So yesterday may go down in history as my worst birthday ever. I've never had the whole pretend to forget your birthday so I can throw you a surprise party the next day thing done to me, and this year probably wasn't the best one to do it in. I spent dinner on Friday wondering how my dad could forget my birthday, after a rainy and tension-filled day where all I wanted was cake and candles and presents and above all to feel special, and after dinner I couldn't hold back the tears of disappointment when I thought I wasn't going to get any of those things. The surprise was revealed. I felt horrible for being such a baby, and my dad felt horrible, too, of course. If I had been in a better mood to start off with this might have been funny, but I was so upset about feeling ignored on my true birthday that I cried for hours. Not fun.

Today was better, I attended the "surprise" party. All was forgiven as I blew out the candles on not one but two birthday cakes (one from Dad at the party, one from Mom at home) and opened my presents. So I guess it wasn't such a horrible birthday after all. Hopefully next year will be better. One thing I can be fairly certain of, I don't think anyone will ever try to throw me a surprise party again.

Hey people, guess what? Today's my birthday!

El Paso gets a mention in the New York Times. I like the way they describe the city- "a sun-baked city of 563,000....sprawled at the feet of the jagged Franklin Mountains across the Rio Grande from Juarez, Mexico, and closer to Los Angeles than to Beaumont in East Texas."

Links to the three-part series on climate change in the New Yorker:
Part I
Part II
Part III
These are important articles, worth reading despite being quite long and fairly technical in nature. Links via kottke.

About three times this week I've had some random person cross the street while I was driving. Like yesterday some guy just strolled across a really busy street, with a full view of oncoming traffic, and I had to slam on the brakes. This guy looked like he could be mentally ill. Then today some high school kid doesn't bother to wait for the light and starts running across the street as I'm about to turn right. Later that afternoon, another high school kid, this time on one of those cheap non-motorized scooters, turns left just as I'm about to go straight, totally freaking me out. Then I heard on the news that a man was run over by a semi-truck as he was trying to cross the Border Highway in the middle of the night. You'd think people would somehow know not to run across a busy street. It's a level below common sense even, it's primitive survival instinct. But no, now I have to worry about inadvertently killing people, as if I weren't scared enough about driving as it is.

I went with my sister to a show at a coffee shop last night. All her church friends were there, and it was strange being there and knowing about everybody since my sis talks about them all the time, but not actually knowing them. You'd think church kids wouldn't be so appearance-oriented, that they wouldn't be so cliquish, but that's not the case. But then again, I don't really know them well enough to judge.

The music was pretty cool. Jazz piano. I was expecting punk rock. What I wouldn't give to be able to play the piano like that. Being a musician must be fun, unfortunately I don't have much talent in that department. After the show I sat around eating amaretto fudge and I got to meet one of the guys in the band. I was like, good show, he was like, how's that fudge? All in all, it was a fun experience.

So grades are done. My TA job is over and I can now concentrate on my research project. I am so behind on that, I have been putting it off for so long. It's embarrassing and I'm going to have to meet with my advisor and have to admit that I have accomplished nothing in the past three weeks.

I have not been spending as much time in cyberspace, mostly because my sister is a computer junkie like me and stays up late IM'ing and updating her website. But that is probably a good thing for me, I find I am actually much more relaxed when I don't spend so much time on the computer.

There's a lot I want to write, I actually find myself thinking, hey, I should write a blog post about this or that, and then when I sit down to write suddenly it doesn't seem nearly so interesting, or I'm just not in the mood to write about it.

All right, so I'm once again frustrated. Once again fed up, annoyed with my life. Sometimes I wonder how long my life can go on like this. Being pathetically lonely, shy to the point of absurdity. I wonder if I'm going to spend another summer being bored out of my mind, staying at the house all day staring at the TV. Looking at this rationally, it's up to me to change. If I change nothing, things are going to stay the same. Deep down I really don't believe this. I believe that something will come along and I will snap out of all this. That something being a job, finding a new hobby I can be excited about, finding the right person who can coax me out of my shell, or going to therapy. After one of these things happen, suddenly my life will be complete, the shyness will go away, and I won't be lonely anymore. I will finally have confidence in myself. This is stupid. I know it is, I mean, even in the rare case when events like that happen I always end up at the same place, and that place is alone staring at a computer screen. I've gone through years like this, and no matter what the circumstances nothing ever changes for me. The constant factor in all of this being me.

