Julia S

So things have changed. The way I look at things, the way I approach situations. I have learned to take care of myself finally.

I need to learn how to take care of myself again, but I have no idea where to start. On saturday, I went to some places that I normally wouldn’t go to in place of other activities and while i know it was the right thing to do, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I shouldn’t have done that. I just didn’t feel comfortable at all for some reason knowing that I was making myself sort of ditch someone.

Yesterday, I did the complete opposite, like i’ve been doing for months and spent the entire day with that someone. And now again, I’m not completely happy because I know I shouldn’t be doing that.

A friend of mine suggested reading a book that I’ve always wanted to read, but I haven’t been able to get freakonomics at any library and I don’t have the money to shell out for even a used copy (DAMN YOU TEXTBOOKS!) so I can’t even participate in that aspect of taking care of myself.

Advice?

If any of you have had to take a breathalyzer for being pulled over, I’m sure you know how long you have to blow into the thing for until the cop can get a reading.

I was pulled over once for driving some drunk people home. I had no alcohol in me and I had stopped close to an off-ramp to let one of them throw up. Right after the kid got out of the car, a spotlight went on. It was, of course, a cop.

He pulled behind my vehicle and turned his lights on, so clearly, i couldn’t just drive away. The guy came up and interrogated us about what was going on. I know you’re not supposed to say anything about whats going on to a cop, but the guys in the car told him that I was doing people a favor by being the designated driver.

To prove that i was sober, I had to take a breathalyzer test. I took me around 4 or 5 tries and he had to change the little tube because my lungs couldn’t withstand blowing into the tube for so long. I’d be out of breath before the device had enough air from me to make a reading. In the end, I got a perfectly sober BAC of 0.00 but it was pretty embarrasing, not being physically able to do a breathalyzer test in one (or ever two, or three) tries.

So for public speaking class, I have to watch the inauguration and then discuss it on thurday. I’m sitting in the Sawyer Lounge right now, and unfortunately, because of my english class, I’d just missed Obama speak. I think i’m going to youtube parts of his speach.

I think that he looks funny when he sits at his desk. He looks all serious. I also think that his wifey and the vice wifey look more awkward than hilary would have. Not that I’m a hil supporter, but I just think she looks better to the public than the wifeys.

Does that not bother you? I had to watch a recorded lecture by the Teaching Company about philosophy and the axial model in which the lecturer kept on referring to taking the viewers on a journey together with him. Now this type of expression bothers me to begin with, and as it was one of the first words said by this man, I was automatically more sensitive to hearing it than I normally am. He said this about 20 times throughout the lecture. I know that lectures are supposed to be repetitive so that you get all of the  information into your head… but that part was just useless filler that distracted me.

If you ever do public speaking, never take your listeners on a journey. Especially if I am one of them.

When somebody accuses someone else of “living off of the system” what does that even mean? What system?

Anyways, I was at a house yesterday that I’ve been to before countless times. Lots of the activity that goes on in it (less now, but back in the day…) is drug-related. Recently, the mother and the sister moved back into the house where the boy and his father lived alone previously. Ever since then, everyone tries to hide what goes on from the sister and basically stick their head in the sand at any possibility of her knowing what goes on in that house.

It’s ridiculous that in addition to badly hiding everything from her, they don’t even give her the opportunity to talk to anyone about it because they are too busy pretending that it doesn’t happen. They do this to supposedly protect her… but it’s only making it worse. The kid knows full well what goes on, and she can’t even talk to them about it because they refuse to acknowledge it.

I did have to nudge her a little bit by actively instally linux, but after 3 or so days of zero success… it finally worked!

Hey Karma… one more favor.. I really wanna see tom tonight and tomorrow and the day after and so on…

Please?

Karma’s really been on my side lately. I lost my keys to my apartment in Boston last week, which caused a pretty big inconvenience to some people. Since then, I got another copy of the apartment key, which i managed to lose the next day. Replacements range from $25-$90 for a new key or set of keys for that building.

Tom, my love, found the first set of lost keys in his house after I agreed to loan him money to help him out, despite the fact that it would make things difficult for me. Then, this morning, while doing a favor for him which involved going to his house, i found the other key lying on the ground in his driveway. I swear, this is karma helping me out for helping him out.

Now I’m hoping that Karma will stay on my side a bit longer.

My laptop decided to start acting up. Well.. it was my sister’s fault, she didn’t let the laptop go through the update process and shut it off “mid-sentence” so now it won’t boot up. I’m stuck on my mom’s laptop or my dad’s computer.. whichever is free. I hope hope hope that karma will help me out as much as it has been lately.

In the spirit of re-starting old things, I’ve also started playing neopets again for some reason. I know that there really won’t be any benefit in it for me except for a ton more time wasted. I think that the reason I’m starting to revisit old communities that I used to be a part of is because I went to college and over the course of my first semester, I realized that being a part of a community is very important. Having people to talk to is extremely important because we can’t always depend on a small group of individuals 23/7.

I’ve been hoarding neopoints for now. I came back at about 130 np, and 4 (or 5?) days later, I’m already up to over 11,000.

If there are any good online communities that seem like something interesting to be a part of, please let me know of them. I’m not looking for quantity, I’d like to focus on quality. A place where individuals communicate, rather than just observe.

Most Christmases for me are the same. I go to New Hampshire with my family to some ski condo that they rent with some friends and spend my time going back and forth between the 10-11 year old crowd and the parent crowd, since nobody has kids my age for me to hang out with. I usually take refuge in the little bit of alcohol that I’m allowed to have and pray on the drive up that there will be internet for my laptop: a luxury that is rarely granted.

I’ve had decent Christmases and not so good ones up in New Hampshire, so it’s not a place that I look forward to going to every year, since I’ve never really had any reason to want to return there.

Christmas 2008 turned out better than any other Christmas ever! I didn’t end up going to the ski condo with my family like I usually do, and spent Christmas with my love. We ended up going to his family’s various houses (uncles, grandmother, etc.) and then back to my temporarily empty house. We finally talked about what we needed to talk about.

I did, however, have a very hectic shopping trip. The night before Christmas, my love wanted me to do last minute shopping for his family: 2 little nieces aged 1and 2, his grandmother and his mother. I went to at least 10 stores, looking for something for his cousins, finally settling on a Spongebob stuffed toy with a DVD and a little pony that can be carried around in a purse (which ended up being named “Troy” after the High School Musical 3 main character, who the girl calls her boyfriend). After 3 gruelling hourse (90 minute of which were spent waiting for gift cards to P.F. Chang’s), I finally finished and went over to his house to wait for him.

Despite all of the little difficulties that I encountered this past week, Christmas was so worth it! No, I didn’t have a huge haul of presents, but I did have a huge haul of happiness!