Things finally look different around here, a change I was more than ready for. Thanks to summer break I finally got to sit down for an hour and change things up a bit. I'm still getting a few odd and ends in order around here though, so things may be a bit off for a day or two. (Sure, I could have just made sure that everything was as it should be before uploading anything, but that would require patience. And I hope you know me better than that by now.)

Changing the layout was more of a bitch than it should have been due to my previously shitty and less than flexible CSS which necessitated me going back and manually changing the format of each and every single entry. With one exception (why, oh why, did I write so fucking much in March?) the whole process actually didn't take too long, which is a good thing since my love for this site is not more than my love of reading, going out, or sleeping.

(But is definitely more than working or doing homework.)

If anything is missing or glaringly wrong feel free to email me and yell at me for mixing cocktails and coding (though this wasn't the first time and certainly won't be the last).

Last night I had a dinner to attend in honor of a classmate's birthday. One of the few people that I've bonded with in school, this girl and I have procrastinated to the point of making it an art form and have muddled our way through more than one group project together, which bonds people together like a motherfucker.

And though she's my closest school friend I don't see her all that often. We didn't have any classes together this past semester, I missed her by two days at the General Meeting (which she also volunteered at - nerd!), and we're both are kept pretty busy juggling work and school (and for me, my drinking habit).

So when it came to getting her a gift I was at a bit of a loss. I always buy people books, but like me, she works at a library...so that was a no go. Instead, I turned to my never-fail gift giving backup plan:

The Basket.

Seriously, The Basket is why you want to invite me to your party (even though I don't get drunk and make out with people anymore). Born out of the fact that I am horrible at shopping for other people, I've found that picking a theme, buying crap that fits the theme, and adding alcohol (key ingredient!) always comes through as a winner.

In honor of wrapping up the semester, I decided to give my friend a summery themed basket. Or as I called it "I'm swimming in the tub because not everyone in Southern California has a pool, dammit". It included:

Things couldn't be better. I'm alive. And done with school. (For this semester, anyways. But let's focus on the positive here.) After working straight through the night and into the morning I turned both finals in early Friday (around 6am), a whole couple of hours before the deadline. Within two minutes of turning them in I had opened beer number four, thumbed through a Cosmo, and watched a redneck assert that he "hadn't had but nothin' to drink at all ever" on COPS. I could think of no better way to give my brain the break it so richly deserved (for, you know, those three nights of totally hard work).

Unfortunately, I couldn't go out and celebrate the culmination of the semester on Friday night since I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 6am on Saturday to volunteer at the yearly General Meeting of the Society of California Archivists. (Think someone might be getting close to graduating and is desperate to look "involved"?)

The event actually turned out to be a completely painless process, and was in fact kind of neat. I'll spare you the details though, as they'll probably bore you to tears unless archives are like, totally your thing.

(No? Didn't think so.)

It took a whole 5 minutes after my volunteer shift ended for me to realize that with the semester now over and work off until Monday, I was now free, free, free! And since I'm only lazy when it comes to things that I don't want to do, I decided to hit up the bars then and there, rather than wait for later that night. (Though I totally did that, too.)

A quick aside: I generally abhor daytime. A night person to the extreme, I could happily live without ever seeing the sun again (I did this for awhile when I worked graveyard, and it worked out just fine). Daytime is for waking up, crowds, traffic, and work - pretty much everything I hate. However, there is one thing that makes the daytime totally bearable, enjoyable even.

Drinking.

There's something about walking into a dark, cool bar when it's blindingly bright and warm outside, when most people are at work, at the grocery store, or carting the kids around to soccer practice. I don't know just what it is (actually being able to sit down? the 30 seconds -if that- that it takes to get a drink? no! line! in the ladies room?), but I consider daytime drinking to be one of life's greatest pleasure. So if you ever want to see me out when the sun is shining, the words "Corona", "Jameson", or "Bloody" and "Mary" had better be involved.

