don't you remember when I was a bird and you were a map?;

It looks like a blog a month is about all I can muster outof myself. I used to be an exceptional blogger, laying it out for all to see. I guess I've finally defined what is okay to share with everyone and what is best kept to myself.

So here I sit on my last free day before school starts back up Monday, and I've already sat in the warm California sun long enough to feel nice and toasty without burning and read (rereading the entire Harry Potter series. I tried to sit and reread the sixth book since the film for it comes out next month, but that didn't go too well considering I spent the first 3 chapters trying to remember what happened in the previous five books. Back to the beginning it is). My modern art history class commences Monday, and I must say I'm really not looking forward to going back to school. I don't know if it is because I've been working nonstop for the last 2 weeks, or because my first week off was spent in Las Vegas, or maybe I'm just sick of school, but my break definitely has not been long enough. I crave the structure and routine that school brings, but I'm not completely prepared to sit for 2 hours every morning, 4 days a week, for 6 weeks, listening to someone lecture about Warhol and Lichtenstein. I enjoy my solitude and silence too much.

Vegas, to put it mildly, was amazing. I loved every minute of it, and everyday since I left I've been missing the dry heat and the absence of an agenda.

Aside from Vegas, the most exiting thing I can report is that Tuesday I sat for 2 1/2 hours waiting at Les Schwabb getting new tires and a new battery. I'm taking better care of my poor car. The last week has been about taking care of a lot of crap I've been putting off. And today I put off getting my oil changed in the morning, so now I just have to pick up my check and deposit it. Pay my phone bill, and for the Bestie's belated birthday present, and my parking pass for school. Why must everything revolve around my paychecks? I'm not feeling very nice about my hard earned money lately.

Okay, enough rambling. I'll (try) to update more often, even if it is to give some opinion of my recent readings, which include:

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
• Wuthering Heights (will I ever finish this book???)
• (eventually) 1984

I finally finished Revolutionary Road after nearly 5 months of reading it. And Catch Me If You Can I finshed right after it. I'm hoping now that I've finished rereading Libba Bray's series A Great and Terrible Beauty I can get down to some serious reading (with the exception of the HP series, I plan on not rereading any books until I complete the stack I have yet to start/finish).

All right, enough. I'm out!

I've got these friends in quotes;

Here's to procrastination and being reminded of every reason why I hate my job.

We have this manager who is a Major Douche. He's a big baby, and we all wonder how he managed to get himself a top-dog position (we stil don't know, but he is most definitely not fit for the job). For the last month, every night that I've closed, he's the been the closing manager. There's only so much of him I can take before I get absolutely annoyed with him, and last night was it. I can't wait until I close with someone who isn't him. I'm counting down the days.

Deep breath. Other than the work annoyance, everything has been somewhat okay. Definitely feeling the stress of finals and the end of the semester right about now. I still have a paper for Shakespeare on the use of disguise throughout his plays and then another on whether Victor Frankenstein can be considered a hero or a villian (6 pages on that crap. Joy.). Summer can't come soon enough.

One art history class which I am taking with the Bestie and it's just 6 weeks. Then it's time for the Summer of Awesome to commence. Camping trips, concerts and shows, and sweet late-night hangs involving some of the greatest people I've ever known and Rock Band.

The last week of finals is going to be the beginning of absolute mayhem. I leave for Vegas the night after finals, and I get back Saturday. Then the weekend before summer courses start, I'll be in San Francisco with P. School and work for 6 weeks, then my summer can really start. Can't. Wait.

Alright. Time to go hunting through the interwebs and my books to begin citing passages for (super lame) papers. I've got Starbucks and nothing better to do.

you broke the rules, you laid it down for all to see;

Whoops. I officially am the worst blogger ever. What have I been up to, you may ponder. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I had every intention of updating (even if just briefly) last week, during my spring break. As you can see, that obviously didn't happen. Is it possible to be busy with nothing? I think it is.

I made a list for myself of everything I had hoped to get done last week for school (which included reading and finishing 3 books, writing 4 papers, and getting ahead on my chapter outlines), and all that I could force myself to do was one chapter outline and finishing Frankenstein. What the hell did I do with myself for a week if that's all I managed to complete for school? I worked. I hung out with some awesome people. I slept. I sat on my bum all day watching reruns of LOST seasons past and watching Twilight on DVD. And in between all of that nothing, I finally painted the inside of my closet and put my bookcase together. I set up my DVD shelves. My room actually looks lived in now. It's incredible.

