i had another driving lesson today...this time i drove in circles (ovals? rectangles?) in a Light Rail parking lot and attempted to park a few times. today's session can be summed up with a conversation i had today...

cat: i ran over 5 curbs while driving today
jlo: ouch :-)
cat: and a piece of roadkill*
cat: but i figure...practice will make perfect!
jlo: lol
cat: (or else there's going to be a path of wrecked cars and dead pedestrians behind me)
jlo: thats video game material cat ;-)
cat: well...um...true

*it was dead already and there was a car behind me...this was in an actual street. so dodging it wasn't much of an option. but as the left wheels went over it, i felt a ::bump:: ::bump::. it was extremely sad.

As I learn to drive, i will keep a log of what i learn...

Today was mi first time driving legally. since i've got a permit, and since i'm older than 17 and a half, one of mi parents decided to teach me how to drive. today we went to a deserted non-through street and a big windy parking lot. what i learned today:

it's alright to make illegal turns if the street's deserted and you're just practicing
one should not accelerate into a turn (you'd think that i'd know that already, from being in a car while mi beloved debate partner's driving)

beware...there is yet another dangerous driver on the road (and this one's very dangerous indeed, because she doesn't entirely know how to operate a car yet).

i've been trying to decide what to do with mi hair - should i get dark purple, dark blue, or dark red dye? and should i get streaks, blotches, or dye mi whole head? im thinking dark shades, like ones that would show up primarily in sunlight. nothing like highlighter blue, highlighter purple, or fire engine red, but definitely artificial looking. one of the factors in mi decision (which is, for the moment, dark purple streaks) was which color would produce the most shock value. granted, blue would be shocking, but i had other reasons for choosing purple over blue (namely, purple is jcl color and njcl's next week). i made a comment - 'i hope he notices,' because i'm hoping to shock someone ::evil laffter:: when he sees me, and that sparked another valuable lesson from Professor Meghan. So today i present a double lesson from Meg's Grad School - one on hair color, as well as another lesson on behavior. Read and learn.

Lesson Six
This lesson can be summed up, however crudely, in a single sentence from Professor Meghan: we don't do ANYTHING for boys.

student: oh...new factor for consideration...which would shock ****** * more? purple or red?
student: ::eyes open with evil glint::
siren9: haha
siren9: good girl O:-):-D
siren9: i think purple is more shocking
siren9: red can appear somewhat natural
siren9: purple is "i'm going all out punk and i don't care what you think"
siren9: deep purple streaks, however, say, "i'm going quite punk with a damn nice amount of style and sophistication and i don't care what you think"
siren9: :-)
student: alright. purple!!
student: i hope he notices.
siren9: nice =)
siren9: he will
student: if im going to this effort to make his eyes pop out
siren9: i mean, sure, boys are dumb
siren9: but he will :-)
siren9: *ahem* time for another lesson from Meg's
siren9: we don't do ANYTHING for boys
siren9:: never, ever
siren9: *ahem* not directly, that is
siren9: we do various things for our own ends- improving ourselves simply for our own sakes
siren9: and if you happen to make someone's eyes fly out of his head.... *oops* is that really your fault?
siren9: O:-)
siren9: example:
siren9: i get hair cut and color change after ^^^^^^ * breaks up with me
siren9: i do that because *I* want to change my hair juss cuz i want toa
siren9: *to
siren9: and its realli not my fault if ^^^^^^ walks past me in the edge one day, stops, snaps his head around, does a double-take, and goes, "whoa, i like your hair!"
siren9: :-D
siren9: once again, subtlty is the key: a guy must *never* know you want his attention, just as with flirting
student: right.
student: hmm. i wanted to dye hair for a long time
student: but the shock value of ppl in general is good
student: but the shock value of ****** is even better
student: :-)

*name has been replaced with a random number of asterisks

06.23.02 ~ Lesson One: The Goal
06.23.02 ~ Lesson Two: The Goal II
06.24.02 ~ Lesson Three: How to Make An Entrance
07.07.02 ~ Lesson Four: Flirting
07.12.02 ~ Lesson Five: The Art of Rationalization

07.13.02 ~ Therapy Session 429

today, i had a link to mi blog on mi away message. i then received the following message:

siren9: if you're gonna advertise your blog on your away message, you have an obligation to society (er, to me, anyway) to update it :-)

i stand reprimanded and will now update mi blog. problem is, there's not much for me to write about that i haven't already said to someone. namely, how much i miss camp, how much i miss freedom and air conditioning and friends and lab leaders and wicked smiles etc... i'm going stark raving mad here at home.

well. i have an interesting book excerpt to put at the end of this post, but before that i mite as well announce to the whole world how mi friday went after landing in San Jose, Cali. After searching the terminal to make absolutely certain that mi angel wasn't there (she'd said that she might drop by the airpot), i walked to the baggage claim and lo and behold, i saw a blonde vision approaching me. my angel! she got dragged out to dinner with mi family, and then later on we talked. what'd i ever do to deserve a friend like this? im searching through mi memory, and it's telling me that i've done nothing to warrant the friendship of an amazing person like her.

i've been dreaming about wicked smiles ever since i took off from the Castilian dorm on friday afternoon. ::sigh::

time for an excerpt from Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, by Mario Vargas Llosa:

I explained to her that love didn't exist, that it was the invention of an Italian named Petrarch and the Provencal troubadours. That what people thought was a crystal-clear outpouring of emotion, a pure effusion of sentiment, was merely the instinctive desire of cats in heat hidden beneath the poetic words and myths of literature.

so what is love? from what i've seen of it this summer, it manifests itself in bonds that lash people together and send jarring stabs of pain into everyone woven into its webs, however remotely. at the same time...i keep remembering wicked smiles...