last week, i came across an awesome deal: brand new skechers skates, exactly my size, for $5.00 on ebay. i bought them envisioning how i'd skate joyously around the skate track at the huge park next to my apartment. when they arrived, i was happy to find out that they were, indeed, brand new and exactly my size--and hot pink wheels!

but it rained all week, and i have not been able to try them out until today, when i realized that i made one small oversight in my planning---i forgot to account for the fact that i have no sense of balance.

i was three feet from my starting point the first time i fell. i fell at least four times on the way to the park, two while in front of slowly moving cars, whose occupants were no doubt laughing hysteically at me. did i mention that i skate slower than i walk?

anyway, i never made it to the park, because i realized that i don't know how to stop or turn. and whenever i get scared, i leap (face first) into the nearest mound of grass or bush. this could pose some problems at the park, where people regularly ignore the "pick up after your dog" signs.

but i shall not give up--practice makes perfect! one day, i will skate smoothly and at a normal speed. and i will be able to stop at will. meanwhile, i'll just keep repeating that to myself.

hmmm.. i think i'll go have a beer.

i went to vegas last weekend, and had my palm read in the indoor mall at Aladdin. The man told me, without my mentioning it to him, that i love to travel, and i like to write. he made the following predictions:
-a great travel opportunity will come forth in the next year or two, that will cause my career to take off.
-my career will go strong until i'm about 35, at which point it will thin out due to some sort of conflict, maybe with a co-worker. I'll either change careers or take an extended vacation, have kids, etc.
-i will marry an extremely, extremely powerful man.
-i will marry twice
-i will probably outlive my first husband.
-around the age of 50, i will come into a position of immense power, probably more power than i want or need. around that same time (and this might be what causes me to gain power), something really bad will happen to me that will hurt me very much, like the death of someone close to me (my first husband?).
-both of my marriages will be strong relationships
-i will not have any major health problems
-i will probably live to be 80 or 85
-i will have kids
-i should pursue a career that involves traveling
-i am a very passionate person
-i will do well in business and in a career that uses my creativity
-i am a good leader of people
-i have good intuition
-he kept reiterating that i will be very, very powerful, not only because of fate, but becasue deep down inside, i thirst for power.

whew. pretty detailed reading...i'm not sure what to make of it. i certainly hope i will take a great trip within the next year or two, but it would suck to outlive my first husband and have something horrible happen to me when i'm 50. i never really thought i was a powermonger, but who knows? i guess i should make a mental note to buy my first husband a fat life insurance policy, muahahahaha.....

I received $70 worth of Lawry's certificates in the mail yesterday!!! Including the $20 certificate I got last week, that's $90.00! Oh, and amazing news--they have a special (until April) where you can get dinner for two for $75.00! This may seem like a lot to spend on dinner, but really, it's a pittance when you consider the amount of joy a really really really good meal brings into your life. Dinner for two includes a choice of entree (excluding the Jim Brady cut), spinning salad, dessert, coffee, and bottle of wine. That's like getting wine, coffee, and dessert for free! Do I seem overly enthusiastic? That's because I am!! Email me for the flyer if I haven't already accosted you with it. Come April: double Lawry's VIP points. So much for eating healthy.

today, as i was coming back from lunch (at 4:45, mind you), Richard Marx's "Right here waiting" started playing on the radio. When I parked, I sat for awhile with my feet on the dash, listening to the raindrops and watching them streak across my windshield. Slow jams and rain go so well together.

crappy law school for free, or $90,000+ of debt and a degree from a good school? what if i don't even want to be a lawyer, and end up having to be one to pay back my enormous debt?

what's worse, the more i look into it, the more it seems i'll have to be sitting around on my ass for the most of the summer, waiting for news from schools. this really blows, since i want to travel this summer.

decisions, decisions...

Coupon Shopping victory of the week: $44.19 worth of groceries for $17.33!!!!

i'm scaring myself with my obsessive-compulsive tendencies lately. example: i bought these groceries by looking through the sunday newspaper, cutting the coupons out, organizing them into a list of dry, frozen, refrigerated, and miscellaneous (to maxmize efficiency so i didn't need to walk back and forth between aisles), then bringing this list to the grocery market, where i checked each item off as i bought it.

that isn't abnormal.. the abnormal part is that i did all of this at 5:30 AM on a sunday morning. the newspaper arrives at 4:30.
then again, this IS a very productive way to deal with insomnia.

