She's A Maniaaac, Maniaaac...

And by "she" I am of course referring to me. It is now hour 10 of being at school (on a Saturday, no less), granted I have not been working the whole time, I have taken multiple flickr breaks, food breaks and general walking around breaks, and I guess the time that I spend darting from computer to printer can't really be called "working" per se since I am not doing anything but giving my legs a good workout and causing my brain to slowly disfunction while I silently swear to myself about the paper I'm wasting by constantly printing out stuff and then realising I made a mistake. Semi-epitome of d'oh.

Well since I've mentioned flickr, I guess I should just go ahead and admit it to the world. I am addicted to flickr. And blogger (obviously, since I'm on here right now when I should be working). Every few minutes I will stop working and go check to see who's commented on my photos, which invariably means I will go and look at those peoples' photos and comment on them and trust me, that takes a while. Especially since alot of people commenting on my photos are cat people and therefore have gorgeous pictures of their cats, which I of course sit and drool over the wonderful cinematography (does that work for static photos? Whatever, they're beautiful) and of course then I go and look at what camera they have, then gotta check how much it costs at bestbuy, and compare it to my tiddliwinks camera, cry in pity and then get back to work. I have honestly considered getting a REAL camera which I can actually self focus with the turning lens (oh how professional I'll feel once I get a turning lens!), and I figure, if W can drop $500 on an xbox 360, I can totally drop at least that much on a camera that will last me the rest of my life. The other week I dropped my current camera in the park without knowing, had walked half a block before I realised and backtracked until I found it. The whole time I was backtracking I was thinking about what kind of camera I would get if I couldn't find the old one. Wonder of wonders it was in the same place I dropped it, untouched, although I'm wondering if I knows I thought of replacing it before I even got closure. It'll probably electrocute me for being such a callous camera slut.

Last night I watched the movie Shopgirl, which apparently I swore I would never watch because I had read the book and knew the movie would never, ever, in a million years live up to the beautifully written humorous subtlety of the novella, but against all odds (and the fact that I forgot my swearing) I watched the movie, and it was (of course) very different from the book. Steve Martin (who wrote both the novella and screenplay) played the main "older" character, which slightly freaked me out, I would have preferred Chris Noth (Big from Sex and the City) since he had the suave older guy thing down in SatC, but Martin did a great job in the role, proving that he really should not be doing crap like Cheaper by the Dozen. Ever. In the special features they kept mentioning how Martin was best choice since he knew the material so well, and it's true, he wrote every nuance and so played it in the truest way, it's just disarming to see him in that role. Claire Danes as Mirabelle was a great casting choice, my sister remarked that Gwenyth (sp?) Paltrow would have been good in the role too, unfortunately, too old. As for Jeremy, Jason Schwartzmen (sp! I'm too lazy to look it up) was good, perfectly awkward, but of course, me being so superficially focused on looks, he didn't really look the part for me. After Rushmore, I just can't imagine him as any other person.

The cinematography was amazing, the movie has a very thought out art-film quality which I love, and like they mentioned in special features, having people not from L.A. (director Anand and producer Ashok, look it up on imdb.com to see last names, I can't remember) working on the film really breathes new life into the location. Views that do not conjure up thoughts of L.A., yet do are shown throughout the movie, the color changes to reflect moods work so well, it's so amazing how it plays on your psyche without you knowing. When Mirabelle is going through her "blue" phase and coloring followed suite, I absolutely felt it, but didn't know why. That's great movie making right there. If you ever get around to watching it, I recommend you watch it then read the book, I did it the otherway around and I was constantly thinking about how people who hadn't read the book would not know what was going on, and I'm sure it was because I had read the book, with its full omnipresent narrative which explained ever little remark, so in a sense I was over-educated. If you don't end up watching the movie, I implore you to at least read the book. I still go back and read it, since its such a quick read and so beautifully done.

Back to work.

Hot As All Hell

You know, when I'm hot, and I have to run around and do a bunch of errands WHILE it's hot, I'm not a happy camper. Never mind that the sun is shining, the weather is beautiful and the east coast is getting it's ass whooped by the cold weather, I am SVITZING! And it really doesn't bode well for anyone I have to encounter during the day. Just thought I'd let all of you know...

New Moo!

I don't really have anything interesting to post word wize, so here I am with the photos. Here's just a little taste of what's been posted on the flickr account!

