Category Archives: Life

Number Six

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This is the sixth-most-played song in my iTunes library (after, among other things, “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” and the Beastie Boys). It’s a cover of another song, which is number eight.

It’s weird to me that they’re both in my top ten. They’re both very much tied to strong emotional periods in my life, they way you have when you’re in high school freshman year of college, and you Feel with a capital “f.” The first song is a cover of the second, originally by The Knife, a weirdass Swedish band that wears bird masks and makes electronic music, which I was introduced to as a junior in high school by the boy who would later turn my heart into ground beef.

It was the summer after my junior year of high school, and it was one of those summers that actually mattered (and the last time I would have a free summer before being shunted off to Nerd Camp I, Nerd Camp II, and employment for different kinds of personal growth). Most of my friends were a year older than me, and I got sucked into their celebrations of having graduated in between being mad at my parents and brewing wine in a Nalgene in my closet (memories!). There was a lot of drinking Two Buck Chuck and finally feeling like I had people who liked me enough that they wouldn’t shun me if I danced around them, and taking long-exposure glowstick photos, and singing along to Kimya Dawson in the car without a whole lot to worry about.

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Emory Medical, Je T’Aime

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Baby moles in a nest.

These are much cuter than mine. Image courtesy of Flickr user Hillbraith.

Yesterday, I went to the dermatologist. I am, to use the scientific term, “moley,” so I go every year or so to have all my moles checked out and, if I’m lucky, numbed and lopped off. It’s very exciting, and has taught me just how much Novocaine stings when injected into not-your-jaw.

So, yesterday the PA is examining me, and we’re at the rather embarrassing part of the exam where this woman is looking at my ass for moles while asking me what major I am, and she started prodding one. She thought about it, measured it, examined it with something that appeared to be a cousin of those clip-on booklight magnifying glasses that old people buy, and stopped. “Well,” she said, “Either it’s grown bigger–which is bad–or it’s, er…. stretched.”

The woman was very diplomatically trying to tell me that I either had cancer or that my ass had gotten large. (I’m pretty sure it’s the latter. Thanks, Lil’s!) She then went on to proscribe me something for acne which I hadn’t actually asked for, which was entertaining. However, body image issues aside, it does seem that I’m cancer-free, so that’s nice.

This is the same PA who, when I first started visiting her at 13, told me I would probably be fine because the moles on my back were “covered with a fine, downy layer of hair.” Which is exactly what every body-conscious middle school girl needs to hear.

After the dermatologist, I went to the dentist. There, the dental hygienist made me watch my gums bleed heavily after she poked them will a metal toothpick in an attempt to, presumably, build character and/or scar me for the next six months.

It’s possible I need to find different doctors.

Global Warming FTW!

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Screenshot from Weather.com showing that it was 46 degrees in Tulsa, OK today.

This is freaking me out.

On Saturday, the family and I ventured up to Winslow, AR to stay with my grandparents for Christmas. After the 14-hour drive (complete with our very own simple dog) to my grandparents’ my family loaded back up into the car for the 2 1/2 hour drive to Tulsa, OK that we make every year in order to placate my sister and me. It may have been 8 years ago, but dammit, we are still bitter about being uprooted.

In Tulsa I got to see a few of my friends who were in town and eat some Mexican fusion, so it was good times all around. We spent part of the day wandering around Utica Square, in December, in Tulsa, without jackets. You guys, this is freaking me out. The first year we went back to Tulsa, my friends and I hung out at the zoo because we were 12 and what the hell else were we going to do. We had to cower inside the rain forest exhibit to restore feeling to our extremities. This weather is unseasonably nice, is what I’m saying.

Because I am from the Midwest, this mostly makes me idly wonder what God is going to do in order to even the karmic scales. I’m thinking a hail storm, tomorrow. Given that my grandparents’ power just went out (they live on a mountain in a town with 399 people), this may, in fact, be the route that He has chosen to go. Still not worse than a tornado! Continue reading →

Slogging Towards Turkey

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My friend saw this and was convinced I had joined a sorority. Nope. We just learn their slimming arm-pose techniques.

It’s been a long couple of weeks. We’re hitting the point in the semester where the work is piling up in forboding sorts of ways (I have an English paper, a response paper, a Women in Cross Cultural Perspectives response and essay, an annotated bibliography for Social Problems, and a lab for Bio Anthro due by December 7th), and it’s rainy and honestly all I want to do is take a nap.

