Etsy Etsy Etsy!!!

I started an Etsy shop! It's pretty sparse right now, but I'll get more stuff up when I have some time off work!
Check it out!

Dressin' up.

I'm staying with my friend Joe on Saturday night, which coincidentally is the same night that he is hosting a party. The theme of the party is 'Grow', and you're supposed to dress up as yourself from any stage of life. Since I don't want to drag around unnecessary clothes, I've decided that I'm going to put powder in my hair to turn it gray, and wear my Starbucks apron. It's simple, but I'm actually laughing alone in my house because I think it's so funny.

Kind of tragic, actually, because of how realistic it may be.

Samosa

I'm getting more and more excited about the trip I'm taking to San Francisco. It's less than a hundred miles away and I used to live there, but it's more out-of-town than I've been in a long time. Admittedly, I'm going to be really bummed out sleeping away from Sean for four nights, but I'll just try to pretend like I'm an independent woman who don't need no man.

I bought the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook, and am not disappointed. I currently have vegan samosas baking in the oven, and plan on making quite a few more indian dishes by the end of the day. I'm bringing my cookbook and spices to SF with me on Saturday, and Ayumi and I are hopefully going to get the hell down in the kitchen.

I'm also going to start taking vitamins. I know I obviously should have begun taking them when I stopped eating animal products, but I'm an idiot. I also smoke.

The spirit of radio.

Lisa posted my interview and photos over at Starship Narcissus. The post seems to be getting a nice response, which is delightful!

I've planned a leisurely trip to SF this weekend, taking advantage of my three consecutive days off. Usually when I make a trip there it's a mess of arrangements and traveling, but I plan on completely relaxing during this trip. There are one or two people I want to see, and I won't feel bad about blowing off everyone else. I wish I were just as social as I used to be, but I really can't fit all of my friends into one trip when the point is to take a vacation.

If they were so desperate to see me, they would have come to Sacramento a long time ago, right?

Anyway, it's not like I'm going to be skulking around the city avoiding people. I'm just not going to stress if I don't get to do everything or see everyone I want to. I'm excited to see and stay with Ayumi. I've been really missing living with her, and I've felt a distinct lack of nonjudgmental close friendship recently. I always do, but it doesn't usually bother me this much.

Because I feel like my posts have been a little text-heavy recently, here's a picture of Ayumi and me from 2007. It's uninteresting, but I'm still going to mention that I no longer have my nose pierced. In case you know me in real life, and were thinking "I've never noticed..."

Finally.

My love has been returned to me. He was released from the clutches of that sterile, concrete prison, detached from the foreign liquids releasing into his veins, finally breathing air that has not gone stale flowing through rattling passages.

Fuck yeah!

He is, however, still recovering. Therefore, we've been sitting on his mom's couch, watching Toddlers & Tiaras. I'm driving my mom to work almost every day so I can be with him here -- his mom's house is too far away for me to ride my bike.

I also received the dress I won from Tiger Cult. I love it dearly, and am so glad I went for a dress in simple black with interesting detail.

Oh me, oh my!

I don't have to work until 4pm today! It's truly miraculous!

Last night, I had several plans that I wanted to make happen, including spending some waking time in the hospital with Sean, but I ended up passing out in all my clothes at 8pm. Usually when I come to the hospital it's mostly to sleep, since I don't have that many days off, and generally have to wake up anywhere from 3-6am. Last night, I was excited to have some time with Sean during which I didn't have to worry about getting enough sleep. Mission accomplished, I suppose.

Lisa and I did a photoshoot yesterday, which was fun. I am the most awkward model ever, but I'm excited about answering the questions she's going to send me!

Thrift Town

I've scored big at Thrift Town, both yesterday and today. I couldn't stop finding stuff yesterday, and my total didn't pass up twenty bucks. Today, I was sure that because of my good luck last night, I wouldn't find anything today. However, it went very well.

I've been experimenting with outfit pictures. I haven't taken any I actually like, but I'm moving forward! I feel like I should try to get into the Style Blog community in a bigger way, because those are pretty much the only blogs I follow.

