L

Oh Friday. T'was a lovely day. Well...t'was a foggy day, but lovely on the inside, if you catch my drift (I know that it's a hard drift to catch).
Went to African History where, after making faces with Mark (Mark!!) during tutorial, I was asked to breakfast by the object of my African History affections. Classy as we are, I ended up buying him breakfast at the dining hall due to my abundance of Chartwells money. We ate with Jakob some, then Mark walked me to my sociology tutorial on the fifth floor of the AQ and headed off to the library to study nuclear something-or-other. Neither of us had plans for the evening so I suggested we hang out some and he supplemented this with the idea of dinner and a movie. Success!
Dinner at White Spot, which is actually fairly nice. We ate dinner and had a round of the house beer; he paid. Following such fine dining, we viddied Saw 3, quite the gruesome flick, and gory to the extent to which Mark had to excuse himself for a few minutes to get a drink of water. We held hands through it and it was sweet. There isn't a lot that's cornier than making out in a movie theatre on the first date.
We drove around some after that in his '92 Jetta, black, and took walks to see views of the city from North and West Van. There was some making out involved near the end. And some more in the back of his car, but enough about that.
At the end of the evening he drove me home and walked me to my room. He didn't stay long for fear of getting a ticket.
I noticed a few missed calls from Jakob upon checking my cellphone and called him back. During this time, the leaves of my potted plant started moving. This scared the crap out of me and Jakob came over to see, eventually proving that the cause involved my desk vibrating slightly. He stayed the night and woke me up in a sweet but x-rated way this morning.
We hung out some after that, watching videos and playing guitar. I took a nap at his place around four and figured out around six that we would not be able to make it to Surrey in time to see the play he wanted to. Jakob expects me to be good at trip-planning and such, which I sometimes am, but I screwed up by about fifteen minutes this time and he was upset. After telling him that he couldn't rely on me then blame me for fucking up, he left.
This, I assume, is partially because Niko had called while we were at lunch and I called him back about an hour later from the bathroom on Jakob's floor. Ni has a crush on a girl who lives near him and wanted advice and comfort. I called him again after Jakob stormed out and we bitched to each other about our relationships.
I had dinner with Brody, along with Graham, Linnea and Kyla. Brody and I then watched YouTube videos of a Japanese show with a character called Hard Gay. He left after we watched all the episodes we could find and after he finished some tea with honey that I made so that his sore throat would get better. He makes me happy.
Mark is coming over after he finishes work tonight. I suspect he will bring a movie.

Yesterday I woke up feeling better after the previous night's pig's feet/cow stomach incident. I studied for about an hour before going to my African history exam, which was a lot easier that I had thought it would be. I had gotten there about twenty minutes early to read over more notes, as did about a third of my class.
After the exam, Brody and I handed out flyers for a special general meeting to be held that day, in which seven members of the SFSS would be impeached as over seven hundred voters sat freezing in Convocation Mall to right the injustices they felt. I was one of these and voted to impeach five of the seven based on the evidence presented that day and on the anger and energy of those around me. Not overly informed, I had hoped to help the meeting reach quaraum, which it did for the first time in ten years. When speaking, those who were to be removed from office were bitter, calling the meeting illegitamate and a witch hunt. But they had embezzled money and had a man fired with no explanation other than that we "don't understand." I don't know what events led to an outcome so severe as impeachment but something had led no less that seven hundred of those who had turned up to vote for the removal of these student society members.
That night I went with Jakob, Julia and Peter to an open-mike night. The undisputable highlight of the night was Julia playing the keyboard. She was purposely off-key and her voice wavered to produce an eerie and utterly beautiful sound. I felt so dull in comparison. Her level of creativity is unattainable yet in everyday life she appears normal. We seem to share a level of mediocrity in everyday life but hers is in contrast to talent while mine is merely a reflection of my lack of originality. I want to be stunning like that. I want to find something in myself that's mine and impressive.
I didn't really do anything today.

In a room lit only by the glow of a computer screen, Jakob lay in bed with tears streaming down his cheeks, shaken by the realization of his own mediocrity. Sitting by his side, I knew not what to say to nullify such a tragic acceptance of humanity. What do you say to a man whose passion is no longer his strength?