(I'm just saying.)

So I had a few beers at the bar on the way home, a few more at home, and drunkenly played fetch with the dog, earning a "how fucking dumb can you get" look from her when I accidentally threw her toy into the rose bushes after the first toy ended up on the roof. (And for your information canine, it's not how dumb can I get, it's how drunk can I get. And from your vantage point on the couch you've watched me stumble through the front door enough times to know that the answer to that is very.)

By then it was nap time, followed by some nighttime drinking, a good six hours of sleep, and an hour-long bath, promptly followed by a four hour nap (cause you know, bathing...totally hard work). Before I knew it the weekend was over and it was back to the monotony of work, and the frustration of moving, and the total fucking joke of cleaning a place that I am moving out of. It's enough to kill the joy in anyone, but I'm determined to fight it and keep the celebratory spirit up for two reasons:

Reason #1: Somehow accomplishing the impossible, it looks like I got aced my classes, again. I am as shocked by this as you are. This is definitely cause for celebration, as now I don't have to lock myself in the bathroom and cry in the shower over how stupid I am (which would totally have happened had I received a B). Hooray.

Reason #2: I start summer school, which I will be attending full time, in less than two weeks. Summer, which should be full of Dodger games, beer on the porch, skinny dipping, and other assorted drunken hi jinks will now have to be crammed into the two weeks of freedom that I have before classes start.

What with so much to celebrate (summer! a break from classes! grades! genius!) and so little time to do it, I'm not sure where or how to start. But I am sure of where and how it will end: with me wearing a Dodgers hat, passed out in the gutter, clutching a bottle of Jameson and mumbling "I'm number one...I'm number one". Because I may have me some smarts (or am just really, really good at cramming - more likely the case), but dignity was never something I claimed to possess.

Let the summer (all two weeks of it) begin.

I just wanted to let you know that last night around midnight I reached Procrastination Stage 3: Two Days Before the Assignment is Due Sounds Like a Great Time To Look Over the Requirements For the First Time.

Oops.

It turns out that my simple final assignment of building a website (hi - no problem!) wasn't quite so simple once I took the time to read the fine print (ie, the assignment). Just a small sampling of the things that this website has to include:

Last night was a night for firsts.

1. I went to the bar, had less than one drink, and then left. Sober. From the bar.

2. I passed on a Girl's Night, instead preferring to "head home at a decent hour".

3. I went to bed at 11pm last night. (Ok, so I did that last Sunday night, too - but that was an accident. Who knew that drinking beer all day with a friend and then going home and smoking a bunch of pot would make you pass out? Not I.)

After doing some seriously impressive avoidance on the whole homework front all weekend long, I finally felt the weight of responsibility crushing down on me last night. I am now at Procrastination Stage 2: You Should Really Fucking Start This Shit Now, But It's Not the Absolutely Last Night To Do It So You Totally Won't But You Will Start To Feel Majorly Stressed Out About It...Now.

Leaving a bar sober, going home/to bed early...this week cannot be over fast enough.

(I promise that the whining about school will stop soon. At least until summer school starts, and then it will really pick up.)

What, you ask, could make my week of near non-stop work, the saddest Mother's Day ever, and soul-crushing, mind-numbing final projects even better? How about getting horribly, deathly sick?

Well, maybe not deathly. But close. I woke up yesterday morning with a sore throat and by today I'm finding it difficult to swallow. Today I can't focus, feel lethargic, and am suffering serious memory problems (which may or may not be due to getting about 4 hours of sleep per night this entire fucking week).

As I can so totally NOT be sick right now, I have a plan of attack. It's kind of crazy, but maybe just crazy enough to work. I'm actually going to give being healthy a try, at least for a whole 24-ish hours.

When I'm not sick (I hesitate to call it "well") I live mainly off coffee, whiskey, and macaroni and cheese. Not really what you'd call "good for you". But when I get sick I like to shock the fuck out of my body by drinking water, taking vitamins, and popping Airborne tablets like Xanax.