Memorial

Yesterday was Ben's memorial. It was in the sweltering Sacramento outdoor heat, though the fortunate set-uppers found a shady spot. I drank an entire gallon of water that I bought at a gas station on the way to the park. I got to hear stories from Ben's high school friends, from his family, and heartfelt speeches from my own close friends. I think everyone cried, but many of the stories were just funny, about the various forms of destruction carried out at Ben's old house (where he lived when I met him, and where apparently everyone spent time).

Afterward, I rode over to the hospital to visit with Sean, who's started talking again, although tentatively. The way that's phrased, I know it sounds like I'm talking about a child, but bone marrow transplants fuck your shit up in many areas, one of which is the throat/mouth. He hasn't spoken in days. We talked for a little while about the day, and about Ben. I was putting sheets on his hospital bed for him, and he was sitting on my cot, telling me (pretty nicely) how I was doing it wrong, when I realized how happy I was to hear his voice.

Then, I burst into tears, because my tear ducts are unstoppable these days.

There's some major work drama going on that no one is allowed to talk about, but that everyone is talking about anyway. I don't know what it is, and I'm going to make it a point never to find out.

Mr. Hoemann

Everyone will miss you greatly.

Dreamamine

I couldn't stop dreaming about Ben in the hospital last night, and eventually stopped trying to go back to sleep at around 6am. I kept waking up relieved, then drifting off with the vague hope for a new dream, and picking up right where I left off.

It hasn't made for a very comfortable day off. I've just been sitting on the computer all day, drinking coffee and staying sleepy.

More hospital talk

I found out the other day that a friend of mine and a better friend of Sean's is in the hospital, unconscious from a blood infection and subsequent liver and kidney malfunctions. Just talked to someone with info, who said he has a very small chance of survival.

I'm upset about it myself, of course -- Ben and I have known each other for five or six years, and used to hang out quite a lot. However, I feel much worse for Sean than for myself, because he has been especially close with Ben recently, and is completely helpless in the hospital himself. It's a very sad situation, caused by an infected wound on his arm. I'm still hoping he'll make it out of this okay, but that is unfortunately very unlikely.

I took a really good picture of him a few weeks ago, too. Is now a weird time to post it?

Chops!

I'm going to get my bangs trimmed. Word on the street (well, the Starbucks line) has it that my haircut is cute, so here are some shitty webcam pictures before I cut off the stylish part. Long bangs look good, but they're really impractical in a food service job, because you have to wash your hands after touching your hair.



Here I am looking reeeeally douchey. However, that thur is my absolute favorite shirt. It's falling apart pretty rapidly. Every time I wear it, I either create or discover a new hole.

Suck it, B of A!

I just got Bank of America to refund seventy dollars in overdraft charges, after only three phone calls (though one of those was to PayPal. Every single customer service representative with whom I spoke was just fantastic; specifically a woman named Taylor, the PayPal worker. Not only did she explain exactly how account transfers between bank and PayPal accounts work, she also emailed me a letter to forward to my bank, requesting that the fees I was charged be waived. It was glorious.

Fortunately, it was much easier than that. I was refunded with barely any effort on my part, and judging by the speed of the transaction, barely any on the part(s?) of the workers in question. Now, however, I'm just angry at B of A's whole overdraft system. If they can refund me so easily, why even charge in the first place? It just seems like they're testing how much they can get away with, and if someone makes a phone call like I did, they're like a 4-year-old caught with a hand in the cookie jar.

I've been talking with people all day about Officer Mehserle's conviction for shooting and killing an unarmed man at a BART station in January 09. To make it clear, I am angry about how easily he got off, and think it's worth further investigation, but I just can't stand behind rioting. Since I don't feel like typing this all over again, I'm going to copy/paste some comments I made on Facebook:

"Well, now that conviction will never be reconsidered, because that would be giving in to rioters, which (in the brains of officials) validates rioting. They don't want to do that. I feel like protest/petition would be more effective, but now it's unlikely. Sad, sad, sad."

"By the way, the people who are going to suffer from those lootings aren't the higher-ups in the corporations. It's the workers being paid minimum wage who will have to clean up the messes, or worse, be without work during reconstruction. Businesses have money (or fake money like credit cards) to take care of destruction like this. It doesn't come out of the CEO's pocket."

