mr. jones

i'm taking steps to be more social, and to make new friends in town. fingers crossed for me.

I said "don't you turn around, wouldn't like what you found out here anyhow..."

Sometimes it's hard to remember that not everyone is the same, and that you can't always find the solution to other people's problems. I think that perhaps the worst is knowing that there is a good chance that there is nothing you can do to make someone happy, because it's not the world that's getting them down, but it's a problem that originates within them (seriously, there is nothing I can personally do about chemical imbalances). It's just rough; it's hard to watch a friend smile, and know that it's only a fleeting sense of happiness.

and i'm not sleeping now, the dark is too hard to beat

good chats. more some other time.

Sending April off with a bang!

April has been an otherwise annoying month. Thankfully the end of April is beginning to turn itself around (which still brings high hopes for May, which has some exciting things planned in it). I look forward to seeing what the future has in store.

I'm currently editing a paper in my office. I tidied my desk early (both a form of procrastination, and for my sanity). The paper is significantly better than the previous versions, and I think that that ought to be true, since it was first written by Josh in his second year, long before he had really gotten into his research. Now as a fourth year it seems to be a much more together and focused paper. I'm proud of it.

I got a goldfish plant for the office. Meghan said that she liked it. I really like it, it brings a bit of life to the office, and will make me feel less depressed while working here in the summer. I also brought in a butterfly chair. Granted, it's not as nice as JD's new office chair, it's a real improvement on the current sitting situation in the office. Maybe sometime over the summer I can replace my desk lamp.

Since my last post a lot has actually happened. Some of the highlights include: meeting Jorge Cham of PhD comics, sitting through the first GASP meeting of 2011-2012, booking the first stage of my trip to Colorado, permanently changing my appearance, and spending more time with my fellow classmates (no sign of desirable number one, but i'm pretty sure that that is destined to go nowhere, so i'm glad to at least be seeing more of the others). Sana and I started talking again and I'm glad.

Anyways, back to listening to Parachutes (Coldplay) and editing!

she said let me clean my teeth

about to head out... pretty excited for the evening (but i may just be saying that, no part of me feels physiologically excited).

i guess i'm looking forward to going home this weekend. it'll be nice to see my family... now if only i could see my friends. i feel like it's been forever, and that waterloo has eaten me whole. just making it through the weeks... winter needs to end.

South Western Ontario Road Trip!

This weekend I'm hitting up Hamilton, Guelph and KW! Hamilton for some fun with old elementary school friends (one of which JUST got engaged), Guelph tomorrow for the Arkells, and KW on Sunday for TKD, stim making, and homework! It's going to be a long weekend!

I've also just finished my LSA application. So fingers crossed that I win an award so that I can afford to attend the institute this summer!

everlong (acoustic, greatest hits version)

yesterday i told my friend brendan that i feel nothing. he asked if i had some sort of superhuman spy training. man, i wish that were the case.

i felt a bit annoyed today. i was told that my program likely will not include a master's section. i personally would like to get my master's. I'm doing all the same work that the students who get a masters with their phd are doing, so I want the same recognition. i think that that is fair.

anyways, work to do tomorrow:

• finish stats assignment
• start working on LSA statement
• make some stimuli for new study
• contact RA about calling daycares
• start readings for next week
• email marta back
• dishes!
• email students about make up exam

nothing good happens after 2am

marshall of himym is correct on this one. i shouldn't be allowed to make decisions in the middle of the night. i screwed up. i booked my ticket to nyc on a weekend when i'm already out of town. stupid.

anyways, i saw black swan tonight with a friend. it's a very intense and beautiful movie. there are very few spoken words, but you can feel everything. it's very dark. i highly recommend it.

while out we decided to start a cooking club, and it's my task to think of a witty name. i'm pretty excited about the upcoming semester. i'm exciting about living life. speaking of cooking, i have some brownies to bake!

subways in pittsburgh

just a quick post because my ears are ringing, and i need to watch the season finale of merlin. my ears are ringing because i just got home from the dinosaur bones, the reason, and arkells show. but, lets talk about the past few days in order.

