Hurts So Good

So yesterday I finally had my first massage from the incomparable H. to alleviate what she referred to as my hunchback termpaper syndrome, and I have no idea why I waited so long. She worked like a dog on me, bless her heart, especially on the two knots above my shoulderblades that I have now nicknamed Thing1 and Thing2. They're not gone, but they're much smaller and much subdued now that The (Cool) Cat in the (Massage) Hat has shown them who's boss. This morning I woke up and, for the first time in a week, I wasn't stiff. Everything moved! Of course, everything also hurt, but honestly I was so pleased I didn't have to lurch to the bathroom like Frankenstein's monster that I almost didn't care. It was as if, instead of being hit by a speeding car and dragged down a cobblestone street (which was how I felt after the combination of "weekend hunched over a laptop" and "Tuesday spent hauling things down many stairs"), I had gotten drunk, laid down in the middle of the street and, while incredibly relaxed, let the car gently roll over me. Okay, maybe I'm not painting a tempting picture here but trust me, in this life you're gonna take your knocks one way or another, and I believe it's better for your sanity and overall tension level to hire a professional to beat the crap out of you all at once. Then you can recover and move on, crap-free. It's an antidote to the amateur-hour death of a thousand cuts that daily stress in Gotham can create. (And H. is an awesome masseur, so don't let my tale of a messed-up back put you off of her magic touch.)

Unlike apparently a lot of people, I don't mind a little pain during the massage either. I sometimes become so used to being tense that the pain is almost necessary to make me aware of it and let those muscles relax -- sometimes you have to swing to the opposite extreme before you can come back to the middle. And that's all we'll say about pain, as otherwise this page will be getting a lot more search engine hits. It's not nice to tease the perverts, after all; they ask for so little.

Of course, H. and I capped off the massage by promptly getting caught in a frickin' biblical deluge while searching for an Irish pub in midtown. Luckily, we finally realized that all you have to do is close your eyes and point to find an Irish pub in midtown, so when the one we were looking for was too crowded we ended up at the one directly across the street. I ordered a mixed drink instead of wine without realizing why; I told H. I was just in a weird mood but I realized later on the subway home that I must have been channeling the fabulously retro, American-style cocktail bar that F. and I ended up at after getting caught in a similar downpour in Vienna. Apparently the Zombies, peanuts and Frank Sinatra made an indelible impression on me and now I just gotta have a cocktail in a tall glass when I'm wet and squelchy. There are worse things, that's for sure.

Off to get my laundry; I'm working from home today which is a godsend as I have not a stitch of clean clothing left to wear. Here's a picture of the flowers on the Columbia campus to close out the post; the camera on my new cellphone is a lot better than the camera on my old one.

Get outta town, eh?

So, today was the day. End of an era. We finally packed C. off back to Canadia, with his dad and two truckfuls of stuff stuffed into one full truck. Don't let the George Washington Bridge hit ya on the ass on the way out! (Sniff. I joke through my pain.)

Kool and the Gang (and by Kool I mean R.) showed up around 9:30 or so and we started hauling. L. had a bright idea -- station somebody on each landing and just hand off boxes one to another, so we wouldn't all have to run up and down all four flights of stairs with every box. And it was a bright idea, except for the fatal flaw that the lady Aretha sang so soulfully: "Every chain, has got a weak link." And the weak link in a chain of guys was, sadly, me. All the other boxes I could carry, but the book boxes were too heavy for me, and every time one of them came down the little pile on my landing grew. And there were a lot of book boxes. Literacy: scourge of a nation. Or at least the portion of the nation that helps you move. Plus my exercise-induced healthy glow (i.e. face shining as red as a neon beet) seemed to worry people. It's genetic, people -- I'm pale! Honestly, if I was about to stroke out (instead of just looking like it) I really would have said something. So anyway, they sent me upstairs to help haul stuff that I could lift out of the apartment, where I hogged the air conditioning and felt guilty about it for most of the morning.

C. & F., it's just as well y'all were moving out, cause with us hollering cheerful obscenities and random Pulp Fiction quotes to each other up and down your tile stairwell for three hours, you woulda got kicked out of this building if you weren't already leaving. You spend a morning with R., hauling cargo and sweating like a Sweathog, and see if you can help talking like a pimp for the rest of the day. (Kindly make sure that the video footage is not shown to anyone who still thinks well of me.)

