lex's blog

In Sickness

i have never -- NEVER -- had such a difficult time getting a doctors appointment. i feel like i probably have strep throat, that horrible disease that keeps you up at night and generally makes life horrible to live. i must have called half the doctors on Aetna's doctorsearch thing, and NOBODY had an opening. keep in mind my voice is completely gone, so just hearing me talk should be enough to break your heart. NOPE. DOCTORS' HEARTS ARE MADE OF DIAMONDS APPARENTLY. thank goodness i have amoxacillin left in my work desk from my last strep adventure, so i'll just self-prescribe that and cross my fingers.

so i made an appointment with one of them for next tuesday, to get that 'hey im here for the first time' appointment out of the way, so in the future when i have medical oh-nos, they cant just turn me away. god. DAMNIT. things to talk about:

- my b-12 deficiency (unfixed from my last dr)
- the possibility of having an overactive thyroid
- how to get one of those multivitamins that are built specifically for you, based on what a sample of your blood is lacking
- my general inability to be awake and not sick 90% of the time(possibly mono?)

i am not a hypocondriac. i generally am not so crazy about drs, and like to let things take their course. but god damnit, i feel like ive been hit by a truck ALL the time, and there has to be a reason for it. beyond not eating enough fruits and veggies.

so much for working out too..gah. its like, im either sick, at work, or out of town. im getting so paunchy. FML RIGHT NOW.

Happy Face !

sometimes this is what you need http://13.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ktaetf6axe1qze4yoo1_500.jpg

Guess Whose Back

HOORAY i have real working internet now !! that means i can be downloading music, and doing some proper work on here (before i had a hard time sitting and working on my computer without internet...its almost..claustrophobic). streaming movies! new music! GOD IM SO HAPPY !

now i just have to go to radio shack and get a cord thing thats a little longer, and a duel plugin thing. right now the setup to get this to work can't be perminant, cause i've unplugged my roommate's netflix cord. but i had to see if it would fix the problem! ftw!

technology is so great when it works :)

so i finally joined the aiga, and went to a talk by tony brook and adrian shaughnessy about their new 'studio culture' book. i got it when it came out a couple weeks ago, so it was cool to follow it up with a serious lecture. adrian shaughnessy has done a TON of stuff, which i didnt really know, so that's pretty baller. i want to pitch them a book about getting your work ripped to shreds by clients. get a bunch of people like up to 5 years out of school, showing projects how they were forced to do through client comments, with a side-by-side of how they would have solved the problem if they had been given the freedom to really, truly, honestly done the job they were being paid for.

i have too many big plans. and then i sit around and don't do any of them! what a waste!

zach's friend alyse has a great quote that showed up on my facebook feed: 'never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option'. i don't know why im so sado-maschocistic with guys sometimes, but this is a good way of looking at things. theres someone out there to meet, who won't be able to stop thinking about you. who you make as nervous as they make you. matias is fun, but i think i've been giving him too much time in my head for where we are, and where we seem to be going. half the problem is him, he makes things awkward, and always has to be right, and on his schedule. it never feels like he does something with me to do something with me, it's always this 'after the fact' thing. which is fine, but i need to stop expecting this to evolve into anything else, or i'm just going to get my feelings hurt. take it at face value, and if it goes further, great! and if not...well, its nice to have someone to cuddle with one night a week :).

All the Single Ladies

nobodys posted here in a while .. what the heck are you guys up to ??

so far this weekend has been excellent -- ive basically just hung out with megan and her roommates tara and jill, which has been a nice change of pace. i love my boys, but you can't talk about boys with boys. well, you can, but only to a certain extent.

