i'm beyond your peripheral vision, so you might want to turn your head
i am home now. i got in yesterday, three hours later than i was supposed to. the lateness didn't bother me too much; i listened to the paul simon station again. robin and mary elizabeth came to get me at the airport, but since it was midafternoon instead of lunch time, i didn't get to go to lunch with them. i got grey pants while i was in reno! the same grey pants i have been looking for forever! they were on sale at the limited. i am very pleased. i also got a nice soft mulberry-colored shirt. now i just need shiny black round-toed non-leather shoes. i like wingtips a lot but i think i'll have a hard time finding not-dead wingtips. my shopping problem (in general) is that i have a picture in my head of
exactly what i want, which makes it usually hard to find. but anyway, now i am on a shoe-mission.
i was on duty last night, and some poor kid's parents got all psycho 'cause he didn't call them back or something, so they kept calling DPS and DPS kept paging me . . . i don't now what they wanted
me to do about it. but apparently that's the only thing that's happened on duty all weekend, which is good.
i don't want to go to school tomorrow.
but what's new?
the cross is in the ballpark
la la la, i'm in reno. i got in late last night after my plane out of san fransisco was delayed a little due to a crack in the engine casing. apparently the tape was coming off and they had to get a mechanic to put new tape on it. that whole announcement was a little bit scary, but i'm here and i'm alive so i'm not going to worry about it. (i also hear there's no snow in susanville, so i'm not going to worry about that, either! yay!) on the flight from eugene to san fransisco they had a channel on their little (usually) stupid airplane radio that was playing ENTIRELY PAUL SIMON. i was so excited!! so i listened to paul simon and read gloria steinem and got all fired up and ready to go change the world and stuff. =) yay!!
today my dad and i are going to see my great-aunt maggie, who is cool and makes porcelain dolls. then i am going with
peggy, jay & jonathan to peggy's brother and sister-in-law's house, where we will have thanksgiving dinner. yay for mashed potatoes!! =) and then i am going home on saturday. mary elizabeth and probably robin are going to pick me up and we will go to lunch and hang out and stuff. then i will go home and clean my room and do my homework. yippee. or something.
i do it for the joy it brings
face is all better except scars, which will probably go down some still. this weekend i was on duty, so that was fun . . . or something. we had some interesting things happen. it was great. i didn't get to sleep as much as i wanted to, unfortunately. and i was up late last night writing a paper (yes, one that i had been putting off for a while) but i got it finished this time, hooray for me! it's ok, i think. not spectacular. this term is definitely
not going to be my best.
i am going to reno on wednesday for thanksgiving. it will be my first thanksgiving down there since i have been veggie. i suppose i will get to eat lots of mashed potatoes and salad =) yay! i'm back on saturday for duty so i will get to sit around and eat mac & cheese for dinner. i think i'm also working at least six days over winter break, so that's yay, too.
arlie is coming back sooner than we thought! in less than a month! i am excited. i miss arlie. i miss shan too. if all goes as planned (basically, if i can save up the money) i will see her at spring break when i go to boston!! yay! also, she is coming home at her winter break. but much as i will be happy to see her, lauren going to boston is more different and therefore more exciting than shannon coming to oregon.
i think i made justin like ani difranco.
better than anything else that i've found
my face is getting lots better. the bruising is almost all gone, and the inside of my cheek stopped hurting a long time ago, but there are still dents that will probably become scars. i got some vitamin E today to put on them; everyone says that will make the skin heal faster.
this weekend
chris and i went to seattle to see
PAUL SIMON!! yay! it was very exciting. we stayed at the green tortoise hostel and we walked around (it was very cold). we went to pike place market and i bought stuff. also we went to le panier, this incredible french bakery, and we had pain au chocolat for breakfast and it made me miss belgium. i went back there to get a brie sandwich for lunch. and of course the concert was incredibly awesome and fantastic!! if i find the set list anywhere i will post it on this page. he had his four percussionists, of course, and three brass players, a keyboardist, an accordionist, and three other guitarists. he sang two of my favorites ("the coast" and "late in the evening") right in a row and his last encore was "the boxer." so all in all i was a quite happy lauren! there are other stories that chris said he would tell so i will bug him to put them on his website, because he is a better writer than i am.
since the election -- what we can do here, anyway -- is over now, i've had a lot more free time! doesn't mean i'm using it all as much as i should be, but it's nice to know it's there if i should want it . . .
i got some pictures back from
photoworks so soon i will have new pictures up. also, i am adding a
friends page which i will link to from the pictures, when i get around to it. i'm on duty this weekend, and brian's theoretically going diving (but he's sick) so maybe i'll have lots of free time to sit around and mess with html. that should be fun! =)
there is a hole in the ceiling down through which i fell
i am trying to be optimistic without getting my hopes up too much. but i kind of lost it last night when dan rather said "so it looks like we will have a republican house, a republican congress, and a republican white house . . ." not a good thing to hear at all. i personally think that because of all the fishy stuff going on in florida, something needs to be done -- like a re-vote, or at least calling the 3500+ people who accidentally ended up voting for buchanan and getting their real vote. like a bunch of wealthy retired jewish democrats really meant to vote for buchanan? pfft. hmm . . . buchanan, or gore/leiberman? i don't know . . .
