thislooksfamiliar

i have this bucket of mints in a draw at work. i bought it at wal-mart. it was 5 dollars and contains approximately 160 mints, according to the packaging. they are individually wrapped in plastic and dressed in red swirls like rotund candy canes. and they have become my addiction while at work. never anywhere but work. i don’t dare bring them home lest i eat them all in one night.

when i come in to work in the morning, i’ve forgotten about them overnight. so as i sit down to begin my tasks i am taken by surprise at the light wafting scent of peppermint, artificial as the plastic bucket it is coming from. and i think to myself that i’ve rediscovered this great secret and i must have one.

the folly of these mints is that they are “soft” mints, like the after-dinner mints at a restaurant. the ones we want so badly that we disregard the grunginess of the spoon we must use to retrieve the mints. the ones others have breathed on, sneezed on, picked past and diseased. only these mints are individually wrapped in their own protective plastic wrapper. a translucent shell of cleanliness and propriety.

and so, at the ripe hour of 10 in the morning, i lose a battle of willpower to my habit. and then again. and again. i force myself to stop. i get some water from the kitchen. i drink it and pretend i’m content. i hold out for lunch. the half hour before noon is the longest of the day. lunch distracts me for a while. but when it is over, my mouth tastes like turkey and wheat bread. i need something minty to freshen my mouth.

yesterday evening i went into boston from work to look at apartments.  i saw four or five that were all pretty good.  but the thing is, my two roommates couldn’t go. so i made movies and took pictures to show them and made a google map with all the info. so it’s all up online nice and pretty, but i’ve been waiting like 30 minutes for a video to post to youtube so i can link to it.  it’s getting kind of ridiculous.

in other news, my allergies have pretty much relegated me to the computer. which i don’t entirely mind, but i would have liked to gone outside after work today.

and last but certainly not least, my good friend over at unrefined multimedia has launched their newest endeavour, skateb.org. from the site:

Have you ever been to a new park and got vibed? Have you ever skated a new city or town and been totally lost as to where to find some locals who could really show you around? Have you ever wished skaters could just come together and just SKATE!?

Skateborg is making life easier for skateboarders everywhere. And it’s completely free. Become a member today and …

• Post, rate, review, and recommend skate spots.
• Find out where your buddies are skating.
• Be a part of the fastest growing online skateboarding community.

so go check it out, sign up, rate some parks, meet some fellow skaters and rock on.

so i noted earlier via twitter/facebook that today is loving day, which i heard about on npr this afternoon.  so go hug the nearest multi-racial couple near you.  or something.  there isn’t really an official way to celebrate. for more information visit lovingday.org.

in other holiday-related news, i found out that my birthday, april 6, is also national tartan day.  i smell a theme for my next birthday party.

peace

today was my last day of classes. it was rather uneventful and i didn’t really celebrate. i was very busy today.

as previously posted, i had a fun time getting my awd portfolio completed/passed in. so once that was done, the bulk of my day was over. i still had a class to go to (dynamic earth) and all we talked about was how global warming and going to kill us all. not really, but we did talk about global warming and the effects it will have on us.

after i went to work for a couple hours, i had the community service project to work on. an nu graduate came up into the lab tonight to help me work on it for about an hour and it was helpful. because nu is based around co-op, i am leaving the city starting in july to work on my co-op job, and i need to find some people from the other division to pick up the project when i leave.

i didn’t end up getting back home until about 8 pm and just caught the tail-end of jeopardy. my roommates and i love wheel of fortune and jeopardy and watch them both every day. we keep our score for jeopardy on a white board. we always win because there are four of us and we neve take points of when we get one wrong. but it’s fun.

around 9 pm we started my first game of risk. i did well in the beginning but didn’t know the strategy and ended up not doing so well in the end. my roommate max ended up winning after barricading himself on australia.

tomorrow is ‘reading day’ so i have no work to do. i don’t have a final until monday so tomorrow is going to be a very relaxed day.

peace

my awd portfolio containing:

• 1000 word reflective essay on the class
• polished copies of each of the four papers
• reviewed draft copies of each of the four papers
• reflective essays for each of the four papers

(all put together nicely in a binder) was due today at noon. the absolute latest that it could be in was noon-fifteen (12.15).

i hadn’t touched this project at all. all of the four papers were written, the drafts were reviewed and the reflective essays completed, but i hadn’t

• organized them
• gotten a binder
• written the 1000 word essay

i set my alarm for 8 am this morning thinking that i would get up and write the essay and be done with it. i didn’t get out of bed until 10.15. i organized everything first and didn’t start writing the paper until about 11.30. needless to say, i didn’t finish by noon. i finished at 12.05 and physically RAN to my teachers office.

i knew the room number and building, but had only been there once before. the last time i went, i had gone into a building that was connected to the building she is in and walked through the buildings to her office. so i tried to do that again but forgot how i did it last time.

these buildings are VERY confusing to walk through. there are four old buildings which were all built at different times connected to each other by various doors and walkways, no order to it at all. it’s a running joke on campus.

so i ask some kid in the building i had gone into how to get to the building i wanted to be in and he told me to go back outside, down the street and into another building. so i did. with far less than ten minutes left on the clock.

so i run back outside, down the street, into another building. mercifully find the stairs in almost no time and run up them at top speed almost taking out an old professor. god was on my side and when i got to the top of the stairs, her office was right around the corner. i couldn’t have passed it in with more than 2 minutes to spare.

by the time i got back to my apartment it was 12.20. i can’t believe i made it. i just can’t believe it.

this is what i look like as i write this:

i haven’t showered. i’m wearing the clothes i slept in. i have bags under my eyes. my hair is only half an inch long and still managing to stand up. i haven’t eaten. i went outside in only a sweatshirt and i’m cold. i smell. i’m hungry. i’m dirty.

peace