new year's to do list || part one (in case I forget things)

1. go to '80s nite at the Pollinator more often
2. sing 'Love Shack' with Robb at karaoke at least once
3. learn about the stock market
4. buy new tires for the volvo
5. write a lot
6. dress more like a grown-up, yet retain hipness
7. show Greg how much I love him
8. eat more vegetables
9. eat less fattening foods
10. eat less in general
11. make my site look how and contain what I want it to
12. begin secret val-u-pak project, which is secret but potentially brilliant
13. find some good charities
14. take ballet lessons
15. paint again
16. deposit into my mutual fund monthly (ha ha)
17. cook more for Greg
18. do dishes at apt more often

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 01:55 PM

Changed the template again. I don't know if I like it, though, and one part of it's messed up, the alignment of the list of links changes with every entry. I'll fix it later.

I didn't do much today. Roller skating last night was pretty rad, though. Chrissie got them to play Beat It and a Madonna song. Steve made fun of me in an email about my entry yesterday, how I said they'd play Pearl Jam. That's how out of it we are, he said. But I mean, what about that car crash song?

I looked super '70s rollerqueen in my dark jeans and yellow ocean city t-shirt with the big scoop neck and ultra short sleeves. When the guy asked us if we wanted rollerblades, I said, "No, the regular kind." Then I realized that rollerblades (they have another name that he used, but I can't think of it) were the regular kind.

Becca wanted me to do a side ponytail, and maybe I would have if I'd thought of it, but she would have been the only person who would have appreciated it. And me. And the invisible movie camera in the sky. I used to pretend, when I was much younger, that my whole existence was being filmed. Or really, only the cool parts. Though I didn't ever think about the whole life movie thing unless I was really bored. Then I would pretend I was in a boarding school with my stuffed animals and nuns would yell at me even though I didn't do anything wrong. How wacko.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 08:58 PM

I feel bad that I'm so lazy I can't even update my real site. It's like boredom, instead of inspiring me to be more creative, works the opposite way. Stagnation feeds upon itself.

I went to return some clothes today, which felt good. I have some brass in pocket now. Shopping spree or bank deposit? I can't decide.

Tonight: roller rink with the girls. A bunch of 21 year-olds wading through the lake of prepubscent Christmas break fun. But it won't be all that awesome, because we'll want to revert back to our youth, and we'll want to hear Guns N Roses, and they'll play Pearl Jam, and it will just feel wrong.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 05:10 PM

Relatives are downstairs. I was skimming through people's entries and they're all talking about Christmas. Everyday people do the same things as everyone else, but today those things seem more worth mentioning, because there isn't much else to do but be with family or go to the movies. I feel bad for the kids who have to work at movie theaters on Christmas.

I got a terrifically ugly t-shirt from one of my grandmothers. "It's big, but you can tuck it in," she said. "Thank you," I said. My brother and I went upstairs and I put it on and modeled it and we made fun of it a little bit. It stank of moth balls, too. Yes, I'm twenty-one years old. I should really grow up. But I really don't think much thought was put into this gift. I spent a good x amount of minutes suffocating in Bath and Body Works to find pretty candles for my grandmother. Well, I don't really care, I'm being too harsh about this. I wasn't expecting to get anything, and it would have been better if I hadn't, because now I have to find a new home for this t-shirt. I am so ungrateful and should really be punished.

In high school my friends and I made a lot of S&M jokes. S&M really amused us.

I've been trying to occupy myself in my room so I don't have to talk to the relatives. I wrote out checks to pay all my bills. Ooh, except the rent check, I'll do that in a minute. Something that I kind of find funny is how, when my parents write me checks, they made them out to "Beth," but when anyone else does, they write my full name. It's just funny because my parents are the ones who named me Elizabeth. I don't know, maybe it's not that funny.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 12:06 PM

I went to a bar with my mom last night. It was weird, as I had it expected it would be, but that's why I said yes when she asked. She was meeting some fellow teacher friends there. They all seemed nice, a couple of them were around my age, too, but I just wished Greg were there so I could have someone to talk to and to comment on people with.

We didn't drink much or stay for long, so it wasn't as weird as it could have been. But all I have to say is, girls with blonde hair and lots of makeup get attention. Why is this? What is it with blonde hair? I mean, lots of porn stars have blonde hair, so maybe men associate these girls with porn stars, and thus high sexual skill and general whorishness, but then, why do the porn stars have blonde hair? Does it all go back to '20s movie stars with their peroxide? Jean Harlow? How'd she get the idea?

