a short (and long) week ago, i stood on the edge of a
precipitous breakdown, and i felt
the shards of my broken-down
existance
painfully slice my fingers as they slid out of my grip.
impending failures
all became realized within
three
short (and long)
days but by saturday
an awakening from my past
(and the help of three very good friends)
brought me back to where i am today.

today, i, I am in control again.

dear god, today's uber.nu story is far too funny.

a valediction forbidding mourning
by adrienne rich

My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.

Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.

They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.

I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control.

A red plant in a cemetary of plastic wreaths.

A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say: those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.

To do something very common, in my own way.

today has certainly been a day. it's a bit chilly out, which is a tad on the annoying side, especially since i wanted to wear my little denim miniskirt. but no, i was forced to wear my old blue jeans and a 3/4 length sleeve shirt... and we call this spring quarter. bah.

pwr library orientation proved nearly useless... since my research paper is going to be on blogging, there arent' exactly annals of blogs hidden deep within the stacks, and most every article ever published on it, i can find online either through the plain old internet or through stanford's online databases. that being said, however, there's a multitude of resources right at my fingertips (hehe, literally. i love cliches that work...) that i can use... i sincerely doubt that lack of resources will be a problem for this paper, like i was initially concerned about.

so my headache and tension has finally gone away. no more grinding my teeth or anything. i suppose it's indicative of the vast amounts of stress that have been lifted, in one way or another, from my shoulders in the last week. i still have an ihum paper and a pwr paper and some other shit to do, but it's not nearly as much as last week, what with ME101 finished for now, and just generally a more positive outlook on life.

maybe sometime soon i'll be able to resume formulating my ideas on divinity. i've gotten a couple of flashes of insight over the last week or so.

totemo ii, kono jinsei wa.

weeee, new screenshot. yaaaaay!
(for the story behind it, email or im me. :)

ah, another high school buddy who's jumped on the blog phenomenon... even though he CLEARLY uses the wrong platform. blogger is so much better, yo....
yeah, brandon's blog... silly canadian...

ah, i feel obligated a little bit to blog. the shit went down today for my me101 project... literally down... the project didn't so much work the way it had so many times before. unfortunately. but since performance is only 20% of the grade i think we'll do alright.

i just slept for a few hours (how many, i have no idea) on the couch, so i think i'm going to go to bed now and get up when i get up, and hope my profro gets here or whatever. i'm gonna feel pretty bad if she gets lost 'cause i didn't answer the phone... so i'm going to sleep and hope that i get up early and more coherent. all nighters are just a bad idea.

oh, and if you're bored, check out www.mp3.com/wideeyed. yeah, future stanford kiddo, who profro-ed in branner... the mp3's are low quality but if you can get past that then there's some quality music to be heard. very dashboard-influenced... of course that's what i need right now. (while you're at it, visit her blog too... yaaaaay!

goodnight.

So this is odd,
The painful realization
That has all gone wrong.
And nobody cares at all
And nobody cares at all.

So you buried all your lover's clothes
And burned the letters lover wrote,
But it doesn't make it any better.
Does it make it any better?
And the plaster dented from your fist
In the hall where you had your first kiss
Reminds you that the memories will fade.

So this is strange,
Our sidestepping has come to be a brilliant dance
Where nobody leads at all,
Where nobody leads at all.

And the picture frames are facing down
And the ringing from this empty sound
Is deafening and keeping you from sleep.
And breathing is a foreign task
And thinking's just too much to ask
And you're measuring your minutes
By a clock that's blinking eights.

This is incredible.
Starving, insatiable,
Yes, this is love for the first time.
Well you'd like to think
That you were invincible.
Yeah, well weren't we all
Once before we felt loss for the first time?
Well this is the last time.