I was never like this before. i think it all started with the time i tried to clean my closet. now everything's clean. my room is fucking SPOTLESS. i even have a feather duster.

god help me.

i had an interesting discussion yesterday about whether we use morals as a cover-up for the fact that we actually always do what is in our own best interest.

por ejemplo, i'd like to think that i want to have a successful career because i want to be able to provide for my children the opportunities i lacked as a child. but doesn't that mean that i'd also live a pretty comfortable life? i don't even particularly like kids. are my morals just a sham to trick myself into believing that i'm less selfish than i really am? i'd like to believe otherwise.

where do morals come from? i used to think i knew the answer--that morals come from God. but now that i'm not so sure. if i create my own morals, then i am my own God, and that's scary because i don't know what the hell i'm doing. whatever happened to my faith? it's discouraging to think that something i used to believe so, so strongly, albeit blindly, i now question with such skepticism.

abliet? albeit? skepticism? scepticism? oh, nevermind....

i never thought i'd say this, but....i miss school. work is just so...dreary. i wonder if every job i ever have will be just as ploddingly routine. i guess that's what happens when you're forced to be somewhere for 8 hours a day when the sun is shining outside and you'd rather be anywhere but in a stuffy, flourescent-lit building. would i still hate work if i were forced to, say, write for 8 hours a day? actually, i probably would. i hated writing in college.

i drank 8 metropolitans on saturday night.

i have a new additiction to add to my list, below Lawry's prime rib: Doubletree cookies!

lisa works at doubletree, where, bless them, every guest gets a fresh, warm cookie at check-in. lisa gets them for free and brings them home so she can watch me drool like a pavlovian fiend.

if left alone with a bunch, i will most likely consume until i die. don't rats do that with cocaine?

on saturday, i, in my infinite wisdom, decided to apply to santa clara law school while still half-asleep. i proceeded to pay for my $60 application fee online, and right after hitting the "submit" button, i realized that i have a fucking FEE WAIVER for the school. now, i feel too stupid to ask for my money back, because in fact i lost the fee waiver and would need them to mail me another one. well, actually, i did call the school anonymously and said "i'm sorry but i accidentally paid for the application fee because i forgot my fee waiver, that i somehow lost. could you give me my $60 back?" the tone of the admissions director's voice indicated that she would put a big red "X" on my application should she ever disciver my identity...so i've decided to not request my fee waiver and take it all as a $60 lesson. dammit.

on monday, i went shopping at Ralphs and bought $78 worth of groceries for $29. i am so proud. double coupons baby, yeah!

check this out: KurzweilAI.net

okay. time to write this down before i forget it, or convince myself it's not true:

On Saturday, September 14, 2002, I was in San Diego with my friend Nadia Richardson. Nadia and I spent the night at her friend Bettina's house. That night, I had a dream. It went like this:

I was in the back driver's side seat of a car or van, looking out the back window. The scenery was receding before me because I was moving backwards. I was passing through a bustling street, except something told me that this wasn't an ordinary street, and the people weren't ordinary people. Everything was bathed in a golden light, and the buildings looked like they had golden trees intervowen into the walls. The best way I can explain it is that it reminded me of Rivendell in The Lord of the Rings, except with cars and buildings. I was in awe of this place, but the people who were in the car with me (they were my friends in the dream, but I don't know them in real life) seemed nonchalant.

I wanted to take a picture of this place, so I reached into my backpack to grab my camera, but my camera was stuck on something inside my bag. Then, we passed through a tunnel that went through a mountain, so I couldn't take the picture.

When we emerged from the tunnel, I was sitting facing the front of the car. I looked behind me, and saw that the golden light from the strange land behind the mountain was filtering in through the clouds. It was beautiful. I looked to my left, and saw waves crashing against a cliff. The water was covered in strange green algae that covered the waves like a blanket.

