Open Daily Until 1:00 AM

not blind, deaf, or dumb

2006-06-03T22:48:43Z

I need to get out of this town, or at least find some new friends who aren't going to dick me over. In case you ever really want to insult me the best way to do it is to insult my intelligence. And for the record, acting like I'm a fucking idiot and trying to make everyone hide the fact that you're dating my ex is a pretty good way to insult my intelligence. Every day that goes by without her fessing up just makes it exponentially worse. So to her say thanks, keep twisting that knife, I really appreciate it. Go fuck yourself San Diego

It's true

2006-05-25T06:24:05Z

You Are a Martini

There's no other way to say it: you're a total lush.
You hold your liquor well, and you hold a lot of it!

http://www.blogthings.com/whatmixeddrinkareyouquiz/

It's true but there's no shame in this game. That's just how I roll

pants fight

2006-05-23T00:20:08Z

I need to go shopping, I hear Victoria's Secret calling out my name. New bras, thongs, and various lacey things here I come. Shopping for underwear is usually the only kinda shopping I really like to do so it'll be a good way to cheer me up

amstrdm @ 2006-05-21T18:35:00

2006-05-21T23:27:30Z

    I miss Atlanta already and I haven't even been gone for a week. I always get really lonely when I'm back in Gainesville, I miss living with my friends and always having something to do. Being back at home is no good especially when getting people together to do anything is like pulling teeth sometime. I'm glad Chris is back in town, I'm hoping that we'll actually end up hanging out a lot, I always see him in Atlanta but we never seem to chill enough back in the 'ville.
    The boredom of the 'ville has led me to start poking around myspace and I ended up finding, through a friend of a friend, a guy I used to have a crush on in 9th grade. I spent a while reading his LJ and I've gotta say he seems pretty cool these days.  Well there you go, I'm officially one of those weird myspace stalker type people. See what this town does to me?

Angry Kristy

2005-10-01T22:00:58Z

All I wanted last night was a quiet night at home with me and my tv. Instead people came over right before I was about to go to bed, someone puked in my bathroom and now it smells, someone stole my door knob (really, who does that?), and someone broke my spacebar on my laptop. And the gators look like shit right now. Fuck today.

WLP

2005-07-28T04:40:05Z

Go check out this band called World Leader Pretend. They're fantastic, listen to their music, buy a cd, check out a show, and all that good stuff. I promise you won't be disappointed because their second cd, Punches is so good its simply out of control. http://wlpband.com/ is their website

Master Shake

2005-07-06T01:52:13Z

Last night was interesting. Had to drive a very drunk robert home. Apparently I shouldn't leave anything that smells good in my car because he'll eat it. Yup my ATHF Master Shake air freshner apparently tasted like a real vanilla shake so after a while of just liking it Robert literally started eating chunks of my air freshner. R.I.P. Master Shake

Day of Suck

2005-06-20T03:02:34Z

Happy Father's Day to all you baby daddys out there. The day started out well enough, I was at home in the 'ville with Amanda and my parents. Went out to a nice lunch, had some pie, chillaxed a bit. Things were even going well when BWell and I started driving back to Atlanta. We were being cool and singing disney songs to pass the time and I was feeling good because the Florida/Georgia curse that seemed to be on my car for so long hadn't reared its ugly head in a really long time (for a while it seemed like I couldn't make the trip home and back to Atlanta without something going wrong with my car). But alas, the my-car-isn't-fucked-up streak couldn't last forever. Just after we passed Tifton about every light that could light up on my dash did. So basically to make a long story short we end up stuck in Chula, Georgia which is a "town" consisting of a shady ass motel, a gas station, and a run down antique store. Since its Father's Day and Sunday and about 7:30/8:00 there aren't any mechanics shops open. The owner of the gas station called her mechanic friend to come over and he shows up, tells me my alternator is dead and that he can fix it in the morning. He tells me his buddy can fix my alternator and that it will be a lot cheaper than getting a new alternator. He gives me a quote and tells me that he doesn't take checks or a credit card. Um yeah thats shady as hell I'll take my car elsewhere please. In addition to the one shady ass mechanic there were about half a dozen people from the shady ass motel who kept coming over asking what was wrong with my car and offering to fix it for me. I think not, get the hell away from me and my car thankyouverymuch. So it was a short tow truck ride to Tifton (the self proclaimed agri-research capital of the South. Now here I am in a Tifton hotel dicking around on my laptop waiting for the night to pass so that I can get my car fixed in the morning and go back home. At least I get a continental breakfast in the morning. Fuck me.

A Poem

2005-04-30T21:52:36Z

Last night was great and I was completely wrecked. It was Andrew's 21st birthday so Bracewell and I went over to party with everyone in the Towers. David and Joe spent half the night professing their love for Amanda and I but I was lucky enough to get a poem from David. It went something to the effect of "Your hair is like a loaf of bread. Your face is like the gumball machine." I think thats the first time a guy has ever recited poetry to me, David is just a true romantic I suppose.

