I dreamt last night that I was a catholic high school girl on a field trip to a Bruce Springsteen concert. All my fellow catholic high school girls and I were wearing uniforms. They were very conservative one-piece gray dresses. It was the 1970s.

Alfred Hitchcock came over to our group. He was homosexual. He picked out about five of us - me because I was a "pretty little thing," he said. Then I don't know what went on, but I ended up having sex with The Boss. He had already had sex with a bunch of people Alfred had hand-picked for him. But he told me I gave him his first orgasm of the night. It just dawned on me now that he was most likely lying.

I don't usually have sex dreams. Or maybe I do, but I don't wake up in the middle of them, so I don't remember I had them.

Here's something else.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 02:27 PM

Break is over. I graduate very soon. So much needs to be accomplished in the next three weeks. Ugh.

My car broke. I wish I had a picture of it so you could all look at my poor little volvo and feel sorry for me. It's not that little, but it is poor. And really, you don't need to feel sorry for me, I think everything will work out. If Mr. Barilla knows what he's doing, that is. Greg is afraid he won't. Anyway, I think I broke my car by driving at high speeds in second gear on the trip home. I didn't realize I was in second until I noticed my new tank of gas was almost gone after 140 miles. The car'd been sounding odd, but I thought it was just reacting to having to drive long distances.

Once I was home, I'd hear chinky chinky chinky sounds every time I started it up. But everything seemed to be running okay, so I tried to ignore it. On Saturday, I drove another 120 miles to Greg's house (I'm not in a linky kind of mood today, I'm sorry), and everything seemed to go fine. It made the chinky sounds when it was idling, but otherwise, I had no problem.

Yesterday, Greg started it up and smoke came out of the hood. And he had trouble steering. What apparently happened is that a bearing broke, and it made the compressor for the air conditioning freeze up, which made a pulley stop turning, which burned the belt for the power steering, since some other pulley was still turning. I think I have it right. So my car is at Greggy's house. Maybe all this happened because I would have gotten in a terrible accident if I'd tried to drive from Greg's to Pgh yesterday. Who knows. Anyway, I'm out a car for a couple of weeks.

Oh! When I was in Kulpmont (home of G-love), I saw the infamous T/A, Greg's destroyed Trans Am. He somehow spotted his car out of the corner of his eye from a few hundred feet away as we drove by a car dealer. So we stopped and visited it. It was eerie. The window frame was bent in such a way that if Greg didn't drive practically lying down like the playa that he is, he could have lost an eye or a brain or some other essential Greggy part. I'm lucky. Here: Read the Thoughts of the Dude Greg wrote after the accident. It's not terribly in-depth, but you'll get a sense of his state of mind afterwards.

The thing that always sticks out to me when he describes the accident is how perfect his car felt, how happy he was, right before he blacked out. It makes me think of the way a pen or a typewriter cartridge starts performing really well, spewing out a little extra ink in just the right amount, just before it expires.

Greg is not a pen or typewriter cartridge, though. No one had to buy a new one of him. I'm glad.

ed. note 5.28.2004: the link to that Thoughts of the Dude entry was updated to reflect its existence on http://web.archive.org, because the original Geocities site is no longer alive.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

I really get bored when I'm 'home for the holidays.' I've been online like five times today. Once I'm on, I realize I don't even feel like going anywhere. I am Queen Pathetica. (I am not Princess Pretenda.)

I bought a pair of gray jeans today. I thought they would be different. I also just wanted to buy something to fill the hole boredom has drilled into my soul. They make me look like a high school girl who wears bell-bottomed, pre-worn out jeans. Except slightly more chubby and womanly. I am Queen Pathetica, woman goddess.

Sometimes I want the option of the skinny high school Beth body. I want a switch like a light dimmer. There would be a range of skinny to chubb (institute), and I could turn the dial and find a setting that would allow me to adapt comfortably to my surroundings. Today would have been a skinny day. In Bloomingdales, there were numerous young pretty things looking at expensive clothing. I felt fat and broke and out of style.

Some feminists may think that it's wrong to feel like that, that I shouldn't have to feel fat and unstylish and should love myself all the time (not like That, Greg). Culture has caused me to constantly critique my body, blah blah. I DO love myself, though; I never stop. But I do have the whole compare myself to others problem, which is bad, yeah. There are ideas about self-image and me that I haven't fully worked out.

