Thursday! January 31, 2008

As we all know, Thursday is my favorite day of the week. I love it.  I’d love this particular Thursday a little more if I could kill off this cold completely, but I’ll settle for finishing my weekly paper a day early and the joyous news of not having to go to work tomorrow.  This means I can spend my Friday sleeping in, finishing my accounting midterm and taking care of some bidness. Like getting my car inspected so I can legally drive it. That’d be a good idea.

And making a hair/waxing appointment. My eyebrows are starting to take on lives of their own.

Ok, now on to what I brought you here to talk about. Envy. The green-eyed monster. Jealously. If I had to categorize myself by one deadly sin, Envy would win hands down. I have always been envious of other people, my friends, my enemies, strangers, animals….I have a problem. I know it’s not a good thing (obviously Envy isn’t a virtue), but I can’t help it and I can’t seem to let it go. Case in point-I am currently very jealous of an individual who is carrying out a plan I considered earlier in the year. Joining a service organization that I (who is by no means a leader in community service) actually researched extensively and almost applied to. Why didn’t I? My schedule was not condusive to actually attend the training sessions. Now, of course, I’m graduating a semester early so that’s no longer an issue, but I’m already on the track to further grad school. So, why am I jealous? I’ll tell you why. And then I’ll cower in the corner because I know how big of a loser I am. I’m jealous because I feel like I had ownership over that plan of action. If anyone from my university is allowed to do that it should be me.  I thought of it first. They stole my idea! Yep. It sounds like the plea of a whiny fifth grader to me too.

Sigh. It just adds to the feeling of ennui regarding my life in general that I’ve been experiencing lately. I keep wondering about my reasons for doing the things I do. What they’re really based on. I think of all the experiences that are open to me as a college grad and my appetite for the novel is huge. I’m so afraid of getting stuck, of not having anything interesting to show after 10 years. I dread high school reunions where my friends shows pictures of their adventures in Europe or their year spent in Kenya and I tell tales of my collected degrees and the great book I just finished…

Right now the only thing I know is that I really don’t know who or what I want to be, what I want to show for myself, what my calling is, where my passion lies, what color my damn parachute is, but I hope it finds me. Sooner rather than later.

I wonder if everything I do/ I do instead/ of something I want to do more/ the question fills my head/I know there’s no grand plan here/this is just the way it goes/but when everything else seems unclear/at least I know/ I do it for the joy it brings/cuz I’m a joyful girl. -Joyful Girl, Ani Difranco

Shaba Listen To This… January 31, 2008

I realized today that I have yet to write anything about one of the main men in my life, my super-dooper roomie.

Zach and I have lived together since 2005 and a better platonic roommate situation there never was. It’s actually an interesting story if you have the time, so get your comfy pants on, I’ll wait.

Ready? Ok. So remember Sazza from a few posts ago? Well she and Zach dated for a long time when we were all in high school. I made friends with Sazza and naturally had to run into Zach occasionally by doing so.  We were always friendly but never really friends. He was just Sazza’s boyfriend in my mind. Even though we ran with the same crowd and had many mutual friends and classes, we never really became friends. Probably because we’re both slow to cultivate good friendships and relatively quiet.  Then one night at a sleepover at Sazza’s everyone else fell asleep at some ungodly early hour of the evening and Zach and I found ourselves in the middle of a conversation that lasted for about 3 hours. BFF now, right? Wrong.

That seemed to be a fluke occurence and we sorta devolved back to our old mutually indifferent semi-friendship. Then we went to college. I stayed around ( my school is an hour from our hometown) and he went far away but came back often to visit Sazza as she finished her senior year in high school. Enter the internet. That first semester was hard on both of us. Because of our shared inability to be outgoing socialite types we found ourselves communicating a lot on AOL. Zach really didn’t like his school and eventually decided to change schools, change majors, and transfer to my university. At this time I was living alone (no roomates because I didn’t know anyone yet and I wasn’t dorming) so I offered Zach a room in the house I was occupying. He moved in. Our not-really-friends relationship stayed as it was for a little while, but soon our 3 hour conversations caught up with us. And I’m not sure when or how it happened but he became my best friend.

