ipicknick

08:35 pm: Springtime in Tucson
first off, i want everyone to know that my amazing friend natasha got accepted to the viscom program here at the university today. she was majorly stressing out about it, while everyone but her knew it was a foregone conclusion. and on top of natasha's success, my friend sam (also amazing) got in as well, the week after the opening of his big solo art show at the cafe passé on fourth avenue. so it's a happy day all around, i guess!

well, spring break is next week. it's kind of hard for me to believe... doesn't seem like it should be time for that already. in fact, it feels like it's only been two or three weeks since the semester started, and here it is half over. i'm excited for the week off, anyway.

some friends are planning a brutal trip to magic mountain in LA this weekend... drive all night to get there when the park opens, be there all day, and turn around and drive all night to get back so that we don't have to pay for a hotel. i'm thinking that i'll probably go, if i can scrape together the $100 it would cost to get there and back. man, that sounds pathetic, doesn't it? other than that, i'll be back home for the week, which will be great. hopefully i can lay the groundwork for a summer job.

the weather in tucson is incredible this week. it was 80° today, and it's supposed to be like this all week long. this means that in a week or two it will be my favorite time in tucson.

see, there's a week or two in the spring when EVERYTHING blooms here... trees, bushes, stuff on the ground... and most of it smells AMAZING. you just sort of walk around in this perfumed bliss. the most incredible smells are from the citrus trees, but there's lots of more deserty native stuff that blooms, too. i particularly like this time because i associate it with some of my happiest memories here... back when my ex-girlfriend first moved here. the first semester she was here was in the spring, and the relationship was still awesome then. every visit to tucson was like a visit to the best place on earth, and in the middle of it all came these scented weeks of spring. i remember walking across campus with her, laying in the grass under the orange trees over by maricopa hall while we waited for laundry to be done at the wildcat laundromat. some seriously happy times. so in short, i'm really looking forward to the next few weeks.

and then it will get freakin' hot, and i'll start looking forward to my summer in the mountains.

11:07 pm: another ending
here it is, almost the end of another semester, another year... and i don't feel as if i've accomplished a damn thing. next year has to be better, right? i really can't remember another year when as little progress was made.... it's very frustrating. and my actions, especially lately, suggest that i haven't EVER learned anything! same old mistakes, same old problems...

12:10 am: freakin' strange
life is so freakin' strange. that's all i have to say at this time.

11:59 pm: whoa
Life has been... intense lately. Trying to keep my head above water in school, reminding myself constantly that I belong here (that is, during the moments when I'm not telling myself that I'm not good enough to hack it). So, as usual, most of my problems are self-inflicted.

Interesting girl developments, tho... which probably won't come to anything, but it's nice to think about, anyway. An entertaining distraction. Oh, and I made a pretty awesome banana cream pie yesterday!

Now... back to work! Think kind thoughts for me...

01:44 pm: Woo-hoo!
this white boy just got ACCEPTED TO THE ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM! yay for four years of hell ahead!!!

11:24 pm: the root of all my problems
i'm pleased to report that i have finally learned the secret to all that is wrong with my life... apparently, i am the way i am because i'm WHITE. and apparently, all white people are weird.

12:48 pm: crap
well, the insurance adjuster just called me... they're totaling my poor car. so, no more car for nick.

10:30 pm: okay, now summer REALLY rules!
yay!!! today was about the awesomest day ever, even tho nothing really happened.

i got up this morning and had lunch with my friends beverly and ilene... beverly used to own the ladies dress shop downtown that was next door to the movie theatre i used to manage. even tho i had known her all my life, we got to be really good friends during that time, because i'd go in and read the newspaper every afternoon when it was delivered. they had these chairs and a coffee table at the back of the store where people (old ladies, mainly) would come in and exchange news/gossip, and i'd just hang out back there, read the paper, and listen. i think i learned more there than anywhere else ever in my life, including school. i used to work at the radio station with ilene back in my salad days in local radio. ilene sold ads for the station, and beverly was one of her clients... so even tho we've all since moved on, we have lunch together a few times a year. i always look forward to seeing beverly... she's one of my favorite people in the whole world. she's retired now, and her health isn't always so good, and i dread the day when we won't be able to have lunch together anymore. she's one of those people who has been a constant in my life and a major link to my childhood and my hometown, and it will be really difficult when she isn't around anymore. i hope that won't happen for a long time, tho.