Really, I just want to be a '60s movie star. I don't want to be a movie star on Hollywood Premiere of New Movie night; I want to feel like I'm in a movie. All the time. Well, I want to have the option, at least.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 09:16 PM

(I'm at the Philadelphia free library right now. Shh. I told the lady I was doing research so I could use a computer. Really, my dad is doing research. He's over there helping some little girl do research, actually. Now he's back to his own research. Anyway, when you read the previous sentences, hopefully you were reading them in a whispery candid camera announcer person voice. That's how they were supposed to sound. I'm even hearing a guy's voice, but I'm not a guy.)

I should hurry up. There's a sign directly above the screen that says "RESTRICTED TO ONLINE DATABASE SEARCHING ONLY." Obviously, that's not what I'm doing. But I should get over it.

Dad is researching a prominent fam from the 1800s who worked in the textile industry here. He's been uncovering information that he thinks no one else - not even the experts on this stuff - knows. It's possible they don't know. But it's also possible that they followed similar paths as he's doing now and turned up with nothing. He's passionate about this, though, and that's what matters.

I've read in magazines that, when you're in a relationship and the passion for your lover fades, you need to explore other areas that interest you so that you don't end up dissatisfied. I wonder if that's what's going on with Greg. I don't think so, really. I think he's still passionate about me. But he's been feeling like he sucks lately, and I wish he wouldn't. However, I understand why he does. He works and goes to FLW class, and that's about it. But I don't think he should feel like he sucks. He just doesn't have the means to do what he wants to do. I wish a new passion would hit him. I wish he could get excited about something and be happy.

I'm happy. I'm passionate about this whole design stuff thing. After my last relationship ended, a rush of life hit me. I hadn't realized how much I wanted to do until I was free from that. Now I can barely sit still, though. It's like I want to make up for the three years in which I did nothing but write long emails to my long distance love.

I'm very mad at myself about that.

I know none of this is interesting. I recently took down the link from here to diaryland, because I hadn't been updating much. But recently I realized that now that everyone thinks I don't update my diary, I can be more personal. For now, at least. My brother told me he still sometimes reads the 'beerbot memorial placard' entry I have here. He says he likes it when I assign personalities to inanimate objects. I don't know that he knew I was joking. I think when he assigns personalities to inanimate objects, he isn't joking. (See most recent Ask Beth for example. I'm sure he won't care that I've surrendered his anonymity, especially if I link to his page.)

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 05:25 PM

There are no issues to discuss today. I have no issues. My Film II final project was called Issues. This was the movie of Greg sitting around the house, eating, smoking and shaving. I put the soundtrack to a 1950's industrial film called The New World of Stainless Steel behind it. Greg performed well, but the film was bad. Ugh. I don't want to think about it.

People want me to transfer all my films to video, and I will. But I wish I could leave off Issues. I won't leave it off, though, because Greg is in it. It's just that his family will make fun of me when they see it. His dad will, I just know. I don't mind being made fun of, but I hate that movie so much, I don't even want to acknowledge its existence. Please don't take that the wrong way, Greg. You rocked; I just have lame ideas.

Oh, but issues and Issues. The title was the best thing about the movie. It really fit. I took it from a piece of art that Greg and Aab and I had seen when we all visited the Carnegie Museum of Art together. The piece had really struck Greg as lame. I don't remember what it was now, but I think tin foil was involved. So it was kind of a joke to call the film Issues, because it was like saying it was 'art,' but at the same time equating it with a bad work of art. And I could just have said it was like saying it was bad art, but I wanted to emphasize the art part first. Whatever. You know.

I also think Greg and I both had many issues at the time. Ultimately, I was the cause of those issues. I was a mess when that film was being made. Who knows how Greg felt, but I suspect he wasn't happy. I know he wasn't happy, but I can't imagine exactly what thoughts haunted him last year. If I knew that more people read dosage, I would explain the situation further. Maybe I wouldn't; maybe it's too private. Someday I'll make a successful TV show out of my third year of college. But right now, you'll have to ask if you really want to know. Even then, I might not tell you.

All issues are mostly resolved now, however.

