dedication

to Dr. E, of the psych dep't:

"Birds they fly so high, and they can shit on your head, yeah they can
almost fly into your eye and make you feel so scared but when you
look at them, and you see that they're beautiful,
that's how I feel about you." -Kate Nash

Or in my words, you're scary, and annoying as heck, but you're an admirable sort of person. ...I'd just prefer to admire you from far away, outside your circle of influence.
the end.
E.O.

Kenari - part 2

So today I did some more of that thing where i stand in the store and try to make people taste and wonder about and buy that Kenari stuff.
I was outside today, which was a very different vibe from the produce section from yesterday. Sampling things outside is much less respectable and less likely to catch peoples' attention than actually being inside the store. 'Cause you know who stands outside- the salvation army, the girlscouts, the boyscouts, random people selling whatever - the people you don't pay much attention to, except to shrug them off as graciously as you can. So it's surprising that I managed to sell as much today as I did.
The other drawback to being outside at this time of year is, of course, the temperature. I had not been prepared to be out of the warm, protective atmosphere of the produce section, and so had not brought a coat/sweater. It was ok for the first couple hours, but after that, I got COLD. Not 'cause the temp was terribly low, but simply 'cause I was there, standing, losing body heat in the most efficient way possible. I think I may have even scared the last few customers, 'cause I was shaking while talking to them and trying my best to smile. Oh well. :P
Then, another thing happened today... In every store there are people who keep the parking lot and the outside of the store clean. They put the carts back in their places, bring out piles of hand-baskets, keep the hand sanitizer filled (yes, american grocery stores have hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes, it's ridiculous, and so typically american, i know). There was one in particular today who... well, who talked to me, and took an interest. He's from Ethiopia, which I think is awesome, and he has a super thick accent. I had to ask him to repeat stuff all the time, which is unusual for me: I can usually make out what people are saying without too much trouble, even if other people find them hard to understand. Anyway, he was friendly, and seemed genuinely kind - that is, he noticed I was cold, and offered to go get me a jacket, which could be more indicative of his interest than real kindness, I suppose. Anyway, we talked - flirted, I guess. i can never tell when flirting is going on, though I really ought to be able to pick up on these things by now - and he eventually asked for my number. As that was a new experience for me, I decided to give it to him, and see what happened.
What happened was that, soon after I packed up, and he helped me wheel the stuff back inside., he proceeded to call the number I had given him. He said that someone had left stuff outside, and he thought it was mine, and was it? - which I'm quite certain was an excuse to make sure that really was my number, since he watched me pack up all my stuff.
The upshot of it all is that I met a guy, got asked for my number for the first time ever, and am giving him a chance. We had a conversation via texting after I left, and presumably might hang out next weekend. Only time will tell.
I also bought a beautiful purple scarf. Partly 'cause I was FREEZING and had lost most of the movement in my fingers, and partly to commemorate the occasion, the place, and the job. =)
the end (for now).
E.O.

p.s.: I'm not sure whether I like coming back to my family or not. But I WILL enjoy sleeping like a log in a beautiful bed, for as long as I want, without burning up because the thermostat is broken. Wahoo! Sleep, here I come!

p.p.s.: irk. what was I thinking? The guy works in a grocery store, his English is bad enough to tell me that he's either really not good at languages, or hasn't been here long enough to pick stuff up. I know absolutely nothing about him...
the experience was really more flattering than anything else.
...i think i'm just gonna leave it at that.

Kenari

So occasionally on bulletin boards and things there will be job offers. There was one in the Culinary Club the other day, and I responded. The upshot of it was that I got to stand in a Whole Foods grocery store today for several hours, pouring and handing out a locally grown and brewed herbal beverage called "Kenari"
Yep, I was one of those people standing at the entrance of a store when you come in and offering you samples.
I was surprised by how many people actually took and subsequently bought the stuff. It was CRAZY expensive for the amount in one bottle, and yet, people seemed to have absolutely no problem shelling out. Maybe it was the neighborhood, I don't know.
What I do know is that the position avails itself very well to people watching. It's almost like being a fly on the wall, or at least, as close as I've gotten in a while. There were people of all different sorts. One person was "allergic to sugar" whatever that means, another refused to touch a product if it didn't have a kosher stamp on it. There were some people who clearly came in the store just for the samples, notably this one big black lady with her little son. They walked around, she trying things as he watched, and all the while trying to convince him to try them. They were such a fun pair! And then there was another lady with one of those really infectious smiles. The kind that absolutely transforms the owner whenever they put it on. Now she could have sold anything!
It was odd, too, I noticed that if you falter in telling people the ingredients, they immediately lose interest. If they know you're not with the company producing the product, they lose interest. If there is a person at the table, making positive comments, then more people are likely to come, or if people see other people leaving your table contentedly, they are more likely to approach.
These are only a few of the things I noticed- but I also noticed my back slowly starting to ache, and my smile fading with time. It's an exhausting job, and it took a lot out of me, especially as I'm not one of those people who is energized by meet-and-greet type environments. But hey, I learned a bit about selling, I got to be in a new environment, and I got well paid: an afternoon well-spent.
here's the website... i guess i should go check out what i'm associating myself with... oh, college, how I love you with your varied experiences. Anyway, here is their official website, but you'll get a better idea of who they currently are out of their facebook page.
over 'n out.
E.O.

