finally

i'm so excited. i finally received a letter from my girlfriend shakira. i know she's busy and stuff and i know she loves me but just like anybody in a relationship we need reassurances and kissypoos so i was just ecstatic when she finally wrote me.

here it is:



what's that you say? why isn't it addressed to me? well duh if she's sending it directly to my email i know who she's writing to! gosh!

what? what's that? it does NOT sound like a form letter. at ALL!

you know what? just leave me alone. i'm not going to share my joy with you if you're just going to be a hater.

the pussy loves him some dog

catdog
Originally uploaded by aqua bucky.

my gran got a cat from the pound. he's very pretty. he talks to you all the time. he acts like he wants you to pick him up and then freaks out when you do. one thing he does love is my dog. my poor, poor, put-upon dog.

clear skies

practpanorama
Originally uploaded by aqua bucky.

so i've been playing with my new nikon coolpix 5400. when i did the research before buying it it seemed to have some cool features. two of them i really like are the panorama and the slow motion movie. i don't know if i can get a slow motion movie uploaded here but it was cool to use it on the rising new moon over some thick thick clouds.

so here's my first panorama photo. it's a pretty slick feature. you set it to panorama then snap the first picture. an arrow shows up on the screen and the faint edges of the right hand side of the photo you shot shows up in the left side of the frame so you can line up your next shot. it was pretty cool. this one is a little crooked because i wanted to take the pictures quick because the clouds were moving away too fast and i didn't use a tripod. still beautiful though. this is the view off my grandma's back deck. i love it out here and it makes me sad to think of what her kids are going to do to this place when she's gone. they'll probably sell it and in about 20 years it will be a developed neighborhood. i hate all the developing they're doing here. no environmental considerations, no traffic mitigations. it seriously fucking sucks.

i hate people.

blue state of mind

bluetoes
Originally uploaded by aqua bucky.

if i could have everything around me blue i would.

i was at my best friend's house after volleyball practice last sunday and she had invited me to dinner. well actually she said, "hey you wanna cook dinner for us after volleyball?" lol

of course!

so i took my shoes off and was walking around in my barefeet.

she laughed at my toes and said "you should go show those to buggy" (her young daughter) "she totally digs blue."

i said "well, she gets that from my side of the family you know..."
"oh, i know"

so as i'm cooking dinner, buggy comes into the kitchen and says "mom, can you start the shower i'm going to go take a shower."

my best friend was shocked. she said "buck, i'll be right back. i must start that shower right away. it's a miracle when buggy asks to take a shower. she's not famous for her hygiene..."

and she exits the room.

but only to pop her head back in to say "and that is totally from your side of the family too!"

bitch

how do you unring a bell?

if anyone has a time machine i could sure use one right now.

i've managed to hurt someone i love so bad and i would give anything to take it back.

someone got here...

by searching for "fish in vagina"

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=fish%20in%20vagina&ei=UTF-8&fr=slv1-&fl=0&x=wrt

i hope they can take care of that before either participant expires....

mildly retarded genius

so yesterday my friend sends me an article that was published in the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE about how they've found that moderate drinking can increase cognitive ability in older women.

when she came through the lab to pick up stuff from the laserprinter, we joked about it, naturally and i complained about the use of the stooopid word "moderate."

she said, "my sister found it interesting because she studies alcohol..."

"so do i!" i said. "i could get my master's in SIERRA NEVADA."

she laughed. she continued "she studies alcohol exposure and fetal alcohol syndrome."

"well, i would be a great candidate for her to study because i'm pretty sure that the sperm and the egg i came from were completely shitfaced and they kept on partying from there. i was exposed to alcohol and i have above average intelligence...."

"or" she said "you started out with an IQ of 250 in the womb and now, in reality, you are a mildly retarded genius."

i haven't stopped laughing since.

i am in love

but, alas, he is a gay man.

i was reading one of my favorite blogs when i saw that he was nominated for a "best of blog" award. so after voting for him, of course, i checked out the LGBT category and started going to those sites.

some were totally meh and i was surprised they were even nominated (self-nominated...? perhaps?). that made me sad. i won't link to them because then they can link back and i don't want to be rude. but, for those who are curious as to what i didn't like, i feel in general that if you think you're cool and you like to rant i would prefer to read some ranting that is intelligent or hysterically snarky. i read this one blog and this person apparently thinks they're funny, but, um, they're not. so sad. it had such potential too. but i read the entire blog from beginning to end and the potential never panned out.

