heroes for ghosts

Okay, I’m kinda beyond stressed with the wedding and its not even a year away yet! The only reason I’m stressed though is because I feel like I can’t get started with the planning yet because…. I don’t have a location! Ah! As soon as I have that, everything will be awesome. I absolutely love the Foundry in Long Island City, but my dad’s convinced it’s too small for our 100-115 guests (I only want like 80 guests anyway, but whatever). I was SO in love with the Angel Orsentaz Center in the Lower East Side but it’s completely out of the budget. We’re going to see Tavern on the Green on Saturday which I’m not too sure if I’ll like. Right now, my hopes are riding on the Palm House at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens…I would die for the Foundry, but it doesn’t look too likely at this point. Gah.

Carl and I are getting married August, 2008.

YAY!!!!

Hey Carl :)

There were mutterings enough when my father first appeared back in the town with my mother. It grew louder as she grew bigger and then, seven months after my father had come home with her, the mutterings stopped. I was born. They would tell me that my skin was so tight you could count all my bones and my skin so thin you could see the blood moving through my veins. The muttering stopped because the people were now satisfied. I, small and squirming ugly thing that never cried, was proof my mother's faultiness and contaimination and punishement to my parents fot their sins. To lose their first child. The muttering stopped and the mummering started, the women talking to my mother for the first time, sympahtizing, apologizing for her loss while I laid there, big glass eyes not focusing on anything. They didn't think I would last the week. But I lived. Every day the people would peek past my dark blanket and see my small chest rising and falling, the more quiet they became. When I reached my first birthday, they had decided that my mother was contaimated but she was contaiminated with magic. When they saw her after that, they tried to not make any sound.

The five year reunion of my high school is coming up. Jesus. No way am I going, because I have absolutely nothing to show for myself.

I ran into two old friends at a concert in the city last night. My friend from high school was engaged--that makes three friends that I know of that are engaged. It kinda makes me sad, because everyone expected me to be one of those three too. I expected to be.

Instead, the lead singer of one of the bands, Jeremy in the tight red pants, thinks my name is Kitty and invited me to an after-party. What kind of handoff is that? I honestly don't know. I'm trying hard not to care.

Okay, so it's Thanksgiving which means I'm sitting around, starving, and waiting half-heartedly for the assorted crazies in my family to arrive so I can at least have some appetizers.

Carl had a convo with me today which made me cry, but that's how it goes. I was just upset and confused since he's coming to visit me at the end of December and he's saying he doesn't really miss me. Meh. At least I finally have the photos printed from the grand European tour to show the family.

I think I've e-mailed every non-American I know to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving, and I haven't said anything similar to any Americans. Strageness.

NaNoWriMo is nearly over and it was mostly a failure, sadly. I did work more on The Night Mare than I have in a long time, but it's nowhere near 50,000 words. Started working on Stars in December again, because of some pleading by people on fanfiction.net. So goof for the ego!

I really want to go back to Germany. I can't figure out which city I want to stay in first: Cologne, Nuremberg or Munich. And that's only out of the cities I actually got to go to. I still need to go to Berlin something awful.

Kirby is wearing his holiday bow today. I'll try to snap a picture of it later because he looks deceptively sweet with it.

...I'm back in Stockholm. I had at least another two weeks left, but because I'm so amazingly clumsy, I broke my foot in Budapest, Hungary. NOT from drinking, as everyone seems to think. Instead, I slipped off the bunk bed ladder in the morning while I was trying to make sure not to wake up everyone else in the room. After half a day in a Hungarian hospital, I flew back to Stockholm and spent another half a day there. At least the Swedes don't want to to operate on me, which was the Hungarians' first reaction. So here I am, trying to recover. Don't believe me?

( Then look below this cut )

I'm well aware that I look demented in both pics, but I'm beyond caring at this point.

Okay,so to you few on my f-list: Taaaa!

I'm leaving tomorrow for my month long tour of Europe. First, evening flight to Paris, day trip to Chartres, Sunie's bday, then to Amsterdam, hit up Germany, Austria, Hungary and Copenhagen before heading back to Stockholm with the Sunster.

It's going to be fun. Pics and stories will come later.

