I'm Really, Really Into Dragon Age: Origins Right Now

...so much so that I have been reading, like, DAO message boards and the DAO wikipedia page. Like it is BAD. Admittedly. But I came across this quote from one msg board:

You know my gf loves those nugs, her reaction was pretty much identical to Leliana's. In fact in her playthrough she collected all the stray nugs and then didn't return them to the seller because she wanted to keep them for herself as pets, even if they only exist as a slot in her inventory.

And nearly died laughing. Then nearly started crying because I understood it all.

Cupcakes

Watch out West Coast grad schools. I have my sights set on you (but mostly on the Sprinkles shop two blocks over).

Important

I purchased my first popcorn shrimp basket at Late Night Grille this evening. It came with fries and cocktail sauce. It is delicious.

Behcet's?!

THAT'S MY GALL BLADDER! Isn't it cute? That little blue thing right there on the left, that looks like an itty bitty robin's egg.

So school started...about two months ago. And a lot can change in two months. I got my appendix out. That was a fantastical week. I thought that would be my big news for the semester, really.

It wasn't. At all. But I got all these cool pictures from my surgeon.
You can click on them to see my purple, broken appendix in all its ruptured glory.

More pictures can be found in my Facebook album "In bun mode," which really just refers to the state of wearing a hair bun. In any case, my appendix did, in fact, rupture, but I was at the hospital already, and the operation was quick and easy. The whole ordeal was painful, but the surgery was cool, as always. FUN GAME: Try to stay awake as long as you can when they administer the anesthetics. [You always lose, but as a result, you always win.]

I also have three new scars because the operation was done...lapriscopically? Is that the right word? Something like that. They healed up pretty quickly too.

Then! In the midst of H1N1 sweeping the Allegheny College campus, of course I get something else, something totally weird and unexplainable. It started as a sore throat, which turned into lesions in my throat, which led to general inability to swallow, pee, or go to classness, to put it briefly. Then my eyes got super-inflammed and started to hurt. Then the swelling.

So you know what they diagnose me with? Herpes.

HERPES.

You just don’t tell someone they have herpes without being sure. You just don’t. Especially to a young woman with her whole life ahead of her, arguably. So for two days, I had herpes, and all the requisite emotional rollercoaster jerks of being diagnosed with an STD: the horror, the hopelessness, the regret, the confusion, the feeling that my youth had been stripped away. Then two days later, the doctor's like, Kidding, that was totally wrong. Sorry.

You don't even know.

I had to re-evaluate my entire life.

So the Health Office cut down on most of the symptoms with a late-but-welcome dose of prednisone, which I've been taking ever since.

Point is, they still couldn't figure out what's wrong with me, until they started connecting the dots...tonsillectomy here...mono there...appendectomy, oh my! Maybe she just has a crappy immune system!

And I do. Or they're pretty sure I do. The fun part is you can't easily diagnose autoimmune disorders, it's kind of like a process of elimination thing. So I'm spending all this week going to specialists to get blood drawn and tested, instead of going to class and distributing Overkill, which I would so rather be doing.

They think I have Behcet's Syndrome, which is common in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. The symptoms match up pretty well, and there's no cure, but there is treatment. And this is really upsetting because

1. I AM DISEASED.
2. Um, how will I pay my health insurance someday? They'll jack up my prices like crazy. Right? Isn't that how that works? Like there's no getting out of it. Dude, this sucks.

And it doesn't help to leave every doctor's office with another handful of prescriptions to fill. I'm TWENTY years old, damnit. Just- ok, I'm dealing with it, I am. Just don't complain about your workloads for school or anything around me, because seriously, I have bigger worries right now.

Then I'm like, oh no, there must be people on campus with herpes and cancer and other bad things. How do they make it through the day? Good grief. I take everything for advantage.

College.

John, Maggie, and Colin are sitting in my room playing an angry game of Mario Kart. There is much swearing. I feel at home.

Waiting

I'm done waitressing. My last day was on Sunday. You know how people have acid flashbacks? I have waitress flashbacks. Like sometimes I'll wake up in cold sweat and think I pressed the Side of Rice button when I should've pressed Side of Fries. I mean, I also have acid flashbacks but that's a different story.

Little things are coming back to me about the whole experience too. Like how remarkably feminist I am in (seeming) comparison to the other waitresses. I vividly remember one day when Adrienne was filling the soda machine with ice and dropped the bucket into the top of the machine.

She yelled out, "Oh my god. I can't reach. I need a boy!"

