Welcome, Mississippians!

My sister tells me that I have a cluster of readers in Mississippi. Mississippians, I welcome you!

It's 10 p.m. L.A. time and my binders are still strewn across my floor like someone barfed academia all over my carpet. I have come to the conclusion that comps will not work themselves out. Damn you, comps.

I know that I have been in a rut until today because for the past week, I have come home from work every single day, taken all of my disgusting, hideous work attire off, thrown it all on the floor, and left dirty dishes all over my counter tops. This is the sign of a necessary intervention, coming from the girl who has every bank statement she's ever received in chronological order in her "Bank of America" file. I just haven't felt like dealing with the maintenance. Every once in a while, about twice per year, I look at my systematized, beautifully organized crap, and think, "Why the H am I wasting all of this time being orderly when we all die one day anyhow?" Dramatic. I am so dang dramatic.

Now. Let me tell you how I almost hit a woman in the face today.

I never take a lunch break. Never. I wake up every single day thinking, "If I can get through today without slitting someone's throat at work, then today will be called an ultimate success." and so when I get to work, I bury myself in work oriented projects so I can just power through this worst day of my life and be done with it. Not today.

I woke up this morning and saw about 30 frozen microwavable meals in my freezer and I wanted to barf. I am so effing sick of microwavable meals. I became so overwhelmed at the thought of tearing back the corner of the plastic film and pressing the "4" on the microwave that I left my house, empty handed, with no lunch at all.

I am not a creature of habit, but when it comes to food, I put little thought into it. Food = fuel. I am no snob. I eat disgusting frozen dinners or cereal essentially every day because it's efficient and requires no thought. But today, I just couldn't handle it.

Around 2 o'clock I felt like I was about to faint. Between the stale smell in my office of morning breath and mildew, and with all of the estrogen floating in the air like some sort of Playboy horror movie, I thought that I might die. My head felt light and my stress level was so astronomical that I thought to myself,

IF I DON'T GET OUT OF THIS EFFING 1980'S HIDEOUS OFFICE IN DESPERATE NEED OF FENG SHUI IN FIVE SECONDS, I AM GOING TO BURN THIS PLACE TO THE GROUND!!!!!!!!!!!

So I decided to walk next door to this disgusting sandwich place and eat a grilled cheese.

I used to be real big on cheese. Now I don't even care. I just wanted a very plain, childlike sandwich, and grilled cheese was the only solution that I could think of in the ENTIRE WORLD that would keep me from blowing my effing brains out at work.

So.

I walked next door to the disgusting sandwich place. Irritant numero uno: I see the CASH ONLY sign, in big, red, offensive letters. This automatically made me mad. Who carries cash these days? It's 2009 and people are thieves. Worst idea ever.

So, seeing that grilled cheese was the only thing in the entire world that was saving my office from its ultimate demise, I walked over to the ATM to take out some cash money.

$2 service charge.

Well, of course there's a $2 service charge. What would be the point in just taking out the money you need to buy a grilled cheese sandwich when you can piss $2 to the A-holes who set up ATMs all over town?

I go through all of the trouble of using this disgusting 1940's ATM that has a bacon-grease film all over the buttons (HEART ATTACK), and I approach the counter.

I was in a time warp.

Maybe I was on another planet.

The lady working at the counter spoke approximately 3% of the English language and was wearing some kind of ghetto-fabulous sunglasses that only a Kardashian would wear. She wore eyeliner for lip liner. Not like I'm hating. I do it, too.

"I'd like a grilled cheese, please."

"We no have grill cheese."

"What?"

"We no have grill cheese. Nah now."

"What?"

"We make korean bah-beh-que and grill is bad."

I gave this woman the death stare from hell.

"Well. That's weird."

I said it flatly, like it was the last little lame sentence that could possibly be slapped out of a corpse.

I stood there staring at her like some sort of internal time bomb was going to go off any second, and my body parts and plasma were going to spray all over her nasty sandwich store and filthy vintage ATM, and then her Korean BBQ grill would really be effed up.

I think she felt it.

"Well, one part of grill clean. I cook white bread grill cheese fah you there."

Ah, white bread and all. Nice touch.

