It's funny how alone one can feel when surrounded by people.  Ever since I was little I've always had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that people just hang out with me because they are nice or because they are apathetic.  I've always felt like an outcast, the only exception being when I met my husband.  I guess that's why we are married.  But otherwise I always get this weird feeling like I'm intruding on something I wasn't meant to be a part of.  I hate making friends, even though I do it so easily.  It takes me a really long time before I can shove that awkward feeling to the back of my mind and accept that they might like being around me sometimes.  I also hate being told to call a professor by his/her first name.  I feel so uncomfortable, like the instant I do it they will shout, "Tricked you!  I actually find that extremely disrespectful.  Now get out of my sight you mindless sheep."  I like to pretend other people's opinions don't effect me, and I guess they really don't.  It's my own opinions about other people and the thoughts I make up for them to think that effect me.  I often wonder how much of what I make up to be in other people's minds is actually truthful.  I think I think way more about other people than they ever think about me and I'm not all that sure how to go about working on the problem.  Eh.  I guess there are much worse problems to have so maybe I should shut up.

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There isn't enough time in the day and my mother asked me a frightening question the other day.  "So, do you and Mike just not do anything together anymore?" Of course I refuted her claim, but honestly we don't get to spend all that much time together.  I'm sure you've noticed the volume of sex-related posts has gone down if you read this blog a lot...and that's because we just aren't having it that often anymore.  We eat meals together sometimes...sometimes two a day...sometimes one...sometimes none actually.  When he gets home from work he's often grumpy or touchy and will become frustrated too easily for me to want to talk to him for extended periods of time.  He also complains about a lot of things lately, like how well I clean the apartment or how I wash the dishes and it gets pretty irritating since I'm doing everything housekeeping in addition going to class and doing homework and all he does when he gets home is waste time on the internet or play computer games.  I understand that he needs time to wind down, we all do, but I don't think it's fair for him to complain about all the things I do if he isn't going to help with any of it.  Did you ever complain about how your mom did the laundry?  I didn't.  She accidentally dyed all my white shirts pink with a red blanket once and I didn't say a thing because I never help with the laundry anyway and probably would have made the same mistake.  It's just really frustrating sometimes, so I end up scheduling lots of things to do after I get out of class and even in the evenings so that I don't have to be home and I don't have to listen to him complain.  He even berates me for playing MMOs halfheartedly.  I mean, it's a fucking game and I just want to relax and NOT concentrate for a change and all he can think about is how I didn't do exactly what he commanded me to do.  It's awful.

I mean, it isn't like that all the time...but it is probably a majority of time.  Sometimes he can be really sweet and I'm hoping it's just his hatred of his job that has him so tense and thoughtlessly cruel...but I can't be sure.  I don't remember him being like this for such an extended period of time before.  Maybe every so often he would have a bad day, but never like this, never ever day.  Again, I keep blaming myself for his current state and it's really starting to effect me mentally.  I don't really know if I can make a whole year with him hating his job...and he also seems so disinterested in figuring out what he wants to do with his life.  It's like living with a 15-year-old kid instead of my 22-year-old husband.  I feel like he will never quit the job because he will never have the drive to get any other job.  I mean I basically filled out his application for the place he is working at now and told him what to say in his phone interviews during the actual interviews (I whispered things to him), so I honestly don't think he would have gotten it without my help and I don't know if he will ever get a job of his own free will and desire.  I find that so depressing both for him and for our future and I guess I should have noticed this trait before now but one can become wrapped up in the fun things and push the serious things to the side.  *sigh*  I don't know what to do.

I'm sorry this entry is so depressing.

Please, whatever you do, whatever anyone tells you, DO NOT EVER EVER EVER WATCH PINK FLAMINGOS!  I'm not going to explain why.  Just please, for fuck's sake, do not watch it.

Holy fuck on a fuck sandwich!

I just wanted to say that.

Nothing inherently interesting has happened since I made my last entry, but I just felt like making one. 

Our microfluidic device worked and all the other groups' failed.  I'll chalk that one down as a win.  I better get an A in Microchemical Systems for that.

I can't wait until Halloweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!!!!  I'm so excited and I get more and more excited every day and I just know I'll want to take more pictures than my camera can hold!  Wheeee!!!