We took classes together, we took spontaneous road trips together, we took ourselves on many a’ drunken (and sober) nighttime walks around our city. We decorated sidewalks in chalk, we picnicked in the rival school’s court yard, we discovered religious Grotto’s. We painted the walls of our house at 1:00am on a whim. We lost the cat during a huge flood, and found her again, safe and wet under the neighbor’s car. We knew our weekly television line up and savored WifeSwap and the 700 Club for the hilarity they provided. We shared shopping carts and methods on how to break into the house when we forgot a key.  We had a serious problem with buying more tea and soup then any british grandma could possible pack away.

And I could go on, but it would make for a very long post. And I’m sure I’ll go into it at a later date. Anyway, there was a period of time were we stopped living together. We had a fire at the house we shared and for the next school year we were both displaced, I split my time between my boyfriend’s apartment and a place I like to call “Grammaland” (yes, living with my grandmother was like living on another planet) and he found a few different apartments he bounced around in.

This past fall we were able to be roommates again, and things are pretty much back to normal. We’re both doing different things now, having graduated already and on different tracks on the railway of life, but it’s nice to have my best friend sharing my apartment once again.
I know this has been a rose-colored post thus far, and I’m not about to say that living with Zach isn’t wonderful, but nothing is wonderful all the time. Like, say, coming home to a lot less juice or pad thai then you expected. Or noting that once again the garbage did not go out on garbage day. Or hearing him press snooze every five minutes for TWO hours before finally shutting off his alarm.

But living with a guy, and especially Zach, has it’s good points. If something isn’t clean, it’s not a big deal. I never have to ask him to stop borrowing my clothes or my makeup. The only PMS I ever have to deal with is my own. And I can always ask him to put things in terms of the male gender for me….”Do guys really [insert stereotype here]“.  Plus Zach is probably the most un-stereotypical guy ever.

This is a guy who would not only watch Gilmore Girls and Sex in the City with me (along with the aforementioned Wife Swap) but would be upset if he missed it! He even taped Gilmore Girls for me when I had the night class from hell. When Grey’s Anatomy aired on Sundays he’d drive to my workplace and sit there with me while we watched it, just us, sitting in our coats in the hospital waiting area.  We play Ani Difranco “remember the lyrics” via cell phone and he’s beaten me. More than once.

And recently, he’s been introducing me to new music by way of YouTube videos left up on my computer with  the words “Shaba listen to this” typed in the search bar. The one left up for me today?  Yael Naim’s New Soul.

But, alas, I fear that I may once again be Zach-less. He has an interview tomorrow for a job I know would be perfect for him, and it happens to be in Portland. So I think I’ll be losing him to the west coast, but they’ll be a gaining a very cool (and single, ladies he’s a catch! I’ll set you up!) guy.

So that, in a very large nutshell, is my roomie. And look at that, just in time for WifeSwap is on…

Things I Don’t Want To Do January 29, 2008

• Get back out of bed
• Put my shoes on
• Sit through accounting class
• drive to the doctor tomorrow
• continue coughing up a lung
• my homework

Sigh.

President Bush or Tony Danza? January 29, 2008

Tony Danza for the win.

Hibernation Complete. January 28, 2008

I emailed in sick today. I actually felt ok when I woke up, but I didn’t want to take any chances and after sleeping through the morning and most of the afternoon I think I’m ready to rejoin the land of the living.

I even managed to get a chunk of work done on my paper and hopefully I’ll be able to wrap us this week’s work by Thursday, as expected.

I have a lot going on this weekend,  and I’m super excited. After class on Saturday morning I’ll be venturing up to Ithaca  to visit  Sazza and see a post-baby Ani Difranco concert. My last concert was about 2 years ago so I’m overdue. And it’s always a good time with her and those crazy Ithaca kids. The only downside is that I have to drive back to NEPA afterward so I can get up for class at 8:30 on Sunday.  Boo. And I have to be coherent enough to give a presentation. After that though, it’s all fun and games and drinking.

Weekend Woe January 27, 2008

This weekend was the first weekend in a long time that I had neither work or class.  I was excited. I planned to get things done, to catch up on important things I had been putting off, like organizing my crayons and reading my way through Barnes and Noble, in short I planned to use the two days to the best of my ability.

