It feels like my heart is trying to hug my brain!

Today, I am breaking up. With caffeine.

Caffeine and I have a history. During high school, we would get together occasionally. I would get a bottle of Diet Pepsi out of the vending machines at Central and drink it during the afternoon. It was fine.

Then, I hit college. My dabbling became a full-blown addiction. I don't remember exactly when I started drinking coffee, but by second year it was definitely a fixture of my life. Coffee was great! I could drink it and stay up late writing papers! And man, did I have papers to write! My junior year, I went abroad to Japan, and started what I call my "Coffee and Booze" diet, which predictably consisted of a lot of coffee breakfasts and whiskey dinners. And somehow, I survived that.

However, caffeine and I started to have a falling out during second semester of my senior year. The stress and caffeine started to get to me, and after one notable 48+ hour panic attack, my doctor told me to lighten up a bit on the coffee, and DEAR GOD stop drinking it after noon.

I've been mostly fine since then, until I moved back to Grinnell at the end of December. I went out drinking one night, had two rum and cokes and a long island iced tea, and was absolutely WIRED for the next 5 hours. Since then, I've been weaning myself off it in a half-hearted kind of way. I've been brewing my morning pot with half-decaf, half-regular so that I can feel like I'm actually doing something. But today, I made the mistake of drinking a cup of this concoction on an empty stomach, and now it is 6 pm and I am still jittery.

Caffeine is like Dennis from 30 Rock. It will sneak its way into your life and the only way to get rid of it is to see it on "To Catch a Predator" and realize that you've had enough.

So: caffeine, I've had enough. This is cold turkey, baby (mmmmm, cold turkey). It's going to be hard, and there will be pain in the form of caffeine headaches, but I will live a happier and less stressful life. If we encounter each other sometime in the future, as will inevitably happen, I will acknowledge you but turn away from temptation and live to see another day.

At least, that's what I'm telling myself now. You may find me in a couple days with my head down on my desk, listening to sad country music, having lost the will to go on.

Rosie

Rosie is my dog. We got her when I was 10, and she was a wiggly little puppy. She was always so quiet and remarkably calm for a golden retriever. She likes leaning on people as they pet her, and coming up and putting her nose under your hand so you know she wants to be petted. When you come in the door, she makes happy growly sounds and brings you a "baby," usually her stuffed squirrel.

My mom just called and told me that she had bad news, and I immediately knew what it was. Rosie is getting old and sick, and they're going to put her to sleep this week. She has cancer, and is having trouble breathing. They're going to do it tomorrow or the next day. I'm so sad. She's my puppy, and she's not going to be there when I get home.

Twilight: Emotional porn at its finest

Sorry I haven't written in a while. Between work and my obsessive knitting, I haven't had much of a chance to write. But tonight, I just had to get my thoughts out.

The "Twilight" movie is coming out this Friday, and I am beyond excited. I mean, this is a book I can only read alone and for about a half hour at a time, because it gets me too worked up and I have to get up and walk around for a bit. This is a book I have to stop myself from reading at strategic points because if I don't cut myself off, I know I'm going to be up all night. This is a book where I had to put it down to type out this post, because my hands were shaking... you get the idea.

So, established: I think this is a fantastic book, in a completely teenage-girl giggly way. I'm under no illusions that it's the greatest book ever written, but I'm really into it. And I just have to sit here and wonder: WHY? Why does this story have such power over me? How can it reduce me to an emotional puddle? Even though I know it's partially a long pro-abstinence screed, I ignore that because seriously, he's a vampire! If they ever decide to have sex, he could kill her in the heat of passion! DUH! I learned all this long ago from Buffy.

I think it all just comes down to the fact that I'm a hopeless romantic. I love Pride and Prejudice because deep down, I wish a Mr. Darcy (or an Elizabeth Bennet, for that matter) to stroll into my life so we could live happily ever after. In a world where my social awkwardness tends to foil any attempts to "flirt" with people before they begin, I kind of long for an idealized romantic idea of love at first sight.

Maybe I've been conditioned to connect to these stories because this is what "love" is supposed to be like. That you find someone and instantly fall into a passionate, life-changing affair. That compared to this, a normal relationship, with squabbles and silliness, just seems kind of boring. Not to mention the whole fact that you should not have sex, because your otherwise perfect vampire boyfriend will lose control and try to kill you. (Just like in Buffy!)

Or maybe, just maybe, it's just entertainment, and I'm just a raging mass of hormones who's a sucker for vampire fiction. :)

Passive aggressive laundry notes dot com

Today is laundry day. Since moving into my apartment, I love laundry day. The laundry room is big and there are always tons of open washers and it feels good to throw everything in and go upstairs to read Glamour and while away 30 minutes doing nothing in particular.

But when I went down to change my laundry (maybe 20 minutes late after I got distracted by a very nice Glamour article calling for the end of women making bitchy comments about each others' weight), I found a note on top of my washers that said "please don't be inconsiderate, pick up wash when done." Talk about passive aggressive.

