This is something like Kysra's "Clean," but weirder

I blame ceruleansan for this one. Her and an_ardent_rain for providing me with Azureshipping to make me jealous of, and guardian_kysra for writing "Clean" and "Unclean," which will forever be stuck in my head. THUMBS UP, LADIES!

( This isn't Grimms Fairy Tale, folks... )

Tonight wasn't too bad at all. I finally met up with Erin and Joyce (actually, they picked me up after getting lost here in S.F. Haha! I don't know SF driving-wise at all. I think of everything in terms of bus routes) and we headed to IKEA in Emeryville and then got a bit lost trying to get to Dad's place in Alameda. Erin and I played with Roy a bit (Roy still loves me :D :D) and then we went to dinner at this small Thai place with a "cute" young waitress (Joyce kept saying she was "cute," even though I thought the girl wasn't that young; she was probably between 16 and 19, which I think is beyond "cute" age in the usual sense of the word). The food was good, though I had leftover Gai Yang, so I brought it home.

We went back to S.F. and I got to see Erin's new apartment (in which I broke the toilet somehow, because it was running/not flushing and my opening the lid and dropping some tube thing didn't help), which is small, but very nice. And when she gets all the stuff she put together from IKEA set up, it'll look very nice. I helped her schlep all the furniture up the 2 flights of stairs, since she doesn't have an elevator in her place yet (but it's still nice, even though it's tiny as all hell and she's paying $400 more than my mom is- and my Mom has 2 bedrooms and a sunroom!).

Anywhoozles, tomorrow I head to the DLP in Moraga-- alas, the people I was going to carpool with either switched DLPs or are going on Saturday, so I'll be going all by my lonesome (hah) on the BART and bus. No biggie, been there, done that. The hard part's always packing light, especially since this is supposed to be a big important business-type event, so I have to ONLY bring what I need. And I still "need" to figure out some way of using Gary's printer (an HP Photosmart C6100) wirelessly. I figured how to do it Computer-to-Computer (ad hoc), but then it messes up any computers that DO use it wirelessly via Mom's router. Anyone have any idea how to do this? The instruction manual seemed pretty useless on this front.

I hope I can get up early enough tomorrow to still get my nails (and maybe my brows) done, and if I'm feeling bold, I can swing by the Metreon to grab that Writer's Toolbox from Chronicle Books that I want. Maybe the more craft books/kits I have, the more inspiration I can get/dish? akavertigo and I are supposed to be challenging each other to get writing, but 1) her challenges were HARD HARD HARD (and I don't see how to fit them into WDKY at all, let alone WDKY25), and 2) I can't think of anything to challenge her back with atm.

Of course, I don't even know if I'll have Internet access this weekend, but regardless, I want to have my laptop so I can at least "write" things down. I would hate it if inspiration DID strike and I had nothing to write/type on but little scraps of paper like I did back in the day.

That said... I should probably get to sleep. :P I kept napping throughout today, which explains why I'm always so tired in the daytime, but relatively perky at night. If I just force myself to go to bed at a semi-reasonable hour, maybe I won't feel so compelled to sleep in the daytime-- which, this weekend would be Very Bad (meriting caps, you see).

Moraga and the DLP, Part 1

9:59pm, Justin Hall, room 216
So I'm here in Moraga, a place I've never been to before. The name Moraga makes me think of "craggy" like rocks, "gag," like something you don't like, and "Morganna," the enchantress (I think) from the King Arthur legends.

On the way here via the 106 bus from the Lafayette Bart station, I kept thinking this town was so small and quaint, the sort of American town that's both classic and yet distant-- not really apart of America even though it defines it. One of my first thoughts was "You'd never think about terrorism in a place like this." People's front yards are half the size or larger of the square footage of their house. The biggest drama might be if someone chooses to repave their driveway.

I could be totally wrong, of course, but that's just the feeling I got.

I arrived with a few other DLPers, Maria from Kazakhstan (don't tell her you liked Borat), Michael, and another girl whose name I unfortunately forgot (but I know it doesn't start with M). My roommate has a unique name too-- she's got a bit of a lisp and I think her name is Shirin, but it sounds different, like it sounds like it ends with an i (even though it doesn't).

The dorm rooms here couldn't be blander-- I'm on the dorm room on the far right end of the hallway, and when you walk in, there are two would-be bunk beds, one taller than the other by just a few inches, two giant closets separated by a dinky sink and mirror, a desk on the far right side of the room, and another desk just behind me, not far from Shirin's bed.

I went to the Enterprise Rent-A-Car Pizza Party, which was good, though the pizza was nothing to write home about. I probably should have eaten before I left San Francisco, since I already bothered to go to the Benefit Brow Bar and to the Metreon to grab my "Writer's Toolbox" from the Chronicle bookstore (and what a great buy it's proving to be! akavertigo, here I come).

After some eating and slight networking with whoever was sitting nearest to me, the Enterprise Reps called for an introduction session-- because there were a good 100 of us or so, it took a while, and we had several latecomers spread out over the room. I was one of the first 20 or so to go though, and I wasn't so scared then. All you had to do was say your name, school, year, major, and something interesting about your school. Easy enough, yeah? No one else is from Northridge though; there are seriously people from ALL over the country here, and some from all over the world!

I would have stayed longer to schmooze, but I hadn't put my bed together yet, wanted to wash my face (I bought the Benetint rose-scented facial tint, and DAMN that stuff rocks!
), and just couldn't work up the mojo to randomly walk up to someone's crowd and start talking. The event officially starts tomorrow, so I'll worry about schmoozing and networking tomorrow- after breakfast. :)

There doesn't appear to be wireless here (alas!) or even a working phone line for dial-up, so I'm just typing this and then saving it for the heck of it. There might be wireless SOMEWHERE on this campus (there's all of one student who's actually FROM this college and attending the DLP; people actually from Northern California *IN* Northern Californa seem to be pretty few and far between), but I have yet to see it. It's not like Monster encouraged us to bring our laptops anyway... I just wanted to, since mine is a habit. Or perhaps an additional appendage. :P

With some luck, whenever I'm not schmoozing, networking, and preparing for my future, I'll be writing SOMETHING creative in the hopes of getting my juices flowing. In the meantime, I'm tired. X_X