Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Wednesday, Apr. 16, 2003 - 11:23 a.m.

Hello, gentle reader; how the hell ya doin'? Me? Oh, fine. A little bored, perhaps, what with Spring Break this week and all. Yawn. I suppose if I were sunnin' it somewhere with all kinds of fresh fruit lying around, a hammock to laze the day away in, the sound of surf, warm sand under my feet, and tons of illicit indoor activities with a certain someone after browning my skin all day, not to mention the odd exotic alcoholic drink and mad jungle drum music pounding away down the beach a bit, my attitude might be somewhat different. But since I'm still here, going nowhere all that exciting - unless you count the Whole Foods at the bottom of the hill, and I don't really think you can - it's really not all that arrousing to be Spring Breakin' it. Is that how you spell "arrousing"? It looks odd, but frankly, I am too lazy to look. Sue me.

Bygones.

So, let's see...my academic record is looking fairly decent. It's a good thing, too, because lemme tell ya, the last two weeks of design class, I got my ass kicked. There was the penultimate project, for which I stayed up 40 hours or more, a solid, *straight* 18 of which were spent bending over a drafting table, an experience I do most definitely NOT recommend, as it is exceedingly painful and takes some time to recover from, especially if you have injured your back any time in the last year. One's back tends to lock up a tad after such an experience. And yes, I am talking a straight 18 hours, with no break. And while drafting for a full straight 18 hours might sound like quite the keen adventure, no, my friends, it is not. Please do not be lulled into such an experience, as it is somewhere far below the fun enjoyability quotient of being lulled into whitewashing a fence in 100+ degree weather by your buddy Tom. (Sawyer, for those of you a tad slow on the uptake. My point is that it *isn't fun*.) And then there was the last project, in which I had a whopping 2.25 hours in which to design a project from start to finish.

This was supposed to teach me time management and to make decisions rapidly. I do not think it was that much of a success, since I spent the first hour of said 2.25 staring at the base map and wondering things like "how does the turn-around in the driveway fit there," and "what kind of building material should I use," instead of just drawing the damn thing out. Then I spent another hour wondering which plants to put where, a task I usually find much less daunting, but when you have a time limit such that you're already stressed out about not having enough time, and you know you have already squandered almost half of it, it's much harder to know where to put the plants. See, normally, I draw in the plants and then figure out what they will be. But in this instance, I was supposed to kind of choose my plants ahead of time, which I found more of a hindrance than a help, because all I could think of was what plant to put where, instead of just drawing my damn circles and *then* figuring out what they were, which is actually how you design. So I spent the last bit of time madly drawing leaderlines and literally scribbling what it was the leaders were identifying, because I figured the best-placed circles in the world weren't going to help me one whit if they weren't called out. I started out neatly labelling my call-outs, but it became rapidly apparent this tactic wasn't going to work, so the result was an amalgam of neatly labelled plants and materials and hastily scrawled (in cursive, in some cases) plant names at the end of desperately arching leader lines. Really, I am amazed I got a B on the thing, especially since I didn't even manage to finish it. Imagine my chagrine and shock that some people not only finished their nice and neatly drawn designs with perfectly straight leaders and impeccably lettered call-outs, but also had the unmitigated gall to draw in LAWN FURNITURE.

Seriously. Lounge chairs and dining furniture. Really, it was quite beyond the pale. I pretty much wanted to strangle them. In my head, I did.

(Bygones, fellow classmates, but you guys SUCK.)

I figured I failed it, so the B I got was a nice and very pleasant surprise. Woohoo! :)

Katie's Favorite Site of the Week:
We Love the Iraqi Information Minister. That guy (Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi Minister of Information) fully cracked me up and was the one bright spot - if indeed one could be found - in the invasion of Iraq. I kinda miss his briefings. I have never in my life seen someone lie with such aplomb. You really had to admire his conviction. Especially if he wasn't shooting at you. I personally hope he's never found/caught by the US government. And no, Joe G-Man, that does not mean I give aid or succor to the "enemy." It just means I thought the guy was pretty damn plucky in the face of serious adversity - namely, the unwarranted invasion of his country by a fricking egomaniac who certainly should know better. Just call me a dumbass liberal and move on, you pinko commie freak.

Bygones.

Excellent Quote(s) of the Day:
"Bush is a very stupid man. The American people are not stupid, they are very clever. I can't understand how such clever people came to elect such a stupid president." --Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi Minister of Information

I am totally with you on *that*, dude.

"War is the last refuge of the small-minded and the lost." --Mark Morford, San Francisco Chronicle, in his piece titled "A prayer for George Dubya," April 16, 2003.

You called that right, Mark. If only your prayer *could* come to pass. I'd love to see the universe kick the Shrub's ass.

