Multitasking

I do my best work completely distracted or completely under pressure. At this very moment, I am tending to my crops on my imaginary Facebook farm, updating my status, listening to a new band from Colorado called Pretty Lights, updating my blog, watching a show on the Food Network, emailing Aunt Sally and going between the internet and two different word documents trying to get a script done.
But that was intended to be a real blog.
I went to see about Rome. They aren't accepting applications until the end of October. : (
Rarely do I use the emoticons but this called for one.
Tired. Exhausted really. This semester has been wild already. It's going to be a long haul.
Ugh. More later, I'm guessing.
I wanted to write all about the city tonight, the way it looked and my experience in the American Girl Store (the very first time!)
But that will have to come tomorrow.

Marilyn Manson!

After a rather tumultuous weekend that included me losing my keys (still haven't found them) and Hunter breaking up with me (first time being broken up with, wasn't that bad), we've decided on a better course of action (obviously we were back together [I hate that word] in about 20 minutes) and have decided that we're going to try and have more fun together.
The problem was this: I am 21. Now legal, the world is an endless source of party fun. He is nearly 23 (the 18th) and has 2 jobs, which limits his ability to have fun. He gets jealous of me getting to go out and also the guys I go out with (started with the Irish) and then we fight. It's reminiscent of the Billy Joel and Katie Lee Joel (I think that was her name) marriage. He was 60-something and she was like 25. Problem.
Anyway, for his birthday, we're going to go up to Milwaukee and see Marilyn Manson perform. Tuesday night will be a hectic one (next week, not this one) because we'll have to leave immediately after I get out of class (fiction writing, the one I still hate) and then drive all the way there, see the show, and then drive all the way back so that Hunter can get to work by like 6am.
So that's the plan.
It should be fun. I'm nervous. I'll probably be the only person there in a cardigan.

Escuela hoy. En la clase de espanol, tengo un examen. Despues de la clase de espanol, tengo la clase de escribe de fiction. En la noche, mi y Simon (mi carro guapo) voy a la Northbrook a retrieve mi telefono de la UPS.

That is probably terrible grammar but I'm going with it. Just to prove to you I did my Spanish homework.

Oh, also, I've decided I don't like the tumblr thing for writing. I'd prefer to have it on a Blogspot page. I'm going to have it switched over soon, so don't worry. I just feel like tumblr should be used for more of text updates, like this blog. (I'm not going to be moving this one though, I think it's quite happy where it is.)

Writings of Mine Posted Online

Hello.
I hope the weekend is going well. My keys are still missing, which isn't turning out to be such a great thing.

However, I do have good news.
I have begun posting my writing to the internet.

www.katiebarry.tumblr.com

This isn't edited like I edit this blog, so don't be surprised to find different subject matter, the possibility of cursing, and other artistic license.

Enjoy! I've been trying to layer different sets of writings, so you'll be getting some recent and some very old. So I'll be playing with the layout and stuff for the foreseeable future.
I don't know very much about Tumblr, so we'll see how this adventure goes.

Have a great day!

Roma!

I'm going to Rome. I've decided it. I will not let the Denver semester ruin any study abroad chances for, so, here is the plan:

This semester: 18 hours.
Next semester: 15 - 18 hours.
May 13-15 (not scheduled yet, but definitely that weekend): Graduation (I will walk and we will all celebrate)
Then I will fly to Rome.
May 22-June 25: Finish my college experience in Rome.
June 25-??? I play in Europe.
??? - August 2009? I begin graduate school. In theory. If not, I'll get a job or something like that. But I think grad school is going to be the way to go. I'm going to stay in Chicago though.
My options at the moment are:
Masters in Fiction Writing (Columbia College Chicago)
or
Masters in Social Work (Loyola) --obviously the better choice.

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that you're welcome to come and visit me in Rome or wherever else I go.
Word is the Irish might be coming back to the US or Mexico for spring break. I'm hoping that we may continue corresponding enough that we can go and stay with them when we're all in Europe next summer. Imagine the partying that we could accomplish. New levels, I'm sure.

It's been a fairly long week and this morning I had to pitch a music video treatment to a local singer/songwriter. It was terrifying although he told me that my idea completely embodied the experience that he had gone through during the break up that the song described. That was pleasant.