-dashboard confessional, "the brilliant dance"

this morning, i woke up. the sun is still shining. the world still turns.

i will survive.

christ, i need a vacation. i'm already burned out, and it's merely monday. lots of stress in my life right now. must... blog... must...

aaaargh. too many decisions to make in too little time. soco app is due friday, i don't have time to do it. aaaargh. i have a profro coming on friday too, which should be fun, but i'm going to the oakenfold thing that night, so i don't know how much time i'll have to hang out with the profro. hopefully she'll spend 2 nights, so we can bond one night. my me101 project is due on thursday, and i'm supposed to work on it tonight, but it's so goddamn far away (frosoco... gaaah) and i'm so goddamn stressed out and i have to do my japanese homework and read for ihum and get to bed at a reasonable hour so that i can convince myself to get out of bed when i wake up tomorrow rather than sleeping through 10:00 japanese and going to the 11 section like i did today, causing me to miss my appointment with my pwr teacher. why did i not write it on yellow stickie-notes? if it's not on a sticky-note, then it doesn't get done. christ. it used to be that if it wasn't in my palm it didn't get done, but i don't check my palm enough anymore. i have an ihum paper due on tuesday (just what i need) and i haven't a fucking clue what to write about. and i absolutely hate all the texts we've read so far with the *possible* exception of dante, but the paper has to be on 2 works, and --dear lord-- it has to be 6 to 7 pages. i can't fake 6 to 7 fucking pages in a night like i can 4 to 5.

i need to cry. i need a night off. i need to make decisions. i need to spend time with people, not with things. talking to becky for about 10 minutes last night was one of the most relieving things i've done in a long time, god i need to hang out with her more. she's a smart girl. ME101 is fun, but it's sucking the life out of me. after thursday or friday my life will be much better, or much worse, or much different, or still the same.

the breakdown is coming. i feel it on the horizon, welling up inside me. and i wish i could truly uncensor myself on this blog, but i just don't feel like i can. aaaargh. so much, so much. too much.

songs of the moment: athanaeum, "what i didn't know," oasis, "don't look back in anger," dido, "hunter"

for this crown you've placed upon my head feels too heavy now, and i don't know what to say to you but i'll smile anyhow. -dido, "hunter"

every day, i try to do something i've never done before.

ahh, sunday morning... lazy sunday morning, after having gone to bed at 4:00. eh, it's all good. i didn't get tired until then anyway.

today, i have the following shit to do: me101, pwr outline, japanese vocab quiz, and some ihum reading. perhaps i'll go to the gym to do the ihum... nah. i'm still sore from friday's windsurfing. which was, by the way, incredibly fun but also incredibly tiring. i ended up having to swim all the way back to shore from the other side of the lake which was a bit of a pain in the ass. even more of a pain in the pectoral muscles. have you ever tried to swim an 8-foot boat and 8-foot sail more than 100 yards? didn't think so. take my word for it... it's hard.

yesterday was big me work day. i think we got a lot done. the launch ramp is just about finished, now all we have to do is figure out a hook and string system that won't get tangled at the end of the ramp, and build something to get the ball from the pitcher into the airplane. it shouldn't be too difficult, really, but it needs to get done. fortunately the project isn't due until thursday (they pushed the date back, thankfully) so we have time. i think we're doing well on time.

mmm... time to shower, and then work.

mmm, profros... them's good eating, as the branner anner says...

so the campus is crawling with them. it's kinda funny, playing "pick out the profro." it's easier than you'd think... there are people running around wiht red folders (dead giveaway), clueless expressions, no bikes, maps, etc... they stand out. it's entertaining.

ankle still hurts, a bit worse today. i should go to cowell tomorrow (mike? car? :) and get it x-rayed... i wonder if i could get my money back for the windsurfing class if it turns out to be broken. that's something to ask them about this afternoon. i honestly don't think it's swollen enough to be broken, though it could be a stress fracture or something (but i'm not a runner and i eat lots of calcium...) who knows. for the time being, i'll just keep it iced and attempt to rest it. i've determined that although skateboarding is bad for it, each push is as bad as 2 or 3 steps, and since you push much less than 2-3 steps worth of distance, then it's better for me. especially on my way home, when i rarely have to touch the pavement at all, because it's so downhill.

mmm, don't expect too much webcam action, since there's a profro living in here. she might want to change in privacy, so i'm gonna keep it off while i'm not in here. sorry. (:

last night we went to the coho and heard a band called pseudopod. they were totally good. i ended up buying a cd and a t-shirt 'cause they were so good... i'm listening to it right now. evidently these guys play at stanford a lot, so hopefully i'll get to see them again. very entertaining.

ok, it's lunch time.