i still managed to spend like, over a hundred dollars on going out. friday was not so hot, because we all spent like 60$, but by 2am nobody was drunk yet, and all the places we kept going to (and paying cover for..) had the shittiest dance music ever. last night was MUCH more fun though -- went to a show at the mercury lounge with the ladies with brookville and tahiti 80. i've never been a huge fan of tahiti80 but theyre just coming out with a new CD at the end of November and played some songs, and they were MUCH better than the older stuff (in my esteemed opinion, at least). we were there for brookville, because tara had been talking to one of the guitarists at their halloween party, and he invited her to the show, but then never even tried to find her, and as we were leaving she saw him hitting on another girl at the bar. not sure if she had just been looking too far into the invite to begin with, but from what i heard as being the content of their email communicado, im lead to believe hes just sort of a douche.

they were tired when it was over, but i was still ready to go. then, i realized we were RIGHT next to arlo, and joe was there, so i went over. my bouncer friend was there, so i sweettalked my way in without paying, and hung with them. it nice to finally do something with a roomie again, i feel like we havn't hung in a really long-ass time. he was totally putting the moves on some chick, but it was good because him and our friend adam were still dancing around as a group, as opposed to joe and the chick just making out the whole time. i really hate when he does that, its like, you can put the moves on a person and still not be rude to the people you showed up with! bravo on his part :).

on the way out i got cornered by the bouncer and he told me he should 'let me take him out'. i don't know why i'm so liberal with my phone number (this wasn't a drunk give-out, more of a 'i feel awkward because i come here a lot and my initial attempt to say 'no' you ignored and pressed on). so he has my number now, but i told him last night i was 'seeing' someone, so if he calls i'm going to just tell him we could get a drink or something, but only as friends, because i really like this other guy.

speaking of the other guy, i think matias is starting to come around more. me and zee roomies spent like 6 hours yesterday (till like, 9) watching arrested development, but my phone was in my room. when i went to look at it at like 8, i saw i had a text from him at like 5:30 saying something to the effect of 'it is done! and it was fun!' (he was talking at a conference in georgia, apparently for the first time), and then i missed a call from him at like 6:45. so i call him back, but i guess i woke him up as he was napping before going out, and he was all weird on the phone and immediately was like 'i've got to go', and gave me shit for not having answered him before because i didnt have my phone on me, 'like you always do'. it left a bad taste in my mouth, like, yes i missed your call, but as soon as i saw i did i called you back. as SOON as i saw i did i called you back. its not like i have to always be at your beckond-called, because we're NOT dating. so that left a little pit in my tummy, i hate when he makes me feel like ive 'let him down' or whatever. but then a couple hours later he texted me to apologize 'for earlier, i was really groggy xoxox', which made me feel better. i think he  knew he sounded like a douchebag, so i'm glad he tried to make it right.

so here i sit, not really wanting to do anything. i was maybe going to go shopping, but i don't really feel like it, so i might just pick up the apartment, clean up my room, change my sheets, read, blah blah. maybe some grocery shopping is in my future? i think matias comes back tonight, i wonder if he'll ask me to come over. i feel super fat, i've been too busy at work to gym it afterwards, and then i've been pretty ill for the last week, but eating way shittier. its taken its toll. also, ive come to the conclusion that i cannot do squats for the life of me. i just always almost fall over! failllllll.

mm sitting in theray of sun beeming in on our couch.......this is...so nice :).

Play The Game

i had a pretty good heart to heart last night with kavashansky. a shocker, i know, but i was looking for a guy perspective, and it just sort of snowballed from there.

its weird, because i dont know where me and matias stand. i feel like he wants to like me, but theres something about him that has to control the situation so profoundly, it makes me feel like there is a specific way i need to react to everything. and if i dont, that some inherent balance has been thrown off between us, something we both can feel. its exhausting.

he came back from japan last night, and the first thing he texts me is, 'wow, not one short message in 11 days, you sure missed me...'. yeah, i didnt text him while he was away, but it was only because i thought it would cost a buttload of money. i almost did a couple times, but then i also thought, 'why betray so much'. (10 pts for anyone who gets that reference).

