she leaves you sleeping with your ghost

i felt a few eyes searching me out as i washed my hands in the sink and tried to make my face a little more presentable to the public in general. no easy feat, considering it looked like i had just been through some sort of emotional trauma.

"heh." i laugh at myself. "crying over movies again. you're such a sap."

"piss off you!" i tell the other half. "it was a beautiful story!"

les and laura and i had gone to see big fish. we bought candy and nuts, and even got half decent seats. laura and i wept like children, and les pointed and laughed.

it really was a beautiful story though.

many meetings

i caught the very last bus that runs from wellington street to carleton last night.

"yesss!" i exclaimed as i saw it approaching. i had been worried that i was going to miss it. instead, i had to wait twenty five minutes. night life on wellington is an interesting sight to see on a friday night, to say the least.

the bus had an exhaust leak, and made weird noises everytime the bus driver applied the brakes, which was just about every three seconds.

"woah there." i tell myself. "listen to the music. you're not gonna puke, ok?"

humming belle and sebastian, i made my way home.

there was a note waiting for me that had been slipped under my door.

"meaghan, knock on my door, i need those pictures. -liz." i stared at it for a moment and then thought "ah! she means the ones of jeremy that she gave me yesterday!"

thinking i was smart shit, i tucked them in an envelope, slid them under the door, and came back to my room. i crawled into bed and got ready to sleep.

and then, just as i was drifting, that inner voice spoke up.

"hey megs."

"mmmppph." i really didn't want to have a conversation if it could be helped.

"why would liz want those pictures of jeremy, when she gave you the doubles?"

i didn't really know or care, but i had a feeling that i was about to be enlightened.

"maybe she was, you know, talking about the pictures on your digital camera. remember how she borrowed it?"

i can't be expected to remember everything.

two weeks notice

i opened my eyes in utter confusion.

"why is santa singing 'hey ya?'" i asked myself. "and where the hell is rudolph?"

it took me a few minutes to realize that santa was not at all singing hey ya and that i had no cause to look for rupolph. hey ya was on the radio, and the santa and rudolph part was a figment of my overactive imagination.

it was all just a bizzare dream.

isn't that overdue?

i was just winding down, getting ready to settle into bed, when the all familar high pitched screech of the fire alarm suddenly broke my serenty.

"motherFUCKER! i yell at nothing in particular, as i begin to grope around my room for my boots and socks.

i didn't even technically exit the building. instead i chose to follow the crowds of people in front of me, making for the extensive underground tunnel system that we have here at carleton.

"this is great." i comment to liz. "when the building starts melting the wave of acid fumes will have direct and easy access to us."

she just rolled her eyes and continued shuffling towards res commons.

you never listen

i dropped some mail in the slot on my way home from class, and on a whim i decided to check my own mail box. i've been waiting for a package from california for some time.

imagine my surprise when i had both a package from wiarton and one from the united states!

it really is true when they say the universe gives back what it gets.

into this house we're born

i read myself hoarse last night, trying to finish the chapter before i fell asleep. when i was finished, kate was already making water drinking noises and mumbling, giving me assurance that she was indeed in the land of nod.

"how nice!" i thought, "i sure hope putting little kids to sleep is this easy!"

it didn't take me long to drift off either.

when i awoke, it was still dark. in fact, it was still night. my feet were sticking out and i looked like i had fallen unconscious face down on the pillows. my brain struggled with me.

"c'mon. i KNOW you heard it."

"heard what?" i mumble in my head. this is not the time to be having a conversation.

"the door. it just opened."

internally, i give a sigh of exasperation. "yeah, so?"

"THAT MEANS THAT THERE'S SOMEONE IN YOUR ROOM!" the other half excitedly and nervously screams.

i listen more consciously. outside in the hall are the voice of girls saying that it's obvious that we're asleep. and inside the room, a guy's voice is responding that we won't mind, and that he's just leaving cookies.

"yeah man." i tell the other half. "there's no way this isn't a dream." i shut off the conscious part of my mind, and just barely register the sound of the door closing agin.

when we woke up, there were piles of cookies on kate's desk. courtesy of greg from down the hall.

bodyrock

kate gripped the pilow tightly, repeating over and over, "this isn't what i want to watch!" i just sat there, mute terror filling my limbs, even though we both knew what was going to happen.

after dinner we decided that we should rent a movie. we thought that maybe stephen king's stand by me would be a good choice because kate had never seen it, and it had been far too long since i had. however, when we arrived at abstentions, we discovered that there were many other high quality movies. after debating for nearly fifteen minutes, i chose identity with the aid of a number game developed by kate.

the lights flcked across the wall, and john cusak's hand crept closer and closer to the dryer.

"AAAAAAAGGHHHHHH!" i screeched as he pulled back a shirt to reveal the head of some poor woman tossed in with the clothes.

atleast my shrill and not-so-puny girly scream broke the tension in the room.

your life is never dull in your dreams

i cackle fiendishly as i put the finishing touches on the package i am sending to melissa. everything didn't work out quite as i had intended, but overall it would probably be fun to open and play with.

as i'm laboriously applying the stamps needed to satisfy the canadian postal system, the phone begins to ring.

i stare at it in disbelief.

"hello?"

"halooooo!" from across the distance echoes in my ears.

my marmee was calling to tell me that she had found my cds, all of them that i had left at home. they were in her workroom, sitting on top of the cd player. apparently she had been listening to them for a few days without connecting them to the ones i had "lost" when i was at home for christmas.

she might be a wee bit eccentric, but she's the best mom in the entire world.

penis penis penis!

when i was in grade four, i shared a maroon-ish coloured room with my sister just outside of owen sound. although not the most appealing situation to her, we managed.

my favourite part of sharing the room with her were sunday nights, when she would tune her clock radio to am 640 and the sunday night sex show with sue johansen. we would lie in our beds, hearing about problems that distant people were having with their sexual partners.

sue left no door unopened. she talked about how to have sex, what positions were best, what toys to use, when to masturbate, how to masturbate and continually emphasized the importance of condoms and sexual health.

being nine, not a lot of this made sense.

