a rather heavy object has recently fallen on my toe. it hurts an awful lot and now my toenail is green. i'm a little worried about the future of said toenail.

and also, if it doesn't stop hurting, how am i supposed to sleep tonight? or for that matter drive tomorrow...

i got soul, but i'm not a soldier

i just found this via kick the leftist. i think it is HILARIOUS!

so at dinner, somehow our discussion turned into something about health care in different countries. i think it started out as a conversation about hurricanes, so i don't know how that progressed. anyway, it's very hard to convince someone who willingly listens to the likes of rush limbaugh that a lot of people can't afford health care and that instead of companies providing it and giving the money to the people to buy their own does not solve anything. also, capitalism ≠ democracy and vice versa.

i'm not sure i enjoy discussing politics.

what i do enjoy is the killers. it's some great music, i must say. i also enjoy the idea that some day perhaps i will have a job. wouldn't that be lovely.

i'm having some nice weekends to begin and end this week with. last weekend was my birthday, then on saturday i went to see some art with my mom. i also went to jordan creek for the first time (and probably not the last, but only because they have a j. crew) and also picked out a christmas present. then yesterday i watched a scary movie (the turn of the screw) and then whale rider. today i finished taking slides of my stuff from my show (and if anyone is interested in any of the photos, seriously! i'm not against selling them or anything!) i also found out that the dorm supervisor job i applied for in the summer is open again, and i asked them to open up my application and consider me for the position. (again). this next weekend i'm going to mt. vernon to visit since jessie will be in town, and i'll get to see michele too. so i'm pretty excited.

it's just the days until friday that i'm not looking forward for!

new layout?

i wanted to try three columns, but i don't know if i like it or not. decisions, decisions...

it's my birthday today. highly uneventful. the best gift i think i got was whale rider, from my brother. guess we're low on ideas this year. but i'm 23 now, which makes me feel old, somehow.

i've spent my entire week reading the abhorsen trilogy by garth nix. and the only reason it took me five days instead of three was because i had to wait a day to get lirael, and then it took me an extra day to read abhorsen because of grant's cross country meet yesterday.

i finally got a picture of grant running:



he's on the left, cameron is on the right. grant got 31st, which is good considering the competition.

since the meet was in indianola, i also got to see my friend amber who is finishing at simpson this year.

i have more to say, mostly about this movie i watched today, called iron jawed angels. basically, i thought it was really good, and i was surprised that our library would have it. mostly their selection consists of about ten different versions of south pacific. (and i'm pretty sure i'm not exagerating about that, either.)

weekend update

this has been the weekend of the phone call, apparantly. on friday, kate called me, which was a surprise because i thought she was in france already. (i had, in fact, already deleted her number from my phone i was so sure she was gone.) she is leaving on wednesdsay, and i'm very excited for her. she also gets to see kid (the wonderful amelia), and said she would email me pictures. that i am also excited for, because i miss amelia too.

not long before kate called me, sue called my mom. she lives in manson, where we lived two towns ago. her daughter emily was my friend then, and after we moved to clarion, she got pregnant, married and then finished high school. she has mostly been in arizona since, where her husband (josh) is in the air force. she now has three kids and josh has recently arrived back in the country after being gone for an extended period of time. but he isn't living with them anymore because he doesn't want the responsibility. it's sad, because i don't think this is where emily saw her life headed at the age of 16, but that's where it is now.

the last phone call was the one i made to laura. i tried to call her yesterday but she was busy so i couldn't get ahold of her. so i did today, and it was fun. i always like talking to her even though sometimes we just sit there on the phone. i miss her. i think she was much easier to live with in that one room in bowman (or merner, take your pick) than having a whole house i have to share with my family.

my weekend has been much nicer than the rest of my week was. i didn't think about job hunting at all, instead i went to target and went baby clothes shopping and then saw sky captain and the world of tomorrow with my sister and reuben. i hearted it a lot, but won't spoil it for the people who haven't seen it yet because i could easily do that if i keep talking about it.

i also read the book eragon by christopher paolini. it was pretty good, it had a good storyline, but some of the language (as in, the made up words) and stuff reminded me of lord of the rings. but then, i figure lord of the rings is sort of the definitive fantasy series and almost anything else i read in that genre will somehow remind me of it. i know, i'm a nerd. and i'm going to go continue being a nerd by recommending books to my library. i really hate that they buy one book in a series, without buying the books before or after it. clearly, i am not in charge or that would not happen. (it's really annoying!)

whiny

all i want is to have one lousy job. but NOOO...gainful employment is apparantly too much to be asking for. i even perused a website about cruise line jobs a few minutes ago as attractive the idea of the sun and sea might be, i really don't know about me + lots of random strangers. this was after i talked to my friend john today and briefly considered teaching english in another country until i remembered i wouldn't be able to teach a fish to swim, let alone english to a non-speaker.