I'm usually not this open about myself in dosage. I guess I'm not even being as open as I could be. Still, I typically talk about silly stuff here. It's a good exercise to write something just to write something, I think. A lot of times I want to be more open about my life, but I feel like it wouldn't be right to talk about my relationships with people who don't necessarily want their business publicized. So I end up talking about things and coming off as materialistic. I don't deny that I am materialistic, but things don't consume me as much as it might appear.

I wonder if I'm being semi-confessional because I had a rum and coke with dinner. I wonder if it's because I'm home and I feel removed from my Pittsburgh life right now. Home is always a void. It's a fantasy world, filled with luxuries like daily morning coffee with newspaper and an expensive, back-friendly mattress. I am Shirley Temple as the poor little rich girl here, post-experience with the man who leaves bread and tea and fancy things in her desolate attic room. When I come home, I always dress up more. I like to look good for this city.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

Every day at work around the same time, the sun passes by my window and makes it impossible for me to see the computer screen for about half an hour. Sometimes I try to cup my hand over the screen to see it, but it doesn't work very well and it's difficult to do that and type at the same time.

Anyway, the sun's visitation period is about to happen. Currently, light is crawling across my fingers. About a foot more to go.

When you get meningitis, you feel it in the back of your neck, not just on one side, right? I really don't want meningitis. That's seriously one of my big fears, getting meningitis. It's a BBF, a Beth Big Fear. A girl in my high school died from meningitis. Does that mean she filled the Archmerean meningitis quota? Not necessarily.

A lot of times I try to apply methods of quickly deleting stuff, methods I use in certain programs, to other places. For instance, in Word, CTRL+backspace lets you erase a whole word at once. In Unix, CTRL+K lets you delete an entire LINE at once. Trying to do either of those things here gets you this: Well, in most other places it = . Ctrl K doesn't do that, but ctrl backspace does here.

ISN'T THIS ALL SO EXCITING?

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 02:14 PM

So. Tonight I drive home with my brother. I don't know whether we're going to eat on the ride or with the p & m once we get back, which will be around 11. It'll either be Roy Rogers or John Harvard. I guess we'll just see which of these boys wants my business more.

Hopefully the PA turnpike won't be crowded, but I expect it to be, since it's "the holidays." I always get a warm joyous feeling when I'm about fifty miles out of town and can start getting the Philadelphia radio stations. I feel home. And it's so nice. And lately, it hasn't been as bad driving back to Pgh. It used to be that a sinking feeling would hit me the closer I got to this city. Driving back here is not exactly a joyous occasion now; it's just excitement over the fact that I'll get to rest soon. That drive really takes a lot out of a girl. And probably out of a guy, too.

Oh, Thanksgiving. I really like to eat, and Thanksgiving is one of those times when eating is most fun. I'm getting a little chubby, a little chubb institute, though. Man, I don't even think they have Chubb Institutes around here. They're like Triangle Tech or C.H.I. Institute. They provide their trainees with the skills of today so that they can get the jobs of tomorrow. To follow this stream of consciousness down the creek a little longer, my freshman year roommate Kate and I once made a sign that said ITT Tech because I found that my computer had the font they used for their logo. We hung it outside our door. We also hung up signs that said TOOL and SCOOTER, her nickname for me and mine for her. I miss Kate. I didn't confide in her much, but we had some good talks. If I ever get around to it, I'll have to put up some Jenny stories here. Jenny is Kate's friend, and it is possible that under all her superficiality and insecurity, she is a thoughtful, considerate, gracious human. I saw no evidence of that, however. Of course, I brought myself to a level nearly as low by ridiculing Jenny behind her back gleefully. Jenny will make a good character in a book some day, though.

Back to the topic, I'm looking forward to home. My goal, as usual, is to eat a hoagie. But, as I mentioned, my skin cells have been multiplying recently to be able to cover the new fat cells underneath. And it's going to get worse, because there will be pumpkin (or punkin, as G-Love says) pie there. And hors d'oeuvres. Oh my. I'm a sucker for hors d'ouevres.

P.S.: Sorry for writing such boring entries lately. I hope they aren't too tedious to read.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

My weekend review:

Friday night: Didn't feel very well. Greg and I watched Kingpin. I enjoyed it. During the end credits, I looked for Nancy's name and found it.