so i try to call him but hes going to dinner, can i call at 10? so i do, at 10:05 (so as not to seem too eager -- this game !!), but he doesnt answer. i leave him a message, and he gets back to me at midnight with snide comments about 'it was nice talking, im going to bed now'. of course i'm like 'but we didnt talk, okay though goodnight', to which i get 'thats the joke, you said you were gonna call me!'. like what the hell! i told him i did, AND i left a message, and then i think he must have gotten it or something, because he starts to finally open up and get cuter, instead of being all i have to do this so you do this then!

but yeah, if you really liked someone, wouldn't you just text them 'im back! i missed you!' instead of pointing out that i didnt text his phone he didnt even have on him while he was gone? i'm not sappy! my response was 'i have my own ways of missing you' and a link to the picture i drew of him.

either way, this is starting to get to be too much. im not being myself, and i think thats hurting us, and im not calling him out for being too much himself (though, i dont think thats really him...he told me when we first started hanging out he was messed up after his last girlfriend, and that he had never had his heart broken before because he had always been the first one to cut things off, to avoid the feeling -- weird, right?), becuase thats what being 'with' someone is all about...the give-and-take. im tired of being fit in late at night...that sunday we spent together, sleeping till 2, getting brunch, hanging around just doing whatever separately, together, and then meeting his friends for dinner. that's what i'm looking for. someone to do those things with. someone to meet for drinks after work, sometimes just the two of us. someone to sit around and do nothing with. or everything. i can't play these weird games though, its just too exhausting.

i've been off work for the last few days. ashley and gerrick came into town (yay!), but somehow i managed to get sick like, the night they came in, and its just sort of escalated since then. and since i havn't been geting very good, full nights of sleep, its just sort of escalated from there. so yesterday i was like 'fuck this', and today, though im feeling better, at 9am i had already been up at least 8 times during the night, and i was just exhausted, so i took today too. we had a big meeting too, for johnnie walker, but whatever..we were jsut listening in on the phone anyways, so fuck it! id rather be healthy for when i actually have to do the work, then struggle through the motions.

i re-read all my hellboys, after telling matias about them/telling him i was going to make him read them. then started HP: deathly hallows and the fountainhead. the latter is good, the writing style is really interesting, but the characters seem kind of flat. i think its the way that we get to see everything about them so transparently...its like, nobody is 100% one kind of person. everyone has doubts, even if they dont show them, and vice-versa. i hope they become a little more 3D as the book goes on (i am only on the 53rd page, haha).

i guess thats it; is it bad to take nyquil during the day? its the only cough suppressant i have in the house...

Lesson Plans

i'm not sure i have it  in me to write a coherent entry. i have resigned myself to wake early and go to the gym, for the first time since we've moved here. probably for the first time in my life, to tell the truth. and humorously enough, i actually am tired.

its a strange thing, to come home and not know what to do with yourself. not having a computer with a useful internet connection basically cripples me, a fact i'm not proud of. and with no roommates to catch up with, i dove into cleaning. finished what i had left of the kitchen friday, obviously not picked up by anyone else (god forbid). then, to move all the furniture in the living room, sweep and mop, shake out the rug, dust the surfaces. some things i dont think have had a damp cloth over them since we moved. and when that was done i moved into the hallway, sweeping and mopping. i couldn't bring myself to do the bathroom; already two thirds of the common rooms cleaned by me, i have to try to cores someone to pull their weight. have to leave that door open and hope, even if it comes down to such brutality, to shove one of them through it.

this weekend was a bit trying. i dont mind seeing my family at all, but my brother. we are at such different points in our lives. and i have such a perspective that cannot be shared, will not be heard. so true, that youth is wasted on the young. he had the nerve to scream at me, that all i do now is act like an adult, and i laughed. laughed through his whole tantrum, and asked, 'in what way am i not, praytell'. its great to hear someone respond with such passion words that mean literally nothing. its why i could never take church seriously, i guess. but it hurts me to know how much he hurts our parents, who literally have given everything they have for us. last night -- my mom's birthday, no less, how can you throw a fit like that on your mother's birthday -- she told me how she was sad, sad that this last year they still have a child in the house, that it has to be spent in such contention. its a frustrating thing, that the best years, the ones you have together, have to be wasted in such a way.

