So yesterday I hung out with Amber Benson (Tara on BtVS). She did a book reading/signing at a comic book store, and it was PRETTY FANTASTIC. I desperately wanted to kidnap her and take her home with me, she was that adorable. So now I can say say I stalked Daniel Dae Kim and a Bryn Mawr theater production, saw a tiny figure on a stage who I'm told was Jon Stewart, felt non-awkward in the face of Luke Wilson's astoundingly awkward presence, and refrained from kidnapping Amber Benson. Life = good.

( photos )

Now, since I'm done making you jealous, (or conversely, bored out of your skull by pictures of some chick you don't even know), have some art! Sadly our scanner isn't hooked up, so the deficient (but endearing) camera had to fill in. ( So excuse the quality... )

I am officially de-wisdom toothed! Which is wonderful because I get boatloads of vicodin, but tedious because I love crunchy food. It was also the first time I've ever been put to sleep for surgery, which was intensely weird because it wasn't weird at all. One moment it was 8:30, the next it was 10, and I had four bloody gaps in my mouth and no memory of doing anything but blinking once.

Oh, also, I apparently hallucinated, though it took me five hours to realize having a memory of six different dentists with big goggles all hovering over me like aliens keen on probing was probably fairly unlikely. Whoops.

I also just got back from a Family Camping/White Water Rafting Adventure during which I encountered a baby skunk, a baby bear, a bald eagle and a shockingly attractive (the kind that you know instinctively is too chiseled to be anything but a rampant douchebag) rock-climbing instructor, and succeeded in getting my sixteen year old brother to squeal in high pitched and adoring tones about his intense love for Spike (Thanks, "Lovers Walk"). I may gayify him yet!

Yeah, it's been a weird week. I still have no plan-like thing for my summer, because I have zero ambition, so I've been reading a fuckton of academic essays on BtVS and am positively ITCHING to write something using dangerous amounts of Judith Butler block quotes, because she is the perfect fodder for cracked out essays. As me about the time I wrote 17 pages on why The Wizard of Oz (book version) exists as a perfect Butlerian land of fluid gender identity. Oh yeah. [/english major geekitude]

Ok, people, it's time for me to get superstitious and beg for your help. I have exactly one hope left for this summer to be even quasi-interesting and/or fulfilling. My other pleas for internships were, sadly, denied, so now I'm a contender for one final internship. According to my mother's inside woman (really), I have a fair shot, and I'm supposed to find out by the end of this week.

Which is where you come in, my darling minions. I think it would be best for everyone if I stopped eating bon bons and watching Angel all day and instead did something that would probably produce a lot of highly interesting anecdotes. Just saying. Otherwise I might a) go mad. b) get very, very fat, or c) start talking in a horrid Irish accent because it's so funny when David Boreanaz does it. So please pray/sacrifice any manner of beasts or virgins/cross your fingers/send up a threat to The Powers That Be, whatever.

But for now, I'm still horrifically bored. I did a spot of volunteering with my MOTHER on Sunday because in this state, I'm even exciting about my dentist appointment this week. Something to do! People to talk (or gargle) to! Anyway, we were cooking a meal for homeless people, and I was paired with this fabulously rich old woman who utterly failed at chopping vegetables but succeeded mightily in the funny story department. We discussed the strange characters that are attracted to Bryn Mawr, which got us on the topic of roommates.

LADY: When I went to college, Calvin Coolidge's granddaughter was in my year.
ME: That must have been interesting!
LADY: No. She begged my best friend and I to be roommates, so out of the kindness of our hearts we said yes. Then my friend flunked out of school and I was forced to be roommates with Coolidge's insane granddaughter. She only ever changed in the closet, and one night, after we had shut off the lights and I was drifting off to sleep, she said to me, "by the way, I'm epileptic. So if I have a seizure, please shove this spoon into my mouth".
ME: Hilarity!
LADY: We went out to dinner with her father, Coolidge's son. You'd think he'd be interesting, since he grew up in the White House, but no. Dull as dirt.

Oh, rich and famous people, I am sometimes perfectly content not being you :D

Anyway, I think I've decided on a project for the summer to try to vanquish the boredom. If I can maintain the motivation, I want to make some sort of picture book. My mom knows how to bind books with pretty paper, so I may have her help me make one. It's just a matter of thinking of some sort of theme for the illustrations, but I think a project like this might be fun...

