updates:

• parents are alive and only lost branches. their boat is in the houston area and i'm assuming it's destroyed but hey, what can you do?
• last night's football game was a bummer but hey, what can you do? (hope that today's auburn and alabama games will go better)
• um, i have an interview in chicago on sept. 22nd? woo?! not sure how i'm going to get there, but hey, what can you do? (no really, i have no idea how i'm going to get there)
• did i mention that we got that apartment?! woo! i'm so excited about that one, it goes in my win column.
• courtney arrives tomorrow, yay! this means arthur bryants must happen soon.
  
• i got a little western digital passport harddrive thing on sale the other day and i'm in heaven. hopefully this will give my computer a little bit longer before totally crapping out because i really can't buy a new computer right now.
• working on putting together portfolio is totally a pain in the ass.
• i bought the pilot for dexter on itunes and i'm excited to watch it. this is mostly directed at patrick.
  

i can't remember what else. i don't know if it's appropriate to post details about this job interview but let's just say i would be really super happy if i got this job (and not just from a financial standpoint, i think i would really love this job).

also i can't stand this palin shit, people who are against women's reproductive rights (and rights in general) claiming to be feminists because this woman is running as their vice president. what a joke! if palin was a man, there is absolutely NO WAY anyone would pick him as their VP because guess what, she has NO EXPERIENCE. my dad was the city manager of a town six times bigger than wasilla for 20 years and there's no way he could be a VP. and in the two years she was governor of one of the least populated states in the US, she brought about tons of questions about her ethics. ridiculous. my mom sent me an email with these:

that makes me sick. seriously. mccain picked a woman because he and his campaign managers were trying to fool americans. i wasn't thrilled about the biden pick for a number of reasons but after watching all of this unfold, i will be absolutely disgusted if americans fall for this. on the other hand, if americans DO fall for this then our country deserves these two lunatics. and as i said before, i will move to mars. immediately.

ps here's the video of the dude on galveston island in a bearsuit:


galveston is pretty much gone and houston has lost power and they can't drink any water right now. hopefully the cleanup goes better than it did in new orleans, houston is the fourth highest populated city in america. hurricanes, what a pain in the ass.

if i had to make a top ten list of the worst days of my life, yesterday definitely wasn't the worst but it would be in the top ten.

i resigned from my job unofficially yesterday. i had written out what i was going to say and i walked into my supervisor's office yesterday, shut the door and became hysterical. it was really embarrassing. i had planned to tell everyone else yesterday but just because of how the rest of my day went and how upset i was, i waited until today. today was a lot better-- i think it was just hardest to get over that "wall". i still cried today but mostly it went really well. i just wanted everyone to understand that i really love my job, mostly the people i work with and the freedom/flexibility of my position, but that if i don't leave lawrence now...i will never leave. i would be more than happy to return here but i have to leave first. i think everyone was really understanding.

i don't really want to discuss the rest of my day but i will say that my aunt has been brainwashed by a calvinist and it is pretty shitty. first lecturing my family about how my cousin kent is going to hell because he followed the book of urantia, now unwilling to help her sick mother and using total depravity as an excuse. it is really interesting how crazy religion can make you, and even more interesting how easily someone can be convinced by someone else with whom they are in love. love and religion, really fucked up. 

what else? well, now i feel like a lame duck so i'm just trying to stay out of everyone's hair and get all of my projects done. i'm not worried about work, i'm worried about getting all of personal shit done. i need to see my doctor and a dentist before i go, get my car fixed, sell my desk and see as many people as i can before i leave. i don't think i'll be able to sleep between now and whenever we leave. i am really excited and really fucking freaked out at the same time.

and finally,

THE APARTMENT, WE HAS IT!!!!!!!

i quit my job today.

last night i was driving people home and became embarrassed by the music coming from my radio when i turned the key. i changed the station to 94.9 and remembered how much i love my parents' music. for real. i could listen to righteous brothers forever. god only knows why.

last night was pretty amazing. i remember talking about high fives to different people all night, almost setting a backyard on fire, halfway watching heathers and wishing i had seen it all, and mostly trying to convince kelly hangauer to let me sing with fourth of july in adrianne's place, but only for "why did i drink so much last night?"-- i think i may have tried to convince several others it was a good idea as well. but seriously, i sound really good when i sing her part. just saying.

did you know that the devil's advocate is a real person? i brought the term up the other day because there's some dude at the ECM who always says "now, i'm just playing devil's advocate but [insert really stupid comment]" and i think that he more than likely believes what he's saying but uses the devil's advocate phrase because he doesn't have the balls to share his opinion outright. /rant

anyway, i was telling someone this and they proceeded to tell me that the devil's advocate is a real person hired by the catholic church anytime they go through the process of canonizing a saint. i had no idea-- i figured it was just some stupid cliche that someone pulled out of their ass one time and it caught on.

from wikipedia:

Formerly, during the canonization process of the Roman Catholic Church, the Promoter of the Faith (Latin Promotor Fidei), popularly known as the Devil's Advocate (Latin advocatus diaboli), was a canon lawyer appointed by the Church to argue against the canonization of the candidate.^[1] It was his job to take a skeptical view of the candidate's character, to look for holes in the evidence, to argue that any miracles attributed to the candidate were fraudulent, etc. The Devil's advocate was opposed by God's advocate, whose job was to make the argument in favor of canonization. The office was established in 1587 during the reign of Pope Sixtus V and was abolished by Pope John Paul II in 1983. This abolition streamlined the canonization process considerably, helping John Paul II to usher in an unprecedented number of elevations: nearly 500 individuals were canonized and over 1,300 were beatified during his tenure as Pope as compared to only 98 canonizations by all his 20th-century predecessors.

Such a dramatic increase suggests that the office of the Devil's Advocate had served to reduce the number of canonizations by complicating the process. Some argue that it served a useful role in ensuring that canonizations did not proceed without due care and hence the status of sainthood was not easily achieved. In cases of controversy the Vatican may still seek to informally solicit the testimony of critics of a candidate for canonization. The British born American columnist Christopher Hitchens was famously asked to testify against the beatification of Mother Teresa in 2002, a role he would later humorously describe as being akin to "representing the Evil One, as it were, pro bono".^[2]

^{anyway i just thought that was all very interesting. what say you, keanu reeves?}