Then, she gave me 50 cents off. I don't know why. I think it's because she was afraid of me. I don't blame her. Is this a raging case of PMS? Is this the fear of being a quarter century old? Is it the fact that I sleep by myself every night and am getting desperate enough to buy a cat, because I'm scared I could drop dead and nobody would find my body for weeks? Who knows.

I just glanced at the binders on my floor. They make my stomach churn.

This blog is too long. Alas, I have more to rant and rave about.

My buddy and I got soul food after class last night, and it was fantastic. The night before that, I went to my coworker's house in Bel-Air, and she made all of our coworkers dinner. It felt SO GOOD to be in a real, legitimate house. One that isn't a part of a filing cabinet. It also felt good to be in a house that smelled like a mom. Ug. Being at this age/stage is hard. You're too old for a mom, too young for a spouse, stuck somewhere in the middle without a place. Anyway. It was wonderful.

One of these days I'm going to write about all of the funny stuff my grand parents said when I was in Baton Rouge in September and I might even write a little blurb about Halloween. But for now, it's time to post obscene videos on Anna's Facebook page. Ciao.

Comps are Stupid

I haven't blogged in a while, and my brain is so fried that I'm not sure I have anything interesting to contribute, but I'll do what I can.

Today I got a package in the mail. I was stoked. My parents are good about sending packages, but other than that, I don't normally get mail, except for bills, and we don't talk about those. I hauled the package upstairs and opened it and saw a teddy bear inside. I got a little bit excited. My emotional reaction struck me as mildly lame, because I'm not really into the chick flicky stuff, but everyone likes it when people are thoughtful and send stupid crap in the mail for no reason.

I pulled the teddy bear out and read a note that was attached to its neck that said it was traveling around the world for a third grade school project.

Way to pound in the reminder that I live by myself and have no S.O., bear!

I remembered my best friend from back home telling me her second cousin or something was doing this for a school thing, and then all of a sudden, I felt a little sad that I had received this 2009 version of Flat Stanley.

This made me start wondering what it is about getting something in the mail unexpectedly that can really make or break your postal service experience.

I just wrote this paragraph about this ex boyfriend that sent me flowers when I was having one of my typical graduate school nervous breakdowns, and then I deleted it all, because right after I thought about how nice it was for him to do that, I thought about what a crappy bf he was, so eff him; his story will not be told.

I am sitting in my cow chair in bachelor-esque attire looking at 7 binders strewn across my floor. I have to write about every class I've taken at school in order to prepare for comps. I'd just as soon swallow razor blades.

The past two weekends have possibly redeemed 2009, the worst year of all time. The only way I can describe it is that feeling that sophomores in college get- that sinking, lackluster feeling, like all of the mystic wonder about college is gone and they have no real goals and they just want to sleep a lot and eat pizza. Or that crappy second year of camp when you're not going for the first time but you're not the oldest kid, either, so you're stuck in this middle-child state where you're lost in the shuffle and trying to figure it all out. This is a bad predicament for a control freak.

Last weekend started as a long weekend, because I went on a hilarious first date on Thursday night. A lot of times, on first dates, both parties are trying so hard to impress the other person, that it winds up being stressful. This first date was HILARIOUS. I spend a lot of my time courtesy laughing, but I genuinely laughed at this guy because he was genuinely funny. It has been a long, long time since I have been on a date with a funny guy. So. That was fantastic.

On Friday, we had a pre-Halloween get together and dressed up in our costumes and sang karaoke at some crappy "to catch a predator" looking establishment. again, awesome. i'd get into the details of my friend, colonel cat, but i'm on the verge of carpel tunnel here and i'm already fading fast.

halloween was legendary. that's all there is to that statement. the most hilarious and economical halloween i've ever had, for sure. the only scary part was finding embarrassing (decent, don't worry) pictures on some weird short guy's blog. How did that happen?

this past weekend, i went out with the first date guy again on second and third dates, which were all hilarious.

i think for the past several months, i have been in this dumb, uninspired, academic funk, because my job is killing me and i haven't hung out with any funny folk.

i think i'm on the verge of resurfacing.

after finals, of course.

i just wouldn't be me if i wasn't having a serious meltdown during finals.