I talk a big talk, don't I?  I like to think of myself as an action hero, as the CEO of a company, as a model, yet I am none of these.  I like to think of myself as the most desirable human being on the planet, which I am, to a lone young man who is satisfied with such a dominating and overbearing person.  I'm such an egotist but I think it's part of being happy.  If you don't love yourself and what you do and what you think and what you say and write and type and share, then how could you really be truly satisfied and happy with your life?

But then I look at women and everything I build myself up to be in my head melts away so quickly.  Until I actually have to act I am so strong and confident, but when I am faced with someone I'm attracted to and I have to spill the words requesting their adoration in return...ah, it's so frightening.

There's an extremely thin, rather short young man that I see often when we hang out with a particular group of friends.  I think he is extremely attractive and very much enjoy being around him, but I already have a male so it is easy to think such things and not be afraid of rejection.  I don't need another male, so he is of no concern to me at this time.  Even further he is already dating someone.  However, if I was single and lonely and he was as well and I was prompted to tell him that I quite like his looks and the way he laughs and smiles and makes silly faces...well...I would freeze up and get sweaty.  Then I would awkwardly change the subject.  Then later I would kick myself a thousand times over for not saying anything.  The next day I would do the exact same thing.  I can't tell people that I could actually request a date from how I feel about them.  It makes me so nervous.

That's why I say I talk a big talk.  I admire so many of my friends.  Under different circumstances I think I could have been a lover to many of them.  But I can't tell them.  And if I feel this way, then why I am I held back from doing so?  Why can't I have them all?  Do people's hearts only have room for one other person?  Are we designed that way?  Am I the only person whose heart is larger?  Am I the only person who thinks that more lovers would equate to more satisfaction?  Maybe I'm just a intimately hedonistic idiot.

Anyway, there is a party tonight.  I'm...I'm afraid to go.  I always talk with my boyfriend about how wonderful it would be to go to gay bars and try to pick up women, but when it comes down to it I become a total loser the second I set foot in such a place.  I stutter and wring my hands and laugh nervously.  I always think to myself, "How can I expect any of these beautiful women to be interested in me?  No woman has ever been interested in me before.  Am I ugly?  Do all these people think I'm a fool for coming into this place?  Are they insulting my inside their minds?  Ugh..." and then I give up and sit in a corner until I can't stand it and leave.

Back to the party...it isn't necessarily any kind of "gay" party, but it is for the film festival here in town this weekend, so I would assume that it would draw a few of the more "open minded" people out, especially since it will be mostly volunteers for the festival (like me!) who are predominantly students.  I start thinking, "Man, I sure would like to try out my new hairstyle and see if it draws the people I'm interested to me...but I'm such a total loser...and I can't dance...and I look stupid in dresses...and blah blah blah," and then I just give up and I don't want to go.  I don't want to go and get rejected.  I'm only confident around guys because I already have one.  I know it's possible to catch one.  But with women I don't know what to expect.  I've never really been one myself, so I don't know how they will react to me.  When the shell is different than the contents, well, I feel like it will be too surprising.  I'm too strange.  Only women make me feel so self conscious and ugly and stupid.

And even if I do go, what do I wear?  If I wear a dress will I send the wrong vide?  If I wear pants and a cute shirt will I look like a tool?  Gawd, I just don't know what to do.  I don't know!

*bashes head on desk*  I need to just sit here all night and do homework and stop thinking about how nice it would be to hold a beautiful girl in my arms and have her tell me that I'm special to her.  Cold shower.

I often wonder what is wrong with me.  I wish the medical field was a little more advanced and my brain could be analyzed for its eccentricities.  Why am I constantly so focused on sex?  Why is it that I desire multiple partners of both genders?  Can I not be satisfied with what I have?  I wish someone would tell me what I should do about it.

I think the problem is that the rest of my life is so complicated and compelling.  Engineering is extremely mentally stimulating and in addition I tutor other students in chemistry which provides me with even more mental exercise.  I also do undergraduate research which pushes me to constantly rethink everything that I am doing to create a better experiment or get better results.  It is a never ending process of incremental improvement.  My mind is never stagnant.  I can't watch television anymore and it's getting harder to watch movies.  I have to be doing something else at the same time or I become restless and annoyed.  I wonder if I have some type of adult ADD because it certainly seems as though I require an overabundance of stimulation to satiate my thirst for both knowledge and entertainment.  Perhaps becoming an engineer has spoiled me and now I expect too much out of life in all respects.