Apparently my body did not get the memo. I spent the weekend in various states of sick; either gross and uncomfortable (before medicine),  loopy and exhausted (after medicine), or drunk. Because of course I wasn’t about to stay home when there was live bands to see and happy hours to partake of. Besides, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a little vodka with my oj.

So I’ll recap my Saturday for you, because I know you’re dying to hear about it and I’m still a little loopy and that’s what I want to do. I woke up around 11ish with Boyfriend. He took me to a grocery store for juice and I debated buying 12.00 mucinex. The decision was made that we’d drive over to WallyWorld to attempt to find a better price on the stuff, success-9.00 at walmart. Still freaking expensive for 20 pills in a needlessly large bottle, but it works. He dropped me off at my apartment and I finished and submitted my weekly paper, caught up on google reader, tried to watch a lucy dvd and fell asleep. Forever.

Or, you know, four hours. I woke up and made soup and cornbread and watched half of Pretty Woman on  ABC. I’ve never seen that movie, which is weird because if anyone could give Hottnett a run for his money as my main movie man, it would be Richard Gere. But older Richard Gere. Not Officer and a Gentlemen Richard Gere. However I do have a aversion to Julia Roberts, I think her mouth is too big for her face and it annoys me, strange considering that one Christmas my mom decided to buy me a Julie Roberts collection even though she knew I don’t particularly like the woman. Steel Magnolias. My mom bought it for the opening scene where her brothers are shooting pigeons in the yard and tying condoms to the get away car.  She said that scene would resemble my wedding. Wonderful. It does have the best scene in cinematic history though. That part where Sally Field is crying/yelling/laughing in the cemetery.  I love it.  Anyway, halfway through Pretty Woman Boyfriend calls about going out. I change and we’re out for the evening.

5 drinks and 4 1/2 hours later we’re home and I’m asleep within minutes.

And now somehow it’s already 3:00 on Sunday and I’ve yet to complete what I wanted to get done this weekend.

I really like living on my own for the most part, but when I’m sick I miss having my parents around. Somehow Popsicles and soup just don’t taste as good when you have to make them yourself.

I know this post is very jumpy and lacks transitions. I’m sorry. Don’t tell my professors.

I’ve got a midterm to do, a paper to write, and a presentation to put together today. I think I’ll get on that.

Or maybe I’ll take a nap.

Eye Candy January 24, 2008

Boyfriend wrote a quick livejournal entry about his new found Movie Star girlfriend (Ellen Page) and his tv girlfriend (Kate Walsh), which got me thinking, I’m surprisingly loyal to my cinematic crushes.

No matter how sucky the plot (Pearl Harbor) I have to see every Josh Hartnett film that hits theaters. He’s been my main movie man since middle school.

That bone structure, that jaw line, and can we say, to borrow Brookem’s term, a good HOH! Swoon! Not to mention that he resembled a huge middle school crush of mine (who recently got married, weird!).  It’s been me and Mr. Hotnett since 6th grade. We’d probably get along well too, we share the same sign (Cancer). However, I’m not sure I could ever handle a man who’s prettier than me so our relationship was doomed from the beginning. Seriously, I’d probably just stare at him and forgot to speak, “Wow….You’re puurty,” and that would be the end of that encounter. Sigh. I’m content to stare at him in his awful plot-lacking movies.

On to the girls. Or girl, since for me there is just one. Ms. Knightley.

God. Not only is she amazingly hot, but she’s BRITISH. This is the only thing that could elevate Hotnett to god status in my book, if he developed an Irish accent. Get that boy in a sweater and you’d have the epitome of my physical ideal. But anyway, Keira=goddess, as you might have noticed from my 101 about me page it wouldn’t take much for me to switch teams for her. I think with girl crushes it’s more about “God, I wished I looked like that” than “God I wish that was in my bed right now, preferably with ice cream and undying devotion.” But really, with her, I’d take either.

Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, but to me, Keira and Josh set the bar.

What’s in a (Nick) Name January 23, 2008

I’ve been called a variety of inventive nicknames since I was a little girl. Of course there are the family only nicknames that are too embarrassing to mention, but the commonly used ones from mi familia are “Girl” and “Goose.” Girl because I’m the only female child in the family but don’t ask me how or why I got stuck with Goose, I have no idea.

