John Faciane

zoombinilover @ 10:37 am:

Yes.

Today IS a good day.

Tags: life

aomori_seiryuu @ 11:44 pm: Ballpoints for Planes
“Happy jetting :),” a friend of mine told me in an email right before I left. Little did he know as he put those words down through his fingers and onto the screen that I have a tendency to panic the night before I travel; this typically involves a full-blown panic attack, replete with pacing, hyper-ventilating, and drinking abnormal quantities of alcohol.

Don’t get me wrong, I adore flying. Being up in the plane and looking down at all the things below you, seeing for miles and miles (provided there is not a grotesquely fat person next to you blocking out the light of day the window might otherwise provide); this is truly the ultimate manifestation of my considerable ego.

This time, however, I did not panic. I suspect it had something to do with the fact that I had insisted on going to the gym one last time before my trip, and so was running behind on, well, everything else. Put simply, I had no time to panic, hyper-ventilate or binge drink. Amidst the showering, cleaning, packing and running around from room to room forgetting why I had walked from the bathroom to the living room and back to my room in the first place, I was also trying to figure out how to walk a friend through getting a computer game to work for him while simultaneously attempting to talk with another friend about his career situation.

I believe the appropriate term to describe my state of being at the time would be what I have so affectionately been called so many times before: a hot, gay mess.

I’ve never really been sure how I feel about that phrase.

Fortuitously, I managed to get everything packed and squared away by approximately midnight. This is about the time I remembered that I should probably call and make a taxi reservation, which I did. But, to adopt a personal philosophy of a friend of mine, it is never tomorrow until I’ve fallen asleep. This led to a rather awkward reservation process.

“Hi, I needed to make a reservation for a cab,” I said. I then provided my address and destination, and then the man asked for the time of the reservation.

“7:30 AM tomorrow morning… uh huh, yes. Okay, great. Oh! And by ‘tomorrow’ I really mean today. Um, December the 24th, not Christmas day. Right, yes, I know that it’s after midnight and so I should have said ‘today’ instead of ‘tomorrow’… right, I’m sorry for the confusion. December 24th. Thank you.” The person on the other end of the phone laughed kindly and then hung up, but I know that he was secretly angry at me and plotting ways to make sure I died a terrible, flaming death later that morning.

After that, I vaguely remember shutting off my computer, falling somewhere in the direction of my bed (considering I don’t have any bodily damages today, I assume I hit it), and falling asleep. Luckily I had remembered to set my alarm, along with the alarm that my roommate so very generously lent to me; my alarm has a tendency to not go off at the most inopportune of times. Then at some point in the next fifteen minutes I positively flew out of bed, very nearly shouted “holy shit, I forgot to check in!”, dove on my computer and spent the next half hour wrestling my computer and printer into submission, along with haranguing the Delta website until it so kindly offered my boarding pass.

And then I passed out again.

The morning came with the melodious sound of two alarms going off in unison less than a foot from my head; in my attempt to shut them both off, I very nearly brought the folding card table that I use as a desk down on top of me. Somehow I managed to snooze them both, only to repeat the process nine minutes later. Apparently a self-inflicted bout of pain and anguish is totally worth those extra five hundred and forty seconds.

At around 7 o clock I progressed from the previous night’s Hot Gay Mess to Hot Gay Mess With His Hair On Fire. Somehow I managed to finish packing, brush my teeth, fix my hair and make breakfast all at the same time. And in fifteen minutes. My taxi was scheduled to arrive at 7:30. The time was 7:20. I threw my shoes on, grabbed an apple, and tried to eat the breakfast I had so negligently prepared, found I had time to eat two spoonfuls, and then had to run. I walked out to the curb where I found the taxi had just arrived. The taxi drove me to Alewife station, dropped me off, and I trotted down to the train – where I realized I had left my apple in the cab.

All in all, I would say the morning went quite smoothly.

And now here I am on my flight (for which I arrived at the gate two hours early), happily typing away on my laptop. I have to pee so badly I could cry – and let me assure you that having a little plastic cup of water steadied between my legs, with a significant amount of turbulence, is not helping this matter at all – but the girl next to me is reading Sarah Vowell and is really quite nice. I can’t bring myself to disturb her. Although I dare say that wetting myself might do just that quite effectively.

There is also a very attractive soccer player sitting back and to my left one row. Naturally, he is there with his beautiful girlfriend. But that’s ok, I’ll just pretend she’s really his sister and that he is going home for the holidays with her because he just broke up with his former gay lover and is ready to move on.

For the good of my own sanity, I think it best that I not talk to him. At all. Lest I break this image in my mind or, worse yet, reveal it to him and be given a Look. And then a slap - from his sister that’s really his girlfriend.

Now, I do not typically care to write something without first having written it out by hand. Although I tend to write longer and a little more coherently when I type from the start, it doesn’t hold the same magic as writing something with pen and ink does. And so I had thought to bring a pad of paper and a pen with me on this particular flight. Shortly before we got our snacks and drink, I pulled out my paper and pen, held the pen in my mouth so that I could get my carry-on baggage stowed back beneath the seat in front of me (like the good passenger that I pretend to be), pulled down the tray table, and set the uncapped pen down on the paper.

Then I noticed the ink blot on the pad of paper, the ink plot that was spreading. I picked up the pen and shifted the paper, trying to figure out what was wrong, at which point I blotted ink across the wall of the plane. Blast and damn. I put the pen down on the page of paper, wrapped it up, tore the paper out of the notebook and then stuffed it into the seat pouch for collection when I leave the plane.

