16 posts tagged “all about me”

I know this is going to sound really sad, but I don't really go on many blogs here. I want to venture out and break out of my shell. I want to pop my Vox cherry, if you will. Does any regular Voxer have a favorite blog here they love to go to ?

I stole this from Amy's BookFace page and was outraged.

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Tally your total at the bottom.
3) Tag others and pass it on.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (x)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (x)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (x)
6 The Bible (x )
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (x)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (x)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (x)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (x)
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (x)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (x)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (x)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (x)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (x)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (x)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (x)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens (x)
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (x)
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (x)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (x)
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (x)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (x)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (x)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (x)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens (x)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (x)
34 Emma - Jane Austen (x)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (x)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (x)
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (x)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (x)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (x)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (x)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (x)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (x)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (x)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (x)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (x)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (x)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (x)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (x)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (x)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (x)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (x)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (x)
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (x)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (x)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens(x)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (x)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (x)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (x)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (x)
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (x)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker (x)
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (x)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (x)
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (x)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (x)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (x)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (x)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (x)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (x)
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (x)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (x)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (x)

72 out of 100. In your face, BBC!! I'm not even counting all the movie versions I watched as well. I am totally kvelling. Yes, I am a nerd. I will admit it....

State of the Union: Smugly Superior (Only six? pssssh!)
Listening to: Horizon by Rachel Yamagata

In case you haven't seen my My Space, Facebook, or Twitter page, my car got stolen on Friday night. Not broken into. Stolen. My car. Mine. My Hyundai Elantra. It's not like I drive a Mercedes or a Lexus or anything. I have a beater Elantra with 15 more payments on it. My car got stolen from downtown Austin. From a parking garage. I could understand if it was parked on the street or in some shady alley, but a parking garage?!??! Seriously?

I was downtown celebrating Julie's birthday. We went to Cork and Co. Yes, I was in a wine bar. No worries, though, because you know I didn't drink any of that crap. Everyone kept laughing because I kept declining glasses saying," No thanks, I don't like moldy grapes." I had two glasses of champagne. Then we went to Qua where the asshole doorguy wouldn't let my friend Vanessa in. He kept saying that she was violating the dress code (she was wearing jeans, a black dress shirt, high heel sandals, and a gray jacket) but he would never come out and say what the violation was. Basically, he was discriminating against her because she's a bigger gal, but he didn't want to say it because he didn't want to get sued. Julie was livid and went off on him because we had just celebrated Vanessa's birthday like two weeks before there and she was wearing the same outfit she wore that night.

We ended up at Grüv. I only had one gin and tonic and a woo woo shot. I also got felt up on the cool by this hot redhead in the bathroom, but that's typical. We ended up in the V.I.P. section dancing and being stupid. Some black dude comes up where Julie and I are dancing, takes my hand and then says," Are you guys up for fucking?" *screech* Say wha? I jerked my hand back and said,"Absolutely not." Then the asshole had the nerve to get mad and say, "Well, I wasn't really talking about you since you're overweight." Scuze me, honey, but seeing as you were looking me in the eye and holding my fucking hand, who the hell else could you possibly be talking to? Me, being the evil bitch I am, just laughed and told him," I'm smaller than the bitch you walked in here with." (Judging by the look on his face, it *had* to be his sister or his first cousin. He looked like he wanted to Ike Turner me). I looked him up and down and told him I don't like dark meat and I gave up ugly boys when I turned 25. He slunk off like the maggot he is. Then, as we're leaving, I see him talking to some coked out blond chick with the darkest roots ever and the ugliest outfit in creation. I know he saw me laughing at him because I did it ALL in his face.

We were walking through downtown and passed this girl that had a guy in front of her and a guy behind and I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard him say,"Maybe we can get some double penetration action." That girl looked like she was a little high, but completely turned on by the idea. I bet her ass is mighty sore today. We went to Vanessa's SUV and then she took me to go to my car, except my car wasn't there. We kept driving up and down the whole garage and it wasn't there. We retraced my steps that night and she and Julie insisted on checking all the neighboring garages, but I know me. I'm a creature of habit. I park my car in the same garage every time I go out. I just assumed it got towed or something. I called the tow company like four times. It didn't even dawn on me until 8 a.m. the following morning that someone actually stole my car. Like I said, I drive an Elantra. Who would honestly steal my car?

