Autumn meloncholy

When I was young I learned a game

where love and happiness were the same

Autumn weather always seems to suit my mood. Wet, crisp, chilly, and usually overcast it can supplement both the best and worst temprements. It's my favorite time of year and I'm all revved up to have a delightful Fall, but absolutely no time to enjoy it. Sad.

A conversation with a co-worker made me question the underlying causes for my inherent laziness. I'm beginning to think the problem is that everyone seems to have too much confidance in me. No one ever tells me that I'm not capable of doing things, or that I can't do something. Therefore, instead of trying to prove them right and show them that I deserve this confidance, I sit back and assume that these things will come to me like everyone thinks they will. Of course, if I were to be told that I couldn't do something, I very well might just sit back and give up. It's a fine line to walk, this blaming of others.

I decided that my favorite type of music is "epic". It's not a genre, just my word for absolutely grand, sweeping chords and driving beats that tell a story and make my heart soar with glee. The newest My Chemical Romance song ("Welcome to the Black Parade") fits the bill quite nicely, as does Muse's "Knights of Cydonia".

It's a rather hollow victory when you take 1st place for an event at a tournament where a) 60% of your competitors were forced to be there against their will b) 80% of them were titanically awful and c) the teammates you beat were still on notecards. I finally got a "big" trophy (yay), but the tournament director neglected to utter the phrase "And your tournament champion in Informative speaking is..." (boo). I'll take the National qualifications though, thanks.

Having my life scheduled out down to the minute makes the days fly by faster than unscheduled monotony. Where is my fall term going?

13 days until Halloween/Glynnis' birthday!
18 days until Chrissy's birthday!
27 days until Rise Against!
36 days until Thanksgiving/Interim!
44 days until Linda's birthday!
45 days until Berlin!
56 days until I turn 21!
68 days until Christmas!
75 days until 2007!

Poo York City,
Cathi

Let's get these teen hearts beating faster, faster

I am not a giggly girl. I don't go into hysterics whenever something hilarious happens. At best, I'll let out a nice, sincere laugh and then let it drop. Every so often something will strike me as so utterly ridiculous that I'll laugh so hard that no noise comes out and tears squeeze out of my eyes. MXC was good for that the other day. I am not one to fall into screams of laughter, however, and those who do grate on my ears. Quiet amusement is the life for me.

I've found it's getting easier and easier to break through my Glass Cage of Emotion and ask questions that have been on my mind. It is still a task which requires weeks of thinking, waiting, and gathering up a network of safety nets and small acrobats, but it is, nevertheless, easier than it used to be. I just wish the same could be said for my intended conversational counterpart.

Some people need to work on humility. Oh wait, that's me.

The more I learn about astronomy and the universe, the more my belief in God is strengthened. It's a little complicated, but ask me about it sometime.

Miscellaneous,
Cathi

sighness

Am I more than you bargained for yet?

I don't know if anyone else ever has this problem, but a lot of the time I think I'm really, really boring. I have this ideal of who I want to be but I never live up to it because of, well, who I actually am. I wish I could be that girl who always had something new and crazy to do, who could be fun and spontaneous and absolutely convinced that she's always having a great time, but I'm not. I've done some really cool things in my life, I just wish that every little thing I do could be just as exciting.

The worst words to ever come from a band are "indefinate hiatus". Screw you LBC.

The boy got the acceptance letter he's been waiting for and ever since, my insides have been waging a fierce war against each other, struggling to be overjoyed for him when all I want to do is put an airtight seal over Naperville so he can't go away and forget about me.

Give me an error will you? Fine. No one needs to hear about voting anyway.

I remember saying that having problems that aren't actuallyproblems is the worst, because you feel stupid for fretting over non-existant worries. However now I'm beginning to feel that having a real problem but no one, literally not a single soul, to seek counsel with might be worse. I guess we'll see how my sanity holds up under this one, then we'll judge.

Sometimes the best way to get your life back under control is to drop it all and pick it back up in an orderly fashion.

Sow what you want to reap,
Cathi

Nostalgia at its best

Her motives are pure and pristine, she's flawed like a diamond

As I was celebrating the "check engine" light finally turning off in Theo, a "Traffic Safety" truck gently rear ended me. I've been telling people I got hit by the irony truck.

Driving home from work tonight made me nostalgic. Sometimes I'll get this feeling of intense recall, of just knowing that I've felt a certain way before. It could be a combination of the light, a strange energy, or even just my mood, but sometimes I'll just remember rather suddenly that I've felt exactly like this before. Sometimes I can even remember the previous instance of that feeling.

Tonight I recalled that the first song I played in the replacement CD player I had installed in Theo was "Everlong" by the Foo Fighters. I also remembered a conversation with Chris Bogue about the song "Daddy's Little Defect" when I was driving the wrong way to the zoo. I remember walks with Danny by the poop factory; buying a scooter with Erik; sitting on a couch knowing Nick and Nicole were making out under a blanket; driving Pete home; how Chrissy kicked my ass on the bus to theatre fest; the time we piled 4 people on top of a sled; or that time some kids asked Sam where he got his Green Day visor, among other things. It was strange to have some of these seemingly mundane memories surface rather suddenly.

Walking in the front door of my apartment tonight was hilarious.

Things to look forward to in the somewhat near future:

-Chicago tomorrow
-Miranda visit?!
-Getting validated
-Visiting Linda
-First speech tournament

Tangerine Speedo,
Cathi

Septembre Elf

I'm about to embark upon a mild diatribe that was intended for two days ago, but the lack of immediate internet access makes timing a bit tricky.

