she had a weakness for writers...

in the midst of everything that brings me joy (graduating and moving the away from this place), i somehow find some sort of melancholy. i can't seem to help but want things to happen that simply cannot... but i guess that this is the human condition and whatnot. i wish that i could just be satisfied with how much i've accomplished, but i seem to be focused on my failures of late (yes, i realize that this is ridiculous, but c'est la vie).

don't count your chickens before they hatch, right? well, i'm moving to dubai regardless. i'm without concrete employment offers, a work visa, or even a plan of what i'm to do once i get out into the 'real world' half-way across the planet from everything i'm familiar with at the moment. i'm just holding my breath for some serious luck once i get to dubai, since i've been on about an eight-year dry spell of it... but i suppose that in the long-run, i can just count myself lucky, for now, for actually being eligible to graduate on saturday.

cheers.

30 days notice

i gave my thirty days notice to my landlord the other day and it dawned on me that i'll be out of here in less than a month. i have my thesis defense this afternoon, and barring a major disaster (... holding my breath until 4 this afternoon), i'll be on the final push toward graduation. i realize that this is pretty much all i talk about lately, but i'm just so bleeding ready for this whole period of my life to come to a close. 5 years is a lot to dedicate to anything, much less something that causes regular panic attacks and near-constant sleep-deprivation... i need a change more than i could possibly ever express in words.

and the beat goes on

this is going to be a great and terrifying week. one of my favorite authors, thomas lynch, is coming to lecture at the u of a on tuesday. on wednesday, i have to defend my thesis (the potentially terrible part of the week) and then get to go listen to terry jones of monty python give a reading on wednesday evening.

i'd have to say that, short of possibly finding out that my thesis isn't sufficient to qualify me for graduation, this is a great line-up for my last week of college. i can finally see that light at the end of this terribly dark, dank tunnel, and i'm soaking up every single beam of that light that i can.

like, whoa.

the thesis is due tomorrow... i'm not freaking out. what? i'm not (well, only a little on the inside). i'm just a little preoccupied with making sure everything comes together articulately, and because i can't spell to save my ever-loving life, i'm proofreading like crazy and running the spell-check a zillion times. i'm also keeping my fingers crossed that the printer doesn't suddenly decide to through a hissy fit... i will continue to do so until i am holding 47 pages of thesis in my hands.

two weeks until graduation. two. weeks. until. i. graduate. from. college. two more weeks of my academic hell and then i get to taste the sweet (hopefully) chocolatey goodness of freedom. now all i have to do is survive my defense, write another (again, hopefully) brilliant paper, finish a series of paintings, and pass a final exam.

no sweat.

numb

someone was killed at my apartment complex sometime friday night or saturday morning. she lived downstairs from me. she was 21 years old. her brother found her dead in her bedroom. i didn't even know her name. i was home all night on friday and i didn't hear a thing... i just can't help but think that maybe, if i'd paid more attention - if anyone living around her had paid more attention - this might have been prevented.

the most haunting thing about this whole situation is that i'm completely numb to it. that's fucked up. i should be horrified to come home from lunch to find a horde of police and a crime scene investigation vehicle parked on the quad in front of my apartment. i should be completely terrified. but i'm not. i am bothered tremendously by the fact that i didn't even know what this girl looked like and she lived four doors down from me for a full six months. and now she's gone. she was only 21 for christ's sake. now that is terrifying.

midget ninja

i have a plan. i am going to dress up like a ninja, climb in through the downstairs apartment window all sneaky-like, sneak through the tiny little rooms and overwhelming stench of fried food, and i'm going to smash my neighbor's speakers with a hammer. yes, yes... this is my sneaky remedy to the my-floor-is-vibrating-because-you-play-your-music-too-loud-are-you-deaf-? problem.

no, seriously... my neighbors play their music so loud it actually wakes me up... through the floor! are they trying to cause their child's eardrums to burst? are they hard of hearing and unwilling to seek medical attention (or get hearing aids)? or do they just enjoy polka music at 300 decibels and annoying the piss out of everyone on the north side of fayetteville?

at precisely 6am and 3pm every day, dude will turn his music on in his car, full blast. he then proceeds to open every door along with the trunk... and then walk away. he just walks away and my apartment is shaking itself apart. dude. what. is. your. deal? are you trying to make me crazy?

nothing, nothing to write home about

my sad, sorry excuse for a life can be summed up in one word - thesis. if i haven't written of late, it is solely because i am up to my eyebrows in things i need to write in order to get that little piece of paper that says that i'm free of this hell commonly known as architecture school. one more month, save a day, and i will be a college graduate. 48 days, and i will be on my way to dubai. oh yes, hell yes.

about the only thing of interest i have to write about is the 'flying architecture' competition i'm hosting today... it's basically just an excuse for architecture students to hurl eggs out of a second story window of the architecture department for prizes and whatnot. it comes down to the fact that i enjoy student-organization-sponsored mayhem. it's more interesting that way, i suppose.

oh, and i got peter eisenman's autograph on monday.

sweet.

photobox

i now have a photoblog... and it's name is 'photobox'. photobox will be [hopefully] filled with pretty/weird/neat/random things to look at... i'm hoping to put something on it every day. it's linked under 'things i see' if you want to take a gander.

it's like a big internet party for me and my camera. byob.

play

my pooter is here! my apple macbook pro has finally arrived! all 15.4 sexy-ass inches of it are sitting in front of me 'as i speak', and i could quite possibly say that this moment is sublime.

my refrigerator is flooding my house

the u of a school of architecture is celebrating its 60th anniversary. this - given that all architects are alcoholics - means that everyone goes out to get hammered. this is how we socialize... it's just how we roll. brewski's on dickson street was full to bursting with the architecture crowd last night... holy mother of god, those silly kids can drink.

the festivities also came packaged with a lovely serving of drama - my tires got slashed. yeah. i just got my bleeding axle replaced and now i have to get new tires. i'm just pleased as punch. someone went down the entire row of cars that my jeep was in and slashed everyone's tires... the best part: in a bloody church parking lot.

the whole group-of-people-simultaneously-changing-tires-in-front-of-cops-thing was actually comic genius. everyone exchanging tools to try to get everyone's tires changed ... and then trying to figure out what tool belonged to whom at 2:30 in the morning, in the dark, after a night on dickson street - in front of the cops. brilliant. brilliant, i say.