Summer makes me crazy. Too much time to ponder things and combined with the time to actually try to make big changes. One year I became a vegan and an exercise fanatic. Last year I joined a dating service and signed up for Italian classes. What will it be this year, I wonder? I should get a job. Not for the money, for the sanity. I wonder what would have happened if I had taken that job at the beginning of the year. I probably wouldn't be writing this, I'd be complaining about getting up early every day and working 50-hour weeks. To be completely honest, I kind of wanted to get that job so that I could avoid the uncertainty of this time of year, have the whole year planned out for me and not have long unproductive breaks that drive me completely insane.

Another Monday. It seems like forever since finals were over, but it has only been a week. Time has seemingly slowed down to a snail's pace. So anyway, I went to see the family yesterday. My cousin and I ended up talking for a while, which was kind of cool. She told me about this book she was reading, Jesus' Son. Sounds like some pretty weird stuff.

Then I went to my other grandma's house, the one on my mom's side. I presented Mom with her gift, a bottle of perfume that she wanted. It was some pretty expensive perfume, but hey, this woman gave birth to me and has let me live in her house rent-free for years and years, so I went ahead and got it for her. She seemed to appreciate it.

Looks like I'm not going anywhere today. My car is having some work done it. Let's just hope it works after the so-called repairs are made. I don't trust mechanics, and as a general rule I hate to have any work done on my car.

I did manage to vote in city elections today. I walked to the polling place since it's close to my house. The workers asked me like three times if it was my first time voting. Do I really look that young? I'm going to be 23. I've been eligible to vote in two presidential elections already. Better for them to underestimate my age than to overestimate it, I suppose.

S.L. Viehl (among her many aliases) is blogging again. I used to read her Star Lines blog two years ago and was disappointed when she decided to end it. So this was a happy surprise.

This word was the Final Jeopardy question yesterday:

sybarite \SIB-uh-ryt\, noun: A person devoted to luxury and pleasure; a voluptuary.
Sybarite comes from Latin Sybarita, from Greek Sybarites, from Sybaris, an ancient Greek city in southeastern Italy noted for the luxurious, pleasure-seeking habits of many of its inhabitants.

And so the boredom continues. I started a new playlist:
Roxanne by the Police
You and I Both by Jason Mraz
Blue Monday by New Order
That Day by Natalie Imbruglia
Keep Fishin by Weezer
Four Seasons by Vivaldi
Every Little Thing She Does is Magic by the Police
You Get What You Give by the New Radicals
I don't know, I adore each of these songs individually but having them all in one playlist is kind of like overdosing on rich chocolate. Maybe there's such a thing as too much sonic perfection. Except for Blue Monday. That's my one "filler" song.

Good news- finals are over for me. I took my last final today. It wasn't too bad. A lot of writing, so much so that I almost didn't finish. Now I'm living the good life. I checked out a couple books from the library, I watched the Gilmore Girls and American Idol, two shows I haven't been able to watch in months, and now I'm trying to think of things to occupy my time. Hence the blog post.

My sister is moving back home this week, so that should be fun. I'm taking care of her fish. I love that fish. I nearly killed it last week when I poured tap water into its tank. Twenty minutes later I remembered that it takes distilled water only. I had to change the tank water fast. Thank God the fish didn't die. I would have felt so bad.

Hey people. It's the first day of May, my favorite month of the year. I'm in such a great mood that I got inspired to pull my guitar out of the closet and attempt to play it. There are exactly three songs I remember how to play: "Autumn Leaves", "Dust in the Wind", and "Hotel California". Kind of pathetic since I took guitar lessons for two years. Still it is good that I remember anything at all since I haven't played in about a year.

The last guitar lesson I took was in 2001. I got busy with work and I finally just quit since I figured it was a waste of money. Truth is, even when I wasn't so busy I didn't get much enjoyment from it, and it was clear I didn't have much natural talent for it. I took lessons mostly out of obligation: I had this really nice guitar and I didn't want it to just be taking up space in the corner of my bedroom. I liked being able to play songs like "Brown-Eyed Girl" and "Hotel California" but I found that I really didn't have the patience for more challenging things like classical or jazz pieces. When I think back on what a lousy player I was- my technique was all wrong, I didn't practice, if a part was challenging instead of working on it that was the part I skipped over- it kind of makes me want to take more lessons, to do some justice to the music I was attempting to play. To prove that I have grown up some and I can do better, that I get the point of music beyond the notes on the page.