"ummm....oral stmulation??"

tonight sue was here at carleton, and her charm has not abated at all. if anything, she's turned into that lady you wish was your closest friend. she was no different than i remembered. the only thing missing were the waves of static and kelly's quiet giggling from across the room.

i still felt like it was the best part of the week.

two people to the bar for pitchers

we stood in line for a very long time last night.

"li-izzzzz...." i whined. "when are they going to open the door?" of course she knew i was kidding, but she attempted a stern face nonetheless.

one of the bands had arrived late for the show and were finishing up a soundcheck, so we were standing in a huge line on the first floor of the unicentre, making a lot of noise and causing a general ruckus.

when the doors opened, forty minutes later than predicted, liz had to sign me in because i had forgotton my student card.

"you owe me now." she said, deadpan.

we laughed like hyenas, and went and secured a seat.

i'm cool, i'm calm, i'm gonna be a star

liz and i were laughing at the badgers and discussing the show tonight when kate came home.

"hey kate!" i greet her, trying not to sound like the maniac that i am. "how was your afternoon?"

in response, i get the icy glare, the one that sends warning bells clashing around inside my skull. no, this isn't time-to-play kate, nor is this time-to-tease kate. this is watch-out-or-i'll-snap-your-fucking-neck kate. yeah man.

"how was class?" i try, hoping to crack the forst that lies heavily across all of her features.

"boring as all FUCK." she tells me.

"oh c'mon..." my brain screams a warning, but sadly my mouth is moving already and the stop signals get lost somewhere in translation. "how can you say that about grinchy?"

i was rewarded with another icy cold death stare. thank god i'm not a man, or else certain parts of me would have shriveled up and died, never to return for many a long year.

falling down

marla asked me to bring my legolas action figure to latin ages ago, so when i remembered this morning, i felt pretty good about it.

"oh hahahahahah!" she exclaims with joy as i pull him out of my backpack. there isn't time to say much more as we're about to stat a quiz, so i tuck him away until break.

yeah, we get a ten minute break in the middle of class. how sweet is that? in the midst of the break, out comes leggy. marla and i start playing with him.

"look, if you squeeze his legs together his arms jerks around!" i'm secretly very pround of my action figures and thier capabilities.

we stay enthralled until the professor's voice cuts cross the room.

"what the hell is that?" he questions as he wanders over. "i never thought i'd have to confiscate a toy from my class in university." not really serious, as he's chuckling as he says it.

he picks up the action figure and studies it for a few moments.

"wow." slight twitch of the goatee as he shoves his glasses back up his nose. "he's even good looking as an action figure!"

i'm still trying to recover from the suppressed laughter.

she's seen her share of devils

i come to the land of the living with only the maximum of effort, dragging my eyes open and wondering why i can't just die.

in stead of dying, i drift over to the coffee maker, and while on auto pilot i manage somehow to make coffee without falling forward, flat on my face or slumping to the ground like a narcoleptic might in this situation.

when my coffee feat is accomplished, i crawl back into bed, waiting for said nectar to be brewed.

"meaghan umublens owers ded han haitlin avvvit?" i think kate is trying to say something i grunt in response.

"well?" she sounds slightly impatient. "i left her a note, can she have the rest of that shower head?"

we share a bathrooom with a second year humanties student, and she brought her own shower head for the shower. it's just one of those cheap ones, that you screw on and is held in place in a plastic holder when it isn't hanging on its lengthy hose. in december, the holder for it broke, and kate tried to fix it. it didn't work. instead it just gave it this lumpy guilty look. so we bought a new shower head, and stuck the new holder on the old shower head.

problem is, we never fessed up to caitlin, the bathroom mate. i told kate she had to, since she was the one who made the original lumpy with glue and because i had stuck the new holder on.

looks like caitlin finally has her confession, even though she already knew what had happened.

"i don't care!" i bemoan my fate of having to get up this early, even though it's not really early at all. "she can have it if she wants!"

because really, what am i going to do with a shower head and a hose?

it's such a waste

i look at the clock and recoil in almost horror.

"there's no way that it's five thirty." i tell myself. "no fucking way."

but then i guess i did spend a lot of time doing simple nothings today. time flies when you're having fun.

"or not."

sad and pessimistic, but true.

it's my life

i quietly opened the door and snuck out of the room. i hadn't been the quietest of people this morning, but kate still wasn't awake, and it was just after one p.m.

"remember when you used to sleep like that?" i ask myself.

"yeah." i respond. "now sssshhhh!"

i used to hate it when people woke me up before i was ready.

such a perfect thrill

i ripped off my shirt before kate had even left the room.

"oh yeah." i told her. "if you're going out then it's....NAKED TIME!"

she just rolled her eyes. her friend sheena had invited her to go out clubbing. i egged her for on for a total of thre point five seconds. not that that matters at all, because kate's a pretty independant person to begin with.

"do you want to come with me?" she asks, with sincerity.

and i reply with equal sincerity.

"dear, i have no desire whatsoever to go out clubbing tonight. it's not exactly..." i pause, searching for the right word. "it's not exactly my thing."

as soon as she left, i turned up my music and danced like an idiot.

"isn't this what they do at clubs?" i ask myself. and then "no. they dance. i'm not sure what you call this...but..it's not going to pass for anything more than wild thrashing. ever."

it's not like i want to be john travolta anyways.

into your hideout

i danced around the aisles at future shop, singing along to u2.

"it's alright it's alright it's allll-right! she moves in mysterious ways!"

of course random people were snickering at me, but i really didn't care all that much. i was on a misson to find pilate. and find them i did, the last copy in the pile. i guess they're a bit more popular than i thought. i stood in line for nigh on forty minutes, paid for the cd and escaped.

on the train ride home, i sat in the sun smiling like a chesire cat.