If I had blonde hair, I would not garner much attention. I'd look awful with blonde hair. Which makes it weird that my hair was blonde when I was a kid, but it looked okay back then. Maybe if I got tan the blonde hair would look better, but seeking out tanness isn't a good idea in these times.

I was supposed to go out this afternoon with the girls for a Chinese feast/gift exchange, but it doesn't look like that will happen. They'll want to go to Delaware and we wouldn't get back before mass. Christmas Eve is such a bore. As will Christmas day be, as will the rest of this break. I really need to buy myself a keyboard that fits in my tower.

I can't believe I let people read the crap I write in here. I doubt people make it very far into an entry anyway, but still.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 01:24 PM

This break has not been the most fun. Things have happened, but nothing very relevatory or relevant. I wanted to get a new d-land template up, but I can't use the computer I brought home from school because the keyboard doesn't fit. I might have already written about this on something else, I don't remember.

Last night I went shopping with my mom so I could try on things and she could buy them for me for Christmas. I have some new adult-ish work clothes, somewhat hip, but it might take me awhile to get used to wearing them. I'm typically a jeans and turtleneck or jeans and tanktop girl. But maybe I'll get back into the fun style I sported back in my Archmerean days.

In high school, for those of you who are still reading and who don't know me, I had to wear 'nice clothes.' We didn't have uniforms, but we had a dress code. I did a lot of experimentation with clothing during that time. I'm kind of embarassed about some of the ensembles - the blue clogs, the old-man cardigans, the pilly thrift-store sweaters. But by twelth grade, I was starting to mature somewhat. In college, my style started to slack, but I'm hoping to bring it back up to speed now that I'm a big girl graduate. We'll see.

Another debate I'm having is whether I should start wearing make-up. Currently I'm make-up free and think I'm a-okay, but I'm also thinking I might get taken more seriously if I start doing grown-up things like wear make-up and sport nice clothes. It's such a facade, though. Chrissie had an interview with some big-time marketing firm yesterday and had to wear a suit. She's twenty-two, she's just a kid like I am. It's like we're playing dress-up. Except Chrissie's been wearing make-up for awhile now.

Well, my home dry-cleaning is done, and they're pretty adamant on the box about removing it as soon as it's done.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 05:24 PM

I watched Simon and Simon yesterday for the first time. I had always wondered about that show, because I had definitely heard about it but had never had the pleasure of viewing it for myself. Man was it lame. But it did give me an idea for a new improved personal diaryland site. The coolness of the implementation of my idea would, however, rely on my watching more television. And even then, it might not be so cool.

I have to Christmas shop today. I've only bought presents for Greg's parents, and I made a list yesterday and figured out that I have eleven people to buy for. I didn't figure out how much that means I'll be spending. I'm just not going to think abotu that for awhile, and hope that relatives give me money for Christmas. It would be extra cool if they gave me money for graduation along with that, but I know that no one remembers that I graduated.

I'm greedy, I guess, but I need to pay for my alternator, which was definitely not in the budget. I never really had a budget, per se, I just wasn't expecting to spend over two hundred dollars on non-present items during the Christmas season.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 09:33 AM

Back at home now. I washed my jeans, they all faded, and my favorite pair, my Levi's, shrunk. I'm wearing them even though I might be a little obscene. At least they're still long enough.

It's been very gloomy out. I took Chris out shopping. Neither of us bought anything. We ate at Burger King. The mall was crowded and unfriendly. I have to buy presents for eleven people. If I had been alone I would have forced myself to buy something, to get myself on a present-buying roll, but with Chris there I felt tied down.

At least the volvo is happy. It made it from Oakland to Media (or Pittsburgh to Philadelphia for anyone unfamiliar) quite nicely after the adorable and wonderful Greg worked on it on Friday and Saturday and Sunday. He worked literally in the darkness and cold, with only a desk lamp and a puffy Uncle Les coat to protect him. On top of that, he was sore from pushing my weighty wagon (I was going to look in the manual to see just how heavy it is, but I forgot) uphill to get it off the road when it died Thursday night. My mom must've said "Poor Greg" five times last night, and that was before I told her about him being sore. He's definitely a lovey.