I really need to work on satisfying the blog urge when it strikes. i should start carrying around a notebook or a stack of post-its so that i can have something to write my blog-thoughts down on while i'm on the run. (if you see a random chick skateboarding across campus, jotting shit on post-it notes, that's likely me. try not to run into me.)

so last night was Dollar Wednesday at the Oakland A's game. Mike and Jay and Neal (from narnia), their friend Tracy (from Robinson), and I all piled into Neal's car and drove over to Oakland... not to see the A's play, because who cares about the A's, but because the Mariners were playing. i'd never seen the mariners play in person, so i was excited... and it was mike's first major-league baseball game (how cute). so we went over there, sat in the shitty dollar-seats (up on the third tier, in the freezing wind) and ate as many dollar hot dogs as we could stomach (I think mike, jay, neal and i all downed 5 each, and tracy had 2... not a bad showing, 22 for a 5-person group...). After the 3rd inning, we snuck down into the expensive seats and watched the game from there. it was a great view. the m's had ichiro in their lineup, creating a huge mob of Japanese fans by the dugout (not to mention the hundreds of shrieking Nihon-jin when the M's brought out Kazuhiro Sasaki as closing pitcher), which was cool. i ended up getting really into the game, yelling things at both teams (sometimes encouragement in Japanese toward Ichiro and Kaz)... our blatant mariners-fanness in the middle of Oakland was vindicated when, with bases loaded, Ichiro hit a ground ball to center field, bringing all the guys on base home, and getting himself to 2nd. after that, the game was pretty much settled... the M's won, 7-4. good game, though. good game. never mind the fact that i got nothing whatsoever done on anything homework-related last night... it was still really cool.

my ankle is still bothering me, which kind of worries me. it's still moderately swollen. too bad i won't have time to get to cowell until saturday. i figure, though, that it's not getting worse, it's getting better if anything, and the swelling has gone down a little since sunday. but, i should go have them check it out - maybe an x-ray or something, make sure it's not a stress fracture. i can walk just fine, it just hurts sometimes when i go down stairs (there's a lot more force on the foot then), and rarely when i'm walking. i don't think it's anything serious, but i should go have it checked out anyway.


my ankle, with ice on it. yay.

	You are Kermit! Though you're technically the star, you're pretty mellow and don't mind letting others share the spotlight. You are also something of a dreamer.
Take the What Muppet Are You? Quiz!

yaaaaaay! webcam up and running!!!! now, it's time for lunch.

weeeee, more ridiculous test results! yay!

How much of a freak are you?

hey look, i got reviewed in kathy's blog. yaaaay!

yay yay, i have a google toolbar! what fun! too bad i can't think of anything to google for at the moment.

hmmm: google now will search for the. now THAT would be a googlebomb to pull off...

ahh, the three b's of allergy season: benadryl, blogging, and bed. and in that order, too. 2 things on my blog agenda for tonight: whether i should write my pwr research paper on blogs, and what domain name i should register for my personal use.

the pwr research paper. i think that there is sufficient material out there for me to write 10 to 15 pages on blogs... the only problem is, one of the restrictions on the assignment is that no more than one quarter of your sources can be online. i mean, print media has chronicled the blog phenomenon, but since it's a revolution of the internet, the best reference is the internet itself. i wonder if i could talk to my pwr teacher about this and see if i could have that rule not apply to me because of the nature of the content of my paper. holy shit, that sentence had a lot of prepositional phrases.

i've also been thinking about running my own vanity site. i think i want to have www.kattaca.com. kind of like the movie, only less eugenic. are there any better suggestions? of course, ideally, i won't be registering this for a few years, but there's the question, will the name be available in a few years? should i just go ahead and establish my presence now? or should i set up a server from my own computer, kattaca.stanford.edu? that might be the best idea. the problem is that registering domain names is so goddamn expensive, and it's such a nonconcrete good... i don't understand why i should pay as much as $35 a year so that i can have www.kattaca.com be my own. it seems to me that you should find a domain name you want and then go to a governmental agency and pay a $5 fee to have the domain registered to you, and then deal with the server and shit. goddamn internet entrepeneurs. the good thing, however, is that kattaca.com hasn't been bought up by one of those asshole domain squatters and i can register it with whomever i please.

i've started having random strokes of inspiration - just catchphrases that may someday end up as the lead-ins to great blog posts. the only problem with these is that they usually happen at night, when i'm in bed... and it's just rarely worth it to get up to write it down, so the thought gets lost. therefore, i'm going to install a post-it and pen system on the wall next to my bed specifically for those moments and others when you need to write something down from bed. i'm excited.

i feel that the benadryl is starting to kick in. yay, bedtime! yay, not doing all your homework at night! yay, saving some for the afternoon! yay yay!

chemical brothers, paul oakenfold, sasha and digweed. 4/26. 7pm to 2am. $40. the cow palace in daly city.

no question.

