so. 25.

ughhh no jobs

god i haven't stayed up all night in months

finally sucked it up and came back to lexington for a visit after 7 months. i felt like 2008 was a wash year but i'd forgotten how much i hated it here and so getting out, and getting out of my rut here, was pretty damn fine.

there's something distasteful about how a person's facebook can become a public forum for grief after something bad happens, like those makeshift wooden cross memorials left by the roadside after a car crash. i don't like it.

raabia: but do you really know anyone who's had to make adjustments because of the economy?

me: every other week i have to get groceries at kroger instead of whole foods now.

raabia: oh god, that's horrible!

i wish someone would explain the "financial crisis" to me. i don't really get it at all. i tried to read the newspaper but it was all freaking ryder cup coverage.

edit: on second thought, i think most people, while making water cooler talk, pretend that they understand it better than they actually do.

during what has been dubbed by hysterical local media as the "windstorm of 2008," or alternatively, "remnants of hurricane ike," i was having brunch on the patio at north end. a leaf blew into my eggs and a tablemate wondered whether it was normal for telephone poles to sway. on my way to coffee with eric, traffic was backed up and i sat there watching a tree fall down, wondering how an entire city had forgotten how to handle a four-way stop.

it's all very inconvenient, not having power and roads being closed, but people need to calm the hell down. the national guard was in the streets outside of work today. this is ridiculous. reading by candlelight and not driving anywhere for lack of gas and coming up with new, creative ways to make meals out of nonperishable food is like summer vacation. the next stranger to whine to me about life being hard without ice or fresh produce and then asking if i have power is going to get a punch in the face.

my electricity came on earlier today; however, it was still quite a challenge locating somewhere to buy cigarettes.

top played songs this year in itunes:

1. katy perry - i kissed a girl
2. katy perry - hot n cold
3. lady gaga - just dance
4. mgmt - kids
5. estelle - american boy
6. i was a cub scout - pink squares
7. gabriel & dresden - tracking treasure down radio edit
8. amerie - crush
9. solange - i decided pt. 2
10. amerie - when loving u was easy
11. chris brown - forever
12. yelle - je veux te voir
13. cut copy - lights and music
14. the pussycat dolls - when i grow up
15. gabriel & dresden - tracking treasure down
16. sam sparro - black & gold
17. the ting tings - shut up and let me go
18. the perishers - nothing like you and i
19. shiny toy guns - nothing compares 2 u
20. danity kane - damaged

what happened to me?

the cops just tried, unsuccessfully, to break up a high school party next door. i wish they had done better because the kids are freaking blocking my driveway. ugh. where are the parents? for once, where is the dastardly neighborhood association of swift parking enforcement fame?

now the kids, safe, are all in the street drunk arguing about where to move their cars.

i'm looking at apartments in town. kind of sick of the suburban drama.

last night at the bar my friend was hitting on some fratty looking boy and so he asked him if he was from louisville. fratty looking boy turns around, puts his hand on his hip, and says, "as jennifer hudson sang, 'one night only!'" and then he did this godawful double snap.

and then he tried to buy me a drink. argument #23423 for going out less.

1. discreetly drink pimm's cups in cherokee park until i pass out in the sun
2. locate a lavender cummerbund
3. wear my white sunglasses everywhere while listening to sam sparro on repeat
4. get fit...kinda
5.

it turns out i have very few goals

the most annoying thing about moving back into the childhood house so far is that in my absence, my walk-in closet has suddenly become home to a hideous combination collection of winter furs and summer golfing apparel. chinchilla, mink, some unidentifiable dark fur that looks like blackened earthworms, and pile after pile of callaway polo shirts. in fact, after having reclaimed my room from "guest room" status, i was horrified to find not one, not two, but three matchy matchy seating sets from ethan allen: one set tacky contemporary (leather in "cool" hues), one set tacky bourgeois (awful purple paisley print upholstery on gross cherry wood), and one set tacky ethnic (batik and bamboo). what guest needs six seats? i have no idea how to get rid of this stuff because of, of course, the ever-feared neighborhood association bylaws prohibiting the disposal of furniture in public.

never trust a korean woman with money to decorate. the madam doesn't live here anymore so i can't even tell her how tacky she is.

edit: i tried on some of the furs and i do look pretty hott in chinchilla, you know, for wearing an extended family of dead rats.

So my workplace is wedged between a Qdoba and a Panera Bread, which are both carbalicious and really bad for my sexyback diet. And I know they are both gross and overprocessed and the food probably comes from Sysco or Sodexho or something; I just can't help myself.

so there seems to be a resurgence of people using this thing, and i thought i might as well, but it's so out of habit that now i don't really know what to add.

1. so living in the suburbs again is fun so far. within the first day, i got a notice on my car saying that i had already violated neighborhood association rules by parking on the street two days in a row. how i had missed the neighborhood association. also, i went to kroger, and it was just enormous, at least twice the size of the falling apart campus one i'd been going to for years. it was ten in the morning and the aisles were packed full of moms fretting about whether they should make mexican shells or manicotti for dinner. it took five minutes just to be able to reach the eggs. the clerk at the circle k still remembered me five years later. how odd.
1a. it is amazing to have the following things again: a normal-sized bedroom, my own bathroom, floor-to-ceiling windows, a dishwasher, a driveway, a patio, a backyard, stainless steel everything instead of cracked porcelain.

2. so i feel like whenever someone dies i feel this guilt, like there's always some complication and it's not a simple process of shock>grief>acceptance. my relationship with my sister was pretty simple in that she was the only person in my family i liked and we banded together as outsiders to make fun of the entire extended lot. now i have no partner in mockery, and i'm still sad, but unlike the other losses i don't feel this incredible sense of guilt, or some sense of injustice, and i don't feel sorry for myself either, just the plainest, basest sadness. it will go away eventually.

3. so it comes that i'm the only one left in my family, a little earlier than anticipated. out of the four of us, i never would have expected to be the healthiest, the most successful (in a way), the most long-lived. and so in the past few days i've wondered how long it will be okay to be irresponsible and young and not put in enough effort at work, and go out more than i should, and buy things i shouldn't, and ache over boys or clothes or hair. i shouldn't be the one to carry on the name.

4. but i am. sometimes i wonder whether i should feel pressure to produce an heir and keep my name and maybe hope that a future son's family would turn out a little better. but i've been absorbed into this other group of people, whose dramas consume me even though i try to ignore them, who've co-opted my childhood, who act as my saviors, my own miss havisham. i'm still a little too selfish, a little too young, a little too unrestrained to be a namegiver.

birthday dinner was a little hard. the food was good and i felt like i was okay at conversation, but someone would start talking and then in the middle of it i would get distracted and zone out. downtown was strangely sparse last night. i did have lots of fun and i did wear my super skinny jeans, sister-approved or not. thanks for the concerns; i'm really okay.

found out today that my sister died. the last thing she ever said to me was in an email: "All the gay guys here are wearing tight skinny jeans. I'm positive they are womans jeans b/c they are so tight and low cut, and i know they don't make 'the skinny' for mens. I hope you aren't wearing those. " i hope my parting words are as good.

also, today is my birthday.

i hate facebook applications but somehow i ended up on "compare people" because i was curious to see my rankings, and here are some:

8 of 8 said more fashionable
2 of 2 said rather skip class
6 of 7 said rather be trapped on a desert island with
4 of 5 said better public speaker
3 of 4 said better hair (WHO HAS BETTER HAIR?)

1 of 4 said make better father
1 of 6 said more organized
1 of 6 said more likely to do a favor for me
1 of 7 said studies harder
0 of 3 said kinder

accurate enough.