on my way to lunch, walking down bullard street (the main street downtown), i got flagged down by another older friend of mine, who wanted to know if i could drop by her house this afternoon to figure out how she had screwed up her stereo system. i went by, and in thirty seconds i located the plug that had become unplugged (and re-plugged into the wrong jack), and had the problem fixed. easiest twenty bucks i have ever made in my life!

also, during lunch, the insurance company called (FINALLY!)... so things are moving on that front. i still don't know if they will fix my car yet, but at least i know that progress is being made towards that goal. so that's good news!

and then this afternoon, i went over and hung out at the giese's house... their daughter's foster children were there for the day, so we all played in the pool for hours... best game of marco polo in years! plus we drank iced tea and ate cookies... it was so awesome!!! afterwards i talked to dale and mrs. giese (my teacher in the second and third grades), and before i left i practiced my tennis serve with their totally amazing tennis ball retrieving dog... he would go get the ball wherever you hit it, and bring it back and drop it at your feet... over and over and OVER! i could be able to play tennis again if i hung out there more this next month!

then my mom and i went and had chinese food for dinner (mmmm... ginger beef!), and now here i am, pleasantly tired and ready for bed. And there's an awesome thunderstorm about to hit outside... see what i mean?

today has been a perfect example of the ideal summer day!

10:41 pm: summer RULES!
yeah, so, so far this summer has kinda sucked, really... yet somehow, i'm still all happy and energetic. i'd love to know why that is, and how i could possibly reserve some of that for the inevitable late-semester doldrums. so, to bring you up to speed:

i finished summer session, and got an A! in PHYSICS!!! and in the lab too! which is awesome, since i was unsure if i even could pass it. it kinda sucks a little bit, tho, because the grade won't transfer back to the U of A, even tho i'll get the credit for having taken the class. that WAS gonna be a good thing when i thot i'd be lucky to pull a C, but now that i aced it...

on the last day of summer session, i wrecked my car in las cruces. some dumbass without insurance OR a driver's license pulled out in front of me on solano, and there was no way i could stop in time... so i totally t-boned him. the front end of my car is completely destroyed, it's not driveable at all, and on top of it all i don't even know if my insurance will pay for it (since in the state where it's insured, they don't make you carry uninsured motorist). so i'm waiting to find out what will happen with my poor car...

the whole house thing is in limbo. the old house STILL hasn't sold, and the bank wouldn't give us a bridge loan, so everything is kinda up in the air for now. this means also that i'm totally broke, so i may go out next week and try to find a job somewhere for the last month of summer...

i rushed back to tucson in a borrowed car last tuesday to go to court for a speeding ticket i got in the spring before i left, and got caught in road construction on the way, arriving 30 minutes late for my trial. i was apparently at the top of the docket, and so i was found "responsible" for the most bogus ticket i'd ever gotten. i was SO pissed that i'd gone all that way for NOTHING, and on top of it all, i had to return the car and so i couldn't really even stay around tucson to see friends or anything...

i'm waiting to hear whether i got into the program or not... hopefully sometime after the middle of next week i'll know something. of course, i'll write something here when i get news. but in the meantime, i just WAIT...

and on top of it all, i told one of my favorite friends in the whole world that i was, y'know, physically attracted to her (i believe my exact words included the phrase "get into your pants"). did i mention that this friend HAS A BOYFRIEND? and that their relationship is one of those amazing ones that gives you hope for the future of relationships and the world in general? so yeah, basically i'm a hormone-soaked asshole, which is, i guess, another way of saying i'm a GUY. fortunately she seemed to be okay with this (she even said something along the lines of she'd "totally probably date me" -- in an alternate universe, of course), even tho she was probably only trying to make me feel less like a loser. the problem that led to my opening my big mouth is that, even tho we don't get to hang out often, every time we do, it's awesome! a couple of days after the last time we did something, i realized that i'd had the best date with ANYONE that i'd had in years -- even tho it WASN'T A DATE! don't worry, tho... i have LOTS of practice at being friends with people i'm attracted to... that was my entire relationship model until i was like 22. perhaps someday i can find a totally cute, smart, awesome, ultra-talented girl (did i mention cute?), somewhere around my own age, who DOESN'T have a boyfriend (and who isn't a lesbian). IS THIS TOO MUCH TO ASK????

