.

I’m trying to think of something funny, or witty, or offhand to write about, because even I get sick of myself and my own angst. One of my favorite entries from a super-angsty time is “Thirteen Stories About One Thing” (title shamelessly stolen from the movie of the same name – which I’ve seen and remember nothing of). So I figured, it was time for an updated version.

ONE

Me: Maybe I’ll buy a 49ers shirt for [the Redskins/49ers game].
Brent: That’s a terrible idea
Me: It’ll be like when Elaine wore the Orioles hat to the Yankees game.
Brent: Yes, and how did it end for her?
Me: I believe there was heckling.
Brent: I believe she lost her job over that
Me: Well I don’t have a job to lose now do I?
Brent: It’s still a terrible idea.
Me: I want to move to a city that with really loyal fans and wear opposing t-shirts. And don’t say Chicago.
Brent: Well if you want to get sucker punched and have beer bottles thrown at you, you could move to Philly.
Me: Philly sounds like a possibility, yes.

TWO

“I want you to come back home. You belong here. You can do anything here, it’s freaking NYC. The advantage is that you have everyone who loves you here; your family and friends.

-Jill-IAN

THREE

Me: I think he was wearing jeans and um…jeans
Ellie: But the important question is: did he iron his jeans
-a long ago reference that I’d long forgotten. This comment made me laugh all day.

FOUR

Regardless of what you end up doing, you did an incredibly awesome thing moving down to DC and leaving the comfort of the job you had before.Hang in there.  You are still awesome and I’m always proud of what you are doing- whether it’s trying to build a life in DC or in NJ.

-Joe (who always knows the perfect thing to say)

FIVE

Brent: i had a dream that i had written a paper for school but i had forgotten to write a works cited page.  i hate everything.
Me: that’s terrible. ms roeser would have kicked your ass. i had a dream that i found a room in a new apartment, except the furniture was staying there, and it was puzzle/trick furniture, that you had to figure out how to open, and i couldn’t figure out how to open the drawers
Brent: The worst. I need to go to dream rehab. You should come with me.
Me: We would alienate everyone there.
Brent: How would this be any different from normal life?
Me: Touche

SIX

On the very first version of Message-Board-of-Note, many years ago, someone wrote: “Love doesn’t stink. It’s fleeting and imperfect and infuriating and very human. It’s an emotional investment, with all the dividends, interest, and risk the analogy implies, and it should be treated as nothing less.”

I saved it in a word file and its survived several computer crashes. The writer is a friend now, so I emailed him because like-like is just as infuriating and very human.

SEVEN

Bitch, get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich.
-Keith (my ex-roommate)

EIGHT

We love you very, very, very much and we want nothing but happiness and kindness for you

-From Ellie & David

NINE

Pacey, to Joey: You fall in love and it doesn’t work out, and you think it’ll never happen again. But believe me, it does. In the strangest of places it does.

Jill-IAN, in response: Oh my god, shoot me in the head

TEN

From my description you can see that trivia is Very Important and that this victory made me (well, us) way happier than it rightly should have. In the car ride home we were still discussing it, and future team strategy, and I was like “Guys, you do realize that we’re the only ones there to tonight who are STILL DISCUSSING THIS.”

But I wouldn’t have it any other way. It feels good to be a team again (Joe and Brent were on academic decathlon with me in high school) and to make ridiculous references throughout the game that no one else would get but us.

I didn’t fall asleep until around 2am, for the second night in a row. I am definitely feeling that this morning and the coffee is doing little to dull it. I have ice cream stashed in the freezer here, and I’m tempted to break it out. Work continues to be filled with crankiness all around.

But I am in a better mood than I’ve been in all week – maybe even all month. Getting rejected from the Libertarian Fellowship certainly left me in a funk and I’ve also hit the wall in terms of available things to apply for in DC. It’s frustrating, because I know I’d be perfect for several of the think tank positions I’ve applied for – there are just other people who would be even more perfect, and they’re probably already in the DC area. I’m that at the point yet where I could realistically (or would even want to) just quit my job, move to DC, and hope for the best with the job search and the powerlessness has left me irritable.