I would also like to add that many of the businesses which were ransacked were franchises, which means they are privately owned. So the responsibility is really deferred from the wealth of these companies.

Blah blah blah. Anyway, some of the responses have made me really angry. It just seems like people who are saying things like "disband the BART police!" have the wrong idea about the whole thing. I don't see how that would be effective. I'm sure there are many events during which the BART police were effective, but no one would ever talk about them, because that's their job. This is a case of an individual man doing something that was not supported by the police force. His sentence was not severe enough, and I hope that it gets changed, but I wish folks wouldn't turn on a whole organization because of an individual. That is one manner in which a widespread prejudice sparks, and for some reason, when it concerns cops, prejudice has become acceptable.

That being said, fuck that Officer Mehserle jerk-off, and his ending of Oscar Grant's life.

Brian Baumgartner

I was just half-watching an old episode of The Office, and in one of the moments I happened to glance at the screen, I saw that the character Kevin has the same sunglasses as me.

Olive oil follow up, and more cooking.

The result of the olive oil in my hair was disappointing. After shampooing it out, my hair was just as dry as before, which I later figured out was from a product change. I guess I should have realized that from the beginning, but I've never been one to look for an easy solution. Instead of being logical, I assumed that my hair had completely changed textures in the middle of one day.

Sean's bone marrow transplant was yesterday, and I was not there, just like the first one. Aside from the fact that I had to work, I guess procedures like that just direct more traffic through his room, and he's already privacy-starved as it is. I really don't want to cause any discontent while he's in the hospital. A lot of people (NOT most of his friends, who are really wary about stopping by) assume that because he's in the hospital, any familiar face will be a joy. Maybe that would be true if he were there for a week or two (maybe not, though), but for a month, it's the place that he's living, and I think he'd like it if people treated it more like he's just at his apartment. Sometimes he just doesn't anyone there, and I think it should be his right to utilize his power over the things he actually can control, since so much is out of his hands.

That being said, I'm sure if a friendly phone number were to text him as a prelude to a visit, it would work out just fine.

I made some work pants into capris today. I'm not generally a supporter of that pant length (on myself, anyway), but today I just couldn't stomach anything else. I cut almost a foot off, hemmed them, wore them to work, and all was happy until I got home. Since I've been a vegan, I'm losing weight, and the pants in question no longer fit. I decided to just run a seam 5/8" inside of the outer-leg seam (I am probably making legitimate sewers cringe with this language), which worked out just fine until I broke my needle on a grommet. Blah blah blah, I now have a pair of capris with a home-sewn seam down one leg and not the other. I replaced the needle, but the machine didn't work anymore after that. If my serger still worked, I would use that, but it also broke on me a few weeks ago.

Maybe it's me?

This is getting extra-long, so I'll just finish by saying that I baked vegan sweet potato buttermilk biscuits after the sewing failure. I used to make Bisquik biscuits all the time as a child, and these were similar. The one I ate was just lovely.

As a new blog writer...

I guess I shouldn't wait so long between posts, but sometimes I'm just so uninspired. I'm sitting at the kitchen table with olive oil in my hair -- something I was inspired to do after yesterday, when my hair decided to do whatever the balls it wanted. I was making a pizza, which required the use of olive oil, and as I was cleaning up, I started running my olive oil covered hands through my hair, slowly adding more and more.

I really hope I don't end up regretting this.



The pizza that began it all.



This is semi-unrelated, but I just love my espresso maker.



The first photo I posted was probably the least flattering of all the oily hair pictures I took, but it gave the best view of the dress I'm wearing, which has been my favorite for three years. It was a purchase made at my favorite vintage store in San Francisco when I still lived there. I wore it to class almost every day for a few weeks.

