SLAINTE!!!!!!
i love being irish. :)
i'll love it even more once 3:30 rolls around and i'll be free for the rest of the day to do whatever pleases me.
dammit, i deserve it already. :)
have a great day, just don't get caught!

the work never ends. this seems to be a consensus as of late, with michelle, myself, and lars (from what i hear) completely overworked and stressed beyond belief...i know personally i feel like i am trapped in one of those running cages they give mice--the harder and faster i run, the faster everything else is placed on my shoulders as responsibility for me. it's driving me crazy and all i want is to be able to have one week--just one week--where i could relax for more than an hour. because it gets frustrating when i have spare time (relatively speaking, it's never completely spare time, generally i have stuff to do that i just don't feel like doing), because part of me wants to relax and stay away from everyone, while the other part of me wants to get out there and do something fun for once.

(10 minutes later)
i had to run over to uncle marc's office to drop off a network cable and NT cd, and on my way back, i ran into colin. talking to him, i found myself impressed with the manner in which he has been dealing with his lack of time. he had to write an 8 page paper about astrophysics for his christianity class, and he did the typical style of getting a paper written, but was altogether unsatisfied with the result. so what does he do? piled on all his gortex and fleece, got a thermos of hot chocolate and brady, some cheese and crackers, a folding chair, and a notebook. went across route fifteen, hiked in about 3/4 of a mile, and sat himself down to watch the stars and observe the world around him. wrote down every thought that went through his mind for the six hours he sat there, and saw shooting stars, stars move, the animals, and turned his thoughts, in respect to the text the assignment was on, into a cohesive 8 page paper.
i think that sounds so fucking cool. if i ever have spare time, i want to be able to simply go on a walk. a long walk, and bring my journal. and instead of thinking about all the shit i have to do, just be for once.

it seems that the consensus is that there is too much stress lately. michelle, lars (from what i hear), and i have been working our asses off with the hope that it'll result in some sort of break--that is, the huge amount of work will eventually subside a bit, giving us some relaxation.
but nooooooo!

i have my trusty nalgene bottle back...hannah threw it to me from the second floor of joyce. right into 10 inches of snow. and i, because i love that damn bottle, trudged right into the snow to get it. :-) it's back it's back...revel revel.
i decided to have a vickie-gets-stuff-done-while-chilling-in-my-house night tonight, only the getting work part wasn't working. michelle came over and told me she'd come back from the 300s to get me because i needed to see d-rod. this frightened me. why would i need to see him? he's sexy bitches, i already know this. and she kept laughing demonically and looking frightening. i was expecting to see the fires of hell in her eyes or something. considering i was watching "the devil's advocate", i figured i'd just live the movie and go with it. plus if she walked her ass all the way from the 300s, i knew it was something good.
J.F.C. hilarious. d-rod truly was sexy bitches. let's just put it this way: hawaiian party, and a coconut bikini top was involved. i don't think i've laughed that hard in a bit of time. especially when he did his hula dance. add to that the igloo front porch ("seriously, someone dug in here and pulled out two full natty ices. no lie."), and it was awesome. i only stayed for maybe a half hour, but i was laughing the whole time.
then i came home, and i wrote a meditation based on samuel johnson's preface to "shakespeare". 1765. hells yeah.
and now i'm sleeping. sleep is gooooooood.

i don't care who it is, you bash john mayer, you go on my shit list. even him.

grrrrr

since i got back my tax stuff and i've been working my ass off, i'm in the process of trying to get myself a little reward. i went into ebay today and looked up james dean stuff--i'm currently bidding on a 1955 magazine that has a story about him with pictures and all that jazz. and the awesome thing is that i've got 22 minutes left, i'm high bidder at $11, and i allowed myself to go up to $15. i want this thing!!!!!!!!!!
now the frustrating process of waiting. 20 minutes. :-)

so i had talked to mark yesterday and we set up a time for him to come in this morning for his mug shot. and then i managed to get a mug shot of him from a differenet picture, so that way rhonda didn't have to completely finish the paper today, so i left him an 11:15 p.m. message saying don't bother coming in. but just in case he didn't get it, i stopped by bergeron, and sure enough, he was there. so i told him and tried not to drool. he's adorable, in case i haven't mentioned that before.
i'm exhausted. i haven't gotten a ton of sleep the last couple days, and when i've been awake, i've been running all over the place trying to get stuff done. i just want to curl up and sleep away an afternoon, but i don't have the time.