"you know," quiet and content. "that's the first cd you've bought since, well, damn. i can't even remember." stated without even a hint of guilt. after all, i did spend a lot of money today.

sometimes you just need new music.

it's time to move your body

the bus lurched to a very sudden and quick stop. i got off as fast as i could, breathing deeply and trying to steady myself. kate and the other people who had disembarked started walkig off, and i trailed behind.

"if i had stayed on that bus for like, three more seconds, i would have hurled." i announce to kate.

we stumble up to the room, where i change quickly, the room spinning and fall into bed making uuuuunnggggg noises and complaining bitterly about the old popcorn smell that is threatening to make me lose my dinner.

"i'll never ride the bus for a hobby." i repeat to myself as sleep finally claims me.

hung down with the freaks and goons

i sat through my anthropolgy lecture with a kind of 'bordom, yet a hint of fascination' attitude. it appeals to me, yet at the same time, i cannot imagine devoting an entire lifetime to working in such a large and all encompassing field.

"yeah, but you're willing to get a degree that says you've read the bible and the upanisads. what are you going to do with that?" slighty snarky, yet also filled with what may be a hint of awe.

i mentally shrug. "who knows?"

after university, i think i might take a course on basic/simple car mechanics.

at least that way i can be doing something practical while i spout hindu philosophy and ponder it's relation to christainity. and it might also shut up that inner voice for a while.

guaranteed to jack you up

i walked towards my mailbox with purpose and hopefully a nonchalance attitude. afterall, if it knew that i wanted mail, then for sure it would eat it, and then i would never get it.

"c'mon." i thought. "build my ego!"

of course there was nothing in there.

it's not enough to pray for mercy

"hey, do you guys want to go and see pilate on monday night?"

liz asked us this last week, as we passed one of the many posters that are plastered around res-commons. we were on our way to the cafeteria to pretend to enjoy to eat.

"umm...i'm going to the movies that night." i tell her. "love actually with the luscious colin firth and then gothika!"

she was ok with this, and so was i.

except now that i have heard more of pilate's music, i'm beginning to think that the benefits of a small live show at olivers may indeed be much more exciting than going to the movies.

live music or colin firth?

"such decisions you have to make..." my brain snickers at me.

i give it the mental finger and go back to listening to pilate.

feels like thursday on a friday

i stumbled out of bed, all of my limbs asunder and askew, and unsteadily made my way across the floor towards the bathroom. everything was going fine until i hit the tile floor.

"whoaaaeep!" i squeaked as my feet went sliding in every which way and i almost, but not quite, wiped out.

last night we were finally able to vacuum the floor, so i did that and i also 'mopped' the tile part. over christmas i bought this mop&glow rip off, because it only cost a dollar.

apparently it make things quite slippery.

you look like me on sunday

"love is suicide! love is suicide! love is suicide!" billy screamed at me as i trudged up the semi-slope to the library.

i was on a quest to find an ethnography, which i must read and write a six page paper on.

"humph." i said, probably out loud because of my walkman. "anthropology is suicide."

god punished me for thinking this at that exact moment by sending a gust of wind stong enough to blow my skirt up past any line of decencey. and of course, there were people huddled around, pointing, staring and laughing.

"ha!" i thought. "trick's on you!"

i was wearing my leggings.

make sure i'm around when you've finally got something to say

kate stabs the poor hapless piece of lettuce sitting on her plate.

"i hate salad." she states with venom behind every word.

we were eating dinner, the same stuff that we've been eating since we came here in september. in the beginning i was enthuastic about the food, because at least a variety was offered, however, that variety really isn't as various as i had originally hoped. it jst consists of the same things offered at different times in a week.

kate continued to stab and mutter uncouth things under her breath at the poor piece of greenery.

"someone's angsty and needs a viggo movie!" i tell her cheerfully.

i think tonight it'll be g.i. jane just so we can watch shit blow up and people get all bloody.

my weakness

every day, multiple times, i check my email.

it's beginning to become a wee bit of an obsession, because i'm always so excited when i get email. but even better, is when i get real mail. it's only one noise different from email, but it's so much more tangible.

i have many letters to send, many people to get in touch with.

"maybe if you bought some stamps..." the inner voice reminds me.

yeah. stamps.

broke the bonds and loosed the chains

kate sits across from me, staring intently at the ceiling to her right as she tries to explain her point in a fashion that will satisfy both of us.

"it's the tone. you sound like you're attacking someone, that you're questioning their beliefs. you make it sound like you're right, and they're wrong."

what had started off as a discussion about the difference between lies and exaggerations, both falsehoods, had turned into a rather interesting and informative discussion about nothing other than discussion. more to the point, discussion with me, which we were trying to hide and failing miserably at.

"i expect that two grown people should be be able to sit down, and discuss things in a calm and rational manner. if they're going to get all worked up about it, then i refuse to continue."

i ponder this for a minute, and then before i really have a grasp on what i'm trying to say, come out with another of my whacked theories.

"don't you think," i start out, waving my hands in the air like the madwoman that i am, "that by saying that people have to discuss things only in the way that you want, with your limitations and rules and regulations, don't you think that you're only then seeing a small miniscule piece of the tapestry they're trying to weave for you?"

kate starts, stops, tries to start again and then stops. i go on, gathering stem.

"aren't you in essence deprieving them of the right to express themselves?"

we're both leaning in, and the room is eerily quiet. suddenly, that mischevious glow lights up kate's eyes.

"i'm cutting out your personality!" kate blurts out, in her "angry voice."

we dissolve into laughter. after all, it was far too late to be anything more than semi-serious.

everloving

i really didn't care if i looked a fool, breathing in funny, holding it and then making a weird whummmmmmm sound as i let air spill forth from between my lips.

a long time ago my mom took me and my sister to yoga classes. she and kelly went back for a second round, and i'm quite sorry now that i didn't. i forgot how relaxing and good it feels to be connected through something as simple as breathing, and stretching.

i think that for the first time ever, i've just grounded myself here.

