Wednesday, May 28, 2003
You're totally right. I haven't posted in forever. It's been so long that I've forgotten what typing in this little box is all about. And I'm not feeling it tonight, with bags to pack and sisters to chill with, you'll just have to wait a bit longer... probably until I'm in Oxford wishing I had a life, but in actuality sitting in front of the computer with plenty of time to blab.In the meantime, a quiz. Yup, I am a fourteen year old girl.
You'll Fall in Love With A Gemini!
What Sign Should Your Lover Be?
More Great Quizzes from Quiz Diva
Heather at 7:34 PM
Thursday, May 22, 2003
Dear Nate,For future reference, when making late night deliverys to my house, please try to refrain from throwing things at my window. Items we have deemed unacceptable include rocks, small pieces of wood, and anything else that will scare the shit out of me.
Even if every light in the house appears to be off, it is still more appropriate to knock and/or ring the door bell in order to gain the attention of someone inside the house.
But thanks for the beer.
Love always,
The Management
Heather at 9:03 PM
Advice to Live By. No, Seriously.1. When dismissing class for lunch, be sure the kids are planning on running down the hall, screaming obscene rap lyrics and the phrase "OOOOOOHHHHH SSSIIIIIXXXXX" as loud as they possibly can, because if you're lucky like me the principal will also be walking down the hall and will the proceed to not only deprive the children of lunch but also suspend them. (Hot damn, something actuall worked for once.)
2. When dissecting one's own pinkie toe, be sure to do so in a completely unsterile environment, like a dirty classroom during a very quiet exam. Also recommended are squeamish children, lack of bandaids, and not-so-quiet obscenities coming out of your mouth as you become increasingly convinced that injured toe will fall onto the floor, as it appears injured enough to become severed from your body.
3. When you KNOW that a soda company is trying to lure you in and try some new uber-cool carbonated beverage, give in once in a while, because now and then that beverage will be Sprite: Remix, which happens to fucking rock.
4. Don't try to quit smoking because it leaves your best friend to go outside alone and read books in the dark and almost burn themselves and feel alltogether neglected and unwanted. I mean, who are you kidding, you didn't really think you had any will power, did you?
5. When making weekend plans, try to make them as ambiguous and complicated as possible. This way, people will get confused and you'll always have an alibi that you were supposed to be somewhere else with someone else. (It's best to start making things complicated at least a week in advance. That way, even you will become so confused that it will be impossible for anyone to get their stories straight.)
Heather at 7:48 PM
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
I've never been this bored. Ever.A poem before I shower and/or sleep:
You only love
when you love in vain.
Try another radio probe
when ten have failed,
take two hundred rabbits
when a hundred have died:
only this is science.
You ask the secret.
It has just one name:
again.
-- Miroslav Holub Ode to Joy
Heather at 8:51 PM
Monday, May 19, 2003
Here, at night, they spray for mosquitos. Mid 80's pick-up trucks rigged up with rust and metallic SuperSoaker sprayers, looking like the type of dream one might catch on a too-hot summer's day, misting the neighborhood with cool water and dishing out fifty-cent rainbow snowcones from the passenger's side window. But instead, the whishing hum of spray leaks chemicals up and down Washington Avenue, already strapped with decades of lead paint sealing windows so tightly that a hot day inside feels less like a Club Med sauna and more like an antiquated Southern-gothic tomb.And when the trucks pass, in those few minutes before sleep thinking, "Yes, I did set the alarm," and "No, I won't have time to iron that in the morning," while all the night's mental housekeeping comes to a close, I worry two things. One, I am sure the well-meaning mass distribution of chemicals will peel the paint off my car that remains casually parked on the street, perpetually safe from the speeding cars that pass not six inches from its side for hours and hours. And two, even though the windows won't open again in my lifetime, the overly efficient central air is quickly venting those same chemicals, the ones that will eventually cost me a bundle to restore the car's silver sparkle, into my bedroom. And while I drift off to sleep, I am breathing them in, odorless and benign, probably killing my ovaries or some other organ that seems utterly meaningless at the moment.
In lieu of worrying about my ovaries, which will no doubt only bring me trouble in the future, the trouble of husbands and babies and old issues of Redbook in HMO sanctioned doctor's offices, I worry about my car. And for the meantime I park it in the driveway, politely at the end, patiently awaiting my predictable departure at 6:40 a.m. again tomorrow morning as it has been every morning since August, at least three feet away from any potential city-sanctioned biological warfare that may or may not be killing my unborn children.
