"What we play is life."

Right, so, my world fell apart today. I was driving home from the mall and this Death Cab song played which I had never heard before. The radio station announcer dude said, "oh yeah, this song from their newest album Narrow Stairs." And I was like, whaaaaa? Did I miss a song when I downloaded the album? So I get home, look it up on azlyrics, and no I did not miss any songs. So, completely baffled, I start looking through the lyrics to each song... only to learn to my chagrin that half of the songs I had downloaded and coveted as sweet new Death Cab songs are in fact by a German indie band which just sounds like them.

Shoot me.

I even talked about this with Jeff--I gave him my Narrow Stairs songs, and we talked about how it was odd that Ben Gibbard suddenly has a lisp in some of the songs. Well, it makes sense now! Gah!

So now I have to correctly name all of these non-Death-Cab songs (apparently the band's name is Velveteen, but I really like those songs, so I will have to check them out) and once I have internet for my laptop again I'll have to re-download limewire and get the correct Death Cab songs.

On the one hand this is devastating, because I really thought that was Death Cab. But on the other hand, I have a new awesome band to listen to AND half of Narrow Stairs to hear for the first time. But still: shoot me. Unbelievable. It's even up on wikipedia--someone thought it would be clever to leak a fake Narrow Stairs album before the real one was released. Man, did I ever get duped. How ridiculous.

But anyway.

Caitlin and I went to the mall today! Much fun ensued. We tried on fancy dresses and took silly pictures, and shopped ourselves to exhaustion. Gotta love the Alderwood Mall.

Yesterday I saw Christian. That was also much fun. :) I wish I had internets on my laptop, because unless I take it to the library (and even their wireless seems to elude me) I can't change my profile picture to that really awesome shot of me and half of Christian's face that we took at the Olive Garden. I have rad picture-taking skillz. It's true.

I work the next three days in a row, but Sunday is my last day at Penneys. Weird. I still wish I didn't have almost a full week with no work and nothing to do. I am still toying with the idea of taking a bus to go home to Pullman early, get my new key to the apartment, and unpack my stuff for a few days. I mean, what else will I be doing? It's pulling teeth to get my parents to lend me a car to drive, and everyone else is busy. Christian will be gone, Caitlin will not be very nearby, Maria is back at school... I have nothing to do except laze around and complain about how bored I am. I would rather spend the last few days of break being productive, unpacking my new room and taking the bus up to the rec center in lieu of sleeping gratuitously and expending little energy. Hmm.

Well, now that I've talked it up like that I REALLY want to take the bus back early. I could probably even take the train up to Spokane, hang out with Christian and/or Phill for a few hours/a day, and then take a bus from Spokane to Pullman. And since I already paid for $20 of gas to Steph for the trip over, then she will not be able to complain about picking me up and dropping me off for a little while. More than a litte while, what with the snow. This could be good. I miss Pullman anyway, it would be silly to deny that fact. Snohomish is just not my home any more.

We'll see.

But Narrow Stairs! Agh. Cannot believe that.

Well, I only have one more week of working at Penneys, and that only ends up equating to four more work days, unless I can scrape up a few more shifts. How odd. One week of 40 hours, one week of 20 hours, and then one week of five hours. What weirdos. :D

I suppose with all my free time opening up in front of me, I will have to get to work on those projects I wanted to do over break. I don't have the WSU library with me, but I do have the online catalog, so I can start looking up some info there. See what I can find. And the roads should be all cleared up in a few more days. That means: MALL! Shopping = happiness.

But really... my last day is next Sunday. I don't think I'll be heading back to Pullman until the Sunday after. That's not cool. Almost a full week with nothing to do? Bad news bears is what that is. Maybe I can see if anyone else is heading up sooner than Sunday. I don't really want to stay here awkwardly if I'm going to be pretty much home all day, bored as hell and wishing I were unpacking my new room and prepping for my new classes.

Speaking of which--I finally checked back to see if UH 440 was open, and it is! So I dropped Motivation (ha ha, how ironic) and signed up for UH 440. Whoohoo! That drops my Tuesday/Thursday classes down to just Experimental Methods from 10:35 to 11:50 and Human Sexuality from 1:25 to 2:40. So I will have a break for lunch and general homework completion and then after Dirty 230 I'm done for the day. I like that better than three classes. And my MWF is still going to be odd--Chemistry from 9 to 10, break, Social Deviance from 11 to 12, break, big band from 1 to 2, UH 440 from 2 to 3. And on Wednesday, after that, I have Methods lab from 3 to 5, break, and chemistry lab from 6 to 10. So my Wednesdays this semester won't be fun. But at least my Tuesday/Thursday will be light!

Belatedly: grades came out a while ago. I am very happy: 4.0 this semester, which ups my cumulative GPA to 3.76. I am only 0.14 GPA points away from graduating with the highest honors from WSU, and I bet I can do that in the remaining five semesters. Now I'm wishing I had tried harder to do undergraduate research next semester, though, because I will need two to three letters of recommendation to apply for graduate school, which means two to three undergraduate research stints, and I only have three semesters left before I will be applying. Hmm.

I will have to make an appointment with my psych advisor to see if the letters of rec have to be from undergraduate research, because I will be taking the undergraduate practicum class for Basic Helping Skills sometime next year, and you'd think whoever teaches that class would be qualified to write me a letter. So that would bring me down to one or two undergraduate stints. The only problem with it is that I am not sure I'll have adequate time to do research assistance fall semester of next year, especially if I make section leader. But then, I could take 14 or 15 credits and then a full three credits of undergraduate research, and that would equate to about nine hours a week in the lab; so I could do those hours during the day time when I would have had another class. That would work.

We'll see.

Dentist tomorrow. Don't know how that will go, since when I open my mouth too wide my cheek hurts. I'll have to tell them that, and maybe I'll get lucky and they won't do the stupid tooth-polishing thing. That would be sweet. And it spare me some unnecessary cheek pain.

Words cannot express how much I love retail.

Love it!

Love it.

I sized the juniors jean wall and the clearance racks. My next project will be the petites/women's tables, they always look terrible. And then I am going to take on the men's jean wall. Go me!

Yesterday my managers told me they loved me three times. :)

I heart retail.

In less awesome news, unless the weather gets even worse overnight, I have to go in for wisdom tooth removal tomorrow morning. Not cool. I will be nervous right before they anestheize me, I know that, but really the only thing I'm worried about is afterward. Am I going to be out of it and on pain meds? Or will I be bored and aching all day? It would be cool if the former were true. Ugh. I wish I didn't have to do this. But it's necessary and all that. Gah.

I can't drink water within eight hours of my surgery. That means that I can't take my IBD meds tomorrow morning. That's no good. Grr.

*sigh*

It's been less than two days and I miss Pullman. I started missing Pullman somewhere past Ellensburg. Snohomish isn't home for me anymore. The whole thing with holidays and spending time with family doesn't apply to me... I just have to get through three weeks without too major of problems between my mother and I. Let's see if I can do it. But I really miss Pullman. I wish I could fast forward to three weeks from now, getting ready to go to the first day of new classes and unpacking my inordinate number of boxes into my rockin' new room. That is what I want to be doing right now. Not sitting in my dead silent freezing cold parents' house, dreading wisdom tooth removal and worrying about things instead of enjoying my free time.

Bleh.