I noticed in my last entry I wrote "piece of mind" instead of "peace of mind." As in, "I gave him a piece of my mind." I didn't mean that, though. You know that.

I brought home my computer tower so I could use Photoshop and start getting my site looking decent, but I forgot to bring home some stuff I'd wanted to scan. That's all right. I'm hoping that once I get back to school (or, uh, Pittsburgh, there isn't any more school for me), I'll have a little free time to work on projects like that. Anyway, do look for new sections and a new look. On both here and diaryland.

Now I'm off to do some superfun data entry for my mom. I'm going to input all the addresses for the people she sends Xmas cards to into Access and then do a mail merge. It will make things quicker for her. And once people are in, they're in. Yay for efficiency.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

I want to be it all.

She said yesterday that I'm funny and got me some hits, thank you. Her comment got me thinking things, however. Like about my limitations.

My opinion of Anais Nin's writing isn't so high as it was when I was 15, but I remember reading somewhere that when she gave short stories as a teenager to her relatives to read, the stories would make them cry. Likewise, this guy's entries can put me on the edge of tears. I don't know if it's due to internal imbalances within me, like the way a dumb talk show can turn me into mush if I'm in the right mood. It's not all hormonal. Meursault's writing can be a little overwraught, I think, but he's making his relationship with the Ann person into a gripping love story. I want to know what happens. I mean, I think he's very angst-ridden, and he hasn't characterized this girl much at all, but it is a diary.

Anyway, I know I don't ever move people. I'd at least like to be able to if I wanted. But I'm too afraid of coming off as pretentious, I think. I need to hone the humor ability to use in dramatic situations like the way Lorrie Moore does. I remember going to see my fiction instructor sophomore year. It was a really awkward meeting, because I didn't have much of a reason to meet with her. I just thought I should. She had suggested that people could meet with her, so I did. I asked her why I had so much trouble handling complexity. I said I wanted my stories to be complex, but I didn't know how to pull it off.

She told me my stories would become more complex when I started thinking in a more complex manner. I was greatly insulted. "You don't think I can be complex? I'm 19! I'm very complex!" I didn't say that, I'm sure I just nodded and mumbled, "Uh-huh."

I think my instructor is right, though. It's weird how you don't notice growing. In a way, it's obvious; you can't. Sometimes I think that constant self-evaluation prohibits growth. Sometimes you just have to get out and live and then think about it later.

I was going to write about my car trauma, but it doesn't fit in with the rest of this, so I'll just put it on something else. After I eat lunch.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 01:20 PM

Oh my. The volvo died last night. It had died at the grocery store the night before, but the AAA guy came and jumped it and it made it home fine. Then it started up just dandy last night when Greg and I went out to the mall. We both drove separately. I was kind of thinking of buying a battery at the mall, just to give myself piece of mind.

So I was following Greg, and it was very trafficky. (I like the word trafficky a lot, because of the k. The word icky can be found in trafficky.) Greg decided to take an alternate route, thinking it would get us there faster, because it has done so in the past. But it was just as trafficky.

So my car sat a lot. I had noticed earlier that the gauges weren't changing, the engine never registered as heating up even though I'd been driving for ten minutes. Then I started to lose the light over the gauges. My headlights dimmed. My car idled in the traffic, dying slowly. I was nervous. I knew what was going to happen.

It died. I should have tried to start it up again right away, but I didn't think of it. I had been preparing how I was going to get Greg's attention when it finally died. I had almost tried to tell him beforehand, but the traffic was never stopped long enough to yell out my window at him.

So it needs a new alternator and we're taking care of that tonight. And then tomorrow I'm driving 300 miles. Hopefully nothing else goes.

quik tip: when you jump start a car, make sure you connect the cables to the right sections of battery, or else things spark, smoke and melt.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

Today at work, which is where I am now, I made a list of all my responsibilities. That's so they can find a Beth replacement when I leave. Or an Elizabeth replacement, I'm Elizabeth here. Friday's my last day.

I shouldn't be on diaryland, then, I should be scouring the on-line classifieds.

I have nothing lined up yet for post-graduation. I'm not doing grad school until I have enough money to spend on intellectualism. I don't want to teach. My brother thinks I would be a bad teacher. He says I wouldn't command respect in front of an audience. I think I would, but I still don't want to teach.

I'm really not stressing about my future right now. It's okay if I don't jump straight into Dreamjob USA. I know I won't be jumping into Dreamjob USA, because a film degree is probably among the least job-oriented degrees, unless I lived in California.