Missing opportunities

I feel like I'm supposed to be learning something about how to deal with helplessness. Like, at some point in the future, through something traumatic, I'm going to be able to just sit back and let things happen, because of something I'll know about this helpless feeling that I currently can't shake. I have many issues with being out of control -- this manifests itself most accessibly in vehicles I am not driving/piloting -- and I think that if things continue as they are now, it's just going to drive me crazy. However, I have always gone through my life refusing important lessons, no matter how conveniently packaged they are, no matter how simple it would be to just tear off their wrappers and devour them. The more likely scenario, I think, will be that at some distant future point, I'll be struggling to remember how I dealt with what's going on now, because certainly I must have figured out a constructive way.

It's hard for me to accept that I'm twenty-two with a fiance going through horribly rough treatment for a notoriously awful disease, and I'm going to come out of it with less clarity than I had when it began.

Jay-rad

Here is an article that was in the Sac Bee today.

This article concerns the brother of a high school friend of mine who worked on changing some legislation involving motorcycle safety courses, and at what point in obtaining a motorcycle license the course is required. My friend Jarrad passed away at age 18 after a motorcycle accident that took place immediately after he received his learner's permit. Sawyer Cole (Jarrad's brother) and a friend of his (the brother of a close friend of Jarrad's) got something passed that makes the motorcycle safety course mandatory before the motorcycle learner's permit is obtained.

People in the comments section are raising a big ol' fuss, as usual. However, I think this is a pretty reasonable law (especially since I think the only people required to follow it are those under 21). First of all, with an automobile permit, it is required that the learner drives with a licensed driver, even if the learner is over 18. Since on a motorcycle it would be far more difficult for a licensed driver to communicate information to the learner in-route, I think that gap could use some filling. I mean, besides some restrictions on when and where a permit-holder can drive (they are restricted from nighttime driving and freeways), motorcycle permits don't seem all that different from licenses.

Anyway, Sac Bee commentators are freaking out because they think that this means that Jarrad's family is blaming his death on the lack of legislation in place. I have no idea if that's true or not, as I haven't talked to any of them in years, but I can't imagine that's what anyone is saying. It's certainly not what I'm trying to get across, especially because of what I understand about the accident itself, which was kind of freakish. I just don't think it's unreasonable to require a bit of know-how before you're allowed to rampage around town on a potentially dangerous vehicle -- especially because an ignorant motorcyclist could make a fatal mistake that involved another vehicle, who could ultimately take the blame.

Look at how handsome Jarrad is!



Here he and I are around 2006, sharing a quick, platonic smooch.

Hot spittle.

I hope that the horrible pain I'm feeling in my back wasn't caused by the hospital cot, because if that's the case, it won't be going away for a month or more. It could honestly be a number of things; standing on my feet all day at work, riding my bike (which has drop handlebars), my insoles, cot-sleepin'. It might just be the normal fluctuations of my back pain, which roll in and roll out unpredictably -- both similar and dissimilar to ocean tides.

Today marks what could be my last day of veganism. However, I think I'm sticking to it. Mostly because it really hasn't been that hard, and I'm losing hella weight, but also partially because I just started this new job and explained to a bunch of co-workers exactly what it means that I'm vegan. I don't want to just mysteriously stop now, because I'd feel lame.

Something really flattering is that my friend Lisa wants to do a blog post about my style. I feel like it's really misleading to call how I dress "stylish", because I don't actually go to the effort of styling anything, but rather just find cool pieces at thrift or vintage stores, and throw on a pair of loafers or flats, and maybe a hat. So I feel like doing a feature like that would just be me showing off the cool stuff I found at various thrift stores.

Dingaling.

There is no alarm quite like the sound of the person you love crying in pain.

Just sent Sean off to the ER -- he couldn't talk quite enough to tell me what was wrong, except that everything hurt. I had to call his mom and ask her to take him to the hospital, because I have to work in a couple of hours. This past week has been pretty rough. I always wish that Sean could do stuff and enjoy himself before he goes into the hospital, especially because this time is going to be for so long. But by the time his admission date rolls around, he's always feeling really shitty because it's been so long since his last chemo, and his tumors are all swelling again and hurting him.

Actually, I guess Sean does enjoy himself before he goes in. He just does it by playing music with other people, an activity in which I am not involved. I only see the exhausted aftermath of any enjoyable thing that he does.