My body, ever grateful that it's finally, finally! getting water from a source other than the ice in my drink generally whips itself into shape in record time, and I am rarely sick for longer than a day. Hopefully this will be the case, as I can totally not afford to get laid up right now. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love being sick (my ideal day consists of alternating hours of napping and bathing, anyways) but I really fucking need to focus on finishing my final projects.

So say a prayer, slaughter a calf, whatever it is you do. Just hope that I get well, or more realistically, just less sick.

I have two final projects due in exactly a week. Of course, I haven't really started either of them because if college has taught me anything in exchange for the thousands (thousands!) that I have spent, it is that procrastination works.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that when it comes to creativity (or, talking out of your ass) there is nothing like last minute pressure. I can try to write a paper for a week and come up with shit, but if I sit down the night before an assignment is due it is as though someone has flipped a switch and I'm suddenly on.

The proof: I was finishing up a paper at work last week, dying to get it done before the weekend so that I could go out that night (it was due the following morning and I really, really did not want to stay in all night working on it). Within two hours I added about 7 pages of pure fucking magic, finally putting me a whole two words over the 5000 word minimum. And I went out and drank a lot that night. And there may have been drugs involved. And I ended up getting an A+ on the paper. A happy story all the way around.

The second reason that procrastination works is the simple fact that putting stuff off lets you instead go out and do other stuff that is much, much more fun; stuff that feels even more fun than normal because having a reason to drink (thanks, grad school!) always makes the drink taste that much more like sweet, sweet relief. Which means make it a double.

And sure, that last night that you wait to finally work on something is hell, but it only lasts for a few short hours. I'd much rather stay up until 5am studying furiously (so like, during commercials) the night before a test than have to (gasp!) stay in each night for a week (or more?!?) and study in small, reasonable increments.

(And besides, studying is for stupid people.)

So, back to my two finals. Both have the potential to make or break my grade. Both are due a week from today. Between now and the due date, I have a whole ONE day off. And oh yeah, that day also just happens to be Mother's Day.

Well, fuck.

That one day off that I had set aside to start/finish my finals so that I could ensure maximum celebrating-the-end-of-the-semester time will instead now be spent trying to get my recently-grieving mother to forget that her now only child will likely never give her grandchildren.

...

(Still better than writing an essay on ethics, though.)

9 days into the Month of Moving, and so far, so good. All of my shoes (3 pairs Converse, 4 pairs flats, 304,986,290+ pairs heels), furs (vintage, don't bitch), and dresses have now made it to the new house. And completely filled the closets.

This a problem, as, um, I don't really wear that stuff much. And now there's no room for the stuff that I actually do wear. If you know me chances are the only things you've actually seen me in are: jeans and a striped top, jeans and black t-shirt, jeans and a black hoodie, or black lacy undies, a Budweiser halter top, and a Dodgers hat. (That was a great night. I'm told.)

Inspired by a few beers I decided to get in and do some creative arranging last night, and somewhere around midnight I finally managed to make everything (except for the purses, handbags, and clutches...fuck) fit into a single closet. I stepped back, admired my handiwork, and proceeded to let the warm glow of satisfaction/alcohol warm my chest.

An organized closet is especially important to me as it's pretty much the key to my past. Let me explain: some people have photographs, I have clothes.

Whether it was getting dropped on my head as a baby or my love affair with whiskey (neglect and genetics - you get the blame for both, parents! Ha!), the end result is that my memory, seemingly mirroring my very nature, is completely unreliable.

Going through my clothes last night I was reminded me of past events that for the most part I had completely forgotten about. I picked up a pink cardigan with pearl buttons and was reminded of my first-ever boyfriend, who bought it for me (setting in motion my love of all things sugar daddy). The black, short (and only see-through in some parts!) dress that I wore for dinner to celebrate college graduation comforted me with the knowledge that oh yeah, I did actually finish some school sometime long, long ago. And there was the delicate vintage flower print silk dress that called to mind the time I attempted to lift it in a Vegas bar to show someone the gun tattoo on my hip.

