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May 26, 2004
love's so sweet right here in the passenger seat
My knee hurts sooooo bad. I fell up some stairs yesterday and all my weight (plus the weight of the 6 books i was carrying) landed on the right knee. It hurts a fair amount to bend it. Climbing stairs is so painful. But running this morning was okay.
It is worth it as I was getting books to read from the main library. Oh the glorious main library. All those books to read…for free! I have a book addiction that will just intensify with the arrival of the end of classes. My favorite author, Margaret Atwood came out with a new book, which I got from the library in addition to 6 or so other novels. I started as I sat in the warm evening for a bit on campus. Campus is beautiful in the spring. I read about 50 pages until I forced myself to leave as I was due a ben’s. between dinner and reading while ben got ready for bed, I was able to put away 25 more pages. I’m already addicted. I had to leave it in the car today so I wouldn’t be tempted at work. I love being addicted to a book. I am definitely looking forward to a summer of laying around ready. Yum.
If only I survive until june 5. I shall. It is just going to be tight…and not in a good way tight.
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Posted by christina at 1:34 PM | Comments (0)
May 24, 2004
i know, just where i am
So, ben moved into this new apartment in april. I mentioned it. I really wasn’t that big of deal to me as it was basically in the same place as his old one, the only difference is now he doesn’t have a roommate. But this weekend I experience the single greatest coolest detail about his place – a washer and dryer.
He’s tried to convince me before that I should bring my laundry down, but I always was like, if I’m going to haul it down to my car, than I minus well (?) use the laundry room in the basement. This weekend I didn’t have time, so I ended up taking it down with me. Oh, the glorious convenience of not worrying about the machines being busy, of hearing the washer stop and the dryer buzz. I washed as we watched the last of the star wars. (java the hut is gross.) it was so nice. So nice. Love the washer and dryer being in the hallway.
So yeah, good, though strange weekend. Big Fish was good. Though I did leave my sunroof cracked during the movie and of course it thunderstormed, even though it was prefect blue skies when we went it. I must concede that living in the south taught me that blue skies does not equal no pop up thunderstorms. But in chicago it does. Except for the past week. So it goes. Tom and I got wet butt on the way home (the blanket didn’t help that much). But my car is all dry now, and seems to be okay.
Saturday night about 11:15 my body got into one of those states where it was physically painful to stay awake. (God forbid I ever am in prison where one of the allowed interrogation techniques is to not allow you to sleep. I would break in a instant.) It worked out cuz all I was doing was watching west wing as ben had just gone out to help a friend also named bed. I just went to bed, which of course put me in a whole different sleep cycle than the bens, who came in ~2:30. I got up before him and quietly read some papers as ben the friend was now sleeping on the couch. Then I got back in bed and snuggled as he (ben the boyfriend, not ben the friend) was finally waking up. At some point, my body just cannot spend more than 10 hours in bed. Though I do remember this time where I spent something like 15 hours in bed. (and I was not sick nor in l’hospital)
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Posted by christina at 1:44 PM | Comments (0)
May 21, 2004
baby's there's something about you there
on my term paper
the good news - i found out that it is 20-40 pages. i'm at 20 1.5 spaced, so i am good to go.
the bad news - i'm writing the application section and getting all grossed out by the biological implants applications.
uck
and somehow, against all odds, it turned into a beautiful day. now i want tom to get done with his meeting so we can go play in the sunshine before big fish
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Posted by christina at 4:54 PM | Comments (0)
May 20, 2004
feels like home to me
oh! i saw troy this weekend. brad pitt is so so so hot.
but also eric bana (who plays hector), reminded me a lot of ben. It is the hair and the beard. but it is funny. ben is hotter. ; ) (and say that he looks nothing like eric bana, but he didn't see the movie. leta says that he doesn't look like the hulk eric (which i did not see) but does look like the eric/hector)here's a pic
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Posted by christina at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
When did I become this
When did I become this person who first things wants to write about the baseball game. Sigh, what has this boy done to me. First baseball, then star wars (which we watch this weekend, a goal of his ever since he found out that I hadn’t seen it), who knows that is next.