SPACE AVAILABLE

That's what it says in huge letters on the sign I stare at out my window while I'm working at my desk. "Up to 300,000 RSF!" -- whatever in tha hell an RSF is, you can get 300,000 of 'em right chere, no waiting. I've been sitting here all day writing my term paper and looking at the stupid sign and thinking about how my friend left town today and now she doesn't live here anymore. Immersing yourself in an in-depth analysis of neo-Freudian psychodynamic theory is not the best distraction when you're bummed, I can now attest. I can't analyze this feeling to death like I usually do because it has too many pieces -- I'm angry and depressed and thrilled for her and whiny about how it's not fair and vicariously excited because I know this is the start of something big. I don't know how to resolve the ambiguity so I just hold the blob of feeling carefully in the center of my mind and try to ignore it but every once in a while I have to reach in and poke at it like a loose tooth. Oh well will ya look at that, I guess I could analyze it to death after all.

I have come to one concrete conclusion and it involves this blog, which is why I'm taking a break from trying to stuff 100 years of contradictory and often absurd psychological theory into a 15-page paper, which -- so help me -- I will print an extra copy of just so I can burn it after I turn the thing in. I've always waited for inspiration to strike before I wrote anything here; I've never wanted to blog unless I had something to say. So screw that. I read my friends' blogs who write about normal daily happenings and I'm never bored -- I always feel like I'm a part of their lives and it's a good feeling. So from now on, less literary and more this is what I did today, dear diary -- if for no other reason, then because someone in Canada might read it and feel like she's part of my life.

Semi-fake post

Nothing in the least bit interesting has happened to me in the last two days, yet I am inspired to update by DeweySweet's haiku challenge. (Okay, it's a desperate effort to distract myself so that I can stop composing haiku, for the love of god -- it's addictive! -- I'm sitting at my desk at work compulsively counting on my fingers!) Since I have nothing to write about, I am forced against my will to post a link:

The Surrealist Compliment Generator

One of the very first sites I ever bookmarked, back in the far off frontier of the wild wild interweb, and I can't tell you how much it pleases me that it's still alive and kicking. Warms my stale old heart, really. Makes me feel young again every time I click it. Or at least 29 again.

The eyes have it

Am I the last one to realize how much more soothing it is to work with the MS Word display switched to white text on a blue background? Wow. Eyestrain-wise, I'm a brand new woman. (Also a brand new Yalie, due to the familiarity of the color scheme. Sniff. Brings back memories.) Big props to my glaucoma-and-cateract-afflicted dad for the tip! He's a resourceful guy, that's for sure -- of course, figuring out how to fudge the eye exam for his driver's license is a slightly less benign discovery, but still, MacGyver would be proud.

How much coursework, you ask?

Indeed, let us catalogue precisely how much work has been assigned by my Personality Theory professor, herself a freshly-minted PhD still wet behind the metaphorical teaching ears. Three tests, each an hour and fifteen minutes long, covering 500 pages of material in total. One 6-page paper, which will form the basis of a 15-minute class presentation to be planned and delivered with one other student (my partner has already e-mailed me her proposed Powerpoint slides, god help me, and we're meeting on Tuesday). One fifteen-page research paper which must make extensive use of external sources. All in six weeks flat. Bitch be crazy, is what I'm saying. The timeframe is so compressed that the first test is Monday of next week and the second follows hard on its heels on Wednesday of the following week. By contrast, my last psych class was a normal semester length (14 weeks) and the coursework consisted of: A) a midterm. And B) ... a final. Both of which were primarily multiple choice. Sigh.

On the plus side, I estimate I'm now approximately 80% finished with the 6-page paper after starting it at lunchtime today. (Well, not precisely true -- I did take the time to read the 5-page research report on which it's based at 7am this morning, crashed out at F. and C.'s place and unexpectedly perky and hangover-free while waiting for them to wake up. That took all of 15 minutes. While listening to the White Stripes on my ipod at the same time. It's not complicated source material, is what I'm trying to convey here.) So apparently I've lost the writer's block (more like writer's paralysis) which afflicted me in college, turned my term papers into excruciating exercises in procrastination, and eventually contributed to my decision to get out into the working world rather than continuing directly to grad school without passing go (or collecting financial aid in the amount of $200). The torture of having one's (adult) writing repeatedly ripped apart by a peer review committee for an actual scientific journal is not without gain! Of course, this paper is only worth 10% of my grade, so I'm not exactly stressing over it. Truth be told, I'm having some badly-repressed schadenfreude-y fun, since the research I'm reviewing is so shoddy and completely point-free that I get to rip it apart in my turn. Take that, respected author who wrote this report 4 years ago and will never even know about my insightful critique of your methodology! ...Yeah.

Haiku of apology

Too much coursework for
Personality Theory;
no blogging for me.