so to recap: aced physics, wrecked car, no house-making, convicted speeder, architecture suspense, and reaffirmed loserness. yet in spite of it all, i'm still really enjoying my summer. go figure... maybe it's some kind of seasonal affective disorder in reverse.

11:09 am: holy crap
i just read my last post and realized that right before my high school reunion, i went out and got myself a CELL PHONE. crap. now i really feel like a loser. hopefully i can restrain myself from telling my classmates that i invented post-its.

11:02 am: almost... done...
so... three more days, and summer school will be OVER!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!! (there really aren't enough exclaimation points in the world to properly convey my feelings on this subject, so that'll have to do.) looks like i'll probably pass everything, too, which is pretty awesome. then it will be back to silver city for a fun-filled month-and-a-half of house building.

first, tho, i have to survive my high school reunion THIS WEEKEND. aieeee! should be interesting, and hopefully not too painful. and then i get to emcee at the fourth of july parade in silver again this year! which is awesome! plus barbeque, and ice cream, and gossip, and flags, and fireworks... all the things that make independence day my very favorite holiday EVAR!

spent the weekend in chicago, serving as tour guide for my mom (who had never been there before). it was great, altho too short. i love that city.

and i got a freakin' cell phone. i feel like such a sellout.

that's the news... now it's time for physics homework.

10:57 pm: the weirdness of life (or, i love my friends)
well, here i am in silver city... at least at the moment. that simple, focused summer i was looking forward to a month or so ago? TOTALLY gone out the window. i've ended up taking not one, but TWO summer session classes... one here at western, and the other at new mexico state in las cruces (almost two hours away). fortunately the class at western is an independent study class, so i just have to find time to meet with my professor and do a buttload of homework... but the other class requires me to drive to las cruces early monday morning (6 am, to be exact), spend most of the week sleeping on my sister's couch, and then drive back to silver on thursday morning after class... for a weekend of house building. EXACTLY the kind of dispersed craziness i had hoped to avoid for a few months, but i suppose it's my own damn fault for putting things off until the last possible minute.

so it's been a crazy week, setting all this madness up AND making a quick trip back to tucson to go to court for a traffic ticket. i met a really cute, single girl home for the summer last week, and i was all excited about that... potential summer romance and all that. of course, such things NEVER seem to work out for me for some reason... she seems to have figured out that i'm interested in her, and so she's actually HIDING from me... i went for lunch today at the restaurant where she works, and she pointedly avoided me for the two hours i was there. SO WEIRD! why can't anything just be NORMAL???

then i went down for my first stint in las cruces... went and hung out at the fraternity house there and met a bunch of pretty decent guys, so i already have friends there now. unfortunately, there were also a few girls, one of which was totally flirting with me when she wasn't being all cute with this other guy. i (unfortunately) caught a glimpse of them kissing in the kitchen, so i kinda figured they were a couple... and then i went to the restaurant where she works for lunch the next day, where she proceeded to sit down and talk to me for over an hour. (it was really dead at the time, in case you were wondering.) i asked how they had met (a week ago!) and dropped the word "boyfriend" into the conversation a few times, and when i was leaving she asked if i'd be around next week, and then said that this guy WASN'T her boyfriend... he's a nice guy, but not her boyfriend. which was awesome, in a way... she's cute, and totally a pain-in-the-ass (which, in case you didn't know, i find really attractive for some reason), and also apparently really into me. so i was all happy about that for a few hours, until i realized that it really didn't matter what SHE thought... this guy apparently really likes her, and he's my friend (however recent) AND my brother, so i can't really even think about going there. again... why can't something just work out for a change??