Ahhh, the memories.

The closet is also where the Shoes, paramount among them the Heels, are kept.

Let's just get it out. I own a sick amount of Heels. Not sick/good but sick/one day you're going to find me clutching a pair and crying about how nobody loves me as much as I love my shoes but that's ok because Stilletto and I will be together until death and beyond, because what would heaven be without Stilletto there? (Answer: not heaven at all.) I hate to perpetuate such a girly stereotype here, but as Asian drivers and women drivers and particularly Asian women drivers show, stereotypes sometimes emerge because they're true.

So yes, I love Heels. Love, love, love. And as with drugs, the higher the better. Besides, when you get drunk and fall down (as should happen if you're doing it right), you can always blame The Heels.

But enough about the contents of my closet. (Sorry about that, guys.) Tonight, rather than cleaning or organizing or doing anything, anything at all! to avoid doing homework, I plan to actually sit down and put some good, honest time into my final course project.

Or, I could just go to the bar.

Decisions, decisions.

Yesterday was without a doubt the most glorious afternoon that I have spent in the last year, hands down.

After a long Saturday night (whiskey, I love you) and a lazy morning spent in bed (getting out of it a Herculean effort) I was supposed to meet up with a girlfriend at a restaurant downtown. We never quite got around to that part, though, which may or may not be due to the fact that when I stopped by her house to pick her up I had a case of beer in my arms. (Actually, it was entirely due to this.)

What followed was beautiful: two girls getting drunk (mostly me), getting high (her), and getting ice cream from across the street (both). We managed to kill a good three hours this way, sitting on the porch, getting fucked up, and coming up with the solutions to life's greatest problems (to call him or to not call him?).

While I could have lived on her porch (only until I plan out and execute the death of one of her roommates) I had to head back for Costa Mesa for the night. Normally this is enough to bring on the Sunday-evening blues as it dawns on me that 1) I will be back in Costa Mesa for two whole days, 2) I have to be at work at 9am on Monday, 3) I will likely be hungover at that time. However, I'm pleased to report that last night, while not at totally perfect as the afternoon, was still pretty great: pizza, beer, and The Venture Brothers. And I was asleep by 11, which made yesterday the first Sunday in forever that I have not been up until at least 4am.

It's not a trend that I expect to last, but hey, I'm all for trying something different.

Despite the misconceptions of many, working in a library is primarily about customer service. And thankfully so, as my background in waitressing and bartending (the latter short-lived but glorious) are what helped me land this job. (Health benefits? What are those?)

I doubt there will be much else I will go through in life that will leave as much of a mark on me as those experiences did; they forever changed me, generally making me a more aware and considerate person in almost every aspect of my life. (Driving is a notable exception here.)

Many friends that I am still in regular contact with were coworkers from the waitressing/bartending days. The shared experience of dealing with nightmarish customers and clueless management while striving to get by binds you like nothing else that I've come across (I imagine it would be similar to a hostage situation).

The authors behind Waiter Rant and Barmaid Blog remind me of many of these coworkers/friends. Intelligent, self-aware people, these two happen to be quite entertaining as well. Total professionals in an industry where it's occasionally (more likely: frequently) hard to keep your cool.

(We know where this is going, right?)

Turns out that "keeping cool" isn't really one of my strengths. (Shocked, aren't you?) It took a couple years, but when I snapped, I snapped. (Keep in mind I was young and awfully immature when this happened. It was a whole two years ago.)

I was managing the graveyard shift at a 24-hour diner just off of Pacific Coast Highway. A typical shift started at 10pm, geared up after last call (we were located right next door to a bar and adjacent to several others), slowed down around 3 or 4, and finally ended (with a trip to the bar ourselves) at 6am.