The Little Mermaid

2005-04-28T01:21:05Z

I miss...
Lounging around on the big brown couches in the Vic
Boys dressed as girls
Whore boots
Crappy hall food
Watching movies up on A floor
The Old Course
The stupid red gowns
Tescos juice
That little old lady's garden on the corner of Market and Hope Streets
The beach
The massive room I used to live in
Having an amazing roomie
Story time
The big booths in the back of the Westport
Skirt nights
Cheap wine
My Mummy and Daddy
The scaffolding
Alcohol in the common room
The bop
Wondering who will be working in the kitchen
People spelling everything with the letter "u"
Empire
Wearing scarves and gloves
The horrible smelly cheese shop
The double shot of apple juice at every meal
Everyone I love

The only thing I don't miss...
Short term loans

A destination like no other

2005-03-12T09:24:10Z

In less than 24 hours I'll be standing on Scottish soil and that is fucking brilliant. The plane ride will inevitably suck but I'm hoping to cut down on the suck factor by burning myself some new CDs, packing a couple of Family Guy and ATHF dvds to help pass the time, sleeping, and doing some reading for primate social psych (this last one has the potential to be very interesting or to cause the crappiness of the flight to increase exponentially depending on whether or not the articles are any good). I'm such a giddy little mess right now at the thought of going back the UK and seeing all my lovely little people. At the same time though I'm already starting to get upset because I know the week isn't going to last long enough. The first time I had to leave I was an absolute wreck so I can't imagine what it will be like to leave again this time. At least last time I left I knew I was going to be back to see everyone again in a few months. But after this trip who knows if I'll be able to make the journey back to my beautiful little town again. Even if I make it back next year (spring break 06 perhaps...) I'm not sure that it would even be the same. For now everything will be just like old times, I'll pick up right where I left off with everyone. But next year I feel like everything would be so different. No one is really going to be living in hall next year so everyone will be scattered about town. Not that St. Andrews is that big of a place, it would certainly be easy to walk around and visit everyone but I wonder I'm sure group dynamics will change when everyone stops living together. All I have to do is reflect back upon what has happened at Emory this year and even at Oxford last year. It sort of seems like with every new year its a new group of friends. Not that I don't still love everyone I hung out with at the beginning of my uni life but I hardly ever get to see any of them or talk to any of them. I hate that I've let so many friends drift away but I feel like I'm usually to busy to do anything about it. I suppose I just need to start making more of an effort. Anyways, I'm quite sure it must be past my bedtime so I'm going to have to get on that now. Here's to dreaming of bagpipes, kilts, and pints.

I live with Cousin It

2005-03-11T07:29:18Z

I swear my suitemate must be a yeti or a woolly mammoth or something. It's ridiculous, she sheds more than everyone else in the world combined! Its so gross. Really, its just gross. How does she manage to get hair on the kitchen floor, the kitchen counter, the bathroom floor, the shower, and the toilet all the time??? I wrote her a couple of notes earlier in the semester about cleaning up the hair in the bathroom and she was sort of doing ok for a little while but now its even worse than ever. I just had to vacuum my bathroom, yup, vacuum it for the second time. We might as well have black shag carpet in our bathroom. I don't step outside my room without shoes on because I feel like I'm walking into some sort of biohazard area. I think I would rather walk into the guys bathrooms at oxford barefoot than into my own bathroom without shoes. Hell, I'd probably rather walk around barefoot in the rhesus monkey rooms...at least with the monkeys I know what sort of diseases I'm likely to catch. Sure, some of them may be deadly, but at least I'd know what I was dying of....

So yeah, anyone want to shave this girl's head for me? I'll give you $10.00. $20 if it doesn't get traced back to me. And while you're at it I'll throw in an extra $50 if you cut out her tongue. Can people still laugh if they don't have tongues? What I need is to just never hear her laugh ever again because it is also frightening. How to describe it. hmmm. Well its loud as fuck and she sounds sort of like a dying seagull. No, a flock of dying seagulls. Thats about as close a description as I can come up with. I know it sounds weird, I mean how in the hell can that be someone's laugh? But it really does kind of sound like that. I just feel like telling her to shut up because nothing, I mean nothing can be that funny. Especially not in her life

I miss St. Andrews like I would miss my nose if it were cut off

2005-02-17T03:22:52Z

So I've come to the conclusion that the guys at Emory are a bit shite. And theyre all short as hell and very few of them are attractive enough to catch my attention. I swear the average height of Emory guys must be around 5'6 1/2 maaaybe 5'7 if you give the little fuckers the benefit of the doubt. Quite frankly I'm a bit disappointed. At first I thought that maybe I had just been spoiled in Scotland and the boys here only suck because they pale in comparison to the ones in St. Andrews. But after a number of conversations with other disgruntled ladies I've come to realize that we all think they suck at life. So with that said who wants to go check out a UGA party or something? I need to get off this campus pronto. Whether or not I'll be able to do that is another story though....

I applied for a job at the Yerkes Primate Center today. With any luck I'll soon be researching social cognition in rhesus monkeys. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed about that but at the same time I'm almost not because I know I'll be busy as hell if I get the position. I already feel like I never get a moment's rest and I know that doing this research will take up a good bit of my time. And when I said it was a job I didn't mean job in the conventional sense in which you get paid for the work you do...by job I meant the kind that you work your ass off for in exchange for no money at all because I'm pretty sure I'm not eligible to get work study money. But I need the research experience and it would be really interesting research so despite any bitching I might do about it I would be really grateful if I got the position. So yeah, fingers crossed. I should find out early next week.

freak out

2004-12-24T00:46:06Z

So I'm back in the States now but instead of having a nice relaxing break I have to write three essays and mail them back to Scotland in place of final exams. Two philosophy papers and a history paper. The history paper is the last one do and it shouldn't be too bad, time consuming, but not too bad. The philosophy papers on the other hand are a completely different story. I'm literally freaking out right now about the philosophy stuff. I've been so stressed the past couple of days I can hardly eat and then just now I was just hyperventilating and puked...thats how much I'm freaking out. I know I need to chillax about grades but its hard to do that for me. I don't think I've ever been this worried about a couple of papers before. I just have to keep telling myself that it will probably be fine. I've never actually written a paper that got a horrible grade before so I'm sure my paper will be fine. I just need to relax and get this done. Damn, why do I freak out about grades this much? I'll be fine, just gotta keep telling myself that. The work will be done soon, just gotta push through it.