With this incredulous attitude that came out of NOWHERE, I strode up to the machine and pulled the bucket out, being quite taller than she. Then I said, more obnoxiously than I had liked, "You need a what? What do you need?"

"Or a...tall person..." she replied sheepishly.

"That's right."

Then I stalked off to serve my table, mentally scolding myself for acting so high and mighty.

But I kept doing stuff like that.

One day, I passed Heather taking a breakfast order from a grouchy middle-aged man. She was asking the standard questions you're supposed to ask, how would you like your eggs? Sausage or bacon? White or wheat toast? Butter or jelly?

And the guy just interrupted her and snapped, "Hey Blondie, why don't I talk and you write?"

I did a double-take and without thinking back to my "the customer is always right" training, I told him, "Hey, you don't talk to her like that." He wanted to see the manager. There were issues. But it felt totally right.

Then there's my whole deal with the correct term: waitress or server. I mean it's server if we're thinking political correctness and whatnot. But it's no coincidence every "server" I worked with was a young, attractive, skinny woman between the ages of 18 and 35. I don't dare put myself in that category, out of fear, because that can only mean I was yet another one to be gawked at and judged every single minute. It has to be different with guys. Waiters and servers. It has to be different.

We're very aware of the customers that watch us, that hit on us, that relish asking for each extra sauce one by one so they can watch us walk away (which we see in the mirrored wall) while they laugh with their buddies, that treat us like we all got pregnant in high school and are too dumb to go to college, especially when they give us their orders very slowly and repetitively, while I scold myself for even caring about the stereotypes and the commonly held beliefs.

There's a stigma to the waitress. There's a sexuality to the waitress. There's an urgency, an excuse to behave badly, a reason for mothers to feel the satisfaction of having someone else clean up their kid's mac&cheese mess after dinner. That is what the waitress is for.

There are people who just come out to eat and don't give their waitress a second thought.

But there are also people who come in to eat every day who complain about the food, who bitch about the wait, who shiver and say it's too cold in here, who want to see the manager, who want to used expired coupons, who loudly declare they're never coming back again, and you wonder why the fuck they come in to eat there every day if they hate it so much until you realize they have no job and no family and it's actually the best part of their day to come in and bitch and moan and feel like they have control over SOMETHING because they don't have control over anything else, so you pity them and deal with them because you know that letting them use you makes their day a little better, so you wait for them to come in.

We're all just waiting.

Really, this job taught me a lot about myself. I recommend waitressing to everyone because it's a very eye-opening experience to get to know yourself. I know the things I SHOULD'VE done...jobs with in-office experience...internships...grad school research...comp topic searching...but all I wanted to this summer was waitress, quite inexplicably. It was, in my mind, the biggest way I could push myself over the summer.

In any case, the job was enjoyable enough and certainly made me grow. My attitude going out to eat has become much more aware and empathetic now. And I'm better at small talk with people now, I think. I'm glad I did it. I kept the apron.

Psych majors, please comp on this?

Nails on a chalkboard don't bother me. At all.

But progressively, more and more,
and I have never before noticed this,
the following make me go gahhhhasjkldkge;lgjl:

1) Scraping plastic on styrofoam
(like a plastic spoon on a styrofoam ice cream to-go cup)
2) Scraping teeth on wet, wooden popsicle sticks
3) Scraping nails too hard on glazed ceramic coffee cups

Is this a psychological thing?
If nails on a chalkboard bother so many people,
then is this herd mentality or seriously a brain thing?
Can someone do their comp thesis on this please?
Or at least tell me if they know?
Because for the life of me, I don't know why these things
illicit such a strong and terrible gahhhaskkjkfriwe7!8n.

Kinda fascinating really.

A Thought

I am eating a grilled swiss cheese sandwich with truffle oil.
I am totally happy with it. Really freaking happy.


Do you ever stop to think: there is so much fucked up stuff in the world. So many people who can’t get what they want. So many dreams deferred and hopes crushed and goals so far out of reach. Even the most generic of people can make it through high school, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, get a house, get life insurance, have a dignified tombstone… and it takes a whole life to get any of that stuff done.

But then there's food. Food is the only thing that give me total and immediate gratification. You eat it, you taste it, you swallow it, and it’s yours. No one else can take it from you. Food is fucking beautiful. I love food. I want to spend my life with food. This grilled cheese sandwich is beautiful.