Heather at 8:02 PM
Sunday, May 18, 2003
Does it disturb anyone else that my new shower gel protects against "delipidification"?Heather at 9:08 PM
Ta-da! Redesign!We shall call it...
Return to Oxford, or If You Turn Around You'd See the County Line Cold Beer Stores
Heather at 6:47 PM
Things Not To Do with Your Weekend1. Ruin perfectly good Friday night with insanely long school function, complete with matching outfits and fashion show.
2. Ruin perfectly good Saturday night inter-friend drama that included way too many instances of walking off and ensuing search parties. (Seriously people, this sort of thing is okay once in an evening, but twice?)
3. Go to sleep at 10 on a Friday night leaving your lovely out-and-about roommate to sulk on the porch and stare at her car in the driveway, contemplating late night trips to parts unknown.
4. Spot N.C.B at karaoke, realize he's a complete loser, and then have perfectly lovely friend comment, "He's kinda chunky in the rear." (quote courtesy of Sponge Brad Square Pants)
5. Get stuck in "Show Fest" (a.k.a Completely Retarded Low-Rider Truck Convention/ Traffic Problem) only to find it's really a taping for Girls Gone Wild. (ref: faith)
Things To Do with Your Weekend
1. Leave large quantities of alcoholic beverages in your bestfriend's fridge. (Thanks Lizzie! Do we owe you anything?)
2. Allow your bestfriend's boyfriend to pose as country music's best kept secret in a karaoke honky tonk.
3. Don outfits suitable only for washed-up 70's reminescent pimps.
4. Have rotating-fake-boyfriend set-up to throw off aforementioned nasty redneck fling.
5. Rename "Show Fest" the Insane Sleeveless-Shirt Festival and make fun of the correlation between bacon consumption and low-rider truck ownership as witnessed at the Shoney's Breakfast Buffet.
Heather at 5:19 PM
Thursday, May 15, 2003
a note of some interestLegend:
PDD4= Potential Delta Distraction number four (preceeded chronologically by PDD1, whom we shall call elvis c.; PDD2, whom we shall call "totally in love with my best friend;" and PDD3, who shall forever be affectionately referred to as N.C.B ref: Lizzie's blog)
RIA= Random Internet Absence
MHB= Mysterious Hard-to-get Behavior
AHTC= Absolutely Hot Teacher Chick
Dear PDD4,
In light of your recent yet continuing RIA, the Rho Sisterhood is
Your behavior is perplexing, as by all accounts you had a lovely time porch-sitting on Monday, May 12, in the 2003rd year of our Lord. And we, as sisters, have no choice but to deduce that you are inflicting some sort of strange MHB on one of our most prestigious members. This notice reaches you to inform you that such behavior is generally only tolerated for a maximum of 48 hours, but seeing as how you're entirely interesting and alarmingly tall and charming, you have been given an additional 48 hour extension.
If you fail to contact the aforementioned AHTC prior to 10:32 p.m. on Saturday, May 17th, you can just forget it. This AHTC has better things to do with her time, and an amazingly grueling schedule of boy-craziness to keep up with. She cannot afford to be bogged down wondering if another random PDD finds her attractive, alluring, irresistable, etc. She is all of the above, and if you haven't figured that out yet, then you'll definitely never get a namesake as appealing as PDD3.
Here's hoping that your seemingly benign allergies have actually turned into something much more serious, like lung cancer, as to justify your inability to chat, call, or come see me.
Sincerely,
Carol Headley Hickey
vice prez until Lizzie kicks the bucket, or runs off with Sponge Brad Square Pants
p.s. Daddy, this wasn't the post that you were supposed to find interesting. Please scroll down. LY!
Heather at 8:36 PM
And this is why my friend Allen is one of the coolest people in the world.None of the rest of you were cool enough to send me this pic. So THERE!
Heather at 12:34 PM
Because I was inspired, and similarly boredKrissa's thursday and friday posts always tend to be large accumulations of one thing or another, and I think it's finally time to mimic her.
These are my memories. Please reference Krissa's post to put it all in perspective. I haven't lived nearly as many places as she has, and I might throw in one or two that were only month-long abodes just to spice it up a bit, but for those who were there maybe it will be a teeny bit interesting.