"9/11" annoys me. Not in the way that mosquito bites annoy me and not quite in the same way vertical and horizonal stripes worn in combination annoy me. Perhaps it's the use of the numbers, rather than the date that gets my gears grinding, but it's mostly the attitude that surrounds the date.

We are encouraged to be blindly patriotic out of respect on this day while at the same time from different sources told to be skeptical, critical. I for one am just trying to go about my life normally. Did my gut clench up just a little bit every time I had to tell someone that school started on "September 11th"? Yes. Did theirs when they heard me say it? Probably. Every time someone shows images of "9/11" I get the same panicky feeling I got 5 years ago when I was watching that footage live, and I'm not sure I'll ever get over that.

I'm all about honor, duty, respect, and patriotism. I believe that we should honor the unknowing people who died that that respectfully, regardless of whether it was truly an Al-Queda attack or a conspiracy of our own government. I take conscious pride in being an American more than your average college student probably does. I take offence, however, at people proclaiming that we will "never forget". "Never Forget" is a Holocaust phrase, not that it was expressly copyrighted for it, and I find it a bit unfair to the families and survivors of the Holocaust to put the same amount of importance on September 11th as we do that. I find it ill advised to make that claim when we will forget, in some fashion or another. We all remember the attack on Pearl Harbor but not the date.

I just want to move on. I want to go to school, work at my job, fall in love, see the world, and love my neighbor without doom, gloom, terrorists, and National Security looming over me. Are we safer? I don't know. We were not safe in 2001? I don't know. Is safety something I'm even concerned about? Frankly, no. Stop filling my head with propoganda. Stop using fancy words loaded with connotations to manipulate my thoughts. Stop this "us and them" mentality. Stop telling me not to forget, and stop trying to rule my life with fear. I won't have it.

Love for All,
Cathi

The anatomy of happiness

If I had a million dollars I'd buy you some art, like a Picasso or a Garfunkel.

"Warm" is a good way to describe happiness, "fuzzy" perhaps not so much.

Sometimes I'll hold conversations in my head just to pass the time. Not in a schitzophrenic way, but in the more hypothetical sense where I devise a question to ask someone. Sometimes I'll try to imagine what their answer might be, but more often I answer that question myself, just in case if I decide to ask that question some day, I'll know how to respond if they ask me the question back. I think the key to this exercise is mustering up the courage to actually ask these questions some day.

According to sources I'm "supposed to be funny", and yet when I sit down to write in this thing my wit sometimes leaves me and I'm left with little to say other than obvious and often mundane things about my life. Here are a few examples:

-I'm feeling all grow'd up with my new apartment and freedom, but the full reality of being "on my own" has not yet sunk in.

-The boy keeps me smiling always and I can't quite figure out what it is that I did to deserve him. At the same time, I worry about thinking "like that", but sometimes I just feel so warm and debatably fuzzy I can't help it.

-I got hired as a server at Friday's and while I'm a bit worried about all the work it will take to train, I remember some of the waiters I've had and realize it can't be all that hard.

-Life with Brian seems like it will work out rather nicely. We spent about an hour the other night just lying around and talking the easy conversation of friends.

-I miss Linda a surprising amount, but random phone calls are a suitable replacement. She provided me with the quote of the week: "I wouldn't say that Geology makes me want to kill myself, but I'll do what I have to."

That's about everything even vaguely worthy of note. I will leave you with a thought that has been keeping me occupied when my brain has time to wander. How do you know it's love? And furthermore, how do you get over the intense, crippling fear of the sheer magnitude and responsibility that word carries?

I'd buy you a monkey,
Cathi

PS: Haven't you always wanted a monkey?

Grow'd up!

Everywhere I turn, there's another turn

Should karma exist I don't believe that I should be quite the beneficial recipient that I have been lately. I think the great bearded guy in the sky has been looking out for me because surely I cannot be this lucky.

I have an apartment, at last. Many false alarms, raised and consequently dashed hopes, and a good deal of frustration and worry later and I am the proud tennant of a two bedroom, two bathroom 3rd floor apartment located (in)conveniently next to the Fox Valley mall. It essentially fell out of the sky and into my lap with so many great deals that I was absolutely floored with how timing worked out. Many deals, specials, and offers later and Brian and I are renting this place for a ridiculously small amount of money for how nice it is. I feel good, no-- great, about this. I'm excited to move in, I'm excited to paint, I'm even excited to pay first month's rent, silly as that is.

TGIFriday's in Bolingbrook called me tod..yesterday to see if I was still interested in working there. What's that? An answer to my prayers about needing a new, better paying job? Well, we'll see after my informal interview tomorrow, but I'm not going to take this opportunity lightly. I will also not complain about the extra radio shifts I picked up because 8 extra hours a week at untaxed minimum wage isn't bad, even if it means I'll have to go 30 hours without sleep on Sundays.

My point? Life is good for now. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts, because I know that a week or two into the new school year I'll be buckling under the stress of a full course load, two? jobs, speech team, and trying my hand at NCC's television department. Enjoy my presense in your life for the next couple weeks, because as of September 11th I'm going to be hard to find.

Things I Want You To Think About:
1) Infinity
2) Your favorite song lyric
3) The reasons you love your best friend so much
4) Your personal boundaries
5) Kittens that look like Hitler ("Kitlers")

Things That Made Me Smile Recently
1) Phone calls from Linda
2) My dad
3) Kitlers
4) A lactose intolerant Eric chugging a day's worth of calories in DQ ice cream mix
5) "Why the fuck did you hug my head?!"

Monday hotdog Tuesday taco!
Cathi