anyway, i really hope something is done about that, because i think it's NOT OK. sure, ok, it's also not falling the way i wanted it, but it doesn't seem right, y'know?
most of the ballot measures did what they were supposed to. and vicki walker won! but my mommy lost, i think. i called her to talk to her but i woke her up so hopefully i'll talk to her tomorrow.
i don't know what i will do now. what *we* will do. i'm kind of discouraged. in fact, no. i'm very discouraged. but . . . i'll keep doing what i can, i guess.
maybe i'll do poli sci. i'm getting the best grade in that class right now, i think . . .
but i got none this season
i got my stitches out today! i feel much less like a freak, even though my face is very bruised. it's all yellow and purple. it's great.
oregon has the most ballot measures of all the states. so far, i heard that the bad ones were all failing, which is good. mostly i guess that means 9 and all the sizemore ones.
we are having a party at robin's. i am really apprehensive. not about the party; about the election. i'm scared. this could easily turn out very, very badly.
life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friend
here i am! yay! i have not posted in a while, as usual; i suppose i shall now give the complete rundown of the past few weeks.
on wednesday, oct. 25th, all the time and work i had been doing for the previous three weeks were rewarded when i got to meet
GLORIA STEINEM!! she is one of the founders of the modern feminist movement and she was touring all of the swing states to speak about the importance of voting for gore if one is a pro-choice supporter. since i was a volunteer and put a lot of work into bringing her here, i got to go to the private reception before the rally, where i shook her hand, said hello, got her to autograph her book that i had just bought, and had my picture taken with her. and since the person who made the flyers forgot to put college democrats' name on it, even though i was doing a good part of the work as a member of the dems, i got to (had to) open the rally by introducing myself as the publicity director of the
college democrats and talking about gore and voting pro-choicely and democratically and stuff. then i was on stage the whole time with her and several other people. yay! it was very cool. and now i can say that i've met a famous person!
on friday, october 27th, everclear came to campus for a get out the youth vote rally. also there were bill bradLEY (basketball player, senator, and former presidential candidate) and bill bradBURY (current secretary of the state of oregon, running for reelection). i always get those two mixed up. it would have been sen. wyden, but he was filibustering so bradbury was here instead. then everclear played a few songs, and art alexakis talked for a while about the importance of the youth vote. he didn't talk about gore so much, but that's ok, 'cause bradley did. it was cool too. i took tons of pictures. when i get them scanned and uploaded i will put them on my page. i didn't get to meet those people but i was pretty close.
on sunday, oct. 29th, sometime during the day someone from the democratic party of lane county called someone from college dems and told us to do whatever needed to be done because jesse jackson would be here at 6 on monday.
on monday, oct. 30, jesse jackson spoke in the ballroom. he had several members of the black student union and also several members of the college dems (including the exec board, which in turn includes me, of course) come up on stage with him when he spoke. this was also quite exciting. he (guess what?!) endorsed gore and spoke about gore's issues and the necessity of retaining democracy and fighting for the right causes (i.e. not voting for bush). that was really cool and energizing and such. and i shook his hand, too. yay!!
in between all that, i had classes, a couple papers, and a midterm. i pulled it off ok. not great, but ok. i always manage to survive somehow.
on thursday nov. 2, the college dems and the college republicans debated. i wasn't on the debate panel but i helped prepare some of the arguments. it was fun. i thought we'd get kicked around but we actually held our own pretty well. i was way proud of us. =)
then on friday nov. 3, we had a smallish press conference with governor kitzhaber (my sister's favorite!) and state rep. vicki walker, who is running for reelection from the campus area. vicki rocks. she makes me wish i voted in lane county so i could vote for her. but if i did that, i couldn't vote for my mum! which i did. yay! (in case you wondered where i get all this political stuff from . . . my mom is running for city council, and i bet she won't stop there.)
what else? hmm. on friday night, i went to bed early -- 12ish -- 'cause i was really tired. i was awakened at about 2 by a resident pounding on my door. it seems something in their sink had broken and it was spewing hot water all over the place. i was unable to get it to stop. on my way back to my room to call the duty phone, my wet feet reacted negatively with the linoleum floor, causing my chin to meet with the corner of a table and then the back of my head to meet with the floor, both at a very high rate of speed. i now have six stitches in two cuts in my chin, and a very tender spot on the back of my head. but i'm actually doing fine. mostly my head hurts and my cheek is swollen and sore. those things hurt more than the cuts and stitches, although those itch . . . which i guess is a good sign. the doctor said he didn't even necessarily
have to stitch it, but that it would scar less. i didn't like the stitches part. but because of my perfectionism and the image issues i share with nearly every other girl in the country (although i probably have a fairly mild case) i am not at all excited about the prospect of having scars anywhere on my face. but i'm sure i'll get over it.
in other news . . . now that i know what i want, i have a fantastic dilemma. i guess the question is this: is it better to do what makes one happy, or to deny it to oneself because it makes someone else unhappy? are we responsible for others' happiness to the extent that we should cause ourselves pain? isn't there some limit to selflessness?
it seems to me that when one finds something that makes one happy, one should do something about it. there's enough unhappiness in the world already. good things are hard enough to come by . . . and that includes friendships.
