I always like to blabber about the things I think I was in a past life -- a nun (hence my fondness for sacred architecture, art, and music), a construction worker (hence my love of construction sites and itch to operate a crane one day), and homeless bum (hence my fondness for the undersides of highway overpasses). But apparently I may have been something else entirely.

In a Past Life...

You Were: A Happy Go Lucky Alchemist. Where You Lived: New Guinea. How You Died: Suicide.

I am very pleased that you offer recycling bins for plastic bags. An estimated 100 billion bags are thrown away by U.S. consumers each year. The average American family of four throws away about 1,500 single-use polyethylene bags, which do not degrade for around 1,000 years. But less than 1% of those bags are actually recycled. Most of my friends aren't even aware of your recycling bin for plastic bags.

I hope you will take your conservation efforts further. Some groceries in my home state of California give small discounts for customers who bring their own tote bags, and cities and countries from Ireland to Australia and Rwanda have already banned the use of plastic bags. Last June, IKEA began charging its U.K. customers for plastic bags and reduced its bag consumption by 95 percent: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070221/us_nm/environment_usa_ikea_dc

IKEA is the first retailer to stop giving away free plastic bags in the U.S., and Wegman's could join at the forefront of this movement. Incentives and a campaign to use fewer plastic bags will ultimately save your money as well as our environment.

Signed up for the blood drive today. Wasn't until I was about to walk away that I realized that I couldn't -- I'd lost a significant (but certainly not serious) amount of blood from the operation in December. Crossed my name off the list, mumbling an excuse about my schedule. It's hard to imagine how I could be so sleep-deprived at the beginning of the semester, but as the workload's not going to get any lighter, it's better to start the all-nighters now rather than pull them all in a row later.

OWWWWW. I'll take anyone and their mothers cycling, but the rest of this is just too painful for words.

When I was a little kid, I thought DST was a bank promotion. Makes sense, doesn't it? I just couldn't understand how the government could sponsor such a clearly commercial event. I also didn't (and still don't) understand banks.

Today I've woken up the earliest I've done all year in order to start practicing at, what Bill tells me, is the school opening time. Let's just hope the practicing does more good for the church service than the grogginess caused by waking up early after Paul's halloween party.

And all of a sudden I drop the names of the sponsors and that they're not happy, and she does a big switcheroo. As if nothing had happened and she'd been okay with it all along.

Mystifying. But at this point it's no longer my concern, as Susan had suggested a bit prematurely. I have work to do.

With all the judges except Geert opposed to my playing a transcription, who would have thought they'd select it over Allard's Image No. 2 as my finale(!) piece, and who would have thought they'd give me the highest score on that, out of all things! Especially considering my screwups while my phone was going "ding-dong" as my feet were going "ding-dong".

It is a beautiful thing to have the time to walk a heavy sack of glass bottles down the street to the recyling point, to enjoy the golden evening sun and to respond to the unexpected hellos on the street of strangers who detect that you are suddenly very friendly to the world. To be part of the real world, just for a few hours...

Now back to the pressure cooker.

"You probably have heard people are very upset that Bush thinks he can wiretap anybody without even getting a warrant. Warrants are given by judges based upon evidence. Bush isn't into evidence. He's a faith-based kind of guy." [article]

For all the giant after-Christmas sales that I nearly killed my wrists to crutch through, all I managed to buy were four pairs of b/w ankle socks, a set of hair ties, and an undergarment.

There's got to be a European equivalent of Hot Topic where I can buy overpriced rebel punk crap. Most Belgian girls, teens, women, and old ladies wear the same exact outfit, and if I'm going to wear anything even remotely similar, I need to accessorize as oddly as possible. Platform military boots would be a good start. Ain't none of those in Mechelen.

