I should have been in bed an hour ago, but I said I'd post every day in July and I'm damn well going to.

Even though today is technically tomorrow. I will just pretend I'm on the west coast, yes?

I will make this quick though. And organized!

A. I made vegan (well, almost. Giant was out of soy yogurt so I used regular) s'mores cupcakes tonight for the Women & Politics Institute bake-off.

Yes, we are having a bake-off. With judges, and apparently prizes too. I've never baked anything from scratch before (well, not since I was about six and my mom would bake and I would help out by taste-testing the batter about five times a minute), so winning is not on my mind. I just hope they're edible.

B. I was morally reprehensible this morning and bought a galley of Catching Fire on ebay. Even though a good amount of my music is downloaded and I have no problems with downloading shows/movies or streaming them from dubious foreign websites, I am not so comfortable with breaking copyright law when it comes to books. It's even less ok to me when someone is making a profit even though they probably got the book for free!

Buuuuut... Catching Fire comes out a week after I leave for Kenya. So it was either buy an advance copy now, pay a small fortune to Amazon for shipping to Africa, or wait until I come home at Christmas to read it.

Ok, I guess it wouldn't kill me to wait...

But anyway, I've already paid, so there's nothing I can do about it now. Assume I've shed a tear over my contribution to the death of the written word. (Which I haven't, although I have been fretting over it all day. I'm silly.)

Anyway, what I've been taking my time to get to is that, in an effort to use my ebay-fu for good and not evil, if you like me are addicted to The Hunger Games, I will send you the sequel for your reading pleasure as soon as I finish it. The more people I get to read books, the less dead I kill the publishing industry, yes? :D

Err, ok, so this morning when my alarm rang at 8:30 I hit snooze and passed out for what I thought was five minutes. Then woke up over an hour later!!! I assumed I'd accidentally turned off the alarm rather than snoozed, and started frantically running around getting ready, calling work to apologize, etc.

Then two minutes later my alarm goes off. I managed to sleep through an hour of my alarm going off two feet from my head every five minutes. WTF? I am not normally a super-heavy sleeper!

Kind of freaks me out, actually. If I can sleep through that, what else can I sleep through?

It seems I've quite been neglecting my journal these past weeks. Oops. :( Things have been... crazy. In a good way. And a bad way. In every way. And that's mostly good, but maybe a little bad. I think.

However, I have decided that I'm going to post every day next month, and post something fannish - picspam, meta, fic, friending meme? perhaps the worst "attended" friending meme ever! - at least once a week. Because really nobody needs thirty-one days of ME. Even I wish I could take a break from me after a week or so.

I also reallyreally need to finish my writeup of Bonnaroo, which I started during downtime at the festival (not that there is any downtime there - but sometimes I just needed to get away from the crazy and make my own downtime). Here is a little preview, being a list of the top ten shows I saw at Bonnaroo:

10. Passion Pit. Stood near two guys who went to college with the band. They shared a bowl with us, a time-honored Bonnaroo bonding ritual.
9. The Lovell Sisters. Remind me of Nickel Creek. Possibly the only straight-egdes at the fest. The middle sister won my heart when she yelled, "I came here to see hippies dancing! So dance, hippies, dance!"
8. Okkervil River. Katie is in love with the lead singer. I think he should update his emo haircut.
7. Vieux Farka Toure. This man's fantastic music cured my hangover. Truth.
6. Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Grace was easily the best dressed at the festival. And living proof that you don't need to be a size 0 to look good in a romper. The band just seems to be having so much fun while they play that you can't help but love it.
5. Chairlift. Their keyboardist (keyboarder?) is officially my new idol. They are just as fantastic on a stage the size of my kitchen at noon as they are in a pavilion the size of my entire apartment complex at 10pm.
4. Julia Nunes. Did a cover of "strong contender for douchiest song ever" Don't Trust Me by 3oh!3. Enough said.
3. The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. I saw Karen O looking at bongs. BEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE. Oh yeah, they also do a pretty sweet live show.
2. The Decemberists. Say what you will about Hazards of Love, it's pretty great live and in SRARKLY SPARKLY COSTUMES. But the best part was probably the cover of Heart's Crazy on You.
1. Of Montreal. Epic.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have to run to dance class. This summer I'm adding a burlesque/cabaret (ok, so I am foolishly pandering to the male gaze, disrespecting myself, etc. etc. YES, AND?) class to the old standbys jazz and modern. I do not quite know what to wear. I don't think the usual leggings and an old tshirt will cut it? Hm.

