Bagels: the redeeming factor of my life.

This weekend there's a choir trip to Halifax and I don't think I've ever needed something bad. Choir trips are possibly the best things, as they include the majority of my favorite people and tend to have lots moments that later make noteworthy stories.

The last week has been so busy. I've buzzed from one thing to another a great deal, filling in the cracks with homework and the occasional bout of sleep and food. I've also resorting to collapsing in a state of exhaustion when I have a few minutes that allow me to do so.

I also have this thing at work where as soon as I clock in, I have a perpetually cheerful facade. It's exhausting but necessary to appease my ever watchful superiors who really just take themselves too damn seriously. That said, I manage to do things to piss them off, though I'm never quite sure because they're also masters of the perpetually cheerful facade. When I get out of acedemics, I feel like I have so much potential to fail in "the real world" that people keep passively mentioning. In both jobs I've ever had, I've been really good at pissing off my supervisors, which is probably one of the worst things I could ever do.

When I'm stressed and busy all the time my caffeine tolerance goes down. In the last few days, it's hit an all time low, from having an English paper for IB due today (but I'm not done yet because it's been the most painful paper to write of all time), a history presentation sometime in the next week, finishing a novel and doing a presentation about it, having choir things, and work (coincidentally at consistently inconvenient times). So basically, I'm wired, stressed and hating everything.

EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE.

Except I bought seven bagels for $3 and that is very beautiful, though the apathetic cashier wasn't as enthused about the "Fill a bag for $3" bagel promotion as I was.
Love,
-J-

Realizations (that I'm a horrid human being)

The city bus that I take to co-op runs from the university across town to the mall, so I often run into friends that go to the university. Today, Missy happened to be on the bus, so we sat together and were slightly loud and obnoxious, as we are both prone to being, which just escalates when in close quarters with each other. The topic of a local band arose while she was debating aloud whether to go a coffee house tonight, as they were playing there, but we both came to the conclusion that they were vastly overrated and that the front man vaguely resembles a muppet. Our conversation moved on from that, but when I got off at my stop, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone sitting behind me with unmistakably muppet like features. He looked back at me with a look of disdain, making all my hopes of perhaps our comments having escaped his ears disappear. Guys, I dropped an insult directly about a stranger on public transit, unknowingly while they were present. Oops. I am one of the world's biggest assholes. Maegan replied to this situation with the text "Now he knows he looks like a muppet. He'll never be able to unsee that."  Missy and I are currently planning the creation of buttons that say "World's biggest asshole" to give society a fair warning. Sometimes I think I'm not as much of an asshole as I think I am, but then something like this confirms it several times over.

 I also somehow got myself invited to a New Year's Eve party held by someone who I barely know, solely because Missy was disappointed that I don't know the group of music kids from a neighboring town. At least I have at one interesting option for my New Year's Eve, now. I'd feel a little bad about abandoning the tradition of tenting out in a senior's hall in the sticks with youth group with copious amounts of midnight snacking, but hey, a party could be potentially more interesting and include fewer people that annoy me. Probably.

And those are the things that happened to me today: I publicly insulted people on city transit and got invited to a party that's a month and a half away that I probably won't attend unless I find myself utterly devoid of other options. I hope your day included fewer realizations that apologies in the form of balloons would be nice to give people than mine did.
Hearts,
-J-

No theme, just madness.

• Do any of you guys have a friend that you made from some passing event a while ago and who you run into about four or five times a year by simply finding them at the same place you currently happen to be, proceed to have a long winded conversation with them, and then forget that they exist until the next coincidental meeting? Or is that just me?
• I feel like I put a lot of energy into making myself do things quickly and somewhat mindlessly so that my mind doesn't start going in circles, over thinking and double guessing everything.
• I think that being a barista is over glamorized by people. But you need the memory of an elephant, a great deal of patience, to keep up for hours of a fast paced environment, willingness to lose a lot of self respect, the ability multitask like a boss and the realization the sometimes you will still be ready for a nap after four shots of espresso. On top of that, you're expected to be nice to people. I'm worked pretty hard and flash my share of haggard smiles at customers.
• I'm considering going on a movie watching binge because the library actually has a half decent collection and I'm movie illiterate beyond belief. I'm developing a system to thoroughly go through the movie collection and everything. The library is increasing my OCD exponentially, though it's yet to be too much of a problem. Any suggestions of movies I should watch?
• I have a paper due Monday about a book I read last April and haven't had time to reread. I'm not sure how to distribute my content, so I've come up with a system where I put square brackets around sections that I can expand by a few sentences if I come out below the word count. I feel like from the skills I've gotten from IB, I'll be fine with the workload in university. That's a comfort. But these words are being written slower than molasses going uphill in January.
• I also started writing my 1000 word autobiographical essay for my application for University of King's College's Journalism program. I've spent half an hour on it and already have 400 words. It's going a lot better than my English paper for Monday and applications aren't due until the end of March or something. This admissions essay is something I'm not going to let myself half-ass. It's going to be good, and probably also a plus that I can revise it for scholarship applications.
  