My first week back from break was supposed to be me writing those papers (or at least outlining/drafting them) and finishing Revolutionary Road (yeah, I know. I'm still reading it. I've been procrastinating). None of that happened. Instead I got bombarded with MORE work. Next week in French is going to be absolute hell. We have the chapter 9 exam Monday and then Wednesday is our in class composition in which we write in the past tense about our lives today in comparison with the lives of our grandparents. Great. Just what I want to discuss.

And on that note, I've been having a lot of inside conversations with myself lately. A lot of reflection and remembering that led me to the conclusion that I still think of him everyday, and every moment I find myself thinking about him I miss him more and more. And the only reason I haven't fallen apart again is because I won't let myself; there's too much at stake now for me to lose if I let myself just crumble. I may appear happier and better on the outside (and maybe I really am, maybe I'm strong enough to cope with all this grief after all), that all I've done also is gotten better at denying and hiding and burying and ignoring how hurt I still am. I'm not as angry, but I'm still just as hurt. The anger is what set in after the numbness went away, and even though it would be completely melodramatic of me to say that I can't feel anything anymore, what I mean is in comparison to that anger and hatred all other feelings are weak and not as strongly felt.

Anyway. That was a brief update. Now back to getting over my cold and listening to MCS.

there is nowhere you can hide from the lessons learned or the lies that bind them;

I am way too lazy to write anything of real sustance, so here's a list summarizing the Life of Tara:

1) WAY too much homework/studying/exhaustion
2) hangs with the bestest friends
3) work, work, work and -oh yeah- more work
4) deep thinking on where I will/want to be in 5 years/ltos of contemplating my navel/trying to figure out the meaning of my life
5) thinking of my Angry Phase over last summer and how that was the last time I really actually felt anything real
6) missing said Angry Phase because I could actually feel something, even if it was a negative emotion
7) also missing drawing beaucoup because it took immense amounts of concentration, which is one of many things I seem to be lacking
8) reading Revolutionary Road and Othello simultaneously (not such a good idea, by the way)
9) havig very bizarre dreams involving D, LOST and my old apartment. What?!?!

Just a brief summary, mind. And yes, I totally outlined this blog out last night in a notebook and in neon purple ink to boot!

And coming attractions:

1) work, work, work
2) a poetry comparison analysis paper whose draft is due Tuesday
3) a humanities midterm Thursday
4) more dull and further confusing studies of Confucionism
5) more Othello and Iago's inspiring brilliance at villianry
6) furhter financial ruin
7) more fialings in the French language (why must I fail so hardcore at it?! I took it all 4 years of high school and studied it a few semesters ago! Whyyy must I despise it so???)
8) more hangs with the bestests AND awesome rockig out jam sessions to Rockband!!!

Yeah, I have a totally lame life. I've come to accept that.

it doesn't matter because I am packing plastic, and that's what makes my life so fucking fantastic;

Oh, how I missed blogging. Kinda.

My laptop has been extremely slow on loading everything IE related, and a savings account for a new laptop/paying off my credit card has been started to buy a new one. It's ridiculous. My laptop was never the best thing, but it's reached an offical all time low.

In other news, I probably had one of the crappiest weeks. Wednesadya my car battery died, leaving me stranded at Ride Aid for half an hour with my mother, which was not a beautiful experience. Since when did my mother get so "zen" about everything? What the hell was up with all the comments about just going with the flow and that bad things happen all the time? Why couldn't she just let me be negative and get it out? Damn. So we got rescued by A, who dropped us off and a few hours my mom and I went back to my car hoping that it just overheated and was fine now. Of course it wasn't. I had been telling my mom that my car needed work done on it, that it was acting up and sometimes driving funny (translation: I didn't feel safe driving it). She didn't listen, saying that it was fine, I was iomaginging things, yadda yadda. Guess what? The next time someone says their car is acting up and they drive it several times a day you should trust them and have it checked out. Lesson learned.

And what's really ridiculous about this entire situation is that when my laptop died a couple of weeks ago, I had this nagging little voice in the back of my mind saying that bad things come in packs of three and that the next thing to go would be my car. Yeah. I jinxed myself.