Now, after 4 years of college I understand the need for prompt clothing pick-up, and I've always hated going to the laundry room and finding every washer occupied by someone else's finished laundry. This is maybe the latest I have ever been in going to unload the washer, as my time at Grinnell has taught me that if you leave your laundry in a washer for more than 2 seconds after it ends, you will find it sitting in a puddle of detergent on top of the washer.

But seriously, this person has no idea what I was doing or why I was late. I could have been cooking, or making an important phone call, or dead! I could be in a wheelchair and therefore having difficulty moving in and out of my apartment. For all they know, I could have misread the timer, or my watch, and made a perfectly honest mistake. They don't know my perfect history of laundry removal. Really, unless this person was hanging out in the laundry room for 20 minutes watching my washers in particular, they don't actually know how long my laundry was sitting there to begin with. I consider anywhere up to 10 minutes to be a perfectly reasonable buffer time (especially in a laundry room with many open washers), because people do lose track of time. And if you're writing a note because you've been watching someone's clothes sit there for ten minutes, a washer has probably opened up in the meantime and you're just an idiot anyway.

Not to mention that I'm pretty sure there were at least 2 washers open at any one time while I was not in that laundry room. There were at least 7 open when I got there, and maybe 10 or 12 when I left. If you have more than 2 washer loads of laundry, you can't be bitching at other people for taking up too many washers.

So, mysterious note-leaver, I defy your attempts to make me feel guilty for being late. If you can't handle the laundry habits of others, don't use a laundry room that is shared among several hundred people.

Bitch, you don't know my life!

Pancakes to Keep: The Joe Biden Story

So I'm not a big political person. I usually vote Democrat because they most closely align with my views, but I never feel like any politician is a close enough fit for me. And political speeches usually just annoy me.

But goddamn, I love Joe Biden. I think Chris's enthusiasm is infectious. I am not following this election too closely, becausut Biden is just so gosh darn cool. He's one of the few politicians I actually want to hear speak. Everything he says strikes home, and I actually agree with nearly all of it. I like his policies. As Chris said, his brain exploded, and he's still going! He's just an all-around great guy!

I will probably not be watching Obama tomorrow night (mostly due to scheduling conflicts), but I would have been ambivalent about watching him were I at home. But tonight, I looked at my watch, and switched the channel just in time, and caught Biden. And now I will bask in his glory.

Picture courtesy of the lovely Chris Neubert (yes, it is a bizarre inside joke)

Movin' on up

I'm moving my big suitcase into my new Pentagon City apartment tomorrow, which is exciting and kind of scary. I found it through Craigslist, and I'm living with two other 20-something women in the converted living room of a 2 bedroom apartment. I think most of the scary will be trying to get my huge-ass suitcase all the way across town on the Metro. But the room is big and my new roommates are really nice, so excitement outweighs the scary.

I'm pretty psyched. This is my first real apartment, and even though I'm not living in a real room with four walls and a door, I'm living on my own! Shopping for food, paying rent, working 9 to 6 weekdays, and budgeting! Maybe buying myself a bedframe or futon to go with the mattress I'm inheriting (or at least new sheets)!

Deja vu, 日本のスタイアル

I've been living in Washington, D.C. for a little over a week now, and I'm having a pretty good time. The one thing that keeps hitting me, though, is how much DC is like Tokyo. Maybe it's something true of large metropolitan areas, but there are some really striking similarities.

-The Metro. Dang, gotta love efficient mass transportation. Granted, the metro isn't as clean or as ubiquitous as the Tokyo JR train system (you can get almost ANYWHERE on the JR, and the subways cover the rest), but it's less crowded (the Red Line at rush hour doesn't even come close to the Den-en-Toshi sen at 8 pm) and there's twice as much seating. And SmarTrip is SUICA without the penguin on it. Which is kind of too bad, because I love the penguin.

-National capital. Oh government, you are everywhere. Government, and people in suits.

-Humidity. Oh god, today I think sweated more than I have since I left Japan. I'm really surprised not to see more people carrying around handkerchiefs and hand towels to periodically wipe themselves down. I'm having my mom send mine out as soon as possible.

-Cherry blossoms. Won't see this until spring, but I have a feeling more that a few people will be rockin' the hanami (blossom viewing parties).

-People speaking Japanese. Seriously, I walked onto the train the other day and the group next to me was talking about Tokyo. In Japanese. Excitement!

I miss some of the cooler things about Tokyo, like karaoke and the best convenience store food I've ever encountered (they will microwave your chicken nuggets for you, right in the store!). But so far, DC is beating out Tokyo for ease of living. Everyone (or nearly everyone) speaks English, and there is so much more greenery here. When I think of Tokyo, I think of lights and concrete and being squished into the train against dozens of other sweaty people.

DC is classy. It's relaxed, and fun. I like it a lot, despite the lack of nomihodai karaoke (all you can drink and all you can sing), steaming hot Circle-K yakisoba, and tuna mayo onigiri. If DC gets these things (and heck, it might already have them and I just don't know where to look), I will totally be set for life.