...but does anyone on my flist follow the Lonelygirl15 story? I'm talking more about the cassieiswatching aspect, because I could give a toss for the whole 'omigod she's really fake!' thing. I'm talking ARGs (Alternate Reality Games).

Okay, I know there are some FANTASTIC icon makers on my friends list, so I just wanted to let you guys know that you should def. check out marvel_lims. The second round is starting up and it is very cool---good images, that sort of thing. Come join!!!

I am drunk, durk, drunk, drunk, drunk.

Today would have been Carl adn mine 6th year anniversary.

Fjuck you all.

I am Liberace. Love it, bitches.

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Awesomely accurate, I feel.

(Click here to post your own answers for this meme.)

✓ I miss somebody right now.	× I don't watch much TV these days.	✓ I own lots of books.
✓ I wear glasses or contact lenses.	✓ I love to play video games.	× I've tried marijuana.
✓ I've watched porn movies.	× I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.	× I believe honesty is usually the best policy.
✓ I curse sometimes.	✓ I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.	× I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.

( it goes on... )

Randomness--and not in the meaty part of my recent writing quite yet--but I think I may have an idea about where I'm going for graduate school. Emerson College actually has an amazing program, a degree in both Publishing AND Writing, which also has some kind of specializtion in teaching writing in college. So basically, I'm amazingly pumped. The obvious problem, however, is that it's in Boston, which I have sworn always to hate and never live there. I don't really think I'm up to commuting to Boston everyday from NY, so I guess that's going to have to change sometime soon. But still--good news basically!

25 jpgs from the David Bowie music video "Be My Wife."

( Samples and download link below here )

So yeah, had the best dream last night. It was kind of like I was back at high school, but it was really more like a boarding school/hostel deal. Anyway, all the people from the Swedish Program were there and I was hanging out with Hailey. She mentioned that Warren Ellis, who was staying in her room, was completly drunk out of his mind. Apparently, I knew Warren was there but I didn't have the balls to go up to him yet, so I decided to take this opportunity. I go into her room and am hit pretty damn hard by the stench of vomit. I try to get him to come around and things happen (glossing because I can't really remember) and the next thing you know I'm topless, he's scratched my right breast up pretty well, and now he's trying to light a match off of me.

Also, his roomie is known other than T.J. Newton, who finally wakes up after Warren's hundreth attempt to smoke off my body. Warren warns me that Newton doesn't like brunette women for some reason but seeing as I've seen The Man Who Fell to Earth like three times recently, I know why and I know what to do. I'm holding him and giving his hair little kisses, and it is amazingly beautiful. I guess it's around then that Warren decides he's going to shack up with me. Which is all going swell until Carl, who was apparently Carl Kent and ergo Superman, finds out about it and gets pissed and Warren gets scared.

I just thought it was interesting because in the dream I was completly drawn to the helpless, hopeless cases who needed me, as opposed to Carl who was SUPERMAN for Chrissake, and therefore didn't really need anyone. Also, Newton is friggin goregous--see icon.

So yeah... this past week I had a break from classes here in Sweden and Carl and I went on a boat cruise to Turku in Finland. It was a different boat company than the booze cruise so a lot more respectable than the trip I went on with the Swedish Program peeps to Estonia.

Sadly, though, before I went on the trip with Carl I watched the Man who Fell to Earth for the first time. And sadly, because I am a wierdo, it nearly ruined my whole week because since then I've been all like WOEANGSTPOUT whenever I think about the movie. And I can't really figure out why. This is much like when I started hysterically bawling at the end of Unbreakable when Samuel L. Jackson says, "They called me Mr. Glass," except that I got over that muuuuuch faster. I have no clue why the god damn movie made me that upset. The only thing I can think of is my neverending, undying love for Bowie, and seeing him all torn apart and pathetic made my heart hurt. That or I wanted to be all torn apart and pathetic with him (becaues he is Bowie and is therefore dripping of the sexiness). OR Carl really does look too much like Bowie, and I look an awful lot like his girlfriend in the movie, and nothing good came out of that relationship. I keep trying to talk about it with Carl, but he saw it when he was younger and is convinced that it's the stupidest movie in the world. So he's not very sympathetic. Or this whole thing could just be because I'm PMSing which, if that's the case, sucks mucho.