  Sufjan Steven's 58 track Christmas album, "Silver and Gold"
  Hearts,
  -J-

A collective list of reasons I want to punch owls.

This weekend was a terrible weekend. Not like an actually terrible weekend, but I feel really crappy at the tail end of it, now.

I woke up on Saturday at 6:30am because I needed to be at STU by 9am for their open house (because university and stuff). We managed to make the usual hour and a half drive in just over an hour, so we arrived on time and got registered. That was when my brother and my dad decided to leave me for an hour in a building that I've never been in before in a room full of several hundred high schoolers and their parents, of whom I was vaguely acquainted with about three, and tables with profs from all the different faculties of the university. I was very close to having a panic attack, having found the toxic situation involving both collecting information about university and crowds of complete strangers. After about half an hour, I had calmed myself down, talked to a dreadlocked hippie about a major legitimately called 'Great Books' because I was wandering around looking lost and overwhelmed and his table was empty. Most of the tables I wanted to go to were super crowded, and ventured to join the cluster of people around the journalism table and listened to an awkward kid with a nasally voice brag about the fact that he's been freelancing since he was fourteen, after which I avoided the crowded tables and went to the small outlying ones, like women/gender studies and sociology. Eventually things died down, people started leaving to go to other events, so after waiting out another kid who was talking about his intense love of The Odyssey to a Poly Sci prof who's eyes were glazing over, I finally got some good, relevant information. The afore mentioned Poly Sci prof introduced me to the head of the journalism department who made me feel that my life isn't going to be a failure. After that there were some other things, including a tour, and I believe that I could comfortably enjoy my university career there, but it's still my second choice.

Saturday evening I attempted the near impossible feat of getting across town by navigating around the Christmas parade that disrupts every area I had to pass. It took me an hour, but with phone maps and the Rent soundtrack, I did it. Who knew a Christmas parade could easily debilitate getting anywhere in a city of 80 000. I celebrated by breathing a sigh of relief, consuming four pieces of pizza, and ranting about the pretentious asshole kids at the STU open house who are probably going to have their egos bashed down to bearable levels once university actually starts. Since it was Margie's birthday party, we celebrated by watching Mamma Mia and enjoying every second of it to its full potential.

This morning I woke up at Margie's house and went to church early without coffee. I then made super mediocre coffee for the entire youth group before our skit. Then I had to leave early to get to work, before the potluck.

I got to work and saw that the crowd wasn't that bad. Then I walked out of the back room and saw a line of ten people through the door. The funny thing was, there was consistently a line of ten people through the entire shift. Five hours of non-stop crazy. We ran out of eggnog and Missy had to go to the grocery store, leaving only two of us for half an hour. We had 10+ drinks lined up at any given time for hours. I had to punch in order after order, which involves a reasonable amount of concentration and juggling punching in orders/payment/marking cups/getting tea and coffee/getting food, all with speed and efficiency to keep the line moving. I had one fifteen minute break in that entire time, when I had planned to get something to eat, but the chaos didn't allow me to get anything to eat or drink. On the way home, I bought a box of cheesy bread and ate the entire thing by myself. The shift had made me feel so shitty that I feel no regrets over that decision. Stress+not having time to eat=later unashamed eating of crap. My family stared at me over the table with sadness in their eyes, thinking that they will have to watch my stressed descent into gluttony and obesity.

Now I look forward to a week of writing my entire World Lit. paper draft (a literary paper for IB consisting of 1200-1500 words), a history presentation, finish a novel, plus whatever other homework comes up, and hopefully maintaining my sanity to a degree that allows me to get out of bed in the morning. I hate looking ahead and realizing there's a small, inevitable circle of hell waiting. Imminent IB breakdown? I think perhaps.
Hearts,
-J-