I hate apartments.  They put provisions IN THE LEASE in case you have to break your lease, then they treat you like a felon when you actually do it.  My new apartment won't officially rent to me until my old apartment "releases" me, but what business of theirs is that?  Why do they care, as long as I'm paying them?  And how am I supposed to take care of anything when my current apartment won't answer their phone or return messages?  I've talked to my apartment 4 times about moving out early, and gotten 4 different quotes of what it will cost me.  I went in yesterday to finally pay it, and I asked where they were getting these numbers they were throwing at me.  The leasing agent looked at me blankly and said (I'm not making this up) "I don't know."  By the time I left, they had THREE people (including the regional manager) poring over my lease, and not one of them had any idea what I was actually supposed to pay.  In a nod to the efficiency and intelligence of the American workforce, it seems that they don't actually read or understand the lease they make everyone sign.  It made my day that I made them look stupid, when they were trying to put on over on me.  (At one point, she told me I had to give them a $3000 check up front. I reponded that I'd be happy to give her the check, but that she wasn't going to have much luck cashing it.)  Idiots.

Also, weekend pictures and 11 new shoe pictures up today!

I'm hopelessly behind in posting, so I'm letting someone else do the work for me today.  I received an entertaining email review of my shoes (the ones that I have pictures of) and thought I should share it (hope he doesn't mind :)  He is not a fan of my rainbow of flip-flops, sadly.  The link to 52 was wrong (leading to an apparently "unneccesarily cruel" second viewing of the orange flip flops) but it's fixed now :)

4. Nice
5. Hmmm
7. They rock
13. Great!
18. Nice
22. Awesome
23. Equally awesome
27. Wow.
36. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!
39. OH MY GOD!
42. Better
44. Photo doesn't do them justice
52. Wrong link -> 36 - ARRRGH AGAIN!!!(Unnecessary cruelty!)
54. Sweet
55. Nice
56. Gorgeous
64. Unusual.  In the future all shoes will look like this...
65. Eak!
69. Fire hazzard
71. Cute
77. Sweet
83. WOW!
87. See 87 x2.

My generation summarized: Checking the news this morning, I noticed the headline "Amazon reduced by 10,000 square miles."  The first thing that went through my head (and I am not making this up) was "Wow, is Amazon.com's warehouse that big??"

Auto designers have run out of ideas: Has NO ONE NOTICED that PT Cruisers look like hearses?  Especially from the back.  Seriously, think about it. 

Love that American freedom: This guy, who works for Budweiser, got fired for drinking a Coors.  At a bar.  On his own time.  While not on the job or in uniform.  (I knew there was a reason I hated Bud so much.)  

After a miserable weekend of apartment hunting involving, at one point, me bursting into tears in front of a leasing agent, I have an apartment in San Antonio. This leaves me free to expound on other matters, such as:

                                My Crazy Cat
Ella Belle does not like to be alone.  She comes running everytime I come home after a brief absence and immediately jumps into my lap, purring.  For this I love her. On the other hand, if I'm gone for a period longer than she approves, she inflicts serious damage upon my belongings.  For example, I have pinpoints of light streaming through my brand new curtains where she repeatededly jumps up, sinks her claws in...and just hangs.  She doesn't bite, tear, or shred.  Just hangs.  When I returned from the apartment hunting weekend, there was litter from one end of the kitchen to the other (which is typical), but also a pile of litter on top of the litter box, and a pile in her water bowl, forming a nasty grey paste.  At this point I have to interject--cats lack opposable thumbs.  This rather limits their ability to, say, carry things.  So how did piles of sand end up in places where she simply cannot take them?  I guess I'll never know.

She has also developed a strange and slightly worrisome affinity for the bathroom.  If she sees me heading in that direction, she immediately races to the bathroom so she can beat me to the toilet.  At first, before she really got the hang of landing on it, she fell in occasionally, which was pretty funny.  Not paying attention, I have sat on her once or twice.  After pushing her off and taking care of business, she jumps back up in utter fascination with the flushing action.  I've taken to keeping the bathroom door closed at all times because otherwise I will come home to my used cotton balls dug from the trashcan, ripped into a hundred little cat spit soaked pieces, and spread from one end of the apartment to the other.

I love her, I do.  But this is undoubtedly God's way of making sure I never have children. 

I love Bowling for Soup.  I first saw them in 1999 when they won a contest in Dallas and got to open for Bush and Blink-182.  I saw them again in Fort Worth last year after their first big hit, Girl All the Bad Guys Want.  And again this Sunday at Emo's.  They're totally unattractive, completely hilarious, and every song is sing-a-long worthy.  In fact, with their songs all over the radio, I can't believe they're still playing $13 shows in small places like Emo's, but I won't complain becase it's probably the last time I'll get to see them that close.  As usual, I took crappy pictures (the ones of the band didn't even come out), but here's what there is.

