Amusing stories in the school newspaper today:

(1) An article about how *gasp* town vacancy rates are on the rise! From 0.2 to as much as 4-9%! How could this have happened? Their answer: students got fed up with costs and moved to Woodland, and more people are buying and renting properties out. There's a whopping 12 houses available for rental now.

I was all sorts of amused by this quote: "Apartment leases are usually signed in August." Are you kidding? Most people have to sign leases during the winter months. I'm damned lucky for only having to sign away my next year in April. (It drives me crazy that I have to decide nine months in advance if I want to move or not in the next year.)

And then even funnier is that there is ONE apartment complex in town that has availability. "As of Thursday, Ivy Towne apartments, on the corner of J and Eighth streets, had 21 units available and was offering rent reductions and a $400 referral bonus for current tenants." Now in a town that has that low of a housing rate, an apartment complex has THAT high of a vacancy rate for a reason, folks. In this case, I've heard from those who rented there that the maintenance sucks and the apartment complex is too close to the railroad, in a particularly noisy location.

(2) A photo caption: "The California Aggie Marching Band-Uh! performed for alumni at the Amtrak Station, where alumni were supposed to arrive sporting pajamas for the Homecoming bonfire." (Don't ask me why this is. I have no idea.) "Just one problem: Only one alumnus got off the train- sporting street clothes- to attend the event." We've got the spirit, oh yes, we do.

(3) I want to laugh every time someone starts whining that they don't want to have more apartments and houses and people here so they can preserve agricultural land and that "small town feel." Dude, Tidal Wave II is coming. This school HAS TO, mandatorily, take a shitload more students in the next few years. Impractically preserving the small town feel? Not Gonna Happen. Can't happen. Driving more students to live in the other towns nearby, jacking up their pricing rates (I hear it's not much cheaper to live out of town in this county than it is living in) and forcing them to buy parking permits and fight each other for parking isn't an improvement.

I am rather cranky today. Got almost no sleep after the laundry debacle- somehow a shitload of white lint was in the washing machine I used last night and I have no idea how to get it all off short of fucking around with the vacuum. Woke up with a headache and unpleasant morning stomach trouble (no, I'm not pregnant, and no, you don't want me elaborating as to what I mean by that), which I tend to get if I have to wake up early in the morning. You don't want to start your day out like that when you're already having a day that's going to go until 8 p.m.

Of all the weird things, I actually have to interview people for the temporary jobs here now. This throws me off quite a bit to be on the other side of the interview table, reading questions awkwardly off a sheet. Had the first one today and I suppose I did relatively well. Another one tomorrow. Very strange.

Another sad sign of adulthood- my student ID completely broke.

I feel like I have too much to do. I've got roughly a week or two (to be honest, about two weeknights a week in a practical sense) to get more jewelry done for the crafts fair, unless I get lucky and get some work done while at the parents' this weekend. I want to make another woven bracelet or two in different sizes. I want to try some WW3WA do bracelets, as someone was requesting. I'd like to finish making my new sea necklace. I need to either find my lost troll doll or paint another one. I want to practice doing the other techniques I'm going to learn in beading class in the next two weeks. This all needs to be done before Halloween.

And also, I gotta work on novel preparation. Which I was supposed to be doing tonight, but as you can tell I've been writing this instead. I need to start finding out the plot information that I haven't found out yet. I also found an article on fair use of other people's works in your writing and was much discouraged by this, as apparently you can't quote more than two lines of anything, and it can't be anything crucial or important to the work that you are quoting, such as the title line or the last line. So much for my using song lyrics as part of the basis of the book, unless I go unpublishable of course. Bleah.

I need to see if I can fit into any of my old clothes for some Halloween costume. Dave already asked Jeremy and Rachel to try to get Halloween off to spend with us, which means no clubbing like we were going to do. Rachel wants to trick-or-treat- apparently in Modesto it's acceptable to trick-or-treat until midnight. Throws me off, since TOT was dead by 9 p.m. in the old hometown and doesn't happen at all here. Either way, it means I gotta find something warm.

I've been trying to get more exercise lately, but it doesn't seem to be working in the right places. You could seriously bounce a quarter off my ass, and yet my stomach doesn't lose a pound. I'm hardly eating anything, but blubber is all over my stomach. Bleah.

I didn't get to see all of Joe Millionaire 2: Now We're Fucking Over The European Chicks since I got out of class when it started, but man. The assumptions they make about cowboys, the accents, Paul the Butler insisting on waking them all up after they partied all night...They didn't even get to INTRODUCTIONS OF THE GIRLS this time. It ended with Joe II (who at least does know how to ride a horse) riding up and saying hi and riding off. Sheesh, are they gonna drag this out for as long as humanly possible. Then again, I can't blame them, since it's great train wreck and after this they can only extend the series by doing one of the following:

(a) Joe Millionaire 3: Wooing Starving African Chicks, which would be too disturbing to even think about,

(b) Joe Millionaire 3: Extraterrestrial Lovin', which would have an enormous production budget, or

(c) Joe Millionaire 3: Hey Amish Girls, I've Got Two Buggies!

This season promises much drama, as the European chicks and David/Joe II seemed to all have hysterics of one kind or another in the previews.

I love this cartoon. It really summarizes my issues with dreams.

Dave and I had a rather ugly conversation about the novel thing the other night- he was all "So self-publish and I'll be your agent," and I was saying that I don't want to spend my money on self-publishing and editors will only listen to professional agents anyway. This got kind of ugly from there, when he got all mad at me for not going for my dreams and for finally saying that I hated dreams.

"Why not? Dreams are what motivate you to go after what you want."

"Not in my case. All I do is realize that my dreams are too hard to go after and they don't motivate me enough so that I want to go through hell and high water in order to achieve them."

That pissed him right off, and he started muttering that he wanted to do nasty things to my parents for leading me to think this way. Actually, no, it's not my parents- they are not the kind of people to go around telling me that. It's plenty of other people in my life over the years that have told me that it's just not doable. That I can fight all I want to or can stand to and that I'll go through hell and still not get what I want, plus wish I hadn't tried to in the first place. That ticked him off too.

With regards to writing, you see the professionals trying to dash hopes at every turn. One of my writing teachers, kind of a bigwig himself, encouraged us to do ANYTHING but writing. You read all the time that your first novel, or first few novels, are total crap and you might as well burn them all. You hear that it's a horrible market for new writers out there. You hear that you have to get an agent first, and good luck getting your foot in even there if you don't Know People. You hear that your book better be an instant success, or you won't get to publish any more once your contract is up. You hear that it is hell to get the success that you wanted in the first place! All the bloody time!

How am I supposed to stay a rosy innocent after all of that? How am I supposed to think that I am such a bright, talented, stupendous star that I can be a success when folks better than I cannot? I mean, really? Is anyone out there that shiny and innocent and bright? If you are, I don't know how you stay that way.

I don't know how I'm supposed to believe in a flimsy, unrealistic dream enough to sustain me through the hell and high water and several years that publishing would take. Is it even a dream worth pursuing? Why on earth do I have this ridiculous desire for fame when in reality I am totally uncomfortable with the idea? I don't even like getting recognized on the street by people I know sometimes, and like to be anonymous in a crowd. This makes no sense!

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