i hate being lonely. i hate that i couldn't convince megan to come up to my empty apartment for dinner and conversation, that none of my roommates are home, and i have no other friends as close as them that it wouldn't turn into a night of entertaining. and i clean?? i know i need projects, i need things to do, but the last thing i want to do is design. i'm not sure why that is, but its true. i even laid out the lighting project me and zach were going to do in our hall, before life took a hold. i want to get everything up and see that something has really changed.

i miss matias. i feel like i am ruining this thing we have with my self-consciousness and self-doubt. i wish i could look at myself and be happy the way i am, but i can't. all i see are the flaws, so big i can't imagine how he can loo beyond them. and it makes me close off, get quiet, not be myself. if the only way to sit back and feel okay about myself is to wake up at 7:45 and go to the gym every morning, then i need to do that. because i can't let the way i feel about myself cripple my life in this way. he is a great guy, and im a great person, just trapped in a body that makes me sick. but nobody can change that but me, and nothing will change unless i change something. so what the fuck, alex. hes gone in japan for 11 days (from last friday), and then i think almost immediately goes to georgia for some conference, so i have some time to get ramped up. everything could be so much better, but its not going to happen on its own. i don't know why that's such a difficult lesson for me to grasp.

no one survives

ugh, i hate being at work till 7 or 8. i havn't been to the gym in going on three weeks. thankfully i just had an epiphany and i think i can make this happen, especially since the meeting we've been working up to is tomorrow at 10, and then we should have the rest of the week to just chill. we better anyways.

ive been breaking out more than i ever have in my life recently. i dont really understand it but, there you go. i think i need to gym it. sweat it out. change my sheets?

i went over to mati's on saturday night, and we grabbed brunch, then just hung while he worked then ditched work to finish watching armageddon with me. then we went to grab a drink/dinner with a couple of his friends (ugh him and his friends make me feel so young. everyone has been married for 5 years and has a kid. wtf), which i felt sort of awkward about, but it was fun. im a little worried because im starting to really like hanging out with him...which is fine, but i don't want to get too attached, and get too dependent on that kind of interaction. hes really busy, and god knows he could be hanging with other girls like this too. hes going to be gone in tokyo for 10 days, then hes talking at a conference in GA for another couple of days. it'll be good to get some space. im such a sucker for a lazy day with a person you can lounge in your undies with. or trade back massages with. or who plays guitar for me while i fall asleep. sighh.

its COLD. i was not prepared. i have to get up at like 8 tomorrow for a meeting. sigh. i hate that i'm so tired. i need to eat more veggies and fruits. ive fallen off the bandwagon. pizza for dinner! ALEX WHO ARE YOU. sigh.

i wish i played an instrument. i took julian's guitar to tool around with, but i just dont know were to start. i think i might just start stringing things together, but i dont even know if im doing stuff right. maybe i should learn some chords before tooling. ugh. sleepy.

sleepy.

something's tellin' me

i have felt a lot of things since we've graduated, but i havn't felt a loneliness like this in a while.

steve kavashansky came to visit; i'm sure you all remember him. he's less the scrawny dude that he was, thanks to signing up for the marines. yeah, ridiculous. he was visiting family before heading to 13 weeks of basic, and said he wanted to meet up. well, it was more of a 'can i crash at your place half the time im up there' sort of conversation, but whatever.

so he came up on monday night and left this morning. obviously i had work, but we hung monday night, and yesterday after work went to see paranormal activity, then hung some more. unshockingly we hooked up; its funny that it takes bad hookups to make you realize good ones. i had hoped that he might have learned something in the three years since we last did, but apparently not. either way,  it was a nice stroke for my ego. when i hang out with matias, self-consciousness becomes sort of paralyzing. maybe because i feel like he weighs less than i do, hah.