Saturday morning: Went to Art Institute Open House with Greg. Ate free donuts, drank free coffee. I'm thinking about applying for their multimedia/web design program. I have to decide soon, though, if I want to take courses next semester. Financing will be a problem, but I should be able to get loans. And I can try for scholarships.

Went to Frank Lloyd Wright class, as usual, but we were late due to the open house. Then we picked up my video transfer from Bernie's Photo Center. It was kind of disappointing, because they just projected the film (of Robb, Aab and Steve acting less than heterosexual on the couch) and then shot it off the wall, the way piraters do. Is piraters a word? Anyway, I thought there was some kind of process through which to capture film accurately on video. If so, Bernie and his cohorts did not use it. The colors were very diluted, and the whole image was shadowy. And I paid twenty dollars for about a minute's worth of video.

Saturday night: No colored lights this week. Greg and I rented The Doors (entertaining, sort of, but very superficial, but I hadn't seen it before). Then we went to Denny's at one in the morning. We had wanted to go to Taco Bell, but it was closed. We ate chili fries.

The more I write about my weekend, the lamer it seems. Not that I thought it was that awesome to begin with.

Sunday: Put parts of the aforementioned video into the computer at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, who I'd link to if I were sure of their address. Then we went to the mall so I could use a free $15 gift certificate from The Limited. I bought a shirt. The certificate was not for use on accessories, so even if I had wanted to do the three free pairs of socks thing, which I often do with those certificates, I would not have been able to.

Sunday evening: I worked on Nancy's site a little, but for some reason nothing was working. So I played with this site's background for a while and got frustrated and still don't like it. I may have to change the design completely, perhaps killing the current frames. Grr. I don't know.

Then I did dishes. Then Greg got a pizza for us and we ate it. Then I went to sleep.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

It's rainy out. And it's early. Greggy and I are going to go to the Art Institute for an open house. He was naked before. Now he has socks and boxers on. I am fully clothed. I sprayed perfume on myself because my shirt smelled like smoke, because I wore it to Saturday Night Colored Lights last week and danced around in it.

I am wearing shirts from last week because I thought that this one looked good and it isn't very cold outside so I thought that I should wear something that's not a turtleneck. Most of my shirts are turtlenecks or tanktops.

I guess I'm going to go now, because the open house started seven minutes ago, and it will probably take about twenty minutes to get there.

By the way, I am saying all the words I'm typing out loud as I'm doing this. It's kind of fun in a way I don't have time to think about right now.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 09:06 AM

My computer is acting kind of wacky today. Oh well. I just need to be patient with it. Sometimes I wonder if my lack of patience and reliance on restarting has caused previous computers to commit suicide on me. Really, though, I'm only on my second computer. It just felt like more than one because it would crash and then I would often revive it with an upgraded version of Windows. But the last one didn't like me very much.

Really, very few home appliances like me. The one thing I've managed to hold onto for an extended amount of time is my phone clock radio thing. It's extremely ugly and fifth grade-looking. I really want a phone that isn't the clock radio, and a clock radio that isn't so ugly.

I was going to review the list of stuff that has rejected me throughout the years. But nah.

I'm going to be redesigning Nancy's web site, with the help of Melissa, the other intern. Melissa is cool. This web site might take awhile, but it will be fun. We get to start from scratch, which may make it easier than trying to change things about her old site.

So I'm excited about it. Maybe I'll start working on it today. But I also want to work on my own site. It would be very satisfying to me if I could just come up with a good splash page. See, I've been calling the first page the main page, because I always thought splash pages were just the page that makes you click on it to get to the real first page, but maybe the splash page is always the first thing you see when you hit a site.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to go to the open house at the Art Institute. I'm looking into taking courses in design there. Thing is, I'd be paying for those courses myself. Which would mean I'd be even poorer than I am currently. But it will be good, struggling is good. Maybe knowing I'm paying for it will make me work harder. I guess I'll find out. Have a good weekend, all.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

Because I haven't addressed this yet, and because I can't think of anything else to write right now, I'm going to clear something up: I wasn't a Led Zeppelin girl, as Steve claims in his most recent journal entry, which I have conveniently linked for you. Not in high school, anyway, as he says. Okay, maybe freshman year, but freshman year of high school is kind of like the first year of a new decade. It's like how many historians consider the 1960s, up to Kennedy's assassination, still to be the '50s. America's ideals were pretty much the same. In 1990, things were still generally how they were in 1989. Kind of neon and Pringles-commercial-y. Likewise, the high school freshman me was not the same girl as the rest-of-high school me. She was, but she was depressed and confused a lot. And she had an unhealthy reserve of Led Zeppelin information stored in her brain.