Raisin Weekend

2004-11-27T13:19:43Z

Last weekend was Raisin Weekend...what a great tradition. Nothing like university encouraged binge drinking to liven up your weekend. Basically the idea of RW is that your academic parents (who are either third or fourth year students) get you completely wasted. Woohoo. Being that St. Andrews kids are hard core drinkers we waste no time on Saturday being sober. Haz and I had to arrive at our Mum's friend, Paula's, flat at 10:00 and we were greated at the door with a glass of champagne each. Hannah (mum) and her friends cooked us crepes for breakfast and gave us each a glass of milk to line our stomaches and we were ready to get to the serious drinking. We played a bunch of games (mainly drinking ones) including a very easy scavenger hunt, russian roullete (a glass with food coloring and some mystery liquid: either water or some large foul shot), pass the parcel, and a game in which we drew a topic out of a hat and then had to talk about it for a minute and a half. My topic was alcohol....a pretty easy topic to talk about combined with the fact that a large chunk of my life in high school was devoted to debate and public speaking meant that I didn't hesitate or pause once during my speech. The boys weren't quite as lucky: their topics were avacados and cacti so they paused a number of times during their speeches and for each time you pause you have to take a shot. Eric was properly fucked up by the end of that game. Highlights of the morning...I flashed some people out the window during one game not realizing that a five year old was staring up at me (oops), changed clothes under a blanket with Simon (he looked like he belonged in a boy band when he was in my clothes), haz asked some guy on the street if she could kiss him for raisin weekend and then when he said 'No' she said 'Tough' and planted one on him. By noon Haz was ill and mum and I had to take her back to hall, read her a story, and put her to sleep in my bed so that I could look after her and Eric was passed out oon Paula's white carpet with a nose bleed. I drank fucking loads but I wasn't really feeling drunk so I just looked after Haz for a few hours. That evening I went to Empire with Alastair to get pizza then Jodi came in tied to two people asking if the guy behind the counter could deep fry a piece or brocoli for her. I was then tied to Jodi and taken back to her mum's flat as part of a scavenger hunt. Apparently I'm a fucking treasure.

That evening was my dad's party at Angus's flat. Laura and I are big fans of Angus...some might say it borders on stalking but all we really want is to put him in our closet and take him out once in a while to look at how beautiful he is. Nothing too exciting happened at the party, just your standard drinking and chillaxin. We headed out to West Port after the party for a few more drinks and more chillaxing. James had a little too much chillaxin though and he passed out on top of my arm.

Monday morning was the best part of Raisin Weekend though. We headed back to Paula's to get our costumes. Hannah and Paula made sheep costumes for us and we painted our faces white (except Haz who was the black sheep of the family and therefore had a black face) and tied balloons all over ourselves. I then met Laura and John at our daddy's flat to pick up our raisin receipt...the coffin he made as part of his halloween costume. The three of us carried our coffin to the quad and chucked it in the dumpsters with all the other reciepts and then went into the quad for the huge fuck off shaving foam fight. SO MUCH FUN!!! Everyone brought two or three cans of shaving foam and hundreds of us just ran around the quad shoving shaving cream in each others faces. I'll have to try and post some pictures from the foam fight so that everyone can appreciate the scale of it. The fight was one of the funnest times of my entire life. Skipping Monday lectures for costumes and foam fights...what more can you ask for? Days like Raisin Monday is what college is all about.

Italy

2004-11-24T16:24:54Z

Yeah, so I'm a bit late about the Italy update...but I've been pretty busy lately so I wasn't able to sit down and write out my awesome experiences from Italy. But hey better late than never. So for those of you who have been asking about it...