Sooooo.

It seems I haven't updated since September. I'm fairly sure that is a new low, and I'm really not sure how to summarize EIGHT MONTHS of my life in a snappy, entertaining manner. Hilariously, the last (and only) thing I wrote about Scotland made it sound like a land of perpetual woe and dentistry, which it definitely was not. It was a last of cider, pasties, jazz bars, castles, wandering accidentally into goth pubs, and for some reason, a lot of attempts at cooking whole turkeys. It was fantastic! During one of the many turkey misadventures, I managed to ooze raw turkey blood all over my e-ticket to Copenhagen, but I made it to the land of danishes (they were delicious) nonetheless. Everyone thought I was danish, and since I conveniently lost my voice for the entire week, the illusion was maintained. I also meandered up to my flatmate's home in Loch Ness and endured the megabus down to London with deora_mystic in order to have good times with penguin_dodger and attempt valiantly to appropriate her accent.

Then I came back home, and desperate to fill the hole in my heart left by all the scottish sheepies, I became a rampant Buffy fanatic. No, I don't know why it took me so long to get on that train either. Clearly my childhood was horribly lacking. I watched it all in a dangerously short amount of time, then made my father buy me the entire box set for my birthday. It is gorgeous. I'm now trucking relentlessly through Angel, which is hard because I'm on season four and it's BLINDINGLY SHITTY. But I persevere! because as of yet I am jobless this summer :(

Also, I haven't stopped attracting crazy people. A couple of weeks ago, I awoke at 8 AM to the sound of a man pacing back and forth in front of my dorm, shouting, "Out! Out! Out devil! feel the blood of Jesus Christ! Get out of the nasal passages! Out!" for a good twenty minutes. He finally turned to reveal his bluetooth, which assuaged me slightly (exorcisms over the phone are slightly less disturbing than exorcisms of the schizophrenic variety), then came inside to empty our trash, which...made me hide under the covers. Life as usual.

Soon there will be a Edinburgh Thus Far update of doom, I swear it, but first you have to listen to me whine a little. I'm fairly sure I was this horrendous, truly evil serial killer in my last life. Actually, the way things are going I was probably Stalin.

So about two days after my arrival in this fair city, I noticed a blinding pain in my gum that only got worse as the days went by. I talked to my home dentist, who concluded that I had an infection and needed by wisdom tooth removed. Epic journey to get antibiotics, go! ...The epic journey took about 5 DAYS, and I was repeatedly told Bad Things would happen if I waited another minute. Then, finally, antibiotics were achieved! Off to find a cheap, emergency dentist!

"So," says the nurse a the walk in clinic, "these are the completely wrong antibiotics, oh, silly doctors who know nothing! At least you aren't this one kid I saw yesterday. He came in from New York, fell into bed his first night here, and hit his mouth on a desk corner. When the ambulance finally arrived to tend to his broken teeth and fountain of blood, they told him getting a cab to the hospital would have been faster".

"So," says the nice dentist at the walk-in clinic, "you actually have a root canal that needs to be treated by a real dentist within a month, this incredible pain that I just put you through was just to treat a tiny area of your already-dead nerve. Go free with this list of phone numbers! 18 pounds, please".

"But I have no phone with which to CALL them, and all the cheap phones are sold out until Thursday! Also root canals are probably the most expensive, painful dental treatment I can think of, and I am in a strange, foreign country with weird healthcare, so stop FUCKING with me, God", say I.

*weep* At least classes start today, so I can distract myself. I promise good things have happened here, but you will have to wait until I stop PUNCHING THINGS to hear about them :D

I HAVE ARRIVED IN EDINBURGH. IT IS LOVELY AND QUAINT AND I HAVEN'T SLEPT IN 27 HOURS. I am actually hallucinating, which is even less fun when you are being driven on the WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD and are eternally convinced you will run into oncoming traffic :o

I am amazed I made it here. I have no idea what time or day it is or how long I've been traveling because the time zones TOOK AWAY MY NIGHT AND MADE IT MORNING. And I feel like I'm in a british TV show. Or something. 27 hours. When we flew in I saw SHEEP GRAZING. WTF SO QUAINT.