I don't know what they're going to do about this pain that he's in. He was going to get admitted tomorrow anyway, and if he needs surgery or anything (because it's quite possible this is a kidney stone) it could very well delay the bone marrow transplant he's scheduled to begin pre-meds for tomorrow.

Hopefully, this will all be over soon. It won't, but I still hope for it. I don't even know if we've hit the worst of it yet.

Faux toes.

I thought I'd share a few photos; mostly to generate some interest in my blog. These were all taken today -- less than thirty minutes ago, in fact!

This is my lovely boy, correcting the paint job I did on that chair.



My bike in my parents' backyard. I love those sunken garbage cans, which my mom wants to start using for compost. I think that will make the yard very inviting for vermin.



The blogger herself.

Day off

I have a joyous day off today. To begin it, I slept in until past eleven, which was unheard of even during the months in which I was unemployed. Upon waking up, I put clothes into the washing machine.

Now, here I am. I decided to blog before I did anything significant with my day, not realizing that it would hinder my ability to write anything meaningful or interesting.

I've been missing a lot of Sean's appointments because of work, and it's harder than I thought. I hate making him talk about the stuff after it's over, because there are only a few moments during which he can forget what he's gone through, and I don't want to make any more time miserable for him than is necessary. Because of this, I should feel stoked that he has his consent signing appointment today, but it just feels kind of miserable. Every appointment his bone marrow transplant coordinator is involved in leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth, because he hates her, and is clearly trying not to lose his shit every time she's in the room.

I wanted to go thrift store shopping, but I have neither money, nor a car. I believe I get paid on Friday, but there are many things I should do before thrift shopping. Pay my parents back, pay off big chunks of my credit card bill, put money into savings for an apartment...

It just seems never ending.

Feeling fairly dissatisfied

I guess if I want to make work bearable, I need to do other things that I really love. The problem is, I'm not really sure what I enjoy doing.

Getting the ball rolling.

I've actually had a pretty accomplished day. Went to work from 11-3; a period of time that was shockingly dull, considering all the training I had to cover. Working those hours really messes up my eating schedule. I wake up automatically around 9, and I'm usually ravenous either when I wake up, or shortly after I wake up. I eat around 9:30, and get hungry again around 2. I only get a 10 minute break for these short shifts around 1, and I'm never hungry that early. Hopefully my body will throw me a bone sometime soon and fucking acclimate, because that last hour is pretty miserable.

Anyway, my problems are small.

When I got home, Sean was awake, and we went out and posted fliers for his show on Friday. I got to do a little shopping, because the stores in which we taped them up were mostly thrift. I bought a straw cloche-style hat from Cuff's as a birthday present, and I think it will be a staple this summer.

Sean and I returned from advertising and a trip to the hardware store, and we sat in the backyard working on projects. He's sanding and painting one of his guitars, and I'm painting and re-upholstering a chair that was sitting on my grandparents' porch for about a decade. Both of us are teaching ourselves. I just left him outside on his own, because I ran out of paint.

I found some people looking for a roommate in their apartment, and emailed them. Even if they don't email me back, it feels really good that I'm in the position to move out.

Birthday

Today is my birthday. I stayed up late last night cleaning my room so that I wouldn't wake up to a big mess on my birthday. Despite that, I woke up and cleaned the kitchen.

I then rode the ol' bike to have coffee with Hollis and Jenny on Hollis' lunch break. Starbucks was nice enough to give me the day off today, although I only started training yesterday. The pressure's really off on the training materials, because they're really strict about not working while you're not getting paid. I also have Saturday off, which is great, because on Friday Sean has another show at Old Ironsides with Phantom Jets and another band I'd never heard of. The training days are pretty painless anyway -- just the reading of a few little booklets.

Anyway, hopefully I'll be going thrifting later today -- possibly with my mother. Tonight, I have no idea what's going to happen. Probably nothing.

Today

went to Sean's cousin's wedding. It was my first ever catholic mass, and an experience, although not a learning one.