Cameron and I started out in Rome. We saw all the typical stuff, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Roman Forum, St. Peters, the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel. We were also lucky enough to get blessed by the Pope on Sunday afternoon. When I say lucky I do mean that it was by shear luck that we got to see the Pope. We didn't realize that the Pope was going to be speaking but when we came out of St. Peters Basillica there was a huge crowd of people in the square and then a minute later the Pope came out and started mumbling things in Latin. The Pope man didn't look like he was doing so well...that man is definately getting up there in age. Being inside of St. Peters was a really moving and powerful experience for me. I ended up just sitting in their for a while thinking about a lot of different things that have been going on in my life and in my head. Later that day we headed to the Colosseum and got a tour of the place. Its a bit unfair that everywhere you go EU citizens get discounts on things and Americans get the shaft and have to pay full price for everything. Cameron rubbed that one in my face quite a lot. As if the British pound wasn't strong enough already the rest of Europe feels the need to give them discounts. I say give me the discount cause the dollar is worth jack shit in the rest of the world. Anyways, fun fact about the Colosseum: women weren't allowed to go to the bathroom inside the place. We were supposed to get a tour of the Roman Forum as well but we lost our tour group. Cam and I wandered around for a little bit looking for them before giving up and deciding that Cameron would act as my tour guide instead. Well apparently we spent a little too much time looking for our tour guide because when we got up to the gates of the forum the woman told us that they had just let the last people inside two minutes ago. Ugh. Its alright though, we just decided to come back the next day a bit earlier. Fun fact (ok, maybe its not actually a fact per se...) about the Roman Forum: the Romans army would put people up on top of the huge fuck off columns in the forum and then use them for rifle practice. Thats just one of many interesting things I learned about ancient Rome thanks to Cam the tourguide. That night we went hopped on a bus and made our way to a bar in Campo de Fiori that had been recommended to us. At one point in the night I was just sitting on my stool, minding my own business, chatting with Cam when he decides that I need to stand up and dance with him. Instead of asking me to stand up though he just tried to give me a little shove so that I would stand up. Well since I had my feet wrapped around the legs of the stool I couldn't catch myself and he just ended up pushing me off the stool flat onto my face. Everyone else around was really concerned about whether or not I was alright but Cam just stood there laughing his ass off. Thanks Cameron, I love you too. Then when we finally left the bar later that night Cam started walking us in the wrong direction and we basically walked off the map of Rome. I think we ended up in the suburbs somewhere or something. All I know is that there weren't any bus routes where we were. Finally after about 3 hours of walking (in heels and with a broken toe) we were able to find a taxi to take us home. What a night.

Monday morning Cam and I were in our hostel room getting ready to leave when we heard a familiar voice outside our door. "Gee," we thought, "that sounds a lot like Caleb. Nooo, it can't be Caleb though." Well sure enough, it was fucking Caleb standing outside our door talking to one of his friends. How random is that, we go to Rome and then one of our friends from hall is standing right outside our door. Caleb being...well...Caleb...regailed us with stories of his Sunday night adventure in Rome. Apparently dear Caleb got completely wrecked and broke into the colosseum Sunday night. He has a habit of climbing things or jumping out of windows when hes drunk so Cam and I really weren't very suprised to hear that he had climbed into the colosseum while he was drunk. The only thing I was suprised by was the fact that he didn't get caught. Hooray for drunk sneaky Caleb. Cam and I tried to go to the Vatican that morning (well around 11:00) and my god I've never seen a queue so long in my life. We got in the back of the line thinking alright, the line is just going to go around this corner here and we should be inside. Wrong. It went around the block. Ok, it will just go around this corner and then we should be inside. Wrong again. The queue went around 5 city blocks. Alright, we're almost there, we can see the entrance, we should be inside in just a minute. Wrong. We were about 20 people from the front of the queue when they closed the Vatican sent everyone away. Apparently the Vatican closes at 12:20 in the afternoon every day. Lazy bastards. We made sure to get up early the next day so we would actually be allowed inside. The rooms in the Vatican Museum were the most ornate things I've ever seen. Raphael did a number of the rooms for the Pope and then of course there was the Sistine Chapel. Wow. Just Wow. I can't really begin to describe how stunning it is to see everything in person, it just has to be experienced first hand.

Cameron and I almost missed our train to Florence which was a wee bit stressful but in the end everything turned out alright. I think Florence was my favorite city to visit, I loved just wandering the streets of Florence. We saw the duomo, the best part about that was climbing to the top of the dome and being able to look out over the entire city. I would have been perfectly content to stay up there for the entire day just chillaxin because it was the most beautiful view I've ever seen. But we didn't have much time in Florence so we jetted off to see Michelangelos David and then the Uffizi, a famous art gallery with a fairly expansive collection of Rennaissance pieces. Cam informed me that he had fallen in love with the Virgin Mary in one of Botticelli's paintings because she was absolutely stunning. I felt bad having to break the news to thim that a relationship with a painting might be a bit one sided and that his love would always go unrequited. Poor guy was crushed. That night Cam, Will (Cam's best friend who came down from Milan to visit us), and I went out to some bar/club. I was quite disappointed in the boys, by sheer virtue of the fact that they were English Cam and Will were pretty much the best looking guys in the bar (Italian guys aren't really all that impressive for the most part and they tend to be a bit sleezy). So basically, what I'm getting at is that Cam and Will could have had any girls in that bar that they wanted but they were too chicken shit to go and talk to the two gorgeous girls that they were eyeing all night. They're usually quite arrogant and self assured so I don't know what went wrong with them in Florence. That night was interesting though, I drank so much. We started off with, of course, loads of wine at dinner. Then when I got to the club I had a number of drinks and let me just tell you something about drinks in Italy, they make em stiff, its fucking great. Anyways, I drank a lot but I never felt as if I was drunk. Its like I skipped straight over the drunk stage and went straight into the I can't remember parts of the night stage. I remember most of the night, but there were a few little bits that I couldn't remember so I was clearly drunk that night I just didn't feel it ever. The next day Cam and I were talking about it and the same thing had happened to him. It's a bit disconcerting, I think my brain has just gotten used to being drunk so it doesn't even register as drunkenness anymore, its just normal. Very scary. I'm not planning on really drinking until its time for me to leave Scotland so hopefully a month off will be enough to drastically reduce my tolerence to alcohol. Anyways, back to Florence talk. As we left the club we met these two Dutch guys who were good friends with Cameron's old Dutch girlfriend from when he lived in Spain over the summer. Fucking weird. But whats fucking weirder is that one of the Dutch guys spent a while living in Gainesville during high school and he went to GHS. What the fuck. How does this random stuff keep happening??? It must be a small world afterall.