so i've been all bummed out today... and then i talked to my friend natasha a while ago. i bitched and moaned for a bit, and she totally shut me down, then made me laugh and generally feel a whole lot better. so basically natasha rules, as usual. i guess the fact that she's my friend shows that sometimes things do work out after all. actually, i suppose most things work out pretty damn well in the end, with the possible exception of romantic things... so really i have nothing to complain about. which in itself is something to complain about, since i LOOOOVE to complain! :) in the end, i guess it's just dumb to get all down about this summer based on the first week... who knows what kind of wonderfulness might be in store?

so that's the update... i'll let you know how the craziness works out as it progresses. i hope everyone is having a good summer so far! oh, and it rained here in the afternoon yesterday and today... beautiful! it's all cool outside now... feels like july already. i don't want to face the fact that we have to get all the way through the hellishness of june before we get this weather in earnest. i suppose it could be worse... i COULD be enduring the june heat in tucson!

02:09 pm: Wow... so it's all over now!
crazy... so after all that work, the damn semester is finished! i got the incomplete in architecture studio taken care of yesterday, which was (almost) the last thing I had to do in tucson. now on monday i need to go to court for this lovely ticket my friends at uapd gave me, and then i'm off to the big sc for the summer.

this week was an amazing mixture of total suckiness and awesomeness... don't ask me how that works. i got to see friends i haven't spent much time with during this semester of craziness: lunch with my friend/academic advisor james, movies with emily and stephanie, lunch with coriann and the rest of the flunt crew, lunch with moriah, and i even got to hang out with my friend/hero natasha a little bit yesterday! all of this goodness was balanced with rushing around trying to finish all this crap which should have been done weeks ago, plus the little saga of my car getting booted/towed, which cost me almost $300 and a lot of stress.

i'll be glad to get the heck out of here on monday, that's for sure.

09:55 pm: exhibit time
well, it's here again already... this saturday is the exhibit that will determine whether i become a second-year architecture student or a THIRD-first-year. the latter option is really depressing, somehow more so because it's not unprecedented. and i'm not AT ALL ready... have barely thought about it, and i've got papers to write this week before i can START really thinking about it. and instead of writing said papers, i'm here typing a damn blog. i love how i can step back from my life, see myself messing it up, and just continue right on doing it, fully aware of what i'm doing. i can't even plead ignorance... maybe stupidity? at any rate, maybe i should quit blogging and get back to work.

BUT, in the good news category... we worked our asses off (me, my mom, sister and her boyfriend) and FINISHED the damn house last weekend! yay!!! FINALLY i can mark one thing off the list of crap to do. i still can't quite believe it... it looks so nice... probably nicer than it ever has in its 25 years of existence. hopefully some rich old californian will fall in love with it and shell out the (to me, anyway) unbelievable asking price, and the whole ordeal will be over!! i'm really looking forward to the building of the new house this summer, even though it is really so far away from being a reality. i guess i'm just trusting that it will all work out, mainly because if it doesn't, i don't know what any of us will do. i went to easter vigil at church on saturday night, and during the two hours of reading, singing, and praying, i found myself reflecting on what this summer has to offer... hopefully some amount of peace, focus, and meditation... and of course, a lot of hard work. i'm basically gonna spend three months doing only 3 things: building, working out, and singing in the summer choir at church. i can't remember the last time i had the chance to focus on so few things... if i don't have a little more stability after a summer like that, then... i don't even want to think about it. the best case scenario is that i'll spend the summer in this ideal way, finish the new house, get into second-year, and return to tucson in august tanned, buff, and together again, mentally and physically. sounds so good...

okay... back to work...

05:25 pm: blog, blog, blog
wellllllll... here it is... the semester is almost over. my exhibit for my application to second-year architecture is ONE WEEK from this saturday, and i'm totally, no-way, nuh-uh, ain't-gonna-happen not ready. of course, the day will arrive whether i'm ready or not, so... there you go.

i'm going home to silver city for the last time this semester this weekend... probably leaving tomorrow evening so i can help with installing landscaping on friday. this in the middle of everything else... but it will be totally worth it if we get the damn house completely done. that will be such an enormous weight off of my shoulders... i can't even begin to tell you. and then hopefully after that all of this school stuff will be a breeze. hopefully.

so the end is near, and soon it will all be over, one way or another. i think my favorite thing about being in school is that, ready or not, the end of the semester comes and --BAM-- it's all over. you get some time off, and then you begin again, with a clean slate (more or less). that is SO different from real life... where you get yourself into messes, and you stay in that mess until you get yourself out... no final end, no chance to do over. i REALLY can't wait for that moment this semester!