I really think I expect too much out of intimacy as a concept.  I can't have friends.  I don't consider anyone I know a friend.  Either I have gotten to know them and I passively dislike them, or I have gotten to know them and am now infatuated with them.  I just constantly think about physical contact and emotional attachment and sex and I desire it from almost everyone I know and choose to hang out with on a regular basis.  I so consistently wish that this world was more like the worlds Robert Heinlein weaves in his books, worlds where morals have been shed for a cold and logical government that holds nothing sacred, worlds where I could love as many other people as my heart could hold close and they could do the same.  When I talk like that I start to wonder if I would be happier in some kind of hive mind society like the Borg or something.  Maybe what I crave is a deep connection with everyone I deem worthy of my consideration and that certainly sounds like a hive mind to me.

A few nights ago I stayed up until 3:30 AM because my fiance was on the phone with one of our mutual friends.  I couldn't sleep.  I had to stay awake because I wanted to hear them speaking with one another.  I wanted to be in the presence of a three hour phone conversation between friends just because it was so emotionally satisfying.  It had nothing to do with me or with really anyone.  I just couldn't sleep because I didn't want to miss out on that feeling, listening to a person laugh and talk and watching him smile just because he was enjoying another person.

I'm such a weirdo.  Maybe I'm glad no one can analyze my brain so in depth.  Maybe I don't want to know what is held inside my mind, in the deepest darkest reaches where these strange feelings come from.

The squirrel is confirmed dead by odor.  It's disgusting.  We went and hung out at a friend's apartment all day because we couldn't take it.  It's coming from the central vent in the living room, so we sprayed a whole shit ton of air freshener in there and then I coated two pieces of construction paper with fabreeze and taped them over the vent.  I hope that helps until Monday when maintenance and try and locate the body.

Ugh, at least that damn thing won't be spreading blood all over my kitchen anymore.  I guess you could say that's a bright side?

I think it's time for an aside to the more convoluted and frivolous thoughts of mine.

Don't tell anyone, but I've fallen back in love with myself.  I'm growing just as egotistical as I was sophomore year before it happened and it feels like my soul is returning to me, surging through my limbs and my heart and blowing my hair in the wind as it rushes back.

That phone call seems such a distant thing that I almost can't recall the feelings.

I'm so beautiful.  My clothing looks so elaborate, like the me that lives in my minds eye would wear.  My hips and legs and arms and waist and shoulders are all suddenly so well shaped.  I spend so much time looking in the mirror and I imagine almost every conversation I have resulting in a sexual encounter because it seems possible to achieve with this body.

The fear is gone.  I've stopped caring about everyone else's thoughts and motives and memories and instead fallen back in love with all the life I had become estranged from. 

Maybe it was getting into graduate school.  Maybe it's because I think he would be proud of me.  Maybe enough time has passed.  Maybe something even more fantastic than anything before is about to happen.  Maybe that's the feeling I have.

I don't know.  Jason.  Jason.  Can I say the name again without feeling as though my heart is about to be crushed from the inside out?  If he were in the room with us right now could I look him in the eye without a tear drop immediately forming?  Jason.  Jason, Jason, Jason.  Where are you now, now that my life is back in order?  Now that my body and mind are back in order?  Do you ever think of me the way I think of you?  Do you ever think of him?  Was I right about everything?  Was that why you abandoned us?  I want to ask you.  I want to show you I survived and I've forgiven you and I've even flourished through it all.  I want you to love us.  Will you?

I italicized it because it feels like a melody, like a song pouring forth from the deepest part of my heart.  You know, the part that sometimes you don't understand even though it is part of you.

I've fallen in love with one of my professors, not in a way that I want him physically (although he is quite attractive for a 40ish man, very slender and with a face like Dr. House with glasses), but in a way that he is who I want to be some day.  I want my students to feel about me the way I do about him.  I want them to watch me with anticipation and awe as I swing my arms across a blackboard and the rush of knowledge I have obtained through my life flows silently and beautifully onto their notebooks and into their minds.  I want to make them laugh and remember.  I want them all to smile at me as they pass, wish me a good weekend on Fridays, and wave to me were we to pass on campus.  I want to be that kind of professor.  I want students to look forward to their time with me, but not long for me when it has passed.  Yes, that would be wonderful.