My mom flipped out. My dad was shocked like me. An ELANTRA, People! The police came to file a report (that officer was totally hot!!!!!) and, when I told him what kind of car I had, even *he* rolled his eyes and said I'd get my car back eventually. He thinks some teenage asswipes are joy riding in it and it'll turn up. I ended up having to get a rental car that guzzles gas and I am just not happy. One of the belly dancing skirts my nana made me for Hanukkah was in my trunk and my iPod was hooked up to my stereo. I was going to get an iPod touch anyway, so I'm not mad about that, but I'm PISSED because my Britney Spears remix cd was in the cd player and I had to practically give away my first born to get one of my deejay friends to make it for me, so I'm livid about that. Everyone has remarked on how not angry I am about this. I don't know. I should be mad, but I feel strangely detached. I'm more pissed off about my c.d.

If your cousin stole my car, please tell him to leave it on the side of the highway so the popos can get it and I can turn this rental car in. He can keep the stereo and the iPod, but tell your cousin that he'd better return my belly dance skirt and he'd *definitely* better return my c.d. or else I'm going to break his fucking face.

State of the Union: Flabbergasted (A flipping ELANTRA)
Listening to: If You Seek Amy by Britney Spears

You ever want to just go out and be reckless and irresponsible? That's how I felt. That's what I was prepared to do. For many, many years, that's how I lived. I partied seven days a week from dusk til dawn and managed to work my family, my friends, and my studies in around going out, mingling, and drinking with a bar full of strangers. I wanted to go out? Ask me what night of the week it was and I could tell you where the happening spot was. I felt like waking up in another city, state, or country? Bon Voyage. I had my passport at the ready and I was off. I see a guy I liked? All it took was one look and a toss of red hair and I would be making out with him before the night was over.

Everywhere I went, there was someone I knew, some adventure waiting to happen, some wild story that I knew I would be telling the next day. I look back on that time and it was a wild, hazy, beautiful mess.That's the life that I retreat to when things get rough, when they don't go my way, when everything sucks, basically.

Work is the same. School is the same. My friends are the same. Everything is the same, except me. I don't want to be here. I force myself to stay here. I force myself to be responsible and to plod on. I know what my problem is. It's rapidly approaching the one year anniversary of the worst month of my life. I know why I feel sad. I know why I cry. I know why I want to crawl out of my own skin.

Nothing is going right and I just hate my life right about now. There are isolated incidences of great merriment, but everything just sucks for the most part. I know that it's me that's making everything worse than what it is. I know that it's psychological and can be tied in with my subconscious mind remembering that, at this time last year, my whole world was falling apart. I know there are people out there that have it way worse than me. I shouldn't be sitting here crying because there are people out there that really have something to cry about.

Death is a natural part of life. I get that. You want the people that you love to not be in pain anymore. I get that. I just wish that it didn't hurt so badly and I wish that it didn't mean that I would have to be left behind without those that I love. I don't know which one of them I'm crying for more. I just know that I'm crying and I can't stop. 

Batten down the hatches, boys. I feel a bout of self-destruct coming on.....

My hair used to be the bane of my existence. It was red, not burning-bush red, but red enough for me to be the butt of some serious jokes. When I turned sixteen, I dyed my hair flaming red. My mother was not amused. Slowly, I fell in love with my hair. I found a dye that would tame it so that it wouldn't look Ronald McDonald red. When they stopped making that dye, I cried. Then I promptly dyed my hair jet black. I had a love/hate relationship with my hair. It required constant attention, would need to be blow dried regularly to keep it from fro-ing up, and, no matter how much I would dye it dark, the red hair would reemerge like clockwork every three to four weeks or so because it ate dye for lunch. Men would stare at my hair and make comments about foxy redheads. I didn't know the power that I had. I hated my hair with a passion, until it started falling out.

Breast cancer runs in my family. My great grandmother had it, my grandmother had it, my aunt had it and I did, too. My great grandmother and my grandmother died from it. My aunt and I have been lucky. Hers was discovered when she went in complaining about being short of breath all the time. She was a smoker and, when they went to scan her lungs, they caught it. They ended up putting a pump in her chest and she was cranky as usual, but now she wears wigs that made her look young and snazzy. Mine went undetected for a while. If my ex wasn't such a horndog pervert who couldn't keep his hands to himself, my story might have had a different ending.

