Paradigm Shift

(Susie gets into car)

C: Sorry the backseat's so messy. I had to take my parents to work, and they sometimes make a mess. And I had to bring my dog, too.

Me: . . .

L: Why'd you have to take them to work?

C: Because they can't be left alone.

S: Why can't they be left alone?

LC: Oh, when you leave them alone, they start screaming.

Me: . . .

C: Yeah, they can't be left alone. They seriously just start screaming.

Me: . . .

C: But yeah, sorry the car's really messy. Sometimes he just chews stuff up and spits it back out. Look at that crap on the floor.

Me: . . .

C: (something about birds)

Me: hahahahahahahaha.

C: . . .

S: . . .

L: . . .

Me: hahahahahahahaha.

Re-read the conversation after replacing "parent" with "parrot."

COCKROACH

AUGH.

Now, I'm not normally an advocate of capital-letter-speak. However, desperate times call for equally hysterical forms of expression. I have spent the past hour of my life trapping a GIANT COCKROACH and recuperating from the experience.

So, I get home from watching Despicable Me at the theater (a surprisingly pleasant movie, by the way) to find a GIANT COCKROACH in the doorway to my bathroom. I initially mistook it for a blob of hair in the dim lighting only to find out I was reaching out for a DEMON ON SIX LEGS.

I immediately telephoned a friend of mine and began screaming into the phone about the GIANT COCKROACH now in my apartment. After listening to my panicked blabber for a good minute, she calmly told me to squash it with a shoe. At this point, I calmed down a bit and told her yes, I would kill it with a shoe, and yes it will all be fine.

As soon as I hung up the phone, I began to approach the GIANT COCKROACH holding a pair of orange Converse when the little bugger TWITCHED. This of course triggered yet another panic attack which led to me calling my parents. They patiently listened to me cry/shout/bellow (yes, there were tears) incoherently into phone for 30 minutes while I attempted to cover the cockroach with a small Styrofoam bowl.

I finally managed to trap the SOB under not one, but two foam bowls and topped it off with a box of sidewalk chalk to make sure it really couldn't escape. Which lead to me pacing around the apartment trying to calm myself down and sitting down to write this entry.

My heartbeat is still slightly elevated, and as seen in my out of character use of capitalized words, I'm still a tad unnerved. I keep thinking the various spots on the floor in the peripheral vision are more GIANT COCKROACHES. I opened my closet expecting a whole army of them to come swarming out. I have made cockroach spray the number one priority on my shopping list.

Dear god, nothing like a COCKROACH ATTACK to remind me that I'm still 6 years old.

Quasi

My friend Casey and I love the prefix "pseudo." We love it so much, we use it even if it is inappropriate and doesn't make sense. We also love the "non" descriptor. Our conversations are filled with "non-places" doing "non-things" as we pseudo-bitterly reminisce those "pseudo-fun" activities during high school.

At one point, we saw the word "quasi" while browsing the shelves at the library. After discovering this awesome, new modifier, we made a pact of sorts to use it more often. Of course, our tongues were still loyal to "pseudo," and our use of the word "quasi" were consequently few and far between. At best, we would say "pseu--" remember our pact, say "quasi" with extra emphasis and then have a good laugh about it.

Anywho, I was reminded of all of this when few days ago I was standing in line at a burger joint listening to some locals play bluegrass. Which then reminded me of folk music. Which then reminded me of a conversation that I had exchanged with a guy named Cody at the farmer's market about a mutual friend of ours who was in a "sort of folk acappella group." Then I couldn't remember if he had perhaps used the "quasi" or "pseudo" modifier instead of "sort of."

This is one of the few trains of thought I have successfully elucidated, so I thought it was blog-worthy.

Personality Inventory

Ever since I've been done with The-Test-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, I haven't visited the CollegeBoard website, but in midst of my "what major to do in college crisis" (more about that later, perhaps), I landed upon an old personality inventory that I took in junior year (for those interested, it's part of the MyRoad module CollegeBoard has for all members). Partially out of curiosity and mostly out of boredom, I retook the inventory (alright, I admit it. It was mostly out of curiosity).

For the most part, I'm still relatively similar to the person I was in junior year. I still like working by myself, I find crowds slightly uncomfortable, I like to plan ahead, I moderately like change, and the future is something that concerns me.

For most of the questions, you choose how left or right you lean on a spectrum between two statements. For example:

I like a lot of change in my world; too little change is boring

(Strongly)

(Mostly)

(Somewhat)

(Unsure)

(Somewhat)

(Mostly)

(Strongly)

I like stability in my world; too much change bothers me

More often than not, when I did refine an old answer, I opted for the "unsure" option. I questioned a bit how my 16 year old self clicked so confidently checked "strongly" for so many of the prompts. I suspect that I was skewing my answers to convince myself I was more defined than I actually was. I always treated those personality inventories as some sort of competition, as if there was a winner in getting a certain 4 letter personality ID. Now in my crisis of not knowing what I want to do in college, I retook that inventory as honestly as I could, and found it more difficult than I expected.

I ended up scoring as an ENTZ (I got an INTZ in junior year), but my individual section scores were pretty deflated, a couple of them bordering between "slight" and "clear." I feel like I should be able to coherently and elegantly summarize a lesson learned from all of this, but I can't. All I really feel is that slight discomfort knowing that I maybe don't know what I want to do in life as well as I convinced myself during my high-and-mighty, life-will-do-my-bidding phase.

Oh man, college, here I come.

Lazy

My calculus teacher once told me:

It's good to be lazy.

He meant that I should try to solve math problems in "lazy" or "clever" methods. Of course, I took this as an invitation to totally misconstrue his words and justify my laziness for everything else.This being summer and all, I've taken my teacher's advice quite literally. For example, yesterday was spent watching 18 episodes of How I Met Your Mother, which by the way is a fantastic show.

As much as I love following the wisdom of my calculus teacher, I can't help but feel a little dissatisfied . . .