For some reason another professor's e-mails, simple though they are, consistently make me feel awkward.  I can't really say why.  For example, the last one he sent me consisted of this single line:

9:00 sounds good...thanks.

It seems so simple, yet the ellipsis makes it sound so...strange, as though instead of it being a meeting to teach him how to create online assignments it is a meeting to give him drugs or perhaps show him how to properly give a striptease.  I don't condone the wanton use of the ellipsis.  It always makes a statement sound shadier.  Think about pauses in speech.  They are always followed by something like "...if you want to try it from behind..." or "...we could just take one hit..." or as an expression of distaste like "...I see..." or "...I guess..." but they are rarely used for something positive.  And anyway, aside from his consistent use of random ellipses he also seems very nervous when I look him in the eyes.  I'm not one to look down or look around when I need to get information from someone and it seems to make him very uncomfortable.  I think he has a crush on me.  I mean, I have a crush on me so I like to pretend that everyone else does.

I put a post up on craigslist.  I don't know how effective that is.  I've been having these dreams about snatching a recent high school graduate from her home and taking her with me to graduate school.  I have this thing for 18-year-old otaku kids.  I really want one for my own.  I want a young woman who will be content to sit around and talk about yaoi manga all day with me and maybe kiss and snuggle sometimes.  Maybe I'll meet someone wherever I choose for graduate school.  There has to be a lonely someone out there who is wishing for someone like me as well.  There must be.  I always say that and I never even think that I could be mistaken.  When one fulfills all of one's acheivable dreams, one must move on to the infeasible ones until they, too, become acheivable.

Also, I think the squirrel died in my ceiling.  I'm hoping I'm wrong, but he/she wasn't heard moving around at all today.  I hope it doesn't smell too terrible.

I came home just now and there is blood.  There is blood all over my kitchen.  The cage is moved and a couple of the raspberries are thrown around and there is so much blood.  There is blood in the ceiling.  There is blood on the refrigerator.  There is blood on the counter.  There is blood on the walls.  There is a puddle with a splatter pattern around it suggesting that it fell from the ceiling.  I'm freaking out.  I'm freaking out.

Also the couches are moved as well as one of the chairs in my office, but the door was closed when I got back so I imagine what happened was that the maintenance people came in and the squirrel was in the kitchen.  When he saw them he/she bolted behind the couch so they moved it and then he/she ran behind another and they moved it.  Then it ran back up into the ceiling and stared at them so they got a chair from my room and some kind of rough weapon (I'm assuming a wrench from the blood patterns) and then smacked it in the ceiling but allowed it to escape because as I am typing I can hear it moving.  I am freaking out.  A bleeding squirrel is dying in my ceiling.

I really need to wake up.  Like now.  There it goes again.  I can hear it scratching.  I have to go to class.

Alright, so here we go.  I'm going to try and get everything down in 15 minutes...

There is a squirrel in the ceiling.  I know he is there because Sunday morning he fell through the ceiling tiles (which are clear plastic) and broke them, woke my fiance up who subsequently chased him around the room and tried to get him out into the hall, and then jumped back up in the ceiling, leaving my fiance startled, confused and unable to get back to sleep.  We noticed that the ceiling tiles had small patches of a yellow substance on them and were told by the maintenance people that it was just grease from the air conditioners (which are also living in the ceiling), but this morning I noticed the previously clean new ceiling tiles had the spots on them again and a new one was forming...underneath the feet of the squirrel.  Yes, he was urinating on the kitchen ceiling when I got home.  I can't tell you how thoroughly disgusted I am right now.  Those yellow patches have always been on the ceiling from the day we moved in, so that means a fucking squirrel has been living in our ceiling for a couple years now.  My fiance says he's kind of a fatty squirrel, so we assume that he just got too fat and finally fell through, otherwise we would never have known.  Ugh, that was the last straw.  I stormed downstairs and asked at the office for some kind of trap to catch him.  Inside I placed a bowl of cereal and raspberries as instructed on the intarwebz and had the maintenance crew remove the ceiling tiles to encourage him to jump down and get inside the trap.  If we catch him I will personally kill him.  Sorry guys, letting him go will result in him returning to the ceiling.  Squirrels and other rodents are like dogs and cats.  They can find their way home over long distances and even if I drove him hundreds of miles away he might come back, little fucker.