I just want, from now on, always to be working on something I find interesting. In school, I always took at least one course (and often more) each term that interested me. Now there won't be that. But that will be good. That will make me work harder to make life rewarding. So it will be rewarding to make life rewarding.

I'm really not into this template, I think it's going to change, like some things on my site, during Christmas.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 01:22 PM

I've been on the web for awhile now. Ever since I've gotten home from my last digital class. Digital class was cool, overall. I learned some, and I think I might actually get an A. It will be my first A from Pittsburgh Filmmakers. I've gotten Bs in all my previous filmmaking classes. It kind of depressed me at first, but then I got used to it. I'm not the most technically skilled filmmaker out there. I don't have patience with technical things. I wish I did. I wish I liked learning about how cameras work and about different kinds of lights. But I don't.

Of course, it wasn't just my lack of technical know-how that scored me Bs. My concepts tended not to be fully developed, and if I wasn't into an idea, it showed. Ironically, the movies I got most passionate about were the short little projects, the one with the guys crawling on each other on the couch, the one with Steve reading teen magazines and then looking at chicks on the streets from above. That was my first movie, and I think it made my then-instructor feel like I had promise. Then I let her down with The Chore, which I won't discuss right now, but which definitely has its own cheesy appeal.

Grades don't mean everything, I know, but they do relate to what your instructor thinks of your work, and I respect the opinion of all of my film teachers.

I guess I've been feeling a need to review my time at school because it's starting to strike me as less meaningful than I think it should have been. Maybe it's not that the time spent hasn't been meaningful; I've changed and grown a lot, even if I'm not distanced enough to analyze how right now.

I'm talking more about my education. I'm not sure how I wanted to emerge from college when I started here. I always just went with the flow. A lot of times I didn't flow; I stagnated. I didn't expect anything, and I didn't try much. I took interesting courses, but I'm not sure where they've put me.

Still, like I've said a bunch of times here and there, I'm young. I don't need to and don't expect to and don't even want to find something I'll be doing for the next ten or even five years. I want to have fun. I want to make friends. I want to celebrate my youth while I still can.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

brief weekend review:

Greg's parents visited. They rented Inspector Gadget and I watched it with them. Pittsburgh is featured prominently, but otherwise, it's a lame movie, as would be expected (I had initially written "inspected" instead of "expected," my brain is just working like that today). As a childhood cartoon, Inspector Gadget was reliable, but it never blew me away. The movie really misrepresented Claw, too.

I have my volvo back.

I watched part of a PBS telethon Saturday night. It was entertaining similarly to how the Lawrence Welk Show is entertaining, in that way that makes your stomach turn a little bit.

I almost finished Nancy's new web site. I hope she likes it.

I also completed to satisfaction my digital project. I might make a couple changes tomorrow before class if I get the chance.

Really, I wasn't much of a girl on the town this weekend (not that I ever really am). But I accomplished things and didn't get all out of sorts about them like usual. I think that means I deserve a sticker.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 12:31 PM

One of my dreams from last night involved me putting a big piece of scotch tape on my knee to rip the hair off. Sometimes during the day, I get flashes of weird things like the scotch tape incident, and I have to stop and think, "Wait, did that really happen?" The memory is real, but I still have hair on my knee.

I'm going to have to purchase a domain name soon, or move my page to xoom or somewhere like that temporarily. I'm going to miss you, unix.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

I don't feel like updating my site today, at least not right now, so I'm just going to write here. It's convenient to write here.

I'm studying for my experimental film final. It's relaxing. It's better than my yesterday, which I still don't want to talk about. I will, though. But that might not happen until all the muck of the next week is over.

Last night I hung out a little with Steve and the girl he's dating, Lauren. Lauren seems pretty cool. She said she thought I would be shorter because she saw the drawing I did of myself that's now on both Steve's and my sites. It's funny to me that she expected proportionality from a drawing done in about three minutes in Microsoft Paint. But I looked at the picture today, and I did give myself short legs.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 05:07 PM

I did something very dumb today. Something that affects my present and possibly my future very negatively.