I had dinner with Jakob, Mitch and Linnea tonight. I can't help but feeling that I'm not as smart as the people I surround myself with. It is with near certainty that I assert that I'm not as intelligent, analytical, nor as wittty as I once was. Something must have happened to me to render my past writings incomprehensible to me now. I used to be the brightest in my class and I find myself replaced in this position by the most unlikely people. Niko still thinks I'm a genius but I honestly can't see far beyond the surface of things anymore. I am easily manipulated. I am insecure. I am seldom motivated and have no interests to define me. My character is made up of my influences and despite the fact that this applies to everyone I feel that my case is more extreme. Brody is quite intelligent but not obviously so. He is a master of noticing details and figuring out unconventional systems of doing things. Graham has humour, Jakob is a musician and sleight-of-hand artist, and Kyla has crude wit. I feel as if I am the odd one out in groups of talented and focused people. I have no specialty and it's becoming increasingly noticable. This is a personal and selfish concern, I am aware. Empathy for the situations of others eludes me just now.

I stayed home to do homework yesterday and got very little done. I called Becky, my parents called me, then Niko called me. Around 3:30 I decided I wanted to go jogging, which I finally did this morning, and called up a bunch of people to ask if they wanted to go. No one did but Brody got the voicemail from me when he got off work and agreed to go for a short while. While I was waited for Brody to get back to campus, Jakob called and asked me to go to breakfast. We met in the dining hall and he was in a good mood despite what I had assumed from the tone of his voice on the phone. We talked like nothing had happened. I hate that but I'm glad things are alright. Brody showed up and after a while we ended up jogging. This lasted about 30 seconds. My homosexual life partener does not fancy jogging, but went with me anyway because he's "a half-decent friend." We both went back to our rooms until he called about an hour later saying he wanted to go for coffee downtown. Walking to his place, I stopped by Hester's smoked salmon party and hugged Linnea some. I walked by with Brody on the way to the bus stop and was forcibly pulled into the party. After a few minutes of banter with my kidnappers, I ran to the bus stop to catch up with Brody. Somehow, we took the same route down the fire escape, him having left first, and I arrived there before him. Before getting coffee we took the skytrain all the way to VCC Clark, the end of the Millenium Line to which there is almost no reason to go. We stayed on the train until it went back in the other direction and eventually got downtown, where Brody got coffee and we tricked the Famous Players theatre into selling us popcorn without us having movie tickets. My night consisted mostly of sitting on the Starbucks patio eating popcorn and listening to people's gossip. When we had to move inside, Brody and I had a deep discussion regarding the near certainty that he would never have talked to me the first time we met if I hadn't been good-looking. His rule about friends is that the better-looking they are, the better he looks with them. It's incredibly shallow but I'm fairly sure it's the way most people operate in our fair land but without acknowledging it. There was some kind of Skytrain issue so we ended up taking the bus home again. I slept on Brody's shoulder most of the way.

I went out for dinner with Jakob last night and had sushi for the first time. Delicious as it all was, the conversation turned to my relationship with Niko vers the end of the meal. Despite the fact the Jakob has "washed his hands of the situation," he still cannot comprehend the fact that Niko and I are still as close as ever. He thinks I'm being "emotionally abused," that I think that Ni "Can do no wrong," and that it selfish of me to put his needs before mine. Maybe a week ago, Jakob was witness to a conversation I had with Niko in which the latter was in a bad mood and started swearing and hung up on me around the midnight. We talked for a while after that, Jakob and I, then he got on the computer and read my e-mail from Niko. The piece he read was written in anger. When Niko and I have a fight, we tend to say the things we know would hurt the other person most rather than arguing a particular point. Jakob does not understand this part of the friendship and tried to force me to go to the Women's Centre with him. Heartbroken over the e-mail, I agreed with tears streaming from my eyes. However, upon re-reading the message the next day, I realized that it wasn't as bad as I had thought, that Niko was essentially asking me to stay with him because although he doesn't need me, he wouldn't want to live without me. So I told Jakob that I didn't want to go to the counseling. I cannot deal with therapists. I think they make too many generalizations and I would much rather talk to someone I know and trust. I've spoken to Niko since and we've talked about the whole situation. No one can really understand our relationship unless they've been around for it. It simply isn't typical of most interpersonal connections. It is difficult to explain. I don't have the words to describe how much I love Niko and would never leave him, and how he feels about me. I know that Jakob is just worried about me because he cares about my well-being, but I can't help but be angry at him for thinking that there is nothing about me that he can't understand. Not everything is so black and white. I care about Jakob and last night he made a comment generalizing me among teenage girls. I never wanted to be seen as a category. I had always thought I was special to him somehow. He told me he couln't "have this in [his] life." I don't want to lose him. I slept alone last night.

