edit is a trillion times better

Entering the top of my list of feasibly-attainable goals in life is to meet a guy who asks me if I want to go back to his place and "exchange some love faces".

Also: drink namers, STOP with the "peenya" spelling already. REALLY.

Smoothie places ought to have little roulette wheels with all their drinks on it. The counter people try to be helpful, but really, asking me "Well, what's your favorite fruit?" isn't going to get us anywhere. I, um, love all fruits. Equally. (Except grapefruit, but I'm convinced that's not really a legitimate family member. If it has to assert in its own name that it's a fruit, something shady's going on. There was ALREADY a fruit called a grape BEFORE you came along, monsieur "grapefruit". You, sir, are a fraud and there is no love here for you.)

They get so skittish when I ask them to just choose a drink for me, too. The counter people, I mean, not the fruits. I don't think the fruits really care; if they're not doomed to be pureed for my drink, they'll meet their tragic fate at the hands of the person behind me. So! Conclusion: roulette wheel. The Wheel O' Smoothies! Which tasty fruit blend will be quenching your thirst and supplying you with more than 7 essential vitamins and nutrients today? Spin to find out!

I'm pretty close to just searching for a good random-picking algorithm and writing a damn program. I can't keep doing this, strolling into smoothie places only to be caught like a deer in headlights for ten minutes by the menu of sixty-three billion choices.

Liquefied cow: it's everywhere! Like in your contact lens solution!

It took me an hour to finish my geo final this morning; about two-thirds of that time was spent artistically perfecting every single one of my Scantron boxes. I don't know; I wasn't in any rush to get out of there and it really forced me to slow down and not make careless errors. And not only did the "coded messages from Mars" question make it onto the final, but the very first question on my exam was about liquefied cows. (!)

I almost blew off studying last night in favor of watching "Planet Earth" (*finally* bought it), which, when you think about it, can be justified as studying for a geo exam. Or at least, it can when *I* think about it. In any case, I managed to avoid that temptation... and fell asleep instead. Except I fell asleep at 2 a.m. and I honestly can't remember what I was doing until then. Reading about the Blackberry Bold/9000 (side note: RIM has lost its mind re: the 9500)? Rereading old monologues and plays? No idea.

The gun-slingin' ultimate cowboy showdown at the E&M Corral is tomorrow. Less than optimistic about it. Starting around five tonight, I'll be holed up in my bedroom doing homework problem after homework problem on fields and flux and capacitance and inductors. Or zonked out on the closet floor. Or in Mexico. Either way. *Ugh*.

"This survey was too long and irritating and I wish I had been warned about how long and irritating it was beforehand." STRONGLY AGREE.

Some weeks back, we had to take this survey at the end of E&M. Well. We didn't *have* to, but I didn't have the balls to just up and leave while the dude was passing out the surveys and pencils. And then ten seconds into it, when I realized I absolutely did not want to fill in all those freaking little bubbles (over 100 total!)... I still didn't have the balls. To, you know, storm outta there in a snit.

"Forget *this* noise!" non-passive me would have huffed, bookbag swishing indignantly from side to side as I made my exit.

Passive, real-life me, instead, remained seated and continued filling in bubbles while silently fuming.

It wasn't about physics, by the way; it was a general university survey. How's the faculty? Tuition? Parking? Food? Health center? On and on, and we had to give two opinions per questions. I really wanted there to be a question, or a couple of questions, *about* the survey at the end, but no such luck. Now that's a survey I would have gladly filled out.

We may be eccentric in this here household, but at least we have CLASS

One of my ghetto-ass neighbors stole my trash can. Granted, the last trash day, it was insanely windy and I didn't get home until late, but still! The neighborhood I moved from? When things like that happen, neighbors would just pluck the trash can from the street and safely stow it on the sidewalk until its owner came to retrieve it-- or, if we knew whose trash can it was, we would put it by the owner's garage door. PROBABLY because there were no ghetto-ass neighbors out there and everyone OWNED a trash can, thereby eliminating the need or desire to STEAL one.

Most of the houses on this street do not own proper trash cans. Most of the houses on this street just put out garbage bags on the sidewalk, come trash day. This is not a Section 8 neighborhood! What the hell?

Anyway. I saw it, driving out this morning, outside of a house that heretofore was one of the many unceremoniously dumping bags on the curb. But what's the protocol? Wait for the garbage guys to come, then run over and grab it back? I "should have" painted my address on it, I've been told, but it's one of those stupid things that you always hear about but you think, "Oh, that'll never happen to me." AND THEN IT HAPPENS TO YOU.

Just be prepared if you want me to do consecutive spins

Being lovingly blitzed might not make me a better *dancer*, but it sure as shit kicks me into full-time subservient follow mode. If I can't be trusted to twirl on a bar stool safely, there's no way I can have the presence of mind to back-lead. I won't even know where we are, exactly, on the dance floor-- so, yeah, the odds of me making assumptions about where you're trying to send me or what you're going to do are nil.

I don't even like ginger. Or soy sauce, most of the time.

At one of my job sites today, I was asked in passing if I'd ever "posed for a camera" before. I was so caught off-guard and so bemused by the wording that all I could do was give the guy a strange look-- something caught between suspicion and laughter-- and blink. Twice.