So many caps! So little sleep! Now I must wait for my Bryn Mawr friends to show up at the hostel and try not to giggle to myself like I did on the plane.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for Scotland for a semester.

And I am UTTERLY TERRIFIED *_*.

But I will undoubtedly post many fabulous pictures and whine incessantly about how sick I am of beans and rice (I cannot cook). It's going to be fun, guys :D you know, once the panic abates.

HOKAY, first of all, I have been trying to draw regularly in my shiny little moleskine, so here's what I have so far.

( it quickly gets weird :D )

Secondly, I thought I should finally get a flikr account. so I did. Yay?

Thirdly, I just had the most surreal vacation ever.

It started as we drove towards out destination in the mountains of North Carolina when we drove past a restaurant called "Goats on the Roof". Aptly enough, there were live goats. Chilling on the roof.

We arrived at our cabin, which was gorgeous and spacious and filled to the brim with nick-nacks. Everything was made clear when we discovered that the man renting the cabin out to us was a flamingly gay cowboy/interior decorator. ♥!! Also, his dog was half dingo. But it really was lovely. The porch faced a quaint little bubbling mountain brook, and there was no cell reception or internet, which forced one to do old-timey things like READ. We were supposed to go hiking up the mountain with our cowboy as guide, but the morning of he came over to give us some interesting news.

COWBOY: So, a bear attacked my house last night. I think it would be best not to go up that side of the mountain, since the bears are VERY HUNGRY this time of year.
US: perfectly reasonable! No objections!
COWBOY: Also, apparently some guys found the remains of Sasquatch one town over. So I think it's best we stay out of the woods for now.

.....yes. Later that day I found a spider the size of my fist in my room. VERDICT: NATURE IS OFTEN TERRIFYING.

I am back from my all to brief vacation in Georgia. There were adventures! Mostly having to do with me driving around in golf carts and pretending to be a blind, retired 95 year old Floridian. But still, adventures! On the drive home from the airport my dad told us the most horrifying story...

DAD: So Bryna [his girlfriend's granddaughter] had a birthday party the other night. She had ten girls over for a party, and they watched Hairspray. However, one of the girls went up to Bren and said, "Excuse me, but I won't be able to watch the movie. My parents won't let me".
ME: Okay?
DAD: And do you know WHY she was forbidden to watch Hairspray? "Because a black man and a white woman date in it".
ME: I'M SORRY WHAT. This is worse than the time I learned that these children are being taught that dinosaurs and humans lived in peaceful coexistence! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, SOUTH?!

Later that week I had to reconcile the fact that my dad's girlfriend's son is a very nice man with the fact that he watches the O'Reilly Factor religiously and completely without irony. I say he is a nice man because he took my brother and I out kayaking/swimming on the river, but upon my return home my dad greeted me with, "I guess he didn't tell you? Oh, that river is practically infested with poisonous snakes!". Which is awesome, because I also split my knee open on a rock and bled copiously into the snake infested waters. BRILLIANT PLAN.

Then I saw Batman. I don't think I have to say anything else about THAT.

Then I ran in a 5K race for no real reason. My brother and I are both currently out of shape, but we're at a similar skill level. I ended up winning in the 20-24 female category (shiny trophy!) despite my abysmal time, while my brother won the raffle for a class for people who "aren't used to working out". What a slap in the face :D :D

In sum: the Confederacy is alive and well, apparently, but on the plus side, turtle!

1)So, yesterday I went to the Grown Up Dentist for the first time (yes, at 20). It was a magical place where the chairs were actually long enough for me, my dentists didn't press my nose as she lowered the chair, and I was informed that I have EIGHT CAVITIES and must have my wisdom teeth removed ASAP BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL IMPACTED. I didn't even receive a sticker for my pains. Instead I have four appointments within a two week period. THIS SUMMER IS SUPER FUN ;_;

2) Havemercy! I devoured it and it rekindled my somewhat dormant love for slash as of late (what with all the "Doctah! Rose! She is right behind you :(" I've been preoccupied with). I am now accumulating a list of slashy books to be hauled from the library. Om nom nom.