"i am a consumer whore!" yeah, it's a catchphrase from one of the best animated shorts of all time (imho, of course), but damn, it really sums up the world today. however, you say that like it's a bad thing. i've been thinking a lot recently about stuff... and i realize how much i love stuff. i mean, sure, money can't buy happiness, but it can come goddamn close. think to yourself of what you want the most. mmmm.... new imac. yaaaaay! i think that honestly, a new imac would be happiness. wired magazine excites me... i love reading about all the gadgets... i love the internet... i need to take cs105. my mind is going ADD on me. and i don't want to go to pwr in about 40 minutes. and my leg still hurts.

this evening, a post in the style of uber.nu (mostly because that's what i've been wasting the last half-hour reading. when i should be writing a paper for my "PWR" class.)

It all started with the trip home from the beach this afternoon. Someone, i don't remember who, mentioned in'n'out. Dirty bastard. If they just knew what it would lead to, then they'd be sorry. so after I got home i found a horrendous craving for said california-based burger joint, and went with mikey to get some in'n'out. i ordered a cheeseburger, animal style, and a neapolitan shake. mmm, shakes. i'm convinced they don't use real milk in those, because they never seem to trigger my lactose-intolerant tendencies. (i know, i know, i run around preaching the virtues of tolerance and here i am, i can't even stand fucking lactose! jesus! and i call myself a liberal.) but anyway, i AM, however, convinced that either beaches or in'n'out burgers contain tryptophan, and here is my reasoning: i fell asleep not once but twice between dinner and right now. after we got in'n'out, mike and i wrote a script for our FUCKING japanese class. our FUCKING japanese class forces us to do a skit once a quarter. but oh, since this is third-quarter, we're sure you kids can handle doing two skits this quarter. Hey, let's throw the first one at you right away! yeah! that's a great idea. So we wrote the script for our FUCKING japanese class and went to take a nap, setting the alarm before we fell asleep. we woke up at 9:30 and proceeded to go to "Flicks." now, for those of you who are not of the Stanford ilk, "flicks" is basically a sunday-night opportunity for those people who slipped through the admissions process and, in order to keep from tipping off Mamlet, oppress their stupid comments 165 hours out of the week, to let it all out and get into screaming matches during such quality films as "Gosford Park", which was tonight's feature. I was awake for the first hour or so of this movie, set in the 40's in England among people with undiscernable accents. After that, however, the tryptophan, either from the beach, the in'n'out, or the movie, kicked in, and i was out cold until approximately 10 minutes from the end. All in all, not a bad way to watch that movie, really.

i just wish i'd fallen asleep sooner.

random sidenote: my roommate and her boyfriend are like fucking rabbits. i don't understand it.

kat reinhart is writing this under the influence of benadryl, and fully intends to pass out before she climbs the agonizing five feet into her bed.

yikes! i've lost the #1 google "kat blog" spot! help! put links back up! emergency! emergency!

on a related note, google hasn't crawled my page since march 6th. it needs to get its act together.

mmm, going shopping this morning for shit for my windsurfing class, etc. and working on me101. i also need to start planning my pwr essay that's due monday. i wonder how long that's supposed to be... hmm. gonna go look at that now.

ok, no question about it, i'm going to do this. it's going to be awesome. and fun. and i'm going to learn to windsurf this spring. yeah.

ahh, good old blog-neglecting.

i found out that my mom likes to read this. at first i viewed this as a problem. but, i've decided to embrace this. hi, mom. also, if you read this, then you can't gripe that i dont' write enough, because you know what i've been up to. ha, so there. :P

today... today today today. today was tuesday... japanese, ihum, me101. well, japanese, ihum lecture, lunch, gym, me101. throw a "shower" in there between gym and me101. hmm. then some "dinner." then some work, and chilling with jamie at the CoPo. i ate a slice and a half of nasty pizza and drank a nasty pearl milk tea. like, the pearls were *crunchy*. i blame mike osofsky. he's satan. and a fartmonger.

anywho. me101 looks like it's going to be the best class ever. i'm definitely enjoying it.

painful thing: when a sunburn itches, so you scratch it. it hurts so good.

i had a most odd dream last night.