Venice was nice, but it wasn't all that exciting all Venice seems to be is canals and churches. The canals are pretty and novel but once you've seen one canal you've kinda seen em all. The same thing applies to the churches in Venice; I like seeing some of the beautiful churches but I'm really only ever up for one church a day. It was kind of cool to see Venice flooded though during high tides. The city would have to put out risers and platforms in the major areas so that people could walk around. It was all pretty amusing at first but then it got a bit tiring to have to stand in a big line waiting to get onto the platforms so that you could shuffle slowly down the street. My favorite part of Venice I think had to be this little park that was on the edge of town and the market that I walked through on the way there. It was away from all the normal touristy areas so it wasn't crowded and the only people around were locals going about their daily routines. Walking up and down the edge of the park by the sea reminded me a lot of Tampa actually. There was just something about the sea that felt just like Tampa Bay. I decided that I haven't visited the relatives in tampa in a long time so when I go back home thats towards the top of my to do list. Right. Well then, thats a quick (or maybe not so quick) synopsis of my Italy trip. I had such an amazing time and I'm really glad that Cam decided to come with me because I don't think I would have had as much fun if I had gone alone like I had originally planned. I definately want to travel somewhere new this summer so whos up for joining me?

amstrdm @ 2004-11-15T17:30:00

2004-11-15T19:46:48Z

I'm not usually very confused about my emotions but for some reason I'm feeling really conflicted at the moment. I just feel like I'm being torn in different directions about a number of things at the moment. I'm torn about whether I wish I was staying here longer and the sudden waves of homesick I get periodically. I'm also a bit torn about whether I should stay the course of the responsible over-achiever or whether I should just say fuck it, do what you want, have fun, go out, party, don't worry so much. I see that other people aren't doing as much work as I am and I wonder how the hell they manage. Not just how do they manage to get decent grades, but how do they manage to get over that voice inside their head that tells them to fulfill their responsibilites. I guess I'm sort of jealous I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to the line where I'd just toss my responsibilities and my compulsive work ethic aside. While that line is devilishly tempting I find that its incrediably frightening. I already feel like a drunk, I don't want to think about how things would progess if I relaxed my work ethic. I also keep thinking about the doom of the senior honours thesis that is currently looming on the horizon. And I wonder if I even want to bother with it at all. I'm sure I could get by without doing one, I could get into a grad school regardless of whether I graduated with honours or not. But its so unlike me to just shoot for getting by, I've always refused to settle for anything less than the very best. My entire education was supposed to be leading up to getting into the best graduate school and recieving the most prestigious degree possible so that I could any job I wanted to. It seems like a waste to chuck it away. But at this point I don't even know what that job would be or if it would be in psychology or statistics. Its so frustrating not to have a perfectly laid out plan anymore.

Another thing thats been on my mind the past week has been the ever frustrating topic of relationships. Cameron and I had a few conversations about love, dating, and relationships and it just got me thinking about my own experiences and tendencies. I can't figure out why I seem to suck at them so much or why its so difficult to get attached to people. Eh, whatever, I don't really want to get into everything here so nevermind.

On a brighter note, Italy was amazing. I had the most fun while I was there. I'll update about Italy maybe sometime later this week but I'm not sure cause I have a fuck off big essay due on Friday that I'll be working non-stop on. So it might be this weekend. Oh, and this weekend is Raisin Weekend so be prepared to hear some ridiculous drunken stories next Monday.

Next stop: Italy

2004-10-24T10:00:08Z

I went to Tescos to buy some toothpaste and I came out with a pumpkin instead. Guess I'll have to carve it sometime this weekend, it can be first on my list of Things To Distract Me From My Research About Spartan Women (well actually I guess writing in this would be the first thing thats keeping me from my task, the pumpkin can be number two). I'm going to do my pumpkin up Trogdor style I think. I'm definitely going to bust out one of the stencils on homestarrunner.com and at the moment I'm leaning towards the majestic Trogdor.

EXCITING NEWS FOR ME!!!
In two weeks time I will be in Italy. WOO FUCKING HOO!!! We have an entire week off from school starting November 6th. T he silly university people call it a "reading week." I say boo to reading and hooray for Italy. I'll be booking my flight later this afternoon online. I think the plan is to fly into Venice and then cruise around Italy for about 6 days. I really want to go to San Marino while I'm there too. San Marino is an incredibly tiny country smack dab in the middle of Italy. I don't know why, but from the age of probably about 7 that country has always amused me. I think I'll probably end up doing the whole Italy trip by myself, which is fine by me. I'm going to see if Kim, another girl from Emory, is interested in going but regardless of what she says I think I'll probably still be bound for Italy. Should be interesting given that the extent of my Italian knowledge is "Ciao Bella" because thats what Caroline and Tara said all the time after they got back from Italy. Maybe Caroline will teach me some essential Italian stuff before I go.