Driving downtown this morning was a purely sublime experience. The fog was rolling in off the lake as I sped down Lake Shore Drive, and it was partially obscuring the downtown skyline. You could see the tops of the buildings peaking up but the middle was completely covered, surrounded, blanketed in this fog.

Our mediocre weather remains. Long sleeves for all.
Madeline's family is in town this weekend, so I'm looking forward to going out with them again. We went out to dinner last night and then hit some bars. More like one. It was interesting because the bar looked familiar and it turns out that we had visited there when we came to Chicago my senior year of high school.

to the weekend ahead: relaxation and rest. hopefully some fun and peace too.

Leather! Bondage! Fetish! Oh My!

It's been decided. Well, I've decided. I can't live without a camera. I really don't think of myself as a photographer, but the lack of access is driving me nuts. And yes, there have been moments that I would love to capture but haven't been able to.
So I'm going to shell out the $160 for the 12 megapixel Exilim, the newer version of the same camera that I've been in love with for the last four years. It's only about two weeks of babysitting money, and who really needs that, right? (That was a lame attempt at a joke.)

I've been exhausted. Hunter's wisdom teeth came out Friday. He moved all of his stuff into my apartment and then lived here for a few days while everything was being sorted out. He couldn't sleep and was generally miserable, which of course affected me quite a bit as well. And then there was the moving. And now there's the settling and the Starbucks at 6:30 every morning. I'm talking shift beginning at 6:30. This has been quite the adjustment for both of us.

School this semester is really what I thought college would be like. We're talking legitimate homework, reading I can't skimp on, etc. I'm exhausted from trying to keep up and it's week 2.
However, this is all stuff that I'm excited about. Even Spanish.

Today, I proposed my semester-long project for Critical Ethnography, a class which I will explain in greater detail later. However, my project, a 20 page paper culminating 3 hours per week of work for the duration of 15 weeks, is this: (brace yourself, Grandma)

A feminist look at the bondage/fetish scene in Chicago, starting with the Leather Archives & Museum three blocks from my house.

This is going to be a thrilling sociology look at the subculture. I'm thinking about starting a blog to blog specifically about this project.

Anyway, tonight is $6 electric lemonade pitchers at our campus bar. I'm also not going to let too many classes ruin my fun!

Love to all.

First Week/Last Year

Interesting last first week of classes. I'm taking 18 hours, spread out over all five days of the week.

There's also been a switch in the babysitting routine. Instead of Fridays from 8:30 onward, I've switched over to Mondays from 8:30 until about 3pm, as I have class at 4:15. This is going to prove to be interesting, as Sunday nights are my only established "party night" of the week. We play trivia. We drink beer. We play trivia. We drink beer. These actions are repeated as necessary until it gets late. Sometimes, Hunter and a group of friends play poker on Sunday nights. Since I am new to poker and especially inclined to play, I have begun ending up at his house after 10pm (when trivia ends) playing poker. I love poker and trivia, but I also love sleep.
It will be interesting to see how this predicament plays out over the course of the semester.

I was very excited about my English 318 class, The Writing of Fiction. Now, I am sorely disappointed. That might be a rant to save for another day, but I shall begin with the statement that he made to us. "We will not be writing genre fiction. We will be writing serious fiction. Take romance novels for instance. They are forgettable....no literary value....plotless." Ha, I beg to differ sir.
And while I cannot substantiate my claim because I am seemingly incapable of getting a writing project off the ground, I can say that ALL fiction is genre fiction of some sort. Even the greats fall into something. Poe: Horror. "Pride and Prejudice": arguably a romance novel.
This speech and also the 7 books he made us buy may bother me throughout the semester. Also, he's a fan of "The Sun Also Rises," which I consider terribly uneventful and, well, forgettable.


Hunter surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers yesterday. He's holed up at my apartment since he's in the middle of moving. His wisdom teeth came out today, so I'm hoping that he'll be feeling better soon. The whole ordeal seems to have gone alright though, with manageable pain and the ability to coherently watch football.

Busy day tomorrow. I applied online tonight to blog for Loyola, which could be an interesting experience. At the end of it, it pays $250 (not in cash, but in AmEx giftcard), so that would also be a nice welcome respite from the Loyola-induced knowledge debt. I hate textbooks, for the record.

