Saturday, November 29, 2008

Roommate issues

Really, the roommate is a decent guy, least I think, but good Lord, do I want to bite his head off lately.

He seems to have been fired or laid off from his job, as he's barely left the house in three weeks. He wakes up, goes to the bathroom and then parks his ass on my sofa to watch TV for the rest of the day.

He's ruined two throw pillows because he wallows on them. They're completely flat, yet were almost brand new when he moved in four months ago. It doesn't seem like much, but it's just a small sign of a larger issue.

He doesn't respect my things. He puts his feet, in shoes, on my couch, my coffee table, the cats' chair. I knew it's not high quality furniture, but it's mine. I paid for most of it myself and I'd rather like to stay in a condition that's still attractive.

He's taken over the refrigerator. It's not a big fridge, but with only two people in the apartment it should have more than enough space. Yet I can't fit anything in the freezer and the entire bottom shelf, you know, where the tall stuff will fit, is taken up by his energy drinks in the fridge part.

He also tries to argue politics with me. I have a strict "No Politics" policy with people I have to live with who disagree with me. It makes things too uncomfortable, especially when the person you're living with wears a tinfoil hat and thinks Russia is now coming to get us because of Obama's election.

He talks down to me about sports. There are few things that piss me off more. I know sports better than 99 percent of the population, including Mr. I Love The Boise State Broncos. Don't try to tell me how things work. I know, and I could probably write a book on them.

As long as he pays his rent on time and the cats continue to like him, I'm not kicking him out, but lord it felt good to get all this shit off my chest.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

I always thought I was fat



Even when I wore a size 6 in the seventh grade, I thought I was fat.

Why? Because I couldn't wear a 5 or 3. Everybody else could, but there's Elise with her boobs and ass, having to wear adult women's clothes instead of juniors.

It got worse as I got older. I did gain weight in high school, getting up to a size 12, and my boobs got even bigger. I was wearing a D as a ninth grader (and I should been in the eighth grade), and a DD by the time I graduated. Gross old men would hit on me, not realizing that I was 13 or 14.

In college, away from from my mother's watchful eye, I finally said fuck it, ate whatever I wanted and got really fat.

Thankfully, that part of my life's over, although I still must atone for my early actions with food at the scale every Tuesday.

Looking though old photos this week, I realized that I was never fat in high school. Even when I weighed the most at my senior prom (see above), I wasn't fat, except in my head.

I listened too much to my biological father, who thinks anybody heavier than Kate Moss is gross, and the girls at school, who were straight out of the movie "Mean Girls."

Monday, November 17, 2008

Crafting!

So this is like a total chick post, moreso than any of my shoe or hot boy ones have ever been.

My parents decided last year that we should make our presents this year. I wanted to gather family recipes and put them into a book and get it printed. I failed miserably, mostly because I couldn't get anybody to send me recipes!

So, like any girl disappointed, I moved on!

I'm limited in craftiness, however. I thought I could crochet or knit my brother a scarf in the ugly colors of the glorious Purdue. Not gonna happen, at least not by Christmas.

So I signed up for some classes at my favorite store. One was to learn how to make this awesomely cool recipe container thingie. Turns out they don't have all the stuff needed to make them in the store, so I just have the one. (Can't say who's getting it. You'll find out at Christmas!)

During the class, however, the teacher passed around a book of Christmas ideas, last year's Christmas ideas, at 75 percent off, so I got it for like $2. And inside, in the middle of the book was the most fantastic present for some of the men in my life. Glass pebble magnents. I have almost everything (except the magnents).

This could be the easiest Christmas giftwise, like ever!

Friday, November 14, 2008

Calling all Harry Potter fans!



It's finally here! The new trailer that is.

Since they decided to push back the release of the flick until next year after Mr. Radcliff's little Broadway appearance, this will have to feed our Harry Potter jones through a sad Christmas movie season that lacks The Half-Blood Prince.