Yesterday was Carla's 21st Birthday! Happy Birthday Carla. I woke up early, 8 AM, to call her (2 AM Carla time) because I said I would give her a ring around that time but alas...her damn phone was turned off. Oh well, sorry I missed ya Carla. Hope you had fun. And for those of you who haven't heard or may have forgotten...Carla makes her long awaited return to Florida during winter break. This will officially be the best winter break ever in the history of all of humanity.

We had football practice down on the beach yesterday. It was such a beautiful day and I had been craving a walk on the beach the day before so it was near perfect timing. Craig said that it was a "fitness day." Ha. Yeah right. I was expecting some actual fitness training like oh I dont know sprints or something to that effect. Craig's fitness day would have been the lightest day of practice ever at Oxford. We did a bit more jogging than usual for a warmup. And he had us do a few push ups, some toe raises, a few other little random things, and I think a whole 20 sit ups. The sad part is that everyone else, apart from Mai, seemed to think it was hard. How funny is it that I'm the girl here who is in really good shape when I was one of the out of shape girls back at the OC.

Ok, enough procrastinating. Its time to get back to my essay on Spartan women.

Weekend journey to England

2004-10-19T00:46:16Z

I had such a great weekend and all of it was on Emory's dime. There's a woman in London, Rachel, whose job it is to take us study abroad kids on field trips and organize cultural activities for us. Emory gave those of us from St. Andrews 120 pounds to pay for our transportation down to London and our accommodation on Friday night but mine didn't cost that much so I ended up making about 15 or 20 quid (that would be about 30 dollars) for doing absolutely nothing. What a great deal! I love it when Emory just throws money at me like that. Anyways, Friday afternoon we hopped on a train and got into London probably around 11:30. I followed a couple of the girls that were on the trip to their hostel (I hadn't bothered to book any accommodations for myself because I had only decided I was going to go on the trip Thursday afternoon); luckily for me there were plenty of beds in the hostel. The hostel was actually on the same road, less than a block away, from the hotel that my parents and I stayed at a month ago on our trip to London. For whatever reason I thought that was really cool, I guess I liked it because I already knew my way around the area and I remembered what buses we needed to use to get to where we needed to meet up with our group the next morning. I was really disappointed though because the three girls that I stayed at the hostel with sucked at life and when we got in they just went to bed. I mean come on, it was Friday night and we were in London! We should have gone out and found somewhere to party but no, everyone just went to bed so I had no choice but to follow suit (I got shit this afternoon from John and Cameron for not experiencing London night life).

Saturday morning we drove to Winston Churchill's old house and toured around there until lunch time. The grounds of the house were so beautiful. Well really, the entire English countryside is gorgeous. The second half of the day was spent at Vita Sackville West's house (she was the supposed lover of Virginia Woolf). It’s a calendar house, meaning that there are 365 rooms and its one of the largest stately homes in England. Only about a dozen of the rooms are open to the public (which is good because the house is way too large to see in its entirety). The really cool part about the place was also incredibly shitty...literally...there were tons of deer everywhere on the grounds. The deer were so used to people that they would just stand there next to you, its as if they had gotten used to posing for pictures. The abundance of deer unfortunately brought about an abundance of deer poo. You couldn't really take a step without walking over it so by the time we got back on the coach to leave, the bottom of my trousers were covered in deer crap. Trang kept calling me poo pants but over here that has an entirely different connotation (pants means underwear here). I have a feeling all the British people nearby were getting the wrong idea, thinking I had just crapped my pants or something. After frolicking in fields of deer excrement we headed off to Dover. The group had a really cute bed and breakfast all to ourselves and we were fed like royalty that night. Rachel took us to a really nice chinese restaurant, ordered loads of wine for everyone and we had all you can eat deliciousness...courtesy of Emory. I haven't eaten that much food in God knows how long, and those of you who know me well should know how much I can eat usually, but given that it was free I felt I had to go above and beyond what I could usually devour.

Nightlife in Dover, however, left a lot to be desired. Kim, Trang, and I were in a big party mood (what with it being Saturday night and all) and set off on the streets of Dover looking for the 1 club in town or a good looking pub. I was so prepared, I even brought a map along with us, circled the intersection that our B&B was on, and wrote in bold letters 'WE LIVE HERE' so that just in case we all got really drunk all we had to do was hand someone the map so they could point us in the right direction. But the streets were pretty dead so when we finally found a group of people that looked to be about our age we asked them about the club. They said it was complete and total shit unless maybe you were already really plastered. Given that we were not we turned around and headed towards a pub that had been playing reggae music earlier. We walked in, saw a bunch of sad looking old people and then we were promptly told to leave because they were closing and we were literally shoved out the door. Our motto of the night: FUCK DOVER. Dover is not the place to be on a Saturday night.

The town redeemed itself a little bit though the next day. Dover is quite beautiful by the light of the day and of course you've got the famed white cliffs of Dover which are gorgeous. You could actually kind of see France when you looked across the channel. Fun stuff. The old Dover castle and the underground war time tunnels from WWII were surprisingly cool. The WWII tunnels kind of felt like something that belonged in Disney World, it was very Pirates of the Caribbean-ey. They had speakers set up in a bunch of the rooms that were playing the types of conversations you would have heard between people in those rooms during the war. They also pumped smells into the rooms so that the kitchen smelled like beef stew, the operating room smelled like well I don't really know...like an operating room, and the sleeping quarters smelled like several dozen sweaty, gross, musky guys. I felt that they could have gone without pumping that smell through the air but it was pretty funny though.