My whole body is basically in a state of deep, almost paralyzing muscle pain.  Obviously breakdancing is a wonderful work out for me, but I'm wondering if at this rate I'll be able to go and not die on Thursday.  Right now I can hardly do anything but sit and walk because everything in my upper torso and ass area hurts.  Even my palms hurt from practicing the freezes.  It's hard to balance on only your hands and head when you are used to using your feet.  Anyway, I'll do my best, but perhaps I should take it a little easier next time.  What am I saying?  When have I ever taken an endeavor other than World of Warcraft easy?  Never, that's the answer.  I'm sure I'll go on Thursday and I'm sure I'll practice my heart out and suffer through the pain because at least then I know I'm alive.

I'm really hungry right now but I don't want to eat anything because the Discovery Channel scared the crap out of me.  Did you know living a "healthy" lifestyle by maintaining a normal weight and exercising will only increase your life expectancy in that you won't die of a heart attack or whatever, but only eating a low calorie diet (they were talking barely more than starvation) will actually add years onto your life.  Basically, your body is a rechargable battery.  Every time you recharge it (with lots and lots of food) it lasts for less time after the charge.  Eventually you can't charge it anymore and it just stops working.  Therefore, eating very small amounts of food makes your body work less hard to keep you running.  It seems almost counter intuitive, but I can honestly say that I never feel really good after eating a huge meal so I guess it makes sense.  Perhaps I should lower my weight goal to like 110 pounds instead of 115.

Anyway, I'm just babbling to hear myself talk at this point.  I'ma stop now.

GAAAHHHH!!!  It's driving me INSANE!!!  Why haven't they announced our research advisor assignments yet?!  I need to know!  What a terrible thing to leave hanging over the heads of eager graduate students over a weekend!

Also today I went to my first breakdancing club meeting and it was A-FUCKING-MAZING and I will be going back as much as I can because it makes me feel like such a fantastic bamf.  I learned just a few very simplistic things and foundational moves, but I'm proud that by the end of the meeting I could do all of them (albeit poorly).  A few minutes after I left the meeting I was suddenly drained of all energy, a great sign that I worked out a lot of muscles I had not been using prior, and that is also fantastic.  I can feel my shoulders and back and abs aching with the pain of growth and improvement.  That's my favorite pain.  Actually I wouldn't call it pain.  I would call it progress. 

Regardless I am extremely happy that I've grown such a drive to achieve all the fun things I've always wanted to do.  I should make a list:
- Learn to play the keytar: in progress.
- Learn to breakdance: in progress.
- Learn a martial art: in progress.
- Learn a new language: not yet started.
- Weigh 115 pounds: working on it...slowly.
- Meet the female love of my life: working on it...super slowly.

I'll come up with more later.  Now I need to sleep.

Good night, internets.

I'm talking to both of them right now...

This is awful.  I must be a masochist.

I haven't made an entry for a bit because nothing has really happened.  I'm waiting on a lot of things.

I'm waiting to be assigned to a research adviser.
I'm waiting for my classes to be over and for my research to start.
I'm waiting to work on my homework until tomorrow so that I can just sit down the entire day and get it all done.
I'm waiting for Halloween so I can see all my friends and family who I'm missing terribly.
I'm waiting for my husband to get home so I can cook him dinner and then go play board games at a friend's home.
I'm waiting for this year to be over so that perhaps we can look into renting or purchasing a home.
I'm waiting until we have a real house so that we can have children.
I'm waiting for a good weekend to go to the gay bar.
I'm waiting for the semester to be over so I can start hitting on one of the girls I'm tutoring.
I'm waiting to lose down to 115 pounds so that I can buy more long pants.
I'm waiting for Sunday so I can learn to break dance.
I'm waiting for a package in the mail.

I'm just waiting.  Sorry I don't have more to talk about.

I just cut my husband's back hair.  Does that mean we're old?  He has like maybe 20ish hairs on his shoulders and upper back and I hate them so when they grow too long I cut them all off for him.  He has about the same number on his chest, but they are all in a nice triangular pattern between his neck and breastbone so I can abide by them.  The ones on his back are just randomly scattered about and get in my mouth when I kiss his back, which is one of my favorite things to do to him, so they aren't allowed to exist.  But I digress.

The students in Heat and Mass Transfer were very grateful for my rice treat offering!  All the ladies loved the chocolate chips I added as well as using the chocolate rice cereal instead of normal crisp rice, and all the boys love food anyway so none of them complained.  I even gave one to the professor!  I got lots of compliments and I find that with food even not-so-genuine people give genuine responses because you can't hide disgust as well when you've just eaten something.  I'm really just happy that it made everyone stop and smile for a moment.  One of my favorite things is to make others joyful and I succeeded today.

