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I watched "March of the Penguins" last night with Peter and my mom.

I had to stop watching.

It was so sad!

It's like, penguins, penguins, penguins.

PENGUIN FALLS BEHIND AND DIES ALONE IN THE COLD AND DARK.

( And, of course, more penguins died. )

They just arrr.

(Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!)

I've been playing through my new music a little, and I found a pleasant surprise in the Debussy book--two, actually, but one of them was far more surprising.

Back when I used to post music and a picture with every diary entry, one of the midi arrangements I'd used was something I'd found on a random website, simply titled 'reverie.' I liked the sound of it, but I figured it was just random internet stuff. Imagine my surprise when the Debussy piece entitled "Reverie" turned out to be the same song! I realized it within the first four notes and I was pretty happy as I plunked away at learning it. I'd managed to transform one or two of my midis to sheet music, but that one was too garbled between staves to be anything playable. The real thing is far superior, anyway.

( Blah, blah, music, blah blah. )

( Did you know that I'm afraid of cars? )

Today, we found a sheet music store that's only about twenty minutes away from our apartment. They have a pretty good selection of classical music and teaching pieces. Their modern independent composers selection is pretty limited, especially in the advanced range, but I still found stuff to buy.

I got the Alfred Masterworks edition of Chopin's complete Nocturnes, for one thing. I had the Eb major in another book and the Bb minor (my favourite) on loose paper, but, otherwise, nothing but arrangements. The binding is even spiral, so the pages will lay flat. I've had my eye on that for a while. And the Alfred Masterworks edition is my first choice for anything because of how responsible the editors are. The autograph is in black; everything else is in grey, with plenty of footnotes and explanations.

I also picked up a half-price collection of various Chopin pieces. I don't think it has too much overlap with the other stuff I have, except for the waltzes, because I have the complete book of those.

And I found an Alfred edition of Debussy stuff, which is nice since the only Debussy I have is on photocopies.

Not too bad of a day, so far.

We still don't have an apartment, but we have a good lead on two. One of them isn't officially available. Someone else put an application in for it, but the landlord feels that we're better prospective tenants and wants to run the first people off. Peter and I think that that's pretty shady business practice, but my dad is in love with the apartment because--get ready for this--a doctor!!!!!--lives across the street. (That's a really big deal to my father, who apparently can't conceive of a doctor living in an area that wouldn't be safe for his baby girl...or of any such area not having a doctor in residence.) The other apartment isn't in as good of a location, but it's bigger and the landlord sounds far more reasonable. The renovations on it aren't done, but they aren't far from done, either, and the landlord said that we could move our stuff into a different empty apartment in the event that they weren't done by the time our furniture arrived, and he'd get "his guys" to move it over for us later.

So, I don't know. I almost don't care.

Erin and Jen came over since Erin's in town and we'll probably never see each other again, especially since her life's dream is coming true and she's moving to Japan. (Incidentally, that was my dream, once. Then I guess I picked Peter instead.)

We went to Max & Erma's for dinner and then came back to look at movie showtimes. There wasn't anything playing that we wanted to see, so we spent our time on YTMND.

O RLY?
YA RLY

Sorry, but between the owls and the emo song, something had to leak out.

Speaking of emo, I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself. Moving to Misery aside, even. I guess I just felt left out tonight, like the people who I thought were my good friends all have way more in common with each other than they do with me. The things they talk about, their in-jokes... I'm just not part of it. I guess it's probably my fault. I wonder if I did what I always noticed my high school friends doing: ditching their friends all the time for some guy. I wonder if that was inevitable.

HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN T--

Sorry.

I'm done now.

They rented the apartment they said they had. I don't know if they did it this morning or if they were just wrong when they said they had an apartment.

I don't know what we're going to do. We're moving in less than a week and we don't have a place to live.

I hate Peter for ruining my life like this. I hope he's happy that he gets to work for a Hughes investigator, because that's the whole reason we're moving to a town I don't want to live in and where we now don't even have a place to live.