"Don't plan out the rest of your life before you write your paper." --Diaryland diarist jzyjsmalls' Mom

Word, Mom. Excellent advice. I wish *my* mom had been like that. My mom was all about the planning out of life waaaaay before any papers were written. Can I just say, that makes for a very stressful life. It also makes the writing of papers more difficult. But that's probably a digression.

This is an oldie, but I just came across it:
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." --Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919)

So there. Kiss my ass, you "don't-say-anything-bad-about-Bush" mindless rabid-American assholes.

Bygones.

According to an email I got purporting to consist of actual sex laws in this country, and which quotes as its source Ovi's World of the Bizarre: "The only acceptable sexual position in Washington D.C. is the missionary-style position. Any other sexual position is considered illegal."

That explains a lot.

Say it again, Mike
I don't really get the whole starting the day out in church thing, but I enjoyed Michael Moore's op-ed piece for the LA Times. I'm kinda surprised they printed it, frankly, being the conservative piece of crap they are. But he reprinted it on his website, and it's fairly interesting, and considering the subject of Bowling for Colombine, I do not find his remarks Oscar night inappropriate or his behaviour loutish, as a lot of pro-war hawks are wont to cry. Bowling for Colombine addresses the fear as propaganda aspect of this nation and the current regime, so I find his acceptance speech 100% appropos, given the substance of his winning film. I can't wait to see the one he's going to make about September 11, frankly. I wonder how many people outside of Washington will be surprised to discover that little tidbit about the private Saudi jet ferrying 24 members of the bin Laden family out of this country with Bush's blessing before the FBI could talk to them. One really has to wonder. If that doesn't raise at least one of your eyebrows a tiny bit, there's something really wrong with you. I was sure as hell surprised. But it turns out it really happened. Shock and awe this, Bush, you piece of crap.

Mike has a page on his site called Operation Oily Residue, with links to all kinds of stories (actual press stories, not the concocted kind, though I suppose like any other journalistic endeavor, some could be concocted, but let us not get into the ramifications of stories fraudulently concocted for the sake of Pulitzer Prizes just at the moment, 'kay; it's not like this is 60 Minutes and I'm drivin' a Pinto - but I digress) about Idiotboy's misbegotten adventure into Iraq. You can get there thisaway.

Huh?
What does it mean when one's shrink asks one if one used to do stand-up comedy because said shrink thinks said one is funny? Seriously. I really didn't know how to take that, sitting there on the big leather couch, having just spent half an hour pouring my guts out. The fact that the answer is yes just made it that much more confusing...

Stupid Quote(s) of the Day:
"I don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there's work that's needed to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it. But nobody looks at it as something you benefit from." --former Sect. of State George Shultz, to Bob Herbert of the NY Times, on whether or not there was a conflict of interest in his serving as chairman of the White House advisory board the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq while simultaneously sitting on the board of a company that would benefit from invading and occupying that country.

Uh-huh. Smoke another one, George. No one is actually *that* stupid. Not even clueless John Q. American Public.

Bygones.

And just think: Lola is fully in check right now. Oh; that reminds me. I dyed my hair black. Once I got over the shock, it looked kinda cool. And The Boyfriend's family (mother, sister-in-law, and SIL's teenage daughter) all said it looks great. And the waiter was checkin' me out HARD, though that was not a good thing, because a) it was kinda creepy, he was so dedicated to the activity, and b) I love The Boyfriend, whom I was clearly with and sitting next to, so it was pretty rude. Plus, he had a really stupid looking goatee, and what kind of idiot dyes his hair orange??? He made me really uncomfortable, so I refused to address him in any way the entire dinner, except to wag my empty tea glass at him once, when the nice waiter Jim was not around. Normally I do not hold with wagging an empty glass at a waiter, as it's really pretty rude, but seriously, the guy was pushing it. But anyway. Actually, my hair does look good now, but the first day or two...scary. Like, Halloween wig scary. I don't know if you dye your hair, gentle reader, especially the male of you, but especially when you go a darker color, the first few days, it's all the same flat color. No shine, no highlights, no lowlights, just all the same dull whatever. In this case, "neutral" black. It really did look like a Halloween wig, and I thought "uh-oh". But then the shine came back and my own natural highlights came thru (so now it's more like a really really dark brown), and it looks really good. I may keep it this way for a while. At least TB has laid off the remarks about the red, which he apparently didn't like, and swears I look horrible in. Not, apparently, horrible enough to dissuade him from the desire to get laid (by me) when we were dating, but now that we are an item, a couple, a relationship, NOW he thinks the red is awful. It's actually not red. It's auburn (say red-brown for the guys among you), and the color my hair naturally is when I've spent a lot of time in the summer sun. But whatever. At least he's stopped the grousing for now.

And that's all I have to say for the day. A' bientot, mes amis.

Peace out,
Katie

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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008