But being around two of my favorite people on the planet, who understand me better than anyone in the world, has done wonders for my spirits. At least for today. And allegedly, that’s the only one that should matter.

And yay, Friday! I may actually be social this weekend (an acquintences birthday tomorrow evening) and then, what the hell it is already February. If I start talking about how time is flying, and how I’m going to be, omg, 27 in May, I’ll just ruin my good mood, so I’m going to stop, and go do something productive.

But anyway, I didn’t finish it, because whining is unattractive and to save myself from future cringing and deleting, I stopped writing. Also, laziness.

Anyway, so today was fine, of course, nothing out of the ordinary. Except tomorrow, I have jury duty. I have done everything to get out of this. I postponed it (for legit reasons) and I was hoping with all the furloughs and what have you, I would be one of those lucky people who gets to check the state website the night before and finds her number has not been chosen.

Alas, this afternoon there was a message IN GIANT RED TEXT informing me that ALL JURORS MUST REPORT.

Again, probably not a big deal. Trek down to the county seat courthouse tomorrow, waste the day away, and hope that they won’t choose me. Which of course will not allow me to even enjoy the fact that I can sit in the juror room and read, because I will be anxiety ridden about getting chosen for the jury, not being able to go to work, and I don’t know, an invoice not getting paid or the world ending, or something equally along those lines.

So now I am back to being cranky.

Do you know what this reminds me of?

The first day of Senior Year of high school. Brent and I took off after 9th, in the vapid mobile, to rage about the day. We both had Mr. Kuzma for AP US History II. Our assignment for the night was to draw a mind map about ourselves. This is exactly the type of pointless assignment that drove both of us insane. Brent was also irate because he had somehow (well, I know how. He is the smartest laziest person I know and he got Cs in AP English junior year) wound up in CP English, and it was filled with savages. Anyway, so we drove around, as we were prone to doing, and complained and whined and came up with whatever brilliant ways of denouncing things that we were so good at back in the day.

And I remember he said “Do you know what the worst day of school is? The second day of school.”

Which is totally true. The first day was usually no real work, you get your schedule, you see who is in your classes, teachers pass out books, and you think to yourself, “oh, this isn’t so bad!”

But then you’re alarm clock goes off at some ungodly hour the next morning and it’s like “God damnit, I have to do this for ANOTHER TEN MONTHS.”

It’s terrible.

And tomorrow, I have to get up SUPER EARLY and go to Jury Duty, and even though it’s only the first day back from a 3 day weekend, I AM CRANKY.

I just hope this doesn’t become a theme, like that time I was cranky for all of September/October. That was bad.

]]> http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/09/08/tuesdays-gray/feed/ 1 http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/06/14/wisdom-from-keith/ http://rachelnotrebecca.com/2009/06/14/wisdom-from-keith/#comments Sun, 14 Jun 2009 19:47:00 +0000 Rachel Not Rebecca http://rachelnotrebecca.com/?p=4148 “We will survive all these dreaded weekend nights when our situations seem especially torturous, until we reach the promised land — independence and relative stability, to be enjoyed while watching baseball, conversing cynically in person, and petting our cats in our shared apartment on the outskirts of some city. And if that doesn’t happen I will just steal us some drugs.”

Him: Ooh, the spelling bee in on this week. But you probably already knew that.
Me: I did not know that actually. I know that in 2006 a girl from Jersey won because I was told about it seperately by Kevin and a co-worker who is from Jersey and it made me re-realize that everyone I associate with is awesome.i didn’t know who Zebulon Pike was I bet Ben would have, since Lewis and Clark was the superquiz topic one year.
Him: pike’s peak? c’mon now. that’s a staple of the carmen sandiego series.
Me: hmph. i very rarely watched the show, because i think it was on the same time as Batman (the one with Adam West)
Him: not the show, stupid, the video game
Me: you must have played where in teh USA is carmen sandiego because the where in the world version certainly didn’t have such low class questions.