I just want someone else's life. I'm really sick of mine.

( Rant the first. )

( Rant Numero Dos! )

( And the last rant. )

Someone, please take away my AOL so I can't keep reading this ridiculous "news."

We're supposed to be moving in less than a week. I was supposed to leave on Monday, and we were going to start painting the new apartment on Wednesday or Thursday. The furniture is supposed to get there starting next Friday.

So, of course, our new management just called to confirm some things with us, and it eventually came out that the leasing agent lied to us about everything. We can't paint, we can't have more than two cats, there's a nonrefundable pet fee, and there's an additional $20 each month rent per pet. Even assuming that we're willing to abandon one of our three cats, the extra $40/month rent puts our apartment out of our budget.

( ROAR. )

It's too hot to write an entry.

That air-conditioning in St. Louis is looking pretty good right about now...

Since we've moving, I've been trying to get rid of stuff that we never use, or don't really need, etc. Somehow, my brain told me that I didn't really need my Japanese Sailor Moon manga with the shiny covers and pull-out posters. Truth be told, I can't read them (that's what the French copies are for), and I have all of the cover/poster artwork in the official art books. But they're not as shiny, and they don't have the multicolored "sera mun" kana on them, either.

( Stupid, stupid me. But it has a happy ending! )

If anyone is interested in Sailor Moon cards, random anime tapes, or Magic Knight Rayearth cards, buy them from me, please. I'm selling part of my beloved collection to make it easier to move.

Lots of shinies here.

Thanks.

Fruit flies like a banana!

I still haven't figured out how I got tricked into being a grown-up against my will. Did I sign something during one of my college drinking binges? Or maybe they did that in a day I skipped class.

But, seriously, there was never a college drinking binge.

I did skip an awful lot of class, though.

Last night, I had a dream in which I was absolutely in love with Lex Luthor. Not Kevin Spacey or whoever, but the one on Smallville.

This is not the first time I've had a similar dream.

Um. Ordinarily, bald isn't such a big draw for me.

There's always an element of me wondering if he's really into me, or if he's just flirting with me so he can be a jerk later. Keeping his interest becomes my paramount concern.

I told Peter this, and he laughed and suggested that normal people would be more likely to dream about Superman.

Oh well.

I'm moving in less than two weeks.

So! Much! Packing!

Final Fantasy X is still a big time sink, but I also started replaying Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines on the PC. I bought it a few months ago, right after upgrading my video card and stuff, but the save got corrupted somehow...so I had to start over. The good part is that I'd played enough of the plot as a Ventrue to feel comfortable descending into Malkavian madness. It's a riot a minute.

I've been busy packing for the past few days. So far, I'm on 16 boxes of books. And these are just my books. And, really, they're about a third of my books--maybe a third. I tried to go through them and find some that I didn't want, but... Books are like friends. My parents never understood why I kept books that I'd already read, or why I'd get a book from the library and then want to buy it. I reread things all the time. And it's not like I could get much for them at a used book store; the chain arond here, Half Priced Books, is great for buying, but lousy for selling. The one time we brought in a box of books, they gave us a little under $8 for the entire box of at least twenty books. That's less than $.50 a book. Thanks, but at that price, I'll just hang onto them.

I did, however, decide to get rid of my Sailor Moon manga. I have all eighteen volumes in Japanese and French, and since I can't read the Japanese and the cover art/posters are all in the art books (which I have), I decided to keep the French and list the Japanese on eBay for about $50. I was already having second thoughts last night. Sure, it's not practical, but those manga had sentimental value for me. And...shiny! I was going to cancel the auction this morning, but, d'oh, someone had already used buy-it-now. So I guess I'm faced with taking the negative feedback and being a jerk, or selling them after all.

Now, if you're wondering where the crooks come in, that would be me. My friend Josh just sent me three zipped Mazzy Star albums. I can't tell you anything about the group, but he sent me two songs a long time ago, and I listen to them over and over. It's good stuff.

