My Japanese exam is only four weeks away and I am so going to flunk it. I bought two books last week to prepare and the more I study, the more I realize how little I know. The thing is, it’s self-inflicted pain so I can’t even whine. While I am too tired to study as much as I’m going to have to, I’m also too masochistic to give it up. I’ve come so close, I can’t give up now. And I sure as hell am not willing to fail. So the only alternative is to bust my ass.

It’s times like these that make me reconsider my willingness to go back to school.

I wish I could tell you something pithy about today but I spent the entire day studying Japanese, desperately trying to come up with an outline for my novel and mostly running away from both chores by watching a week’s worth of TiVo. I’m sure tomorrow won’t be shockingly different.

I did see Charlie’s Angels last night and loved it. It was funny. It was witty. It was silly. It was fun. It was the perfect Friday night movie.

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Goody Links
Can you summarize the last year in twenty words or fewer?

Thoughts
The weird thing about being sick is that I can never seem to remember the time when I wasn’t. As soon as I get sick, it feels like I will always be sick. I feel hopeless and miserable and each time I try to recall how I felt without the sickness, I can’t seem to. Maybe it’s just me, but it happens to me every time. It’s one of the major reasons I hate getting sick. The sore throat, chess pain, incessant sneezing, fever and nausea are some others.

Happy Halloween! This is the first time in my life that I’m giving out candy. Last year, I was at my friend Laura’s house for Halloween and it was the first time I carved pumpkins. Since I never gave candy out before I wanted to go all out. I bought full-size bars and lots of them and then I got worried and bought some snack sized ones as well, just in case too many kids showed up. I just hope the kids come to get it or my diet will become toast!

I was trying to link a picture of my plate of candies but I can’t get the image to be small enough, so it’ll have to wait.

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I spent a large portion of the last two days in a car. Since I don’t drive, I did the passenger seat thing, which I must say is not much more fun than driving. When you drive, at least you are doing something. I always have these plans to do a lot of writing and reading that, somehow, never get done. If I were driving, I at least I would never hope to get other things done.

Anyhow, we drove from New York to Boston for the annual Serve-A-Thon. Since Jake was a City Year Corps member in 1992, he and his family do the Serve-A-Thon every year. If you’re from New York, it’s similar to the New York Cares Day. I really enjoy the day-long community service sessions cause everyone is so hyped up and you meet all sorts of interesting people. The best news I heard today as that City Year is planning to come to New York. I’ve been wanting to volunteer for them for a long time and now it looks like I might get the opportunity. Yeaay!

After cleaning the park and raking leaves all day, we drove to New Haven where Jake’s brother goes to college. His roommates and he are throwing a Halloween party. I didn’t even go to parties much when I was in college so it’s funny that I should choose to attend one four years after I graduated. We’ll see how this turns out.

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Today is the two-week anniversary of my Lasik surgery. I still haven’t really registered it all. I can see but I constantly think that I’m wearing contacts. I’m anxiously waiting for the moment it will all hit me.

Today’s word is obsession. Good word in my household. Both of us get totally obsessed about things. The funny thing is that the subject matter isn’t all that relevant. Only the strong obsession with which I throw myself at it. When I started writing a book, I obsessed about learning all the details of grammar (not that you can tell from my log). For some Godforsaken reason I decided to keep a blog and got totally obsessed with all the other ones. I spent hours of my day reading everyone’s words. I even wrote emails to some of these people. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just that, for a while, it consumed me. I kept trying to think of ways to change my blog so I’d have more visitors. I checked my referrer logs every second. I’m trying to get across the difference between liking something and totally obsessing about it.

For better or worse, I seem to be over that one. I now read a few logs whenever I feel like it and if people don’t want to visit my page. So be it. I can’t force them. However, if you have been reading my page and do like it, it might be nice of you to make contact. Make me feel like less of a loser and all. Heh Heh.

There are good obsessions, too. For example, my two good obsessions are reading and learning. I can never have enough of either. But I guess the word obsession has bad connotations doesn’t it?

When I tell people of the obsessions I have, and in most cases the sorrow they cause me, (like how I am not worthy) they tell me to stop thinking that way and to appreciate all the great things in my life. The thing is, if I could do that I wouldn’t be obsessing!

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Awesome
This is really really awesome.

1. dial 1-800-888-3999 (it’s free)
2. listen to the options
3. when you hear number 7 press number 7

This so made my day!!! Thanks go to Jessica!

Thoughts
My first day back home and it’s pouring. What a bummer.

I watch a lot of TV and I mean a lot. For me to get my work done, the television set has to be on or I can’t function. I generally watch what most people call crappy shows since I multitask while the set is on. Last week I’ve started watching Gilmore Girls and I must say it’s awesome. The dialogue is great, the characters act well and it doesn’t hurt that they are gorgeous. It’s funny. It’s witty. Watch it. You know you want to.

I woke up at 7am today, which isn’t so bad for jetlag. Hopefully, this means I can stay up past 7pm tonight. I managed to write my scene for the novel writing class and get my shit together in enough time. It’s amazing how I get all the necessary stuff done when I have a minimum amount of time left to do them. On the other hand, when I have a week to do something, I never get it done.

Last week, when we had the terrible bombings and killings in the Middle East, the thing that terrified me most was that CNN had a logo for the whole thing within seconds. I find that offensive.

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So I want to the doctor yesterday for a control and ended up having surgery on my eyes. The Lasik surgery. I’ve had pretty bad eyesight since I was in third grade so the idea of opening my eyes in the morning and actually being able to see is amazing beyond belief. The operation was pretty painless tho weird since my eyes were open the entire time. Watching them do the thing is not that much fun but it lasts all of 4 minutes per eye. Afterwards I felt some burning and stinging and today I see kinda blurry but I am all good. No more pain, just bothered by light.

Anyhow gotta go now since I’m not even supposed to use the computer much. More short pdates this week and longer ones later.

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