I hate doctors and hospitals. After spending half your childhood in the emergency room, you would, too. I still hate hospitals. I hate doctor's waiting rooms. I hate mammogram machines. I hate biopsies. I hate oncologists. I hate MRIs. I hate needles. I hate chemo. I hate radiation. You name it; I hate it. I hate being sick. I hate people poking me. I hate people prodding me. I hate people looking at me. I've hated this entire process, which pulled me away from my life, my studies, and away from my friends. I hated being nauseous all the time. I hated having no energy. I hated lying about why I looked like shit all the time and why I never wanted to go anywhere because I felt like shit. I hated all of it, but most of all, I hated my hair.

I hated how my hair fell out in chunks. I hated how I looked like a mangy dog. I hated it enough to the point where I pulled a Britney and cut it all off (Now you know why I used to get so sensitive when people made jokes about her). They throw all kinds of fact at you. They give you all kinds of odds. They tell you things that you believe and others that you don't. They tell you that your hair will grow back. They don't tell you how the process seems to drag on forever. They tell you that it may be thinner than it was before. They didn't mention how brittle and prone to breakage it would become. They tell you that it may grow back in a darker shade than it was before. They don't mention that your glorious hair color, a color that started to look better and suit you as you grew up and matured, that glorious shade of red that looked like a red-gold haze in the sun, that made men turn around and notice you, would be stripped away, muted and dulled.

So, I wear my "donated hair" until my real hair grows back to the length it was before it fell out. You've all seen the wigs I wear. I go from red, to black, to brown, from shoulder length to the crack of my ass and back with no rhyme or reason. I change wigs the way people change underwear. It’s like getting to be someone new, someone different, someone who wasn't sick. I get to be someone with a history and a past that isn’t as jacked up as mine.

I know that I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm still here. I'm still alive. My breasts are almost entirely intact. My mother has almost forgiven me for keeping it from her for so long. My dad and I decided to keep it from her until I went into remission and stayed there for a while. She's still angry with me, but I catch her looking at me sometimes. I see the fear in her eyes and I know what she's thinking. I can't die because she's lost too much already, too many people she loves have died and left her. I take care of my mother, not the other way around. When we're being playful, I tell her that I'm the parent and she's the child, and she laughs, but her laugh is tinny and a little hollow, because she knows the truth of my words.

My dad, for all his faults, has been my rock through all of this. Sometimes, I feel horrible for that man. He gets dumped with all the bad things in my life. He has to clean up all the messes that I make, deal with all the health problems, legal issues, all the crap, basically. He gets saddled with all the bad stuff and none of the good. I’m here and I think it’s from his sheer force of will alone. He won’t let me die. I'm all he has left as his faith died when my brother did six years ago. My dad and nana got here on Sunday to celebrate Hanukkah and I needed to get him something. What do you give the person that has enough money to buy *anything* his heart desires? What can you possibly give someone that has everything and lacks for nothing?

You give him hope.

State of the Union: Optimistic
Listening to: You Have Been Loved by Sia

I'm writing a fairytale for my friend's little girl for Christmas. I babysit her every once in a while so her parents can have a date night. She insists on stories that "come from the head" because they're better than the ones that "come from paper." I have the challenge of showing her (she's four, mind you, and very fixed in her opinions) that stories on paper actually start out in someone's head. I decided to do the story about a magical tree that holds wishes and you can pluck your wishes from the tree and they come true.

This story was partially inspired by me lying in bed last night thinking about my Christmas list and all the people I have to buy presents for. They're ranked on 1) What they like 2) How much contact I've had with the person during the year 3) What they gave me last year. I know it's the thought that counts, but some people put absolutely *no thought* into what they gave me (i.e. all the bottles of wine I ended up giving to my mother because I don't like wine and the gourmet coffee I got last year and the only thing I hate more than wine is coffee).

This year, I decided to buck tradition. This year, I'm only giving out gifts to people that actually deserve them. There are some people that have gone above and beyond and their friendship, their compassion, their caring will be rewarded. Some people will get Kingsford briquettes hurled at their heads, but I digress.