Right now, I'm actually going through one of the worst conversations I've ever had. Although I have a blog, I'm not THAT much of an exhibitionist, so I'll just stop there. Suffice to say, I was supposed to be hanging out with Hollis tonight, drinking mojitos in celebration of my birthday, and instead I'm laying in bed with a puffy face, googling 24 hour pharmacies in my area.

16th Street Benefit

There wasn't a great turn out at the benefit show last night, which was unfortunate, as it may be Sean's band's last show. However, I got to see Dog Party for the second time, and they even played a longer set. Those girls are just amazingly talented -- at 14 and 11, they're so much better than most of the local musicians twice as old.

My parents came, and Sean gave them a shout out, which was nice of him and for them. It was relevant, because the megaphone he sings out of was their Christmas gift to him.

After the show and unloading equipment, Sean and I stumbled upon Alaric and Lisa walking home, and ended up hanging out for an hour or so. It was a great out-of-the-ordinary post-show celebration.

I am really not feeling my writing right now, so I'm gonna wrap up.

(I do think it's really amusing that I linked to Lisa's blog on here, as she is my only follower!)

Beep beep boop.

I am very apprehensive about Sean's bone marrow biopsy tomorrow. They really mess him up. He's going into the hospital for a heavy dose of Oxycontin beforehand, which hopefully will make the aftermath less painful.

I tracked down spring roll wraps today, which turned into an hour of (predictably) spring roll wrapping. The little darlings were filled with rice noodles, carrots, mint, cilantro, bean sprouts, and basil. The first thing I dipped them in was a homemade peanut sauce, but when that ran out, I just moved onto Trader Joe's Soyaki, which turned out to be even better. I'm on a mission to make a perfect peanut sauce, but I lost my touch after the first couple of attempts.

Now, the fridge is full of leaves, and I must find a use for them so as not to waste. Ideas?

Work starts on Monday, my birthday on Tuesday. I wish I'd have money for my birthday, but it doesn't really matter. Something that really does suck, though, is that Sean and I really wanted to take a small trip somewhere in celebration. Thinking of the timetable, though, this really doesn't work. He has his biopsy tomorrow, and his benefit show on Wednesday. On Thursday, my friend is coming into town (not completely vital for me to stay, but I rarely see her, and we are very close), then on Friday, Sean's cousin is getting married. Monday, I start working, and have no idea what kind of hours I'll get.

We talked today a bit about moving, though. Obviously, his health is the most important thing, and it's impossible to make rigid plans, but neither of us want to stay in Sacramento forever, nor in the USA forever. That's as specific as we can get at this point, but the prospect of moving and traveling again got me very excited.

Pretzel M&Ms

Today was my fourth day of eating vegan, and besides not putting cheese on a pizza I made, I haven't noticed the difference.

Sean has been eating a good (?) amount of pretzel m&ms, in which I can not partake. I suppose it's probably for the best.

He had his psych evaluation today, and more problems with his meds. I can't even imagine what it's going to be like when all of this is over; every day has been starting with something stressful, and I'm really ready for that to be over. However, I can imagine that after he gets better, daily events will feel just too calm, like there's an explosion waiting to happen. Almost our entire relationship has been like it is now, with near-daily hospital visits, and occasional stressful medicine refills -- I'm really excited to find out how we fade out of that habit, and into normal life.

Not that things will be easy anytime soon. Sean will be in the hospital for 4-6 weeks beginning as early as June 18th. When he gets out, he's facing daily hospital visits to get blood drawn for 1-2 months. Basically, for the six months after his transplant, he won't be going more than two weeks without a hospital visit for labs. It all seems impossible right now, but I know we'll just plow through until everything is done. The first transplant seemed impossible too, until we did it.

Employed.

I got a job. It's at Starbucks. Not as local as I'd hoped, but I hear it's a good company to work for.

This means I can move out of my parents' house, which I'm very excited about. I've never lived on my own in Sacramento before. It probably won't be as interesting as I imagine, but maybe it will be similar to when I first started driving, when the places and streets I'd traveled so many times become suddenly unfamiliar. As soon as I've saved up money for rent and a deposit, I'll be looking for a place. Sean's long hospital stay for his transplant begins earliest on June 17th, and we're planning on moving in together when he gets out. It will be weird, though, if I'm hunting alone for the first apartment we'll live in together. I think the recovery will be better for him this time if he has a home to come to, instead of a parent's house in which he is required to be.