but i did find some new blogs that i love and hot toddy is my new favorite! he's so ab-fab! i've gone all the way back to the beginning of his blog. between really heart-felt and touching posts he likes to post these ridiculously narcissistic snarky posts. it's great because you can tell he's totally not that narcissitic which just makes them totally hysterical because you can just smell the sarcasm. i love it.

anyway, personal note to hot toddy: you must stop blogging now. i have work to do. please.

thank you.

volleyball as anger management

i'm glad volleyballs don't have feelings. because i'm going to slam the crap out of the ball when it comes near me.

i hate it when people are upset and they make it very clear to me that they are upset, so much so that it upsets me too, and then when you ask them "why are you upset?" because you feel that they are alerting you to their upsettedness (made up word - shut up!) and they want you to ask them about it. you also ask because you care and you also suspect that it has something to do with you (i.e. relationship status...and change in relationship status because she wanted to change it but then probably regrets it or didn't realize it was much harder than she thought...or both...).

*ahem*

anyway, so when you finally talk to the person you say "what's wrong?"

"nothing"

"why are you upset?"

"because"

"because why?"

"because"

"because why?" *irritation building*

"because of the situation"

"what situation?"

"you and me. me and you. us"

"what about it is frustrating you?"

"i can't talk to you if you're mad at me...."

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

great! don't fucking talk to me. and while you're at it. DON'T upset me and THEN not talk to me about it. gawd i hate that. it just feels so childish and so fucking passive aggressive. if someone is acting like that they have to know you're going to ask them "what's wrong?"

so this happened last night. it's still unresolved. and i wake up and i'm still pissed about it. today is volleyball practice and i'm going to take this all out on the court. too bad it's not a game today because we would totally win.

speaking of games, we had our first game. it was interesting. lol. we're in the C league, meaning we're in the retard and older lady league...the A's are serious, the B's are really good and well, my best friend signed us up for C because she wasn't confident about what kind of team she could put together and she also wanted it to be fun, not tooooo supercompetitive, although it's pretty obvious some of the ladies we have are. which is alright with me cuz i hate fucking losing.

the rules for C volleyball (although it could be for A and B too but i'm not sure) are kind of like playing volleyball in bizarro world. all the normal rules of volleyball are different and in some cases the exact opposite. for example, we play "rally scoring." in a normal volleyball game only the serving team can score, when the receiving team gets the ball back they don't score until they start serving, and the first team to 15 wins but must have a 2 point lead. so the rally scoring is interesting because everytime you lose the serve the other team gets the point automatically. other different things are that you can foot fault on the serve (small gym, not much room at the baseline), you can hit the net on the serve, they don't call two-handed open palm hits on the first serve, and some other things i can't remember right now. so i was laughing because all the rules of volleyball are seriously relaxed and we got dinged because one of our players was going to serve and she didn't like her toss so she let it hit the ground. which is what you're supposed to do. and as soon as it hit the ground the ref blew the whistle and gave the ball to the other team. he said as soon as it hits the ground on our side the play is dead. well, we had major befuddled looks on our faces because it just made the rules seem arbitrary at that point. before you could see some sort of pattern, regular volleyball rules are relaxed but then all of a sudden one rule was super strict! lol we were all laughing at how random it was.

we play three games in an hour, with the first two games going to 25 points and the third game to 15 if we run out of time. we lost the first two (not by much) and then we won the third and just guess who scored the winning point? yeah, that's right! moi! i went up for the spike and miracle of miracle slammed it down on 'em. heeeeeeee. it was awesome. but i think even losing the first two games we did pretty good. it was our first time playing together as a team and the other team has been together for a couple of years. we know this fact because one of the girls that joined our team used to play on the other team and when they asked her to play again this season she said she was too busy. oh imagine the burn when they see her on our team. ouch! lol i don't mind though. she's pretty hot. totally married but so what, i can look.

another interesting thing is that i can already tell there's going to be a powerstruggle between two of our players. CATFIGHT! hee

ok i'm going to do some homework before i get the hell out of here to go play!