Twix are good comfort foods

2004-10-14T23:11:27Z

I was in such an amazing mood 45 minutes ago but I just crashed big time. I was giddy with excitement because Carla and I decided that I was gonna call her at 11 oclock tonight. I don't think I can properly express just how excited I was to get to talk to Carla tonight. I haven't talked to her in over a month and she hasn't been on AIM so I've only been able to talk to her through a few emails. Maybe that doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but for me its like being deprived of oxygen. There are two people in the world who I honest to God could not live without: Carla and my mom. If such a thing as soulmates actually exists, Carla is mine. Anyways, back to tonight, I walked my happy little ass to the nearest pay phone (because the phones in our rooms won't let you use phone cards) and called her up. Apparently the phone card my parents left me only had about 7 minutes on it so Carla and I didn't get to talk very much. I have more to write but Laura and I decided its bedtime because we'll be getting up early.

"What did you just decide that I'm drunk?"

2004-10-08T00:40:38Z

My Dad is supposed to start his cancer treatments on Monday, hopefully things will go well with that...or at least as well as they can go given the circumstances. I have yet to mention just how much insurance companies suck at life. Theres a really amazing treatment available, proton therapy, that is incrediably effective and is usually free of side effects but the cheap ass insurance policy that UF provides decided they don't want to cover this type of therapy. So the trip to California is off and dad will be going through slightly crappier treatments in the 'ville

On a brighter note, I was watching a few aqua teen hunger force episodes on my laptop a little earlier and that always makes my day. The Super Birthday Snake episode is the single funniest damn thing in the world. ever. no question about it. Well actually I think it might be in a tie between Shauna falling down the stairs in 8th grade and the time I witnessed this guy giving his girlfriend a piggy back ride when he tripped and fell and she went flying over the top of him and landed face first in the dirt. Cause those moments are damn funny too. But back to ATHF, if you haven't seen that episode...download it immediately. Meatwad gets drunk and has the best drunk rant ever. seriously no question about this one.

Bedtime now, I'm really tired. But hooray for only having a one hour long lecture at noon on fridays. And hooray for the fact that its my favorite class, Philosophy of Mind.

Icy Hot is damn near orgasm inducing

2004-10-06T23:11:13Z

To everyone back home, I'm sorry if any of you feel like I haven't been talking to you enough since I came to Scotland. Its not intentional, its just that the first couple of weeks were really busy for me but things are starting to calm down because I actually am starting to get a lot of work to do now. So I'll be near the computer more often to chat with yall.

The Opening Ball is this Friday and I'm incrediably excited. All you ladies back in the states should be really jealous....a bunch of the boys at the ball will be wearing kilts....and ya gotta love good looking scottish boys in kilts. I'm gonna be taking loads of pictures friday night so check my picture page for updates on saturday or sunday (http://community.webshots.com/user/ktshad12). We had a nice discussion today at lunch about some of our top 10 favorite things in the world and hot guys in kilts ranked in a number of people's top ten lists.

It dawned on me today that my favorite person in the world, Carla, is turning 21 in about two weeks. I've now added find the best birthday present ever to my list of things to do. My to do list is getting pretty long, I'm really starting to feel like I need more hours in the day or maybe an extra day of the week to get all my shit done. I've got loads and loads of reading to do and I'm only taking the equivalent of 13 credit hours. I'm so glad I dropped that extra social and evolutionary psych class. Speaking of loads of work, I need to get back to reading now....peace out

Disjointed

2004-10-02T15:05:06Z

Coolio is playing at the Student Union tonight. How random is that? Tonight's plan: get drunk and watch Coolio. Last week they had 80's pop princess Tiffany at the Union. Apparently St. Andrew's is quite good at recruiting has been musical acts.

I got up early today (10:00) and went to football (soccer) practice. I was quite proud of myself for getting up out of bed and walking all the way over to the Athletic Center. Practice was fun, it feels good to be back out on the field playing again. I did pull my quad though. Boo to that. I looked like a fool walking back to my hall after practice though, the entire way back I held an ice pack down my pants.

Something I found interesting: McIntosh Hall is located at the beginning of Hope Street. Or maybe its the end of Hope Street.

Amusing gossip of the day: A certain boy in my hall woke up this morning starke naked with a small bite mark on his chest. He was completely hammered last night and doesn't remember a thing. Poor kid is very confused as to where the bite mark came from and why he woke up naked. I think I know the answer to the mystery.

St. Andrews is great but there are a few little random things that bug me sometimes...

1 pound coins. I hate them. Its such a pain in the ass to dig through a pile of change every time you need a pound. I wish they had 1 pound notes instead.
Its so windy here. I seriously feel like I'm going to blow away sometimes. I was having a conversation earlier today and one girl says she loves wearing dresses and skirts but she can't ever wear them here because huge gusts of wind would blow your skirt up.
The food is shit. Not only is it shit but it isn't even all you can eat shit. You get one plate, only three choices for your main course, one side (theres generally only two options), and either a dessert or piece of fruit. And you get one glass of juice (apple or orange) but when I say glass its more like a double shot of apple juice. No soda. And can I just say that I miss sweet tea more than anything in the world! Anyone want to send me a keg full of sweet tea? They also don't bother to feed us on Saturday or Sunday nights so we're on our own during the weekends
They turn off the hot water at night. I always take my showers right before I go to bed so now I never get nice relaxing hot showers anymore. The showers are just barely warm enough to be tolerable.

