katie

Last night Katie and I were downtown for 6 hours. Apparently I hadn't had enough of her, so I dreamt of her too.

We were in the art department and there was a substitute for one of my classes. She was tagging along with me the whole day. The substitute was actually an English professor at WWU by the name Margaritas. He had on his regular fancy shoes and khaki trench coat over a billion dollar suit. He turned on some film and told us to sit down and watch it as we streamed into the room. I felt annoyed immediately because he hadn't given any thought to the arrangement of chairs, leaving me with a spot totally uncomfortable. I had to make a fuss and move my chair to be beside him in order to get a good view of the screen.
(Just before I had been in a critique and everyone's art was mind-blowing. They were all students I didn't recognize as well.)
I put the chair next to him, then went to use the restroom. Instead of returning to the classroom, Katie and I walked around. We wandered into a room with mechanical equipment lining the walls. We sat down at the desk, equipped with microphones and all. Realizing it was set up for radio broadcasts, we decided to take advantage. I pressed the buttons and she talked. We aired a show during a regular time slot for some other boring show about hawks or ancient music or something. Immediately after I was paranoid that somebody was going to get really upset with us for messing with their equipment, and we would be punished for making fools of them on air. When I began getting paranoid, Katie got a call from some girls who just heard us on the radio. They asked if they could come by and talk too, to promote their women's healthy body image/sexual awareness/feminism club. They had an acronym but I can't remember it. Katie, being the nice person she is, said of course! and hung up. She told me what they asked and I freaked (mildly). I told her how stupid it would be if we actually allowed them to come by. I also brought up that she had just proudly announced herself by full name on the air so she couldn't avoid the punishment. And topped it off with a persuasive comment on how we were quickly getting out of hand and into trouble. She understood and agreed. Then we laughed and moved on.

no more giving thanks

Just got back into Bellingham from a short Thanksgiving stint of a break.
It was pleasant for the most part.
The food was perfect.

I'm still in pumpkin and comfort food mode so I've got a batch of muffins in the oven. I probably went too heavy on the clove because tasting the batter I got a similar numbing feeling on my lips that I get from clove cigarettes.
They should be interesting to eat.

It is dismal outside and I really do hate it. My mood generally lowers a couple of octaves when it becomes dark outside(if we were to measure our moods in vocal notes). I can't help it, the mood problem is some psychological thing lingering from childhood.


If you're reading this, could you give me some book suggestions? I'd like something interesting to read over winter break.

the sun is out.

I'm in Seattle now, as of yesterday afternoon.
Got to see Steve last night, after months of not. We had about an hour to catch up, so it was a rapid conversation of what we've been doing with a lot of brief explanations.
I'll see him again one of these days and maybe we'll have longer to talk.
One thing brought up that I need to think more about is the idea of returning to China after I graduate. For some reason, being back, I began to fear that idea, but I'm not exactly sure why. I want to figure that out, and then battle it, so that I can make plans to return without myself stopping me. :)
Thing is, my heart actually ached when I overheard a Chinese couple speaking to one another a few weeks back. I think I'm in love with China.

Leila is super duper pregnant at the moment. Her belly is projecting outwards, and you can actually imagine a baby curled up in there now. She keeps telling me to touch different parts of the mound, saying that the baby's whatever part is there at that time. You can feel some extra pressure, but not actual contours of body parts, like I foolishly expected.
They're at the airport or on their way back right now, picking up Leila's sister, Sheda.

We may actually postpone Thanksgiving until tomorrow because the ideal would be to spend the whole day in a joint effort to prepare the meal.

Let's see, what else can I say. I'm kind of bored right now. I just finished up prepping a Journalism poster, which I'll need to work more as soon as I return to Bellingham.

There are a lot of people outside jogging and speedwalking through the neighborhood. They must be prepping their metabolisms for the extra food today. Literally every other minute someone goes by, flushed cheeks and heavy breathing. I'm kind of jealous.

Haven't been remembering dreams. They'll come back though. I'm starting to think I remember them for about a month, then don't remember them the next. There's definitely a pattern.

dry spell

I thought I had a remembering dreams dry spell, until just now.
Something literally just came to me, but it's not a significant portion of the night's dreams.

I was sitting on a toilet that was raised really high from the ground. I had to climb up to get in. The barrier was a curtain. A man opened the curtain and took a hammer to the toilet seat exposed between my legs. I jumped off as he retracted his hammer and ran away. I later found him and yelled at him for being such a jerk. I blamed him for me losing my things, because it was a bathroom/shower, which meant I was naked, which meant all of my belongings I had left behind and in running away from him I also ran away from my them.
He didn't care. He would hardly look me in the eyes. I remember thinking I'd need to keep yelling at him so that he would understand what a ridiculous thing he had just done. I thought I could connect with him if I continued to badger him. I was desperate to make him feel compassion or guilt.
He never did. He was always blank faced and hardly spoke. There were people all around but none of them really cared either. They didn't want to get into my business.