"crackpot!" screams my inner voice.

meh. when haven't i been the eccentric cat lady-in-waiting?

the forests will echo with laughter

on monday night, after the matrix, kate and i discovered that we needed to do laundry.

"i haven't any underwear left." kate told me, with the demurest of looks upon her scandanavian face.

she's not scandanavian. but she could pass as a person from a country in that area of europe.

when we went down to the laundry room, there wasn't even one single washer available. they all were in use or had someone's wet clothes still sitting in them. there was no way i was waiting until some dumbass decided that he should maybe, you know, kinda go and get his laundry and then proceed to use up all the rest of the dryers.

so i dragged kate over to leeds, and we used their laundry house.

man, i so better live there next year. it's classy with a c.

teenaged wasteland

the soap opera of my life continues. or rather, the soap opera of the lives of those around me continues. because i am involved in their lives, i would deem it possible to conceive that my soap opera also continues.

"andrew told me that i was the anti-christ last night." melissa tells me over msn.

i do not fully comprehend this, because she follows with " and a communist and a mac user, apparently i'm the third."

i wonder to myself, and then on msn to melissa, "the third what?"

she responds, slightly garbled and even more unclear than before.

"as in they said there would be three; hitler, napoleon and me."

all i can wonder, is did she mean that there would be three communists, three mac users or three anti-christs? and if she was a communist, how could she be compared with napolean, who really wasn't about communism as far as i know. and although nazism is similar in the political scale when it is ideally compared to communism, there are still some important key differences. the ani-christ opens up a whole slew of ideas and concepts that would take days and days to explain. all i know is that i'm pretty sure melissa isn't the ant-christ. as for the mac user.....well....she cannot escape the title of one.

after some more inner debate, i finally respond.

"so...he's saying you're either short and crazy, or rejected and crazy?"

"no, he's saying i'm the last to complete the cycle of crazy dictators/anti-christs. i think. it made sense last night
but then again, he's stupid."

i cackle with glee.

pots hanging on ropes

kate made little to no noise when she left this morning, leaving me in a predicament when i awoke, as it was much later than i had hoped.

not that i expect her to wake me up. usually the door opening and closing again wakes me up just fine.

"meaaa-ghaaan..." i thought that i was at home, and that my mom was trying to wake me up for market. "you have twenty minutes to get to cla-assssss..."

this elictied a response. who has twenty minutes? me? YEAH RIGHT!

i had thirty when i finally rolled out of bed.

"hehehehe." i snickered to myself, as i rolled out the door just in time, running on a coffee high that was sure to end as soon as i got to class. "thirty!"

sun salutation

half way through english class, i started doing yoga breathing exercises to wake myself up.

"breathe in...and in..and in..." i told myself. "now hold for four heart beats. aaaand, exhale slowly."

this is actually quite effective if you need to concentrate and wake up. sadly it only worked for a few moments because my professor was going over what i will now only ever refer to as frankenboring.

"stupid monster." i told myself.

if it had been me who was a monster, i would have phoned up my sister and asked her to tell me to 'suck it up' right and proper.

that usually seems to do the trick in most situations.

the lakes district

i was supposed to be running off to class, but in stead i was slowly wandering around, soaking in belle and sebastian for what must have been the fifth time today. surprisingly, it hadn't been me who had put it on. kate had.

"isn't it great that..." i started off, meaning to complete it with i came along and saved you from musical oblivion? but that wasn't quite right.

"no, not quite right at all." that inner voice told me. "more like overtly snobbish."

there was nothing to be saved from, because music depends on taste, which is totally subjective. although i cannot help but wonder where her love for ja rule came from...

so instead i finished off my thought with "...we have belle and sebatian to save us from silences?" or something along those lines. whatever it was, it was definately less self-incriminating than the self absorbed line i had been intending to say.

definately more accepting. look ma, i can so think before speaking.

or at least think while i am speaking.

tunnel freak!

kate started yelling about food earlier than ususal this morning, or so my brain tried to tell me. but the conscious part of me wasn't responding to any sort of stimulant.

"nnggaaahhh, nhghhhhh. mmppppfffffff. rrrmmmmooott." that just about sums up my vocal capabilities this morning. however, i eventually dragged myself out of bed, splashed some water on my face and allowed myself to be dragged away to the cafeteria.

as i sat there, munching on the french toast that had turned to ice long before i ever chose to eat it, i was thinking about linking keanu reeves to the lord of the rings.

"hmmmmm..." i thought. "well, keanu was in bill and ted's excellent adventure, with alex white, who was in the lost boys with kiefer sutherland, who was in stand by me with river phoenix, who is the brother of joaquin phoenix, who was in gladiator with russel rowe, who was in master and commander with billy boyd."

of course, i could have always gone through hugo weaving, also known as agent elrond, or producer barrie osmond.

i think i like complicated things.

nobody ever told her it's the wrong way

i bounced around in my seat and started clapping my hands with unparalled joy.

"look! i was right! the trainman was that dude from mad max! ooohh..and he was in queen of the damned too!"

you never know when useless trivial information will come in handy.

monday nights are slow around here

the screen jumped to black, and the musical cresendo announcing the credits began to roll. i turned to kate to say something and ended up in giggles instead.

"trinity...trin.." i said, using my best kenau reeves voice, "i..i can't see! oh god..I CAN'T SEE!"

we decided a few nights ago that we really needed to see the third matrix movie, and as luck would have it, the mayfair theatre was showing it. it's a classy establishment from the nineteen thirties that features a double bill for nine dollrs. not too shabby methinks.

of course, it was slightly bizzare seeing such a machine and technology based movie in an establishment that show its history with pride.

i pretended i was trinity on the way home. i could so kick ass like that.

just go ahead now

kate started a blog of her own last night. of course i can access it and i put it up as a link on here. she's the ibuprofen freak. it's actually rather a fitting name because she really does enjoy her ibuprofen.

i read her posts from last night and this morning, drinking coffee and eyeing latin out of the corner of my eye.

