It's 12:30 in the morning

and I'm still up trying to pick out an outfit for tomorrow night's New Year's Eve party.

Sometime I'm so fucking gay it hurts.

Really, though. I have to look insanely good if I want to a)impress the people I haven't seen in years and b)seduce the boy who is in desperate need of a seduction from moi.

I thought the black striped Kenneth Cole shirt was a sure thing, but now that I've decided that I need to wear my tux jacket (with jeans, of course), the shirt is out. I've toyed with the idea of replacing it with a stupidly tight black Armani Exchange button down shirt, but that would require a very particular shirt underneath that I just don't think I have.

See? So gay it actually hurts.

You know whom I feel bad for?

I feel bad for that poor sap of a woman that played Johnny Depp's wife in Finding Neverland. I can just imagine her reaction when she found out about her part.

"I'm playing Johnny Depp's wife and I don't even get to have a love scene with him? He doesn't even kiss me? Oh, there is a kiss? It's only on the cheek? Man, I got screwed!"

Also, go see Finding Neverland if you haven't already. It will make you cry like a stupid, ugly baby but I'll allow it just this once (maybe because I found myself with snot running down the front of my sweater).

First of all,

Rufus Wainwright's latest installment, Want Two, has officially been bumped above Dar Williams' Out There Live on my list of albums that I would rather swallow rusty nails than be forced to live without.

Second of all, I wrote a rather long entry yesterday about seeing people from high school that I hadn't seen since high school and overcoming my own insecurities and blah blah blah but I composed it in the Diaryland field and, due to my own stupidity, you will never read that entry (what can I say, I'm a sucker for the "Get the lobster in the basketball net" pop-up). I suppose it's all well and good, though, because the only part of that entry anyone else would care to hear about is the part where I managed to develop an overwhelmingly dirty crush on an endlessly attractive, endlessly questionable straight guy I used to sit with at lunch on Orange Floor my junior year of high school.

Lastly, I may or may not be addicted to this computer game my brother bought me for Christmas called Zoo Tycoon 2. The premise of the game is that you build zoos, but you don't just build zoos. You pick which animals you want and you design their exhibits to meet their needs and you layout the restaurants and snack bars and souvenir shops and restrooms and you hire staff and fire staff and it's all too much. My zoo is still rather small right now, with only two peacocks and a moose but my visitors seem genuinely pleased!

I am having a problem with the moose, though. First he didn't like his exhibit (too cramped – I'm on a budget, Bullwinkle, beggars can't be choosers), and now he won't stop pooping. I kid you not, every time I click on him to see his thoughts it says "I'm going to poop." And he does. He goes and he poops. Now, understand that I'm running a small operation over here and, therefore, can't afford to hire much staff. Because of this I do a lot of micromanaging (i.e. scoop my own poop. Well, not my own poop, but the poop of the – oh, you get it). This moose doesn't make it easy for me, though. He likes to poop somewhere amidst all the trees at the back of his pen, forcing me to scour the ground for little brown lumps.

Why I'd rather play this game than eat, sleep, or breathe I'm just not sure.

Christmas came and went as it always does.

My parents gave me the one thing I really wanted/needed right now: enough money to spend some time in New York and not be forced to forage for food with the pidgeons. When this trip will take place, I do not know. Soon, child, soon.

Actually, my parents got me the two gifts I really wanted/needed right now. They (by "they", of course, I mean Mother) got me the first season of The Golden Girls on DVD. I will tell you this right now and I will mean it more than I've meant anything I've ever said in my life: You have not lived until you've watched The Golden Girls in Surround Sound. You just haven't. You thought you had. I'm sure you believed that you've been living all this time. But if you haven't seen The Golden Girls in Surround Sound? Not so much, my friends, not so much.

You know, I'm getting out of here.

I'm going to get out. I'm going to get on that plane at 8 am on Friday morning and I'm going to leave this place. I'm going to leave this place and I'm going to leave this place and I'm doing it.