so...

...I'm still working on Hungarian.
and...

...I may or may not have pierced my ears for the first time since I was eleven (ten?). With awesome anodized hoops. With a turquoise-colored captive bead.
yeah.
I most definitely DID accompany G to get her cartilage pierced. Which looks awesome, but not as awesome as her tragus piercing, which I have admired since last year.

:D

Hungarian can't beat me today!
over 'n out.
E.O.

Concentration? What?

Yeah... my store of concentration has gone waaay down the tubes. I don't know what happened to it.
I am attempting to write a paper on Hungarian Phonology. We have to write a description of a language for my linguistics class and I (foolishly) thought that choosing a language I don't know would make the thing more interesting. I would like a large stamp that says "FRUSTRATING" and some red ink. If I owned such a stamp, I would print the paper, and then stamp it. I'd stamp the books I'm currently poring (read: sleeping) over to get the information, and I'd stamp the professor's face, the one who assigned this thing and encouraged us to look for "interesting" languages in the first place.
Yes, I now know why Hungarian writing has so many z's in it. I also know why "Budapest" is not pronounced (as the average European would imagine) /budapest/ but with a "sh" sound where they've clearly written an "s," and why the same goes for the town of Sopron. However. It has required of me extra hours of painstaking, detailed work and analysis, synthesis, and comprehension- and I'm not even through the phonotactics (syllable construction) of the thing! I have to describe: phonology, phonotactics, suprasegmentals, morphology, and maybe a little syntax if I feel like it.
I won't say that I'm not learning though. Did you know that, contrary to what public school taught you, words are not solely made up of syllables? No, in some languages, there are things called "edge clusters" of consonants. Consonant clusters are normal- they're things like the "cl" part of the syllable "clap". What this one book I've been fuddling through intimates is that, in some languages, there are extra consonants that just sit around on the edges of words, for no particular reason, with no particular cohesion to the word. They're "licensed by some special mechanism limited to the edges of domains and not by an onset or a coda constituent (read: the consonant parts of a true syllable) dominating them." Take a wild guess at a language that might have these weird clusters? BINGO! You guessed it. Hungarian.
This is only one of the many lovely complications and news-flashes I have encountered in the past week or two, which started with old, semi-indescipherable IPA and hasn't come to a conclusion yet.
Sigh.
Back to the slaughterhouse. If you find me wandering around somewhere, lost, with mush dribbling out my ear and nose, don't be too surprised- it'll just be my brain that finally disentigrated from a mixture of confused incomprehension and tedium.
over 'n out.
E.O.

Eschew Obfuscation...

...will never, never again go to sleep at 3:30 and then (attempt to) get up at 7:45.
But why, you ask. Other people get by on minuscule amounts of sleep. Why should you be different? I will tell you.
All I could think about when I got up was how tired I was. I went to find A & G so we could go meet E for breakfast, like we do every Friday. I had actually gotten up mostly 'cause I was psyched to see her- she's really busy, so we don't get to spend much time just hanging out like that. Anyway, I found them still grooming themselves, so I promptly curled up on A's bed to wait. And slept. Then we actually went to breakfast. We had an ok time, were almost through eating, when somehow the subject of work came up, and how A gets paid a bit more an hour than me and An, even though we do pretty much the same job. We started faux arguing about it, like we always do... and then for some reason, it got serious for me. I accused her of waiting 'til I was dead tired and not quick on my mental feet to argue with me, and asked that we stop. Which we kind of did, but then got sucked back into it, as will happen with us- at which point I decided I needed to just leave, because I was not going to be beaten in yet another argument by A, simply because I had the disadvantage of not being at full mental capacity. Also, it wasn't fair to E. I needed sleep.
So, I went promptly to the library (where I recently discovered the most amazing sofas on campus) and slept. And in my sleepy brain, I imagined that my Really Important Class started at 11:30, which is when it ends, instead of 10:40, which is when it actually begins. So I set my phone to ring at 11:15. Of course, it was only when I woke up at 11:15 that I realized what had happened. Let me be clear- this class? Yeah, it has no book, no text to study from. The professor doesn't think that any book is arranged properly. Which is all well and good, you don't have to spend book money on him. But it DOES mean that you have to be in EVERY. LECTURE. in order to ensure that you don't miss anything important. Plus, the material is detailed and somewhat complicated, so generally I have to record the lecture and listen to it twice to really cement it in my head. And this is the class that I inadvertently skipped, plus the class I intentionally skipped, dance.
So, what happened? I got pissed off at my friend for no reason, didn't get to enjoy my other friend's company, and played hookie both intentionally and unintentionally. All because of lack of sleep. Was staying up cooking for a big event 'til 3AM worth it? Only time will tell...
Never did I think I'd see this day.
Next thing you know I'll be going to parties and drinking alcohol. Yikes! (No, don't prepare yourself for that variety of stupidity- even sleep-drunk, that's not something that would appeal to me, ever.)
over 'n out.
E.O.