I already wrote about it, but I haven't put it on my site yet because I want to illustrate it and make it more fun to read. I want to get something good out of my stupidity, at least. Ugh.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 04:00 PM

I'm not interning today so that I can work on a presentation I have to give tomorrow. It's going to be lame. I should do more with it. But I figure, if I fail this seminar course, which shouldn't happen since I'm at least going to prepare somewhat for my presentation, I will still graduate, because I am taking one extra/unnecessary course this semester. That just means I can't fail any other courses. I want to say I don't foresee that happening, but usually when I say something like that and act all confident about the future, higher powers prove my forsight very wrong.

My feet are really chilly.

I'm also trying to work on a webpage for Nancy, my internship supervisor. But my lack of HTML know-how is getting to me. I'm doing a double-frame thing, frames on sides, frames on top and bottom on the right side. I've succeeded in doing multiple frames before, but in this case, mind doesn't want to figure out how to make it work. At least not right now.

I was playing on the message boards at Pencilbox for awhile, but now I think I'm going to make myself a tuna sandwich.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 01:39 PM

bethy debate of the day: McDonald's or Burger King for lunch? I've been buying my lunch in the basement of this building lately, but it's got to stop. I work, in case any stalkers want to know, in the Cathedral of Learning, a large unattractive gothic-revival structure. It's the second tallest educational structure in the world, behind something in Russia. I am so proud to be working inside of it.

(About my former overly-confident stalker comment: I don't think you could find me in this place if you tried, unless you happened to run into my brother and ask him. I'm not going to link to him because of now increasing paranoia. But I'm realizing it doesn't matter, because I'm out of here in a week or so, and I probably won't be here much in the interim, as next week is finals week.)

For lunch, I only buy sandwiches; I have my own bottled water to drink. These sandwiches (of fair but not supreme quality) range from $3.39 to $3.99. How ridiculous is that? They're gouging poor students. I gave them (whoever they are) a piece of my mind in a survey I filled out once when the building evacuated for a fire and I came back inside when I realized that there was no longer a need to chill my buttocks on the cement bench outside. The elevators were stopped at the time, though, and I'm too out of shape to deal with the number of flights of stairs I would have had to deal with. So I whined about the high prices in a survey and got free M&Ms for my time.

Those M&Ms didn't make up for much. So I'm taking my business elsewhere. Oh yes, bringing a lunch would be most logical. But my fridge is empty, save for some really (like, from October) old things that need to be tossed out, a two liter bottle of Dr. Pepper, mayo, some things that aren't mine like jelly and bacon, and cheese.

File under DAILY. Posted at 11:39 AM

I've only had one visitor to my site today! Aah. My popularity is waning. No one cares about me. Sigh. I was reading someone's diary on d-land today, and he was saying how he needs to stop basing his personal worth on how many hits his site gets. I don't do that, exactly, but I definitely like it when people visit my site. I am definitely interested in making people go there, and more importantly, making them want to return. (I just found out that I win a free val-u pak of Trident Cherry gum. Yay. I wonder if it tastes any good.)

As I was saying. If no one visited and I still put things up, it would be kind of like being the only person alive. My stuff would exist in a void. But if I were the only person alive, I would get to do lots of stuff, I would just have no one to share it with. But I'm thinking of this kind of in an armageddon situation where there would still be lots of things to do, if not everything was destroyed. I guess the only thing to do to keep your own will to live if you think you're the only person alive is to try to find someone else. What if you found someone and hated them, though? What if they were a bitch?

I guess I should link to my brother's site, since before he dropped me from his links, all my hits came from his site, at least according to him. I thought I'd told him about my plans for a friends/family section. I still do plan to put up a section like that. I just want to work out how it will look first.

Interestingly, I just checked my stats and have had three hits in the last ten minutes. If only that pace kept up all day, what a popular girl I would be.

You know, I haven't said anything insightful at all in this entry. I'm sorry. I try at least to be interesting, but lately I don't think I've been accomplishing that, either. Oh well. Please come back tomorrow anyway.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

(second pathetic entry of day)

partial xmas list

money

cool sneakers (no one but me would know what they'd look like though, so it's futile)

quality digital camera

hip yet grown-up-ish clothes that I will want to wear yet will not feel guilty about spilling food on (this presents similar prob as sneaks desire)

sleek-looking, high-performance stereo system

socks that don't fall down into my shoe and that are cute

panties (I like the ones at chickshop, but they are tres $$$$)

old records (I haven't thought much about which ones)

that rad stainless steel retro TV in Maxim

Okay, my workday is over now. Enjoy yourselves.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 03:00 PM

When I was at Greg's house a couple of weekends ago to go to his friend's wedding with him, I opened a book on his kitchen table. I had been wandering around his house not knowing what to do with myself because Greg and his dad were out trying to make my car work again. My car wasn't working because stuff broke in it, probably as a result of me driving 140 miles in second gear a couple of days prior to it not working.