He can try to die and I can hand his life back to him on a silver platter and I'm going to get on that plane.

I can juggle finals and packing up my life into 18"x18"x18" boxes and I can do it.

I can find out that Plan A for getting my stuff home is a total bust four days before I'm supposed to leave and I'm still going to leave.

I can find out that Plan B isn't going to happen two days before I'm supposed to leave (due to a flood. A flood! Who has those anymore?) and I'm getting out.

I'm getting out and I'm leaving and I'm getting on that plan at 8 am on Friday morning and I'm going to do all of those things. I'm going to do all of those things and then I'm going to get off that plane and maybe I'll cry and maybe I'll laugh or maybe I'll cry and laugh because, honestly, sometimes that's all you've got left.

I think that's all I've got left.

I don't know how it is in your reality,

but in my reality it's apparently perfectly normal for a haggard old queen to walk into a laundromat and shriek, "Okay, all! I need 5 washers and I need them NOW!" In this same reality in which I live it also seems to be perfectly acceptable for haggard old queens to refer to my over-stuffed laundry bag as "a big tiger." Twice.

Again, I don't know if these rules apply to your reality, but in mine? Yes sir.

In totally unrelated and far less interesting news, I'm 100% finished with all final projects. I didn't bake the vegan cookies that I promised my printmaking class for tomorrow, but there's only so much one can do at once. My to-do list is shrinking, but the items left are rather large. You know, like "move across the country" and "pick up the pieces of your shattered life." Stuff like that.

I find myself

saying "oops" a lot lately. Not just a lot, but more like "I'll be right there, I just need to - oops. Okay, hold on a sec, let me - oops. Hmm, alright, if I just - oops..."

We went to a Sean Astin's book signing last night. That man is quite skilled in the art of circumlocution. He rambled on about who-knows-what for about 45 minutes before taking questions. By the time he "answered" the first question I had forgotten what the question was to begin with. That gave him just enough time to "answer" one more (a girl asked how he approaches doing multiple takes of an emotional scene and he spoke at length about The Stairs of Cirith Ungol...). All in all, an evening ill-spent.

Thanks to Kate,

I have finally taken a look at the big picture. My relationship crapped out, I have to move back across the country to a place I hate after having moved out here only four months ago, I have one week to pack for this move, I have to find a new school after falling in love with this one, and, to top it all off, I have final projects to complete! I guess it's really no wonder that my face looks like the surface of the moon, my left eye won't stop twitching, and haven't eaten in three days. Though, I suppose, if that's all that's happening to me I'm either very strong or very stupid (and judging from the day I've had, it might be more of the latter and less of the former).

You can't recycle toast, can you?

Well I'll be damned if I didn't try.

Dar Williams is so my lover right now.

We go way back to the eighth grade when a friend of mine's brother bought her a Dar CD for her birthday. This friend's brother was a freshman in college and, therefore, light years cooler than we could ever hope to be. Naturally, I ran out and bought that same CD (End of Summer) because this was obviously the music that all college kids were listening to and, thusly, light years cooler than the music that I was listening to at the time. It was true love at first listen, but lately she's been speaking to me on a whole new level. February leaves me in tears and The Christians and the Pagans makes me smile and I've been known to hum the chorus of As Cool as I am ad nauseam.

Speaking of Dar, where has Kate been? Call me, Darling. The you and the me and the chatting needs to be happening, like, yesterday.

I made whipped cream to top off my pumpkin pie and I licked both of the beaters clean ("clean", of course, doesn't even begin to describe the amount of effort and dedication that I invested into lapping every last speck of deliciously sweet and fluffy cream from those beaters). I tell you this for two reasons: Firstly, because it's worth noting that I delighted in not sharing the task with anyone else that might have been in beater-licking proximity; secondly, because I think there's something to be said of someone who whips their own cream.

I just left Connie a voicemail that, in its entirety, went something like this: "Hi, it's me...hold on a sec, I'm confused."