no feeling
07.30.03 @ 2:26 a.m.
Whoo boy. It's about 2:30 in the morning. There go all my vague resolutions about going to bed earlier so I don't sleep in so late. Hah.
Today was uneventful except for the fact that I had serious plans to work on my novel, which I've been avoiding like the plague, but now foggy visions of Emma and Robert (Emma may well undergo a name change, I'm thinking maybe Elizabeth or something else fairly common, but Emma is too close to the Jane Austen heroine of the same name and I don't want the similarity nagging at me) are dancing at the back of my mind since I spent a lot of time replotting minor bits in my editing notes. And I did work on it for a while, except for when I fell victim to Civilization III. I didn't much like the game when I first got it because Civ II was a bit more sensibly laid out, but it's growing on me. So much that I played until about two in the morning last night and for at least a couple of hours today. Enough to make my eyeballs want to implode, right? I'm addicted to the notion of overtaking the world by sheer force of culture, except now I've been attacked by Germany for not answering their threats to give them technology or suffer the consequences and they took one of my favorite cities, the bastards. I lost the Great Wall and a Forbidden Palace! Man, I'm a geek and this is boring, so I'll move on.
But I didn't work on my novel this evening as planned because I got a call from Martha asking if I wanted to go to Starbucks because she and Andrew were supposed to meet up with their mildly annoying and very vapid friend, Pam. Amy was the one that picked me up, and she was about forty minutes late because I guess they went to a fast food Mexican restaurant (Baja Fresh) and their order kept getting fucked up. It's very mean of me to say this about someone who's been my friend for quite a while (well, an aquaintance and slight friend since kindergarten, a fairly good friend in late high school and lately a bit of an annoyance), but I was totally disappointed that it was her that came to get me. I completely expected Andrew and Martha or just Martha.
Somehow I've got the misguided idea that my being aware of how much of a total bitch I am about this girl who doesn't really know that I dislike her lately somehow mitigates the evilness of my tearing her apart behind her back. I can't help feeling justified when Martha and Andrew feel the same. Those two are like the exalted inner circle of our whole group of friends (the definition of which varies depending on who you ask) and somehow you just want to trust their judgement. Maybe not trust their judgement, but we're all such avid observers of people that we feel secure in our analysis. (I'm feeling shades of Elizabeth Bennet here, danger, danger.) Somehow I've gotten so catty.
And yet I'm happy, very happy that Martha and I have enough shared conversation and interests that we have a dozen in jokes, some of which were passed back and forth on little slips of paper (which littered our tables because, well, I'll describe the game in a second). That, perhaps, is a bit rude but oh so much fun, especially to someone who's insecure about friendships like me. To have a firm, private friendship with the practical leader of the pack is so ego boosting that I almost don't care who the fuck I alienate. Bad girl, me.
ANYWAY, we spent most of the night playing the new Starbucks game, This or That. It's like playing Pyramid or something. It's all rather complicated. This little computerized thingamy gives you a category, for example, "Things that are dry vs. Things that are wet". One team picks the one they want to write down and the other team gets the other. As quickly as possible, each team writes five things for the category. The people who wrote on each team swap papers and then try to get their own team to guess as many as possible. Plus there's some stupid Word Rumble round that we all hated and skipped. Initially it was me and Andrew vs. Amy and Martha. Any team with Martha on it is bound to kick serious butt because she comes up with hilarious yet complicated things. The game we played where Martha and I were a team was won with record speed because we were both coming up with quirky, complicated things. Yay us. So that kind of explains the paper everywhere, from the little pads that came with the game. Oh, and we played what we always play, MadLibs.
From various games and conversations came these things:
Excellent names for a band:
Electric Heterosexuality (the result of a MadLib)
Unusual Fornication (this one is from This or That. Our guessing category was "Things associated with back ache" so it was all things that would make you throw out your back, and that was Martha's clue for me to guess "kinky sex.")
First album title from one of said bands: "Pretty Boots, Let's Have Sex." (This one is also from This or That, it was Andrew trying to get Amy to guess the classic pick up line "Nice shoes, wanna fuck?" in their guessing category, "Things that are not romantic.")
I smell like cigarette smoke because we just HAVE to sit outside to humor the few smokers in our party, I have the usual mild post-hang-out headache, I unexpectedly started my period a week early (what the fuck is up with THAT? I was totally unprepared) and I feel mildly bad for being so catty about Amy, and yet I'm still pleased with the evening overall. Good fun, good friends, and the delicious wonder that is a Tazo Black Tea Lemonade.
(Apparently other cities of the world do not have the kind of Starbucks density we have in the Portland Metro area and other major Northwest Metropolises... but it's Seattle-based and so it's everywhere. There are literally Starbucks directly across the street from other Starbucks. In the local strip mall, there is a full size (and now 24 hour) Starbucks attatched to Barnes and Noble, one in the Safeway and one in the Hagen. THREE. In ONE STRIP MALL. In fact, in a single Fred Meyer store there's a full size Starbucks renting a space on the side of the main building (with Baskin-Robbins and the UPS Store) AND a mini-Starbucks in the Fred Meyer deli. Now tell me, is that really necessary?)
PS- I'm also quite happy that Martha and Andrew really WANT to help me re-dye my hair. I was totally convinced that it was boring and they'd just as soon let me convince my mom to do it.
(The title track of this entry is off Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols by the Sex Pistols.)
Previously
fuck it @ 08.01.05
fanciful imaginary sea voyages to come @ 07.20.05
*dies* @ 07.19.05
more ootp @ 07.17.05
harry potter: driving our children into devil worship @ 07.17.05