i read a qwantz today about body image. it said something to the effect of 'duh, your body type defines your personality. how comfortable you are, the things you are physically able to do, those are all things that shape the kind of person you are.' it's so true. i feel like i could actually loosen up and be myself if i wasn't so worried about the way that i look. it's not crippling, but sometimes i try to imagine a situation where that's not at the almost forefront of my mind, and i can't. and that fact makes me sad.

i digress -- steve. a horrible lay, and an even worse conversationalist. he called me his 'one that got away', and i just closed my eyes and smiled and went somewhere else for a while, because what do you say to that? you can tell by the way he said it, that he didnt know the capacity the words he was saying could hold. it was just something you say in a moment like that, when a girl you knew from another life is resting her head on your shoulder again, when theres no future in sight. and even now, i dont think its the emptiness of these last few days that leaves me sitting here writing this. i think, this is always here, waiting for that moment i stop looking outside and start looking in. that day where work makes me want to strangle the world, where i finally get away and get home, only to look around and not know what it is i wanted to come home to so badly. there are things here, yes, some mindless, some impactful, some distressing. but the days i come home and everything is on the same level, i'm not sure what to do. those days, i just want to go to sleep.

how do you stop using 'i' so much. its funny, in normal conversation, i almost never talk about myself, but when writing, it just glares out at me. you'd think more of my highschool english would have stayed with me, but alas. its why writing anything other than stupid journal entries has been so difficult lately. or maybe because my brain is stagnating. probably a little of both.

ray lamontagne came up on my itunes. i think steve forgot to pause it when he left this morning, only turning off the speakers. ive had it for a while but never listened, but now..i'm definitely a fan. i think its time to get into bed and start reading this book i got interviewing people whove started their own design firms. i could do this. i think. but then i realize that the job i need can't have clients. outside clients. and then i just sigh. maybe this book will shed some light on the situation.

something tells me girl, this is bringing me down.

092009

i think i might start updating sunday night with the last week's shenanigans; hopefully that'll cut down on the bullshit entries you guys im sure just scan since its just talking about running and boys. ha! maybe.

this weekend two of my best friends from home, sarah and jackie, came up to visit! it's been since....well, whenever i last went to DC (maybe march?) since i've seen sarah, jackie since she came to visit right after i moved in june. the whole weekend was basically us getting wasted and walking around nyc, something i'm sorry to say i don't really do very much of. so many of my weekends merely dissolve into me sitting around doing menial tasks around the house or what have you.

friday they got in at midnight, but we had been separately pregaming (a weird thing to do by yourself, since all my roommates were 'taking it easy', so i was downing vodka orange juice like its my job) so when they showed up we could just go out. of course as soon as we get to arlo & esme (hey, i HAD to take them to the place we frequent most in the city, haha) we take 3 shots and a beer, which completely put me over the line and into totally wastehouse territory. i hate getting like that, though ive been told that i don't act like im blacked out when i am, it's still kind of unnerving. the waking up the next day in a panic because gosh, did i come home with my wallet? my phone? then where the heck is everything! so that wasn't great, but we got up at like 10 and got ready, then walked around the city to do a little shopping, then went to the san genaro festival in little italy. the latter was fun, but so incredibly crowded all we really did was walk down mullberry streeet with the tide of people.

that night we got ready and headed to jackies' friend's apartment in the financial district, which was SO NICE. i wish my camera hadn't died so i could have taken pictures! we went to her hardcore rooftop and polished off a bottle of svedka between the 5 of us, then tripped it over the mehanata in the lower east side for some dancing. it's a bulgarian bar with dancing, which is cool, but it's weird for the music every so often to switch to weird polka-esque stuff. i danced with these three dudes from...FUCK, i wish i could remember, somewhere in latin america i think? and we actually DANCED, like you have a partner and everything, something i'm not good at because i'm told that i try to hard to lead (haha, what does that say about me!). jackie and sarah got SUPER hammered, so this morning they were both pretty out of it until they left around 2.