the dream was that we were going to go on a picnic, just like five people, me, mike, and 3 unidentified people that i seemed to know... one of them might have been harlen, but i'm not sure. and that it was a huge production. we had to meet in the middle of wilbur field, first off, and it was an odyssey because there were all sorts of administrators and tourists crowding the field. so we decided to meet in the unidentified guy's room, so we all went in there (our numbers were rising by this point) anyway something about harlen's keys caused this huge alarm to go off throughout the dorm we were in (it might have been in wilbur, the stairs were yellow like the ones in wilbur and it wasn't as sterile as stern. it would also have to be on east wilbur because of the way the stairs pointed... arroyo or cedro or j-ro or okada? who knows) so he was like, ok, i'll leave, you guys go without me. (as soon as he left the alarm stopped.) but the room was too crowded, there were too many people trying to come along, so we decided to go outside again. we were walking across the field when an unnamed administrator suspiciously asked us what we were doing. we told him, "we're, um... going on a picnic!" I had a bagel with cream cheese wrapped in a napkin in my hand. he said to have fun, unless we for some reason needed a clown to go along with us, in which case he would perform those duties. well it seems we already had a clown, so the drunken administrator waved bye-bye. suddenly in a window above the lawn (this had at this point turned to something that looked vaguely like the lawn in front of branner, and the window was one of the 2nd floor quads'.) opened and out leaned a much-fatter, much-younger, pot-head (and pot-bellied) ronald behrends. i have no idea how ronnie b came in, but i remember he said something about us finally getting an "apple juice party" we'd been promised and poured a bottle of martinelli's into a very large beaker that someone else was carrying (which incidentally already was about half-full of martinelli's...??) then we finally started walking away and i woke up.

daVandhol (9:29:17 PM): Blog, yo.
daVandhol (9:29:19 PM): You got nothing.
daVandhol (9:29:25 PM): since yseterday at 6.30

...some people can be so demanding.

fine, fine. i'm blogging. i hiked to the dish this morning with mike, it was a beautiful day. i'm going to a couple of frat parties tonight.

i'm also pondering a redesign of the site (again!). also check out the tag board below. it's coo', yo. tag me, biyatches.

ah, what a nothing day. nothing days can definitely be enjoyable. today i have done three things: gone to ihum section, taken a nap, and eaten dinner. nothing more, really. it's beautiful.

random question/poll: who has ever had diet crystal pepsi?

haha, trick question, the answer is me!

just thought i'd like to give you that little tidbit about myself. my family participated in a taste-test of diet crystal pepsi back when i was, oh, probably in 2nd grade.

i thought it was good - everyone else in my family thought it was horrible.

dear god, me101 is going to be the best class ever.

i tried on bowls as hats at Secret Safeway last night. me, standing in the aisle, hoping that an employee wont' come around the corner and look at me funny as i decide which bowl feels the best on my head...

...and i have made myself an iHat. it's great. all it needs is an LED on-light, and a few more final touches, and to be glued together once and for all.

too much bloody fun.

:( i don't want to go to ihum section now, but i have to. eh, oh well. i will survive... theoretically. oh, and i haven't read any of dante's inferno yet. too busy creating ihats. hehe.

oh, and mike said it: the board's name is ryoko... it means "journey" or "path" in japanese. (: weeee!

my skateboard needs a name. please suggest.

weeeee! i am unbelievably excited - i just bought a *longboard*. it's badass. sector 9, 40 inches i think, totally badass. i'm in love.

this is too funny... :P

oh, i almost forgot how much i love california in the morning.

i woke up this morning next to mike, which is in and of itself a great feeling, but the window was open and there was a tiny cool breeze blowing in on us. the sun was shining. i sat up and peered out the window and at that moment i had one of those fleeting feelings where you know you're in the right place. one of those "this is why i came to college in california" moments.

i'd also forgotten how nice it is to wake up in the morning, instead of the afternoon. my body is still on central time, so i woke up at about 8 and decided that it was time to get up. it's so easy to roll out of bed when the weather's perfect and you have stuff to do.

i signed up to take me101. i think that class is going to be an ass-kicker. i have a feeling i'm going to enjoy it very much. and rolf is teaching it... rolf faste, the head of the product design program. so i'll get to meet my future advisor. hopefully i'll be able to declare this quarter and be done with the advisor i have that does nothing. not that i really need him to do anything, but still. *sigh*

what a gorgeous day.