Forgive me for unloading. Tonight was my last Italian class. Too bad I was in such a crappy mood. I couldn't think of anything to say in Italian for the required two-minute speech in front of the class. Oh well.

I am thinking about planning a trip to Italy, if time and money permit. The instructor said something is being planned for spring break. That would be the perfect time to go. We'll see how it goes.

Amazingly I got an e-mail back about the job for which I messed up the program name. As part of applying I have to work on an Access database. *deep breath* I can do this, I can do this.

I'm so frustrated and discouraged. I'm acting like a little kid, who wonders why the world doesn't revolve around her and sits in a corner and pouts. So I've figured out the problem, now to work on the solution. But the solution may be painful, and I am afraid. I am going to have to force myself to do something that is very, very hard.

The anxiety is getting to me. More school tomorrow. Homework I need to catch up on. Otherwise boredom and angst. Right now I wish I were busier. I wish I had something to keep my mind occupied, instead of occupying it with thoughts of what a horrible human being I am.

I finally have a bed to sleep on. The house still looks like a tornado ran through it, but at least I have a bed. I took a delicious nap today. So many times I have wanted to go back to my old room and pick up a book or some other item I had in there. I can see my old room in my mind's eye, and then I realize that it no longer exists that way, that instead I will have to go searching through a pile of my stuff to find it. Then I decide to forget it and watch some more TV.

How's this for stupid? I apply for a job by e-mail, but I get the program name wrong. I just realized this after I sent the e-mail. D'oh! *smacks self on forehead* I can kiss that job good-bye.

Again with the job situation. I'm not flat broke but it would be nice to not have to worry about money. At this rate I'm definitely going to have to dip into savings. Why does everything have to be so expensive? I'm not an extravagant spender but most months I end up putting $200 on my credit card, and that's not counting all the cash I spend on small purchases like fast food. Hopefully now that I've paid for tuition and books I won't have to be spending all this money.

I feel much better today than I did last night. The day was manageable. It seems I finally have some time and space to think.

I'm trying to come to terms with my shyness. It's a part of who I am, but it's not the biggest part of me. There are some things I need to work on, though, I will admit to that. It seems that shyness holds me back from a lot of things, to the point where I won't apply for a job because I don't want to have to ask for letters of recommendation. At some point I know I'm going to have to do this, but does that point have to be now? Yeah, this is a big problem.

I got home at 6:00 PM yesterday expecting to have dinner. Mom pulls out a six-inch tuna sandwich from Subway out of the refrigerator. I know this sandwich was sitting in there since at least yesterday afternoon. She splits it in half, puts each half on paper plates, and says that is what we are having for dinner. I was less than enthused. I mean, I'm not expecting a four-course meal here, but come on. I ate a couple bites then I threw it out when she wasn't looking. Later on I made some popcorn. So much for dinner, then.

The house renovation is finished except for my room (of course). Thank God for that. Finally some peace and quiet, no more strange people roaming around the house. The house looks kind of like an ice castle now, with blue-gray walls and tan-colored tile.

All right, it's Tuesday. I have one class today, I've been killing the time before 6:00 by doing the following- watching the Olympics on TV, reading blogs and the newspaper, watching the house get painted strange colors, going to the discount store to buy paint rollers, designing a flyer for my mom's business, and in the midst of this reading chapter 1 of my computer architecture textbook.

Tonight after class I am going to see Nickelback in concert. Let's hope this is a good one. More later.

Another day of not feeling quite well. I have another headache and just this feeling of malaise. I stayed up until 3 AM yesterday and ate Sonic and some eggs at 1:30 in the morning, somehow that doesn't seem very healthful.

Tomorrow I go back to school. Yuck. I'm dreading it but also looking forward to it. Depending on how it goes this could be my last semester.

It's my last real day of vacation :=(.

I can't decide whether I want to get a job or not. I was all set to apply for this co-op job over the computer through the career services center. I think I might have at least a chance of getting this job, but I don't know if that would be such a good idea. My classes are already going to be hard enough without having to spend like four hours a day working. But it would be good experience and it is right on campus which is a big plus. For now I can't even apply for it because of some stupid technicality in the computer system. We'll see what happens.

