i won't. i? won't. i? won't. i? won't. i? won't. i? won't.

after the ultimate stress of the Ulcer-Inducing Project on monday, i needed a smoke. badly. and just like that, a month of cigarette-free disappears. Tristen was my generous benefactor in this cave-in. i love tristen. i've never met anybody so relaxed, and who doesn't think they are above anybody. everybody says they don't think they are better than anyone, that they are nice and friendly and will talk to anybody - even if they don't say it, they think it, i do it too - but tristen is the ONLY person i have met who will actually follow through. the sort of person who after only one time meeting them you feel like you could talk to about anything.
and he is not stingy with his smokes. that is a blessed rarity.

Neanderthal helped me out with that too yesterday. baaaarf. don't know what to do there. halloween is also giving me grief. let's not forget last halloween - how could i? do i forget anything with big? no. my brain refuses to forget these things. tanya told me "people remember birthdays and anniversaries, but they don't remember every day of the year with their ex." then she bought me a blizzard. thank God for tanya.
anyways. i'm not likely to forget standing beside big at bright eyes, holding my cassadaga record to my chest and beginning to cry when he began playing the first day of my life, a song that big used to sing to me. and big just standing there, a foot away from me, mute. why would you ever go to a concert with your ex, using tickets you had bought as an anniversary present for each other? why? i'm not likely to forget the asian girl next to me, punching big on the arm and telling him i was crying. and him stepping to stand further away from me. i'm not likely to forget running out of mac hall, past josh and matt with confused looks on their faces. i'm not likely to forget sitting on the steps for the rest of the concert, plugging my ears and wishing it was over. seeing big in my mind, standing that way he did with his stupid hands in his stupid pockets and that silent, angry look on his face. i ruined bright eyes for both of us, his face said. fuck bright eyes. fuck conor oberst. fuck big's favorite band. fuck the first day of my life, fuck at the bottom of everything, fuck bowl of oranges. fuck that i can still hear big's voice in my head and the way he used to sing those to me.

i won't listen to bright eyes anymore.

baby, you may turn the corner yet.

i am liking working for matthew ebrahimi. he asked me to come in today since lynn couldn't. when i walked in the door and saw me sniffling, coughing, hacking as per lately he told me "we are taking lunch today, i am buying you lunch." we trekked to sweet basil, the thai restaurant where the waitress brought us some icewater. before i could take a drink matthew shouted "what are you doing? she is sick! don't give her any icewater! bring her some water with no ice." he told me later "you should never drink anything cold when you are sick. hot drinks only." and he gave me a juicebox for my throat in the afternoon.

after work i hopped a bus to subway, where i got a dose of bad 80s music on the radio and a severe dose of depression from being the only single person in the place. i ordered big and i's signature sandwich, because that's what i've ordered at subway for the past two years. even without him i still order it. i took my sub to the bus stop...sitting there eating the sandwich i used to eat with big being the only person without a significant other there.
i made it home and realized that i was going home to clean my apartment and do homework on a saturday night. now hotel rwanda is on and i'm watching it. i'm feeling pretty damn cheerful right now.

i love the smell of fall

ughhh back to everything. FART on this group project, i'll be fucked if i get a bad grade because kelly feels like procrastinating and sam can't apparently tear herself away from talk about dick-all with jenny. WOW, HOW OLD DO WE SOUND. anyway, i'm not busting my ass to pay for school just so that i can flunk out. that is a bit extreme. but.
speaking of busting my ass...am going to victoria this weekend for liam's birthday. well mostly to see jenna, but liam's birthday just happens to be this weekend. and i just happen to feel like drinking and dancing all night and singing old showtunes, which is what happened last time i was there. actually there is a video of that. ugh.

in other news, i ate all of my turkey day leftovers. back to grilled cheese and ichiban for this poor student.
and in even more news, i have been fake-messaging big. that is, i have been starting a message but never sending it. whoops. i blame this all on the dream i had where i hacked into facebook and somehow managed to creep all of his pictures, but he either had no face or he had this weird blank face. with a goatee. and in one picture he was in spain standing outside of a shop. in another he was playing guitar.

and in a last news bulletin, my newest roomie, bertram the spider, has disappeared since last night. if he surprises me, i will probably Tilex him to death (i don't know when this became my preferred method of spider killing. it's because i don't have to get so close then.). sorry bertram. don't say i didn't warn you.

when things aren't going your way, see a movie. even if it's a bad one.

i had a dream saturday night that i found out big had impregnated and was now engaged to my friend eve, who by the way is 24 and has never laid eyes on big in her life. i think. i woke up halfway through my sobbing admonition to a very pregnant and wide-eyed eve that it was very hard for me and she could probably never understand and i could probably never be truly happy for her. it was very sad.
so the end of my weekend wasn't off to an amazing start. going to white rock and seeing my uncle and aunt was very good. youth church was amazing. i don't know if i'm ready to go back to church yet. so much of it reminds me of my life with big. but i felt good.
stayed at tanya's last night, realized today that i left my toothbrush there. toothpaste and everything. as if a house of three people would not have a single bottle of toothpaste. why do i bring these things? i took one look at tanya's giant deep freeze and just about wept with reverance. say HELLO to my three inch wide freezer which, by the way, turned a lovely box of fudgesicles into bags of milk mush with sticks in them. and yet i had to defrost my watermelon. why?
in my haste to leave saturday when the power was out in my kitchen, i forgot i had a pot of creamed corn i was heating up on my stovetop. which has no actual stove, its just two elements. which i had left on. i walked in the door today and thought, what the hell in here stinks? this place smells like burnt shit. and boy is it hot in here. i lifted up the lid on the pot to find a perfect round cake of petrified black cream corn. it was disgusting. it was coal.
my house still smells like burnt air. i'm surprised my landlords didn't call the fire department.

in dj low's class today we had a test. now, duncan is the man, in my books, and i want him to think highly of me. very highly. so highly in fact that he would say to me in his dignified gentlemanly british voice "i was very impressed by you, laura. i think that you're fucking brilliant." which he would say, if i had actually done well on this test. but i somehow doubt that. i could write a fucking NOVEL on strategic planning, but was that on this test? heavens, no. it was all external & internal output, and boards of directors, and fucking employment representative categories. i'm not going to lie, i felt a bit like crying after.
so when kelly called telling me that we were going to a movie, i wasn't about to argue. we saw the women. i was reminded once again just how much meg ryan bothers me in any movie but when harry met sally and you've got mail. she's so cutesy, and floppy, and never wears heels. she's forever wandering around in flats or weird sneakers flapping her arms and stomping and looking for junk food because of her latest break-up. don't even get me started on her in kate & leopold, where she never stops shouting and somehow CANNOT accept the fact that hugh jackman is in her living room, hers for the taking.
but at least it got my mind off of the Awful Test. tomorrow i am getting up at 7:00, making one LARGE pot of coffee, and getting work done. good plan.