I've had a lot of free time since graduation. I mean, what would be the point of looking for a job when I'm moving in three weeks? (I don't even know if I'm going to look for a job after we move, but if I don't, I'll be doing volunteer work instead.)

But I want you to know that I haven't been wasting all of this marvelous free time I have. I'm working on a perfect game of Final Fantasy X.

Ha, and you can't even tell if I managed to say that with a straight face.

( Hahaha. Or not. )

Okay, I think I overreacted about the hair stuff. I stayed up late to put the highlights in, which I wasn't going to do because it's bad for your hair, and that definitely makes my hair look more dark blond than light brown.

I had an awful dream this morning, right before I woke up.

It started out with something pretty typical. I was at church, and my mother and the choir director from my old church were there. I don't remember this part very distinctly. There was a little girl who looked like Dakota Fanning, and I was supposed to know who she was, but I don't now.

( And, strangely, this did kinda feel 'War of the Worlds'-ish... )

I'm going to die. My mother is going to kill me.

A few months ago, I caved in. My mom and my husband had both been bugging me for so long to make my hair blond again after having it auburn for almost five years. My mom offered to pay for it, which was necessary, since the process of leeching the old color out and adding new color added up to about $150.

Well, when I first came back from the salon, I wanted to cry. It was so. damn. light. Like, Marilyn Monroe, not like...someone with golden blond hair. I can't think anyone. All the famous bitches have gone platinum.

( Read on for my hair-brained scheme. (Get it? Har har.) )

I feel a little better today, even though I swear every damn light bulb in the apartment burnt out as soon as I turned them on. I guess I'm sitting around in the dark, because I am way not tall enough to reach where Peter keeps the lightbulbs. (I'm also not going to break my neck by standing on the only chair we have that's suitable for the purpose. It's a rickety card table chair! We have no other chairs!)

Last night, I fell asleep on time for the first time in forever. I took four excedrin PMs and sat down to read while Peter was in the shower, and, by the time he was done, I was actually ready to roll over and go to sleep.

I'm still groggy now, but it was worth it. For the past few weeks, a bedtime before three o'clock was just impossible. I just couldn't sleep. I'd stay up and read, or get up and play Heroes of Might and Magic V or write.

( Nocturnal Emissions? )

Sometimes, when I think about my life, I can't be anything but depressed. I miss college, when I always knew what I was doing and what I was going to do next, and could change it with the help of an add-drop form if I didn't like it. I miss my apartment with ostrich327 where I had things the way I liked them to a reasonable extent and my own room where I could do virtually everything I could possibly want to do in one place. I miss all the people who have moved away, and I hate that I'm about to be another one. Mostly, I feel like I've suddenly lost control of my life, and I don't like it.

( Blah, blah, blah. )

Now that I've revealed the secrets of the universe in that lj cut (don't bother looking; they've expired by now), I still really want a DS Lite. And a Wii, even with the stupid name. And a PS3, even with the stupid price. But not really an X-Box, because, as far as I can tell, X-Box games are like computer games, but harder to patch. And I really want a cute little skin for my DS Lite that I don't have yet just like the one that maladaptive is going to buy, but a different style. Of course, if I could make a list of more than three games that I wanted (and was willing to pay $30 for), I'd probably already have the damn thing.

This article about the rhythm method being responsible for more embryonic deaths than abortion just about made my day.

Really, it just points out a logical inconstistency that the anti-choice community has completely missed. If life begins when sperm meets egg, and birth control pills are bad because they prevent a fertilized egg from implanting, then how is the rhythm method okay? The entire point of it is that while an egg might become fertiziled as a result of intercourse, intercourse is taking place at the wrong time in a woman's cycle for the fertilized egg to implant on the uterine wall and result in a pregnancy.

So isn't deliberately missing your fertile window and having sex anyway actually causing the creation of an embryo that you have MURDERED through willful neglect?

Oh, you silly anti-choicers. My whole day just got better because of you.