I think there comes a time in a person's life when one has to admit there's such thing as too much sleep. Lately I've been getting a lot of bizarre sort of dreams. Just before my half hour workout session (running at 4.5 mph for half an hour is killer!) I was taking a nap and I had a dream that apparently, while I was a little girl, I was on some sort of field trip, and I dropped a twig into the water of a stream and it ended up killing a woman and a daughter. In the context of my dream, I was sitting in the middle of class as I am now, 19 years old, that is, while one of my second grade teachers (we had two-teachers team teaching of 40 some-odd kids when I was in elementary school, it was fun) was going through a slide show presentation of this horrible accident and everyone was quite horrified, and then they were especially horrified, as was I, when all of a sudden the teacher informed me that it was me who dropped the twig. So then after that, in my dream, I went to an ugly church that had old 70s decor and visited the old man whose wife and child I killed and apologized and then he introduced me to his sons who were actually a group of old african-american a capella singers - this was only particularly odd because 1) they were as old as the old man, and 2) the old man was white. Thought this one was odd? I haven't even mentioned my using a scalpel to save the whole high school turned mental ward escapade.
Of another interesting note of what I did today, my parents took my sister and me to a Japanese buffet in White Plains, NY today. I expected it to be similar to the Chinese buffet in our area, which, to say the least, is a very painful experience. Well imagine my surprise when I walked into a large, spacious, well-lit, modern looking, CLEAN buffet with well mannered waiters who could actually speak English. And the food was very good too, bite sized everything, even the desserts. Todai is a very good buffet, and White Plains looks like a very clean Pittsburgh.

Tonight, I shall watch Case Closed - it's a Japanese cartoon based on a Japanese comic. Now the question is why would I, the anime-hater (more like anime-not-liker), would deign to contribute half an hour of my busy schedule to watch it at 12:30 at night on a Saturday? Simply put, I've seen the show dubbed in Chinese and it's one of the most fascinating murder mystery shows I've watched. Very clever, it's like a cross between Encyclopedia Brown, Sherlock Holmes and CSI. Hopefully they did not do too bad a job on the dubbing, and hopefully they didn't decide to chop anything out.
On another note, I had a wonderful chat with my best friend, Marlen.

My cousin Yogi would be so happy to know that I've suddenly taken an interest in Madonna. Mostly I just want to do the dance thing she did in her "Human Nature" video and try some of the stuff she's tried - like hennaed hands and..I guess they're called corn-rows or something, that hairstyle she had in the video. I doubt my face is thin or angular enough for that to look good, but it's a fascination I now have, thanks to unemployment.

Well, I've turned into mommy's little helper. There's no way around it - a summer at home where there's no work to be done and you get turned into an elf with a towel and some windex. I've been regularly doing the dishes, going out on errands with mom and just sitting around the house. I dropped off a ton of job applications earlier this week, and I know I could work at Macy's part time, but 1)I want full time, and 2)If I find a better job, I'd want to leave Macy's, which isn't a very nice thing to do to them and 3)I don't like department stores. Ideally I will get something at Pottery Barn or Williams Sonoma - they have great stuff that I like to stare at. Otherwise, maybe Borders Book Store, though I doubt it, since people always want to work there. So it looks to be like another boring week of washing dishes and surfing the web. How is it that my sister can find office jobs so easily?

I did it! I did it! I cooked lunch for mom and myself today from scratch. No cans, no recipes, just me, my bag of lentils and some fresh vegetables. And it turned out good. Mom looked a little dubious at first and said it looked like mexican food, but her eyebrows perked up on the taste-test and said, "Hai bu tsuo, o" which means "not too bad" in English. And she said that when she wasn't even very hungry which means that it must be good, especially when there's no meat in it (mom is blatantly anti-vegetarian, and I'm pretty sure that what I made is a vegan meal...). I thought it was quite yummy myself, though it wasn't the prettiest piece of gourmet cuisine in the world - mom likened it to Taco Bell mexican stuff. I don't really think it looks like Taco Bell per se, and it certainly tastes better and is much healthier. What really surprised me about this cooking experiment is that I didn't measure anything out at all, just a pinch of pepper here, some salt there, and things came out really well. Perhaps I have a knack for cooking? We'll find out when I make lentil stew I suppose.

What fun, what fun! My first freak thunderstorm of the year, I just love them. It rained for only around 10 minutes, really hard so that the road looked like a river, and it washed all the dust into the storm drains. And there was hail the size of ice cubes that my freezer makes falling from the sky. I would have run out into the road and stood there getting wet, except the hail would most likely have knocked me out or at least caused a lot of discomfort and bruises. We all went and stood on the front porch to watch the events unfold, me with my bowl of yogurt and granola, my sister with her comic book. Mom lost interest and started thinking about the flowers and I pointed out that some of our nicest ones, sadly I don't know what they're called, have bloomed into a brilliant shade of magenta. Dad just talked about how we had insufficient drainage on the property. I observed a bug trying to fly wherever a bug might fly in conditions like this. It was weaving it's way in and out from under the safety of the porch roof, until a big hunk of frozen water took it down and both of them were obliterated on impact with the brick edge that is the front of our house - a life and a form gone unnoticed from this world by everyone except for me.