Generally, through high school, I was a punk/indie rock girl. But I never liked The Smiths or Morrissey. I remember car rides with my friends where we'd sing along to "Boy Racer" on the radio in mockingly dramatic voices.

I miss being silly with girls. I'm looking forward to going out with them over Thanksgiving break. Maybe we can boogie down to some '80s tunes. I take so much pleasure in '80s dance parties. They have made me happy to the extent that I even danced with an OLD MAN to the Dexy's Midnight Runners song. That guy had to be like 37 at least. Ew. If I could make myself stay awake later on Thursday nights, I would go to more '80s dance parties. But I wouldn't dance with any more old men. Not to be prejudiced against older men, I just don't want to give them any ideas. I'm a supple young woman, but I'm a TAKEN supple young woman.

Sometimes I still think about renaming my site. Maybe I should rename it 'supple.' Really, any time I see a neat word, I think, "Oh, I should name my site that!" I am lame. I'm still tossing around the viewer vote idea. But how suggestive, supple. People would think it was porn and be disappointed.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

I am not one with the weather today. The weather is above me. I am under it. There are weird chills streaming through my body. Bed, I love you. Please transport yourself to my office. You wouldn't fit, but maybe we could do some rearranging.

I apologize again for being so sparse with the updates. And for not getting the site together. I have a big list of things that need to be added/modified. I want to put a little form letter there for people to write to Ask Beth. I want to add a friends & fam section. I want to update the bio. And, of course, I want to redesign the main page. I think I need to go to glamourshots and get my picture taken. Wouldn't that be rad? I could have pictures of me dressed like a policewoman and a cowgirl. I remember when I used to work at the supermarket, the highest-up supervisor guy had glamourshots pictures of his daughter (she was a grown-up) in the office. She was dressed like a policewoman in one. It was large and ridiculous.

Speaking of photos, I got my new license picture taken on Saturday, and it actually looks good. Maybe I'll scan in the old license and the new license, and you can see what a big improvement the new one is. I always say, "Maybe I'll scan in blah blah," and then I don't. I'm sorry. Most visitors know what I look like anyway. The rest of you can just imagine a tall red-haired girl.

Steve's party went pretty well on Saturday. Many cool kids showed up. I didn't go '50s party dress, but I instead tried for an Audrey Hepburn thing with black capris, a black shirt and little pink scarf. Greg wore his pajamas and looked darling. Early on in the evening, he gave a French girl an apple and then walked out of the room. After the apple-giving incident, the French girl stared at Greg and me whenever we were in the same room with her. Greg is so artsy, though, isn't he? In fact, you can look at some of his art here, or perhaps here.

Oh, I think that's all for now. Stay tuned. This weekend might be the time for some web site refurbishing. Of course, it also might be the time for extreme unproductivity. We'll see.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

It's 11-11. Two years ago today, I locked myself out of my dorm room and spent four hours in the computer lab reading astrological stuff on the internet until the lockout people could help me. I had nothing else to do. Obviously this incident occurred before I became accustomed to playing on the net for endless hours. I should have made a website back then. Imagine what an HTML pro I would be now if I'd started so long ago. Oh, what an awful night. When the lockout girl finally arrived, I did something whose embarassment level has not been equalled since.

There are revolving doors as well as regular doors separating the outside of the dorm building where all the housing offices are located from the inside of the building. I waited inside for the girl to arrive. (In case you're curious about how the lockout process works, it goes like this: the locked out person goes up to a window to talk to a lady who handles that sort of problem. She tells you you missed the most recent time to be un-locked out by about ten minutes. You go to a computer lab for four hours till the next time comes around. Then you come back, tell her your problem again, and she tells you to wait so she can see if anyone else is locked out before she calls the girl who will unlock your door. It turns out you are the only one stupid enough to lock themselves out.) When the girl finally got there, she was very nice. We chatted as we walked towards the exit.