It would have been a simple fix, just call AAA and get my car jumped and/or towed, right? Apparently my mom hadn't payed the bill yet. So while I'm freaking out thinking I'm going to be without a car for quite some time, my mom is just shrugging it off as an accident. Of course, it isn't her car. Once I told her she woild be the one driving me out to school on Mondays and Wednesdays AND picking me up AND toting me to and from work, it became of the utmost importance to get my car fixed. Yeah. That's what I thought.

So that was my negative Wednesday. I had switched schedules that day with someone earlier in the week so it didn't effect work at all. I had planned to work on my three papers due the following day, and I eventually did. At 8 o'clock. While rewatching last week's episode of LOST. I managed to write 5 and half okay pages on Hinduism for World Religions, and then wrote two pages about the character of Orsino from Twlefth Night for Shakespeare and two pages on Caravaggio's The Conversion of St. Paul. I was quite proud of myself for my Caravaggio paper until I got to class the next day to hand it in and find out that the majority of the class had chosen the same Baroque painting to analyze as well. I felt brilliant about my Hinduism paper, though, considering that some people had only written 3 or 4 pages and had been up all night writing it while I had outlined mine and had it written in just two hours. Paper power!

I've been watching The Office on DVD for the last week. Why has no one ever told me about this show until now? It's hilarious. Every episode makes me laugh and reminds me that not all TV shows eventually go down the drain like LOST has. What is up with that show lately? Anyone know? Do the writers even know anymore?

I went last night to see Slumdog Millionaire with A and R (I just realized I have two A's: a male and a female. Dang. Af and Am maybe?). I really liked it, and I can see why it would be nominated for so much. What I didn't get was why it actually won all the Oscars it did. Don't get me wrong, I really liked the movie and thought it deserved the recognition, but I don't think it should have won all of the awards it was up for. Just like I don't think that of the two films she had come out last year, Kate Winslet should have gotten her Oscar for The Reader. I liked her performance and the film itself a lot more in Revolutionary Road. Just sayin'.

Oh. Yesterday I saw M. With his Lolita. I think he gets that I won't be forgiving him anytime ever.

Now I am off to attempt my French studies for my examen on Mercredi (Wednesday).

believe me when I tell you that I never want to see you again;

I am the laziest girl ever.

I didn't go to French yesterday, that is to say, with the help of sleep aid, I didn't wake up until noon. I checked my phone like I always do after eating breakfast, and I had two new texts. One from P and one from D. Reading D's totally bummed me out. "I want to see you again. But I have to be honest: I intend to undress you." Umm, yeah. So all that avoidance of that topic the week prior was farce? He only started to talk to me again to sleep with me again. What he didn't take into account with that piggish text was that I am not who I used to be. I don't thrive off of male attention to feel happy and good about myself as I used to. And with that said my reply went something like this: "I knew that's what you wanted. Thanks for the honesty but I don't want it. I know it'll end up just like the other times and it is just not worth it to me. I deserve more." I sent that over 24 hours ago, and have gotten no response. I highly doubt that I will. All he wanted of me was sex, and when I denied him that, he has no more purpose to me. I'm hoping this is the last I will have to hear from him in a very long time.

Now, I have my reasons for telling him no. Several reasons, in facts. 1) I would always be the one driving out to see him. Do you know how much gas has gone up? Between driving to and from school 4 days a week, making the trips out to the gym, and work, I barely have enough gas to get me where I have to go. So the one sided driving thing is a definite con. 2) In previous times, it hadn't been that good or worth the trip. And by it, I mean the sex. 3) I have enough to contend with lately without heaving on top of all that a boy, even if he is unattached. That's still a couple of hours I could be using to be doing thigs I actually like, such as reading, having dinner with my mom, or seeing people who do actually care about me. 4) The biggest, heaviest con on the list of all. The emotional part of it. I may not be in love with him or like him, but I do get a little jealous if I'm with a guy and he's talking about other girls as I'm with him. I don't need that. I don't need the insecurity right now of wondering if this trip will be the last one, and if it is, how long it will be before he talks to me again.

Overall, what I've realized is this: I don't need him. The past year and a half we haven't spoken has proven this to me. I function much better without him around. And when I say I deserve more, I mean I deserve to actually be with a guy who wants me, and not just for my body.

And that is the end of D.