06:53 pm: the return to AWESOMENESS!
back to school... back to work... back to life again. so far, so good, especially if i can kick this cough i have left over from last weekend's illness. weirdest thing... i was SO sick for like a day, and then almost immediately felt normal, except for chest congestion and occasional coughing. END BODILY FUNCTION UPDATE.

things progressed really nicely on the house over break... got the majority of the house clean, all the carpets cleaned (they look way better than i had hoped), almost all of the baseboards and doors reinstalled, and the bathroom downstairs got a full cleaning, including stripping and waxing the floor. plus my friend came over and looked at the yard and gave us an idea of what it would take to spruce it up, and hopefully that will be done sometime next month. SO, even though i have been telling myself this FOREVER, i think my trip back to paint weekend after next will be my LAST housework weekend! YAY to infinity!!!!!! and even better, i think the place i want to buy to replace this one will actually work out, although as they say, don't count your chickens...

so for the first time in a long time, i feel like good things are about to happen. that right there might be the best thing of all! this weekend i get to stay home (yay again!), although i'll be busy pretty much the whole time. i've got a brotherhood retreat on friday night, and then arizona ambassadors training (my first class!) from 9-noon on saturday, a little bbq thing at 1, and then i usher at my friends tamzin and alex's wedding at 3:30... reception to follow at a REALLY swank place, actually one of my very favorite places in tucson! hopefully there will be smart, cute, and wonderful girls there. okay, actually, i'd settle for any one of those attributes plus single... :) and THEN, provided i'm not too drunk, my new friend from the reception (i know, i know, wishful thinking here... but let me have my little dream!) and i will head downtown to the monkey box, where one of my very favorite groups is playing! so how's that for a potentially awesome weekend?? oh, yeah, and then homework on sunday.

okay, i'd better get the community service committee budget sent and get out of here to find some FOOD! remind me sometime soon to tell you about the cool story i'm writing for the desert exposure back home.

09:49 pm: Spring break
so while most of my fellow students are off on a beach somewhere, i'm home painting/cleaning my mother's house. awesome. but on the bright side, hopefully it will be all but done after this week, and i won't have to worry about it anymore... which i guess is worth way more than a bad hangover and a sunburn. it's amazing how i went from complete despair about ever being done with this mess to optimism in just a day, but i can definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel. yay! so maybe this "vacation" isn't so bad after all...

02:17 pm: DONE!!!
yay! i can't say i pwned the arch history test, but at least i survived it! if i pull a b, i'll be thrilled. and now i just have to do some study questions for american history, and i'll be outta here.

so i never gave a recap of last weekend... which was pretty eventful. to start with, i went to silver on friday afternoon with my ex-girlfriend... just because we were both going, we went together to save gas. i actually wasn't going to go at all... i had to go to bowie for a court date on thursday afternoon, which is more than halfway home, and back in the same day... so i was understandably not wild about turning around and driving back friday. but several really good friends of mine were in a play in silver, and i kinda got hoodwinked into going to the play... so since roz was going, too, i hitched a ride. the play was weird but cool, and then afterward there was a party in pinos altos (a little town in the mountains just north of silver). so i went, and wound up drinking WAY too much, and feeling all lonely and pathetic while i watched my ex hang all over another friend of mine on the other side of the campfire... and i kinda just lost it. SO embarassing! but all the general frustration with life just came out, and thanks to my friend alcohol, i was in no condition to restrain it. so it turned into this weird half-drunken hippie campfire counseling session at 3 am. like i said, embarassing.

