delovely

mood: especially agnostic

listening to: “clark gable” by the postal service, on repeat

i had a really good weekend, which might make up for what seems to be a trying week ahead. as in, trying on my last nerves.

saturday i decided to venture out into san francisco on my own. i had intended on waking up extra early to escape the bourgeois museum crowds, but after hitting the snooze button three times and rolling my eyes at my roommates for starting their day i realized that an early start just wasn’t going to happen. and when i eventually woke up around noon, my horoscope read that i was essentially a slacker and that “saturday and sunday, [i] might not make it out of [my] pajamas.” granted, if i had forgotten to read my horoscope that morning that might have been true. but given my defiant nature, the very fact that yahoo! horoscopes had the audacity to tell me i wouldn’t get going inspired me to do precisely the opposite. the last time those idiots told me i wouldn’t be able to make any decisions about my academic life, i sat down and made a four-year plan complete with motivational quotes and footnotes.

so i quickly bought a snapple and a stale honeybun at the arco across from campus, and then i set out to find free parking in palo alto and a caltrain ticket to the city. when i arrived i walked straight to the SFMOMA (san francisco museum of modern art) to replenish fill up on the artsy fartsiness i’ve been missing all summer, and i found myself having so much fun. there is this new product design and architectural art exhibit that was inspiring for me. it had all of these new, young artists with such creative ideas that i felt ashamed of how little i’ve applied myself in school so far. i should be brilliant by now, or at least on my way to being someone memorable. my absolute favorite was this one south african artist named william kentridge who fashioned “movies” from pencil drawings of progressively erased images, kind of like those flip books you used to play with when you were younger but so much more intricate it must have taken years to make. and there was another woman named marilyn minter who made these huge paintings of “ideals” (a woman’s foot in a red stiletto heal, a mouth sucking seductively on a pencil, etc.) that were so gigantic and realistic that you could see all their imperfections (oversized pores, sweat, etc.) up close. but when you stepped back far enough they just looked like your average pin-ups—you should google these brilliant mofos, seriously. i’ll stop boring you with the details—also, before walking back out into the scorching sun i talked to this 50 year old guy about modern art and oxidized copper (he was a construction worker) for about an hour until his wife and daughter came to get him from the lobby. apparently, he’d been embarrassing them with his lowly opinions of the art so they deserted him early in the visit. poor guy. i liked him.

i walked some more to union square where i window shopped for hours. in the end i was proud of myself for not having bought anything that i can’t afford, meaning i didn’t buy anything at all. well, originally i’d told myself that if i couldn’t find anything reasonable to buy i would go back to the first store i’d visited on market, diesel, and get this cool green jacket with red and yellow embroidery that was completely impractical and expensive, to reward myself for having saved money this summer. but when i finally came back to the store they had just closed, so i took it as a sign that bad financial times are in my future, and the yahoo! gods are somehow protecting me from myself. i also caught a bus to haight/ashbury and walked to soma to stroll through the nice apartments and fashionable people until it got cold outside. at last i caught the bus home at 8pm, exhausted, and there were bomb sniffing dogs all over the caltrain station, combining the two things i fear the most. dogs and blowing up. lovely.

on a shorter and less fun note, my dad decided to accept another year in iraq, so i’m depressed/pissed about that. some bitch named “federal income taxes withheld” took $400 out of my first paycheck. and lauren has yet to get her birthday present from me in the mail, which was supposed to be an amazing surprise for her a long time ago. but i’d rather repress those issues.

love *manda panda