literalists unite!

Awesome conversation:
Friend 1 quotes: "Shoot for the moon because even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
Friend 2: The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years from earth. So actually, if you shoot for the moon and miss, you are much more likely to wind up in the void of space than among the stars. That doesn't mean you shouldn't shoot for the moon. It just means you should probably go really really fast in case you miss.

my city

I am only just coming to realize that, whether or not i actually liked living there at the time, Barcelona is My City, and Castelldefels My Town. I generally live as if Spain had never happened, nor Austria nor Germany either. I just paste together those portions of my life when I was in the states, or take out the international aspect of my other memories. So, what does my life consist of? The first four years of my life, the second half of the second grade and the first half of the third, one year in middle school, one year in high school, and college up to the present. Everything else is... murky.

It's not that I intentionally leave everywhere else out of the picture- it's just that... well, for one thing, mentioning living in Other Countries, no matter how subtly it is slipped into conversation, immediately takes over, and then you have to make disclaimers and calm people down, and explain that it's just your life, not some amazing privilege or fairy tale. For another thing, if I think too hard about what it was like to live not in the States, I can't function properly. It throws everything into confusion. Memory puts on it's famed rose-colored glasses, and I start to think "I really liked it better there." But then I remember how often I was really unhappy, in a way that has never beset me here, and I think, well, this must be better. And then I have to go into wondering whether it really IS better, and what parts I'd like to keep from each, if I could, and wonder how valid my experiences there WERE, after all, and whether it's not arrogant of me to think I know so much more than other people because I've lived Somewhere Else.

And things just spiral downward from there. So, for those reasons, I keep them separate- this life and that. As best I can manage, they don't mix. But of course, I can't erase my past just by hiding it. So occasionally it will come through. Lately, it has been doing so in a more positive light. Examples: Yesterday I was able to help my friend with her Spanish homework without any trouble. I even knew the grammar and the terms, which I never knew when trying to help my Spanish friends with their English work. And I saw pictures of an event at my parent's church in Spain, and couldn't stop oohing and aahing over the people, and the places, and how they haven't changed but have, and saying inane things like "yep, that's my church!". And then today I saw pictures that a friend's bf posted from his trip to BCN, and to my extreme surprise couldn't help exclaiming in utter happiness "Aww! That's my city!!"


I realize that all these musings just sound exactly like other people with multicultural experiences in their childhood. Sorry if you were bored by it. But to me, this is poignant. How am I supposed to integrate where and who I was with where and who I am becoming, now? What do those experiences mean? What on earth am I supposed to do with the immense turmoil they create within me? Is it ok not to shy away from mentioning that I grew up outside the US? Am I entitled to look at the US culture from outside it? Or is that possibility precluded me because I'm not fully participant in the Spanish culture either?
Ack. See, this is why I don't think about stuff like this on a regular basis.
signed, a burgeoning ATCK.
over 'n out.
E.O.