But, it has been a good few weeks too. I went up to Blue Ridge with Elizabeth and my family, and we climbed Amicalola Falls (and by “we” I mean “Elizabeth and my parents” because my sister and I were too lazy to go more than halfway up), and it was lovely and there was tons of food and I napped. I even got to sit on an easy chair and I swear to god, of all of the stupid things I miss since entering college, furniture is high, high on the list. It almost makes me want to rent a house rather than live in the dorms next year. Continue reading →

People Can Be Horrible (Also: Arrowheads!)

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First off, new post at OpenStudy. Ten points to online learning!

Secondly: I spent most of this weekend at the Safe Society Zone‘s Sexual Assault in Our Schools conference. It was at times inspiring, at times depressing, and consistently heartbreaking because it is so, so infuriating that people think that it is okay to ever do that to anyone. And not even like it’s a small group of people–1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted. (Even better, 1 in 4 women in the military will be assaulted while they are in the military. And 96% of those assaults are committed by people who wear the same uniform.)

I know people who have been assaulted. They are the most amazing, most wonderful people and it makes me want to cut the asshole who did that to them because they do not have the right. It takes something that can be so, so good and it turns it awful and it hurts people and it fucks them up and they did nothing to deserve it.

So, those people can go to hell.

But it wasn’t all horrendously depressing. I learned about concrete actions I can take to help fix that. (Look out for changes in Oxford’s amnesty policy to accommodate sexual assault and an attempt to get No Zebras, No Excuses screened at frosh orientation next year.) I met the people at Central Michigan University, who have the most amazing peer advocate program. There are men and they are allies; there are women and they are strong. The entire program is well-run and victim-sensitive and just so very, very good. That doesn’t change the fact that I wish it didn’t have to exist.

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Vaseline on the Lens of Your Memories

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The Dalai Lama wears a sun visor to block stage lights. He is delightful. Image courtesy of Flickr user Ferne Millen. Licensed under CC 2.0.

[photo source]

It has been a busy week, what with it only being Tuesday. First off, today I saw the Dalai Lama speak at Emory, which was pretty sweet. (He had a tiny sun visor!) Plus, tonight my residents managed to fill a UNICEF box in literally five minutes. They are the bomb! Plus, my OpenStudy blog post went up and I registered the Riot Campus domain and life is good.

While at Emory after the Dalai Lama talk, my cohorts and I ran into literally every frickin’ junior at the school that we knew. It was kind of insane. The non-Oxfordians were wondering who the hell the screaming people in the sweatpants blocking the aisles were, I’m sure.

There was an uncomfortable run-in with a member of our group and her Atlanta campus ex. She came to our table, somewhat irritated: “I wish I could quit feeling! I just want an off switch!” I do not know this girl that well, so I didn’t say much, but I wanted so badly to say that I felt her pain. I have been there! It took me six-ish months and a lot of my life becoming awesome to not be there! And even now, with the knowledge that it was a bad relationship and I am better off single and holy shit how awesome is my life right now, even with that, when I saw my ex’s best friend sitting in the chairs behind me today I started to feel physically ill. I don’t think it ever goes away entirely. Continue reading →

Back from New York

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I just came back from my whirlwind Fall Break weekend trip up to New York for Microsoft’s Open House. (The trip was sponsored by Microsoft and run by uniformly delightful people, so I feel bad that I’m writing this on a MacBook. Not enough to switch, but, y’know, bad.)

Managed to start the trip off with a solo subway trip from the swanky hotel (in which I was not able to work the elevator, because I am not wealthy enough for that kind of crazy) to the American Museum of Natural History. I managed to unintentionally stumble onto their 10th anniversary celebrations on 10/10/10 for the Rosa Space Center. There was acapella music done by astrophysicists in addition to the normal battery of amazing bones and things. I was delighted.

I even got to commune with my friend the giant ground sloth!

It was more fun this year (in addition to just being nerdy) because I’m in Biological Anthropology, and the Human Origins hall was basically just a collection of the things that will be on my next test, except that they may have actually been real and certainly weren’t made out of plaster. Turns out the American Museum of Natural History is better funded than Oxford. Shocking, I know. I’ll let you catch your breath. Continue reading →

Riot Grrls Rise Up (Also, Vervets)

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So, in case you were wondering what I’ve been up to, it involves vervet skulls. (Yes, I do spend an inordinate amount of time in the skull lab. To the point that the work-study student there is sad when I do not visit. You too can hook up with a Huffington Post-published blogger/librarian/skull enthusiast! Fellas.)