So I opened this book without really looking at what it was, and the first thing I read was, "Elizabeth! Elizabeth! What has become of you? You used to be so unique, so engaging, so blah blah, words that mean you used to be really cool and now you're a bore." It turned out that this book was sort of a daily affirmation type thing with little personal stories by various people for each day of the year.

Ever since then, I've been wondering if I opened to that page for a reason, my name being Elizabeth and all. The rest of the little story was about an 80 year-old woman, which made me feel relieved at the time, because I had been a little freaked out that the book was criticizing me like that. But I still think there was some hidden message for me in it. Am I being silly? I don't know. I don't think my life is as balanced as it could be.

Wanna see something else? Do it, babe.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 09:39 AM

I wonder if it will be weird not to be in school in the winter. I have always been in school in wintertime, at least since I was five. Some of the winters between five and twenty-one have been spent wishing it would snow so that I would not have to be in school in wintertime, and some winters where I hadn't done any wishing resulted in a couple of weeks of no school in wintertime. But this post-graduation thing will be different.

I still feel so young. I am young, though. I'm younger than all of my college friends. So it makes sense to feel like that. I just feel so not ready to enter the real world. My education didn't train me to do much other than make poor films and write insightfully about good (or at least, discussable) ones.

I was going to make a list of other things I've learned in college, but I'd have to think awhile on it, and it might be boring. I would have to think even longer if I wanted to make it interesting.

I'm going to temp, I think, unless some superinteresting opportunity falls into my lap. If I were to visually represent that idea, I would have someone take an oversaturated picture of me sitting at my desk in my office, my mouth and eyes wide open in surprise and happiness as confetti falls from the ceiling and a big box that says RAD JOB rests in my lap. The box would be open and an orange-yellow glow would light my face from below. Something about the color orange says "party" to me. I don't know why.

Actually, I do, and it's a really lame reason. There was a skit on an episode of 'You Can't Do That on Television' (from the good old '80s, obviously) where the kids were in bed and the mom and dad sneaked into their (the kids') room because a party was going on inside their closet. When they opened the closet door, all that was visible inside was orange light, but it sounded like there were people partying in there. Then the mom and dad walked into the orange light and presumably partied.

We still have the orange light from S. Night Colored Lights in our hallway, and whenever I turn it on I think of that episode.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

Hey, this is St. Nicholas day. When my brother and I were younger, my mom always had us leave our shoes outside our doors overnight so she could stick little presents in them. My mom is cool. I should call her.

We also used to do that shoe thing at school, but we'd only take off one shoe to leave outside during our classes. So everyone in the room would be wearing one shoe. Kind of surreal.

I wonder what kind of internal chemical reaction happens that makes you stop getting excited about Christmas. For so long, I still couldn't sleep on Christmas eve. Or more like, I would just wake up really early Christmas morning and shower and be ready before everyone in my family. But last year, I didn't care. My brother (who's 18, which makes me feel old, wow) had to bug me to get out of bed.

Maybe this year I'll revert to being excited again. But I don't think so. I don't even know what I want. Or I know that everything I want is too expensive for anyone to buy for me. Like if I asked for a good digital camera, that would be all I got. And the fun of Christmas for me has always revolved around putting the quantity of gifts before the quality.

Greg knows my typical Xmas complaint, and he teases me about it whenever he gets a chance. This is it: When my brother and I open gifts on Christmas morning, my mom always makes sure we have the same number of boxes to open. I like that. What I don't like is that she puts more than one thing in all of my brother's boxes, and usually just one thing in all of mine. So he gets more stuff. How unfair. If things aren't equal, they should be in my favor. I'm kidding, but sometimes, in sibling relations, I do think like that. How bad I am.

With my recent apathy towards Christmas morning, though, I may not care about this same number of boxes/unequal amount of items problem anymore. I'll find out in a few weeks.

