when you fall asleep in transit

i interviewed earlier this week for the doomjob, which went releivingly well; they'll be notifying people early next week, and because the process is behind schedule, the start date could be immediate. it's a little nerve-wracking to be in another state of waiting-on-the-phone, because this is the sort of position i could see myself in for a long time. either way, though, i'm trying to be chill about the outcome. kind of.

i've also been revisiting my long-lost thesis project with the intent of taking a slight perversion on the original proposal, but maintaining much of the theoretical resources i culled together. it's a bit like trimming the fat from a juicy, pomo seitan-steak, and rolling it in some lemon gingery marinade. delicious. to fuel this aim, i also bought an older mac powerbook g4 from a woman on craigslist. her name is minerva, and she's nothing flashy, but we roam the internets and i finally got neo-office running, so we're golden. now to finish things before june, when it would be officially pathetic for me to still not have my degree.

but what i'm most excited about right now are the darling little seedlings that are growing on the living room window ledge behind me. the mustard and lettuce shoots are already about 5" high at just two weeks old, and the beatiful red swiss chard and beet sprouts are poking through! this will be my first real foray into gardening, and i CAN. NOT. WAIT. this weekend i'll have to get some soil, because already most of the buggers are bursting out of the little pods i sprouted them in. it's still too cold to transplant them outside, but i can move them into little peat pots until the weather gets a little less freak-bouts-of-snow-in-march.

ahh, dancylvania livin. already the house is two years old, and this weekend eli and i are signing the lease for a third year. RIDICULOUS!

long story short, that little "break" that i had been looking forward to has turned into nearly five months of unemployment. i wish i could say that i've made the best of it; overthrown the patriarchy, or at least gotten down and dirty on my abandoned thesis project. sadly, all i really have to show for unending amounts of free time are a few minor craft projects in various incomplete states, a drastically reorganized-at-three-am and slightly nicer bedroom, a rather refined pizza dough recipe, and the inability to fall asleep before 2am.

that said, my dream job (which should not be confused with the "dream job" of six months ago) was announced a few weeks ago, and after having a series of drawn out, complete freakouts over my self-worth or the font size on my resume, i finally sent in my packet on monday, at 11:43pm, just minutes before the application period closed. i know that i have a fairly good chance of at least getting an interview, and it seems like the hiring process will happen pretty swiftly in the next week or so. that hasn't stopped me from anxiously checking my phone and email every so often to see if i've been rejected from life. pls to be indulging me.

i'm a little bit very much obsessed with good luck, who i first heard when benji and i went dumpstering a few weeks ago. i finally did a little research, and, well. sorry dancylvania, for listening to the same five songs on repeat. see above neuroses.

i shall leave you with my current favorite chocolate cupcake recipe:

cupcakes take over the world!

1 c. soy/almond/cow milk + 1 tsp apple cider vinegar,
mixed in a bowl and left to curdle for 10 minutes
1 c. flour
1/3 c. cocoa powder
3/4 c. sugar
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 c. oil
1-1/2 tsp. extracts (try a mixture of vanilla & almond!)

whisk together dry ingredients, making sure there's no lumps, then slowly add in wet. (the milk should have become a bit lumpy from the vinegar -- almost the consistency of very runny yoghurt.) bake for about 10-12 minutes at 350*.

when the cupcakes are cooled, slice them in half and frost the middle. :D

why did it take me this long to listen to the replacements? good fuck.

to write that last paper on max and teddy's big gay gay neo-marxist love, or to undulate in my underwear to stove by a whale? that, truly, is the question of the age.

still on some kind of high, but that may be the caffeine talking. had a little potluck reunion of some of the practical anarchy folks last night; tentative plans to watch fantasia when ry gets back from his conference in oxford. babbled a lot about guerilla gardening, the cowboy/indian frontier violence theatre (ry's defending his doctoral diss tomorrow on non-white american literature written in english), blacks performing blackface, zapatistas, diy contraception, and worms. jessica gave me a lot of tips on urban gardening and suggested doing a joint independent study in the fall. plan on checking out this wierd empty lot that's two houses down from us, see if i can't utilize a little patch of that for potatoes or squash; maybe just make some rosemary bombs and see what happens.

chid graduation ceremony is on friday. might be completely revamping my thesis project. same idea, different ends. oh rina, you will never, ever finish. maybe that's the best thing.

it's kind of stupid how, just, content i am right now. i'm barely scraping through my german social theory class, my thesis will be the end of me, i have completely recidivised in my attempt to stop drinking coffee every morning (it's just so good), but the points rule in favor of the algernon cadwallader demo tape, and jeffrey mcdaniel's new book, and filthy kids, and the zucchini sprouts in the window that must be radioactive, and the cello i bought off brk, and fancy dresses, and the feeling of not being totally emotionally schizophrenic.

probably i have heatstroke or something, even though it's been beautifully mild the last couple of weeks, or i actually do have a brain tumor, not just migraines, but whatever. i want to write fucking epic songs, and finally get the cartography pieces, and read! some! books!, and dig my toes in wet grass.

but first, adorno and horkheimer call.

tomorrow morning i'm taking a much need vacation. hello new haven, new york, pittsburgh!

i continue to be rather suspicious of this, but it appears as if i made it through winter quarter, and even after the tumultuous last week, i am almost excited about next quarter and writing my thesis. to think! what the last few days have reminded me, though, is that i am incredibly lucky in CHID. i have made many critiques in the past to its "theory-based" nature, and wished that i was in a program like community & environmental planning that got out and "did something". but, as stacey has said again and again this quarter, that is forgetting the very material affect of ideas, the ways in which these words work on me, persistently. and that is ignoring the incredible people i have met and learned from in my short time here. it's so hard sometimes, but i am hopeful, and driven, and so, so full of love.

benji, whitney and i just got back from a crazy dumpstering expedition. the naked juice dumpster was completely empty, but we scored big at mecca and have way more fake meat than i've ever seen! we also hit up some produce dumpsters and got about 10 lovely green zucchinis and green peppers, a few apples, and some weird exotic fruit that looks like a pear with a weird butt. the essential dumpsters weren't super, but i did get some raisin pecan to make french toast and a lovely little loaf of soda bread. yeah st. patty's day! but i think the best part of it all was at the qfc on 15th, where i climbed into the compost dumpster that was packed with flowers, pulled out a bunch of beautiful red roses and more peppers, and then found five perfect strawberries nestled in some daisies. mmmm. at the end of the night, the trunk of the car they rented for their trip this weekend was full. all of this was after benji's surprise birthday party at the house, which i was stupidly late to because i ended up covering a shift at cupcake and didn't get out of there until almost 9pm. but we played a pretty ridiculous charade-esque game, and then i gave fletch a haircut and we had a pretty good discussion about relationships. hopefully it was a good end to a sort of crappy week for benj.

i have a job prospect for the fall that's a little too good to be true. we'll see, though. just gotta get through that whole university thing.