1. Marathon: I need to start doing longer runs to prepare myself. The marathon isn't until March, and I've been doing 4-5 mile runs, but I need to beat my mother this year.

2. Money: I'm still flat broke. I'm starting one part-time job next week, but it's not going to make much of a difference. I'll probably average 12-15 hours/week at $10/hour. But at least it's something. I still don't know how to pay for applications when the med school won't accept credit cards, though.

3. Fatness: yesterday I ate a big bowl of cereal, a banana, a Big Mac, large fries, two McNuggets, three pieces of naan with hummus, a big bowl of bolognese (turkey meat, onions, tomatoes), some sauteed brussel sprouts, eleven frozen chocolate-covered bon-bons, two pieces of toast, a pear, and another big huge bowl of cereal.

4. MCAT: I've told several people that my scores will be coming in over the next few weeks and each time I say it I get physically ill.

5. Madeline: Drew and I are in the process of adopting a springer spaniel mix from our local humane society.

 

No celebrities today. No talking about celebrities, watching t.v. shows with celebrity interviews, reading celebrity gossip sites, and (the hardest of all) not spending time hating Brad & Angelina.

I made that vow this morning and then less than thirty seconds later I clicked on a link to Mickey Hargitay's obituary. Ugh.

I have an orientation for one of the part-time jobs tomorrow. And I got a call about the other one, saying that a decision hasn't been made yet but they'd keep me posted. I've fallen into this cycle where I'm lazy through about 3:00 and then I get this manic burst of energy and try to do a day's worth of work in three hours. Probably just so Drew will think I'm being productive. But if I don't have Perezhilton.com to fill the void, I'm going to have to find some other way to chew up the first half of my day.

My mom called yesterday and said my little sister finally found a doctor in Taos who can treat her thyroid condition. Then, once she was back on her medication and things returned to normal, she admitted to Mom that she'd been having chest pains. JESUS. I ranted to my mom on the phone about my fears that Amanda's doing permanent damage to her body. I'm sure she found that amusing, since she's been a nurse for twenty years and I've been premed for about five minutes.

It must be weird for her to have a not-living-up-to-his-potential kid who suddenly has aspirations in her field. I've heard through the proverbial grapevine that she's a little freaked that I will soon know more about the human body than she does. I find it hard to believe that she honestly thinks that. But last week while I was volunteering I saw the doctors give an IV fluid I didn't recognize to a head trauma patient and when I asked Mom what it was she answered me and said "You didn't think I'd know that, did you??" Actually, I did.

As I was making my coffee just now I started thinking about how nice it is that Mariska Hargitay won the Emmy before her dad died. THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE EASY!

 

I woke up at 5:00 this morning worrying about money. This week is Drew's birthday and I've probably spent around $[REDACTED] so far.

That's insane, I realize, given that I don't have a job at the moment. But considering that this is a person who has shouldered most of our financial burden for the past year doing a job he finds increasingly pointless and demoralizing I think it's probably fair. Plus it's his 30th.

Still, $[REDACTED]is a bit steep. I talked to his mom yesterday and she's taking over one of his presents, which will knock that number down to about $[less REDACTED]. She also gave me a very generous gift last week, so I think I'll survive financially.

Drew and our friend John (both of whom make bucketloads, in my opinion) are each generous big spenders. They spend on themselves and their friends & families. They don't buy a lot of stuff, but they have very expensive taste. Our friend Chris and I are constantly in awe of how much money those two will shell out for a lamp or a pair of socks or a camera.

Yesterday I drove Chris and John to the airport (they're going to a wedding in NY together) and John was bemoaning the last time he went shopping in Manhattan.

Chris: "You still haven't gotten over that, have you?"
John: "I really haven't."

Me: "Why? What did you buy?"
John: "It's what I didn't buy."

Chris: "Well... four thousand dollars is a lot of money for a jacket, John."

I didn't even blink, because I honestly wasn't surprised that John might consider buying a jacket for four grand.

John smiled: "It wasn't four thousand. It was nine hundred."
Chris laughed: "Well, if you wore it 50 times that's just eighteen dollars per wear."

Meanwhile I'm sitting there thinking "God I wish I had eighteen dollars."

Drew's birthday presents went on the credit card. Yay! Credit card debt! I interviewed for two jobs this week, neither of which I really want to do, but both of which would be perfect for me these days.

Drew's strange relationship with money (and by "strange" I mean his family has lots of it and since college he's made lots of it) can cause problems when I'm job-hunting. He doesn't think anything pays enough. My mom loves that he once objected to me making $11/hour by saying that it wasn't even minimum wage. But it's easy to listen to him because he doesn't put pressure on me to find work and when you don't have to get a job nothing seems to pay enough.

But do you know what's really, really low-paying? Lying naked on the floor eating yogurt and watching The View.

Hopefully these jobs will come through today or tomorrow and I can quit dreaming about finance charges.

 

I'm not a grammarian (like, say, this smartypants). My sentences are often incomplete and I'm never totally sure about all the rules. I'm also not one to correct people when they break one of the rules I am familiar with; I think that's so rude and embarrassing. Yet there are certain things that really drive me nuts.

Lately I've been obsessing over the rampant misuse of the word "literally". I know this is nothing new but I just can't believe how many people do it. It's everywhere. I've found myself doing it in spite of the fact that it's such a huge pet peeve. I've noticed that people are often using it as an intensifer. To me that's completely perplexing. "She literally drove 100mph". As opposed to what? I don't understand why you'd say that.

The only possible way to use the word correctly is in contrast with "figuratively". You didn't literally turn your back on your family (unless you turned on your heel and refused to face them). You figuratively turned your back. But if, say, you hike to the top of Mt Everest you could say "I'm literally on top of the world."

I've pointed it out so many times to Drew that he suggested, quite seriously, that perhaps the meaning of the word needs to change. I'm not completely against that; I agree that usage determines meaning rather than the other way around. But how can you change the meaning of such a word? LITERALLY.

Just so you won't think that I'm being nothing but snotty and nitpicky, check out this correction that ran (not literally) in the Los Angeles Times a few weeks back:

"A July 30 Current article on urban revitalization said the Central City East Assn. had 'literally swept and hosed' homeless people from encampments on skid row when it cleaned the streets recently. Homeless people had been informed a day in advance that the street would be washed, and the organization waited until everyone was out of the way before beginning the cleanup."

Needless to say, the Central City East Association was not amused. The head of that organization said, in response to the original Times article, "The images that were conjured up were of the darkest days of the Civil Rights movement... I was absolutely mortified."

I think that what bothers me most about this is that there seems to be some deeper meaning to the misuse and abuse of the term. Somebody smarter than me has probably written a paper on it. But I've started to wonder if people don't perhaps feel the need to distinguish what they're saying (which they believe to be totally and completely true and accurate) from the air of "truthiness" all around them. It's as though people are saying, 'Hey, I know you can't believe what most people say, but what I'm telling you right now is the goddamn literal truth.'

That may sound absurd, but it's really starting to bother me. We shouldn't have to come up with a new way of reassuring everyone that we're telling the truth. And even if we do need that, let's get a whole new word. Let's leave "literally" alone. The more we misuse it the more confused its definition becomes and we end up with false (yet awfully fucking dramatic) images of homeless people being assaulted by high-power water hoses.