In truth I always disliked my name because of its lack of nickname ability. Shannon isn’t like Jennifer or Jessica where you can just cut off the last part of the name and bango- there’s a nickname. Shan just doesn’t seem right, though my kindred spirit, Tristus has called me Shan since we were teeny. So, I kinda felt left out of the nickname circle, that is, until high school and the origin of “Shaba”.

My new identity came into being thanks to a note on a paper plate. My bestie Sazza (Sarah) left me a good luck note on a paper plate as she left my house in the morning after a sleepover. I had a diving meet that afternoon so she wrote, “Good Luck Sha-Ba!” And to this day has no idea what prompted the spontaneous nickname. It stuck. The rest of my close knit friends started calling me Shaba, and soon even my Dad had adopted the nickname. I even made everyone “Shaba Loves Me” tee-shirts for Christmas one year. It makes me happy. It’s fun to say, pronounced Shaw-baa, and has a friendly feel to it. Since then many varietions of Shaba evolved, Shaba-bobba, Shaba-mamma, Shaba-bobba-romulous, Shabliss, and my favorite, Shabalicious.

Then in came Boyfriend. He’s not a fan of Shaba. He argues that it’s not an appropriate nickname because the sound isn’t close to my original name, Shaw/Shan is quite a difference. So he developed his own, Shan-o-bam. And soon Shan-o-bam was shortened just to Bam. It’s cute. It’s something we keep just between us, and it’s nice to have a pet-name that doesn’t make me sound like an infant or a food.

So there’s the nickname breakdown in a nutshell. Feel free to cut down on the typing and address me as Shaba, or, you know, as my professional title, “Supreme Emperess of the Universe.”

Roe v. Wade, Gym Jerks, Diving, and a Survey! January 23, 2008

 If that’s not the most unusual post title ever I don’t know what is.

Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and as the token feminist on campus I wanted to give those individuals who fought for me to have a safe, legal abortion (if I ever need one) a virtual shout out and and incredibly large THANK YOU.  Now, I was not always pro-choice. To the contrary I would have argued with you all night about the issue in high school, “But why not just have it and give it up? Isn’t that more noble?” However, this is the same me who pined over an emotionally abusive boyfriend for years, obviously my head wasn’t screwed on straight. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, obviously, and mine happens to be that I don’t believe it’s morally right to take away the right of a woman in order to give a right to a potential person.  So that’s where I stand on that.

Ok, next item on the agenda.  Through my university I get a free Y membership (yay!) and I’ve recently started upping my visits (double yay!) and I also misplaced my membership card (b00). I’ve been super busy this week, classes, TA-ing, homework, blogging (hehe), and of course moaning in my car to practice for the Va-Jay-Jay Monologues; so suffice it to say I haven’t found it yet. The past two days it hadn’t been a problem, they just gave me a visitor card and told me to look for it. However today the front desk clerk told me they don’t give out visitor cards (maybe YOU don’t blondie, but the chick here yesterday did) so I had to hitch an elevator ride with another lady. Not so bad, I can deal. So I did my workout and gathered my stuff and walked down the 5 flights of stairs to the exit….and noticed I forgot my purse upstairs. Ugh! I ran back to the elevator and asked a man stepping out of it if he’d be so kind as to swipe his card through so I could get back upstairs. He shook his head and walked away. I was in shock. I would have taken 5 seconds of his time and he flatly refused. Whenever things like this happen I’m always more affected than I should be. I barely ever ask anyone, not to mention strangers, for any type of courtesy and this type of response is why. I remember wondering where the hell Karma was. I can remember  3 tasks I’ve done in the last week for perfect strangers, including finding cranberry juice and bringing it to a woman in line at the checkout! Oh well, I guess I just need to find that card.

On the brighter side, I finally got to see my brother dive in competition today. It was fun to watch him do some of the same dives I did in high school (and do a few I didn’t). He’s tall and lanky and still hasn’t gained control over his limbs. He’s all arms and legs going into the water. Every time he dove I flinched, he looked so close to the board from the angle I was seated at. He came in third, which is respectable for a freshman. I’ll be hanging out with him tomorrow and the next day at rifle matches. Maybe I’ll see if I can give him some pointers on not looking like a dying duck as he goes into the water.