Hopefully after this, his cancer will be completely gone, so he's not in constant debilitating pain during the recovery. Hoping his cancer is gone probably goes without saying.

Chris, 19th and N

Today, a man stopped me on the street and asked if I wanted him to be my lover. This was particularly tacky, because before that, I'd told him I have a fiance, and that my fiance has cancer.

Then I remembered how dominant I used to get when I lived in SF and people talked to me on the street. Joe told me he felt the most safe with me around creepy people (particularly creepy homeless people). I pushed a guy on the beach when he tried to hug me, after I'd denied him a cigarette. I yelled when some creep came up to Camille, Ayumi, and I and stuck his hand down his pants. I pulled some Matrix-style reflex out of the air when a dude tried to put his hat on my head. Somewhere in Germany, somewhere from the helpless looks I had when people would try to talk to me in a foreign language, I became helpless. When I first moved back to the US, through sheer force of conditioning, I was unbearably nervous in restaurants when it came to be my time to order -- in my own language.

I have no end to this post. Just stuff I was thinking about.

99% of germs.

My first day of eating vegan has almost passed by me, and the only variation on how my days normally go is that I think much more about what's in the food that I'm making. The food itself hasn't changed. I didn't exactly switch my diet from completely carnivorous to purely plant-based (nice alliteration, eh? I should write for Cosmo!). I've been vegetarian for six years, and for three or four of those years (non-consecutively), have cut milk out of everything I eat and cook. I also replaced butter with Earth Balance when I moved to San Francisco, only altering that habit when I lived in Germany and the product wasn't available. Still, claiming veganism feels like a big change.

Other than my food, I've mostly been thinking about advertising. Sean and I were watching TV on YouTube last night, and there was a Lysol ad for a soap pump with a motion-sensing dispenser, similar to this one. It angers me to no end what lows the advertising industry will stoop to, just to scare consumers. It also offends me that these people think I'm stupid enough not to realize that if you're touching the soap pump to begin with, it's probably to pump soap; probably the very soap that is supposed to kill 99% of the germs on my hands.

I hope that everyone who watches TV sees the idiocy in this product right away. I'm pretty sensitive to TV ads, as I saw virtually none of them from ages five to thirteen, but I think this one is too blatant to miss.

I may also use this as an outlet to share some photographs of clothing I wear or food I eat. I don't have consistent access to a camera, but I can use one from time to time. Food photographs are usually unappealing, as I often eat indian food (which tends to look just like a puddle of mush on a plate), and outfit photos require me to overcome my extreme self-consciousness about full-body photographs. Maybe paying such close attention to what I eat for the next month will help me with the latter problem.

This blog has begun, in my opinion, rather poorly. I am, however, going to attempt to update every day, as incentive to spend some of your internet time reading my humble words!

For now, Sean and I are just laying in bed, on separate laptops, occasionally having involved discussions of things like Scientology, or Party Down. He's spending a lot of his time organizing his next Hodgkin's Lymphoma research benefit show, which I am trying to telepathically involve myself in. As I am not in school, not working, broke, and living at my parents' house, I am fairly desperate for anything that will give my life meaning and/or quash my boredom. Since I moved back from Germany -- which was almost a year ago, I keep realizing -- I've been feeling rather directionless.

The beginning of June

June should be an interesting month for me. Reasons?

1) I'm eating vegan the entire month.
2) I'm only shopping second hand.
3. I'm going to try to start a blog (this very one!), and
4) possibly an Etsy store.
5) Sean (my fiance) is supposed to get his second bone marrow transplant.
6) I'm turning 22.

I've been wanting to start a blog for a while. I attempted one while I was living in Germany, but it was a total bust, because I'm lazy. The intent was to keep all of my life updates in one place, so I wouldn't have to send individual e-mails to everyone, but what happened was that I neither updated my blog, nor e-mailed anyone.

What the subject matter will be is debatable. If anyone wants to join this debate, let me know.