i also woke up to find out that my phone was broken. or, more specifically, none of the buttons worked, i could still receive calls and such, but there wasn't anything doin' about it. so i had to trip down to the verizon store and pay 55$ for a new one (sigh...next year, iphone here i come! as soon as the new one comes out...), and on the way, i passed a lady selling tiny turtles! i got a set of them (now lovingly known as poncho and wilhelm), so our apartment officially has a pet! of course, zach has to give me shit about the diseases little turtles sometimes carry, but i gave them a good rinsing tonight when i changed their water, so hopfully that'll start getting anything weird they might have out of their system.

of course, me and the gang spent almost no time in the apartment this weekend, but does that mean anyone is going to do any dishes, or take out any garbage? or do ANYTHING? of course not. i'm really not that bitter, i don't mind doing it, but my trade off is that someone else cleans other things. like the bathroom needs to be COMPLETELY scrubbed down, and the living room needs the rug shook out and a good sweep and mop. and i say these things caged in a "hey guys, i just cleaned the entire kitchen, so someone else needs to do x and y and z." and they nod and whatever, but i just feel like i'll have to hound them! it's like, start being grownups already! the kitchen is one of the most-used things in the house, and gets the grossest fastest, which is why i'm always willing to clean it up, but people have to start pulling their own weight SOMEHOW. sigh.

so in retrospect i feel like i havn't really done very much today, but i did clean up my room (which was a sty after everyone left), and got all my laundry together (including the new 15$ sheets i got on saturday! wee!), and i'm thinking i might trade in azure ray for something a little more upbeat and do another round of 'going through the shit you have you don't use and reorganize everything so that you don't have shit piled up into little nooks and crannies.' we'll see!

i was looking forward to hanging out with matias this week, but for biological reasons nothing can really come out of it, and i'm left wondering: what do you say? do i tell him i can't do anything this week, or do i say lets get a drink, but i can't come over afterwards? i have a hard time anticipating expectations in situations like this, and it's not like we know each other THAT well. though, honesty is the best policy!

working out has been really good, i went wed-fri after work, and as much of a pain in the ass as it is, once it's over with it's so good! ive been eating so many less carbs and cheese than i had been, and cooking veggies and tofu for dinner most nights, and drinking bolton's vanilla chai protein drinks, and i can feel a difference! here's to hoping that life doesn't start getting too in the way (read: drinks after work, late nights at the office, etc etc..). after all my big talk, i just don't think i have it in me yet to go running in the morning. i'm still in a situation where it HURTS at the end of my last few reps, and i just can't bring myself to punish my body like that 15 minutes after waking up. so i just have to be serious about going after work so i can build myself up to the point that it's just maintaining, as opposed to the struggling climb. at 132lbs i'm the heaviest ive ever been, and it doesn't feel good, but i know all the cutting back and newfound working out has to do something...i'm not worried about the number (muscle weighs more than fat after all!) as i am about how i actually LOOK. no more tummy pooch, or love handles, and god damnit i want two inches of space between my thighs! it will happen, i just have to stick with it....the only person i cheat by not doing anything is myself after all!

the weather is starting to change; i feel like one day i will wake up and even without the trees, i'll just know it's finally fall. thank god, i love sweaters.

almost beddytime

its almost bedtime. sigh. and ive only been home since 10:30! i was really in the mood to run tonight too, but of course today's the day i stay late. wish the gym was open late, bah. tomorrow i'm up at 8!

matias is going away till next monday, then he wants to do something, so i should really try to amp it up. i have being with guys that are skinnily in shape, it makes me feel like such a fatass!

what else what else. fuck. nothing really i guess. two of my best friends from home are coming in this weekend!! it's going to be SUCH a good time, im so excited !! also: i need to clean my room?

wow im so boring.