"she really is an odd one, isn't she?" i ponder to myself. the other side answers for me.

"well isn't that just the pot calling the kettle black?" with a condescending overtone, of course.

sometimes those old adages are actually quite intuitive.

i walk the night alone

"damnit!" i screech into my closet. "i cannot find my pajamas!"

nonchalantly kate responds to me.

"i sold them to liz. for five dollars. a little extra money on the side."

all i could think was who in the hell would want my pajamas, because they aren't exactly top of the line. fuzzy pants from my mother, and an old tank top with a ratty sports bra makes up my nightly ensemble. oh baby. oh baby. hot stuff this evening.

"motherfucker." i tell kate, as i finally dig them out from my closet.

view from a broken window

"aaagggghhhh! AAAAGGHHHHHH!" i exclaim to kate, pulling on my pony tail. "i don't know what constantia means!"

she looks at me, sighs, and returns to her conversation with mark, who apparently has a receeding hairline.

maybe i should be returning to my latin.

could i have been any one other than me?

"but what are we going to put there? and there?" kate gestures to the empty spots on the door after i add our newest phrase.

i shrug. "i don't know. go nuts, kid!" i sort of snicker, and then add on, outloud. "i can cope with the fact that it will be crooked."

kate gives me the look. back in high school there was a geography project she was going to hand in, and the title had been horribly, horribly askew. i simply refused to let her hand it in like that. i had to fix it, and nice girl that she is [was?] she let me make my attempt. sadly my version of the title hadn't been much better, probably because i was laughing the entire time i was wording it and colouring it in.

"even though i've recognized all your faults, i can still be your friend." kate tells me with either a glare or a mischevious glow.

i'm still trying to figure out if this is a compliment or an insult.

prince of the land of stench!

he walked around the corner of the drink bar. if i had been drinking my milk, it would have come out my nose.

"oh kate. he loves you. he wants you. he is yours forever."

we were playing the boyfriend game. i'll admit that maybe it isn't the nicest of games to play, as in essence we are indeed making fun of the way people look. however, there's just so much fodder in our cafeteria. it's even worse than west hill.

another beauty rounded the corner.

"hmmm..should i mention how he likes to suck her toes?" i pondered to myself. i decided against it. after all, she was trying to eat. and this guy was less than savoury. i settled on telling her that he wanted to hold her all the time.

speak to me in the middle of the night

"look!" kate from down the hall exclaimed. "my foot is like a baked potato!"

eveyone who had skates was peeling them off and returning them to their bags or cases. we had just spent an hour skating, or in mine and kate's case, sliding with boots, down the frozen canal. i looked at kate from down the hall's skates with envy. it's so graceful, people skating. they glide over the frozen surface of the river. you almost expect little rabbits to come out and frolic at the edges, while a deer looks placidly on.

"watch any disney movies lately?" the ever cynical inner voice pops up.

that other voice, the less cynical and angry one, pipes up just as quickly. "oh piss off! let me have my damned disney moment if i want it!" hmm..an argument with myself. not anything new, in case you were wondering.

regardless, kate and i now have a new mission.

we must find skates.

i'm lovin' it...

i had a dream a few nights ago.

it made me believe that maybe perhaps my lord of the rings fanatacism has reached a point where it's no longer a simple thing, but rather a complex sort of obsession, because it now invades my unconscious thoughts as i surrender into sleep.

"come on, out with it!" the inner voice dictates my actions.

it was simply this. i sat outside burger king, watching elijah wood eating a whopper. he didn't speak, and there was no one else there. just him, the boy who plays frodo, and his whopper.

"who the hell names something you're going to eat a whopper?" i ask myself. "it sounds so crude."

last train to clarksville

"we should have run!" exclaimed leslie as we watched the otrain pull away from the stop mere seconds before we got there. our distress became more pronounced when we came to understand that the train we had just watched depart was in fact the last train of the night.

"damnit." i muttered to myself.

the otrain is really the most direct and easy route to carleton from greenboro,. no bus goes directly to campus, because the otrain does. and even i, transit queen, saw no easy and uncomplicated way of getting us home on the public transport system.

we ended up calling a cab. i sat in the front with the driver, a man with an indistuingishable accent.

"i'm going to cuba at the end of the month!" he proudly tells me.

i wish i were going to cuba at the end of the month.

'where the hot springs flow' or 'haggis as a sexual stimulant'

i could imagine candice cackling and slapping here knee as i began to list off the states.

"north dakota. new hampshire. idaho. hawaii. alaska!"

she had been eating toast and had unconsciously eaten it into the shape of the united states. obviously, we concurred, this meant that she wanted to eat the united states as well.

"it's every little girl's dream!" candice exclaimed to me over msn.

we decided that idaho tasted like potatos, hawaii like pineapples, colorado like rock candy and mains like lobster. when we got to new york we were stumped.

i still think olives.

obey all orders!

i wiped my face one last time and glanced behind me at the quickly emptying theatre. it reminded me of the old theatre in owen sound, with it's bad decor, poor seating and uncomfortable chairs. funny enough, it felt like home.

i finally caught leslie's eye, and she waved and gave me a confused look. half way through the marathon that is the return of the king i was forced to leave my seat and use the facilities. there was no way i could wait. and then, upon my return, i discovered that i could not at all disturb the entire row of people that separated me from my friends. so down into the third row it was.

"niiiccceee."

frodo's head filled the entire range of my vision. so did aragorn's.

"here's something i can deal with!"

of course, i ended up in tears.

mr wizard, get me the hell out of here!

i read magazines in bed for an hour this morning when i awoke. there was an excerpt from an upcoming novel entitled Goat. it's about a young man who was kidnapped and then brutally beaten, and how he had to cope with life after that. it engrossed my mind.

i thought for a bit. how do these things happen? how do people who are barely adults inflict such horrible and evil pain on others? how do these same barely-adults manage to overcome the trials and tribulations set before them?

i guess it's because deep down, we inherently know that we possess a strength that rivals nothing else on this planet.

i contemplated these thought for a bit.