Don't forget to visit something else while you're here.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 05:13 PM

I was planning on changing my d-land template today. Then I got stuck at Pittsburgh Filmmakers working on the digital project I keep mentioning in here. Editing video on computers might be ultimately faster and easier than cutting and taping film by hand, but you don't run into problems like having the Mac files on your zip disk suddenly convert to PC (read: unopenable) files for unexplained reasons.

Oh well.

I'm hardly in my apartment much these days. I'm usually at Greg's. It's not bad. He has a futon. It's bigger than my bed. I'm happy. He always thinks the things I write that mention him are indications that I'm not happy with him. Maybe I whine too much when I write. Maybe it's just easier to write about the things that bother me than the things that make me happy. People like to read about other people's problems. That's why advice columns are so popular. It's so you can read them with people you like and make fun of the people who wrote the letters.

It's also fun to read 'trauma-rama' in seventeen magazine, where all the teen girls tell their stories of period accidents and other bathroom-type problems that happen in front of the cutest boys in school. I haven't read that in awhile.

For a good time, call...

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 05:10 PM

It's extremely early. It's not even eight a.m. yet. I've been awake since six, too. Oh well. Hopefully this means I'll just be extra awake when I have to do my digital project later today. Blah, digital project. It's not that bad working on it, but it takes more time than I want to spend. And I haven't done much of anything with it anyway. And the rough cut is due Tuesday. If you want to read about the project, since I don't feel like re-explaining it here, visit this little area.

I want to say something insightful and witty to close out this entry now. But I've noticed I'm bad with endings. A lot of times when I read other people's writing, even that of kids on diaryland, I'm impressed with how well they end their stories or entries. A lot of times I really feel a sense of closure at the end part. But I rarely feel like I've conveyed closure when I end something I write. I've turned in papers with no conclusion paragraph before, just because I couldn't think of how to end them. And I'm not of the 'conclusion as restate thesis' ilk, either. I think conclusions should bring new insight to the rest of the piece. Oftentimes, I just don't possess those insights.

Speaking of endings, I don't care particularly for the final sentence or two of Greg's most recent story, but I really dig the rest of it.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

The most interesting thing I did today was see the Carnegie International exhibition with Greg. It was, from what I saw, pretty rad, and I want to go back. It's here till March so I can. But it won't be free for me after I graduate, which is in two weeks. My reason for going was that I had to write something on one of the films there for my experimental film class. But they had mini golf in the museum. That alone warrants a return.

I was hoping to have time to change my d-land template, but not today, no, not today. Stay tuned, although I'm sure you'll forget all about me after you read this. That's okay; I expect it.

So I never talked about my digital project that I'd mentioned yesterday. It's going to be a short trailer (made in Adobe Premiere and Photoshop) made from a film I made of my friends (Steve, Robb, and Aab) fighting with/climbing on each other in somewhat repressed yet definitely visibly sexual ways. They were drunk. It's all slow-motion. I was going to combine that with scenes from videos they've made of themselves acting rather homosexually. I'm 'exploring the homoerotic elements in relationships between heterosexual males.' Or exploiting my weird friends.

So the song I got so excited about hearing on the radio, I'm not even sure what its title is, but a man sings it, and he tells a story about a woman in a bar who leaves him for this other good dancer guy named Jose. There's one part where he says what the woman says (or sings what she sings, you know what I mean), and he goes, "Come a little bit closer, you're my kind of man, so big and so strong, come a little bit closer, the mood is so strong [or something], and the night is so long." It's so perfect. So I just plan to use that bit over and over.

Hey! Here's something else.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 07:19 PM

I forgot my Pitt ID today. It's in the back pocket of my Levi's. I'm wearing Jordache pair #2, the pair I got at Salvation Army for $3. Pair #1 was actually $10, probably because it had original drygoods tags on it, from, like, back in the day. My dad got his first baseball glove from drygoods. He used to tell us about that every time we passed it. Now it's a Value City.

What forgetting ID means is I'll have to pay to ride the bus downtown to my internship. I'm at work now. I'm leaving to intern soon.

There's an audition for Zippo lighters today at internship. It's a national spot. That's pretty big time. I like Zippo lighters, too. I don't ever use lighters, because I don't smoke, and there are usually matches lying around for lighting candles, when I light candles, which is occasionally, but not often. But if I did use lighters, I'd use a Zippo. Baby.

