Wednesday, September 25, 2002 "sweet home alabama..." i know this song isnt appropriate either, but i dont know many georgia songs. and besides, it neigbors the peach state. several comments to make before my synopsis: 1. un-urban like places scare the shit out of me. 2. not taking a shit for 3 days straight scares the shit out of me (or not...because i didnt) 3. port-o-potties scare the shit out of me. let me say for the record that my trip was very good. james seems to think i didnt enjoy myself because the trip was nothing but cars, cars and more cars. he could not be more wrong. i showed a considerable amount of interest to the subject and because of this i know what a head gasket is, how you can purge nos from the engine, what a turbo engine sounds like, what a supercharger does to your engine, and how much more faster your engine would be if you replaced the lower part from a 2.8 to a 3.0. this weekend has given me a vast appreciation for cars in general. now, what i did not enjoy was sitting in 3 hours of traffic with the sun on my side of the window and no breeze whatsoever. what i did not enjoy was the fact that the air-conditioner was not working that whole time. what i did not enjoy was being left out of conversation because i was a girl and i did not have any input on said cars. anyhow, we left for md and the trip from nj to md was uninteresting. nothing but night time driving all the way down the turnpike. and for anyone who has had the dis-pleasure of doing so, my apologies. our first meeting point was from there to virginia for the lunch stop at the virginia motorsports park. this was also hot and annoying. and from there we drove to our second sleeping stop in greensboro, north carolina. at night we decided to indulge in southern food and abel had the idea to eat ribs so we ended up at oh! brian's (which we thought was o'briens when the front desk first told us about it...but that's besides the point). oh! brian's had all-you-can-eat ribs which abel and james decided to indulge in for god knows what reason. damn those were good babyback ribs i ate. but watching james eat his ribs made me want to throw everything back up. his ribs were the size of human ribs and he was tearing into that shit like his life depended on it. i thought watching him eat rodizio was bad...for a not-fat guy he sure ate obese-ly. afterwards we left and tried to get down some steep driveway but because he lowered his car previous to the departure of the trip, the steepness of the drop and the crown in the road made it impossible for him not to scrape his fiberglass bumper on the road. we were stuck there for about ten minutes while ron waved on-coming traffic out of the way so he could just gun it. he made it out with minimal damage. i still claim that it was his weight and all those ribs that weighed the car down. more boring car stuff after dinner. were cruising around the parking lot of the sheraton where their was a nopi party. very highschool although in highschool i didnt have a boyfriend with the cool car to cruise with so i guess this makes up for it. rolling up in the previa for those hudson dances didnt have the same effect. i think that our drive from nc to the lunch stop was the most exciting because it actually seemed like driving in a tour. from md to va everyone got separated including the car james and i were driving with so we ended up driving to virginia by ourselves. but from nc to the lunch stop there was a pack of maybe 25-30 cars driving while the superstreet/eurotuner people had their camera men hanging out of their cars taking pictures of the long pack of cars. james got himself in a couple of good pictures, so cross your fingers and hope they picked one of them. i was implementing my videotaping and picture taking skills at this point so i was having a jolly good time. went to lunchstop...nothing of importance. drove on into georgia from there through some rain and then TRAFFIC. lots of traffic. six lanes of highway and traffic. how is that possible, i dont understand. but hotness and traffic dont go well together so i watched a dvd to help the time pass. i'm tired now and i need some sleep so i'll continue the rest of my story tomorrow. 1:05 AM

Wednesday, September 18, 2002 "oh give me a home, where the buffaloes roam...." i know the song isnt appropriate, but it's country-like...i suppose. i'm off to georgia for the weekend. tonight our first stop is maryland. tomorrow we are driving from md to greensboro, north carolina. is that anywhere near wilmington? i just saw joshua jackson on a repeat of conan last night. from nc we go directly to atlanta, georgia where i will be eating pounds of fried foods and drinking sweet tea. i dont really know what sweet tea is, but i only hear good things about it. i feel i always overpack. or i look like the idiot that brought the biggest bag of shit and ends up forgetting something. i hate carrying too many bags - which is weird, because i love bags...but i mean travel-wise. i like to stick to no more than one luggage and one bookbag of sorts. i hate that i can never fit my shoes into luggage so i end up bringing an extra bag for just that. and then i have to bring my camera bag which alone is pretty bulky. yesterday i went to the mall with a mission: to buy a hat and a hoodie. i need the hat because i figure its going to be hot down there during the day. and i figure that its going to be cold at night and you should always bring a sweater whereever you go no matter what because you never know. anyhow, my trip to the mall was all for naught because i found neither. although i did find the cutest little pair of blue new balance sneakers that i could not resist. i have bought too many sneakers in the past 2 months. i'm out of control. someone needs to tell me to stop. which was what james was supposed to do yesterday, but all he said was that they looked really cute on my feet. how am i supposed to fight that? whatever. so now i am bringing an extra bag for my new sneakers. in addition to the sneakers i already have. why do i persist with this? see y'all next week! 2:30 PM