Notebooks & Matching Books Are Important

Me: with drug fair going out of business i was able to purchase a large quantity of Five Star notebooks (the best notebooks, imo, but also very expensive, as notebooks go) for very cheap. However, today I realized that a purchased a large stack of graph paper notebooks. So today I’m stuck at work with one and cannot carry out my OCD notetaking as planned AND i don’t have any 5 star one subject notebooks, period. You have no idea how annoyed I am right now.
Him: i have a very good idea. the most annoying part has to be that you’re an idiot and you know you’re an idiot. plus i think i’ve done that before and it’s the worst
Me: you have no idea how important the proper notebook is. different notebooks are used for different things. for example i have a regular 100 sheet spiral Mead notebook, but i would not use it for this – that would just be ridiculous. so i can’t start this note taking project today and it totally ruined my day. i am also inflexible and do not like change.
Him: if i could, i’d give you a really patronizing ‘there there’, since this is what all this deserves.
Me: joe was with me when i bought all these notebooks too, and he was purchasing graph paper lined notebooks, so that’s probably how i mistakenly wound up with these. so i’m offering all of them to him.
the other thing that is irritating me, is that I own the entire Stories of Civilization Series, but they are not all of the same edition, and now that I no longer live in New York, I can’t regularly troll the Strand to find the copies I want in the proper edition, nor can I rely on Amazon.com used, because without an image, I can’t verify that its from the edition that I want.  This is proof of my growing insanity, I know.

Him: you’re going to end up like the collyer brothers
Me: your more of a hermit than i’ll ever be.                                                                                                                                                  Him: it’s ‘you’re’ and ‘you’re’ probably right.

Extremely Important Decisions, Problems Making Them

Me: if you were taking notes on shakespeare would you take them in blue ink or black ink?                                                   Him: you’re asking me this just to get a patronizing response aren’t you i haven’t cared about ink hue since i had one of those cool multi-color pens when i was 9

Me: NO I NEED AN ANSWER.i also have red and green ink, but i only have a couple of those and given my propensity for losing pens, I don’t want to start a project in one of those colors and then not be able to continue it because I lack the proper ink color for it.

Important Decisions, How To Make Them

Him: you know what’s a way superior method to worrying about things like this? flipping a coin.
Me: but then you have to decide which is head and which is tails. and then after you flip the coin you have to decide if you’re really going to go along with the results of the coin toss  

But Decisions Have Consequences

Me: All of these black pens are defective.

Him: More like you’re defective.                                                                                                                                                                      Me: No, really, they all are. I can’t write smoothly with them.

Him: also googlemail is advertising pens to me, and i think that’s definitely your fault.
Me: i’m getting ads for pens too. but i have pens! what i need are notebooks. i actually found a 10 pack of one subject five stars on amazon, but it just says “assorted” and colors not guarenteed, and there are 10 different colors and I want to make sure I’m getting 10 DIFFERENT ones
Him: i doubt you are getting 10 different ones, the five-star people don’t cater to ridiculous neurotics like yourself
Me: that’s why I’m not going to order them online. I will go to a store where I can safely pick out different colors myself.
Him: will they have all ten assorted colors, though?! anyway i am watching the spelling bee. because it is awesome
Me: I don’t know, it may take me awhile to find all 10 colors. Some are rarer than other.

(i wish i could take credit for this, but it is one of the brilliant guys from grylliade)

This evening we’ve just been hanging out watching TV, talking about Obama insanity. I have a kitty next to me. The plan for the rest of the day is to do little to nothing because Monday/Tuesday are going to be INSANITY. I’m going to bawl like a baby on Tuesday. My dad did wind up at the concert at the Lincoln Memorial, but was so far away that it was on major delay.

I am so psyched about playing the crowds tomorrow. LIBERTARIANS FOR OBAMA!

