sticker shock

as i was driving home today, cursing friday northbound traffic and giving my synchro-less 2nd gear a grinding good time, a ray of sunshine cut into my shitty commute and brightened my day.

a white dodge neon cut in front of me and, my fist poised in the air to give my signature "let me tell you what i think of your driving" gesture, i froze and burst out laughing. i looked from the beefy man arm hanging out the driver's side window, complete with hairy fur-cuffs and big manly watch, to the dude's 5 o'clock shadow and aviator shades reflecting from his side mirror, to the handmade sign taped on his trunk. in sloping block letters colored in alternating day-glo hues, it read, "so happy to be gay."

for a split second i thought the dude was just way too cheap to spring for a rainbow sticker, like the guys from new bedford who think using ace hardware mailbox lettering to spell out "COROLLA" across their rear window is a special kind of badass.

then i realized the poor schmuck had no idea what was on the back of his car, and that he had some pretty funny enemies, or even funnier friends, that taped that shit on there with care and a lot of clear packing tape (no pun intended). that guy's going to get home and be pretty pissed when he realizes why i was guffawing, slapping my steering wheel with mirth, and digging out my camera phone. someone's day was definitely worse than mine...

high time

i was doing my procrastinatory blogcheck, which is a reflex any time i have something important to do (i have a presentation on monday). it reminded me that there's still a post on the front page of my own blog about my chembio final. that shit ended last academic year. i'm a second year now, and my next class, molecular biophysics, just began today. while it's depressing to be back around at fall semester, it's even more depressing that not even an entire page documents all the good times i had this summer. although most of those good times were sneaking to a nearby complex to tan and have lunch by their pool during the work week, or scooting out early to get pedicures with my coworkers, and not worth documenting for posterity.

yesterday i marveled at the transition a year can make. the few days leading up to the inception of first year core courses at school, i was all over office max with all the elementary schoolers, fighting them for the best set of highlighters and binder tabs. yesterday i was like, shit dude i think my class starts tomorrow - anyone in the lab got an extra binder i can borrow for a few months?

there's a lot going on, as always; kz beat me to the punch by updating his blog, which served as yet another reminder to get cracking. he changed jobs and was a real trooper during the time of uncertainty. that change means we're trying to move to an apartment in metro west, the upshot of which is more $$ for a short commute for me (15 min...holy crap), a garage for our multitude of car troubles, and dog ownership. nothing's open for us at the place now, and i'm just hoping we get to move before the holidays. springtime will be qualifying season, which means i won't be doing anything outside of school other than possibly devoting some time to a puppy (we've voted on a corgi).

my eye twitch is back - yay, i missed you!; i'm experimenting with proactiv and have discovered that yes, it burns off your facial skin but it takes the pimples with it; but thankfully i'm not having any sleeping troubles - my nights are packed with strange dreams indicative of either a rich imagination or a psychotic break (from rushing to diffuse the bomb with vin diesel, but everyone is dead already and i'm the source of the outbreak! to the nested dream within a dream, where i wake up and say to bears "phew! i just had the worst dream," and i roll over and the associate dean is lying in his place...) so the cycle begins anew, but in another flavor of stress and dread. it's all good.