Thursday:

As previously discussed two friends stopped in for dinner and a movie, which went exceptionally well, other than the fact that i made a large salad that only i could eat. we ate the lasagna (carrot, zucchini, spinach, mozzarella, and ricotta), drank some red wine, and watched amelie. my friend sana had never seen it before, and as she claims to be a lover of romantic comedies i thought that this was a tragedy. the movie was wonderful as always, christie managed to get over her desire to kill my downstairs neighbours, sana fell in love, i missed my garden gnome days, and we discussed people and places we know. i greatly look forward to our next movie night.

Friday:

Woke up early, scarfed a couple of muffins and ran to catch the bus to toronto. em and i went out for a delicious sushi lunch before trekking out to the Ex for the one of a kind show. we spent a good 5ish hours looking and shopping. while there, i ran into an old friend and got caught up. before and after meeting up i managed to snag a number of wonderful pieces, my favourite being a silver giraffe pendant on a silver chain. it's very cute.

all in all friday was an awesome and exhausting day. after the show em and i grabbed dinner at marche (rosti and cheese cake!). though we initially had plans to try to convene with others for drinks post-show, we were too exhausted to do anything other than sit and enjoy dinner.

Saturday:

Had lunch with the family, and then decorated the christmas tree (a tradition i have only ever missed once - thanks to an ill timed set of exams in the early years of undergrad). following that i jumped on yet another bus to head back home to the arkells show. my brother only had good things to say about their shows, so i was pretty excited. when i got to wax, i found out that the opening bands were dinosaur bones (of toronto), and the reason (woah, flashback to a band i loved in highschool). while at the show, i met a nice lady who was in attendance with a short tempered man, and a young kid who looked like my old friend bill (ian's younger brother). i also got to watch the final shootout of the leafs game, while sneakily trying to check out the guy standing next to me (he looked kind of like the college-aged version of dexter/michael c. hall).

anyways, reviews of the bands!

Dinosaur Bones:

I was unsure of what to expect when a group of hipster like guys wandered onto the stage. They played a super short set, and promised that they'd be putting out a new CD sometime next year (i'm guessing sometime soonish, otherwise it seems sort of crazy to be promoting it already). they had a good sound, they reminded me of the reason why i used to like seeing moneen, and some of the reasons i didn't (mostly that their kind of music isn't well suited for some venues, it seems like i was missing a lot of the vocal harmonizing, and guitar mastery due to weird sound meshing).

The Reason:

I thought that they were a bit of an odd choice after hearing dinosaur bones, and reflecting on their old 2003-era sound. i recently added their old CD to my ipod, and i was reflecting the other day about how different their music is from what i normally listen to (they used to be a bit screamo, but i loved them dearly). anyways, the newer stuff by the reason is much more calm, like how alexisonfire became after dallas started taking over the vocals, and more mellow. it was strange. i'm not sure that i'm against it, but i really do wish that they had played more of their old songs (understandably its been like 7 years since they first started playing them, but still!). they played one old song, "subways in pittsburgh", which was fantastic.

The Arkells:

They were seriously fantastic. Just like on the record but better (how rare it is to find a band that is actually better live than recorded!). I think that the highlight of their setlist was when they played "champagne socialist", because dan broke out the harmonica and played it like a master. i mean, the song usually has a harmonica in it, but when he played it live, it was just unbelievably good. their sound was clear, and they had a lot of fun. i had a lot of fun. seriously.

i guess i lied about this being a short post. at least i didn't ramble on more about the girl standing in front of me for the arkells. i could write a whole post about her; she's the rotten, annoying kind of girl that is easy to hate. a few quick words: 1) she started a fight with the woman standing behind me that i had been chatting with, because she saw nothing wrong with her and her tall boyfriend standing right in front of her after she waited there for 3 hours, 2) she then ignored her boyfriend (except to spend lots of time making out with him in the middle of songs, while he tried to listen), only to flirt with his friend (who apologized to me for standing in front of me, and said to ask him to move if he got in the way - nice offer), 3) bumped into people and thought it was rude that they asked her to try to control her movements, and 4) talked through all of the songs, because she clearly was not as interested in the band as she was interested in having both boys attention (i'm surprised that they weren't more annoyed that she kept interrupting their sing-along).

right. anyways, off to watch merlin!

good night, world!