Gallatin, TN 1980 - 1993
Three dogwoods in a row, mine taller and skinner than the rest
Picking up trash along the front of the yard
The Cutlass, with initials scratched into the backs of the seats
Meeting Sarah at the corner
Sitting in the driveway, missing my dad
Numerous manifestations of being "accident prone"
The neverending yellow-and-greenness of my room
Soddy-Daisy, TN 1993 - 1998
Learning the value of porch time
My first and worst bestfriend
Late night trips to Chester Frost Park
Staying on the phone so long that my ear hurt
The wisdom and humor of Katie in our ongoing note correspondence
Pre-competition Mock Trial sex talks
Knoxville, TN 1998 - 2002
Moving the coffee table and Destiny's Child
The religion of starbucks
My bench outside the library
East Stadium Hall 130 and the cult of the LRC
The smell of old plastic in the paleo cast lab
Double Tray Days in Dr. Logan's class
Trolley Rides
The KAT bus
My tree at Taliwa
The pink bathroom
Walking with a purpose
The giant vent outside Humanities
Fountain swimming
Fountain bubble blowing
Nail-polish parties
The Laundry Channel
Unicoi Mountain, NC Summer 2000
Dampness everywhere.
Dirt everywhere.
Knowing what it's like to be damp and dirty at the same time.
Learning that butterflies eat poo.
That hour long ten mile drive to civilization
Homesickness so strong that I finally learned what people mean when they say they cried themselves to sleep.
Learning that I really could do anything.
The feeling of unshaven legs against sleeping bag nylon.
Washington, DC Summer 2001
Long walks in skirts and uncomfortable shoes.
Windowless offices.
Escaping to exhibits, learning on lunch.
Learning how to drink inappropriately
The buzz of the big city
The glory of a working mass-transit system
The bucket guy outside Natural History
Cranberry muffins and coffee
Lily Thursdays
That desperate sense of wishing I knew how to be cool
Oxford, MS Summer 2002
Penny pitchers.
Thinking an alarm was going off somewhere far away for almost a month, then realizing it was locusts.
The freedom of mobility.
Oppressive heat.
The smell of magnolias, moving into the smell of baked earth.
The terror of the p.s. shack.
Sunflower parking lot, Indianola, MS.
My porch or yours?
Many, many cigarettes.
Greenville, MS 2002 - 2003
The solace of the porch.
Fading glory of Washington Ave.
"Are you goin' outside?"
The feeling of perpetual motion.
and perpetual unrest.
and constant reevaluation.
and homesickness. always homesickness.
Heather at 11:05 AM
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
Top Ten Ways to Thorougly Piss Me Offin no particular order
Disclaimer: In light of recent blog faux paus, this blog is intended to be a joke. A very large, not entirely humorous joke. Any mention of loved ones are not made to be hurtful, but instead intended to be lovely little, punch-in-the-ribs humorous statements.
1. Rain, a lot.
2. Serve something lame, like corn dogs, for lunch when I'm so hungry I could eat my own arm.
3. Label your hair color box "Dark Golden Blonde" when you really meant "Kinda Reddish Brown."
4. Disappear from IM conversations that might not have been interesting in the first place but are still worthy of a measley, "I'm going off to do something more interesting now."
5. Send me emails with contradictory, sage-like relationship advice when you're in love with a freakin country music singer.
6. Not call and apologize. (Thanks, mom.)
7. Claim that I "lost" your stupid Drama book, when I distinctly recall writing YOUR name in it and not mine.
8. Use me for my porch.
9. Make today Wednesday instead of Friday. (How in the world is it only Wednesday?)
10. Not be able to regenerate yourself, such as the ever dwindling population of cigarettes in the current pack.
Heather at 8:50 PM
Today, suffering very terribly from the blahs. Such behavior has been deemed unacceptable by those more deserving of blah-status. Namely, S.R. marching proudly into spinsterhood sans recently discarded perfectly viable option.Due to lack of response to moping, will take entirely undeserved nap until not-very-reality-based programming begins at seven.
Heather at 3:59 PM
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
And then there were four.Futon, taxicab, porch swing, porch swing.
That porch swing is trouble. Maybe we should start charging people to use it.
Heather at 5:41 AM
Monday, May 12, 2003
And every picture has a middle.I might have been living in a mold-infested dorm room, decorated only with a "Kurt Vonnegut in the U.C. Auditorium" poster, but it still had a certain charm. Mailboxes that never opened, a front door that you could only get into if God himself assisted you in swiping your ID card, a lobby lacking in both a television and friendly people. But, on a positive note, the front steps offered a view down the street toward the EPA, with it's tiny reflecting pool, down towards all the buildings of government finance. And I could sit on those steps without really getting in anyone's way and watch the people come and go.