The game was really good last night – especially for me as I like a fair amount of action. No-hitters are impressive and all, but I like when we get men on base and have action on the field. Last night was good. It was just ben and I at the game as the other couple couldn’t come at the last night. So we had 4 seats. The buffer was nice. Though I enjoy more when I can put my feet up on the seats in front of me.
Anyways, the game when into an extra innings. at the end of the tenth, with 2 outs, 3 balls, and 2 strikes, Alou hits a homer. It was great. Especially since his dad is the manager of the giants (who we were playing).
And my hot dog was especially yummy. We got them downstairs with the grilled onions. Yum.
This week has flown by. I know that the next ones will as they are very busy and I have lots of stuff due, which makes time alternately fly and drag. It drags while I’m actually writing the papers, but flies in respect of how much of the paper I have done.
I’m tried, really for no reason. I’ve been getting a decent amount of sleep lately. But I did have a very strange dream last night involving a friend framing me for murder and my apartment being robbed. Random.
It is so humid here today. Feels like home. I love it.
This amuses me -
this amused me
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Posted by christina at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2004
average every day sane psycho / supergoddess
I was reading my church newsletter today (must start going back to church, but so hard to get out of bed on Sunday mornigs), and saw that the intern priest has just been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. She’s about my age, maybe a year older as she’s fresh out of seminary. Wow. Kinda puts all my little worries in perspective.
I think I’m not use to being content. My life has been such a roller coaster the past month, forget what contentment feels like. And this is it. A run in the morning. Ben’s kisses on my forehead. The way by hair feels when I wear tanks and therefore can feel it on my back.
I’m currently in the mist of a giant term paper (40 pages). It is comparable to the background section of a thesis. I have the presentation for it june 1. I did not realize that there was so little time. The paper itself is due june 5, but I would like to have all the content done this week. It has to be done sometime and it makes the presentation easier. It also means that everything is the world distracts me.
: )
but I have good writing music (as picked out by ben) and my water bottle (as I’m trying to drink more water than soda).
So you’ll laugh really hard if you know me at all – but I’ve made a small resolution to work on my spelling. Instead of letting word do my correction, I’m focusing on spelling things right the first time. My main problem is my laziness. If I think about a word, I usually know how to spell it. With word, I’m lazy because I can just type something close to a word and it’ll figure it out for me with a click of the mouse. So my bad habit are reinforced. It is also bad because things I do know how to spell are not reinforced. I am just not confident in my ability to ever believe I am spelling something write if I don’t have spell check.
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Posted by christina at 3:46 PM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2004
sometimes, just when you thought
sometimes, just when you thought it was impossible to love someone more than you do...
you find yourself surprised, randomly, as your eyes meet across a crowd room.
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Posted by christina at 3:59 PM | Comments (0)
May 14, 2004
i’m a lucky man
As you can imagine, some of my day was swallowed by messing with this new template. I first saw it on chris's page and really liked it. I was shocked to find that it was based on a blogger template. So after I got chris’s permission to copy, I went about changing it around to suit my tastes. So now we’re more like faternal twins than identical twins. Like our names. Ha ha ha. Like a fair amount of things about us. : )
I feel totally unproductive today as I just did the minimum amout of work I had to get done. I have to say that I did work an enormous amount this week and came it this morning at 7.30. I had a big lab due at 11 and finished it in the nick of time. And so I felt like I could take the hour off this afternoon and run. Which I did. It was (is) cold and rainy, so it wasn’t a very good run. So it goes.
I’m going to see Troy tonight with tom and marina. Every time I think/say troy, I think of this guy I, um, knew in washington state. He was an apartment (well, pod as we called them) mate. He cut all of his body hair to one length. Yeah. Random. He was a really great guy though. I hope he is doing well. It just reminds me of the summer where I learned not to date people you live with. So it goes.