I've started to really miss a couple of people in particular. I haven't talked to Carla since I left home, not even online, although she did send me a short email saying she had big news to tell me. I sent her a couple of emails and a postcard. Hopefully I'll actually get to talk to her soon. I also really miss the random pervertedness that ensues when I hang out with Manhattan. She says she's sending me a mix CD and I'm incrediably excited about that. I was playing the Metropolis Mix she made last night while people were in my room and it recieved several compliments. She makes damn good CDs. I won't get into who else I've started to miss recently.

Academic Families

2004-09-23T09:56:17Z

St. Andrews has a really lovely tradition in which everyone has academic families. Throughout the year third year students can adopt children into their families and everyone ends up having huge extended families with loads of brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. I got my first Dad, Peter, the second day here on one of our pub crawls. I have a second dad throgh my academic mom. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to adopt kids since this is my first semester here but one of the freshers from my hall said something about wishing I could be her academic mother so I started quasi adopting a few of the freshers from my hall at the party. Anyways, on Raisin Monday everyone goes over to their moms for tea and gets drunk then after dinner you go out with your dad to a pub and he gets all of his children really truely wasted. In the morning you go back to your moms place and your parents dress you up in a ridiculous costume and give you something to carry down to the field and theres a huge foam fight or something like that. Should be a very interesting couple of days. I'm just glad that its the dad who pays to get the kids tore up cause theres no way i would have enough money to get all the kids i adopted last night hammered. One guy from my hall was talking about how he might just end up renting out a club for the night cause hes got so many kids already.

St. Andrews = The University of Alcoholism

2004-09-21T09:23:45Z

I’m finally at St. Andrews now and I am absolutely loving it here. The city is so beautiful and the people are really nice. I really can’t believe how windy it is here though. Every time I step outside I feel like I’m stepping out into hurricane force winds or something. My parents and I arrived on Saturday afternoon. They helped me move in, we had lunch, walked around town a little bit and they left just before dinner. I think they’re already a little bit worried about me because at about 2 oclock there was a group of people sitting around in the common room drinking gin. Apparently this was disconcerting. “Dear God Barry they’ve started drinking already.” My poor mother. I figured it would be best if I didn’t tell them about the hall sponsored pub crawl that was planned for that night. Of course I was in attendance that night…and the next.

The pub crawls were loads of fun but drinking in pubs here gets really expensive really fast for the Americans. A drink costs about 2 and a half pounds which is roughly 5 US dollars. Stupid exchange rate. Why does the dollar have to be so damn worthless? Oh well. But my main problem is the fact that I drank way too much over the summer and my tolerance has skyrocketed. Granted, I’m nothing compared to my some of my more hardcore friends from Oxford but given that I earned the nickname little asian annie freshman year in part because I was always on par with my girl Alex…I’m impressed with myself. First night I didn’t end up getting drunk at all, second night I get just a tiny bit drunk for a little bit but sobered up nicely before heading back to the dorm. That night I had 2 long islands, a pint of Guinness, a pint of regular beer, a double Bacardi and coke, 2 shots of who knows what (one of my pub crawl leaders was buying so I didn’t want to be rude and refuse) and I think one other random drink that I can’t remember. A year ago half of that would have gotten me hammered but now it just isn’t all that much for me. But last night, oh damn, last night was a muuuch different story. Hall committee got a karoke machine and lured us all into the common room with promises of free alcohol. And boy did they deliver. I think last night just might be the drunkest I have ever been. I have no idea how much punch I drank, all I know was that it was a lot of liquor. As some of you may know already, me getting sloshed off liquor is generally a very bad idea for me. But I’m an idiot so I do it anyway. I had a great time though.

My awesome awesome roomie, Laura, and I got up to sing American Pie and our little group of people started dancing around and got the whole room to start dancing. Then Cameron came and found us and brought us downstairs to play drinking games on E floor. I think most people there were pretty shit faced. By the time we got down there the actual drinking games had stopped (thank God, there was no way I was going to drink anymore) and a game of spin the bottle had started up. Yes, spin the bottle, we had reverted back to being stupid little 12 year olds. Laura said I was so funny last night because she was asking me who I had pulled and my response was simply “I don’t know. Everyone.” That response was actually pretty close to being true. I somehow managed to avoid pulling any girls and Laura and I figured it out and I ended up pulling every guy in the room except one, James. The kid sitting next to me, Ed, was rather unlucky, he kept getting guys and he ended up getting completely naked (if you don’t want to kiss the person you take off an article of clothing). I think I might lay off the heavy drinking for a few days cause I think my body might need a couple of days to recover from last night.

Oh I almost forgot to mention the Run and Dip Society that we started. See, St. Andrews is right on the coast and the beach is just maybe a 10 minute walk away from the hall. I can actually see part of it out my window, I have a lovely view. But John and Jenny convinced a few of us to get up at 8 in the morning yesterday, run down to the beach and dip ourselves into the sea. I don’t think I’ve ever been so cold in my entire life. When we ran into the water it was just like I was being stabbed with thousands of little needles. I’m really glad I did it though, it turned out to be quite a lot of fun.