alright, call me sentimental or what have you, but this sports section of the defender was a labor of love for me. i know, i'm stupid. but as i was putting the pages together, two things kept popping in my mind. 1) this was a record-breaking season. years from now, people will look back for info on this season, and where will they look? the defender. and then they'll see my name plastered everywhere on the section and they'll know that i was responsible for recording this information for smc history. no pressure there right?
2) to add to all that, this is the big issue that i would think todd, brian, and mark would want to keep. and their families would want to keep. so in my own dopey way, i figure this is kind of like my present to them for working so hard for four years. they'll be able to show their children this stuff, and their kids will wonder someday who that victoria girl was. but hopefully they'll all feel that i did a decent job of covering it.
and know what? if people are pissed that it's tons of basketball, i don't even care. i'm proud of these pages. i think they look damn good. so there.
i had a truly wonderful (in my dopey little lust-sick sort of puppydog way) experience today--i was desperately searching for a player of the week, and no one i asked seemed interested. i called mark this afternoon and left a message asking if he was interested. asked him to call me at the lab.
phone rings, and since i'd also called brian and todd with questions, i figured there was a good chance the phone would be for me. so i pick up.
"hello, defender."
"hi, is vickie there?"
"speaking."
"hi vickie, this is mark."
if i was my former freshman self, my reaction to those words would have been significantly different. rhonda laughed at me because i got a huge grin on my face, but i kept my cool and responded.
"hey mark, how's it going? thank you for getting in touch with me, that's really cool of you..."
if he only knew that i was drooling on the other end of the conversation...
it's so fun to have a dopey, completely unattainable crush on someone, and mark's been fun for three years. i never thought i'd actually have any reason to speak to him, but this has been a dream semester in that respect. journalism, sports, basketball star...it all goes together into one beautiful packaged deal that has been (stress, long hours, and lack of sanity aside) a lot of fun. he's certainly kept me busy with coverage this semester, that's for sure...
yes. yes. goal definitely met. :-)

i'm home. ah...blessed home...
the weekend went well for the most part. about 6 hours down to L.I...got stuck in bitchy, nasty weather part of the way down, but fortunately, it disappeared for the most part once we arrived near NYC...i was psyched to have a view of the skyline while driving in...little did i realize that our route took us right onto the good ol' GW bridge, so i was estatic. i know it's cheesy, but there's something about cities and me that fit just right...and i find skyscrapers so asthetically pleasing. they're just beautiful things. and how much better does it get than new york? the thing's just a gorgeous sight.
so we reached our hotel, relaxed for a few, and then took off for the first game. the gym sucked (ours is so much better). reminded me more of a high school gym than a college. but we played UMASS-Lowell again, beat them again. not exactly a shock. if we'd lost, i would have been ripshit.
we found out we were staying in a much nicer hotel than the guys, plus we had the added bonus of nothing to do until 7:30 the next night. so what do you do when you've got a whole day to kill? go to the city, obviously.
i loved walking everywhere. for the first time, i didn't have the whole "ohmigod this is new york city" stigma attached to everything i was seeing. it was just fun times in a good place. we were planning on heading into the village, but that didn't happen. so instead, we wandered about. mostly went shopping. bought a couple things, nothing too major. fun sunglasses that don't do jack when the sun's out, but they look cool. finally tinted blue shades that look good on me. AND THEY SAID IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN.
did our one touristy thing--empire state building. i always have to do that when i'm down there. first time it was too cloudy to see much (but with the mist, the dark mass of central park looked amazing), second time it was nighttime (which was gorgeous, but didn't allow for much of a view at all). this time? it was perfect. beautiful view, beautiful day. i loved being able to look around and see the world trade center off in the distance a bit--looking down at the traffic and at the building tops, trying to think about what each building is and who's inside. and while i didn't have the whole "this is NYC" thing going on, it was kind of a surreal feeling to look out at the different landmarks--statue of liberty, central park, macy's, WTC, chrystler building--and feel like it was completely natural for me to be seeing these things with my own normal eyes, instead of through the eyes of wonder like i always had before. and wandering the streets and feeling like i wasn't "country girl comes to the city"--feeling really comfortable there and sort of, odd as this sounds, at home there. i think it would be a very interesting, very cool experience to live there for a little bit. not super long, but a little while, because for the first time, i felt like i could. i don't know if it was because i've grown more independant while being here and growing up a bit and whatnot, but i felt really natural there, a feeling that's both really cool and rather unnerving at the same time. i never ever would have imagined myself saying that before. not that i never thought living there would be cool, i always have, but that i felt like i could actually live there without being completely overwhelmed or killed or anything.
i don't know, random thoughts from a random (but very cool) experience. i need to go back there very soon.
so then we went back to the hotel and then went to the game. and the guys went and lost. and i had a killer headache and i was pissed. but whatever. i'm still proud of the team (so proud). and i was happy to be there when brian, todd, and mark (dear dear mark) played their last game. and yes, i came damn close to crying, i will proudly proclaim to the world. I GOT MISTY-EYED, OK???
so now i'm home, and i have a shitload of work to do and i'm not going to my first class...oy. i need a vacation. but none for me.