Looking forward to the rest of the weekend as it will be warm and sunny. Apartment warming celebrations fill Saturday. I’m excited as ben has a friend in town and we’re going to have a whoville waffle morning tomorrow. So excited. I haven’t had a whoville waffle morning since who know when. A long long time. Yay!
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Posted by christina at 5:55 PM | Comments (0)
May 13, 2004
counting the ways to where you are
Ben has been sick this week. We are quite the pair. Since last Monday one of us have been in pain. Now I get to comfort him after he spent all last week comforting me.
He took Tuesday and Wednesday off of work. He came up to evanston to go to the doctor Tuesday afternoon and stopped by to see my lab. Yeah, he’s never been to my office/lab. More because of lack of opportunity. He was a tad overwhelmed. It was cute. And I guess I can see it. My lab consists of 4 vacuum chambers (which are round stainless steel units with windows and pipes much like a submarine). Around the chambers are lots of wires connecting it to power, etc, and tubing connecting it to the cylinders that surround one side of the area. Oh, the chambers are covered in aluminum foil (better to keep the heat in when we heat the things to desorb any gases from the interior wall to achieve a lower vacuum). So it looks like quite the made scientist lab.
Yeah, I said to him, my lab is very hardware down and dirty engineering type of lab. To succeed in here, you must be both the scientist and the engineering. I do science – I want to investigate what happens when I do this. But I must be an engineering to do that. Yesterday afternoon I spent trying all of my engineering skills to install a shutter in my chamber. It was fairly frustrating as the screw I needed to loosen and tighten to install the pole for the shutter was impossible to get at. I finally divised a very round about way and got it to work. But not before I had a v. funny conversation with the guy in the machine shop as I went down with absurd measurement for the diameter of the pole and then for the length just held my hand apart...about this long. I did pretty well as I ended up having to eyeball the diameter and just made a educated guess on the length. Lucky me.
Tired. Tired. But am not complaining.
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Posted by christina at 1:09 PM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2004
happiness / more or less
I read this book called the Cat Sitter. It was good. I recommend it – more of a fluffy book, but not girly. The main character is a guy. I’ve been shying away lately from just girl books. Anyways, the main character makes an interesting point (he’s in his late 20s and has lived away from home like me since college). He says that his parents have become voices on the phone and that it always takes a moment when he sees them again for him to adjust to their physical presence. That is true for me for not just my parents – that they’ve become voices on the phone. Dear to me, but in a different world that my own. My closest non-chicago friends have also become that – voices on the phone.
I was commenting to chris last night that I’ve been reminded of late of the fact that it takes a while to find good friends. That once you find them you forget how long it took you to find them. Like it was my third year of college before I really became friends with chris. And my fourth before I even met sarah g./carter/kent. And my fifth before I found sara c, truly one of my soulmates. I guess what brought this on is though I am surround by many friends and acquaintances and stuff to do and people to hang out with, I miss the consistency and the ease of my atlanta friendships. I’m a tad jealous that ben still has his college friends to hang out with. I wonder if our relationship would be different if I had all my college friends still here. Chris says yes, as my tendency to run is amplified when I have people to hide in. (though I’m not so sure how valid that is as my tendency to run was still in full force my first year here.) I don’t know. Relationships are funny – both friendships and otherwise.
Oh – random tidbit. I figure out the other day that I met ben on the anniversary of my move to chicago. Isn’t that the strangest thing?
It was a good weekend. It didn’t rain at the Saturday cubs game, it was the perfect game weather – just warm enough for jeans and a tank top, but in the 7th when it is was getting a tad too warm, the wind switched and we had to put on our sweatshirts. But we lost. But I got to spend some time with ben’s parents, which is always enjoyable. And I got to see maddox pitch, which I more enjoyed to make carter jealous. It did rain on Sunday during the game and the game went into the 14th. I was glad that I didn’t go and that the cubs ended up winning. Crazy spring weather this weekend.
