You know what's funny? Since I've started this whole "not out for a relationship" thing, I've had many a guy trying to land me. I don't say this with pride or arrogance; I say this with annoyance. The guys I've been attracting lately have been d-grade guys. Not that I'm better than them by any means, I'm just saying that they're not the sort of people I should get involved with. For instance: a crystal queen, an achoholic, a player, a married guy, and a few assorted others. I realize that to find a prince, you have to kiss a lot of frogs, but at this point, what.ever.

The truth is, I'm just really lonely right now. I'm so busy that I don't get to actually spend time with anyone - friends or otherwise. And my friends, lately, have been...preoccupied.

I realized tonight that I don't have anyone to share the upcoming special stuff with. My birthday, graduation, whatever. And it kinda sucks. Of course, this is all relative. I'll be surrounded by friends and people who love me, and I'm sure everything will work out and be fine. I've just, lately, been in kind of a mood I can't quite shake off. I wanna be all cool and "tra la la" but at least, for the moment, I want to wallow in being completely and totally ughed-out. But I can't really talk to anyone about it, so I just keep my mouth shut and deal with it. I can't really talk about anything, anymore.

It's wierd, isn't it? The more open I become, the less I can speak.

Figured I would do a quick update before my class; one that isn't about alcohol. Heh.

1) I am sore in all the wrong spots today. Wimpering, bruised, watery-eyed puppy dog kinda pain. Last night was slam city at work. We rang almost $900 in about 5 hours with only me and Will working. To give you an idea - we normally ring about $1200 on a Saturday night with 4 people working. I didn't stop running/moving from 9 until 3 last night. Insane. But I'm making deliciously good money, so I can't complain too much.

2) I'm about to recieve my critiques in my creative writing class on that short story I wrote. I'm nervous as hell. I'm the only one in the class that a)wrote about an "alternative" lifestyle, and b)wrote about something other than a drunk, abusive father or dead puppy. In the critiquing session, we're not allowed to respond to what's being said to us, and everyone's allowed free range to say what they want about the stories. Not feeling too optimistic about this, truth be told.

3) Dr. Dave still hasn't called - should I be worried? Mark came in last night and started to play his "you didn't call me so I stood you up last week" game, and I pretty much just told him to fuck off. I don't have time for people who play games. Especially when it's that kinda BS. What.Ever. I found out that Michael was crazier than even I thought. And I've had 4 offers in the last two days to "party" with different...groups...of guys. Um, no. Just, no. In short, men suck.

4) Eep! Only one week until my b-day, and 5 weeks till graduation. WTF? When did this happen?

5) *sigh* It's so pretty outside and I'm stuck in class all day. I think I'll skip my LGBT class again tonight; just as well - I didn't finish the midterm paper yet. Ah, well. Shit happens.

Here's the short story I'm turning in today for my Creative Writing workshop. It sucks, I know, but I just started it three hours ago.

( Queen Victoria )

Once again, my creative writing ASSHOLE professor strikes again. Our latest assignment is was a free-write open poem that had to have an intentional form. Then we had to have a consultation with him so he could proof it before we turn in a final copy. This is what I came up with:

Here at Home
Bombs are raining from the sky,
diving to the earth.
Wars are raging through the world,
in every nation.
Famine plagues the population
in every empire.
Clean water cannot be found
in rivers, lakes, streams.

But here at home
all is as should be:
Boys and men kill each other
for any reason.
They seek to destroy themselves
to not be destroyed.
Women, young girls starve themselves
to look too perfect.
They cry crystal tears that crack
their perfect faces.

Elsewhere things are horrible,
as we have been told.
Everywhere else things are bad;
we should feel lucky.

But here at home
all is as should be.

( My commentary on this piece, and then his comments on this piece. )

Yup, it sure is. I know I've been kinda scarce, lately, save for the occaisional rant/whine posts. But actually, things haven't been SO bad lately.

Guys: Where to start. Michael (they guy I let down as gently as possible a couple weeks back) has turned into a hands-down stalker boy, and it's getting a little irritating. He's scared off 3 guys this past week, alone. Definetely going to have a chat with him. As for Mark, the guy I broke it off with Michael for, we've decided that for now, we're friends. I don't want to be his rebound guy, and he doesn't want to lead me on (is anyone else noticing a pattern with the guys I've been interested in?). California (his name is also Michael, so I'm calling him Cali) has been coming around more and more often, and I think he might have something going for me, which would be cool, but I'm so not in date mode right now. There's also Phillip, who walked me home the other night. I had to fight every urge to just throw him against a wall and start making out with him. There's also a few other random guys trying to get a spot on my dance card. **No worries to any of my LJ mums - I haven't touched a one of them!** I just think it's funny that the minute I turn off date mode, it's like someone flipped a switch that turned me into some kind of homo beacon.

School: What else is there to say but "yick"? My classes suck - all of them. Well, maybe not my Film and Lit course, but the rest of them, yes. My creative writing professor has ripped my work to shreds, and kicked me down to shit level - telling me how bad my stuff is, how amateur my writing is, and how I can never be a "real writer" like him. I just laughed. I don't want to be a "real writer" if it means being like him, or writing like him. Doesn't he know anything about style? My style is my own, and I rather like how I write, thank you very much. I'm getting a fucking C in his class, and that pisses me off something awful. But again; whatever. If he's a "real writer" - no thanks, I'm throw my pens and paper away. Moving on...