Night falls.
Two young students are walking up a downtown street. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a transvestite appears with a few of his friends and, looking one of our heros up and down, exclaims "Look at you! You would look so cute as a girl! Put some nice titties on you...!" He who is addressed does not respond. He thinks they are referring to his female companion. Upon her discovery of his misjudgment, she began, sounding somewhat helpless, "But I'm already cute as a girl."

After quickly going to Walmart and back, Brody and I set out to celebrate his birthday. His mother had offered to foot the bill so he had decided that the Denny's free birthday meal would have to wait another year. On our journey to Moxie's (on Davie), we encountered the aforementioned transvestite. This event was shortly followed by a deranged man yelling about needing fifty dollars and wanting to get on a bus.
Disturbed by these events, we ordered drinks upon our arrival at the restaurant. Brody told the waitress that it was his nineteenth birthday (only a year off) and she didn't card either of us. Although she did ask if we were secret shoppers before serving us our first round. I now know that my alcohol tolerance has gone to crap after finding myself surprisingly tipsy after only two beers.
The food was delicious, which it ought to be seeing as our bill for the evening ended up at over ninety dollars. That's two beers each, a shared appetizer of some sort of cheese bread, Brody's steak, my penne carbonara (half-portion but still too much for me what with the beer), and a warm cake-ish thing.
As we skytrained back to campus, a fight broke out between a bunch of drunken guys and Brody pushed the yellow emergency strip. The police met us at Broadway and my homosexual life partener described to them how a train window had been broken and that he was uncomfortable using the platform at which they were now standing. I was drunk and nervous about being around police but he took care of everything and we eventually took the 135 home from Burrard station.
I wished Brody a happy birthday before going up to Jakob's and trying to have sex with him for a while. I had my period so the conversation was more or less "No." and "Yeah that's probably best." We made out for a while then fell asleep.

I didn't want to wake up today. The alarm went off and I reset it. This happened at least three times. I eventually did get up and go to class, but I wasn't happy about it. I got a large chai and listened half-heartedly to the lecture- something about women's roles in various parts of Africa. The guy who I fancy in that class whose name I can never remember made fun of my hungoverness. I noticed him on the first day and thought he was very good-looking and he's now my closest friend in that class. Not that I have other friends in that class.
In tutorial I looked around trying to notice the absence of the guy who died last week but still couldn't place him.
I borrowed the movie that I missed from inadvertantly skipping last week's African History lecture from the library after class. The VCR in Jakob's common room was being difficult to I ended up watching it in the library. Then I came back here.
I have no plans for tonight. I really need to get my readings done. It's sunny but too cold to do it outside. I'll probably call Becky in a little while.