Okay, I just acted a little frantically because I heard the song that I want to use for my digital project on the radio, and I don't own a copy of the song so I had to scramble around looking for a tape that I didn't mind taping over. I taped over the B side to an old Velvet Underground thing that I think might be blank anyway. The song is an oldie, I'll tell mr. bethy diary all about it later because I've gotta jolt. But it's kind of weird how my brain kicked in when it heard the song and said, "Hey, Beth, you need to tape this song now, because you're going to work on your digital project this weekend, and today is Friday."

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 01:30 PM

I just changed my directory name to 'beautyqueen extraordinaire' to see if I get more hits. The problem with this idea is that I don't have a hit counter here. I have other sneaky tactics, however.

I'm not a beauty queen, even though I've always wanted to enter a beauty pageant, mostly so I could write about the experience. But beauty pageants can be expensive. My mom always thought I would win. My mom wants me to be famous, I think. She has, in the past, wanted me to model and to be in commercials. But she's not a stage mother, so she never actually did anything about it. She's just said, "You're tall and have no boobs, you should model." That was when I was fourteen, though. I have boobs now and should not model.

Though Greg thinks I should model. But he just wants Maxim to make me look all sexed up.

Back to topic, I think internet popularity has a lot to do with self-promotion. Depending on where I'm registering my site, I change the description to try to appeal to my assumed target audience. I am also as vague as possible. I use words like "intrigue" and "froth." As in, my site "froths with intrigue." It sounds cool, you know? I would hit it, anyway.

The hard part is getting people to come back. I have to create something worthy of the lush description. That's in the works.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 12:03 PM

Greg is in the kitchen doing dishes. I'm in his room playing on the internet. I realized yesterday how terrible my page looks on a Mac. Why? I haven't been specifying page background colors, and the default background color for Macs is gray. On PCs, the default color is white, which is what I wanted it to be, so I thought I could just skip the defining the background part. As a result of my laziness, some things look really bad on Macs. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to visit a Mac at school and fix this. I mean, I could hunt through all my files, but it's easier to see what's wrong on a screen and then fix things accordingly.

In other news, I gave a guy on the streets a dollar today when he asked for fifty cents for the bus. He came up to me while I was waiting for Greg to retrieve me from Nancy's. I was kind of scared, actually, because he first passed me and then backtracked to walk over to where I was leaning against the building. It was dark out. I knew I didn't have fifty cents so I gave him a dollar to make him go away. He called me ma'am. "Thank you so much, ma'am," he said. No sweat.

Another unusual thing occurred when I went to McDonald's to eat lunch before interning. It was wildly crowded in there, which I sort of expected. I waited awhile in line, and then once I got to order, I said, "two cheeseburgers," and then I had to wait longer while they made the cheeseburgers. I didn't really care, though. I was in a patient mood. But I'm thinking I might have looked pissed off, because when I went to dig out my food, I found an apple pie in with the burgers. It was nice, even though I hadn't been feeling like apple pie.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

Life is boring right now. I paid the rent today. I have more bills to pay tonight. I just wanted to get the most urgent bills out of the way. But I'm going to have to break into new checks, and I didn't feel like dealing with that before work this morning.

I'm at work now. Usually I don't do much when I'm here. I like it like that. I'm used to that. When I graduate in three weeks, I'm going to have to find another job. Well, I might not have to, but I want to. It won't be another one where I sit around and play on the web all day. But I'm glad that I got to enjoy a job like this. I would never have discovered how fun the web could be without spending a summer "working" full time, alone in my unwelcoming office with only the web to sate me.

I mean, if not for this job, I wouldn't be as into designing as I am now. I might not have started writing again this soon. This most definitely wouldn't exist if not for my current meaningless job.

I'm scared, though. I want to do something fun. I'm not going to get a job in film. Can I get a job in some other fun field with a film degree?

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 02:37 PM

Do bugs freeze? I'm hoping the ones swarming around my kitchen sink will now that the temps are plummeting. (I'm imagining secretaries falling out of windows because I am lame.) Steve (whose name in Native American means One Who Ripped Off Design of Beth's Page) did the dishes this morning. His method was to let the dishes soak in soapy water for awhile, then to dip them in and out of the water (which, I would imagine, becomes dirty, what with all those dirty dishes sitting in it) a few times and put them on the drying rack. I watched him in bemused semi-horror and realized that I've eaten off dishes "cleaned" by this method before and am still alive, so I didn't say anything about it. But now I know the secret of why it takes him so much shorter to do the dishes than it does me.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 PM