Sex does not count as total and absolute immediate gratification. I can think of at least ten of my closest friends who would argue that. Sex gets complicated. You’re wrong. Even people in solid relationships can’t have sex whenever they want. But you can go downstairs at 4 a.m. and have a grilled cheese whenever. Masturbation is a little closer, I guess. This grilled cheese is probably a better sexual experience.

Why do some people waste their food time with crappy Lean Cuisine TV dinners and hard store-bought muffins when food is the best treat they’ll get all day?

I am so pleased with this grilled cheese.
If I wasn’t eating it, I’d have it plated with gold and put on display.

The Worst Line I've Ever Gotten

Customer: I'm Kevin, what's your name?
Me: Katrina.
Customer: What?
Me: Katrina. Like the hurricane.
Customer: Oh, cool.
Me: Yeah.
Customer: So hurricanes usually fly solo...you single?
Me: (stares)

Celebrity Morph by MyHeritage

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities

In Defense of Fashion

So here I am, munching on my nectarine,
Flipping through the pages of Nylon magazine.

That rhymed, but this isn't a poem.
Bitch please, I didn't even have a single cup of coffee today.
(Post publishing edit: I did later.)

Today I'm thinking about fashion, makeup, & the careers and businesses surrounding them. This female-dominated realm is something in which I ricochet back and forth, as far as whether I take it seriously or not. Whether I like it or not. Whether it's worth my time or not.

And deciding whether you like something or not is very important, I think. Never definitive and final, but always very important.

I decided a long time ago that I do not like expectation. And unfortunately, I think life for a lot of people is built around expectation. There's a comfort to it and a need for it. But expecting I'll graduate from college, get a job, settle down, have 2.5 kids and a pension plan is necessary but not very interesting, no. I'll be happy to have all those things (and views can always change) but I'm not fired up about it. Not now at least. Not at all.

I also decided a long time ago that I love art. I love creating it and admiring it. And I know what kind of art I like. More Warhol than Whistler. More Gorey than Gauguin. And more Louboutin than Leonardo. I prefer art without the expectation of enjoying it in a museum where you're supposed to enjoy art. I like flipping through the pages of a magazine and finding art. I like walking down the street and finding art. I like rolling out of bed in the morning, smearing on my makeup while my eyes are still blurry from sleeping with my contacts in, and then realizing I did a pretty artistic job blending my eyeshadow regardless.

I like constantly reinventing myself with art. Fashion and makeup allow me to do that.

That's about it. Really.

So many people view the world of fashion, design and couture as superficial, vapid and useless. I often thought that way too, because in the great scheme of things, what I wear today doesn't mean a damn thing and doesn't make a bit of difference to anyone 100 years from now, 10 years, 1 year, tomorrow.

But I'm not hanging around 100 years from now, I'm hanging around right here, and if a boucle sweater and leggings make me feel sexy and happy right now, then sweet muffins!

So billions of women and gay men, if I may embrace some stereotypes, read Vogue, Vanity Fair, and other fashion magazines, or watch Top Model and Project Runway, inhaling fashion advice and goggling at images with anticipation, fascination, and devotion that others may compare to following politics, music, or sports.

I like some of them. I like the flamboyant Sanjaya look-alike that just got kicked off the designer reality show because he threw a hissy fit about his model being too skinny to fill out into his masterpiece fringed poncho. Dude, I'd be upset too. That fringe took like two days.

I do not like the ET correspondents who flock to the red carpet begging to know who Blake Lively is wearing. Brands are dumb. I also hate when celebrities tell fashion reporters they're wearing some obscure designer's name and get impressed responses as if they just figured out a really difficult math equation.

I think fashion is art when I like what I'm seeing. Durr. Asymmetrical shapes and offbeat colors are fashionable to me because they're interesting to look at. I don't care if bubble skirts are a great trend for the Fall, but I do care that my new skirt makes my butt look like a bubble, which is intriguing.







Maybe I just like flipping through Vogue for the voyeuristic deliciousness of their beauty, colors, and good hygiene, and that tiny hope that those "Get this look!" tips could bring me just a little closer to such a beautiful, bizarro world.

The point is, I think I get fashion as an art form. Not so much the business with whoever decides what's "in" and what's "out" and whoever thought Crocs were a good idea. But the fact that everyone wakes up in the morning (except for people who die in their sleep) and gets dressed. I see the innovative potential in fashion and cosmetics to transform this necessary task into a daily creative adventure to evoke a mood, make a statement, or generate conversation. Not with a $5000 Gareth Pughs coat of polyurethane balloons (above), but you know. That potential tastes good.