I think this dream may have a come from my recent viewing of American Psycho.

Topic of Discussion

Today in Journalism the topic of discussion was 9/11 and the fact that the American media failed in answering the "why" leaving Bush to answer it for the public with an oversimplified and ideologically beneficial explanation.
Terrorists are evil. They hate our freedoms, so they attacked us. We need to go into Iraq, kill the terrorists, and free the people.

The professor argued that maybe if America had dealt with relations in the Middle East better that it could have prevented the attack. An example of a poorly handled issue was our relationship with Israel; the fact that we ignore the illegal actions they take against the Palestinians. He argued our support of Israel was one of the many things that ticked off the terrorists and caused 9/11.

It was sooooo strange for me to sit listening to a professor speak out against Israel in any way. Every teacher, every adult, and nearly every peer I've had in life so far (excluding one Fairhaven student and one Palestinian girl I went to school with) have been either pro Israel, or didn't know enough to have an opinion. Plus, I experienced the other side when a terrorist set off a bomb in Haifa, where I lived. Our city was always known as the safe city, so when it happened there I actually begun having fears of riding on public buses or waiting in any public space. Then for a period we had to carry gas masks around with us on the daily and have a safe room with plastic covered windows and syringes that would save our lives in case of a chemical attack.

So, after speaking with him in his office about the recent project, I brought it up. I told him exactly what I felt...that it was strange for me. I told him I generally consider myself open-minded but that today's lecture made me stretch a little further. I told him that there really are two sides to it and that I lived on the other side of the conflict. He agreed and went into detail about all the intricacies and the possible solutions. Luckily I didn't come off as offended that he had spoke out against Israel's policies. I wasn't. I actually just felt odd hearing it. I feel like I could sympathize with either side because clearly both have been wronged.
At the end of the conversation he thanked me for sharing.

I guess I realized those five years in Israel made me a little patriotic for that country. It was home.

to fix the first sentence in the Obama post

Last night soon after Obama gave his acceptance speech, I along with the room of people I was with finished drying our faces of tears and we headed downtown

Obama

Last night soon after Obama gave his acceptance speech, I and the room of people I were finished joy-crying, we headed downtown. When we got there, a larger than usual crowd had formed outside of the Horseshoe Cafe. We joined them. They yelled happy things about hopeful times and a promising new president. Then they started parading up the street, in the street. We continued to join them. We walked around downtown Bellingham for something between half an hour and an hour, in the midst of a mob of hundreds parading and filling the streets. Cops blocked intersections to control the mob and the few cars that got onto the streets we took over, stuck their hands out their windows for glorious high-fives from everyone passing by.

It was really epic.
And the most a part of something political or patriotic I've ever felt...or ever thought I could feel.

Here's a couple pictures stolen from somebody else's facebook page.

11-4-08

I feel kind of dizzy and spaced out right now. I think it's the cold medication from last night.
Also, I remember dreaming of dancing with someone I didn't really want to, but they were very into dancing with me. It was uncomfortable. Also, there was an enormous chain of those huge tires that little people were tying together with thick ropes. They were doing it by hand and struggling to maneuver the pieces. They put it all together over time and were lifting it with a crane while we were dancing. I was more interested in seeing how that was working than dancing, but I couldn't get away to look.

And I just peered out my window and it's nearly a monsoon right now...
walking to school is going to be a shower today...

costumes! :)

Okay, these are not in order but included in these photos are:
bob ross
bjork
the square
me
pumpkin
cowgirl
daft punk
old lady
young McCain

halloween in olympia

alright so night before last we went down to Olympia for a huge halloween party. it was pretty much epic. there had to have been more than 100 hundred people there, and all in costumes...making it one of the strangest evenings of my life.
they decorated the house to go with the theme heaven/hell so the upstairs was heaven, middle floor purgatory, and downstairs hell. downstairs they had live music, but there were a bunch of issues with the equipment so not much music really happened. in purgatory people just stood around and the walls had a huge spray painted quote on black bags covering the walls. Upstairs in heaven there were just a lot of pillows and white balloons so people could go rest up there or be in some peace and quiet. And outside there was a bonfire.

It was all really well thought out and the host spent a lot of time planning everything.

My favorite costume was the square, which was a girl wearing a shirt stretched over a big foam square she wore and she acted the part too. She went around talking essentially like the stereotypical librarian and she did it perfectly!
There was also a clockwork orange character, a carrot, prince, a dragon, and a ton of others. I'll post pictures once i've got them.

It was really fun being the one eyed one horned flying purple people eater, but my wings were trashed along with the equipment when hell got crazy.