This next part is not a dream.

When I woke from my dream, I was mesmerized, and stunned because I remembered it so clearly (I still do). I told Nadia and Bettina about my dream. I also told Sherry and Tim.

Now here comes the eerie part....

A month later, Tim and I were supposed to go on a week-long cruise to the Mexican Riviera. We bought our tickets, packed, everything. Two days before departure, a hurricane hit Cabo San Lucas, and our cruise was cancelled. We were, of course, totally bummed out...so we decided to take a vacation somewhere else instead. We ended up deciding on Hawaii.

While we were in Hawaii, we rented a car and drove into the middle of the island.

I was sitting in the front passenger seat.

It was sunset, and we were driving towards a mountain. I tried to take a picture, but my camera ran out of batteries, so I couldn't. We were traveling towards a mountain. I looked in front of me and the golden light was filtering in from behind the mountain, just like my dream. This was the exact same image that I saw in my dream. Then, I looked to my right and saw waves crashing against a cliff.

Then, we drove through a tunnel that went through the mountain.

I couldn't believe it. I barely do even now.

This has raised many questions for me.

Was I fated to miss my cruise and go to Hawaii by default?

Since everything happened in reverse in real life, the strange Rivendell-like land bathed in golden light was supposd to be at the other end of the mountain. But it wasn't.

I think it's especially strange that everythng I saw in my dream happened in reverse when I actually saw it in real life, like a mirror image. I have a theory, if a very farfetched one: you know how when you look at things, the image is actually projected upside down and mirror-image onto the back of your retina, but your brain turns the image right side up for you? Maybe that has something to do with the reverse order of reality to my dream, because I was not seeing with my eyes.

This is no joke. If I can find Nadia (we lost touch), I can prove it. Sherry and Tim have vague memories of me telling them about my dream before I went to Hawaii. I wish I would have written it down so I would have concrete proof.

Can anyone enlighten me on these very creepy events? This is by far the weirdest, most fascinating thing that has ever happened to me.

Just when I thought that the LSACD (law school application CD) could torture me no more.....

I was playing around with it (since, goddammit, it was expensive, and I wanted to see what I paid for) and found a diaolical little part of the CD that calculates, based on your GPA and LSAT score, the probability that you will be accepted into certain schools.

Now, during my free time, I hunch over my computer looking up my chances and cringing at the results.

I mailed out six applications this weekend. three more and i'm done. now begins the four-to-six-month period of agonizing waiting. i've always wondered what berkeley's rejection letter looks like....

"Reality is what doesn't go away when you stop believing in it."
--Philip K. Dick

i have internet access again (cue triumphant choir)! i am now once again connected to the rest of the world. no more long conversations with Marley, my plant. sadly, i think Marley has taken a turn for the worse, and is slowly dying. heartfelt supplications and pep talk have not worked--i think he needs sunshine.

so it turns out that i do not have any cavities, thank goodness. no drills last saturday.

i bought two cases of wine yesterday, ostensibly to give to friends for christmas, but i think i just want an excuse to have too much wine on hand so i can drink it whenever i want.

i'm going to Lawry's tomorrow to celebrate the holiday season with a large, juicy prime rib, creamed corn, and spinning salad. one day, i will marry a Lawry's chef, use him for all the prime rib he's worth, then dump him for another Lawry's chef with a bigger medallion. now THAT's a goal.

still busy. very very very busy. no time for reflection.

i have a dentist appointment on saturday. i haven't been to the dentist for a long, long while. he creeps me out. i can't stand the smell of the place...and the sound of drills *shudder*.

i don't have internet access at my new place. it's amazing how much you can accomplish when the option of signing on isn't there. but i feel so cut off from the world lately.

oh! I HAVE A NEW CELL NUMBER, so email me for it if i didn't already give it to you. i just mass-emailed my number to everyone, but i got all these return emails from that bastard DAEMON...so i guess i have a lot of outdated addresses.

sitting at the office right now, eating a rice bowl and drinking green tea vitamin water. another thursday.

I'm moving out of my house this weekend.