• I voted this morning. I was literally standing in the voting booth staring at the screen. I couldn’t hit the button for Barr. I just couldn’t do it. I voted for Obama. So some of my fellow Libertarians would say this makes me a sell out. So what?
• Jon Stewart:  ”YOUTH VOTE: DON’T FUCK IT UP FOR US. Every year we hear about how you rock the vote and every year you let us down”
• -I love how he is unabashadly pro Obama, but I think the media overhypes the youth vote.
• -McCain is just making stuff up now; he’s like “I’ll make sure energy prices don’t go up for families” Yeah, how you going to do that maverick?
• Indiana polls close early – if it really is as much as a swing state as we’ve been lead to believe, and Obama wins it…we could know REALLY early. I’m so nervous! In 2004 I knew Bush was going to win, so there was nothign to really get my hopes up about, but my hopes are so high that it might kill me. I think part of the reason I refused to get into Obama, despite him being awesome and wanting to marry him, is that because I couldn’t handle a let down if he lost. I was ridiculously angry for weeks (months?) after the 2000 election and I wasn’t even old enough to vote.
• I don’t want to hear about any voting irregularities or anything. It will anger up the blood.
• “If there has to be a screw-up, let it be somewhere else. Let some other state’s ballots go missing, its machines cough up negative numbers, its computers declare a victory for Grover Cleveland. Let the assembled media of the world descend upon Albuquerque or Des Moines.
• “But preferably, let it happen nowhere at all. We’re due for a nice, clean, undisputed election. Please.” –Howard Troxler, St. Petersburg Times (Florida)
• -I’m getting all teary eyed reading obama quotes and how psyched people are abouth im. clearly i have problems
• i am addicted to reading all the stories about the polling places having lines, and blah blah blah Change blah blah blah Hope and I totally buy into it because I am a sucker for PR and polish. I know him winning won’t really change anything but I am psyched nonetheless

okt3rrific (11:00:21 PM): nbc calls

okt3rrific (11:00:24 PM): nbc calls

It’s totally appropriate that I heard the news from Kevin first, given that he has been my source of all things Election 08′ news for the past four years.

okt3rrific (11:00:30 PM): president obama

And yes, I teared up. I’m not made of stone people.

Me: that really is sad, actually, she missed seeing her grandson become president by one day.

wait, did i just admit that i think obama is going to win?

Kevin: Yes it is. And yes you did.

Yes being down 150 electoral votes is all part of the plan…. good luck with that one, maverick.

Do people actually listen to the words john mccain says?

he says stuff like “we need a fighter”

wtf does that even mean? you gonna punch the economy?

and yesterday he kept saying “we’ve got them [obama/dems] right where we want them”

you want them to be 10 points ahead?

and of course the classic “i know where bin laden is, but i wont announce how to find him”

you couldn’t have told bush 7 years ago?

“Where do you find these guys? And more importantly, what do you get from them that makes their nonsense worth suffering?”

Good question David. Good question.

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Password:

David wrote:
I’ll set one up on yahoo, and see if anyone signs up.

Rachel wrote:
Oh, so now you’re STEALING MY IDEAS.

David wrote:
Ok, you set it up then. And kindly put down the gun.

Rachel wrote:
I don’t want to set it up. I’m a girl, I don’t know how to do these things. I wouldn’t even know how properly to word an annoucement about a basketball pool.

David wrote:
Have Rebecca do it. She’s competent and somewhat sane. Some variation on “Hey, lets do an NCAA Bracket! Sign up here.” is all you need for wording. I doubt that we could organize one for actual cash, given the anonymity of our posters. You just don’t want to be mailing checks over the internet, collecting would be a bitch, and federal law likely prevents there being a site where everyone could use something like pay pal.

Rachel wrote:
Of course no money, but we could do it for libertarian credibility! I actually used to be really into NBA in like, 1994-6. I don’t know why.

David wrote:
Wouldn’t libertarian credibility require that the most talented handicapper take the money of all the losers? Although, given the geek-based nature of cause, knowledge of sports could taint a person’s libertarian cred.

Rachel wrote:
No, because we’re not into taking other people’s money. That’s what the government does, silly.

David wrote:
I took the liberty of creating it. If you’d like to make the announcement, the league # 57522 and teh password is bacon.