Phantom's Realm of Angst

Bringing everyone up to speed.

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 05:54:54 GMT

This is the Basic Facts Meme. Rather than culling it from my Friends' Page, I hunted it down because between the people I haven't spoken to in years and the people who are new to my livejournal, I'm feeling dangerously close to being an "LJ Lurker."

First Name: Adam

Age: 21

Location: Scarsdale, NY, but really Eastchester.

Occupation: I think officially I'm an employee of Kelly Services, though I haven't yet done any work for them. More on this later.

Partner: I recently reunited with my college girlfriend, alz_be_ta. We cook good food and drink fine wine and generally live outside our means together. I am very pleased with this development.

Kids: None, though it is an eventual goal (much to many peoples' surprise and dismay).

Brothers/Sisters: I have a sister (Katie, 19) who attends Vassar College. It was for the wrong reasons and she didn't deserve it, but we've been getting along for most of the last 5 years, so I don't mention it much.

Pets: Two cats, named Haley and Louise. They are named after Haley Joel Osment and the character from Katherine Paterson's Jacob Have I Loved, respectively. They have adorable territory wars all over my house and every morning I wake up with one of them on my chest.

List the 3-5 biggest things going on in your life:
1. The Job Search. I admit I wasted a few months this summer, but luckily, the economy tanked right after that, so people are very sympathetic. And Kelly Services, which I think some aunts of mine used when it was Kelly Girls and only provided secretaries, seems happy enough to take on my resume, and has made many promises to employ me soon which I don't believe for a moment.
2. Self-Betterment. I am pursuing things that I enjoy doing in my free time. I'm going to therapy, gardening, cooking, exercising, and generally attempting to do things that make me healthier and happier. This may seem kind of simple, but those who know me know that it's a significant departure from my previous life philosophy of "scowling while drinking abusively."
3. Actuarial exams. Since I've been old enough to understand the concept of jobs, I have vowed that actuarial science is the one job that I will not do. I wanted to be an astronaut. Needless to say, for job stability and the highest pay you can receive without further education, I'm taking a very simple probability exam that will make it impossible for me to be anything but an actuary for the rest of my life.

Where and for what did you go to school for?
I went to Vassar College, Class of 2008. I have a major in Japanese, but I tell people that I have a double degree in Japanese and Mathematics. I'm only off by a credit or two anyway.

Parents: My father is an actuary. He makes this job look attractive by going in at 7 AM and coming home at 9 PM. He enjoys dark chocolate, the harmonica, and emptying out his toolbox, cleaning it out, and putting everything back.
My mother is a freelance copy editor, though most her work is for the Pension Board of the United Church of Christ. She enjoys salads from California Pizza Kitchen, buying things she doesn't need, and I don't think she has ever cleaned out her purse.
I've been getting along with both of them very well lately.

Who are some of your closest friends?
This is a silly question. You can't quantify your friends' values and rank them. That being said, definitely Lindsay and Sally.

I hope this turned out useful and not just boring.

And now, because I feel like it, I will do the other meme that's going around. If you post on this entry, I will tell you something I admire about you. Or tolerate about you, as the case may be. Or both.

Can you hear this?

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 01:37:45 GMT

Um. Well. The plan was to not write until I had some manner of success to report, something along the lines of my ideal job with a salary of a fafillion dollars, moving into an apartment on Park Avenue, something like that. However, since I am now a month out of college and my spectacular effortless success seems to be taking its time about getting here, I am settling for sending out this general reassurance to my somewhat abridged friends-list that I am both alive and still interested in hearing from you. My only victories in the last month have been domestic or virtual (level61bloodelfpaladinwhoseRLhouseisnotincompletedisarrayWHAT?), but I'm starting with the effort thing for real when I get back home, and I'll have something to do with my days soon.

Oh. To those of you who are still matriculating at Vassar: Using my paradigm skill in "It's ok when I do it," I have rethought my fairly unforgiving stance about visiting Vassar next year. I believe there are (and am attempting to formulate) classy ways to be on campus more often than I previously thought was graceful or acceptable, and am thinking that if I ply people with wine and the occasional baked good, there are still places I can be quietly suffered.

Here's hoping as much is well with as many of you as can be reasonably expected.

Thu, 15 May 2008 18:30:03 GMT

Let it be known that I am pleased. It makes for much less entertaining lj entries, but I am still chalking it up as a Good Thing. I'm done with everything, there are no more papers or tests or projects, and the ones that I finished went well, I think. Not to mention, I had a brilliant day yesterday with truly, an all-star lineup of good folk, expensive sushi, and drinks that tasted like candy. Actual life stuff is not settled, but nor is it intimidating, and I feel like next year will be a good one. I apologize, there are no witticisms for what I am currently feeling.

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:46:28 GMT

So, at some point in this college's illustrious history, the outer window of a small room in a small Town House on a relatively low-traffic corner of campus got jammed slightly open, so little as to be nearly imperceptible. Much more recently, the occupant of TH E3 Room C awoke just in time to prevent several wasps from entering the inner window of the same room. The time since said awakening has been spent watching in morbid fascination as paper wasps (family Vespidae) slowly spit small wads of gray strands at other wads of gray strands in their effort to take up permanent residence not four feet from my pillow, and listening to the gentle "plink" of wasp heads on the glass of the inner window. The institution in question has been notified via their Buildings and Grounds department, who have bravely vowed to "enter the request into the system and see what priority it takes."
Despite this reassurance, my attitude is generally of the "Fuck you, I'm going to Guam" variety, where Guam means Intensive Introductory German. I am taking my computer and all school books with me, and I am not sleeping in this room again until it is occupied only by members of the family A------.

...

JESUS CHRIST FUCKING WASPS!

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 04:44:11 GMT

Surprise kanji quizzes suck.

There are those who would argue that it is was in fact on the syllabus. To them I say, Fuck you, hypothetical nay-sayer. You're no hypothetical friend of mine.

Otherwise, things vary, as they so often do, between good and crappy. My new housing is wonderful, as are the people within it. The one drawback is that I rarely am inspired to go back there between classes, so I've been spending more time doing work at the library and less time looking at livejournal and facebook for the umpteenth time. The work itself is plentiful, but managable. I need to do well this semester, so that they let me go abroad next year. The downside of the work is that I run around a lot more, mostly to the "stupid-outside-of-class-mandatory-crap" sessions that 3 of my 5 classes insist upon. So if I'm irritable (haha, if), keep in mind that this is me controlling myself.

A toast, to absent friends.

Pre-registration

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 15:30:54 GMT

Um. Yes. I need to choose courses. I already know I'm taking Intermediate Japanese and Linguistics, and the next math class after multi-variable (what is the next class after multi-variable?), but I want to take two more courses. I want at some point in my college career to take an economics course, and a comp sci course, and Introductory Russian, and maybe brush up on my French... does anyone have any recommendations for what I should do for first semester sophomore year? Oh yeah, I forgot, my draw number is "3" so if there're any courses that are difficult to get into, I might want to prioritize those first... I don't even really know what I'm asking anymore. Any insight would be appreciated.