Indexed.

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It's math and fun. I swear.

Quitting

Oh sweet lord how I love it! Freeing, relaxing and fills me with optimism. Of course, this is how I feel afterwards. Before and during are hell, but afterwards, ah, afterwards.

And I'm so happy that I've made the decision that I am DONE with retail. Retail and me have totally broken up. We had an on again/off again relationship for 15 YEARS! That's half my freaking life. Half of my life selling people stuff. How hideous. It may take me a while to find something not in that field, but man am I glad I will be out of it in a little more than a month! A month! That's it! Hurrah for me!

SART

I'm hoping writing here will help quell the adrenaline rush, since what I'd really like to be doing is sleeping, but after you get paged by the sexual assault beeper, the adrenaline flows into your stomach like cold water, and all you can do is wait it out.

I was paged tonight to phone a young woman whose friend had just been sexually assaulted. The survivor didn't want to talk, but her friend was interested in some information, and what the options were. I spent ten minutes talking to her about what the centre offers, what our roles are, the time lines for our services, etc etc. Talked a bit about crisis psychology and some of the things her friend might experience over the next few days. I always think I've forgotten tons of my training, and I get paranoid that I'm leaving massive chunks of information out, but when I get down to talking to someone, letting them know how long they have before it would be useless to take the emergency contraceptive pill, or support them in making a plan for how they're going to get through the next twenty-four hours, I feel like I'm actually doing real work that makes a real difference in people's lives. If I can leave this earth knowing that at some point I made another person's life that much more bearable, or their pain that much easier to work through, then my life won't have been a stupid waste of interneting, movie-watching, and procrastination.

Summer Movies

I'm not really aware of it, but along the way I seem to have acquired a bit of an "intellectual" label concerning books, music, movies and other media. And I guess it's true to an extent. What is probably less known about me is that I freaking LOVE summer movies. Smashy, shiny, slick, plotless, jingoistic (there's that "intellectual" thing again), and hackneyed - I love them so. Everyone should go see the Transformers movie because the way the transformers looked when transforming in the air was one of the cooooolest things I've ever seen. The humans in the flick are useless meat-bags who utter completely laughable shit and shouldn't have been in it at all. In fact, I wish there had been NO plot whatsoever. I like my summer movies like I like my porn, it seems - hardcore action, and nothing more.

Harry Potter was dark and has pretty art direction as per usual and I get to watch jail-bait boys be all pensive. Sweet! I'll go see it at least once more.

I'm going to watch the musical "Hairspray" this month too. The original John Waters movie is one of my all-time faves (HELLO!?!?! The heroine is a fat chick named Tracy who gets the hot boy in the end - what's not to love?!?!) so I have to see it and then go for a drink, toasting to the memory of the lovely Divine.

The Simpsons movie is going to be utter shit, I'm sure, and I'm going to see it as well, just for the train-wreckedness of it. I haven't watched almost any of the Simpsons after the 10th season because almost all of the ones I saw made me want to cry out for Conan O'Brien to come back, so I'm not really expecting anything from this movies. Too late in the game, too over-hyped, but I'll see it anyway, and I'm sure some twisted part of my heart will love it.

Some of my all-time favorite summer movies:
- Any of the Terminator films
- Independence Day
- Pirates of the Carribean

MARIO PARTY AND BEER

I have found my summer zen moments and they will involve the sweet-ass Mario Party 8 and drinking beer. Everyone is invited!

Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi

It's been approximately 1,000 years since I wrote in this thing for two reasons: I've been busy enjoying the things that make me happy and I'm also super lazy.

Yesterday I quit sugar, and I don't mean entirely because that would be impossible. I mean eating candy, pop, chocolate, Froot Loops - that kind of thing. I'm still eating ketchup, dammit. I didn't realize how much of an effect this would have on me physically. I have NO appetite and could kill everyone for fun and laugh at the blood spurting out of you all. There is one lone beverage in this world saving me right now, and it is Caffeine-free Diet Pepsi.

I can't have caffeine, and haven't had any in a very very long time, and I don't super miss it anymore. I don't really like Sprite or 7-UP normally, let alone in diet form and it's difficult to find diet ginger ale. And I miss my colas, I must admit. I was a Dr. Pepper addict for a very long time. I suspect if I had one now my heart would explode from three things all at once: the caffeine, the sugar, and the happiness.

Will is a total Diet Pepsi freak, and we discovered a while ago that their caffeine-free version is pretty darn tasty. So that's what I'm drinking right this minute. I think we should all give a silent thanks to it for keeping me from killing everyone I can get my grubby little hands on, and for making my mouth happy.

Bowling!

A bunch of us went bowling for my and Will's birthday (that sounds weird - I want to say "mine and Will's birthday"). It involved lasers and really awful pop/hoochie music, some of which I'm embarrassed to say I knew. A few balls were glow in the dark and my orange sleeves on my baseball shirts showed every piece of lint on them, what with the bitchin' black lights. We went for beers afterward, and I got nicely inebriated - not too much, but enough that I passed out in my bed while Steph and Ethan battled it out on Wii boxing.

The saddest thing is that my right thigh hurts like a mother fucker today - I am so out of shape that bowling injures me. I didn't turn thirty - I'm now ninety-three.