Meaningless Accomplishments

This weekend was one of meaningless accomplishments (I may be the only one who cares...):

1. Finished my book, This Much I Know Is True by Wally Lamb. It was excellent. Afterwards, I tried to look through the other books that I mysteriously own and found that ALL of those books are schizophrenia-related. One novel (the one I read) and two medical-y books. Naturally, I started having elaborate fantasies about myself being schizophrenic and my alter ego buying these books to prepare me for when my regular self learns about my illness. Although, by reading the Wally Lamb book, I know that that isn't how schizophrenia works. The fantasies, none-the-less, persist.

2. Started arranging "Head Over Heels" for Corina and my (so far fictional) a cappella group. It wasn't monumental progress, but breaking ground is the most important step.

3. Bought a new string for my favorite necklace. Again, not huge, but it's been months and months since the moment I decided the string was too frayed to risk wearing and the moment I got the new string. Considered buying a coloring book AGAIN, but suppressed the urge and instead...

4. Tried to paint again. I've been working on this same damn Bob Dylan/Suze Rotolo painting for probably a year. More than. Maybe two years. Every time I work on it it looks like I've done nothing. I'm thinking of abandoning it and/or starting a new painting to get reinvigorated and going back to this one in time. I feel like it's when you're reading a boring-ish book and you don't want to start a new book until you've completed said book. And then you end up not reading for like... 3 months straight. I should just do a face. This painting I'm doing now has too much scenery for me. I'm a much lazier painter than this.

5. Watched the movie Unmade Beds. It's not REALLY an accomplishment, but I enjoyed it. I feel like Natalya would really like it and intend to recommend it to her next time we speak.

6. Finally watched the finale of season 4 of Skins (UK). I had some sort of block against that last episode and halted Corina and my progress for several months. 4-6 months, I would guess. It was a pretty disappointing episode, but at least we got through it. I don't even know why I refused to watch it for so long.

7. Watched a couple of old episodes of Bored to Death. It was pretty good. They were 3 "for your consideration" episodes from a year or two ago. One episode had Jenny Slate from the abortion rom-com "Obvious Child." If you haven't seen it, I HIGHLY recommend. I've seen it like... 4 times and I just LOVE it. And thus love her (you may also know her as the recent SNL addition who said "fuck" on her first episode-- I'm not sure if she's still a cast member and don't care enough to check). I don't like Bored to Death enough to recommend, but I would watch it if I had cable and nothing else to watch.

If you want something to watch, go with Wilfred!! Hulu. I already list it in my short list of shows I actually watch, which is huge (only in my mind). Also, I may accidentally going through movies looking for Elijah Wood, who I'm accidentally in love with (I do know what "accidentally" means). I will not watch Lord of the Rings and I'll DEFINITELY not watch Everything is Illuminated again. Puh!

8. Taught Corina to play gin. In the moment, I felt like I'd never been more excited in my life. I LOVE playing cards and have often fantasized about roommates who will at least indulge me. Corina seems to like it and won the first game 124 to 4. Terrible with the trash talk, though. My grandpa would be disappointed with her on that. Or teach her REAL quick how to effectively criticize a cut of the deck or prophecize incredible failure.

9. Asked my boss for the Monday after the wedding off. That trip will be a real adventure. My grandma is making a dress-prototype out of muslin. I'm going to try and get an autographed headshot of my sister's favorite actress that I happen to know. Figure out where I'm staying. If I'm getting a rental car.

And it will mark the first time I've stepped out of California in almost 2 years. I never went this long without leaving Boston. I'm not sure I ever went this long without leaving Pennsylvania. Crazy. But slightly irrelevant, I guess.

Feeding my fish has become a lesson in patience. One of the fish will gobble everything up on sight (Chair Beverage), but the other fish will hold a piece of food in her mouth and swim around with it for a while before finally eating it (Ladder Phoenix). Thus, I have to wait until Ladder eats her food before I can put more in the bowl. Otherwise, Chair will eat like... 5x more food than Ladder. The fact that I'm willing to do this--NOT let Darwinism inflict it's wrath upon Ladder-- shows that I'm growing, surely.