I know that I'm picky.  I don't like the outdoors, I don't like to be hot, I don't like to be cold, and I want good food at every meal.  Despite this, I prefer to think I'm not actually snobby, I just prefer not to waste my short time here doing banal, unforgettable things.  This does not mean that I don't eventually draw a line when it comes to my surroundings.  I have attended my share of crazy parties, but I find that it is wholly unnecessary for a "crazy" party to have a "trashy" element, and that is what  I was forced to endure Saturday night.

First of all this party was being held in a garage.  It goes (I thought) without saying, that if you own a home, it is generally preferable to hold a party inside said home rather than in the garage.  Especially when it's raining.  I soon found out, however, that the garage was necessary because the house itself smelled like various waste products of cats and dogs mixed with a healthy dose of wet fur.  At least, I hope that's all that was causing the smell.  Not breathing through my nose and wishing for a gas mask, I quickly scrambled back to the garage, where I was in for a long bout of standing up because I was afraid I might contract a disease if I sat on anything. The host of this party kept screaming that if anyone was drinking out of his keg, they better pay $3.  (Note to self: Do not throw garage party and then charge attendees for privilige of drinking Natty Lite.)  Specifically, he announced that he saw a lot of people drinking out of his blue plastic cups that had not paid. I was drinking out of one of his cups, but being picky, I don't drink beer and had brought my own refreshment.  He generously pointed at me during the rant about the cups and announced he was aware that I'd brought my own drink so I didn't have to pay for the cup.  Really, his kindness brought tears to my eyes. 

There was some odd game going on wherein 10 cups with beer in them were set up in a bowling ball formation on each end of a ping pong table.  Players took turn throwing a ping pong ball at the other person's cups, and if it landed in one, the opponent had to chug the beer.  Of course, if they missed, the ball went rolling along the garage floor.  At this point they would make a perfunctory gesture of rinsing the ball off in a cup of water (which was never emptied).  I don't really have to go into why that was pointless.  Our esteemed host, angry at losing this game, began screaming and pounding on the ping pong table.

At this point I turned to Perry and informed him that he was going to be paying for this for a long, long time.  I'm sorry, but when a majority of the females in one location weigh over 200 pounds and one of them is wearing a bedspread (she might have been wearing pants, but I would have no way of knowing, seeing as how the entire time I was there she was clothed in a bedspread sarong) it's just not a place that I have a great desire to be.  Call me snobby, I don't care.   Perry was a bit annoyed that I wouldn't just "try to have fun," at which point I informed him that if he didn't know me well enough yet to know that this was not a place where I would EVER have fun, we needed to have a serious discussion about our relationship.  Having finally convinced him that he could choose between me or the party, he retrieved my belongings from inside the house (I wasn't about to set foot back in there) and took me home.  My nice clean, Green Tea and Mandarin smelling, wet fur free, disease infested garage-less, home.  I may never set foot outside here ever again.  It's not safe out there.

I finally managed to say the words "I'm going to San Antonio."  That's been my biggest problem--I sent off the acceptance, have started making plans, everyone knows I'm going--but I haven't been able to physically say the words.  But yesterday I did!

To my gynecologist.

There I am, in the most uncomfortable, immodest position any human has ever known, telling the doctor that I need a copy of my records because I'm moving in 2 months to go to law school and don't know what's going to happen with my insurance.

As I walked out to my car, I realized that I'd actually said the words without internally thinking "Well, maybe I'm going."  As God did during the first week, I said it, and it was.

And so it is.  I'm going to law school!

I'm coming out of my paralysis long enough to congratulate you, Charlie, on finally getting rid of Sarah W. although it was about 4 episodes too late.  I'm sure you felt bad at the time, but as you're watching these episodes now and see the way she was really acting, you can rest easy.

As for you Sarah W--I fully realize I don't "know" you.  I know that reality show producers like to villainize someone in each series, and you were picked this time.  But come on, you didn't make it a very hard choice!  You very much baited the other girls, and then when they defended themselves, you claimed that they "hate you because you're beautiful"? Who actually says that?  Now honey, you might be pretty, but there's a lot of pretty girls in the world, and I don't see you catwalking in Paris.  Albeit, I'm not either, but I'm also not on national television whining that girls hate me because I'm just too sweet and pretty.  I hope your classic superiority complex keeps you warm at night, because there's no love lost between you and ANY viewers of this season's bachelor--male or female.     

I'm still in the throes of indecision about St. Mary's and am unable to do (or write about) anything else.  In fact, I'm so out of it, that this morning when I grabbed the check to make the tax deposit, I grabbed the rent check instead.  I just gave our rent to the IRS.  I'm telling you, things in my brain aren't good.

I mean, it's obvious that I'm going.  Everyone acts like I'm going.  I act like I'm going.  My office is beginning the process to replace me.  We even told my grandmother, and believe me, we don't tell her anything until the entire event is over if we can help it.  I talk about to anyone who will listen, and even a few who won't. Yet I can't say the words "I'm going." 

It's a shame that I'm in such a paralysis, because I have an amusing little anecdote about Weirdo aka Shredder aka Little Sh*t aka Feline Schizophrenic aka Ella.  It will have to wait until tomorrow.  Or if things continue like this, until I have graduated.