Tonight, off to Greg's parents' house to visit with the in-laws, so to speak. Tomorrow, big snow storm. Sunday, we'll hopefully get to drive back to Reading.

I have a lot of laundry to do. Right now, I must pack. Part of me wishes I could be holed up somewhere else than Greg's parents' house for the snowstorm. It'd be nice to stay in bed all weekend. Which we might do anyway. But it's not the same when the house is full of other people. You can't just walk around in your underthings without care. A brother or dad might see you.

At least the work week is over. Such a short week, but such a bad one.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 10:19 PM

I haven't written an entry at diaryland for almost eight months. But it was always easier to say things here, almost like this is separate from me (from my site, at least), so I can be a little less self conscious.

And now, no one is reading.

I don't know what to say, though. I have a lot to say. But none of it is all that mind blowingly insightful or fresh.

I've been wishing to go back to a year ago, when all I did was play Donkey Kong 64 with Greg. I had just finished school and quit my job, and most of the time, I did nothing. I started writing epinions, eventually, and it made me feel like I was doing something, but I've still only made just over $100 from them. Anyway, wow, I had it very good back then. I didn't have much money, but I didn't really need it. I slept well, mostly, and felt free for awhile, before panic about getting a job started up.

Now things are different. I have money, and that means some nice things, but boy, was last January a cozy month. I miss it! I miss Pittsburgh, and the old apartment, and Greg's old apartment, and my silly, naive self. Not that I'm not still silly and naive.

File under DIARYLAND. Posted at 03:52 AM

One of the coolest channels I get on digital cable is VH1 Classic. It plays mostly crappy old rock videos from artists like Heart and Jefferson Airplane and The Byrds all day. Most of the videos it plays aren't even actual videos, but live TV performance recordings. I am a sucker for classic TV. And for old music videos!

I've only watched the channel twice, but I've seen the Prince video for 'Little Red Corvette' both times. That video is particularly lame, with Prince wearing a suit with clouds on it and gratutitous use of blue screen technology. It's just a mess, but maybe Prince wanted it that way. He's a talented fellow, Prince, and I don't doubt he had a distinct vision. But it was a vision gone awry, I think.

While I'm on the topic of music, Philadelphia finally has a decent radio station: 96.5 The Point. It plays all '80s, and currently it has no DJs, which equals more music for my car rides. I've noticed it cheats sometimes: I like Duran Duran's 'Ordinary World' more than most songs from 1993, but, uh, it's supposed to be all '80s tunes. Just because you're a band from the '80s doesn't mean your '90s stuff qualifies. I would email them about this issue, but they don't yet have a web site. I once emailed The Box and they wrote back about two months later.

Anyway, to return to topic belatedly, Cool '80s Radio Station also played a song off of Pink Floyd's The Wall once, which is just not acceptable. The Wall was released on November 30, 1979 (yes, I looked this up). So they missed the cutoff and should be stuck in Classic Rock Hell forever. Other than these minor gaffs and the fact that they play late decade Aerosmith songs, The Point is near perfect radio, at least for '80s ladies like me.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

I really need to Christmas shop. I have yet to buy a present for anyone. Now that my paper is out of the way, I can devote time to gift giving.

I turned in my Hitchcock essay tonight (just a few minutes ago) by email, along with a note to the professor thanking her for her influence on the way I view films. She was my first film professor five years ago, and she truly did enlighten me to the language of cinema.

I wrote that I hoped she didn't think I was flattering her (this came after the paragraph where I told her I didn't exactly consider my paper successful, that it was too broad in scope in some parts and not broad enough in others). I do hope she doesn't. I wasn't.

I would love to be able to thank all of my favorite instructors in person, but I'm afraid of embarassing them (or more likely, embarassing myself). The best I seem to be able to do is say, "Thanks, I learned a lot," on the way out the door from the final class. And that just sounds so insincere. Hopefully my e-mail message to Dr. Sciole sounded the opposite.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

Must write 14-page research paper on Hitchcock by Tuesday. Still haven't narrowed down a topic at 8:30 PM Sunday evening. Of course, I didn't have to go to Reading this weekend, but some of the Pittsburgh fellas were visiting Greg, and I haven't seen them since summertime. I am honored to know such wackos.