Last night I saw The Brothers Bloom, Rian Johnson's (guy who wrote/directed Brick) new movie. It was quirky and adorable and badass and awesome. I want to see it again, like, now. Even though I just saw it less than 24 hours ago.

Most awesome thing was, Rian Johnson was at the screening, and did a Q&A afterward. (Unfortunately a short one, as the show was at 9:45, and by the time it was over it was past midnight and everyone wanted to go home.) themis sent me some questions to ask him.

( And I will report what he said to the best of my memory under the cut! :D )

How do you tell someone you don't want to see them anymore? I'm such a coward about it and am always tempted to just stop returning calls. After the plan B debacle of a few weeks ago I had finals, then went home for a week, then started my new job, and between everything didn't see the guy or really talk to him for a while. This was fine because I'd like to just put the thing behind me. The last few days he's been calling and texting a lot. He wants to see me this weekend. I don't want to see him. Oh, and I met someone else. He called and asked if I wanted to hang out tonight. I work in the morning, so I told him I'd call tomorrow. So I have until I get out of work at 2 tomorrow to figure out what to say. :(

Dragged myself to the longer dance class for the first time in a month or so. I'm soooo tired now. Just want to shower off the sweat from two hours of dancing to Lady Gaga in a studio with crap air conditioning, then watch an episode of Dead Like Me and go to bed.

In fandom news:

DOLLHOUSE RENEWAL FTW. THAT IS ALL.

Yesterday a few of the other girls in the office were talking about how awesome Glee is. This made me squeeful because I was worried the show was doomed to cult status and nobody without a livejournal would ever hear about it. I watched the pilot last night. I have a soft spot for shows about high school losers (who else watched The Paper on MTV??!!?) and as a former musical theater nerd Glee makes me so happy. :D

I still haven't watched the Gossip Girl season finale! I just... really don't care about the show anymore. In all honesty, I started watching for the clothes and never really got into the characters/plot. And then I started reading fashion blogs and the romance was over. I don't think I'll watch next year.

Funny thing is, I think if the spinoff had gone ahead I would have watched that. I have been dreaming of a silly inconsequential show in the style of Brat Pack movies ever since I first caught 16 Candles on TNT.

Oh, and The Brother's Bloom is coming out. Have been looking forward to this movie for aaaaages!

I'm having a rather lonely evening over here... not that I don't enjoy being on my own sometimes, but today just isn't one of those days! After my super-awesome night out turned crappy last night (and no thanks to me for organizing, or apologies for taking my friend and me to a place we were pretty uncomfortable with. ( Ok I feel the need to briefly vent coming on... )

Ok, anyway, so I started today in a bad mood which just got worse when the little girl I babysit for had a really bad day. She was napping and had a bad dream, and was understandably upset when she called for her mom and got me instead. :( And then she cried the rest of the afternoon and I felt like the worst babysitter ever.

I'd had a bunch of plans-in-the-making for the weekend, which seem to have fallen apart now that everyone I'd been talking to earlier seems to have stopped returning my calls and texts all at once. It's silly, but I feel so lonely and unwanted. :( I talked to my best friends from home for a while, and that made me feel a bit better. I wish I were hanging out with them tonight.

Now after all this depressing talk, I come to the important bit: FASHION. I cleaned my closet in an attempt to get my mind off how crappy I felt. It actually kind of worked. It was fun clomping around in my most impractical shoes and playing dress-up trying everything on. I looked through my closet hoping to get a better sense of personal style without interference from that stuff that I ended up buying because it was trendy or practical or I needed it for work. I realized that the end-all-be-all piece I own are my vintage cowboy boots. I wear them with absolutely everything, and they're perfectly worn in by now. Every time I wear them (at least twice a week) I get compliments. They're great. Unfortunately they were used when I got them and I've worn them on every possible occasion for three years. Yesterday I pulled them on to realize the sole on the right foot had cracked. I need to get them fixed - I couldn't bear it if they fell apart on me!