Work and Home: Work has been...work. I love bartending, but I hate cocktailing now. I get to interact with the customers more behind the bar; and I get tipped hell of a lot better. I've been run kinda ragged the last few weeks, though. But I have tomorrow and Sunday off (yay!). I have to write a bunch of papers and assignments for school though (boo!). And I desperately need to clean and do laundry. I have like nothing to wear or eat off of. It's kinda gross. Ah, it's the bachelor's life for me, it is. I'm looking forward to the summer, because I'm going to get rid of a bunch of shit, do a DEEP cleaning of my place, get some new furniture, and paint. And definetely clean my carpet, because - yuck. Since I can't move, I'm going to do the next best thing: redecorate. How gay am I?

Speaking of summer, it is fast approaching. My *eep* b-day's in a couple of weeks, and graduation is only a couple of weeks after that. I just ordered my cap and gown, and I need to pick up some graduation announcements. I would love the fancy university-sponsored ones, but they're so freakin expensive. I can't believe it's coming so fast. But yet - not fast enough. I have senioritis so bad, it hurts. I'm almost done; and that's crazy to think about. I really should sit down and do my resume again and start sending it out - but I want to take some time and just do my own thing with no school or "real job" to take up my time. Seems stupid, because I've spent all this time and money on getting a degree and for the moment I don't want to use it. I just want some time for myself - my own time that I don't owe anyone else for a little while. Whatever.

So it's a beautiful day today. Went for a walk this afternoon around the neighborhood, and was reminded again why I love it. Sitting here in the park, on my wi-fi, sipping my Chocolate Cooler from Cruise-n-Brew. But it's almost time to go home and get ready for work.

Hope everyone else is well!

quick update before I head to work on how horribly horribly BAD my weekend was.

walked to the bank before I headed out of town to deposit some tips and a paycheck, and got pick-pocketed. $300 worth - two weeks worth of tips - gone. So i had to put gas and smokes on my credit card just to get home. then it was bumper to bumper traffic on my way out of the city - it took two hours to get outside of city limits alone, and I narrowly missed getting involved in 4! 3+ car pile-up accidents.

home itself wasn't bad, not really. but it was really odd - I have my apartment front door buzzer hooked into my cell phone (so if someone rings my buzzer, my cell phone rings). the entire weekend at home, my buzzer kept going off, and if i answered it, no one would answer back.

then on the drive back to chicago, traffic was about 4x worse because it's Easter Sunday and they let all the old people out of the homes, and because it was thunderstorms the whole way back. I left about 3:30 this afternoon, and it's 7:30 now; i just walked in the door. It usually takes me about 2.5 hours. i get back to my apartment (after parking in the middle of the lake that is my street), and someone's tried to break in while I was gone. The door jamb is all chipped up by the deadbolt, which doesn't quite lock properly, and it appears that it was tried more than once (my forensic chem class coming back to me). which leads me to conclude that whoever was ringing my buzzer was testing to see if I was home, and finding out that I wasn't, somehow got into the building and to my apartment and tried to break in. luckily, they didn't succeed - it doesn't look like anything's missing or messed with. But that's really very scary for me. and after that pick-pocket episode, I am not amused with my luck right now.

Fuck, what a shitty weekend.

Going to get tested today.

Wish me negativity.

I have a date tonight! Mark called and wants to meet tonight after he gets done at this birthday party thing. EEP! That leaves me with 6 hours to clean this apartment, pick out an outifit, and make myself purty!

EEP!

I'm in an icky mood today. It's mostly because I'm exhausted and achey. Tonight's my 6th night in a row working, and yesterday I did a double. Thank god tomorrow night I'm off. My apartment is trashed and I'm behind in my school stuff already (I was naughty today and decided to not go to school...BAD BRADLEY!), and I've got a shitton of paperwork and crap to go through and sort out. And errands and laundry and all kinds of domestic stuff that builds up.

Was woken up this morning by my property management company wanting to know if I was planning on renewing my lease. I laughed at them and told 'em I'd let them know by next Wednesday, but it looks like probably not. When they asked why, I said point blank that what I'm paying now is too much for this apartment, let alone the extra $35 they want to increase rent to. Considering all of the stuff that's broke, my neighbors, and all the BS, it's just not worth it. I think I'm going to move up to A-ville (north side of the city) or even Irving Park. It's amazing what 12 blocks distance can do to property values. My goal is to get a 1-bedroom for around what I'm paying now for my studio, or maybe a little more. I'm meeting with four different apartment finding agencies next week. So hopefully I'll turn up something and be able to put some money down for a deposit to hold it till June. I just don't think it's a necessity for me to live in this neighborhood anymore. It's nice and I love it, but I can't really justify the money being spent here. Who knows.

Met a new guy last night; Mark. Nice guy, seems stable. We're going out next week. Gonna set Michael down tonight or tomorrow and let him know what's what. Things have definetely gotten out of hand.

I just finished all the requested changes for my research study and emailed everything back to the IRB.

It only took about an hour, and now I feel stupid for waiting till the last minute.

But it's done. It's really really done.