The trailer will be Internet only for a week, least if I'm reading the story right. Click here to watch it! They've got HD and standard, flash and quicktime. Really, whatever floats your boat as far as video online goes, they've got it :D

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

President Obama



Nov. 4, 2008, was the most moving night of my neophyte political junkie career.

A black man elected president? I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime, and certainly not with a majority of the popular vote.

I knew he would win before the race was called for him. Once we won Ohio and the networks had him at over 190 electoral votes, I knew he was our President-elect. There were 83 West Coast electoral votes in his backpocket long before the polls closed. I even called my mother and my sister!

My reaction when they actually called the race after the polls in California and Washington closed shocked me. I cried. In the middle of giant election party, I cried. Like a little girl.

Never in a million years did I think I'd get to see this so early in my life.

When he came out with family to give his acceptance speech, I got chills up my spine and started crying again.

My decision to leave newspapers so I can become more involved in grassroots political activities was confirmed as the right idea. I felt a passion over the course of the campaign that I have never felt in newspapers, and that I've come to realize I never will.

Obama, and to a lesser extent Larry LaRocco, have opened my eyes to what my passion really is.

______

Obama's acceptance speech, part 1. The rest of it is linked to from the first part.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Nate Silver, world's hottest nerd


Yes, it's another blog about my flavor of the day crush :D

This time, though, I'm going for brains instead of white-trashness.

Nate Silver, who predicted the Rays would win 88 games this year and figured out a new way to look at baseball stats and predict what would happen that was better than the old way (I really don't understand all that, though, cause it's baseball, and we all know that baseball and I have a love-hate, mostly hate, relationship), predicted a victory for Obama tonight on his site fivethirtyeight.com, which takes polls and uses more fancy formulas and number crunching to interpret the polls and tell us what's going on.

Nate also pops up from time-to-time on Countdown and other MSNBC shows, providing me with the opportunity to see him kinda-sorta in person.

Now I know what you're saying, "Elise, I've looked at the top of the page, and, well, he looks more like he belongs in an engineering firm than in your bed."

To this I say, you haven't seen enough of my ex-boyfriends. I like nerds, geeks, dorks, whatever you want to call them. At the end of the day, nothing is sexier than brains. Your brains stay (generally), while looks are fleeting. And Mr. Silver has brains to spare.

Being a Democrat in Idaho



There was a big rally today for the Senate candidate here in Idaho, and it pretty much summed up what it's like to be a Democrat in this great state.

The College Democrats were out in full force, below, but the number of other students or even non-family members at the rally was disappointing, top.





A state legislator, who's a professor at the U here, read her speech from a piece of paper. Good lord, I should run. At least I can give a fun and exciting speech!



The world's worst congressional candidate spoke, and then later told me her son told her that the reason nobody knew about her was because everybody thought they were in the other district. sigh. Sorry, lady, it's because your opponent is one of the best Republican congressmen out there and strong incumbents tend to attract weak opposition.



Finally, the Senate hopeful spoke. Finally, I got a real candidate, and it was beautiful. I'm so very sad that the downticket races don't have candidates of his ability, just younger and less experienced.



And of course the best part of the rally, the cute boy!

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Coffee



Hi, my name is Elise and I have a problem, a coffee problem.

I cannot function until I drink at least a pot a coffee. I sit on my couch, watch bad TV and surf the Internet.

Without my coffee, I develop headaches, shakiness, crankiness and a general lack of desire to do anything. I also struggle to read basic words such as the, an and cat.

If I can't get coffee at home, I'm forced to rely on a large Americano with four shots down at the coffee house. It's not even about flirting with a cute guy down there anymore. It's simply about being able to function!

The worst part of my coffee addiction is that I can't even get the coffee I really like here. I can only get Wind Rider from Coffee Traders in Montana, which makes it hard when I run out and I've forgotten to order some. So I wind up drinking bleech coffee from Winco, which is OK, but just not the same.