The girl chose to leave the building through the revolving doors. For the briefest of instants, my brain said, "Go out the normal doors to the left." But some other force took over. And this force made me, for a reason only it knows, GET INTO THE SAME SECTION OF REVOLVING DOOR as the girl. And it was a small section. Normal people don't share a revolving door section. Lovers do, occasionally, and best friends do sometimes. But no one shares a section of revolving door unless they're being silly, unless they're squealing or giggling.

I didn't squeal or giggle. I pretended like it was normal; I acted like I shared sections of revolving door with everyone I knew, meanwhile silently wondering what the hell I was doing. The girl pretended likewise. At least, she didn't stop being friendly post revolving door incident. And then she even unlocked my door.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

I'm feeling a bit yawny today. And my neck muscles are very tense. I think I need to take up yoga and become one with my body.

So it's been awhile since I've written anything new. Last weekend I just sat at my computer and worked on the redesign of Nancy's logo. Maybe eventually the logo will show up on her site, which I'm going to update at some point. I also played a little with my own site, but I didn't add anything or make anything look better. I'm frustrated with it right now. Just keep coming back. Maybe I can make the overhaul my Christmas break project.

I downloaded some more free fonts, too. I'm starting to become a free font addict. I pass up most of the fonts, but I need to look through all of them to find the most worthy fonts. And looking through all of them really takes time.

So last weekend did not give me the relaxing experience I had wanted from it, even though I tried to give something back to the weekend by going to a party (rare) and a bar.

And now this week is happening, and it's very fast-paced and unrelenting as well. I thought people were supposed to be able to slack their senior years. I haven't worked this hard since my senior year in high school, when I was working and taking a course at Villanova as well as, of course, going to high school. (Greg will tell you he had it worse his senior year of high school, but everyone has individual limits, and I definitely approached mine that year.) I think I've got myself more together now than I did then, though. If I didn't I might have reason to be disturbed.

The new weekend approaches. Steve is having another go at a Warholian bash. I plan to gussy myself up for this one. Most people who will be there have never met me; they only know a mythical Beth. So I need to look special for the public. I think '50s party dress may be in action.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

I did it again last night, can you believe it? I woke up in the middle of the night (just before three) and didn't fall back to sleep until four hours later. Twice in one week is just a little much. But of course, when I was lying there thinking about how not asleep I was, I was also thinking about how I would write about it today. How lame is that.

I'm feeling rather okay right now, though. I almost forgot about the whole sleep fiasco, actually.

I should really be doing work, by the way. I jammed the copier really badly, so badly that they had to call the photocopier repairman. Greg (and this link should open a new browser, if Christian, the stranger who emailed me this tip, is right, and why wouldn't he be, but now both you and I don't remember what I was talking about) said (in an email) that he could have broken and fixed the copier twelve times by now. That's because he's such a man.

New color scheme for the site, like it? I don't know if I do. It's a work in process. So is the main page. There's something really American about the current color arrangement, though, if you know what I mean. And you know, I like America. America is cool. But I want to use shades of the same color. It would look more cohesive that way, I think. I just need more time to work on it.

People who know me and who read this might think I put too much time into this site, but I really enjoy myself when I'm playing with stuff like this. Making films was never so satisfying. And I have so much room for improvement, yet I can still make things look good if I spend enough time on them now, so there's definitely an instant gratification quality to it. It would just be nice if more people visited more often. Anyway, just to let you know, I'm planning on adding a few new sections in the upcoming undetermined timespan. They're top secret for now, though.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

At 1:56 a.m., I woke up. I looked at the clock and thought, "Mm, it's early." Then I peed. Then I got back in bed. And I haven't been to sleep since. It's 11:49 right now, by the way. In the morning.

This thing has been happening about once a week. I wake up, get a drink, pee, and then my mind just goes crazy thinking about stuff. My brain will not shut up. Last night, for instance, it planned out what to get my friends for Christmas, it thought about designing a new graphic for this site, and it mentally sung along to oldies songs looping through my mind, among other aggravating activity. Sleeplessness happens to everybody sometimes, I think, but it's becoming more frequent in bethworld, and I want it to stop.