Other than that, I’ve been in that weird state where I know I’m ungodly busy (I’m taking 5 classes, sitting in on another, TA-ing, and writing for HackCollege, a college profile book, and OpenStudy. Hahah, I make terrible life decisions.) but it doesn’t feel that way. Either this is what time budgeting feels like or I’m precariously juggling all my responsibilities right now and at any moment I’m going to go teetering off the precipice into despair and scholarship loss. Tune in to find out!

Other than that, I’ve mostly been musing about why I am so bothered about college blogs targeted at women. (I also have not been studying for Social Problems. Correlation?) I think what it is about it is that there is ample space for publications both print and intertubular to address 18-23-year-old women, but they so rarely are. Bust skews a little bit older (it assumes you’re out of school), and Jezebel isn’t focused on issues affecting women in college so much as in pop culture. My own beloved employer doesn’t address women’s issues because it’s not a focus of the blog, and the women’s college blogs that are out there are so completely derangedly unrelated to my experience as a woman in college.

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And by “care package,” I mean “bomb.”

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Beep, beep, beep... It's Hotmail! Image courtesy of Flickr user Cindy Seigle. Licensed under CC 2.0 BY-NC-SA.

Today Microsoft sent me a care package. It included: a pedometer, a thumb drive, a cork screw, bubble wrap, a book on origami, and an alarm clock. With the alarm going off.

You guys, Mail Services thought I had received a bomb.

Now, can you guess what product Microsoft was trying to advertise with this assortment of items? If you guessed the launch of the new Hotmail, you’re right. In addition, you must work for Microsoft’s marketing department, because there is no one else on Earth who could make that connection. It was a terrible package. For one,  the package was a giant waste of resources, shipping fuel, and manufacturing costs. The only part of it that I kept was the thumb drive–the envelope-shaped box, the corkscrew, the pedometer, the origami book, the alarm clock, and the bubble wrap all went to people sitting with me at lunch. Secondly, it was poorly-targeted. There is no demographic that likes all those things, and though they were all loosely tied to the launch (you can “hit the snooze button” because Hotmail is so fast, and the like), they were mostly confusing. I didn’t know what the box was for, and I had been sent an email about the launch three days ago with no mention of the box in it.

But the thing that set me off, aside from the general poor planning and execution of the campaign, was the god-damn alarm clock. Who in their right mind sends a beeping package through the mail? If nothing else, it was annoying the mail services employees, who are all lovely people and who are not paid to listen to Microsoft’s bad marketing go off all morning. But more than that, sending something that says “sketchy device! Maybe a bomb!” through the mail is a terrible idea. Continue reading →

Dead Fish and Atheism

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My late fish.

RIP, Bertrand. You will be missed.

This weekend, while I was at Clairmont Campus, my fish died. I also won $200 in a trivia competition. Things pair good and bad, I suppose.

So, on a slightly less macabre note: Biological Anthropology tshirts.

“Zygomatic: it’s a process!”

“I was reproductively isolated and all I got was this lousy dwarf elephant.”

Wholphin versus grizzpole, with the text “Hybridize this!”

A hobbit anthropologist uncovering a human skeleton. “They’re so big!”

“Alas poor Yorrick, I drew thee well.”

Anthropology: the most warped of the sexy, sexy sciences.

Other than that, I’ve been enjoying spending my trivia winnings on Etsy purchases–specifically a custom dress from this woman, who sews in Thailand, as part of my attempt to build an ethical, adult wardrobe, and a wine bottle serving tray from this woman as a gift from my mother, which was well-received. The purchases give me hope that I can, as I age, keep myself reasonably well-appointed without tearing my conscience apart too badly. My only worry is shoes. My Sociology course (Social Problems–we spent the first class watching a documentary on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, which was super fun) is rubbing off on me.

Tonight also marked the first Interfaith Council meeting. We ate Thai food with a group of 30 students and two professors, and we talked about faith in college. I was asked a question about how I–as an atheist–handle being alone in the world, without a God to pray to. There was also a hint of “how are you a good person without faith?” For the latter, I simply said that I strive to be the best person I can be, and to go to bed thinking that I have done as much as I can to make the world better and done as little as possible which harms anyone. It’s never been a fear of God which kept me from doing bad things–just a fear of disappointing those who love me.

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