Our Monday meeting which usually has pizza, today had sandwiches and sides and cookies. Yummy. Yummy. Strangely, with all the good choices, my advisor only had 4 cookies. That was it, for lunch, he had 4 cookies.
wow, and blogger got a new layout. random.
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Posted by christina at 1:08 PM | Comments (0)
May 7, 2004
love can be rough around the edges / tattered at the seams
so my friend ben (as opposed to my boyfriend ben) got a new camera phone.
here's my pic for my phonebook entry in his phone.
amusement
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Posted by christina at 3:52 PM | Comments (0)
I should write more. I
I should write more. I feel less busy at work, so in theory should have more time to write. But I am still busy at work – just doing class work more than testing. Some of my testing involves babysitting, so I have time to write. But to write now is to no be doing something else.
So it goes…just explaining my quietness.
I have been reminded several times in the last week how amazing my friends are. How lucky I am to have a friend that I can tell anything and everything to. I think it is a fairly rare thing. It really makes all the different in the world to have someone that you will never worry about judging you and know will always be there. Not to mention I have several amazing friends in general.
I want a divorce from my body. Seriously. Extremely tired of being a girl. And people should not say to me – oh this should be nothing after what you’ve been through. Dude. It does not make any one thing hurt any less because I’ve experience much great pain. It does make me feel like a wuss to whine about my current ails. Though my boyfriend is amazing and so sweet. I could not ask for a better person to hold me.
Let’s see. I went to the cubs game Wednesday night. We lost. It was annoying because we had several opportunities to score, but never could get it together. Kerry pitched a great game, so it wasn’t his fault at all. [note – I am amazed to find that I’ve become a person who can tell you what time the cubs are playing that day (well, if they’re at home).] I really do enjoy the game, contrary to popular opinion (including my own). I’m not a big fan of the crowds as we leave, but ben keeps a hold of my hand and I just focus on not thinking about it and life is okay.
Another game tomorrow. Should be good as it will be warm. The past two have been cold.
I am so glad that it is the weekend. So glad to be sleeping in tomorrow.
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Posted by christina at 12:25 PM | Comments (0)
May 3, 2004
day by day / oh dear lord / three things i pray
Chris came to visit me in the louisville hospital. I awaited his visit with much anticipation. We got a cot for my room. We got it under the guise it was for my dad cuz technically, non-family members couldn’t spend the night. But I was well loved, and everyone was also under the impression that chris was my b/f. Not that that is too far off description – especially then.
I hadn’t seen him since salt lake city. He hadn’t seen me since hospital life had gotten old. I wasn’t walking yet. I wasn’t even in the cool zippy wheelchairs. I couldn’t really sit up, so I was still in a reclining wheelchair. But at least I was to the point where he could roll me around unaccompanied.
He got there on Friday. He drove the longest distance he had ever driven by himself. He got there after my shower. We sat up late talking. For the first time since the accident I felt like a regular person as we gossiped and laughed. The nursing staff declared him so cute. Saturday he pushed me around the hospital. He brought bbq for dinner. (I must at admit that all the hospital food I had was not that bad. One had lots and lots and lots of choices. For a month I ordered from a menu. I finally settled down into a routine of a bagel for breakfast. Tuna sandwich for lunch. And then whatever sounded good for dinner. It is amazing how much the try to feed you in the hospital. There was snack time and desserts.) him and my dad went to go get donuts for me and the staff as I did my nightly routine with the nurses.
What brought this memory up today was a pattern of a checkerboard that made me think of connect four. My Saturday occupation therapy involved working on my left hand by playing connect four. It reminded me how well chris stepped up when he was needed…when I needed him. How lucky I am to have experienced an event where I felt so loved – not just by him, but by every single person in my life. Life is crazy. One never knows what will happen. But it goes to show you that one can survive anything when surrounded by love.
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Posted by christina at 5:37 PM | Comments (0)