I ate everything in sight today. Marzipan candies, Swiss cheese, a banana, nuts, rice, chicken, a chocolate chip cookie, etc., etc. How much sugar can one person ingest in a day? I have been so hungry lately. I check myself in the mirror constantly, looking at my gut which stubbornly remains even after losing some weight.

There is now an opening in the wall between the den and the living room. Things change so fast in this house. Wait a day and it's a whole different house.

My sister left this morning. Stuffed all of her clothes into the trunk of a car and drove off to Ames, IA.

I went to Mexico yesterday. Mexico no longer seems strange to me. I've been there enough times to know how it is.

Clear blue beautiful skies await. Finally it looks like this is going to be a good day.

Hey people. When did I move to Seattle? This wet weather is really getting to me. The worst part is the mosquitoes.

My plans for this morning have been postponed until this afternoon. My list of chores: pick up a check from the dept. office, deposit the check at the bank, buy textbooks, buy school supplies, and finish up this crossword puzzle I'm working on. I also wanted to go to this new coffee place called Jamocha. The sign for the place said simply "Coffee and Fudge". Sounds heavenly.

Another day of overcast skies. That sure is depressing. I have Italian class today, I'm going to be a little behind since I missed class last week.

I went to see The Notebook yesterday night. It was a bit too sweet for my taste, but it was OK. It was a cute story. I didn't particularly like the actors though. Is it just me or does Ryan Gosling look exactly like David Arquette? And this was not one of Joan Allen's best performances. Come on, you expect me to believe you had a love affair with that cement worker?

More hysteria. Yet more work is being done on the house, but I'm pretty used to it by now. I went to the library. I didn't find any good books. I feel like buying stuff. I am thinking about selling some CDs on ebay to get some money. Somehow I don't think the rate of return is very good. I'll be lucky to get a $5 profit per CD.

The weather is overcast and that is guaranteed to bum me out. I've been watching the Olympics to keep myself entertained. More later from this land of radical hysteria.....

Welcome to the Friday Night Rant. I am so grumpy lately. I am feeling downright misanthropic. Maybe I'm just tired and stressed out over the prospect of going back to school. Whatever it is, I am being mean and sarcastic.

Oh and now I have to worry about money. My check for $500 came in today, so that is a bit of relief for me. I will have money for books. I'm used to throwing money around for fast-food lunches and CDs and stuff, but if I don't have a job I am going to have to guard my money more tightly. I wish spending money weren't so much fun for me.

And then there is the never-ending internal debate about what I am going to do. Even if I finish grad school what then? Grad school buys me a year, but what am I going to do after that? I looked at the career center job listings today, and just doing that was enough to provoke me to tears. I don't know what's wrong with me. I have no confidence in my abilities. It's this weird thing where I don't want to compete, I don't want to have to perform in an interview, I don't want to be tested, I don't want to be rejected for a job. OK I know that sounds incredibly naive. I guess I am so comfortable in my little world that I don't want to go "out there" and have it all shaken up. I would rather sit here and live off my parents' money than go out on my own. Jobs suck, don't they? Life sucks, doesn't it?

I guess that one day I will wake up from this haze. I will go back to school and realize what I need to do, realize I need to get out there and talk to people and pull strings and look for a job rather than sitting on my butt, at home alone. I can't hide forever. I'm so afraid of being an underachiever. But it seems that is what I've become. I mean, I sit at home all day watching daytime TV and reading magazines. I'm unemployed, I have no career goals, no friends, nothing. People think that just because I'm in school I have it all figured out, but if they knew the truth I think it would shock them. The truth: I don't know if I even want to do this anymore. Lately I have become so repulsed at the idea of getting a job in this field. I think of endless nights in front of a computer. I think of that movie Office Space and I would rather be free than be enslaved to some money-making entity. It's not like I'm so ambitious. I don't want to leave this town, but in doing so I fear I will have severely limited my career options.

