Dude, I see birthday greetings!

In addition to the many amusing birthday cards (and collages!) I got from friends in honor of my 21st birthday, I got birthday greetings from two corporations this year.

Amazon.com, who know my birthday from a little wish list thing I made so I could keep track of the random crap I saw while browsing through but otherwise would never remember, was nice enough to send me a gift certificate for 10% off my next purchase (though it expires June 12th, so I'd better get cracking).

AstroCenter.com, who Kat convinced me to have a full-out horoscope done by sometime last year, sent a predictable but amusing horoscope, which I shall now dissect the main portion of:

Today, an old cycle ends and a new one begins, because the Sun is back in Gemini at exactly the place where it was when you were born.

I know nothing about cycles of solar systems, but any shithead can tell you that the underage cycle ends and the legal cycle begins when you turn 21...

During the upcoming year, Saturn will still be traveling through the sign of Gemini, testing your stamina. It is now very important to finish existing projects and to not take on new ones.

Also doesn't take a rocket scientist for this one, since people my age are generally getting ready to get out of college, and thus would be finishing large projects and need to not take on too much responsibility...and my stamina has been sorely tested by sleeping...not much over the last week or so, so that part's already done with.

Embrace the fact that you now have the chance to eliminate remnants of the past to clear the road toward a sunny future. There will be significant changes within the next year, which will keep you occupied.

Again, duh. It's nice to know my future will be sunny, though you're not going to keep an astrology business around for long if you just tell people they're fucked.

Excitement and frustration may be two emotional stages that you need to deal with, but overall, you will head into the right direction.

I hope the frustration doesn't come directly after the excitement...I've unfortunately been getting that a lot lately in several portions of my life (one in particular...I'm sure you couldn't POSSIBLY guess which one)...

In matters of the heart, you will now be ready to make a commitment!

Ah, shit. I wanted random sex first...

More drunken posting!

I'm 21!

Thank you very much to the people who have come to my Festival of Drunkenness this evening and thanks to those of you who have sent me your best wishes although you could not make it due to finals-related stressfullness. I shall purchase you some alcohol in due time :)

All is well in Ellen-land, though we shall see tomorrow morning if I have had a Festival of Hangoverness as well...

Wheeeeeee!

Damn it

Dee Dee Ramone died.

Putting on "I Wanna Be Sedated" as a tribute.

Ev,IL/I am not a flower shop

I would like to thank the city of Evanston, Illinois for deciding that reading week is obviously the best time to use jackhammers, backhoes, and other loud pieces of equipment early in the morning to fix some roads in the vicinity of numerous college students.

Today was the only day I have this week to get some rest. So of course, at 7am, there is a man with a jackhammer directly outside my window. I think they're doing something to the sewer system.

They've also had a bulldozer whacking something with its shovel thing so hard that my entire building shakes. I realize the same effect could be achieved simply by turning my amplifier up to about six, but still, it's obnoxious as hell when you've previously slept four hours in two days and will be sleeping even less in the next two.

I should find out where Lorraine Morton lives, get a generator, and turn it up to 11 at 7am sometime this summer as she's getting ready to make some big speech to get re-elected.

Oh, and also thanks to the woman who called at 8, just as I was getting back to sleep, thinking that I'm a flower shop. Seriously, I picked up the phone and muttered a groggy "H'lo?" and she paused for a second and said:

"Do you sell sunflowers?"

I'm sorry lady, but a clear sign that you've got the wrong number for a flower shop is when the phone is answered "hello" by someone you have obviously just woken up. If this were an actual flower shop, I'd have said "Ellen's Flowers, how can I help you?"

But I'm not a flower shop, so I told her she had the wrong number, got back into bed, and put a pillow over my head to try and drown out the jackhammer.

Some days

Some days I'm thankful I have to edit from 11pm to 7am.

Like when I come home to reburn a CD that didn't work, and I discover that the girl upstairs from me, who is constantly yelling at me to be quiet, is having sex in a manner that I fear will cause the ceiling to collapse.

And, no, this has nothing at all to do with the fact that I'm not getting any.

Screwed

I had to reattatch a towel rack earlier this evening, and as I finished screwing in the top screw, I heard the distinctive crrrrrack of the screw coming out the other side of the door.

I'm really that much of a moron that I used screws greater than the length of the door to reattach the damn thing.

I should get a prize.

Hay fever in the morning, hay fever all through the night

Ah, pollen. We meet again.

I'm allergic to pollen, which has not been quite as much of a problem here in Chicago as it was in DC (where a couple of months ago the count got up to 2587. 100 is considered enough to trigger allergies) , but over the last week it got hot and hasn't rained.

Unfortunately, every allergy medication I have tried has one particular side effect that makes another medical condition I have much, much worse, and really, I'd rather just bitch about sneezing so much than be in an enormous amount of pain. You should prefer this as well, because I'd bitch a hell of a lot more were I in that much pain.

So, anyway, the little Green Particles Of Death have arrived in Chicagoland, and the sneeze-a-thon has started. And I don't sneeze quietly or gently. Ask Eddy, Elisa, and Cleo about their entertaining ride home from the CRC play, where I essentially couldn't stop sneezing the entire drive back. I'm sure they thought I was going to crash the damn car.

I've inherited my father's sneeze, though his is still a good 20 decibels louder than mine, and has a much better low end to it. But we both have the same process when we're about to sneeze.

We start going "ah....ah..." desperately trying to defuse the sneeze, but then our eyes start to water. And for a second, we think that the sneeze may have been averted. But before we can mentally get to the end of that sentence...

aaCHOOOOOOOOOOO!

It comes out swinging at 150 miles an hour, threatening to blow over (or at least scare the shit out of) small mammals. It echoes, particularly at both my dad's old house and his new apartment in Atlanta. He used to send Smokey, his cat, running like the wind up to where I was sitting "doing homework" (i.e. watching TV).

Neither of us wins the prize for loudest sneeze, though. That goes to my friend Miyuki, who I could hear sneezing in the hall on the second floor when I was in class on the third floor in high school. God help you if you were sitting next to her if she had a cold. You'd be deaf for days.

The problem I have is that once I start sneezing, I can't stop. I'll be fine for a couple of hours, then I won't be able to stop sneezing for like 10 minutes. I really hope I don't throw something out of alignment (like my brain, for instance) with a really powerful sneeze...

I guess we'll see whether this happened when I get my grades back.