"woah." that inner voice piped up. "there's that same thought that everyone else has at least once in their lives."

so much for originality.

do it...do it now!

i let the textbook fall to the bed beside me and breathe a sigh of relief.

"done. donedonedonedonedone!" my brain exclaimed over and over again.

i crawled down from kate's bed and moved to my computer. i was free. i had read chapters one and two in my cultural anthropology book, which can also be yours for a mere one hundred and eight dollars!

"you're free, and yet you chain yourself to technology?" my brain asks me. "you're daft."

i shrug to myself. my concept of freedom is so blurred by cultural influences at this point that i hardly think my brain would recognize freedom in a conventional sense of the word if it was dragged across my line of vision in the form of some hardy young hobbit actor.

daft echoes through my skull once more...

masterminded...like a potato

i hunch over my keyborad, the bottom lip firmly caught between my teeth as i glare at the screen infront of me. overall, i'd have to say that most of it just looks like gibberish to me.

"daaa-aaam.." i think to myself. "why did i never take a course on html ever once?"

at the same time, i'm having a conversation with melissa.

"i just posted over at diaryland." she tells me. i snort and go and look. we're both self admitted attention whores at this moment, so i see no need to not fulfill her wish to recieve feedback. besides, i know she's looking at this right now anyways.

i read her post, and we continue our conversation.

"html will be my bitch someday!" i proudly proclaim.

when exactly that day is has yet to be determined.

single serving mint

i bolted out of humanties as fast as i could muster, which all things considering, wasn't all that fast at all.

"jesus," i muttered under my breath. "i'm going to kill the idiot who did that!"

halfway through our trying to stay awakemuststayawake lecture, some fool either spilled or sprayed a large amount of vanilla perfume. it permeated the air, moving slowly with the currents created by our breath and the shoddy heating system in paterson hall. however, it still permeated.

eventually it reached me, filling my nose and throat and lungs with poison, setting off alarms in my brain.

my nose reacted first, sending relays to my brain telling me that this was vanilla, or rather the cheap chemical version of that particular plant. next, my throat sent messages to my brain:

"uh boss, we gotta problem here. see, lungs, they hate this shit. it makes them strain. so i'm just going to tighten a bit here, so that less of that shit pollutes thier environment."

so instead of pretending to concentrate, i had to concentrate on breathing with a throat that really wasn't up to me taking full and deep breaths for the part of the lecture involving the smoting.

i'm going to kill the idiot who sprayed that junk.

i really like the smoting parts.

you've been running away from what you don't understand

i stepped into the shower and let the not-so-hot water pummel me for a few minutes before i started into it.

"i loooooo-oost myself in the sum-ummm-eerrr rain, i looo-oossst myyy self!"

there's a definite reason why i simply will not be participating in any sort of singing competition ever. anywhere. i sang karaoke once. i apologize to anyone who heard me. sincerely and profusely.

after my shower, i kept up my vocal companionship with bono, prancing around my room.

"oh yeah." i thought to myself. "naked time!"

needless to say, the next twenty minutes were spent reading and catching up on online journals while sitting in my underwear, cackling at everything and anything.

endless sleepy stories about nothing

sirens blast by my window close to three or four times a day. more often than not, it's the fire department responding to a fire alarm in one of the residences here. the alarm, in turn, is usually the result of some jackass prank by a bunch of people maruading as almost adults.

such fascination. they lick their lips, checking over first their left and then their right shoulders. then the snap of the glass and the grasping of the handle. it's yanked down, and suddenly that luscious highpitched screeching sound intermittantly fills the halls and the rooms branching off of those corridors.

i always ask myself the same question when we're yanked out of of warm rooms at some obscene hour.

"what if there's some cat lady somewhere who's house really is on fire? and the firefighters are here, responding to a jackass prank?"

the world moves in mysterious ways.

hey, you, you've been used.

kate groaned and shifted for the eighth time in twenty seconds.

"meee-eeeg, my back's sore!" she mumbled from above me.

complaining about aches and pains makes them more acceptable. i complain to kate all the time, so her groaning and moaning was acceptable, expected even.

"try being on your back. are you only using one pillow? don't stack your pillows!"

i like commanding things from my lowly bottom bunk. makes me feel powerful in some freakish way. she responded by shifting again and making a small series of complaints that were nothing more then gutteral gibberish.

"would it help if i read to you?" i asked, half jokingly.

my throat is sore this morning, and my voice sounds like i was a chronic smoker for many years.

but i read sixty pages of blood canticle to kate. and damn if she didn't fall asleep. i wonder if she'll let me read her the lord of the rings in february and march?

don't ruin the myth

i was supposed to read a chapter in my classics text about ancient theatre in greece. although possibly engrossing, my mind certainly wasn't open to embracing the reason behind the invention of tragedy as an homage to the god dionysus. instead, i took great pleasure in tormenting kate, who was trying to read like a good, nice, studious student.

it all came to a head when i turned to her and yelled "DUCK JISM!"

she collapsed into a heap, laughing with her head on her crossed arms, lifting it only to send me a half assed attempt at an evil glare.

satisfied, i went back to my work.

acension from judah screaming about israel

walking back from my discussion group, i posed the question that had been bothering me for the past hour and a half to matt and kelly.

"if you could be a jelly bean, what colour would you be?"

granted, it was totally unrelated to our discussion of I and II Samuel and I and II Kings. however, i deemed it a prudent and necessary question to ask.

matt only contemplated for a minute until he puffed out his answer.

