Nicole

I just wanted to say right now how much kind words mean sometimes. I need to be better about offering them. Someone just told me at the end of FS this morning, “I love working with you,” and it meant so much more than the usual niceties we offer one another.

And I have near me a couple things a friend and sometimes mentor said to me on IM which I wrote down:
“I hate it when you’re not OK.” –from last January
“I wonder if that’s possible.”–from last week or so.

Both were said instead of much more discouraging things (which I did get from some others about the same situations).

Words, they’re powerful things.

Whither my heart has gone, there follows my hand, and not elsewhere.
For when the heart goes before, like a lamp, and illumines the pathway,
Many things are made clear, that else lie hidden in darkness.”
–Longfellow, Evangeline, Part the Second, ch. 1.

I have absolutely no time but I am rereading Evangeline anyway. Well, I guess I felt the need to because in school I am rereading Eugene Onegin. Every other time I read the latter, I completely related to what Tanya was doing and feeling. This time, however, I don’t relate at all. So I guess I needed to see if I still related to the heroine from which I draw my nom de Internet… I’ve even gotten credit card offers addressed to Evangeline Bellefontaine. Too bad fictional characters don’t have social security numbers.

Anyway, I guess I connected with the character because she is French Canadian, deeply religious, making her way through life alone and fearless about it. And I am too, more or less. I can’t recommend the book without the proviso that Longfellow, while not a Catholic himself, lays the Catholic motif on pretty thick, so that non-Catholics probably read it and go, “Whatever,” and Catholics go, “Yeah, right.”

Speaking of non, we have our CO this week. There were some points I wanted to post tonight, but I seem to have left my notebook in the car.

So I will just give you a clickie of a not-so-old song I came across the other day, which I kind of like, even though I don’t remember what it’s about. copyright yours truly.

I like smelly cheese.

My hockey tix will be at the office tomorrow.

I went to Hell today.

<–Chekhovian terseness = I am ready for exam tomorrow.

It’s gonna be okay. We’re dealing, just as we have been.

Good to be reminded how the other half lives–no, make that the other 9/10. Sometimes living in a city where people have so much money makes you forget that rich people are the minority. And my job doesn’t help. Waiting on bored trophy wives and well-off widows all day doesn’t keep you in touch with reality either.

Did anyone get the new Media Player 10? The main change seems to be that the “Copy from CD” tab now is called “Rip” and the “Copy to CD” is “Burn.” Is this a half-hearted Gatesian effort to “keep it real” with the youth of today? I’m 21, smack dab in Generation Y, and stuff like this actually makes the product LESS appealing to me.

Jason Mraz has an interesting blog. The latest one reveals that Michelle Branch has a birthmark on her face that she hides with makeup. He compares it to the way people were kept from knowing that FDR was in a wheelchair in the White House. Hmmm.

He ends with some good quotes though. Read them

I know that’s partly my fault, because my mind is often preoccupied, but still. Nobody tells me anything.

Today was pretty good. I can do better than that. I’m ambivalent about the day because I didn’t accomplish all I needed to, just some. And I keep missing Midland. I keep missing me in Midland. Everybody there calls me Nikki, not Nicole. I have kind of a reputation for being a Type A personality, dependable, PUNCTUAL(!), organized, says things that make sense. I think I might be a workaholic, maybe always have been. But somehow now that that tendency is split 3-4 ways at any given time, I’m barely hanging in. Lateness is habitual to any daytime event, and there’s my growing trend of absenteeism to school. I’m an absenteeist. Finally, I’m an -ist of some sort!

I need some kind of a topic or plot or gimmick for a 12-page poem (minimum). This might be my last time entering something for the Roethke prize. I can’t even begin to describe what Ted Roethke means to me, and I hope I don’t have to explain what $5000 would mean. I can’t find my last year’s entry, maybe I lost it with my hard drive, but I do recall that it was pretentious garbage. I threw in just about all the Latin I knew, for good measure. Hey, it was close to 15 full pages long, I was throwing in just about everything I know. I think my ATM PIN was in there too. Someone emailed me personally to tell me I hadn’t won, and who had. I don’t know if that meant I was a finalist or what. But I do want to try again.

Tried to go see Nick Lowe at the Ark tonight, all by myself. Tickets were sold out, so I was cruising Main with the moonroof open, enjoying Bohemian Rhapsody at a rather high volume, looking for scalpers, when I got holla’d at by a car full of senior citizens. Whatev.

So no concert. :( But it got me thinking of casting my biopic

A stomachache that even Vernor’s can’t remedy… what is it coming to? As a kid Vernor’s always made me feel better.

I realize that this random assortment of symptoms is probably my body’s way of coping with the stress, or rebelling against it. But you know, Paul pummeled his body and led it as a slave. I will just go all WWE on mine.

That or maybe I have spent too much time at the hospital in the last 9 months and contracted something exotic. “Why yes, Oprah, I caught the ebola virus in the waiting room of the cancer center. And I would like my new car in red.”

Speaking of the CCC, looks like my dad’s next procedure will be on Friday. Hopefully we will learn a bit more from it.

Thinking about dropping out of school and cleaning pools for a living. Growing up, Scott and I used to fight over who got to take care of ours. I think he hates his job as much as I hate my school/work combo, maybe more, so perhaps we could form a partnership. Nicole & Scott’s Pool & Spa. We could have a 70s diesel Econoline mural van and everything.

Okay, I really should sleep now.

Дмитрий Мережковский

This is the best game I’ve seen in a long time! I love hockey, I love Canadian tv, I love Canada, I love goalies, I love overtime music (“Elevation” “Sweet Child o Mine”), I love Tim Horton’s, I love the bank commercial with Tom Cavanagh, whom I also love!!!!!

I think I might move to Canada.

And you know what? The BoSox are going to win the pennant for the first time since 1918, I believe that. And then Armageddon can come. :P

Here’s some fun links which might make you as happy as I am:
Crazy ebay man
Things to do in an elevator
In case you haven’t seen them, Teen Girl Squad (there’s a new one!)

around the state in two days