Liv and Let Sigh: Liv Tyler deserves major accolades for her unique ensemble at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards. The "Lord of the Rings" lovely, never one to worry about making a sartorial misstep, boldly pairs a floor-length mint green Ralph Lauren gown with a purple velvet jacket. On a less regal-looking celeb, the unusual color combo might have looked more mismatched than an Orc wearing a peace sign, but Arwen's alter ego carries off this fashion feat with aplomb.

I don't think I'm being crazy when I say that this outfit is horrible.

I got Joe a peacoat! Now he is pretty like me!

GLARGH!

I've gotten hits for "Arnold Schwarzenegger anti-christ," "buns or boobs test," and "screwing my sister crooked."

I think I got the best junk email title ever today. The subject was "Sexy ladies self-milking themselves :)"

Not in the mood.

Definitely waiting for the bone-numbing cold to stop.

I know you're bored. Go take a typing test.

On whatever the morning show on NBC is called, they're doing makeovers for women who have lost a lot of weight, and the girl who is on right now, they're saying about her, "Is it true that once you were so overweight that you only wore men's clothing?!" She said, "Yes," very ashamedly. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......

I wear almost exclusively men's clothing, or T-shirts that are "uni-sex" (but purchased on the "men" side of the store). I wear exclusively men's pants, I wear a men's snowboarding jacket, I wear men's polo shirts and sweatshirts. When I have to dress up for something, I have 2 skirts and a nice pair of women's "dress slacks." I have a few blouses and dress sweaters that I only wear when I have to dress up.

I don't think it's because I'm hideously overweight. It's because, for whatever reason, I feel more at home in men's clothes. I feel nice when I dress up in skirts and blouses, I feel pretty, but I also feel awkward, like I'm trying to prove something to someone. I hate the girls who wear those stupid lowlowlow cut jeans and their buttcrack is showing or their fat pooch of a stomach is hanging over the front. I like my cargo pants and baggy red sweatshirt. I feel comfortable. I'm not advertising. If people want to know what I have to offer, they can come and talk to me. They can't already see it through my patchwork of fabrics I have strategically placed and call "clothing."

Sick inna tummy.

Do you ever have a day when you feel inferior, and there's no real reason why? No one has said anything to you, no one has put you down, but there's just this nagging little thought in the back of your head that you're really not good enough and you don't deserve to be wanted or loved?

I'm a smart person. I know that. I am a lazy person. I know that too. RIT's a hard school, and I'm not saying that I could have a 4.0, but I sure shouldn't have to be working to keep my 3.0. I put off all work until the very last minute and hand in sh*tty stuff that the teacher should throw back in my face, and probably would, if three-quarters of the class wasn't handing in the same sh*tty last minute stuff.

I want my parents to be proud of me. When I was growing up, I knew that my mom had been a high school biology teacher, and my dad was a chemist. My mom was the salutatorian of her class and I think my dad graduated in the top ten of a class of over 500. When I brought home a test with a big red 98 at the top, they'd say, "Good job! Which one did you miss?" When I brought home a report card with 4 A's and a B+, they'd say, "Well, we know you can get that B+ up, right?" They weren't ogres by any means, but sometimes I wish they had been a little more supportive of what I had already done, instead of what I might be able to do.

In the (coming up on) 5 years that I have been in post-secondary education, my parents have only recently stopped questioning my field of study. For the first 3 1/2 years, my mom kept telling me that I should have gone into biology or English, since I'm "good at those." Nevermind the fact that a lot of it bores the crap out of me. I like a lot of aspects of biology, but last semester when Joe was going over stacks of index cards and memorizing the family, genus, and species of 100 or more small mammals and rodents, I thought, "Gee, I'm glad I'm not doing that right now." In the last English class I took, I couldn't believe the idiocy of the students around me. These people are in their third or fourth year of uni and they don't know a colon from a semicolon and couldn't write a grammatically correct paragraph to save their lives. It's disgusting.

I don't have a concrete reason why I'm in photography. Do I love every aspect of it? No. Do I think I want to do it for the rest of my life? Yes. The business classes I've taken just drill "It's all about the money" into our heads over and over and over. From the business standpoint, photographers who are in the business just because they love photography are the ones who fail. They underestimate costs and go out of business because they're not out there sharking people every chance they get. I mean, RIT's not teaching us to be unscrupulous, but they're teaching us things like, "If you're not happy, you're not charging enough," and "Photographers who don't have work are photographers who aren't marketing themselves very well." I don't want to be pounding the pavement every day looking for clients. I don't want to sit down in an office and spend an afternoon making cold calls. I want to take pictures. I guess I have to pull my head out of my buns and realize that there is no such thing as "just taking pictures" (while also not living below the poverty line) but I.... I just want my parents to encourage me more.

Phobias Quiz: How much do you know about fear?

Matt said he was sick of seeing fake boobs, so you can blame him for this.

That's me and Joe at Randy & Laura's wedding in August.
Then here's me and Joe with Matt... same wedding.

Wow. I hit the snooze alarm 9 times this morning, and each time it gives me 8 more minutes. I didn't even go to sleep late last night.

You know what really sucks? Now that Joe has moved in, we have to pay 2/3 of the water bill instead of 1/2. I seriously seriously doubt that we are using any more water now than I was when I lived here alone, especially not 17 percent more. I take fewer showers in the winter because my skin gets so dry and my hair gets weird if I take a shower every day so I usually go every other day. In the summer you have to shower every day because it's so hot and humid but in the winter my legs get horribly dry if I shower too much. The only way I could possibly think that we could be using more shower is in washing dishes, but really, I don't think we use that much. The water bill had only been about $8 a month, so I don't think a little bit more is going to break us, but we're on a seriously tight budget here.
P.S. The toilet runs unless you wait about 10 seconds after flushing then jiggle the handle a couple of times. It's really annoying.

What Finding Nemo Character are You?
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One more thing about that Primetime Thursday interview of Charliza Theron... Here's the IMDb synopsis of the interview.

I hate this.

I took a shower this morning and discovered that apparently the entire bottle of Drano MAX we used on the drains did NOTHING. Thursday morning we poured 1/3 of the bottle down the tub drain, 1/2 down the sink drain, and the rest down the bathroom sink. We waited, and washed it down with hot water. At the time, it seemed like it helped quite a bit. Not that it made it flow like new, but it seemed a lot better. Well, last night when we were washing dishes, we actually had to bail some water out of the sink with a bucket to even get the water level low enough to plunge it. Then this morning during my shower, I was standing in about 3 inches of water. I guess I'm going to call the landlord, because I'm not wasting another $4 and the effort on another bottle of drain cleaner if it's not even going to help anything. And yes, I am very careful about what goes down the drains; I'm not one of those people who washes food down the kitchen sink or lets long hairs clog up the tub. I don't know what's causing it, because all of the drains were fine before I went home for Christmas break.

Bah. To hell with this.

This thing must be cinching those babies in there pretty tightly.