Those of you who've been with me since the beginning may remember a particular time period in my life, the only time in my life where I felt like I didn't know who I was or what I was doing and I became lost in a sea of confusion and depression.  I was forced to confront mortality as a concept for the first time in my life and I didn't handle it all that well.  During this time a particular person seemed depressed as well.  We talked and I felt comfortable speaking to him about my desperation.  On a particularly bad day I snapped and decided that if I was going to be depressed I couldn't be around normal, happy people and he and I must have been meant for one another because of our dysfunctionalities  in regards to life in general.  Of course this assumption is false.  You do not need people in a particular mood when you are depressed.  You need those who care about you and who are willing to listen and who love you.  Well, I made the mistake (and never made it again, mind you) of ditching the one person who loved me most in the world for his best friend, the depressed one.  Nothing came of it.  He rejected me and I came to my senses and got back with my now husband.

But I lost him as a friend.  To elaborate even more, I have a very active imagination.  Prior to what I often refer to as "the event" I enjoyed dreaming of two of them, him and my husband, being together.  I imagined it all the time.  I was in love with them being best friends.  In my mind they were more than best friends and I enjoyed my fanciful little play world quite a lot.  I think I'm in love with the concept of best friends falling in love...because I think perhaps to me it is the deepest kind of love to become attracted to one's friend.  Anyway, after the event...they stopped talking.  I mean, he 100% ignored me which was to be expected...but it also destroyed their friendship.  Possibly the sexiest friendship ever and I ruined it.  I was heartbroken, not by the whole asking him out thing and being rejected, but by the destruction of a friendship that would have been perfectly fine otherwise.

Time passed and wounds healed.  We started talking again, awkwardly at first but slowly it grew easier.  Recently it hasn't even provoked any unpleasant feelings to talk with him.  We're both in grad school.  We can relate to one another's stories.  However, it isn't the same for my husband.  My husband claims that before any of this happened he thought the guy was kind of a weirdo, but stayed friends because they lived right down the street from one another and he wasn't that bad as a video game buddy.  He claims they never talked about girl problems or anything like that and he claims that they weren't really that good of friends.  I know that wasn't the case, because once when we first started talking, he said about my husband, and I quote, "Maf is one of the only trustworthy people I know.  I can always depend on him."  To say such things about someone who is only a "video game buddy" I think would be impossible.  Perhaps the feelings weren't completely mutual, but I know that the event definitely affected my husband's friendship with him adversely and really how could it not?  But my husband's wounds haven't healed.  He still doesn't want to talk to him.  When I said we should try and hang out he completely rejected the idea.  Frankly, I think he associates the pain I caused him (during the break up) with his ex-best friend and it's tearing me up inside, but you can't really just asked someone to be friends with someone else again.  It doesn't work that way, no matter how much I wish it did.

I often wish I could take it all back, but I know given the chance I wouldn't because it taught a lot about myself and how I deal with sadness.  Still, I wish they could be friends again like they used to be, not only for me and my dirty, dirty dreams, but for him as well.  He sounds so lonely and it hurts me because I feel like I basically erased his only real friendship with a phonecall.  And he's not the type I see finding a woman he can put up with on the long term, so what does he have other than friends?  And he still speaks of my husband so fondly that it's like a knife from the darkness with each word.  Consequently I've been talking to him far more than I should, perhaps out of guilt, perhaps out of the desire to pretend like it never happened.  I don't really know why.  Maybe I was just overjoyed that he seemed like he had completely recovered from the whole ordeal.  Often our conversations are meaningless or horribly boring, but I can't seem to avoid talking to him.  I'm just compelled to do so by some deep buried part of myself.  It's a waste of time, I know.  I know I can't take back what was said and done.  I know that both of us are thinking about it in the backs of our minds.  I know that my husband chose me and feels like it was a mutually exclusive choice, but I just want him to realize that it wasn't, that they can be friends again so easily and that the only one who did anything wrong was me.  I know the ex-best friend is willing.  I can tell from the things he says.  I can sense his longing to have his best friend back, but he just won't come out and say it.  I honestly don't know what to do or even if there is anything to do.  I guess I'll just keep talking and listening.  I think I at least owe him that all things considered.

Anyway, I think this entry is long enough and I'd like to play video games before I have to go to sleep.

Sleep tight, internets.

I made rice crispie treats for everyone!  I can't wait for class!

Also with clothes on this morning I weighed 118.