And so I sat that day, on those almost wide steps, pretending to read the Metro section of the twenty-five cent Post, waiting for him to walk up after zigzagging down the street to avoid construction fences, cranes, and homeless people. And eventually he did show up, looking like he hadn't brushed his hair in a week and like he'd never seen an iron in his lifetime, smiling that same smile that had gotten me in trouble a couple of nights before. I wish I could say what we said on those steps. That conversation has faded away like so many others before and since. But let it suffice to say that I knew I was going to follow him and that somehow I knew this was the ending of something rather than the beginning.
We walked back to the Metro, talking about work and what our other friends were doing and what they would think if they spotted us together. We took the Green Line all the way to Fort Totten talking more about the people around us than what was going on between us. We walked to his car, past the "Kiss and Ride," and drove to his house in what I then called the ghetto, what I would now call the quaintly forgotten and unfortunately gang-ridden.
He had two roommates (one shirtless and Italian and the other middle-aged and vaguely pschyzophrenic), a matress on the floor, stacks of CDs that must have taken up at least half of the space he had in his car when he moved, and letters all over the floor around his unmade bed from the girlfriend back home, decorated with doodles and colored pens and metallic stick-on stars.
Heather at 4:35 PM
Saturday, May 10, 2003
Unsupervised drunken saturday night postMy late night blog reading activities have struck gold.
Faith and I are SO doing this. And you can't say anything about it. Because we don't care what you think and you suck.
Lizzie, I'm sure we can find some sort of White Zin variation so you won't miss out on the fun.
Heather at 11:03 PM
Thursday, May 08, 2003
Every picture has an intro.My office was peach. Good ole 1986, country kitsch, peach. But I did have hardwood floors, thanks to some long ago employee with allergies so bad that carpet couldn't (or wouldn't) be tolerated. And it was in that windowless office, hidden behind a door, thirty feet from Mr. Roger's sweater and Fonzie's leather jacket, that I checked my email at least a hundred times that afternoon.
He was locked away in the Federal Reserve, writing code for some overly complex economics computer program, interpretable by only Alan Greenspan himself or some other faceless semi-important political figure. But every so often I'd get an email. A sentence or two at best. First:"Yeah, we should see each other tonight." Then:"I guess we could meet when I get off work." My replies were all dated thirty seconds after his emails, the frantic actions of a girl trying to pretend like she didn't know what she was doing.
I took the Blue Line. Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Metro Center, McPherson Square, Farragut West, stopping only once after getting off the up escalator, arriving at street level to a compliment from a beautiful woman who had been commuting with me. "That dress is absolutely gorgeous." "Thanks," I said, feeling almost sure of what I was doing. I walked down 19th, past the World Bank, the homeless sleeping in the park, to my dorm where I would sit on the steps and wait, watching the line for the bus on the corner grow and then shrink, grow and then shrink.
Heather at 8:58 PM
Wednesday, May 07, 2003
Scrawled on a Post-It on my bedroom door this morning...Heather,
The internet called. It misses you. You haven't posted anything more than lame middle-schoolesque quizzes and one sentences entries including unacceptable phrases like "holy crap" in ages. Get back to work, woman! And, one last thing, did you write a check for rent?
Kisses,
John
Okay, so maybe I lied. Maybe there wasn't a post-it on my door this morning. But I know people have been talking, wondering if I've lost my touch. And yeah, I probably have. I've spent all my time thinking about how school is almost over, how I still have a million things left to do, how I'm feeling entirely too little anxiety about the fact that I didn't teach my kids much of anything this year, how the first years are probably graduating from college right this very second, how my bed hasn't been made in more than a week. But I'm still here, attempting to pay bills, teach something every now and then, and have teensy-tinsy bits of fun every now and then.
And as for John, he'd probably never sign a note with "kisses," but the fact that he will now, just to mimic this entry, and the fact that he got up TWICE this week to smoke with me on the porch before I left for school make him the absolute undisupted coolest guy I know.
Heather at 6:35 PM
Monday, May 05, 2003
Holy crap, I'm finally home. What a crazy crazy crazy weekend. More later.Heather at 4:42 PM
Friday, May 02, 2003
Go figure.The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Second Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:
| Level | Score |
|---|---|
| Purgatory (Repenting Believers) | Very Low |
| Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers) | Moderate |
| Level 2 (Lustful) | Very High |
| Level 3 (Gluttonous) | Moderate |
| Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious) | Very Low |
| Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy) | Moderate |
| Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics) | Moderate |
| Level 7 (Violent) | High |
| Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers) | High |
| Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous) | Moderate |
Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test
Heather at 7:26 AM