The point was there are some gifts that I would love to give. I would want to make someone's fondest wishes come true. Things like an accounting degree for my mom because she recently discovered she likes accounting. Or every electronic gadget on the "what's hot" list for my dad. A baby for my friend, Claire, that found out she can't have any children. I'd wish for silly things like bigger boobs for my friend Manda, or a hot boy for Meg, or for me to be able to eat whatever I want and never gain a pound. I'd like to be able to wish for a house with a bedroom for each of her children for my friend, Lisa, or for Sarah's diabetes to go away.

My wishing tree would be filled with silly things like plasmas and Wiis and XOXO purses and shoes as far as the eye can see. It would also be filled with me graduating from college and having a career instead of a job and no health problems. It would also sprout $100 bills at will.

I would wish that everyone was safe and happy, but the thing I would wish for more than anything is to be able to go back in time. I would tell my grandfather to stop smoking because emphysema is a horrible way to die. I would tell my grandmother to check her breasts every month because breast cancer can kill you quickly. And, if I could go back in time, I would have ran away with Gianni when he asked and went all over the world and saw everything he saw, did what he did, ate what he ate and lived how he lived.

I wish I had a wishing tree. It would make life sooo much easier. You could fix everything that was wrong and wish yourself a happy ending.

State of the Union: Hopeful
Listening to: Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky (Hey, when you're writing fairy tales, you have to set the correct ambiance). 

Okay, so I went to what seems like 50,000,000,000,000,000 (that's a gazillion in case you're wondering) doctors and no one could seem to find what was wrong with me. The issue is my fat ass. I was working out four days a week and actually following the diet plan and not losing any weight. So the trainer upped me to five days. No dice. I went to my doctor and told her my situation. She just ran some blood tests to test my blood sugar level, my blood pressure and to check my thyroid. Tests came back in the perfect range. What has always seemed odd to me is how I have never had blood sugar issues or high blood pressure or high cholesterol when I used to eat tons of fast food. Seriously, my blood type was McDonalds at one point.

My doctor's solution to my weight problem: lower my caloric intake. She lowered me from 1500 down to 1200. My dad thought I was cheating on my diet. He used to tease me about a secret stash of snacks like I had a horde of ho hos and twinkies and Reeses peanut butter cups somewhere or something. Everyone in my department could attest to the fact that I was following that diet to the letter as I was a big ole raving beyotch everyday because I wasn't eating any fried foods, sodas, breads, candy, cakes, cookies or fast food. I was miserable every fricking day.

This is about to veer into TMI territory, but I'll go through it briefly. My boss sent me to her girly doctor when I told her about my lack of girly issues: i.e. the fact that I don't ever surf the crimson wave. Apparently, you're supposed to do that on a regular basis and I hadn't in almost two years. (Yes, I am very popular with the boys) Girly doctor asked me a whole bunch of seemingly innocent questions. Then she did the nasty tests that only another woman will truly understand the horror of, drew more blood, and sent me to get an ultrasound. She also conferred with the endocrinologist she sent me to.

Know how people make jokes about fat people? About how they always say it's a gland problem that makes them fat? Yeah, well, that shit is legit because it's part of what's going on with me. My adrenal glands aren't functioning properly. To make matters worse, turns out that I have a nice, lovely condition called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. What is that crap you ask? Short bus explanation: I have cysts on my ovaries (they look like black and white marbles), my hormones are fucked the hell up, ('scuse my French), and my eggs aren't reaching full maturation, which means there are no babies coming my way anytime soon.

All those seemingly innocent questions? She was just running down the checklist to confirm her hunch. Infrequent menstrual periods? Check. Hirsutism? Check. Excessive acne, oily skin, or dandruff? Check. Weight gain or obesity, usually carrying extra weight around the waist? Check. Thinning hair? Check. (Although we thought that was related to something else I'll get to later) Patches of dark brown skin on the neck, arms, breasts, or thighs? Check. Anxiety or depression due to appearance and/or infertility? Check. Know anyone in your family that has the same symptoms? Check.

They think it's hereditary. I can think of three people on my mom's side that I know have some or all of these symptoms. I've always had it, but most of the symptoms were dormant until something kick them into high gear about three years ago. My mom is upset because she has, up until this came up, blamed all the bad things about me (asthma, allergies to everything under the sun, bronchitis, red hair) on my dad's side of the family so this sucks for her because now her gene pool is "tainted" just like his (She really used to say that). My dad had to apologize to me. It was scant consolation for the number of times he's called me "fatty" or "tubby" or "Big Mama Chunk-Chunk," but getting my dad to apologize for anything is like calling a special session of Congress on New Years Eve, so I take what I can get when I can get it.