So if this isn't what I want to do, what is? I don't want to ditch it all and go off in pursuit of another degree. I'm so tired of school. I'd get a job before I'd sign up for yet more school. At least I'd be making money rather than having it leaking out of my bank account every four months.

Every time I think about this, I always come to the same conclusion: that it's in God's hands, not mine, and whatever I do it will be in service to the world, not to myself. That I won't choose it, it will choose me. Somehow that doesn't end it, though. I think I need concrete plans, five-year plans, ten-year plans, that I need to know all the answers right this second, I need to take career tests to pinpoint the exact perfect career for me. I know that's all nonsense, though. I know myself, I know my interests and abilities, I know where I am at this point in my life. If I need to stay home and take even more time off to figure it out, so be it. I am not at the point where I am absolutely forced into working a full-time job. So that option is there. I could even just stay in school and lay low for awhile, not think about jobs and the future and crap like that. It is all so overwhelming, but it could be very simple. One damn day at a time, study, study, study, try not to flunk out.

I am back from Reno. It was a lot of fun. We didn't spend as much time at Lake Tahoe as I expected. We spent more time in the casinos in downtown Reno and in Virginia City, a historic mining town.

Right now I am feeling tired and kind of in a daze. I don't know what it is, the disruption in my usual routine of napping, daytime TV, and a lot of caffeine. Maybe because I haven't exercised in three days and I've been eating like a pig at all-you-can-eat buffets. Oh well, back to normal for me tomorrow.

I haven't felt much like writing, at least not the deep soul-searching posts I usually write. I guess I haven't had the alone time I usually do- I've been spending it with people, which is weird for me. I have also lost faith in relationships with MOTOS, to the point where I don't even want one at the moment. I am having a pretty good time being on my own. Men are just weird and I don't think I will ever understand them completely, and the parts I do understand I don't really like- the shallowness, the insensitivity, the machismo, the male pattern baldness.

So like I mentioned I'm leaving for Lake Tahoe tomorrow. I am pretty excited, considering I haven't gone anywhere on a trip in a while. The last trip I took was to Ruidoso last year, a three-hour drive from here, and I've been there so many times. The time before that I went to Las Vegas, and I've also been there many times. So this is something cool for me. I am freaking out about the plane ride, though. I haven't been on a plane since my 21st birthday over a year ago.

What else? I'm worried about money right now. I don't know what's going on with my RA job, but I probably won't get it back this semester. I have enough money in the bank in savings to pay off tuition this semester and to cover expenses, but I am not thrilled about dipping into it. If push comes to shove, I could probably cover the rest of my grad school tuition from savings. It would take probably everything I have but I could do it. The point is, I should get a job. The spring semester would be a better time for a job since I wouldn't have such tough classes.

I guess I am not super worried about paying off grad school. I could ask my parents for money as a back-up plan and then pay it off to them. I guess I am freaking out more for the long term. There are some more serious questions I am thinking about. Should I even be in grad school? Is this (computer science, IT, technical work, programming, etc.) really what I want to be doing with my life? I know that right now my life is not exactly going where I want it to go. I don't know what my life would look like if it was going the way I wanted it to. I guess what I am missing is excitement. I am not very excited about doing what I am doing. I mean, I've spent the whole summer locked up in the house, watching TV and surfing the Internet, and I find that more fun and more exciting than anything else going on in my life. My RA job was a big letdown, it made me nervous all the time, I felt incompetent and discouraged and totally unsuccessful. Despite it being a cushy job, I had the nagging suspicion that I wasn't suited for it.