Today I had a dentist appointment (again). My last one until my cleaning in May, I hope. It went by pretty fast and as I was waiting for the numbness to spread, I finally finished Slaughter House Five. Dear god, it was an easy read, but I just didn't have the time to actually read it. I'm still reading about 75 pages a night for school. That doesn't leave much room for hobby reading.

When I got home, I had every intention of finishing Fellowship of the Ring (when I couldn't get to sleep last night, I started watching it. I made it through to the last half of the second disc before I passed out), but my mother was home and had some news to tell me. Believe me, there is a reason why I have Motion City Soundtrack's Everything is Alright as my ringtone for when my mom calls. She hasn't been delivering happy news in the last year, and I expected the worst. But I was glad to be wrong this time. An appraiser is coming out to the house in the morning to re-evaluate the value of our home and adjust our mortgage rate. Translation: We won't be moving for a while yet. Hopefully we won't have to.

And now I am off to scrub our kitchen because, dear gawd, it's awful in there and is dying for some TLC: Tender Loving Cleaning.

the sun is out the sky is blue/it's beautiful and so are you;

Oh, insomnia, how you are the very bane of my existence. For the last couple of nights I have been completely unable to fall asleep, and stay asleep while I'm at it. Why? Don't you kow I love you, sleep? And that I miss you and the wonderful sleep habits I acquired during winter break terribly?

Okay, I guess I can recap on my weekend.

Saturday was P's birthday. I was sleep deprived (I worked 2-11 Friday and had to be up by 7:30 the next morning to be to work by 9. Ha.) and not feeling at all sociable, but I went anyway. I had an okay time. Got completely sick from the food (note to self: never eat at Chevy's again), but other than that it was okay.

Sunday I worked 8:30 to 12:30, again sleep deprived. I had every intention of going home and takig a serious nap before hitting the gym, but I just could not fall asleep to save my life. So I stayed awake surfed the web, and watched "The Life of David Gale" (which I keep calling Henry Gale and couldn't figure out why until last night: LOST). Did cardio for 15 minutes, and then a full hour of pilates before going home to crash. What wishful thinking on my part.

My iPod died at the gym, so I went over to my laptop, turned it on. And nothing happened. It clicked on for 3 seconds and then shut itself back off. What the...??? So I played with the cord for over an hour, got really pissed off, and high jacked my mom's PC for hours looking for a new laptop. My Dell is a piece of maneuer, and it deeply saddens me. I bought a new power cord for it, paid the extra 16 bucks for express shipping and got it in today. Luckily it worked and it only set me back $90 (meaning my income tax moolah is diminished and I won't be able to pay as much off of my credit card as I had hoped). Still, it's cheaper than the $1300 macbook pro I was oogling, and the $1700 Sony vaio I was dreaming of, and the HP Pavilion I was stalking for 2 hours. I need to learn to be frugal and save my hard earned cash to pay off my debt and be able to buy myself a new snazzy laptop that doesn't infuriate me with its incompetence. Anyway, it turned on loaded itself up, and I was thrilled to have it back. Until I tried logging onto IE and having the AT&T message announcing my Internet was having an issue. Translation: My mom forgot to pay the bill again. Fortunately, it only took two calls this time to get it up and running. And no call what-so-ever to the router company! Made me very very glad we threw out our Netgear piece of crap months ago and upgrder to something better (and whose customer service speaks clear, distinct English).

That was today, er, Tuesday. Back to Sunday: In my frustration, I texted D asking about his HP laptop. The conversation soon veered to hanging out Monday, since neither of us had class and didn't work until late evening. Don't ask me why, but I agreed. So Monday afternoon I drove the 45 minutes to his apartment and he made me lunch and we discussed music philosophy, and many more nonsensical topics. I irritated him with my erratic song changing, and I came to the realization that I am over him and that he bores me to death. I wouldn't mid hanging out again, but he just has nothing to hook me with. I haven't quite decided if it was me who changed or him, or perhaps both of us, but the dynamic of our relationship has definitely fizzled. No sexual tension of any kind, and with the exception of a few flirtatious comments, I say it is definitely safe to be around him. Old habits eventually die in this case, thank God.

So that was my Monday. And now I am on to my Wednesday and unable to sleep, yet again. I must be up by 7:30. Perhaps I shall ditch French, though it would put me way behind considering it's a two hour class that meets only twice a week. I wish this old habit would die already.