Last night I had dinner with Kyla, Jakob, Hester and Brody. I can't remember much about it except that Kyla had a carving for jello and there wasn't any left. As we were finishing, some of Jakob's friends came up to him and told him they had an extra two free passes to see the sneak preview of Borat, a comedy about a Kazakhstani comedian in America.
I'm offered a ticket and decide to go. After running through the rain to catch a bus then a skytrain, we arrive at the Silvercity movie theatre in the Metrotown mall to find out that they had sold more tickets than there were seats and the theatre was full. We received passes to see the film once it comes out.
Jakob and I then went on an unnecessarily long quest to find a washroom for him, which we finally did at a Starbucks where he purchsed a Jones Soda in exchange for the key. There was no key, the door was unlocked. Since we were in a Chapters' Starbucks, we faffed around looking for Sedris books for a while. This too was unsuccessful due to the store closing just as we reached the humour section.
So we decided to go home. To fit with the theme of the night (failure), we got on the wrong skytrain and ended up in downtown Vancouver. Jakob has yet to learn the public transportation system here and I was tired and not paying attention to my surroundings. I realized the mistake when we got to Main Street station.
Since we were downtown and Jakob had had his eighteenth birthday a week ago, he decided that we should go buy porn. We did. It was Hustler. I rarely see that many vaginas in one place. I misdirected us once more and we eventually walked back to the skytrain station using Granville (we had come on Thurlow), a street full of sex shops. By the time we reached the station, Jakob had acquired three adult magazines from the seventies and early eighties and was very proud of himself. I, on the other hand, was content with the Scooby-Doo fruit snacks that I got from the Shopper's Drug Mart (Jakob has since eaten almost all of these..bastard). We ran into a girl named Julia who also lives in residence at SFU and a bloke who's name I don't recall and described to them our crazily uneventful night. I also somehow managed to bring up the fact that I had learned three chords on the guitar, which failed to impress my company, all of whom were fairly talented musicians.
I slept at Jakob's last night. As usual I got up, studied for a while, had breakfast, went to class, came home and took a shower before my companion had woken up. Class today was my English 105 midterm- not difficult.
I had lunch with Graham, Jakob and Brody. Graham was dressed in business attire and explained to us that he was going to a business meeting to speak to business men. This made sense so I didn't ask any further questions. I gave Brody his birthday present once we sat down. Although the comination of one real gift and one wildly inappropriate one went wekk, I had left the receipt in the bag and was mocked for it. Graham's statement was more or less "Lindsey, you're adorable, but how did you ever make it into university?" I'm a spaz. It's not new.
I tried to study some more afterwards but got distracted when the hot water tap in my common room wasn't working and I couldn't make tea without my kettel. Then I remembered I hadn't spoken to my mother in a while so I decided to send her an e-mail.
In a few minutes Brody will come home from McDick's orientation and we will go out to dinner for his birthday. I haven't done the syllabus readings for African History tomorrow so I'll have to do them when we get back or early tomorrow morning. I'm lacking in focus on schoolwork. I'm not overly concerned.

As one might notice, it's been about a year since my last post. I'm pretty sure no one checks this anymore (did anyone ever really check it?), but if anyone sees this then I thank you for your utter devotion to my life story, or lack thereof.
Since last time, I've left Ottawa. I really hated Ottawa. Things were starting to get really fucked up there. But I like it here, east of Vancouver. I think it's gorgeous.
I've started this up again because I can't remember anything anymore. My sense of time, which was waning the last time I posted, has all but left me completely and I need something to keep me grounded. Yes, I'm using a blog as a mnemonic device, and I'm probably not the first to do so.
Also, my writing's improving and I want to nurture that skill lest it be replaced by drivel (mindful drivel, mind you) once again. So let's start:
Today I woke up at 6:30 in the morning to the whine of my cellphone alarm clock. Somehow it doesn't affect Jakob, who I sleep with and spend a fair amount of time with but who is not, and I cannot stress this enough, commited to me in any way that would make him my boyfriend. College years, man. I wrote a short little paper about the perpetuation of the European sense of superiority through accounts of explorers in Eastern Equatorial Africa, which is actually just me bitching to my prof about something she clearly already knows about. I left for class before Jakob woke up.
African history class (9:30-10:20) involved a classmate of mine telling me about how his girlfriend of a year and a half had broken up with him a week earlier and that he hadn't been sleeping. Shortly after hearing this traumatic news, my prof, who I'm sure is a genius, started her lecture by informing us that someone in our class had died in a car accident since last class. After looking around the room at everyone for a while, I realized I had no idea who that was. I couldn't figure out who was missing. Worse, there were people in there who I didn't recognize. This guy who died, Martin I think, was in my tutorial as well. And I just don't know him. Should I? The extent to which I look up at my classmates must be minimal. Call a team of shrinks! This could be disasterous for my developement as a human being! (Note: this is a sarcastic comment. I'm a selfish bitch but not to such a ridiculous degree)
After class, I went to the library to return a book then came back to my dorm to catch up on my reading. Which is exactly what I was doing until Niko called.
Well, until I took a break to watch the Crossroads Guitar Duel (Vai's arrogant but sort of deserves it) and then Niko called. And we talked about Steven Hawking some. And how the world is screwed.
He told me about how Becky (majoring in concurrent education at McGill) was learning of this system of assigning numbers to children who displayed signs of having learning disbilities or trouble at home. The children to whom the numbers are assigned are apparently supposed to be ignored by the teacher. This is the most disturbing thing I have ever heard about Canada's public education system.
At this point I should go back to my readings. Nothing else of interest has happened today (that I know of), and I know how fun it must be to read anything that drones on like this. Plus I'm in midterms and something this time-consuming could be the end of me...