"black. so i could see which crazy motherfucker ate the black ones first."

dorkus malorkus

little kids never care what they look like when they go out in the snow to play. no worries if their snow pants don't match the coat they're wearing. their mittens can be an ugly brown, hats can have huge, balance altering, pom poms on top. and you'll never find a wee child refusing to put a scarf across his face. after all, that scarf is a damned good snot catcher!

imagine my surprise this morning when, walking back after latin class, i saw about fourteen people [university students no less] with scarves wrapped around their faces, foreheads, and in one instance over one eye.

i guess when it's thirty three below the dork factor suddenly becomes nil.

hack the planet!

i had to literally peel my eyes open this morning, even though i went to bed at a reasonible hour.

"c'mon!" i told myself, a la trainspotting, "wake up!

it really didn't work. so instead i hit the snooze button and pretended that i had all the time in the world.

mother mary as back up

i turned to kate to ask her about the fortune cookies. she was online, as she so delicately put it, "..wasting time until candice comes back! fuck!"

i turned back to my computer, and nearly died. i saw the tunnel. or maybe that was the imagined spray of rice cracker as i caught my new desk top out of the corner of my eye.

a catholic priest, smoking a pipe. totally rico suave.

and you guessed it, he is the reverend in rhythm.

funny though....that he's called a reverend.

i am next in line for promotion in my firm

kate and i have an addiction. i think it would be best if we came right out and spoke about it.

we discovered that we could buy fortune cookies in bulk at bulk barn. this means, that instead of being that tasty scrumpet of delight only occasionly had at the end of a lovely chinese meal, we can enjoy the benefits of both a fortune and a tasty treat at any time of the day.

the problem is, i find myself obsessing over those tiny slips of paper at all hours of the day.

how does it get in there? surely the cookie isn't baked with the paper inside. it would burn, or crisp, or curl up or something, i am quite sure of it.

forget about caramilk, this is my new all comsuming question.

i'm sure however, that it's just a simple trick. when i was little, my gramma used to slide quarters in our cake at our birthdays. we'd be eating cake, and suddenly, we'd find a quarter wrapped in wax paper. i used to think it was magic. i never could quite figure out how she knew exactly where to cut the cake so that all of the children got a quarter.

when i discovered that she simply slipped them in after the cake was baked, i felt cheated. yeah, cheated by my own gramma.

i guess sometimes embracing the unknown and just accepting it is better than always needing to know.

"why can't i feel anything?"

i walked back from class this afternoon with some of the people in my program. as we approached the edge of the quad, the wind picked up, buffeting us between the two buildings, forcing us to bow our heads and fight to keep our balances.

"i've lost my ears! i've lost my ears!" came a plaintive cry from lindsey.

not literally, but it sure did feel that any body part exposed to the biting clawing wind would definitely be lost if not covered very quickly. last week there was a warning on the radio that flesh exposed to the wind would freeze in three minutes.

makes me glad i've got a coat and warm things to wear.

sermon on the mount from the boot of your car

halfway through the lecture, i realized that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

"calm down." i told myself. "you put on underwear and you're taking notes. what else could possibly be wrong besides the fact that you're jonsesing for some coffee?"

and then, for the fourth time, my elbow was knocked.

i don't normally sit right beside people in lecture halls. i find that it's far too restraining. i always end up kicking them, and getting slush all over their pants or something. all the little shifts, noises, pen doodles and general dissertations that your seat mate makes are clearly visible and audial. it kinda pisses me off.

yet here i was, nestled in between a seat holding my coat and aaron, who i always sit with in classics.

"what an interesting development." casually, lightly, but with the overtones of restrained and suppressed laughter lurking behind it.

damn that inner voice.

two creams, one sugar.

this morning i woke up to outkast. heeeeeeey yaaaaa, hey yaaaaa was playing on a loop as my roommate attempted to force me into the world of the living. we had decided last night that we would brave the cafeteria breakfast this morning, and kate wanted to go before her class.

"c'mon meg." i scrunched my eyes a little tighter, thinking that maybe i could stay in my nest a wee bit longer if i simply appeared to be asleep. "i want to go for food. and you said you'd come!"

i grunt and roll over. who needs food anyways? it's not like i'm going to fade away to nothing if i miss one breakfast.

kate of course knew what to do. she slipped u2 into the cd player, and soon the strains of ultra-violet were filling the room. it's next to impossible to sleep when that cd is on, so i stumbled out of bed and headed for the washroom.

"look!" kate cheerily observed. "you're awake!"

i shot her a death look and mumbled "this isn't awake."

i was in a dark place

kate confides in me as i brush my teeth. the paste almost comes out my nose, as it's the last thing i expect to hear at this time of the night...or morning. and it's not the type of thing i expect to hear from her. after all, she's the one who seems able to brush off anything, remain unfazed and appear confident and competent in any situation.

yeah, my inner voice pipes up again, until the two of you start blasting shots of raspberry vodka like there's no tomorrow.

pessimism in the twenty first century

the computer slang that people use always fascinates me. we drop letters and combine numbers to make a perverted form of english that is only ever rivaled by my poor typing skills. i'm not too keen on this perverse and backwards form of communication, but even i stoop so low sometimes to type out a generic what up dawg? to all of my o-so-tough street friends.

yeah. we're pretty badassed. living in university residences all across southern and eastern ontario. watch out! we might chase you in our walmart brand boots across the well lit street before nine pm on a weekend sometime.

i responded with my street-wise shout out after being messaged by melissa.

no lo on the shizzle i sent off, having no idea what it was even supposed to mean. all those izzles, surely there's somewhere they might sound right, but coming from my mouth? yeah right.

we proceeded to tell each other about our evenings. i worked on the perfect deponant conjugation in latin while she was socially active, hanging out with people and going to an open mic show. apparently her planned talk with andrew didn't take place because he didn't show up. and her planned talk with another individual isn't quite approachable at this point.

"i want to tell him, but i don't." she confides in me. i can hear her saying it in my head. "but what if?

my own inner voice pipes up yeah, i know what you mean.

you can't win them all, no matter how much you try.

what an injustice

my roommate and i sat discussing names over dinner. not that we're planning on having children in the very near future or anything, it's just good to always be prepared i guess.