I had planned to drive back home last night, but the thought of returning to the dead mouse entrapped next to my fridge and my dishes in the sink covered with said mouse's crap made me decide to extend my visit. But I didn't want to be up drinking till 3 am as had been the case Friday, so I decided to stay in while the boys hit the bars. I sat on Greg's futon, read the latest Maxim, and watched the last half of The Wedding Singer on TNT. I cried at the end, partly, I think, from loneliness and self-pity. I wished I'd gone out.

Turns out the guys decided to go to Al's Diamond Cabaret, a strip club. Greg said that as soon as they left his apartment, one of the guys turned to him and said he wanted to look at boobies. They didn't want to mention this while I was around, though - in case, I assume, I would forbid it or something. The weird thing is, I've been to a nudie bar with all of them before during our Spring Break 1999 trip to Niagara Falls in Canada. Maybe that made them uncomfortable. Or maybe they thought things were different now.

When they got back, I woke up. I ended up being awake until 5 listening to Greg's N-bar tales. He made me some White Castle mini-burgers and imitated a weird thing the girls did with their legs. He said he felt sad for them; he wanted to tell them they didn't have to be doing what they were doing. ("Yay," I thought. I was also satisfied by the number of times and the sincerity with which he reiterated his disinterest in the naked ladies.)

[remainder of entry deleted by request]

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM

I live on one half of the second floor of an old house. This had been someone's house, and then it became law offices, and now it's an apartment. Sometimes I wonder where desks were placed and whether this made a comfortable place for people to spend their workdays. It's really very un-officelike, aside from the flourescent lights on the ceilings and the hard gray-blue rug.

Well, two elderly women live on the floor above me. I've only ever seen one of them, and only then at a distance. Some things about the ladies upstairs:

- They always put the trashcans out by the curb on trash day, and they always bring them back to their original spot some time after the trash truck comes. I would do these things if I emptied my trash more than once a month, but I don't. I just don't make much trash. Plus, I have a job and am not here to beat them to trashcan maintenance. This perhaps is what causes their apparent contempt for me, examples of which I will outline in the next few paranoid paragraphs.

- They put a sign on the door downstairs that says "Please keep this door locked at all times" after I made a faux pas and left it open when my mattress was delivered in the summer. I want to rip it down (as I have wanted since I first saw it), but I don't want to cause harsh(er?) feelings. I also sort of want to make a nicer looking version of the sign because it's not attractive even in an "ugly things that are appealing" sense - just large cursive on a logo'd sticky note.

- Two new phone books were out front by the mailboxes the other week, and I brought them both upstairs. I left one by the door to their apartment in a neighborly fashion. It sat there for two days. I opened my door the third day and it was sitting in my trip and fall zone. Humph. Maybe they had already received theirs, but what did they think? That I was littering? I was trying to be NICE. I took the phone book outside and sat it openly on top of the trash, hoping the offending old lady would notice it.

- They have windchimes on the door to the staircase that leads to their apartment so they can hear if someone (me?) tries to break in or snoop. I did open that door once. I just wanted to see what was behind it; at the time I wasn't sure where it led. I don't recall hearing windchimes then. I have since tried to twist the knob, just to see if they lock the door now. They do.

- Sometimes my apartment reeks of mothballs.

- Greg and I drink occasionally, and I like to recycle, but I'm lazy about it. So for about two months, I had built up a nice collection of wine cooler and beer bottles. Finally, I decided to rid my kitchen of these. So I filled up the recycling bin outside with all my bottles. Aileen visited me later that day, and as I was getting into her car out front to run errands with her, one of the ladies walked outside. She looked into the recycling bin, shook her head, and then looked off somewhere (towards my apartment? I couldn't tell) and mumbled a few sentences to no one at all! I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I'm betting it wasn't very nice.

I'm not sure why all these little things have irritated me to the extent that they have, but the phone book incident was "the last straw." I have no choice now but to stick a super sweet Christmas card in their mailbox.

File under DAILY. Posted at 12:00 AM