One more tidbit before I turn you over to Survey-Bliss. I had my first Vagina Monologues rehearsal today, moaning and all, and I thought it went pretty well.  My “surprise triple orgasm moan” was longer than usual, but actually I thought it could be a little longer. One of my directors told me I should try to cut it down a bit because it might people uncomfortable. Isn’t that kinda the point? To make it over the top so women don’t feel uncomfortable moaning?

On to the Survey, I was tagged by Jamie.

Here are the rules:
Link to the person who tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Share six (6) non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
Tag at least 3 people at the end of your post and link to their blogs.
Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. 100 calorie bags of kettle corn usually function as my night-time snack of choice. Sweet and salty, and portioned controlled, what more could you want?

2. My youngest brother buys everyone socks for christmas and always gets me the coolest pair, this year it was yoga girls in various poses, I’ve also received tootsie pop socks, daisy duck socks, invisible socks, and “lucky socks”.

3. I’m ridiculously lazy when it comes to household responsibilities. I just don’t care enough to bug my landlord again about the loose and falling out tiles in my shower. The water still works, and I don’t really care about how it looks so why bother?

4. I have to pee before I go to bed, even if I just went. Otherwise I can’t get comfortable.

5. I’ve been watching ER since it came on years ago when I was in elementary school. I used to watch it with my mom and we’d eat soft pretzels. Now I still like to watch it if I can, it’s one of the constants in my life and part of the reason I love Thursday.

6. I’m a pack rat by nature, but I love the clean simplistic look of minimalism,  this irritates me to no end. Every so often I do a clean sweep and get rid of knick knacks and stuff I haven’t used in years and the very next week an opportunity to use it will arise. It never fails.

I’m tagging three bloggers I admire, Chelsea, Eleanor, and Nerd Girl.

Go check them out, if you get the chance!

What You Would Do If You Knew You Could Not Fail? January 21, 2008

Thanks to Chelsea I’ve spent the evening trying to figure out an answer to this question.

You would think it would be an easy one to answer, a person with as many passions as moi should be able to come up with at least one thing she’d be monumentously happy doing.  But, alas, that’s not the case. This is due, I feel, to my general personality as a realistic dreamer.

I love to day dream. I spend hours imagining things, different paths my life could take, different people I could meet or be, different characters in my head, etc. I love it more now that I’m in my twenties than I did as a girl.  And though the first answer to this question that jumps into my head is “Write a book,” realistically I don’t think that’s really the right answer.

And I think this comes from realizing that my favorite daydream characters, while fun to play with in the Barbie Dream House of my mind, never really do anything that American Jane would want to read about in a book; thus dashing my hopes of ever becoming a best-selling author.

Pair that with the fact that I KNOW fiction is not my forte, instead, for better or worse I’m a poet to the core. Much less commitment, much less acclaim. Thems the breaks.

That’s why I really don’t think “write & publish a book/series of books” would answer the above question for me. Not because it wouldn’t be awesome, but because it’s really not me, or wouldn’t be blissful or self-defining for me. I’d like to take a shot at it once, to say I did, and to cross it off my to-do list, but as a career? No thank you.

You know what I would really like to do? Start things. Just start a whole bunch of things, one at a time.  Get them running and successful…and then move on to the next thing.  I love the beginning part. I love the planning and the organizing, the brainstorming, the learning-as-we-go. Then I get bored.  I have so many ideas, so many times where I think, “someone should really….” but the idea of doing anything forever, or even for a couple of years make me antsy.

I hope that one day I find a solid answer to that question. Maybe I’ll end up owning my own business and follow that no-fail plan I’ve been considering for years. Maybe I’ll earn my Ph.D. do some incredible research, tour the country on speaking gigs, become the next Jean Kilbourne, and  convince the Smithsonian to build the National Women’s History Museum and hire me as the curator.  Maybe these characters in my head will finally do something and I’ll write a book that O-to-the-Prah touts to a best-seller.

Or maybe not.

But right now I’ll just savor the possibilities.