Being Amber Rhea

Okay kids, as of probably tomorrow, my blog will be out of commission for a while. I’m back in Georgia and tomorrow is the mad packing day. Our faithful server Pen-Pen will be taking a well-deserved vacation before resuming his duties sometime toward the end of next week. The next time you read my blog, I’ll be in Texas!

I know it’s stupid, but I’ve created a Target wish list. Not like I expect anyone to buy me anything from it, or even know it exists. Honestly, it’s mostly to help *me* remember what I need and/or want to buy.

So much for last night; now I’m feeling crappy again. I’m ready to get out of here. I want to be in Athens. But also I want to already be in my apartment in Dallas. I want to be painting it, arranging furniture, something like that. Actually I don’t know *what* I want. Now the future feels scary and menacing again. This sucks. :-(

I am immensely confused because according to my bank statement online, I have about $50 less than what my checkbook says. Yet I went through and compared everything and it’s all there, and in fact for a while the bank was saying I had *less* than what my checkbook said. I usually don’t worry about that kind of thing since transactions get posted in a different order and it should all even out, but this time almost everything has already cleared and there’s still that discrepancy… argh. This is why I am not an accountant. Well, whatever the bank or my checkbook might think, the bottom line is that I need enough money in my account so I can pay for all the moving expenses once I arrive in Dallas. Bleh!

Tonight I drove to Borders. -Okay, first, a note of clarification: I spent the afternoon with Niki’s mom. We had lunch at Fazoli’s (yay!), then went to a new Super-Target, and then to her office at Time Warner Cable to clean out the refrigerator (sp?) in the staff room. And get this, she let me borrow her *car*! She said I can have the Passat until Monday night! (One of the first things she said to me when she picked me up at the hotel was, “I’m mad at you, you should have called; if I’d known that you didn’t have any means of transportation, I’d have given you this car!”) They have like 3 cars so it’s not a problem. But I was totally floored, I couldn’t believe it! So now I have a car and it was hilarious what a sudden feeling of freedom came over me. (That sentence was a grammatical disaster.)

Okay, back to the story at hand. I drove to Borders tonight and bought The Language Police by Diane Ravitch. I managed to read one chapter of it before the store closed. Fascinating topic, and one which I would like to blog about (ack! I used blog as a verb! not to mention ending a clause with a preposition!) at a later time. This entry is more ethereal (read: cheesy). So anyway, as I was driving back from Borders I was listening to Automatic for the People, which, to my good fortune, had been left in the CD player. I stopped at the traffic light at the intersection across from the hotel, and I sat there… and sat there… there was no one else around and the light wasn’t changing, it was like those crazy lights in Athens that refuse to change even when there’s no one else coming for miles. But as I was sitting there at that intersection, with no sign of any other cars or people around, listening to Find the River and looking around at the dark, still night sky, it was just… I don’t know, a moment. I sang along quietly with the song and everything just felt kind of right. -Actually, it wasn’t so much that everything felt right, but more like the absence of feeling, but in a good way… -argh, I can’t describe this, I was never meant to be a metaphysicist. Maybe you get what I’m trying to say.

I parked the car in the parking lot and it was kind of funny because it was perfect timing — Find the River ended as soon as I stopped the car. I got out and walked toward the hotel; there was a breeze coming up and who knows, it might actually rain tonight (I doubt it though). As I walked through the parking lot I felt profoundly okay. My line of sight into the future was completely blind, but that didn’t bother me. A couple was walking a little ways ahead of me and they just seemed like another part of the surroundings. I took a second and thought about not thinking, and then went on into the hotel.

Now I’m here with my faithful little iBook, listening to Liz Phair mp3s and relaxing. The feelings that inspired me to write this entry have dissipated a bit. Starting to worry again about things like whether I have to pay a $100 deposit to TXU, and where the hell my new cell phone might be, and if there will be any problems with the moving truck, and so on. But today was a good day (don’t worry, I’m not going to make any Ice Cube references) and for the most part I still feel pretty good. Here’s hoping tomorrow will be a good day too. [takes a swig of Sprite]

That reminds me of something else kinda funny and noteworthy. Last night we were somewhere (dinner?) and I said that I wanted to buy myself an iPod as a present to myself for getting a job. One of my fellow TCs asked how much iPods cost. I said about $250 (okay, I see now that they start at $299, but whatever) and he made a noise that was meant to convey his feeling that that was expensive. I said, “It’s really not that expensive if you consider everything you get.” He was like, “Yeah, but I’d rather spend my $250 on — oh wait, you don’t drink…” So we had a little laugh at that. I don’t know what the hell I would do if I *did* drink — I mean, I’ve been broke enough for the past few years as it is, I can’t imagine what a hole I’d be in if I had to account for a “beer budget.” I said something to that effect, and the response was something along the lines of, “Well we make adjustments, we all have our priorities…” Yeah, okay, anyway… I do want an iPod, btw. It will have to wait until after several paychecks because I’m gonna be racking up even more debt with this move, but hopefully sometime in the not too distant future I will be stylin’ and profilin’ with my mp3 player/hard drive/PDA/Solitaire console.

Wow, this is pretty long; I haven’t been this verbose in a long time. Here’s your referrer search-o-the-day:

 26 Jul, Sat, 14:12:06 Google: g3 for gay urban women from june 2003

As well as your daily dose of Liz Phair:

What if I’m not able
To put my cards on the table?
And would it liberate you
If you knew what I knew?

And that’ll be all for now!

I know I cut-and-paste these referrer searches a lot, but I’m sorry, their randomness never ceases to crack me up:
22 Jul, Tue, 02:47:43 Yahoo: will venus fly trap eat gnats
23 Jul, Wed, 15:46:57 Google: blog indian feminazi
26 Jul, Sat, 03:26:51 Yahoo: "Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn, Say What!?"

“You phony as hell, I’m A-T-L, you from Augusta” –Hitman Sammy Sam

Maybe it was by serendipity that I found the following excerpt written in a random stranger’s blog (friend of a friend of a friend) today. Or maybe it was purely a coincidence (and maybe serendipity doesn’t really exist). Either way, it did lift my spirits a little after the previous two 14-year-old-girl-esque entries:

Does anybody but me think that a gap between the two front teeth is really sexy? I don’t know what it is about that. Maybe it is that the people I have known who bore this trait were just like the folklore on it would have you believe. They’ve all been sexy, warm, open, sensual people. And fun.

Aw shucks.

I’m embarassed, I can’t believe I posted that previous entry. But I guess my blog is supposed to be a representation of my life, no matter what… :P

I wish I could go home Saturday instead of Tuesday.

I’ve lapsed into that sorry state of self-consciousness which I *thought* I had risen above, seeing as how that sort of thing hadn’t really bothered me in, oh, over 6 years. Yet now, with some of the stupid things I’m thinking (and I *know* they’re stupid, but still I’m thinking them and being bothered by them) it’s like I’m 14 again or something. WTF? It’s going to sound stupid and pathetic and you’re going to roll your eyes at best or make a snide remark at worst, but I’m gonna say it anyway: there are so many girls who seem so much more well put together than I am. How can I ever stand out against some of these other girls? -This sucks, I haven’t had thoughts like this in ages. Why am I suddenly seized by such doubts again?

I’m almost embarassed to publish this entry, but oh well, here goes nuthin’. :P