I've moved out before, during college, but I've always left all of my non-essential things behind, knowing I'd be able to come back and get them if I ever needed to. But my room is going to be used for other things, and I need to clear everything out this time, and I doubt that I'll ever be living in this house again.

Strange, realizing that I no longer live at home anymore.

I've lived in this house since I was a baby. I remember running around the neighborhood with the other kids (all of whom have moved away) repeating the only thing I knew how to say in English: "Just a minute!" I remember the glorious day I finally grew tall enough to reach the light switches on my tippy-toes. I remember sitting in the front yard with my mother, tickling one another's noses with the weeds. Years later, sneaking out the back door at night (and sneaking people in). I've gone through 22 years of laughter, arguments, fear, joy, tears, in this house. So many memories reside here.

It'll still be here, of course, but I'll no longer have my space here. It's sad to think that my whole life fits into a few truckloads of boxes.

Upheaval is a catalyst for change.

i've been so busy lately i barely have time to breathe, much less write, so i have decided to use my saturday night to mull over law school applications and try to put some thoughts together for my personal statement. i should have done this a long time ago, but considering that i now have 13 days to fill up the blank paper that is my essay so far, and fill out all of my (blank) applications, and get my transcript from Fullerton College sent over to the LSDAS, and make sure all of my letters of reccomendation are in, it looks as if next weekend will also be spent at home.

the new job is very hectic, but i am now so much more clear about what it is a lawyer actually does all day. my co-workers are just about some of the most stressed-out people i've ever seen in my life. also, they speak legalese, which is a completely foreign language to me. they run around throwing phrases like "motion in limine for collateral estoppel" at me... and i have not an inkling of what they mean. do they want me to stopper their collateral with a modified lime? if i survive it, i'll learn a lot from this job.

I bought FIVE pairs of shoes today for a little under $70.00! I have a pair of red euro-style tennis shoes that look like bowling shoes, three dressy strappy shoes, and a pair of black boots. I am so proud of myself.

for some reason, all of my old shoes decided to fall apart in unison. could it be possible that i wear them all out at exactly the same rate?

i didn't vote yesterday. and i don't even feel guilty about it. why? because, dammit, we had two of the most sorry lame-asses on the planet running for governor. i have a major problem with smear campaigns, and it seems that all gray davis has been spending his tens of millions of fundraising money on is defaming simon on national tv. not that simon doesn't seem kinda goober-ish himself.

maybe someday, when the gubernatorial candidate is not a cretin devoid of common sense and morality, i'll actually drag my lazy ass to the polls.

actually, strike that. i'm registering to vote for 2004 elections--i'm voting for whoever runs against bush. i don't care who it is.

2nd day of my new job. worked from 8:35 till 7:40. learned ten million new things. tired as hell. byebye.

i made my own halloween costume. it's a tulle skirt with flowers and ferns and spanish moss---i'm gonna be a woodland fairy! i have big purple ears and a wand, too. i ran around the house in my costume all night last night.

tomorrow is my last day at my job!! i'll try to look sad, but i'm sure i'll barely be able to contain my glee. i'll be lucky if i don't break into paroxysms of joy in the middle of my goodbye lunch. in the past two weeks, i've finished all their database queries and reports up to june, so if they don't find someone else who can use a computer by then, it's their own fault. ha.

do i talk too much?

Baby61212: but really, i don't like online chess
eMdeeMae77: heh
eMdeeMae77: aite
eMdeeMae77: some reason i like the top view
Baby61212: i'm going to mexico soon, and i;m going to buy a miniature chess set while i'm there and accost everyone with it
eMdeeMae77: accost eh?
Baby61212: i like the "unnerve your opponent with steely glare" view
eMdeeMae77: hrmmm
eMdeeMae77: for some reason
eMdeeMae77: i can't imagine u able to do that
Baby61212: how about "talk your opponent into delerium" view?
eMdeeMae77: u do that even when not playing chess

i got my LSACD in the mail today. i was hoping that, considering how much i paid the LSDAS, it would be wrapped in $5 dollar bills, or that when i opened it i'd find a golden ticket, but alas, all i get is a cardboard sleeve (and a flimsy one, at that).