Just one more day…

I was going to go to work today to earn some holiday cash, but then I decided that I haven’t recreated nearly enough after the ordeal of fall quarter. It was kind of a hectic weekend, to be fair.

Saturday Laurel and I decided to make a dent in our holiday shopping, which neither of us had started, and went to Northgate Mall. This may be the most irrational decision that I’ve made all week. I forgot how much I hate people, who thronged around me in a dense, mouth-breathing mass, rushing from store to store. As the day wore on and I crossed people off my “to-buy-for” list, the number of things I professed to hating grew inversely, and included: people, driving, parking, Christmas (Jesus briefly made the list as well, but I quickly recanted and crossed myself; He knows I was only joking), my cell phone, America, and capitalism. Shopping is really a very stressful activity for me, but at least I got it mostly done.

Afterwards, Marta and I met her parents at the Cultural Diversity Theater, or something, to watch some authentic flamenco dancing. The show was amazing, and I had a good time; I even knew one of the dancers, surprisingly. Flamenco guitar is infuriating to watch – each time they strum they do so four times, one with each finger, and the pace and chord progressions are spectacular. I left feeling like a vastly inferior guitar player. On that note, I have a huge blister on my thumb from strumming too furiously this weekend. I’m learning a song with an intense, rapid strumming pattern, and owing to my unique (read: incorrect) method of playing with my thumb, the resulting friction raised the already-callused spot into a fluid-filled bump. It hurts, and I can’t play without a pick until it heals.

Then I went to Gioia’s boyfriend’s surprise birthday party and hobnobbed for a bit. She was drunk, and denied it fiercely between bouts of accusing me of being in love with her. Gioia’s roommates and friends are all gorgeous – maybe it’s a Catholic thing, I don’t know – and I’ve hit on each of them somewhat profusely in the past. They think it’s cute and humor me with mock flirtation, but it’s a dangerous game to play at times. The most beautiful one, Marissa, with whom I was actually, wholly enamored for a few weeks at one point, has an enormous, terrifying boyfriend who wants to kill me for obvious reasons. He’s civil for the most part, but on Saturday night he kept fixing me with murderous stares. In spite of this, I enjoyed the party a lot, despite being sober and not usually having much patience for Gioia’s gatherings. I think it was a different crowd this time; they were all really friendly, and kept introducing themselves without provocation – a surprising turn of events, but not an entirely unwelcome one.

Then yesterday, Nathan and I embarked on the Great Cleaning. Marta has had our vacuum since September; we hadn’t vacuumed for a few months before then, and obviously hadn’t since. I stole it back yesterday morning, transporting it down the hill in Ofie. Running it over the carpet in the living room produced a near-constant rattling, and it mowed through the drifts of dust-bunnies lining either side of the hallway. Never has an apartment needed vacuuming so badly, and the difference is monumental – I already feel about three times better about living here. If the carpets were bad, the bathroom was worse. I won’t go into disgusting detail right now, as I’m more than a little ashamed of the state to which we allowed things to progress before springing into action. Suffice it to say that half a bottle of mildew remover was required to put a dent in the deposits in the shower, and that’s just a small portion of the total bathroom space.

Last night Alison had a “Christmasy vegan potluck” to celebrate the end of the quarter. I wimped out and bought a microwavable couscous dish from TJ’s, but people seemed to like it. The food was fantastic: pastas, fresh fruit, lasagna, salads, and more desserts than you could shake a stick at. I told Alison that the repast had changed my mind about veganism, and I was thinking about converting. “Really?” she asked, a sparkle lighting her eyes. “No,” I let her down. All my favorite people from CS were in attendance as well: Chris Baker, Julian (with the Eco Hunk from his house), Mike Chinen, Kelly (of course), Dylan Carney (with his perhaps-girlfriend Molly), and Alison, the gracious hostess. Kelly, Dylan and I were discussing the amazing concentration of CS majors at one party, and Kelly reflected on how many awesome people there were in CS. I protested. “No, there’s not. There’s like eight; they’re all in this room.” “No way!” Kelly said, “I know like four more!” Chris Baker and I are going to start a student organization called the Razorblade Crew (email address: r4z0rCrU@u.washington.edu), whose sole members will be, for all time, the above people, minus Kelly and Dylan. We just want something to recognize our circle of CS friends, and in reference to Chris’s now-famous solipsistic quote (“No way are we nerds, man. Strip away the keyboard and it’s all skateboards and razorblades and shit.”), each member will carry a razorblade (it can be a safety razor if they’re a pansy) on their person at all times. Kelly and Dylan are being denied membership because they’re such obvious candidates, and we could scarcely call ourselves elitists if we only kept out people who clearly have no place anyhow.

I came home from the party and felt obligated to deal with this – my hometown paper somehow picked up on this article, and is quoting the more acerbic bits to raise some sort of crusade of Gig Harbor residents (median age 67) against me. I gave the editor a piece of my mind for misrepresenting my column – it wasn’t even about Gig Harbor – and he apologized for not providing more context. Regardless, it’s too late now, so hopefully the residents of my fair city don’t rush to the assault.