Despite me being waaaaaaay too sensitive, I had a great little trip with the Carl. I think I love boats and want to live on them forever. The last night we got a suite which was AWESOME. It had a BATH. This is amazing, because in our apartment we don't have a bath, so I hadn't taken one in way too long. And there was a SAUNA. Oh my god. Fucking amazing. Carl and I had the best time, and that's all I'll say, though I am tempted to go on and on about it forever with many details people would not wanna hear.

I'm going to go and pretend to have never seen the Man who Fell to Earth now. Ta.

that I am deliriously happy. It's awesome. And amazing. And I'm not even quite sure why I'm this happy.

One reason definitely has to be people. I haven't felt this comfortable and at ease with a group of people since like the third year of high school. I went to this big Foo Fighters concert with Katie, Vanessa and Paxton on Saturday and it was amazing--not necesarily because I love the Foo Fighters (because I'm not the biggest fan) but because they're all such cool people and it was just a great experience. It sounds wrong but I LIKE doing things without Carl. I like being the vaguely ignorant American whose finding things out for herself. Sometimes when Carl is around, I feel like I'm cheating because I can just say nothing and he'll take care of everything. But it's very nice to try to take care of things myself. We actually had craptastic seats--nosebleed and practically behind the stage--because we booked the tickets the night before. But as we're sitting there and waiting for the first opening act to start, some security people come up and ask if we went to go down to the floor. YES PLEASE. We actually ended up like three feet from the stage at one point (while the second opening act, which I really liked, was on) but then Vanessa had to go out to get Paxton and the security wouldn't let them into the closet standing area so I went back to stand with them. I made some efforts to mosh but I decided on just bobbing up and down because my feet were already killing me. These two guys next to me were totally out of their heads, which was annoying, but they left me alone so that's cool. After the concert, I had to wait at T-Centralen for upwards of half an hour for my train and got to witness various interesting aspects of Stockholm night life (puking, drug deals, flashing).

Today was Sami (or is it Same?) National Day, the Samis being pretty much the Native American equivalent in Sweden. There was some kind of event being held at Skansen, which is a living museum and zoo and is close to my apartment, so I decided to go and meet up with some people. A bit disappointing! There was no real events but a lecture in Swedish. But I did get to eat some reindeer (delicious!) and lasso another reindeer (it was stuffed) so I can't complain. I did miss the last bus to my place by two minutes so I decided to walk. It was so beautiful--snow everyone and Djurgarden is ecspecially beautiful because it's mostly parks. I was so disappointed that my camera wasn't working; I would have loved to snap some shots of Grona Lund, the amusement park here, which looked so creepy and beautiful completly empty and covered in snow.

So basically, I am relentlessly happy here in Stockholm. The only thing upsetting me is my independent study, which is because I feel guilty because I haven't done enough with it yet. I know that when I really sit down and get started (on Wednesday?) I'll feel better.

So the laptop is back! Yay! And with a brand new screen. Very good. All and all, it was actually quite a busy day today. I went to the University (all by myself) to pick up my welcome package, and I meant one other student--Jeremy from Long Island! God, of all the students from all the different locations... he seemed nice, but nervous, and geeky, so I instantly felt much more confident about the whole thing. I got my cell phone and my monthly transport pass, so I'm in business. I'm going to dinner tomorrow with the apartment people, so I'm actually excited about it. I was nervous as all hell this morning about the whole thing, but it went well so not so nervous anymore. Yay.

Oh, and sadly, not much to report on the absinthe front. I had some, but I was already rather inebriated from some Long Island ice teas, so I'm not quite sure what the difference was. I'll have to expirement sometime soon.

These are all thumbnails, so click them to get the bigger image.

( the pictures )

My Birthday Bounty so far:
Sin City book in Swedish
English-Swedish dictionary
Toaster!
Pearl Shop gift certificate
Paperback book cover that has a map of the Swedish subway system with all the stop names changed to author names
Pearls, and jewwlry making supplies
Cute dog bathtub plug from Kirby for my non-existant bathtub (in the card that went with it, he promised to collect as many coins on the street as he could so he could buy me a bathtub next)
Massive suduko book
Napkins, oven mitts and apron

And tonight, I do out to eat at Stockholm's premiere gormet resturant--T.G.I. Friday's! I'm ordering ini English and god helps anyone who tries to stop me.