She's also pissed off because the chances of me getting struck by lightning are greater than me producing any more matured eggs and producing a grandchild for her. Now, she has to be nice to my older sister, (who happens to be a RAVING beyotch) because she currently has the only grandchild my mother is going to see until my little brother and sister procreate and, seeing as they're still in elementary school, that's a *lot* of shit talking and temper tantrums she's going to have to put up with from my sister. Damn. It's kinda funny. I wouldn't trust my sister with a dog, yet she's the one with a kid. God has a *wicked* sense of humor. Know what else is funny? I was voted most likely to get married and have six kids in high school.

Ironic, innit?

State of the Union: Little bit on the numb side
Listening to: About a Girl by The Academy Is....

I am starting to think that my birthday is cursed. Why, you ask? Oh, let me count the ways.

1) I bought an grass skirt and coconut bra to wear to the party from this company on the internet. I gave them my measurements and the coconut bra came and was still too small.

2) The lady that was supposed to make my food left me a voicemail at 1:30 in the morning that her daughter had gone into labor and she was at the hospital with her. So, there I was at 4 in the morning, slicing meat because I was making Kahlua pork and it had to be slow roasted for 12 hours. This on top of the fact that I had gone out on Thursday night and was tired and then I had just got back from the bar with my friend, Alexis.

3) The lady that was supposed to make my birthday cake got arrested for punching a police officer in the face. So, there I was with no cake.

4) My cousin absconded to Dallas with my circular ice chest that was supposed to hold the rum punch and the dress I was supposed to wear to the party. This was, in addition, to the fact that she had a bunch of people over while I was out on Friday and they drank up half my liquor for the party.

5) I cut myself three times on the hand and once on my foot chopping and slicing fruit. (The foot thing was because my friend scared the living crap out of me and I lost my grip on the knife.)

6) I went to Walmart to find another ice chest with a spigot and couldn’t find one so I had to get ghetto and put the punch in a trashcan.

7) The clubhouse where I was having the party had an old school sound system that didn’t have the right plugs for hooking up my computer or iPod. I ended up pulling my speakers and bass from my computer and attaching them so we could have tunes.

8) I’ve lived in my apartment for almost three months and have never seen a train on the tracks, but of course one shows up when I’m in a hurry and took almost ten minutes to get across the road.

9) I had planned to be the Chiquita Banana Girl for Halloween and had bought the material to make an outfit for it and I’m glad I did because it ended up doubling as the skirt portion of my luau costume, which I paired with a red bikini. I found out that I really don’t want that to be my costume because it kept sliding down and showing my bikini bottoms.

10) My belly dance teacher performed two numbers and then she passed around the hip scarf and made all the belly dancers perform. Note to self: When you haven’t slept much from the night before and you get buzzed on four jello shots and some jungle juice, do NOT pick, “When I Grow Up,” from the Pussy Cat Dolls as the song you want to dance to. I was tired and it was probably the worst dance I have ever done to date. (And that’s saying something).

11) I looked really hot and I wanted to take lots of pictures, but I did something weird to my SD card and now it’s saying that it’s not initialized and wouldn’t let me take any pictures. BOO! Guess that means we have to wait for Birdy to post my pics.

12) Birdy’s wife was sick, so she couldn’t come to my party. BOO!

Good things that happened:

1) I got some really nice presents from people and a bottle of good champagne that I will bleed dry as soon as I get home tonight.

2) Since I didn’t get to go to the Texas/OU game, my dad is taking me to Vegas for the weekend.

3) My friends felt really bad that they missed my party, so they took me to the butt naked on Sunday night.

4) Everyone seemed to like the food that I threw together all late in the game.

5) Rolando and Gabrielle called and texted me to say Happy Birthday. I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but Rolando smokes weed, so his memory is sketchy on a good day and Gabrielle works like twelve jobs like a Jamaican, so I didn’t expect to hear from her at all.

6) Gianni bought my birthday present before he died and made my dad wait to give it to me on my birthday. He got me a “Return to Tiffany’s” necklace and bracelet set. I look totally pimp in it.

7) I’m still living. There's always that.

State of the Union: Nostalgic
Listening to: Sad Caper by Hootie and the Blowfish