so to kill time (and to clear out space in my room) i've started cleaning again. which means taking everything apart:

my closets look pretty much like that too right now.

i'm so flipping bored!

visitor

al franken just spoke in the park downtown. i didn't get my picture with him though, and i'm kind of sad. he wrote lies and the lying liars who tell them: a fair and balanced look at the right and rush limbaugh is a big fat idiot. neither of which i have read, but are on my list.

i guess cheney is supposed to come tomorrow and they want people to go protest, but since they didn't say what time he's going to be here, it's kinda pointless.

i took these at the last cross country meet, at fairfield. maybe it will help the homesick iowans? (or make it worse.) the trees are already turning here, some of them! it's crazy.

i also took some of my brother, but i still haven't figured out exactly when to take a picture in order to compensate for the slow reaction time of a digital camera. (maybe it's just ours, but it has to think about it before it takes the picture. that's why a lot of mine turn out badly.) i also used up a roll of b&w, and then last night used the other two i had around town. there really is nothing of interest in ottumwa to take pictures of.

it can't really be september

my birthday is in a couple of weeks. have i mentioned that? have i mentioned that i'm a little freaked out about that? because i am. i can't believe it's already september.

since this will be a sort of longish update due to my disinterest/laziness/lack of anything interesting to say until yesterday, i'm going to try to make it easier and use bullet points. why? because i can! but that doesn't mean that it will be any easier to read.

• high school cross country season has started, which means that grant is running again. i'm really excited about this because a) i love hs cross country and b) my brother is really good (he's an xc rockstar!) and since i'm at home and jobless, that means i can go to every meet if i want to. so far that's only been two meets.
  the first one was last week at wildwood park, here in town. last year at this meet, my brother got 30th. this year, he got 6th place. that says how much he has improved since last year. he's been running all summer and doing weightlifting and stuff. you can tell too, he looks a lot different. (he's six inches taller than me and weighs less than me. you can really tell when he puts anything, fat or muscle on his frame.)
  then yesterday he had a meet at grinnell. this was with bigger and better schools, so i was thinking that maybe as far as placement he wouldn't do as well as at wildwood. he got fifth place! i'm so excited for him, he even got a medal. i also got to meet jaya very briefly, because she was there running for her school. (she is the girl that my brother likes.)
  the other thing was that i met the mother of one of the girls who runs varsity, and she said that her husband's school (as in he is the principal, not like he owns it or something) is always looking for volunteers to help teachers, and that i should think about it. so i am, and we'll see if i decide to do something like that. i suppose it couldn't hurt since it's not like i have a job yet.
  anyway, so i had fun at his meet and afterwards we all went out to pizza ranch in oskaloosa, because that's what grant wanted. and since, if i am not eating pizza, i am thinking about eating pizza, i did not object. i can't wait for grant's meet tomorrow in fairfield.


• we redocrated my room. well, not really. we just put grant's tv in there because that way i can watch the daily show/adult swim/whatever is on pbs (shut up!) at night without my dad getting all mad. it required a lot of effort to move the cable cord into my room, so it will be staying for awhile.


• the beach is closed! hooray! the end was bad, because nobody wanted to work, so it got very complicated as far as rotations went. i also had a hispanic man flirt with me, and then he kissed my hand (i shouldn't feel too special, though, he kissed erin's as well). there was also a group of three kids on labor day all in red, white & blue/stars & stripes swimwear, which frightened me to no end, and a staff party on monday night which was a blast.

i need to make some plans for today now. i'm supposed to call a bunch of people, including my ex boyfriend from high school so that we talk about meeting in fairfield for indian some day. that should be an interesting lunch. since it's been basically about four years since i last saw him, i don't really know what we'll talk about or anything. he's a nice guy, but i'm not sure i'm looking forward to it.

my sister on the fourth of july when we had our home fireworks.

i should really just upgrade so i can do albums if i'm going to keep posting photos.

améliorer (french) - to improve

that's just for laura.

i feel like conjugating verbs now. i really need to stay away from my sister, it's her fault. she's always speaking french or about french. the only reason i know this word was because i couldn't sleep the other night for trying to remember the french word for "blueberry". so i got out my eight years of french notes to search. i didn't find it, but i saw this.

i am such a geek. the other day i was looking through my text from critical theory, reading roland barthes. i don't even ENJOY literary theory, i think i'm just suffering from some sort of academic withdrawel.

speaking of academic things, indian hills is now in session. my sister is now a victim of drive by harassment, as well as my poor dog. i think he's on the verge of developing a nervous twitch or something.

i've been trying to incorporate these shoes into my post for the last ten minutes. i want them. more than anything.



if only they didn't cost over $300.