Besides the boots, I also really like bright colors in big abstract prints. My favorite vintage dress is covered in huge paintlike swirls of fuchsia, orange and white that blend into each other in an awesome way. It's probably visible from about ten miles away. I also have a Marc by Marc high-waisted tulip skirt (I got it secondhand for a song) with the same sort of design - but smaller and in deeper shades of magenta and turquoise so it stands out just a bit less. :D I also really like any pattern in black and white - stripes, polka dots, African tribal-like print, abstract zebra stripes, and so on. And I have two low-necked plain black tees (one with elbow-length sleeves and a scooped boatneck and the other with cap sleeves and sweetheart neck) and desperately need more - they're always the first thing I miss when I haven't done laundry in a while. And I like my denim dark, my skirts high-waisted, and my jeans skinny. Add the ever-present strappy sandals (that stay on well enough to bike in) in summer and black opaque tights, motorcycle boots or high-top chucks, and chunky crimson knit beret in winter and you pretty much have my entire wardrobe - the parts of it I wear, anyhow.

I noticed that even though I love wearing black, and have several little black dresses, more pairs of black tights than I can count, and multiple (but still not enough!) black tees, I always seem to be buying my accessories in brown. The cowboy boots for one, plus the Helena de Natalio bag I bought last summer (my first expensive bag!). I don't even have a plain black purse. The closest are a vintage navy blue frame bag and le sportsac messenger with a print on a black background! So I always get stuck in the "what bag do I wear with this outfit?" trap. (It's less of a problem with shoes - I have a lot more of them. I'm just not a purse girl.) Thus I frequently leave the apartment in a fabulous outfit with all my junk thrown in a Trader Joe's cloth tote. XD

So now that I've told you all my style must-haves... what are yours? If you could have the wardrobe of anyone in the world whose would it be?

Just deleted my last entry. Everything is ok! It was just the plan B messing with me. Something they don't list on the package is that it, like anything with hormones, can make you a bit craaaaaazy. Add that to barely sleeping all finals week and I was a mess by Friday morning.

I may get worse grades than usual, but mainly that's because I've been rather a slacker this semester. My Contemporary Africa professor gave me an extension on the last essay of the take-home final, which was very nice of him! I handed the last of EVERYTHING until next September in last night (finished it on the train to my parents') and it is a huuuuuuuge relief.

Now I have a week off before I start my internship, which I intend to spend doing as little as possible. Except make a list of things to do this summer! Which will include (among many other things): finally have a rooftop party - I have not yet made use of my building's open roof, how awful!, spend at least three weekends at the beach (once my beach buddy gets home from Spain!), and go to BONNAROO!

I AM SOOOO EXCITED! I will get to see: TV On the Radio, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, MGMT, The Decemberists, of Montreal, Animal Collective, Neko Case, Jenny Lewis, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Grizzly Bear, Andrew Bird, and those are only the ones I'm REALLY REALLY excited about! There's about one hundred other artists playing. Oh, and a special episode of the Daily Show!!! (Now if only the Fleet Foxes would sign on... come on guys, you played Coachella, why screw us over here on the east coast??! Coachella is LAME and COMMERCIALIZED anyway! Hmph!)

I don't have to babysit this afternoon, so I made a hair appointment for 4:00. My hair is grown out and shaggy, especially the bangs which weren't even to begin with (seriously, I've given myself infinitely better bang trims than the lady who last did them, and now that it's (just, barely) long enough to pull back I'm tempted to wear it like that every day. I'm going to a new place, they managed to make my roommate not look like a Milwaukee soccer mom so I know they're pretty good.

I was looking through a hairstyle magazine and I'm so happy about the variety of short cuts that have shown up lately. A few years ago it seemed like all stylists could do was layered bobs in various lengths. I love how everyone seems to be getting their hair cut short lately. Remember how not long ago it was the thing to get extensions and have hair down to your ass? Ew. Cutting my hair off is the best thing I could have done with it, srsly.

Oh, and I am wondering what should be my next Saturday morning show. Because it seems like sci-fi shows are always on Friday night because some network shitheads decided all the fans were watching tv every Friday because they have nothing better to do, I usually ended up watching BSG and now Dollhouse on Saturday morning, in bed, while eating cereal straight from the box. Geeky television is the new cartoons. But what am I gonna do during Dollhouse's hiatus for the next few weeks or if (blasphemy!) it's canceled?? Much as I hate to think about no new Dollhouse, I need a new show. So what should it be... Deadwood, Sarah Connor Chronicles (although I don't need a new show just in time to see it get canceled and break my heart!), or Dead Like Me? Hmmmm?