I wanted to be like you
I wanted everything
So I tried to be like you
And I got swept away

I didn't know that it was so cold
And you needed someone
to show you the way
So I took your hand and we figured out
That when the tide comes
I'd take you away

(chorus)
If you want to
I can save you
I can take you away from here
So lonely inside
So busy out there
And all you wanted
was somebody who cares

I'm sinking slowly
So hurry hold me
Your hand is all I have to keep me hanging on
Please can you tell me
So I can finally see
Where you go when you're gone

(chorus)

All you wanted was somebody who cares
If you need me you know I'll be there
Oh, yeah

(chorus)

Please can you tell me
So I can finally see
Where you go when you're gone

I dreamt that I happened upon the Oxfam store and went inside to ask to purchase some tea. To my surprise, it was a tiny one-room pizza joint, and it only carried Oxfam tea on certain non-consecutive days of the week.

How the hell do I interpret the meaning of that???

"my goals are to get him to pay and to find out how old he is."

wise words from a seasoned dater. i should learn to follow suit.

To have and not to hold
So hot, yet so cold
My heart is in your hand
And yet you never stand
Close enough for me to have my way

To love but not to keep
To laugh, not to weep
Your eyes, they go right through
And yet you never do
Anything to make me want to stay

Chorus:

Like a moth to a flame
Only I am to blame
Ba ba da ba ba ba
What can I do?
Ba ba da ba ba ba
I go straight to you
Ba ba da ba ba ba
I've been told
You're to have, not to hold

To look but not to see
To kiss but never be
The object of your desire
I'm walking on a wire
And there's no one at all
To break my fall

(chorus)

You're to have, not to hold
You're to have, not to hold

(chorus)

You're to have, not to hold
You're to have, not to hold
You're to have, not to hold
To break my heart

Men Overestimate Number Of Sexual Partners
"Psychology professor Dr. Norman Brown said while some people might conclude this happens because 'men are pigs,' there is in fact, important information to be gathered from his survey of approximately 1,100 Albertans..."

Last night I dreamt that I was in some sort of skateboarding contest. The kind that makes my dad complain that I'm too "macho" for my own good. But the distinction of being the only skateboarding carillonneur that I thought belonged to me has been taken away... by someone who's already done everything else I want to do! Guess who that is. Damn it.

Let's see if I survive my twenty-third birthday.

It took a lot of effort (or rather, intense hunger) to make me get my ass downstairs at 8 pm to cook dinner for myself for the first time since the accident, but the meal was well worth the ass-busting. Thin pho with tom yum soup, broccoli and cauliflower, and garnished with fresh basil. I've sorely missed my own recipes. It's strange to get "homesick" for one's own cooking, but I suppose it's because I've learned to emulate the food I loved in San Fran and New Haven.

When I went downstairs this morning for breakfast, I felt like the main character in Gattaca, Vincent. He had his legs broken because he was too short and needed to have them lengthened. When the person supplying him with genetic samples "went away," he left Vincent an entire wall full of samples... and there I was going through my cabinets on my broken leg and finding that my parents had stockpiled as much food for me as possible, as well as toilet tissue in the bathroom and everything else they could think of. Come to think of it, did I first watch Gattaca at SSP, or was it at home?

To rewind further, I asked my physical therapist Tom to come early today. Since his only opening was at 9 am, I woke up at 8 and got a few things in order, then lay back down thinking that it would be impossible to fall asleep again. The next moment, he was knocking on the door of my room a little before 9. Stefan had noticed the poor guy ringing the doorbell out in the cold as he was taking the dog out. Despite my flakiness, Tom was super nice, and has offered several times to help me whenever I need him, even if I just want someone to bring me food. He also reads more fantasy novels than anyone I've ever met. Awesome dude.

Best/worst of all, I proved to be on a roll. Around 7:45 pm, my nurse walked into my room while I was showering. Ooops.

It's soooooo beautiful to have real speakers and a subwoofer again.

To be frank, I'm pretty happy with my blogger account, but 1) I needed to take a break from writing my Soros application without actually falling asleep, 2) I am curious to see Tom's livejournal, since he can see mine :-P, and 3) Geert once read my belgiumblog and wie immer teased me about it + most hits to my as-yet not public homepage have been from my blogspot profile, so I guess people actually do read that scheisse, and I should use a private-entry enabled service when I have creative things to say about them. Pardon my french. *evil cackle*