so i wound up crashing at my friend's house at 5 am... as did my ex... which was fine. until the next morning, when she wound up punching the holy crap out of me... resulting in a nasty bruise that people have been asking me about all week. so i went and had lunch with my mom, and we headed back to tucson. then, maybe to compensate for the suckiness of friday, saturday night was awesome! saw a weird folksinger chick perform at monkey box, met some new people, walked up to no anchovies and listened to the really great band playing next door at frog and firkin... which turned out to be the night owls, a band of high school kids(!) that just do some awesome blues. i met them when i was in silver last summer working as a dj at the local radio station... they were on my radio show when they were in town playing before the blues festival on memorial day weekend. they're actually from here in tucson, but i always manage to miss their shows somehow. so i went next door to listen, and their parents spotted and recognized me, which really surprised me. so i got the whole night owls update, and i'm gonna try to get them set up with a show in silver this summer.

so that was the weekend! i hope that this one has at least as many cool parts, and hopefully not so many bad/weird ones. happy spring break!!!

11:17 pm: almost spring break!!!
i am SOOOO ready for the break!

my sister and carl came up for the she wants revenge show last night... which was pretty cool, being in the tiny little space at plush and all. i actually was a bigger fan of the first band that played, rock kills kid, but i was mostly stoked just to be out at a concert at all. i don't do nearly enough of that kind of thing, living here in the "big city" and all. i really only went to this one because i shamed myself into it... here was my sister, taking a day and a half off of work and driving 8 hours round-trip to see this show which for me was only a five-block walk from my house. so i went, even though i had a paper due today... i went to the library after the concert and wrote until 5 a.m. big fun! got up, went to class at 11, ate sushi with pook and carl at ra (up in the foothills), ate gelato at frost (also foothills, and amazingly awesome!), and went to see night watch at the loft, which was... weird. so i'm more than a little sleep deprived right now... going home to crash so i can do class, physics, and arch history studying tomorrow. but after 12:15 thursday... i'm FREE!!!!!

i am SOOOO ready for the break!

10:54 pm: Holy crap!
so, okay... you know how in my last entry i said i had talked to my friend natasha... my best friend i'd never met? well, so... this guy named will from some telecommunications company out of utah has been here on campus recruiting people for summer work (and work in general, i guess)... i keep running into him, and he keeps inviting me to stuff, and i keep not being able to go. for instance, the last time i saw him was right before i spent the rest of the day tossing cookies (see previous blog entry)... it just wasn't working out. so he calls me this afternoon, says he's back in town and having a meeting tonight in the scholarship suites above the stadium, and invites me to come out for it. so i say i will... and right when i'm supposed to be at this meeting, i'm on the damn computer, still talking to natasha. so i realize i've gotta go, say bye i'm going to a meeting, ride home, put on a nicer shirt, and make it to the stadium like 15 minutes after i was supposed to be there... and there's no one there. the gates are all locked... it's kinda creepy. so i walk up sixth street so i can see if the lights are on up in the boxes... nope, no one there. about this time i've decided that i must be nuts, but i think, maybe there's like a place to meet in the dorms that are UNDER the stadium, and THAT'S where this meeting is, so i go and knock on the door and the desk assistant girl gets up and walks across the lobby to let me in. when she was about halfway to the door, i realized that I KNEW THIS GIRL... and sure enough, it was NATASHA!!! i was so weirded out... i'm sure she thinks i'm even weirder than she did before (if that's possible!). but a couple of seconds after i blurted out "I KNOW YOU!," she recognized me too, and so now i guess i can't say that she's my best friend i've never met anymore. so i talked to a guy who i assume was an RA, and he said that some other guy had just been in asking the same thing, so I WASN'T nuts after all. i did feel kinda stupid for not having more details about why i was there, tho... this whole job thing seems kinda shady. but i guess it caused me to meet my favorite cartoonist, so maybe that was the whole point. who knows? anyway, we talked a little bit, and she seems every bit as cool in person as she seems online... so i guess she can stay as one of my favorite people. she's even as cute as she looks online(!)... damn that boyfriend of hers! :) just kidding. mostly.

so that's my weirdness of the day. just figured i'd share...

oh, and in case you didn't know this already, natasha is the cartoonist who draws my favorite comic in the school paper... and a lot of other cool stuff, too. i started a fan group for her strip on facebook, and that's how i know her. she even put me in her comic... that's where my little nick icon you see here came from. so basically, natasha rocks!