After a weekend of partying and then losing my phone at a quasi-rave Tuesday night (Which I did not expect to be going to. My friend works at the 9:30 club and got she and I plus another of our friends in for free. From the opener I was expecting a pretty chill show, but then the glowsticks came out, sunglasses went on, and people started tossing handfuls of glitter. And there were legit people with pacifiers and candy necklaces, which I had no idea anyone still wore. However, the huge array of light-up accessories on display made me envious. They still make light-up sneakers? Maybe I can finally heal the old wounds from when my parents refused to buy them for me in second grade! Ahem, but anyway...) I now have an icky sore throat and sinus headache and am spending tonight curled up with Wide Sargasso Sea and Pink Think. Friday night in bed with feminist literature is fine by me.

My roommate was going to have her boyfriend over, but I may have, um, pretended to be sicker than I actually am earlier, so she now thinks I'm a walking contagion. Hopefully that will keep her away for the evening as her judge-y-ness hasn't let up at all in the past few weeks. :(

My roommate's watching Dollhouse. Awesome, huh? :D But she's still getting caught up and watching an old ep, so I don't want to spoil her by putting it on tv just now.

Also, roommate quote of the week: "You're not stupid, just under functioning." Just what you want to hear. She's pretty funny when I remember to just shrug off anything she says. XD

I should really really been doing homework tonight (still working on the same papers from last night), but I'll go bats if I stay here with my roommate all night. Going to 90s/00s antiprom at the Cat. Cover's $10, which is not great as I've set myself a $20 weekend budget. Girl Talk's coming to my campus tomorrow night as well, which is $5 (bargain!). So that leaves me with $5 for... incidentals. It's a good thing I won't be drinking much, though. It was just last week that I discovered that if I don't drink too much I actually look kind of cute when I come home and not like hell like I usually do at 4am. This good-life-choices thing is still quite new and interesting!

If you haven't yet posted on la_faerie's Culture Snob Friending Meme then you are missing out and should do so now.

Quickity quick update before my dinner comes (what a wonder it is to live in a world where if you pay someone they will come to your door with food). Tonight I got ditched spectacularly for dinner in a scenario involving tampons, traffic tickets, and mental instability. A friend of mine is having a really hard time lately with medical problems and a death in the family, was having a particularly bad day today, and when I commented on how she was speeding not one minute after getting a ticket pulling out of the CVS parking lot on a red light after buying tampons, she blew up. I guess all the drama and angst needed to come out eventually, and so it did on me. She yelled, I yelled back, she cried, I was at a loss for what to do, we forgot dinner and went home. And now I'm mad, really fucking worried about her, and hungry.

I stopped taking zoloft a few weeks ago and it's been a level of hell. Mood swings, random crying, headaches, and all the stuff that's to be expected but that really interferes with my GPA (hard to get to early classes when just getting out of bed is a hurdle). So now I'm trying to write three papers at once tonight, two of them late but mostly finished, and one due tomorrow but not even started and likely to be late as well.

Oh, and I'm on twitter. http://twitter.com/iheartyoutoo Follow me, and if you do post a comment here so I can follow you back! :D My twitter feels lonely since I just started following people this afternoon and even though most of the people I'm following are RL friends only 6 people are following me back yet so far! :( :( And one of them is a blog I've never heard of!

So I got home around 12:30am, fought with my internet connection for half an hour (it's been slow lately for some reason, grrrr), and then... WATCHED THE BSG FINALE!

( Most of that was great. The rest of it, I'll just have to pretend DID NOT HAPPEN. )

( Tomorrow night my sorority is initiating this semester's pledge class. This thing conflicts with BSG and I can't take it!! )

In other news, I babysit a four-year-old misogynist. Today she was drawing a picture of a princess and asked me to draw a sash on her dress. It ended up looking more like a karate belt. This conversation ensued:
her: What's that?
me: Um, I guess this princess does karate?
her: *appalled* NO. Princesses don't do karate!
me: What do they do?
her: They stay in their castles.
me: That must get pretty boring. What do they do there?
her: I don't know. Not much.
me: Poor princesses... :(

Worse, her favorite princesses are Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. Of all the lousy princesses! They didn't do shit! >:( (But at least she doesn't like Ariel, who had to give up her voice to get the prince. You could write a masters thesis on that plot point alone.)

BUT after a few more minutes of my increasingly frantic questions about princess behavior, she laughed her ass off and told me she didn't want to be a princess, silly. She just liked movies about them!