3) Today at the internship I spent 3.5 hours transcribing a taped interview. When I hit 6,000 words (5,000 of which were either, "um", "uh", or "like") and still wasn't done, I escaped with the remnants of my sanity and told myself anything is better than scraping little sticky vinyl lettering off of walls for 3 hours. I'll be over here, boycotting summer.

I made the incredibly foolish decision to re-watch Brokeback Mountain on TV last night. I told myself firmly that I would only watch the beginning, when they are happy, because I hadn't the heart to watch sad cowboys or wholly terrifying mustaches.

Yeah, right. I spent the rest of the night alternately weeping shamelessly, cursing Bravo for editing out ALL THE IMPORTANT BITS, and wondering why the people in commercials could be so CHEERFUL when Jack Twist was DEAD. Ahahaha. I'd forgotten the devastating effects of that movie. So, so brilliant. All except for the mustache.

ALSO. DOCTOR WHO TODAY, AND I HAVE TO WORK UNTIL 10 PM. Curses! I shall spend the entirety of work slacking off and doodling the Tardis, methinks. This "work" thing had destroyed my tradition of watching the new Who with my brother on his immense and wonderful monitor with surround sound. He's a bigger Doctor fangirl than I am, at times :D

I have a thing for drawing depressed, bewildered business men.

( art art art )

I think I'm finally getting my knack back. THANKS, SUMMER :D

OKAY, PEOPLE. I'm terrifically uninspired. Do you want me to draw you something?


And now, a word of wisdom from some punk riding the train: "So then she stole all of my belts, so I have to wear my stupid camouflage belt with my camouflage pants. Camouflage points out the asshole, but only in the city. If someone is wearing camouflage in the country he's only maybe an asshole, but in the city everyone wearing camouflage is definitely an asshole."

To which his friend responded, "Why do hunters wear camouflage AND bright orange caps? It's, like, a total contradiction."

I've been besieged by crazy people.

A while ago, the man who occasionally does pirouettes in our alley walked up to our garage sale and began an aimless, winding story about finding money on the street.

MAN: I was a crack addict back then. Let me tell you something, you can do crack all you want, doing crack is fine, but don't deal crack. You can go to jail for LIFE. Do crack but don't deal it! Have a good day!

The next week, as I was packing things into the car to move out, I noticed a guy rooting through our dumpster, wearing army pants and a red, sequined top.

GUY: I hope you don't mind me going through your trash.
ME: Not at all, we don't need it!
GUY: I find all sorts of stuff in trash cans. I find Playboys a lot, and Japanese porn!
ME: That's...fun.
GUY: I find dildos all the time. And I have 58 of them at home.
ME: HUH. USED DILDOS.
GUY: Did you know I live at the nursing home? They only give me $30 a month. Do you know what I did with the money last month? I bought a pair of fake plastic titties!
ME: Wow. Well, I have to go now.
GUY: Do you know why I bought plastic titties? Because I want to be a girl.
ME: Good for you!

My mom had the same conversation with him an hour later. however, after we conferred, she cried, "TITTIES? I thought he said fake plastic kitties!".

Yesterday, I was in Borders, listening to a guy harass one of the baristas.

GUY: I like your name! You know what else I like? Cornbread and 2% milk! I like your name just as much as I like cornbread and 2% milk.

Wow. that's just...the highest of compliments, that is.

In other news, I CAN'T DO ART. IT JUST WON'T WORK. I have bought shiny new pens and notebooks and ink and still NOTHING ;______;

Any day where your mother decides to wake you up at six so you can go with her lady friends to a "women's breakfast lecture" on "stress" is bound to be an interesting one. I found myself, at 7 AM, seated in a room where the average age was 95 and men weren't allowed, where the lecturer was conducting Neuroscience for Dummies, and where we were told to "always carry our stress rainbows with us". My favorite part? "Stress is like email. One or two emails are fine, but when you get overrun with spam emails your computer shuts down and you have to reboot. It's the same with stress! You will crash if you get too much spam"

HOKAY. A) the average 95 year old woman in that room has no idea what email is. B) Since when did too many emails make my computer crash? YOU HAVE BOGGLED MY MIND.

Oh, and THEN? There was a raffle. I went to the bathroom, because in 20 years of living I have never won a raffle, and only in a case of extreme irony could I possible win this one...Aaaaand I have won a free manicure and pedicure! For my ravaged, stubby nails! HOORAY, IRONY, YOU REIGN VICTORIOUS.