P.S. I've officially gone Pro! With the new flickr pro account I can post as many photos as I want! Watch as the madness unfolds...

Shoes!

Okay, honestly, for my 101st post I thought I might do something that was groundbreaking in my life, or was super-inspiring, or something amazing. But I'm just going to post about something that's only huge and groundbreaking to me: I bought two pairs of shoes in two days that I can actually wear on a day-to-day basis. Now, let me tell you this, because I get made fun of all the time about my huge collecton of shoes that I never (seriously, never) use, because they're either high heels (which I can't stand for more than three horus) or shoes that are inordinately uncomfortable and need to be "broken in", unfortunately I have no patience to break them in and so they're still painful and so I refuse to wear them. It's a very vicious cycle that I repeat constantly without fail. Bad, cheap, painful shoes are honestly like my crack, I totally find myself saying "No, it's going to be different this time! I'm going to find GOOD shoes! And they're going to work, they will! I promise!!" And of course like a meth addict relapsing and going back to that disgustingly dirty drug, I go back and buy a pair of shitty shoes from Payless and waste yet another twenty dollars.

But not this time! This time I am ditching that drug and I have bought two pairs of comfortable shoes which I will wear everyday and wear into soft, awesome shoes. Now here's the problem, I will NOT spend money on shoes, yes, yes, I wear them daily, and my feet are pretty important, I don't want hammertoe and bunyons, blah blah blah...but I can't stand it, so I end up buy cheap shoes that kind of fit my freakishly wide fan feet that are so used to being shoe-free and open air in the house. Well it usually doesn't work out so well because that "kind of" is the difference between soft clouds of pillowly shoeness, and crippling pain after an hour.

And so...here are the shoes:

$20 Sugar's from Nordstrom Rack (mentioned in yesterday's post)

$17 Roxy's from Ross

Oh how happy am I? Happy enough to go eat some shortbread and chocolate cookies and a burrito! G'nite.

Oy-yoy-yoy! My feetsies!

So let me start from the beginning. This morning was the second day of my visit from Aunt Flo and I was NOT a happy camper. But I had two overdue books sitting in my locker at Northpoint and I HAD to get them to the library today, or incur the wrath of the librarians! I already had 25 cents in late fees, I didn't need more. So I slowly got ready, had a breakfast of cereal and half a banana. Technically it was still breakfast, it was before noon (11 o'clock) and my first meal of the day. Then I took the bus to Northpoint, puttered around printing out stuff, organising, realised that I didn't draw as much as I needed to last night on my lighting plan, and shit, all my stuff is disorganised. Fuck this, I'm gonna clean up this mess and move on. Took the F-line to New Montgomery, walked down to the library, returned my books, puttered (as I do best) and then went downstairs for a gyro. By now it's two and I'm starving. The gyro's good, the fries are amazing and the Sunkist just finishes it off. Unfortunately I did the very silly, very Asha thing of eating too much, and I lurch out clutching my stomach, not hungry anymore, but in a little bit of pain.

Now at this point I should explain why I didn't just up and go home right after the gyro incident. I had discussed with a few friends about going out to dinner, and then a movie was brought up, why, sure! Well, sent out an email, got a few replies, one had to drop out, the other was having dinner with other friends, so it was decided we would postpone the dinner to a later date. The movie? Looked up times, 5:05 showing, texted the two left standing (T.L.S.) and then walked over to Westfield for retail therapy. Now let me tell you two wonderfully delightful facts: 1. Cell phone reception for me at Westfield is shit. For some reason there is a T-mobile forcefield around that shopping mall and whenever I walk through the glass doors, my bars go from six, to one, to nil. 2. Window shopping is damn depressing when you're in a frugal bitch with cramps. So get a call from one of the T.L.S. who agrees to the five o'clock showing. I call the seconf of the T.L.S. and she wonders if we can push it back to the next showing. A very reasonable suggestion, but me being the menstrual hag that I am at that very point, say I probably will be weeping in pain by that point, so I don't think so. Okay, whole thing gets scrapped, let's try some other time.