Other than that I'm tired of talking about, being asked about, and being told to plan my wedding.  Even MY parents are getting into it now and I just want to tell them all to shut the hell up and leave me alone.  I'll do what I want, when I want and how I want it, to quote a wise shake-shaped man.  I need to get married over the summer LEGALLY to gain benefits for my husband when I start grad school and I WANT to get fake married on Halloween so I can have a sweet party.  DEAL WITH IT!  I have other MUCH MORE IMPORTANT things to think about right now.

Also I got into Cornell.  I got into fucking Cornell.  I can't believe it.  It's like a dream.  Then, after I got accepted the exact professor I was hoping to work with sent me an e-mail and information about his research and even got me in touch with a real estate agent that he knows personally to find me a house!  I honestly expect to wake up soon...

...except maybe this is a half dream/half nightmare what with the goddamn squirrel in my ceiling.

Oh gawd I really want to make an entry but I have an exam in about 15 minutes.

My main point is that a squirrel is living in the ceiling of our apartment and it pissed on our kitchen floor and I don't know what to do about it.

Also I will probably not be living in Columbia this summer for reasons unrelated to squirrels in the ceiling.

I wish I could write a long, drawn out explanation of the crazy squirrel shit but it will have to wait.

I got into Cornell!!!

So here I am spending another evening in the engineering library on a Tuesday.  My hands are covered in chalk dust and I like the feeling.  I like to think that teaching students on a chalkboard is more organic and interactive than mumbling about a Powerpoint presentation or getting weird marker scringles under my fingernails.  I feel like I am rubbing a copy of my knowledge onto the board and it is in turn beaming into the minds of the students who are intently listening to my explanations.  It is such a strange and wonderful feeling.  I had 25 students at my help session tonight.  I've never taught that many students at once and it was admittedly a little intimidating, especially when some of the girls look like they would rather gouge your eyes out with their heels than learn anything about chemistry.  Overall, though, the students who take the time to come to a review session have a special place in my heart, regardless of their personality failings.  I want to help them and I hope I end up doing so.

Anyway, nothing as exciting as getting into a good graduate program has happened since then.  I've been eating really well and sleeping a normal amount and I feel kind of fantastic.  I'm wearing short shorts (well, I mean short as in they don't touch my knees, not as in my vagina lips are almost hanging out) and a t-shirt and I feel absolutely stunning even if the hosts of What Not to Wear would condemn me for purchasing the shirt at Goodwill for $2.  Also, the weather here has warmed up and it smells like spring outside and I love that smell, so I really can't get myself into a real funk right now.  I feel great and I think I look good and my partner thinks I look good and I am as happy as I've ever been in my entire life.  I've always been of the opinion that happiness is a synonym for satisfaction and I can truly say that I am satisfied with my life right now.

I'm a bit short on cash, though.  Not cash that I necessarily need, but cash to save up and take us on a honeymoon with.  More on this as it unfolds.

I've been trying to quit one of my jobs to have more times for friends and studying, but as hard as I try my supervisor just will not fire me.  She is so desperate for someone who can tutor people on differential equations that I might as well be made of solid gold to her.  I've succeeded in getting my hours cut in half, but she just will not let me quit at all.  *sigh*  I guess it's nice to be needed, but I think 30 hours a week is enough for my last semester of undergraduate studies.

Speaking of which, I haven't done anything in terms of research this semester.  I hope that changes soon.

I know, I'm boring.

I've gotten to the point where I kind of want to touch myself in public.  Weighing what I want to and working out and eating right and GETTING INTO GRADUATE SCHOOL have kind of made me fall deeply and madly in love with myself.  Conceited and egotistical?  Perhaps, but it feels good and life is grand and wonderful.

My partner and I were sitting in the secret tiny computer lab alcove with like eight computers in the engineering library and I turned to him and said that we should have a room like this in our home only with a television mounted to the wall and he agreed.  Hopefully it will have a little keypad for entry purposes.  And a DDR machine in the back.  And we could hide it behind a bookcase.  I worry about what kind of children we will have.  I hope our eclectic nature doesn't bring out a Dexter or a Stewey.