I've been talking to some specific people too much recently.  I'll elaborate later.

Ahhhhhhh...I can sigh a big huff of relief.  My midterm is over and after all the solo studying (12ish hours), discussing with other students and finally cramming an hour beforehand I had no trouble with it.  I anticipate a grade about 80%, hopefully above 90% depending on how many random mistakes I made and how the TA/professor grades the thing.  I feel satisfied that I have redeemed myself for the time being and I can feel better than I did after getting my other exam back with the terrible score.  I will say that I think it is very unfair to students to write an exam so that it takes two hours instead of the single hour allotted for class.  A couple people had to skip classes that came directly after the midterm because it took too long.  Like I said, I think that is very unfair to students, undergraduate or graduate, because we can't simply say, "No, I'll just take an hour," and then rush through the test and by the same token it's hard to say, "Sorry, I'm skipping your class for another class."  It's just an awkward situation.  What if those students who schedule classes right in a row had exams in all the classes on the same day.  Then they would be fucked if one of the professors was all like, "You get two hours to do this, whether you can stay or not."  And then students like me who didn't have anywhere to go get an advantage based on a completely random criteria.  It's just not fair.  But that's life I suppose.

Also, I can breath another huge sigh of relief because one of the other first years was kind enough to take time out of his own schedule to re-explain separation of variables to me and even offered to show me one of his own personal textbooks so that I might choose whether or not to purchase it for the advancement of my own knowledge.  As I was saying before, the people in this class all seem so kind hearted and willing to help and it's basically the most fantastic atmosphere I've ever experienced since starting the DDR club back in undergrad.  I kind of want to bake everyone cookies or make cake balls or something and bring them to class because they all deserve some kind of gift or praise for being the type of people everyone should be.  I'm in love with all the ChBE graduate students of the fall of 2009 and I'm not afraid to say it.

That reminds me, I made an order on amazon for one chemical engineering textbook, one yaoi manga, and a collection of sheet music from the best of Styx.  Now my suggested items are this crazy jumble of yaoi and technical references and it's kind of laughable.  Someone commented that I was going to be put on some kind of watch list for my outlandish purchases, but what can I say, I'm just a person with diverse interests.

I weight 116 pounds last night after I was done eating things.  I'm not going to allow myself to get below 110 because I think that's unhealthy for me and it kind of represents a line I just don't want to cross.  Once my weight begins with "10" I feel like that's in some way frightening and I don't want to feel that way about my own body.  Playing DDR has been a large factor in this since I haven't really increased the amount of food I've been eating, but I have increased my physical exercise now that I have a little more time in the evenings.  And I'm going to go learn to break dance Wednesday night!  And I'll probably attend Aikido class on Thursday.  I'm going to be so active, but in a bunch of really cool ways instead of boring ones like just running in circles on a track or lifting weights.  I like feeling good about myself in that kind of way.

One of the lights in our livingroom has been out for quite some time and I should replace it but I'm so lazy.  I think I'll sit around and watch television instead and basque in the glow of free time since I've completed my midterm and my homework for this week already.

I woke up this morning and started studying.  I took a 15 minute break to eat lunch.  I wasted some time on facebook, maybe an hour.  We had sex for about an hour...maybe a bit more.  I took a 10 minute break for dinner.  I stopped studying only about 30 minutes ago because I just couldn't take it anymore.  I honestly don't understand a majority of the material I'm being presented with in my courses.  I'm seriously starting to doubt my ability to actually excel as a graduate student and I may just have to be satisfied with mediocrity.  Mediocrity isn't that bad though...as long as it doesn't slip into that danger zone of borderline failure...

I did get an e-mail from a professor today and I'm going to copy and paste it here because it kept me studying when I was just about to give up and go cry on my bed with my husband.

Thanks for your interest in my group. I enjoyed my conversations with you
and I was impressed by your strong motivation and excellent academic
achievements. I understand that you may not have too much background in my
research area, but as I mentioned to you, several of my former students who
did not have any bio background before they joined my group are doing very
well now. As a matter of fact, two of them are now professors in academia
([name] at University of Tulsa and [name] at Texas A&M
University). 

I will be very happy to address any concerns/questions that you may have
before you make your final decision on Oct. 5. I hope that you will consider
my group favorably.

To have a professor request that I choose his group, such a vote of confidence really put a smile on my face and brought me out of my funk for just a moment.

I need to buy a textbook that explains separation of variables.  I think that would make my life much easier.