Friday, September 13, 2002 waiting, waiting.... my sleeping disorder last night prevented me from going to sleep at a normal hour. because of this i was forced to update my cover letter and resume and watch about an hours worth of crappy television. as i was changing channels, i came across an interesting informercial that i havent seen yet. i love watching infomercials. some of them i have actually purchased (ab slide, penali pens and some thing called create your shape or make your shape...they were work out videos.) more often than not, i am very tempted to buy whatever they are selling. the infomercial is called eye-q and its a reading enhancement cd-rom that gives you reading/eye/brain exercises that supposedly can increase your reading words per minute 2 to 10 times! the only reason i didnt already call and order this thing was because they were offering an introductory trial price of $14.95 and would not specify how many more easy payments i would have to make. so this morning i go onto there website where they have a demo. and what do you know...my beginning reading time was 427 words per minute and i ended with 649. not a vast improvement, but still substantial. anyway, i decided to do the test over again to see if maybe i would go up again....that didnt happen. i dropped from 590 to 502. it might have been because the whole time i was thinking about the sinigang that was sitting on the stove waiting to be eaten. hmmm. i want to be the guy in the testimonials that said he went from 430 wpm to 1000 wpm. that's incredible! yeah, i'm a loser. whatever. anyhow...as for the mundane day-to-day happenings of my life - bles and i ate a komigashi last night and then met up with joyce and brianna for soup, coffee and cake. saw the newport memorial for 9/11. and then watched swimfan with bles & james. hmmm. that movie made me think - dont ever cheat on your significant other. if anyone watches that movie, keep an eye out for any interesting jersey city landmarks. i dont know exactly where the movie was supposed to take place in new jersey, but they had a shot of christ hospital in jersey city. but where they lived looked a little like the mountainous parts of bergen county. i could be wrong. 1:15 PM

Tuesday, September 10, 2002 things to do today 1. go to home depot and buy a new lock for my door because some people are so damn nosy that they cant help but look through my private possessions 2. go to the bookstore and pick up atlas shrugged. i finished fountainhead and was amazed. its become favorite book #2. i highly recommend it to everyone out there friday night everyone gathered together in celebration of ed's 26th birthday at mt. fuji on route 17. the day before, michelle, james and i were having a discussion on the whereabouts of the other mt. fuji. james claimed it was somewhere between mt. fuji on 17 and the fiesta but just up in the mountains. i said it was way past that on 17, right after you get on I-87. and of course he was being cocky and arrogant about it and i KNEW i was right, so we made a bet. if he won, i would have to wear shorts to ed's. if i won, he would have to wear tight pants. just for the record, i dont wear shorts out in public if i know people i know are going to be with me. the only places i wear shorts are a.)to run and b.)to run errands that i know i wont run into people i know. just for the record, james does not wear tight pants. anyhow, i called mt. fuji on 17 and they gave me the number to the other mt. fuji and i already knew i won when he said the area code was (845). the recognition i saw in james' eyes when he knew he was wrong and i was right was priceless. it was a mixture of fear and heartbreak of knowing that he was proven wrong. but....being the nice person that i was, i let it slide for now, and am keeping another date open for the tight pants. 12:58 PM

Friday, September 06, 2002 rewind, like three years ago michelle and i decided to go to new brunswick to get haircuts...i havent been back since i graduated. and everything was just the same as i left it. only the people were transient. standing out there on easton ave just gave me this weird rush of nostalgia. i went across the street to lazy shopper and the guy remembered me! i guess it shows how much i actually frequented the convenient store during my residence on hamilton street. on a side note, i have freaked myself out watching the ananda lewis. i guess that's the price you pay...she did a segment on germs. lice on pillows on the airplane...fungal spores on the bus from secaucus to new york...live wriggling bugs in chinese food...hypodermic needles in fast food sandwhiches... makes you want to wash yourself silkwood style and lock yourself up in a ziplock freezer bag. ewwww. oh, so my hair is short. hmmm. i guess i need to get used to it. 12:50 PM

Wednesday, September 04, 2002 weekend update took a drive down to philly with bles to visit kat...mostly shopping and a failed attempt to have fun saturday night. i wonder if i am just getting too old for things like this. that was the majority of my conversations with bles for the weekend. just how fast time is going...its been almost a year since september 11th. its been a year since i met james. i really didnt think this is where i would be last year thinking about the future. which is not to connotate anything negative...believe me, certain aspects of my life could not be more on point. others, well, are in transition. and transitions suck. bles and i played the 'where do you see yourself one month from now....one year from now...five years from now..." scary how that doesnt seem so far away for me. i will be 29. ethan will be 7. oh good lord. hopefully i will have some sort of job related to the career i want to follow. i couldnt see myself at this age when i was 21. its like time stands still in your mind, but reality is pressing fast forward. and before you know it, you blink and four years have past by like nothing. and you wonder what you have to show for it. 12:25 PM