After which I went to my internship and was forced to call people, which resulted in me shaking so badly I utterly failed to press the numbers on the telephone. I'm not joking, I had to slowly and meticulously guide my finger to each key while breathing like a woman in labor ;___;

But then I got a job! It's at a little family owned, Turkish cafe with the most orgasmic food I have ever consumed, so now I can call Mr. Enormously Skeevy from my last interview and tell him I'm too good for him and his "3 day trial period".

In other news, I can't stop watching Six Feet Under. It's quite possible that I am addicted to Michael C Hall.

I'm such a shitty updater. But I really have nothing to say because I've forsaken sleep and spend all my hours in the library, where a giant statue of a centaur choking a naked man stares down at me for hours on end. I really don't know why this statue exists, but it's very inspiring! I spend my zombie-esque waking hours making little puppets out of grapes and my meager sleeping hours dreaming about smoking pot in the library (I don't even smoke!) and eloping with faceless people. I just want the pain to end! Sometimes, in sheer desperation, I stuff myself with chocolate-covered espresso beans and watch my hands start to shake uncontrollably.

( Hey, have a drawing )

I'm fairly sure Students for Hilary and Students for Barack Obama are competing to see who can bring in the most ridiculously famous TV celebrity. I ended up seeing America Ferrera last week in what was advertised as a non-partisan event but was in fact nauseatingly pro-Hilary. It went something like this:

PANEL: THE WORLD IS SO SEXIST! HILARY IS BEAUTIFUL AND INNOCENT AND EMOTIONAL AND PRECIOUS. AND NO ONE UNDERSTANDS OUR PAIN.
ME: I want to leave this horrible place.

Luckily, Kate Walsh, aka the only person on Grey's Anatomy who I can find it in my heart not to hate with every fiber of my being, is coming here on Friday to extol the virtues of Obama. I love that Pennsylvania's primary is suddenly crucial in fending off the apocalypse ♥

I consider it my moral obligation to update at least once (since it's been nearly 3 months) before I turn 20, at which point I can only assume the 0 at the end of my age will brainwash me into thinking this newfangled World Wide Web is just too complicated for my old fashioned brain to bother with. I shouldn't be as worried as I am, seeing as I already engage in such Adult Activities as ritual morning coffee, leisurely reading of the New York Times, going to concerts and gravitating automatically towards the safety of that group of awkward, 30+ guys who stoically refuse to bop up and down like idiots, and liberal use of cynicism, but I've done nothing wild and daring with my teenage years! NOTHING. So I've gotten into one car accident and once drank enough that I ended up at a dance. Dancing. (shock! horror!).

Oh, to be young again ;_;

Anyway, I apologize for pretending I'd never heard of the internet for a while; I've suddenly discovered the rumors about college are true. It is hard. So talk to me! How is life?

I have this really terrible habit of constantly trying to prove that I am Brave, Adventurous and Incredibly Manly when I am in fact nothing more than a girl with weak arms. It gets me into a lot of trouble.

For instance, when I volunteer to go quail hunting with my dad, brother, and half brother-in-law (who does things like shooting the biggest grizzly of the year - 800 pounds - and fighting wild boar TO THE DEATH).

There was this quail, see, and I think it was a little slow, because it sat in a tree and allowed me to shoot at it SEVEN TIMES. There is nothing quite so humiliating as a bird humoring you when you have a deadly weapon. That bird made it out alive, but my entire shoulder was bruised due to the recoil. Later, I was putting the safety back on and ended up pinching my finger so hard it spit open and gushed rivers of blood everywhere :D

AND YET I KILLED NO QUAIL. MY LIFE IS A RUIN.

The next day we went fishing. At one point my brother thought he had a fish, followed the line with his eyes and found that it was going up instead of down. Yes, he had caught a seagull. Seems his bird-killing prowess is undaunted by a change in scenery.

I do not make new year's resolutions, as the only people who profit from those are people in the gym business, but if I did I think I would resolve to be more adept at killing things :)

I firmly believe that tubby old men with white beards and red coats who might be mistaken for Santa should stay indoors on Christmas Eve. They fill me with false hopes. That said, Happy Christmas to all of you ♥