Destiny

This weekend it was my turn to clean the bathroom. There are four of us, and each of us takes one week of the month. Convenient, right? The bathroom stays clean, and everyone has very little work. In theory, yes. In practice, not really.
See, the four of us form a sort of continuum of bathroom-cleaning assiduousness. My roomie is probably the cleanliest, then myself, then our brunette suite-mate, and the most reluctant to clean would be our blonde suite-mate. So what generally happens is that the bathroom gets a good sound cleaning once every two weeks, and in between my roomie and I grumble to one another that K and E really just don't know how to clean a bathroom. Their version of "cleaning" is sweeping everything off of the counter and swishing a sponge around the sink, despite the fact that SOMEHOW their mothers neglected to teach them how to flush the toilet after peeing, or keep said pee off of the toilet seat. Go figure. I ask no questions. (And then they have the gall to post little notes around saying things like "please don't leave your dishes on the sink counter, clean or dirty- we've seen ants and beetles!" *note: there are NO BEETLES and the ants stay strictly in our room; their vendetta is against me and me alone).
But to get back to my point. Today, I cleaned the bathroom. I cleaned it so thoroughly and with such vigor that my mother would have been proud. And that's saying something, because Mom has NEVER been satisfied with my cleaning. EVER. She has that motherly talent for finding the one little spot in the very back corner that you may have missed out of sheer reluctance to squeeze and huff and puff your sponge all the way into it. Not today, though. Today I scrubbed every tile in the shower, removed every hair, swilled out every last speck of dirt that was swill-out-able (it IS a dorm bathroom after all... some dirt just WON'T. COME. OFF. It is ingrained there for the ages to come). I even mopped, despite my roomie's protestations that there's really no need to mop (I really don't know why she's convinced of that, considering how thorough she is with everything else). And that's what scares me.
Am I destined to become my mother??
Complaining about how other people don't clean the bathroom properly, devoting an hour of my time to scrubbing every last inch of the blasted thing?
Aaaaaagh! *creepy haunting music*
the end.
E.O.

creepy crawlies

i have endured them occasionally crawling across my desk. i have forgiven them for wandering into my box of kitchen utensils. i have simply blown them off my keyboard, when they have dared to be so bold. i have simply squished the more careless explorers that somehow found a way onto my bed.
but this.
this is the last straw.
I am not a bug-squeamish person, and, as a rule, i like ants. I think they do the environment a favor by using things that people discard (like the ice-cream a kid drips on the pavement) and I like that they don't give a hoot about humans, and usually won't bite.
But THIS time! They have invaded my home and my personal space, and now they are making an ANT HIGHWAY into my beautiful, NEW coffee mug, which i used for tea the other day (and washed and then used for water).
THIS MEANS WAR!!!!

procrastination is my liiiiiiife

note to self:
~self, you should really be working on ideas for that Romanticism essay
~and the Old English research paper
~or alternately, doing some preliminary research on Twi and sending your idea for a language research paper to your ling prof.
~learn how to flirt
~find something to do in the evenings if you're going to dawdle around your REAL work. sheesh.
~don't be a lazy bum

there, that ought to about cover it for today.
over 'n out.
E.O.

Let me explain to you...

...what my body is doing to me.
This is a post about the horrors of the Nasal Drip. Those of you who are squeamish, do not proceed.
There is a tickle at the back of my throat. Persistent, insidious. It's not a big sensation. It doesn't have to be. You see, the sole purpose of this tickle is to trick my throat into thinking it has to cough. Once that is accomplished, the throat will pull the lungs and back and abdomen muscles with it in an attempt to rid itself of the foul oozing sensation. The back pulls, the abdomen moves in like a flash, air leaves the lungs in a rush, and - nothing is accomplished. Absolutely nothing. Just a dry, hacking cough; and the Nasal Drip goes right on trickling quietly, laughing to itself, and waiting for it's little scheme to have the same effect all over again.
Of course, having experienced this cycle several thousand times in the last week, I know exactly how it works. But no matter what I do, there is nothing that will stop that mucous from traveling out of my nasal cavity, to my stomach, via my larynx. As aforementioned, I can't cough. Neither can I blow my nose, or attempt to push the mucous onwards by "swallowing" it. The thing is so odious, I almost wish I COULD. I can't stop from coughing either, you see, because the whole thing is a sort of reflex. If I breathe in too deeply, my throat catches, and can't help but cough. I know I don't really need to cough. But no matter how hard I try to convince it, my body won't believe me.
The crazy thing is, this one silly, simple little thing, a nasal drip, is making my whole body suffer. My back and abdomen are sore from coughing ineffectually. My throat is raw for the same reason, sometimes to the point where I get that pin-prick sensation in the back of it that won't go away no matter how much you cough, or drink water. The skin of my nose is raw from trying to blow some of the beastly little buggers (literally) out. I LOOK sick. I FEEL sick. All because of a stupid little tickle at the back of my throat.
And that is the horror of the Nasal Drip. A small, silly horribly annoying little pest. I hope and pray that you may avoid it and never read this post and think "goodness! yes! that's just exACTly what I felt/am feeling this/last week/month."
thank you, and good night.
E.O.