Now, it's not that I'm frustrated with them, at this point I'm so frustrated with the fact that: A. I have my period. B. I can't organise a DINNER AND A MOVIE worth a shit. C. Organising it cutting it very close to corralling, and I have a new found respect for my high school friends who did this all the time, meanwhile I was the brick-shaped cow being corralled. So I leave Westfield, pissed that I didn't find the cheap candles that I wanted ($32 for a candle?! Are you shitting me? It's smelly wax!) and I start walking towards Fifth, see that I'm not going to make the 14 that will take me home, so I decide that I'm going to just walk home. Oddly enough, as I'm walking block after block, I realise that I am actually meeting the 14 at each bus stop, but as stubborn and frustrated as I am at this time, I keep going. Until about Seventh when the 14 whizzes right by me and on into oblivion. Damn.

I reach 9th and decide to cross the street and start walking towards Howard. And then realise that the direction I'm heading is the same direction as the Nordstrom Rack that I have never gotten the chance to go to. Since June, I have wanted to because I have been gagging to get a new pair of shoes, but of course, being the aforemention frugalist that I am, I won't pay full price, so I end up going to the Rack because my love vs. hate relationship with Ross has boiled to the point that I now hate, hate, hate it. Anyway, the ol' reliable rack granted me a cute pair of Sugar shoes that I'm definitely going to have to break in, but I'm happy so...nyeh. Then I walked home, and now I'm sitting here with very pained footpads which I shall bitch and moan about in my head. Oh and as for the map down below, it chronicals the walking I did today, since, unwalker that I am, was a major accomplishment for me. Adios!

Click to see the actual map.

Note: I just realised that this is my 100th post! *Cue Madonna music*

"Celebra-ate! Holiday! It would be so nice..."

Woo-hoo, just goes to show, if you create a blog, and you have a grumpy enough personality, and you perservere to gripe to the world, you can do it!

Hardeeharhar

So I guess I haven't blogged in a while (by my standards), but I've been stressed, had class, and have a pained belly-perfect excuses!

So I wrote that previous sentence a week ago and pretty much haven't logged into blog to post anything since. It is now Wednesday, April 18th, 11:31AM and I have so far accomplished: Not much. I ate breakfast, showered, checked all my daily online stuff (myspace, facebook, comics, emails, etc.) and called my health insurance to see why the hell they're telling me I have to pay an additonal $31 on top of the $40 I paid for my annual exam THAT I HAD IN JANUARY. Ugh. So in an effort to get my "creative juices" flowing (gross, oh I am SO 12 years old), I put on some classical music, unfortunately I think I just put on the music from the Nutcracker. I just slipped in the stupid Tschaichovsky CD I had, okay, let's try Bach. This morning when I woke up, my roommate had one of the public access channels on and they were playing classical piano music, and it was really nice to wake up to. So add to 'to do' list: Get classical piano music.

Okay, Bach's on...it's...nice. Well actually it's okay, it's a full on orchestra. I guess I was looking for something a little more simple like the music I heard this morning. Let's give Pandora.com a try. Except I have to find an example of what I want...shit, okay onto Amazon.com to look for classical music. Shit they're playing my other radio station "Oscar Peterson" and it's 'How High the Moon' and let me tell you, Bach and Peterson do not make a lovely pair. Plus I the Bach music is making me picture the main hall of a castle, with a lyre playing the lute. Okay, no to Bach then. Luckily I don't remember ever buying these, they were just laying around my house (in BKK) and I brought them to the states with me.

Okaay, "Most Relaxing Piano Album in the World...Ever!" lets give you a try. No no no, you're way too relaxed, I definitely want to fall asleep listening to you. The goal is to WORK, not sleep. Let's try "Ultimate Classical Piano"...Oh, oh this is nice, okay who are you? Isaac Albinez, click click click into Pandora.com aaaaand....no. Okay, let's try a different approach, let's do songs.

Okay that didn't work out so well, they didn't even recognise Fryderyk Chopin, so I'm thinking this is a lost cause. Whatever, it's half an hour later and I have accomplished nothing as far as work. And I wonder how I never get any work done in a day. Guess I should go buy that birthday card and nail polish remover before it gets dark.

Meanwhile I have all the windows open to air out the apartment and Moo is having an absolute fit because it's too cold. She is currently hiding under my bed.

Blogging And The City...

So I have spent the last nine hours watching Sex and the City online while also working on my classwork in CAD. Which worked out great, I actually powered through and got one of my projects completely moved from paper to computer and I was able to listen to the show and switch back and forth between windows whenever I felt like it (and pause, rewind and fastforward at my will, oh my!) The only problem is that now that I've been watching a SATC marathon, I'm filled with this sense of longing and weird happiness. Longing because obviously every episode has to do with the love & lustrelationships of characters involved and also because I can't believe how much bullshit I bypassed by dating a guy like W.