Since I figured that I would have to use my laptop to write at this point, I reached down to pull it out from under the seat in front of me, picking up my nice, new North Face jacket and folding it in my lap. After I had everything out and my bags stuffed back away, I picked up my jacket again and then notice the former inkblot on the airplane wall – the inkblot that was now an inksmear. Bugger.

But the good thing about water-resistant fabrics is that they are also ink-resistant, especially when they’re black. So aside from dying the wall of the airplane blue (and it is really quite a lovely blue, I must say), no harm has been done.

One might think that considering I have destroyed at least three good ink pens in my time flying that I would have learned a lesson by now.

At this point I am afraid to get up to go to the bathroom. I can just imagine the girl sitting next to me thinking, “what kind of a sick bastard covers the wall of an airplane with blue ink?” So I sit here hiding this mark as if it were some kind of embarrassing disfigurement that should be hidden with a mask and large amounts of makeup. I can just imagine her, in her disgust, while I am happily relieving myself, standing up and declaring that I am a pig with no sense of respect for public property, and that I am probably the one who keeps passing gas (much to the consternation of every passenger nearby), and that I should be thrown from the airplane immediately and without remorse.

But what worries me more than being hurled from the airplane at full cruising altitude is that Pretty Soccer Boy might think me a slob, and then I would never have a chance with him when I got back to Boston (after his sabbatical in Atlanta has mended his wounds from his gay ex-lover). And to think that I could have maintained my dignity and sense of self-worth had I just remembered to bring a ballpoint.

zoombinilover @ 11:19 pm:

I'm working at Atelier and being paid in yarn, which is weird, but I spend a lot of my money on yarn anyway, so this is kind of saving me money. The yarn earnings are the same as money earnings, so for every hour I work, I earn ten dollars worth of yarn.

Do you know what that means?

I earned a sweater today. And I'll earn two sweaters next week. Screw knitting for other people; I'm making shit for myself. This job fucking rocks.

Plus I sold $300 worth of yarn to one lady and then she told one of the other women who works there that I was extremely helpful. That always feels really nice.

Tags: knititng, work, yarn

zoombinilover @ 10:38 pm:

Crying at Riverdance definitely means PMS.

Tags: theatre

zoombinilover @ 10:32 am:

It feels quite good to have this gem shining at you from the top of your degree audit.


ALL REQUIREMENTS IDENTIFIED BELOW HAVE BEEN MET


Oh yes, now I am officially done with college. Gimme my diploma, University of Oregon.

Tags: school

zoombinilover @ 11:43 am:

I bought tickets for an east coast excursion with money I do not have.

Dear February,

Please be now.

Love,
Alexa

Tags: letters, travel

zoombinilover @ 10:49 pm:

John
does he know?

Alexa
I don't know
Probably not
Not unless he can tell how often I Facebook stalk him

John
I think it's better if he doesn't know that

Alexa
That I want to bone him?
Or the Facebook stalking?
He and I have discussed Facebook stalking before

John
Both.
I guess

Alexa
We talked about the pseudo-celebrities that we Facebook stalk
No, he should know that I want to bone him so that he'll bone me
That is such a dirty sentence

John
Gotcha
and yes

Alexa
I think I won the dirty sentence of the day award with that one

Tags: conversations, quotes

zoombinilover @ 08:25 pm:

Apparently there's a school for deaf kids in the Peninsula that's named after my great-aunt. I totally want to pull the family card and get a job there.

Of course, Aunt Jean and I don't have the same last name. In fact, I don't even know where the hell Weingarten comes from. All four of her children have the last name Lees. Grandma Kathryn's birth name was Wolf, so I think it's safe to assume that was Aunt Jean's birth name, too. Even if I hadn't changed my last name when I was fourteen, she and I still wouldn't have a name in common.

Oh, and I don't speak ASL yet. Nor do I have my teaching credential yet. Hmm.

Tags: family, school, teaching

zoombinilover @ 07:20 pm:

I am definitely over Christmas.

The entire city is decked out. When I got home for Thanksgiving, the freeway had giant candy canes lining it. All of the area surrounding Union Square is covered in lights and tinsel and bows and doves and angels. Every store everywhere is constantly playing Christmas music. I just feel isolated. Up until two years ago, Christmas was the day when I could sit at home all day and wonder when it would not be considered rude to text one of my friends (heaven forbid I call) because I didn't want to interrupt family time. Thankfully, I'm able to go to Drea's family's house for Christmas, though my mother is constantly insulted that I don't want to sit at home all day and do nothing with her, and even that's somewhat awkward for me because they're having family time, too. I mean, I'm sure if Christmas were a day when I could truly feel part of something, I wouldn't dislike it so much. But I hate that the music is forced on me and I hate that we all have to be consumers (sorry, I don't do holiday presents. If I see something I think you'll like in May or September or January, then I'll buy it for you in May or September or January. I'm not holding off for one day because it's THE day. I don't like that at all) and . . . I mean . . . It's freaking Hannukah, guys. And it was Thanksgiving when you started decorating!

By the way, Union Square's menorah is insulting. They've got this enormous, gaudy tree and Christmas music playing and they've had those things going since the Monday before Thanksgiving. They put up the menorah on the first night of Hannukah and leave it for eight days. It's a dumpy piece of cloth. I get that Judaism isn't exactly in the majority, but this thing is still a piece of crap. Before Union Square remodeled, their menorah was some huge, awesome piece of art that lit up instead of the dumbass cloth piece of shit.

Whatever. I swear I had a good day. I'm just bored because no one's home and everyone's busy and I always feel left out this time of year.

Tags: holidays, rants