i still so totally kick ass at volleyball

which is a good thing, since i'm not kicking ass much in anything else i do! hee

well, it's not that bad but i am hella busy and yet i'm still procrastinating on major things. and i'm not even feeling stress about it. which is weird because usually what happens is i procrastinate and then the stress of the deadline really motivates me and i shit things out on time. but it's also a protection mechanism. duh. see, i'm a "perfectionist" but then i have this whole low self esteem thing so i'm afraid that even though i have to be "perfect" i'm constantly afraid i'll fail. so if i put everything off until the last minute and just throw it together quickly then i have an excuse if it fails.

sick

i know.

i've actually gotten much better and worked on doing things in a timely manner. but then sometimes i feel it's not always so much better than if i waited til the last minute. which is wrong! because if you really take your time and focus it should absolutely be better than if you just shit it out at the last minute. and this situation freaks me out much more.

the other thing is that i don't get that stressed feeling up against a deadline anymore. it's more of an apathetic feeling. which freaks me out even more! i feel like i've been beaten down by the game and i don't have that unbridled enthusiasm i used to have when i quit my job 10 years ago and said "i'm going to school! and i'm going to be a marine biologist! and noone is going to stop me!" and i guess i believed deep down that if someone lived their dream then so much of their life would improve dramatically. and it did for awhile. but i also realized, whereever you go, there you are. now, i realize i didn't invent that. but when you realize it, it hits you very hard. i also realized whereever you go, there they are. insert whoever you want for they: other human beings and their nasty human being characterisitics, your demons, your baggage, your fucked up family...on and on. that hits even harder.

don't get me wrong. i'm still soooo much happier and more settled in myself than i would ever have been if i had not been bumped in a different direction and changed my trajectory. i love what i do and i know i'm good at it (well some aspects more than others - i.e. i'm a master in the field and slogging through tons of hard work diving and doing research but unfortunately still retain my absolute hatred for anything bureaucratic and office-politic and inability to play nice with people who have no souls) and i don't want to change that at all. i want to keep doing what i do.

i know that part of it is that i'm still a little gun-shy about the last field season and the drama and lack of professorial support and the repercussions of that experience.

ok i've rambled enough and i have stats homework and about three research proposals (due) and a report (late) and a research permit application (late but NOT MY FAULT!) to take care of and because blogger sometimes scares me that i'm going to lose what i just spilt out of me i will press the publish post button and move on.

thank goodness for volleyball though.

best.message.ever.

over christmas break i ended up spending three days at my best friend's house. she's the coolest person on earth, as well as entirely overworked by running her own business, a husband, and two kids. she always jokes that she needs a wife to help her get shit done.

so i went to their house for the christmas eve open house and then ended up staying until the day after christmas. at the open house it's become more chill over the years. people dropping in and out, having a cocktail or two and then going somewhere else. i didn't think i drank too much but i was a little hung the next morning. so i had the pleasure of drinking spicy tomato beers all christmas day watching her kids open presents. it was mellow (except for the screaming).

she tells me that she's putting together a volleyball team to play at the local rec dept. and asks if i'm interested. HELL YEAH! i know i'll be busy retaking the gawwwwwwwdamn stats class again but i figured i'll be driving home the nights they play and i practically pass right by there so i was stoked.

we had our first practice the sunday before the first game and i figured i should go to make sure i even know what the HELL i was doing after not playing for so long. it was awesome! a little warm-up and i could totally do my rocket-looks-like-it'll-hit-the-backwall-but-drops-2-inches-too-far-in-front-of-you serve. so we practice and then my bf and i stand outside talking logistics a bit and then we leave. i must have had the radio turned way up (shocking!) because i didn't hear my cell ring. and when i got home i got the following message in the most awesome happy/enthusiastic voice of my best friend:

"hey, i know i just left you at the school but i just wanted to tell you how happy i am you're coming out to play volleyball with us! i just love you so much and i'm so happy i get to see you while you're in school! i know you get so busy and the gas costs you a bunch but i swear i just can't get this big smile off my face from seeing you today and from knowing i'll be seeing you so much more than i usually do once you're in school and i just wanted to call and tell you that and that i'm STILL smiling so huge! LOVE YA! CAN'T WAIT TO SEE YOU AND PLAY VBALL!!!"

*sigh* too bad att doesn't let you save voice mail longer than 14 days cuz that's something i really want for the archives. it just makes me smile and feel all warm and loved and special by someone that means so much to me.

oh poor abandoned blog

well, at least in my defense i haven't forgotten my login and password and therefore abandoned this blog and started 5 or 6 more in which i have followed the previous pattern....like some people i know...

heh