Another problem with watching that show is that it has an omnipresent narrative that is also a writer, and therefore gets my mind clicking and I'm suddenly filled with the urge to type to the world, which actually happens quite often, before it was You've Got Mail that got me going. And luckily, now that I have a blog, I can just post this and if people read it, so be it, instead of how I used to send my word out to my little world, by writing an e-mail and imposing my insanity upon everyone by having it pop up in their mailbox, unless they junked me, which I totally understand. I've actually written to a few people explicitly telling them not to send me anymore forwards, since I was so damn sick of opening up my email inbox and getting the same stupid outdated forward about sodium laureth sulphate making my hair fall out and giving me cancer. One particular email was actually really bitchy, and though now I think of it, I could have dealt with that situation in a more adult and civil fashion, bitchy got the job done. But I still try to refrain nowadays. Sadly W usually gets the brunt of my bitchiness...

Why did no one tell me a new Diner Dash came out? I was completely obsessed with this game two years ago one vacation at home (it was way too hot to leave the house), and I actually made it to the last level on the original downloadable Diner Dash, but could finish the game because I just wasn't fast enough on that last level. Sad to think that I still want that unattainable goal. Sometimes I just have to shake my head and sigh at my own antics...

G'nite folks.

I Guess Other People Are Partying...

It's 3:39AM on a Saturday morning. I'm awake only because and hour ago I woke up with a headache and wasn't able to find a comfortable position to sleep in and was too frustrated with having a headache to sleep. So I massaged my skull. I rolled over. I tossed off my comforter. I used one pillow. Then two pillows. Then no pillows. Still I was unable to get to sleep. I finally gave in and took a painkiller that I was given for severe back pain last year, and I think the headache is slowly ebbing away as we speak *knock on some damn hard wood*.

The only good thing about being awake at this time is that most of the channels that I usually watch on T.V. are running infomercials, which -unless deal with exercise- are some of my favorite things to watch when I can't get to sleep. For whatever reason, it just reminds me of back in the day when I used to come visit the states and I'd be so enamored with U.S. television because it was so much more interesting than IBC (remember when it was called that?)

I'm a little over the Magic Bullet, they seem to run that one pretty often, but I still love watching the Miracle Blade with "Chef Tony" who is the classic Italian chef. You know those cartoons of Italian chefs? With the pudginess, the thick black mustache and the tall chef's hat? If that was a police sketch and you saw Chef Tony you'd pretty much say "That's your perpetratin' ho right there officer." Which is obviously just how you roll, right? I've been watching way too much I Love New York.

I can't believe I watch this show, it's all completely staged, and NY is just too over the top, but still, I'm drawn to the horrible VH1 find-me-love "reality" shows. An hour ago I caught the last five minutes of the finale, and it was just too horrible for words. It makes me glad I didn't watch it when it first premiered on Monday night so they can't use my view as a vote for ratings. Right now I've got the Eukanuba Dog Show on and I THINK I'm looking a black cocker spaniel, but I honestly have no clue because all I see is black bell bottom legs and a small black body. WHERE IS THE HEAD? That scared the shit out of me because it seriously has the smallest head I've ever seen on a dog with that size body. Stupid show dogs and their blow dried poof-hair. It's honestly very disorienting. I wonder if anything else is on...and if I can get to sleep now...and why that dog runs in such a weird hippity-hoppity way. G'night!

It's Getting Better All The Time...

...Or at least I'm getting better, which is very nice. It's always nice to be able to breathe through your nose (even if it's only every once in a while), and nice to NOT wake up because your cold-induced snore was too loud. It's also nice to not have to constantly be clutching tissue and bed-ridden. Even though I'm still a little sniffly and constantly clearing my throat, I'm still pretty happy. The only thing that I'm a little iffy on is that I am such a complete baby when it comes to being sick, I was so upset with being sick because it was completely not the time for me to be sick, two days in bed may sound like fun, but that's only when it's voluntary.

Anyway, it's now Wednesday, I'm actually feeling almost all better and I decided to take a break from working on class stuff to do a little "photo shoot" with Moo-raka...

Captured just at the right moment

I uploaded quite a few pictures of Moo onto my Flickr, no new scenic ones, hopefully I'll see something interesting to take a picture of now that I'm practically human.