The Wiz is a better musical than I initially thought. It's not a great great musical, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. There was dancing, so much dancing that I'm jealous and wish I was a year younger just so I could be dancing too. I was quite impressed with the girl who played Dorothy, and the Tinman (though he was out of tune occasionally), and also Colleen, but Colleen has always had good stage presence. And my friend Rob was very good too, with his Tae Kwon Do! He was crying a lot after the show though and I hugged him a lot. I don't usually like hugging, but I really enjoy hugging Rob, even a wet and sobbing Rob. One thing about the show overall that I noticed is that nearly everyone couldn't sing a few parts because their voices couldn't go low enough.
I think the biggest surprise was when, at the end, one of the faculty actors set up a bit of a ruse with the director, and they turned a pretend raffle into a marriage proposal. I have to admit, and I hate to admit, that it impressed me (though if anyone ever tried that with me, I'd kill him later).
To go a bit further into the past, my friend Matt and I went to the mall in search of job applications today. I found that to be quite a bit of fun since we laughed and joked our way from store to store as we filled things out and got paper applications. I came away with quite a handful of pages.

Today I feel angry. It's been quite a while since I've gotten home and I still have nothing to do. My sister has been grumpily driving off to work with dad and I've been sleeping in till noon and mooching around the house, dusting off a few places, scrubbing some counters. But overall, there's been nothing. I haven't been productive. I want to work. I want to be busy and make some money so I'm not always dependent on my parents. I'm not being useful and I'm not happy about it. Just angry.

I found the most amazing blog today - actually it's the online pillowbook of an australian bisexual temptress (I wonder how she bags them so easily, and how it is that she doesn't worry about STDs). I started reading it roughly an hour after my friend - skipping school - left after a quick visit - which was around noon. I just finished a few hours ago, actually went back to her earliest blog and read through it all. I believe that was some of the best writing I have read in a very long time, even better than a lot of novels that are out on the market. It was quite humorous and things about it were quite thought-provoking. Despite it being a pillowbook, I wouldn't even call it anywhere close to pornographic smut, I would say it was like a memoire filled with a bunch of lemons. I think it will be one of those sites that I will visit quite often and read with interest. It reminds me that I used to visit "the best page in the universe" a lot and read with that sort of intensity. That page has lately fallen out of my favor though - the writer doesn't update much anymore and his humor has lately been slacking, more bigotry instead of the old satire and sarcastic commentary. I think maybe he's starting to grow up and isn't really into it anymore. How sad...

I think that as long as I don't eat and don't think of disgusting things, I can avoid that horrible nausea feeling I've been getting. Or ask mom to buy a lot of Halls Cough Drops, since those have made the ickiness go away a bit. What really annoys me is she's been eating my cough drops (they're my cough drops, mommy, I bought them myself....). O well. I also think my olfactory senses are going insane in that sometimes I catch a whiff of things that aren't here, like the smell of a nice herb shop or something that reminds me of my cousin's apartment in Taiwan. Could it be that I miss Taiwan? Because I do, I really really do. I want to shop and eat lots of yummy yummy foods, and see my cousins who I haven't seen since I was 10 and go back to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial and walk in the gardens at noon, in the darkness beneath the walls and watch the sun shine on the reflecting pools...

Well yesterday was just a terrible day stomach-wise. Just massive nausea across the board. And I was a little nauseous after lunch too...Though I just finished dinner and things don't seem to be bothering me. I am tentatively attributing it to my growing aversion to meat. Why oh why? It's summer? Let me enjoy a steak when daddy decides to barbecue! O well...
I'm still waiting for a job to magically appear - I called the temp services yesterday and asked if there was anything they needed from me and only one of them bothered to call me back and they called me back two hours later to say didn't have any photo ID - why didn't they tell me this the first time I called? I also contacted a local architect to see if I could intern or something, anything, I'll work for free for god's sake just get me out of my house!
Ah hem, anyway. I also noticed my comments section has turned into a wonderful debate field for my friends - M and L you know who you are. It's absolutely fascinating, I just read the comments through again and it's quite enjoyable to see that my depression can get something like this, though I don't intend to be depressed more often no matter how fun it is.