Maybe the point is that when I really want something, I will do whatever I have to to get it. I will talk to people, I will send out job applications, I will write proposals, I will train myself in whatever I need to, I will read whatever books I need to, all of that. Problem is, the motivation is not there. Sure I jumped through a couple of hoops to get into grad school and to get decent grades my first semester, but I didn't exactly move heaven and earth. Same thing with getting a job. I can't muster up any enthusiasm for talking to recruiters, sending out resumes, filling out applications, going to interviews for jobs I know I will never get. Maybe I need to spend some time out in the real world, temping or getting a job just to get some money, maybe I need to move out of the house and re-discover life on my own. Then maybe the sense of urgency about the future will come back. A lot of times I think it would be cool to have an unconventional job, one that doesn't require reporting to a cubicle every day. But what job would that be? I don't know.

I went to see "The Village" last night. It was a weird movie. At some points I found the premise of the story so ridiculous that I almost laughed out loud. "Those we do not speak of", the colored hoods, the way of speaking. It reminded me of a video that we put together in my 8th grade Humanities class about colonial America, for reasons that are known only to me and the 20 or so people in the class who had the privilege of viewing it.

On the other hand, The Village was a lot more interesting than most movies because it had a point to make about society and about life in general. Sometimes it is bizarre how we are so scared of certain things because it has been ingrained into us by the media or by our families or whatever, i.e. terrorism, sin, etc.

An update on stuff happening in my life:
-I may not have a job this coming semester. There's a good chance my RA job won't be renewed. I'd actually not be too disappointed, since I want to concentrate on school, but I will miss the money.
-My advisor for my RA job is leaving in May, which means if I want to work on a thesis with her as my advisor, it has to be now.
-I've stopped making up hours I owe from last semester, since it now appears that it doesn't matter anyway. I absolutely love the idea of having two more blissful weeks of slacking off.
-I'm going to Lake Tahoe on Monday. Family vacation. This may be bad. Fighting may occur.

I am starting to feel a little down right now. I feel bad because I skipped out on work and hung out with my cousin. Oh well, work will always be there, my cousin is leaving soon, so I guess it was worth it. In two days of working this week I haven't accomplished much at all. I need to get something running, then I will feel successful. I also need to talk to my advisor, something I am dreading. I need to be more focused, have goals, have an agenda for every day, every week, every month, every semester. I think last semester things got all muddled and bogged down. I got so discouraged not making any progress. Hopefully this semester will be better.

My mom is starting to annoy me. She never has time for us, her kids. Every spare second she has she is on the phone or out on the town with her friends from the "agency". I know she would be around if it were a dire emergency, but day-to-day she is just not around.

Last night I went to see Gloria Estefan in concert. It was a really awesome concert, I must give props to Gloria. The dancers were great, the band was great, and she really is an amazing singer. She also put a lot of emotional touches into the show, like displaying pictures of herself when she was a little girl. I happen to think she is a great role model for Hispanic women, and there is something about her where she just looks like a nice person.

She played a lot of salsa music, but the crowd just wasn't into it. They were more into the slow, sad songs like "Con Los Anos de me Queda" and "Words Get in the Way". She probably should have been like, "Get up, come on, people, get out of your chairs" but she never did. Also, this town doesn't have a lot of people from Cuba, and the average age of the concert-goers looked to be about 40, so I guess it wasn't a dancing crowd. Anyway, I had a good time.

Ever notice that a lot of popular websites have 5 or 6 letters in their name? Yahoo!(5), Google(6), Amazon(6). Even among the blogs I read: kottke(6), ireneQ(6), dooce(5). I guess it's an aesthetic thing.

All right, I finally went to school and got some work done. It is a small victory for me, finally, I pushed myself out of the house, more like kicked myself in the ass, and did what I set out to do, no excuses, no whining, no complaining. Two and a half solid hours of venturing through some new software.

Last night I stayed up to watch The Darkness on Hard Rock Live. "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" oh yes I do.

It's Sunday. Mom is home from Guatemala. She said that she got sick with dysentery for most of the trip. I felt bad for her.

I'm for sure going to put in a few hours of work tomorrow. I really need to kick my own butt into gear. It's not healthy or normal to do nothing all day. I think getting back to work will put my mind at ease. I'm still unsure about a lot of things, but for now I'm going back to school, for lack of a better alternative.

The weather is dreary again, my mood is dreary.