Later I told a friend about the conversation, and he suggested I make up a badass new princess. The above Princess Thelma was his creation. I think a set of paper dolls are in order. Princess Thelma comes complete with motorcycle, helmet, two changes of clothes made by workers paid a living wage, and working dual-action "I don't need a man!" vibrator.

They're my favorite event of the year. But why is it that, out of consideration, professors never have a big assignment due the day after the Superbowl? Football for chicks is, if not football, still just as Serious Business as a bunch of guys running around after a ball and groping one another! Hrrrmph.

I've never liveblogged anything before... and this seemed as good a time as any to start as I want to avoid writing a 5-page skit for tomorrow in which I go on a date with Snowball the pig from Animal Farm, we pass Kitty Genovese dying on the sidewalk, and then Martin Luther King Jr. walks by. Or something to that effect, I haven't quite worked out the details yet.

Lords and ladies, the MOST BULLSHIT CLASS EVER. My brain is turning to MUSH. AAAAAAAAAGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGH.

( So what has Miley Cyrus ever done to warrant a ticket to the Oscars? And why is she dressed as a wedding cake? )

It is mu twenty first birthday and I just got home. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

And, to prove what a goddamn nerd I am, the FIRST YHING I DID when I got home was post and livejournal. Next I think I'll watch the new BSG.

I had a veir vair good birthday. Althogh I did not take 21 shots (I am quite a small girl and that much liquor would NOT be a good idea), I did get twnenty one kisses! IUt was nice.

CHEERS.
<3 Ally

Ok, so I stayed home to do homework (because I have a lot of it and also a lot of other stuff lined up for this weekend, and also I'm trying to stay in more and be a shitshow less, because last weekend I had kind of a rather large impromptu party in my apartment which was apparently a pretty good one not that I remember, and people keep coming up to me and going "So remember when that thing happened at that party you had and it was sooooooooooo funny and...", and I am like, "No. No, actually I don't remember." Mostly I remember drinking a lot of the extremely lethal punch the guys brought and the Drunk Sophomore (now the Drunk Senior! how time flies!) telling me how he slept with a tranny and also a 52-year-old cougar. And then the next morning I was hungover and grumpy because someone had spilled beer on my favorite blanket (actually it is basically my blankie as I have had it since I was one but shhhhhhh nobody needs to know about that), and my roommate was grumpy because someone had spilled lethal punch on her axis of evil finger puppets (come to think of it I do remember people being very amused by the axis of evil finger puppets, but not the spills), and we were both grumpy because there were half-drank beers and cups of lethal punch everywhere which neither of us wanted to clean up.)

But anyway, I decided to be less of a lush from here on out at least until the parties tomorrow and the next night. So I stayed in and I am glad I did because BSG WAS THE FRAKKIN SHIZZNAZZ.

( this contains spoilers for tonight's ep (obvs) and is only half-coherent )

I feel almost bad saying this, as it seems that a lot of my flist didn’t have such a great 2008… but 2008 was my best year ever. It wasn’t all fantastic, and it certainly wasn’t calm or laid-back, but it was upanddownandupanddownandupanddown… trending upwards in the long run… which is just how I like it.

BUT many of the friends who made 2008 great are going abroad this semester. And I will miss them and I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. :( And because I’m going abroad next fall, I won’t see some people for a year! So, the onset of 2009 is a bit depressing for me. Which is why, instead of looking back on last year (I’m too young for nostalgia), I made this:

( Reasons why I’m glad it’s 2009 )

( I found Gossip Girl pretty boring this week. )

( And I just finished watching Torchwood... my new favorite show ever until next month give or take! )

Currently I am, as you may have guessed based on my not-so-subtle subject line, watching the first debate. Just now McCain is not answering the question that has been asked in favor of shilling for Bush's economic plan.

I'm supposed to be meeting some friends for a night out at 9:45, but I kind of want to stay in... for one, I want to watch the debate, and for another I have a professor who is completely out of touch with college students and also a sadist, and has scheduled a mandatory review session for 9am tomorrow morning. :(

ETA: I have decided to stay home tonight and watch debate, attempt to clean my apartment, and make brownies. I don't want to miss what promises to be a predictably wild night out, but there will always be more predictably wild nights out (that's why they're predictable!), and I must remember that there are more important things out there, such as financial crises, passing my classes, and eating brownie batter.

To console myself for not going out, I've put on the sparkly top and headband I was planning to wear (so at least I look cute while I sit in my apartment with no one to see me), but replaced the ankle-strangling jeans and heels with flannel pj pants, which are much more comfortable.