I've also noticed that I'm twisting my hair a lot recently. I guess it means I'm stressed out. Last night in film class, the prof handed back the midterms. My name's at the end of the list, so I had to wait awhile while the guy walked all around the lecture hall. I looked to the end of my row and saw a girl twisting her hair. And I realized I was twisting my own hair emphatically. When the girl got her test back, she stopped twisting, but when I got mine back, I didn't. I got an A, by the way.

But I've been thinking: I don't have much reason to be stressed out. Things are going well. I'm happy. I'm busy, but if I need to take a day off from something (like today, in which I'm supposed to study for my art midterm tomorrow), my uppers understand. People are nice.

Ugh. I don't know. I'm gonna start studying.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

For awhile this weekend, I was kind of down. I had gotten myself all worked up about Halloween on Friday - I was bouncy like bunny. Greg and I went to Wal-Mart to pick up some Halloween accessories Friday night and I made him race me back to the car from the parking lot to alleviate some of my excess energy. He slowed down to give me an edge and still obliterated me. I am quite the slow runner. In grade school gym class, I was always among the last to finish, along with the rest of my friends.

Anyway, Friday night, Greg and I went to a concert-type thing. I had bought stuff at the goodwill to be a slutty librarian/secretary, but it wasn't working out during the preparations back at home. I didn't look voluptuous and slutty enough. So I went as a school girl, in a plaid skirt, white shirt and white stockings. I felt like Britney Spears or Greg's 'Study Hard' poster from last year (which I'm not going to describe). I wasn't comfortable. The concert wasn't bad, but it didn't equal my level of anticipation. That's usually how things go, though. Getting ready is often more fun than being there.

We didn't go out on Saturday, but the day and night were relaxed. It was happy after I accepted that we weren't gonna go out.

Then yesterday, I had no expectations of Halloween activity. But I'd wanted to go on a hayride all month, and I thought last night might be the last chance. So Greg and I drove out to where I thought there were hayrides. There was a haunted house there instead.

Most of the kids in line were junior high/high schoolers. I thought about how if my friends and I had gone to something like that in high school, we probably would have dressed up really oddly and stood around thinking we were interminably cool. But then, maybe we wouldn't have dressed up at all and stood around thinking we were interminably cool.

This is getting long, so let's cut to the action.

They took about eight people into the house at once. The first thing we walked into was a little room with doors on both ends. Eight people barely fit into it. A man stood there to greet us. He made the girls line up on one side of the room and the guys line up on the other. It was me, Greg, and a group of three girls and three guys who looked like high school freshmen or sophomores at the oldest. The girls screamed when the lights went down and when the room shook. The man talked about how the house was bigger and better this year, etc., and then said, "The other change we've made is that the girls no longer have to enter the house before the guys." The girls all sighed, relieved. The man let the guys go, then shut the door before the girls to get to it.

The little girls all screamed. Then one of them slipped her cold hand into mine. It took me aback for a second, but I quickly assumed a baby sitter mentality. It's not like it's socially unacceptable for people to hold your hand. Just the other week, at Steve's sister's wedding, an old lady in a sparkly dress grabbed my hand at mass during the Our Father and held it up at shoulder-height.

When the man in the room finally let us go, we walked out onto a plank. The guys we'd been with were gone, but the girls were doing okay. My hand was freed. Then we turned the corner and approached an unlit tunnel. Screaming ensued. They refused to walk ahead. "I'll go first," I kept saying, but they didn't hear me because they were making too much noise. Finally, the girl in the lead looked at me and said, "Do you want to go first?"

When I got to the front of the line, hands wrapped around my waist. The girl behind me said, "I'm just gonna hug you, okay?" "Okay," I said.

I walked through the tunnel with the train of high school girls attached to me, wondering how old I had looked to them. I don't feel like high school is that far behind me. And people still occasionally think I look twelve. It's weird to be seen as the big girl.

Greg was waiting for me just before the next section of haunted house. When the girls saw him, they let go of me and started yelling frantically, "Where's our guys?" Greg and I walked off to experience the rest of the house. On the ride home, he couldn't get over the picture of me emerging from the darkness, bemused, a bunch of girls holding on to me for dear life.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 PM