In response to my silence, he restated his question: "Have you ever modeled?" Which, you know, I'd figured he was getting at with the first version, but now that he'd flat out said it, I couldn't stop laughing. He may as well have asked me if I'd reached things on high shelves without the aid of a chair before. You can only do so much with what you're born with. I'm not tall, and I'm not photogenic. And when I was finally able to coherently form words again, I explained this, kindly, to him (the photogenic part, not the tall part, I didn't think of that until five minutes later), and was then accused of being much prettier than I give myself credit for.

This, by the way, is not true. I wasn't trying to put myself down when I said that; I am 100% aware that I am solidly, genuinely, thoroughly okay-looking, with the potential-- as most do-- to be even quite lovely, with enough effort and giving-of-a-damn (neither of which I can be bothered with the majority of the time). But I am not photogenic. I don't photograph well. It's annoying, but it's not the end of the world.

Anyway. I did inquire as to *why* he was asking, and apparently some other guys on the site-- I forget for which company, which is probably for the better-- owned hot rods and-- yeah. So they asked him to ask me. And at this point, I'm just dying, trying to keep it together. Because honestly, how much more ridiculous can this conversation get? How in the world did these people, people who could not have gotten any closer than 20 feet to me because the only guys I'm around when I'm in the field are the ones who work with me, see a chick wearing a hard-hat and a loose T-shirt (underneath! a dorky neon-green vest!) and jeans and think, "I bet *she'd* look hot lying on the hood of my car wearing a bikini and hooker makeup"? Man. I'm Asian, but I'm not *that* Asian.

Facepalms and sighs

We ran out of paint after three sections, so before I had to go back to school, we ran to Lowe's and I bought another can. When I got back from class, she had finished painting-- including some touch-ups-- and about two hours later, we stood in the living room and gazed at it.

Me: "Wow. Yeah, in this lighting, you can really see the brown tones coming out. Before, in the sunlight, it just looked black."

Five minutes later, we realize that, oh, the second can of paint? Not the same shade as the first.

Also, the kitchen now smells like tuna because I felt so sorry for Part II. I really need to set up office elsewhere.

There's this girl, a ballroom dancer, who epitomizes everything that shies me away from taking up ballroom. I love ballroom as a dance genre-- I love the lines and the grace and the costumes and the music-- but I am not so huge a fan of the pretension and snottiness that all too often accompanies the ballroom scene. And this girl! She's not even that good. I've seen her dance; her footwork and timing are there, but everything about her movements feels rigid and stiff and altogether too forced. Everything is *so* overexaggerated (even for ballroom), it's like opting for JJ implants. You can see where she's trying to go, but it's so over-the-top that "fake" doesn't even begin to describe it.

Which isn't to say she won't get better; she may. But at present, who the hell is she to criticize and look down on her fellow dancers for their mistakes and such? At least they look like they're having fun, genuine fun, with it. If that's all that's important in ballroom, if footwork and timing are all that really matter, then boo to that noise. I dance for the freaking joy of it, not to get things exactly right and perfect. Boo.

*****

That being said. Ever since midterm, my hip-hop instructor-- how do I describe it? It's not that he started being *nice* to me, because that would imply he was being unkind to me before midterm, which isn't the case. He just started-- paying attention to me? Drawing attention to me? He'd compliment me on my stretches during warm-up, or praise me after a run-through of whatever routine we were working on that day. And it's not in a skeezy hitting-on-me way, there's no ulterior motive here, but I'm not an exceptionally good hip-hop dancer, not good enough to be singled out in a class where there *are* girls you just can't stop watching when they dance because their bodies, man, their bodies just *occupy* the music, you know? And this guy doesn't do this with the other students. Which leads me to the conclusion that I'm like that special kid who is so, so hapless and incompetent but who has so, so much heart and perseverance that all you can do is cheer her on and act like she just won an Olympic gold even though all she actually did was remember to step out with her left foot and not her right.

*****

And speaking of occupying the music: I went to this dance recital concert performance thing, an end-of-semester show for the BFA Dance majors, and that one dancer was there, as both a dancer and a choreographer. I saw her name in the program and my heart skipped a beat. She's still as captivating as she was last year, and her choreography skills are nothing to sneeze at, either. I am *not* a big fan of modern in general, but there were a few pieces in the concert I really, truly enjoyed, and hers was one of them. I don't know when she graduates, but I sincerely hope great things come her way.

Maybe with a dish of wet food? She's on a strictly dry diet, mostly.

Part II had a bad day. You wouldn't think cats could have bad days, that cats have it good all day, every day, especially when they're pretty pampered, as animals in my family tend to be-- but, no. First she fell off the balcony; I only knew this because I heard a loud THUNK, the sound of something heavy dropping on the hood of my car, and then a tinkle tinkle tinkle, the sound of the bell on her collar. I grabbed a jacket and ran outside to look for her and found her cowering in the backyard, unharmed except for her pride.

And then not two hours later, she fell off the railing that borders the living room on the second floor, all the way down to the first floor-- so, really, about the same distance as the first time. I even told her as she was catwalking the railing that it probably wasn't a good idea, but of course she paid me no mind. (That oughta learn her.) Again, no injuries, but she crawled under the couch after that and wouldn't come out for a while.

Anyway. I feel kind of sorry for her. But I can't take her out for drinks. I can't even buy her ice cream. How do you comfort a cat?