It was a weekend night, busy, but just starting to taper off. The drunken rush had come, been served, and were for the most part quietly cramming food down their throats in an attempt to soak up all of the alcohol consumed earlier. I checked in, topped off the coffees, told the host not to seat me under penalty of death, and finally went to sit down with a buddy that had come in to visit.

At some point during our conversation, another customer of mine, a man sitting by himself, began to bitch. His food? Fine, he said. His coffee? No need to be topped off, thanks. The problem then? Apparently, the conversation between my friend and I was annoying him. I should be busy serving people (regardless that everyone was taken care of) not sitting on my ass.

Hmph. Any other night, I probably would have laughed it off. The customer wasn't particularly angry, loud, or even agitated while talking to me. Just drunk. Grumbling, mumbling, drunk. I'm not sure if it was because I had had enough of the drunks, or just enough of the job, but I was done. I had just gotten through serving countless numbers of drunk Orange County club trash, just as I did every weekend night. I had just wanted to sit down for a minute, take a break, and catch up with a friend. And now some asshole, eavesdropping on our conversation, called us annoying. So yeah, I was done. And I decided that he was, too.

I picked his half-eaten burger out of his hand, tossed it on his plate, and carted the whole mess off to the trash, all the while telling him to get the hell out. After freezing for a second, hands still poised inches from his mouth, he did.

(Everyone else in my section was incredibly well behaved after that.)

I quit a few months after that incident.

It's a shame that it ended up being my people that got to me, but it turns out that dealing with drunks is not nearly as fun as being one of them. (What, you say? That's crazy talk!)

Some of the drunks were infuriating, some of them were funny, some sweet. Some (Jake) were all three. Some of them threw up in their bowls of chili and tried to send it back to the kitchen. Some of them hit on me ("Come here often?"), and despite that ended up becoming great friends of mine. Some of them tried to steal beer from the fridge, or tips from the counter. Some of them helped to pay my way through college, or at least for the drinks I bought the next night. Some of them crashed their cars on the way home and died.

Sometimes I miss that job. But not often.

(Update: I just got tipped $20 at work. This is odd, as I now work at a library. I guess I am quite the customer service superstar, after all.)

And now I'm off for a three-day weekend, starting off tonight with a trip to Alex's Bar which has the distinction of being the only bar at which I've ever gotten into a barfight. On Christmas, even. (Class. Pure fucking class.)

Cheers.

My near year of two-county cohabitation is coming to an end. (For those not in the know, I currently live in both Costa Mesa and Long Beach. It's complicated, and a less than ideal situation. Hence, moving.)

So this is very, very good, as I will be moving out of Orange County and back (full time) to my beloved Long Beach. This is very, very bad, as I totally fucking hate moving.

This move will be the fourth in 3 years. I wish I could say that I've gotten good at it, but nothing could be further from the truth. My procrastinator tendencies absolutely shine when it comes to moving, and I have yet to ever take the time to pack things up in boxes and move them in a single day, instead preferring to pile as many belongings into my car that will fit, and make as many trips back and forth as it takes. It's a bitch for sure, but I still maintain that this is much easier, if less organized, than spending a week preparing for the whole moving process.

This time, of course, won't be very different. However, since the Long Beach house is available to me now and I don't have to move out of the Costa Mesa apartment until the end of the month, I figure that I don't actually have to move at all. If I just take a bag or two of stuff each time I go to Long Beach and drop it off at the house, I should be all moved in no time! (I'm sure there's a flaw here, but I don't want to look at it too hard.)

With the actual physical act of moving now off my plate, I just have to worry about maybe getting a new car (in addition to the Nova - she's not going anywhere), thinking about new jobs (with graduation happening in fall), and not living with the boy (mixed feelings).

At least my closer proximity to Ferns will surely help me deal with all of this (bright side!).