So the things that are making me not bored are really doing just that. Making me not bored. However, I forgot one crucial detail in making myself not bored. I have to be completely happy with myself.
Unfortunately I'm not (the being lonely part really, and that o so wonderful feeling of inadequacy). So I just watched one of the movies I rented - Bend it Like Beckham. A wonderful movie that I laughed through. Then after the movie I started wondering if there was anything that I could do really well. And to tell the truth, I can't do any one thing really really well. I'm like my father, where I'm really good at many sorts of things, but I lack the conviction to really apply myself to one thing and become really good at it. Sadly, I think I also inherited that tendency from him. But this strays from the point where I really feel crappy that I can't do any one thing really well. I don't really want to be good at soccer, or really any sport (I hate sports, no offense sports lovers, but if you ask me about Women's college basketball I can tell you loads - Daddy's influence yet again). I also don't think I want to be really good at the violin. It's just...too passive a sort of skill. I want to be an amazing dancer, or some sort of movie star (except many of them aren't too great, personality-wise). I'm ranting I can tell. I just, there's this feeling of desperation and anger in me. Why can't I be noticed? Why am I always the one in the background? For once I would like to be the one people gape at in awe of because I'm a spectacular person with an amazing talent. God, I'd settle for something as stupid and ephemeral as being the prettiest girl in the room.
I'm being an idiot. I'm going to shut up now and try to get some sleep.

I have things now to make me not bored! I went to the library and took out a few books which have amused me greatly (I've gone through 1.5 of them) and a couple of movies which I have yet to watch. There's also a fascinating online game that I'm going back to as soon as I finish this post that has kept me in this computer room for the past few days. They've proven a good way to make my days go by a bit quicker as I anticipate Monday evening - when one big worry will finally have an outcome. And other worries as well...why must I worry so much...?
I was discussing the idea of depression over dinner with my parents, as a friend of mine has not dealt with it too well recently. I was trying to describe it to them as I perceive it to be and begin to wonder, was I actually depressed most of the year? Sometimes at college I would find myself sitting up at 5 am with classes in 3 hours, not sleeping. I was tired, I had nothing to do, and I was just sitting at the computer with absolutely nothing, no one online, keeping me there. I just couldn't bring myself to stand up and take the two steps that would bring me over to my bed because I summon the energy or the will to do it. I think that's what depression is, and I think I was depressed.

So, it's another day of boredom. Sadly, I couldn't sleep this morning, so I'm already awake and it's not even noon yet. The indignity of it all. I think that today, I shall beg mommy dearest to take me to the library, where I shall take out stacks and stacks of books. I think that today, I should also try out that new treadmill that is lying dormant in the basement (mom and dad should be using it...why aren't they?) I can't wait to find a job, a nice, mind numbing job that will occupy my mind on the most minimal level for hours on end - just like high school. High school which I think I've visited way too many times for it to be healthy (I'm not a loser, I like the teachers...). Is it just me or does everything seem smaller when visiting old places? Even my house seems smaller, my parents seem shorter, my sister - well, she couldn't really get any shorter (sorry, May ^_^).

I was bored! Lookie! Isn't it somewhat cool? If I knew any html I'd tweak it a little. And silly Blogger says you have to keep your photos ftp-ed elsewhere....ugh...Maybe my sister can help.

Hello, everyone. I'm home now. In fact, I visited the high school just this morning and chatted with some of the teachers for hours. Tomorrow I go back for round two and show off the Maya documents I didn't bring today and swoop in to meet with the teachers I missed today. So much to do, so little time. Right now I'm beginning to feel that depression that comes with having nothing to do. What I need is 1) something to do (a job would be nice, or a fascinating new book) 2) somewhere to go (sitting in my house which is freezing cold despite the nice weather outside is not good) 3) someone to hug (I miss CMU) 4) less time that is free. I think I'm too much of a workaholic...I actually DREAMED of working last night. I actually WANT to work. What is wrong with me?

So yah, taking a break from packing now. I had no idea I had so much junk. I've accumulated way too many things over the course of this semester. I'm starting to weed out what I won't be using...So sad...

Today I feel something that I haven't felt in a long time - I feel that desperation of loneliness. I'm once again clicking between email, AIM, blogs and particular other websites in search of people who want to talk to me. I have that tense feeling in my chest that I get when I feel alone. Why do I feel like this? I have a whole bunch of friends I could hang out with now. I suspect that perhaps I'm sensing the impending loneliness that will come when I get home. Of course there will be my friends from home, but getting to hang out with them will be so much harder without transportation and parents hovering over my shoulder. I'll also miss the people here at CMU. I can pretty much assume that a month from now, I'll be back to my insomniac ways, sitting up at 3 am for no reason, just searching for people and wishing.

I got an A! My life is complete! I have the approval of my professors! Absolute euphoria!
Only downside is that I was tried calling home and good ole' mum was happily chatting away again. I guess they'll just have to wait to hear the good news. Too bad for them. For now, I shall go out and enjoy the joy that comes with getting an A in studio!