"what about david?" i asked her. "micheal? william? paul? isaac?"

ultimately, we decided that hugo really isn't a flattering name. there's no getting around that.

you're cool and you know you're a star

i was supposed to spend my time this afternoon wisely, reading both I and II Kings in the old testament. sadly, the technological draw of the internet seems to be too much for me. the sheer amount of information available to me still seems intimdating, like a giant pile of paper waiting to fall on me and trap me in some dark corner, forgotten by everyone. i'm quite sure that that will never happen, but then you never know...

i'm also keen on the instant message phenomenon we almost twenty-somethings seem to be so addicted to. after all, it's cheaper than the phone, especially when internet is unlimited. and when you're a starving university student, it seems to be even more of a deal.

so this afternoon i reached out through msn and touched melissa.

yeah, i know, we talked on the phone last night.

"so i started a blogger." i tell her, sending her the link. "go here and read it." there's a few minutes of nothingness, and i begin to get worried. i suddenly remember my post from earlier today and wonder to myself ummm, what if she's pissed that i'm talking about her personal drama on here?

luckily, she didn't care.

instead she tell me that she and andrew are going to talk tonight.

"really?" i ask. "when and where and what are you going to talk about?" so maybe the when was kinda obvious, because she had said tonight, and the what is also slightly redundant to ask about. luckily for me, melissa just goes with it.

"he hasn't a clue of the fact that i'm aware of his feelings." she tells me. "so i'm assuming he's going to tell me how he feels." there's a sort of gleeful pause here. "and then i'm going to shoot him down. because really, the kid did fuck up."

i can't help but wonder if maybe melissa does know what she's doing when it comes to relationships.

roman latin speaking pirates

i sauntered into my first and last class of the day this morning feeling pretty damned good. it might have been because it was my first and last class, but i'm betting money that the feeling of euphoria was a result of a nice, steaming bowl of coffee with real cream.

i stole the cream from denny's last week when we were driving home, but that's beside the point.

we had translated this chunk of a play entitled Amphitruo by the roman playwright Plautus. Most of it was inane balthering about a war that i really didn't care about, until the part about the ships was metioned. hmmm....romans on ships eh? i wondered to myself. would they have been like pirates?

i asked marla, who sits next to me what she thought about roman pirates, travelling in ships to the new world.

she politelty informed me that, although the idea of roman latin speaking pirates was a novel and entertaining one, the new world didn't really exist back then, and that roman pirates probaby wouldn't have gone there anyways.

i thought it was a good idea.

hours of talking without really saying anything

last night i left a message for my friend on her msn.

so, are you gonna call me or what? i wondered "outloud" to her. it'd be a good distraction from latin. *hinthint*

however, due to being poor, it ended up being me who called her. my phone keeps a timer, so i know that we talked for something close to forty minutes. having seen each other just a few weeks ago, it ended up that we had no drastic or life altering news. well, i had no drastic or life altering news. melissa was having a soap opera drama that was actually quite fascinating. she told me all about it.

"i mean, he goes and has sex with his supposed lover's best friend, and then comes here and tells another of his friends that he has feelings for me? what the fuck is that?" i told her i really didn't know.

i have a new theroy. it's because we never had such dramas in high shool like other girls. we were too busy painting murals and hiding in the art room and having potluck dinners to experience those dramas that merited tight groups of girls gesticulating madly and waving their arms with supposed due distress for one another.

i think we may be slightly unprepared for forays into this whole relationship thing.

i'd fancy that happening again

it happened again today in the cafeteria. after sitting down with almost the exact same thing i had for lunch/breakfast/brucnh, io began to listen to the two men sitting beside me.

so i eavesdrop occasionally. in our cafeteria it's kinda hard not ot. and i mean, i was sitting right beside them, so it wasn't like i had to try hard. i didn't pay that much attention until the one across and to my left really began to get going. he was talking about one of his classes and how it must have "thirty or forty extra students innit."

yeah.

it was the thirty thing again.
because he was scottish, and of course that word jumped out at me. the slang was also ace. fancy. he kept saying fancy. i wonder, would i be cool if i said fancy?

i don't fancy that i would in all honesty.

"at least if it's snowing it's not quite as deadly cold"

so says my roomate as she wakes. up. the plan was to get up a bit earlier today, do some homework and go for a walk later. that's still the plan, it's just that now there is definately less time for pissing around and doing stupid internet things like we normally do.

last night we watched galdiator. i haven't seen it in quite a while, so it was cool to see it again. annnddd...

surprise surprise, i didn't cry! i think it was because we talked through most of it and began to get really dorky and punchy near the end. however, that doesn't mean it wasn't sad...because really it is quite sad. historically inaccurate to the bone, but visually stunning. and the music! i might have to go out and get that damned sound track at some point just from some of the music...strange thing that. if you listen to the main like, war omg wtf is going on music, it sounds just like pirates of the caribbean.

ambition's a tricky thing...

when you step outside it feels like your eyeballs are turning to rock.

seriously.

it's that freaking cold out there. but that's ok, because it is the middle of winter and it is ottawa. what else could be expected in a place/city/area renouned for it's canal skating and record low temperatures?

so what is this? this is me. by me, i mean me. i have aother blog right now with a friend, but i find that in some ways it is inhibiting. it's hard to always express what i want and make it coherent to others, because i know for sure that she'll be reading it...not that i mind, i live for her responses and stuff. but it's rather personal, full of personal jokes and stuff, so we end up writing in an almost kind of code....so..we'll leave it at that....whereas with this thing, i mean, hunky dory free pony ride!

after all, we all know that i'm going to send out the address to all my friends, damned attention whore!

and besides, i can decieve myself for a long period of time saying that no one really knows about it, therefore no one reads it. not that one should feel guilty about reading it. secretly i want you to. yeah that's right, secretly but now not so secretly i want people to read this and say 'my, now that's interesting!' but no worries mates, i'm not expecting anything here.

i'm being ambitious here aren't i?