oh new mexico

it's been very long since i've blogged... and i have gotten some complaints, which means more of you are reading than i knew. leave comments! it entertains me.

left california. packed up our house, raised $200 by selling our stuff, and will give it to a family in new orleans once my lady gets back there. moving out proved to be a nightmare. we put everything up for sale on craigslist, and our lovely roomie L decided she didn't need to do anything to help any part of the move out. NOTHING. she went out for dinner and had some fun with friends in SF. aw, soo nice to hear that she had a good time while my lady and i had all the craigslist shoppers of the bay area coming into the house to barter for our things. girl didn't come home for 3 days, showed up at 4.30pm the night that we had to be out. she couldn't understand why we were pissed at her. she said "i didn't know 'this' was happening." WTF? did she think tinkerbell was going to show up and empty out the apartment for us? she's a bleepin' idiot and i told her so. F her. wake up. *growl*

my lady packed up the car something fierce and we spent our last night in the bay area saying goodbye to everyone. woke up thursday morning and drove a painful 16 hours to albuqueerque. the kitties were better than i expected, but they wouldn't poo or pee no matter how many times i put them in the box. finally, as we pulled onto the street of our final destination at 1.30am, they both took a crap. the smell hit us in the face. i thought we might crash, that my lady might vomit.

been hanging in new mexico, introducing the kitties to their grandma and their, um, uncles harry and sally (doggies). the dogs really want to play with the kitties. the kitties really love to hiss at the doggies. fun.

i could eat breakfast burritos with green chili every single day. oh, wait, that's what i've been doing. if you ever travel through NM, make sure you get yourself some green chili. yum.

ok, that's the update. can't spend anymore time blogging, that's too anti-social of me and my lady will start to say i am lost in my cyber life. but having limited access to email has been tolerable. see, i'm not a complete junkie! i can interact with people NOT online!

off to save the kitties from the doggies, or should i say off to save the doggies from a clawed swipe to the nose. *hiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssssssssssssss*

cheesy "i feel like this song" moment

especially this verse:

i teeter between tired
and really, really tired
i'm wiped and i'm wired but i guess its just as well
because i built my own empire
out of car tires and chicken wire
and i'm queen of my own compost heap
and i'm getting used to the smell
and i've got a lack of information
but i got a little revelation
and i'm climbing up on the railing
trying not to look down
i'm going to do my best swan dive
into shark-infested waters
i'm gonna pull out my tampon
and start splashing around

oh ani difranco, if only you didn't go all weird on us by adding a horn section to your acoustic guitar and marrying a man named goat.

people suck.

i am tired. i put so much energy into this report, and what do my (previously called) friends say? NOTHING. silence. well, nothing to my face.

i get a phone call from a "friend" who reports that 2 "friends" are upset with me. pissed. i wonder if the reporting "friend" stood up for me. riiiiight. no way. another friend wrote an email, asking us all for $ to give to the facutly and staff who lost their homes, because she wants to do something "positive, for a change." yet a third friend wrote my lady and said the report was biased and we need to stop attacking the poor tired staff and that the report was not in the right spirit.

that makes 5 "friends" - spineless gossip lovin' girl, angry at the world girl, immature and foolish girl, a republican pothead girl, and even someone i can't think of a single bad adjective about - all coming out against my efforts to create a space for students to have a voice.

fuck them all.

finals hell.

here i am, at the end of my graduate school experience. it certainly hasn't been easy, but it is over over over in less than a week! of course, Tulane may be a pain in my ass, who knows. i was told (by my now-long-gone advisor) that since the ONE class i needed to graduate was not available here at my host school, another one would count instead. rumor has it that N. asked the department chair if this switcharoo could be made for her, and he said no.

doesn't he have more important things to worry about.. like the state of new orleans?

in fact, i know he has more important things to concern himself with - things like THE REPORT WE MADE! yup, me and my social-action-focused pals made a survey, tallied said survey, and printed that bastard up. it looks divine. it would look much less divine if L. did not help us. it would be quite ugly, in fact. that girl is magic on the computer!

so the dean here will bring it to our dean at APHA on thursday. we will send it out over email that same day - i want the dean to get it when everyone else gets it and not afterwards. don't know why, but for some reason that seems disrespectful. and then, we can wait and see. what action will Tulane take? who knows. only 2 of the 5 of us will be there next semester, as of today.

as this comes to an end as rocky as it began, i am actually happy that i landed in the bay area. i know i've said that i want to leave since the day i arrived, but now.. i don't know, i'm kind of used to it here. whatever, it's just pre-move nostalgia.

the waiting isn't over

two articles today in the NY Times discuss two very important issues related to new orleans. the first to catch my eye was about the environmental safety of the city. seems that it is being debated, with the gov't on the "it's safe side" and the advocacy groups on the opposite side. the other story relates the lives of current - or should i say former - residents of new orleans and that bungled mess called FEMA. people are still (still!) living in cars, still without assistance, still unable to find any sense of normalcy.

and yet tulane demands our return, promising cruise ship living (at $5k/semester). the local people of the city are commuting "home" from miles away, arriving just to spend the day walking around aimlessly, trying to find out how to reproduce random paperwork that FEMA requires when everything they own has been under upwards of 8 feet of water. and tulane reopens. what kind of city is this to learn in? maybe if all learning was turned out of the classroom, maybe if all of those students who can afford such luxuries as higher education actually learned through helping those without - maybe that would make sense. maybe that would change the world. give those rich white kids an opportunity to live the hard life. that's an edcuational experience. who needs peace corps experience when you have new orleans to clean?

it's time the city truly engages the community in rebuilding. it's time people moved out of their cars and into the next step towards stability: the trailer.