This has been Trina Tulloch, in another edition of "Desperate Attempts to Justify Herself with Seemingly Analytic Rambling." Good night, America.

The Lyrics to the Pancake Song

(from The Mighty Boosh, which you should know about)

eggs, milk and flour, pancake power,
look at his milky yellow sunshine face
flip it now flip it good oo
flip it now flip it good oo
some are salt
some are sweet
some are fruit
some are meat

the time we used the chive
it really came alive!
edible frisbees
springtime tuesday

i like to boogie.

All hail British humor.

I CAN'T TELL IF SHOPPING MAKES ME HAPPY

Terrifying.
Watch This.

Driving, Sushi, and HP6

Yesterday I got my drivers license (!!!)

Unfortunately, this still doesn't mean my dad trusts me driving alone. He has separation anxiety out the wazoo. He makes all these excuses about our insurance policy, but really he just wants me to be miserable. Truth.

I am currently eating a frozen yogurt. I don't often freeze my yogurts, I usually just eat them with tons of extra creamy Reddiwhip so I achieve my life long goal of being an All-American fatty. But someone recommended I try freezing Yoplait Whips. It's OK, in a frozen fluffy way. My spoon tastes too metallic. I broke a spoon at work today. Life is so unfair with spoons.

Apparently, I have forgotten how to type a happy and comprehensible blog post.

Let's start over.

I got my driver's license! I was shopping online a little for a car. I have such an affection for those new, boxy cars like the Cube [mobile device] and the Honda Fit. And those Smart Cars they imported recently from Europe. I don't know brands, haha, just shapes. Boxy cars look so futuristic to me, like the flying pods from The Fifth Element. Really I'd be happy with any car, but I hope the wave of boxcars means we're deep in a transition period toward digital and electric automobiles along with everything else. Sometimes I'm totally blown away by how different things are from ten years ago.

I don't even know how I would explain stuff today to someone in 1999. Did we even have iPods then? Friends was still on air. How would you tell someone back then that the funniest TV shows today don't even have laugh tracks? Holy cannoli, that was when I was in fourth grade. I had just gotten my first pair of glasses. They were wire frames. (shudder)

Anyway.

Yesterday, my mom and I went out to try a new restaurant to celebrate my acquisition of The NYS License. We meant to Koto Japanese Sushi Bar, but then my mom told me "koto" in her language means "lice." This significantly decreased my desire to go there. We instead went to a place called Hana, also a Japanese Sushi Bar, but also a steakhouse and hibachi bar.

I rarely go out for Japanese food (there are so few places here in the 518) but this place was EXTRAORDINARY. My mom and I were decided to be daring and order only dangerous sounding things. She got "Fast and Furious Sashimi" and I got "Dynamite Sushi."

Dynamite.

Our sushi chef.

Fast and Furious.

Bar.

Mmm.

What else, what else is going on. I saw HP6 twice. It was ridiculously funny the second time, because I was watching more of what was going on in the background than the main action in every scene There is some seriously funny and great acting by the extras. It's really always just very British, lots of very questionable staring. Especially Snape's reactions to everything. I really believe this is the best film to date. Everyone keeps complaining about a lack of action sequences and magic special effects, but they're the same people who thought Transformers 2 was good. Also, they paid money to go out and see Transformers 2. So I rest my case. I'm just really happy to see the younger cast starting to act and play off their amazing and experienced cast members (Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Helena Bonham Carter, Jim Broadbent, etc.)

I sound super snobbish and misleadingly interested in celebrity news, but I just really have a passion for watching British people, having grown up watching miniseries after miniseries on PBS.

A Love Letter

Dear Table 74,

It was such a delight to be your waitress this evening! You took my breath away the moment you walked through the doors. Your greeter and I may have debated in the kitchen whether or not you were completely stoned off your ass, but baby, you know that's how I like my men. Your bloodshot eyes, easy smile and ravenous appetite were more charming than anything else.

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time from your cell phone conversation to give me your order. I also really enjoyed the workout I got running back and forth to get you all those different sauces for your one turkey club. And it sure was a sexy surprise to find out you're in the army, although it would've been easier if you had asked if we give military discounts before I brought you your check.

But oh, the cherry on top of the sundae was when you left me your name and number on the bill, with a little "Call me." Brandon, I would totally call you, cause you were kind of a rugged hottie, but I'm afraid the $2 tip you left just doesn't say "true love" to me. Feel free to try again, though! *thumbs up*

Affectionately yours,
Katrina