I'm also finishing up working on that short film "Hers.Theirs.Ours." tomorrow downtown in the afternoon.

Also, hints of a summer abroad?
More later. Seemingly much to tell. Need new camera. Badly.

August Recap: Denver Visit

There will be more pictures later, however the internet is not cooperating.

No hepatitis C!

yes!

Still hope that stupid irresponsible woman rots in jail for the rest of her life.

Leaving Denver tonight.

Missing Mom terribly already.

Mike is the best brother ever.

killing time.

Somehow the Irish incident seems to have um, adjusted, the lens of my camera and it no longer works. I sat down yesterday with Mom's camera taking pictures of the apple tree in the yard and Lucy(fur) the neighbors adorable dog. I swore I'd never love a small dog. More on that later, though, once you can appropriately understand my obsession.


Today. Today. Waiting. Passing time. Killing it. Two thirty. Hopefully they won't see me until two thirty three and I'll feel better about things, but time is just a number anyway.

Killing time is a nasty expression, really.

Bargaining

Anyone who knows me, even a little, knows that I very rarely talk to God.
But of course there are those times in your life when a conversation with some higher power is strongly recommended, even possibly necessary.
Those are the times when I look at my mom laying in a hospital bed, or sitting in the ER, or going in for tests.

It's like in a movie or some attempt at melodramatic literature when the little girl says, "Please God, don't let Mom die; I'll do anything."
It's like that, but in real life. I feel embarrassed, bargaining with the higher being for a life, something I know I'm not quite in control of, but knowing I asked makes me feel better.
So does making her swear that she won't die, as if death was a choice. Left, death. Right, life. Oh, tempted to go left, but Katie made me promise.

For me it's these strings that tie us to life, that leave us here. Perhaps they remind Death of a purpose, a promise, the people here on Earth who'd struggle immensely if that person were to be whisked away elsewhere.

I made that deal. I've been making that deal since kindergarten.
And today, as I was sobbing in the front seat of the car in a parking lot, I realized that maybe my bargaining paid off. Sort of. I get to keep Mom, but in exchange, I get to understand her fear, no, terror, her pain, her grief, her anxiety, her strength, her courage, her determination. I wallow in my fear. It overtakes me. The one thing that I want so desperately, children, is being dangled in front of me by the vicious pre-cancerous cells, taunting me maliciously on a daily basis. Mom has that too, but in a different form. She has to be taunted by words such as "remission" and "brain tumor" even though they're in the past. They're a constant presence.

I get to keep her, though, and any amount of pain on my part is worth that. I'm not going to be as strong as she is, not yet. I can't even attempt that. But I'll suffer, I'll take all of the bad so that for now I can retain the one person I love more than my own life.

Tomorrow is going to be a hellish day. I'm taking her with me though; we're making a list. Questions to ask. Things that need answered. Now. Not when the results come back. Not a year from now. NOW.

So hopefully G/god is listening. Hopefully this test of endurance is nearing its end. Hopefully I'll look back on this one day with neutral emotions. But that's hope and this is fear.

The Mile High City, At Last.

I stole these pictures from the internet. So sorry, they're not mine, but they're pretty sweet anyway.

I'm not sure that I do enough to remind you all of my inner thoughts. I think I do too much of the rundown of my daily activities and not enough serious contemplation. But in saying so, I feel as though it's not something that you should call attention to in your blog. Because then you're trying too hard. Who knows. We'll get something figured out.


I'm always exhausted by the time I get home. Travel somehow takes all the energy out of me. In between all of the trains in Chicago, then getting to the plane, then flying, etc., I end up ready for a year-long nap. Which I have yet to get since I've been home.
It's been nice to reconnect with family.
I went and had all my blood drawn this morning, so that's a plus. I'll hear back in a week.
Lunch with Grandma Mary this afternoon. It was nice to sit and chat with her about things.

Watching trash television as well today. It's the simple pleasures that keep life interesting.
I've decided to extend my stay here. Being home for a couple more days before school starts will be nice. I'll get to see Katie (she's coming down from Ft. Collins and it'll be her 21st birthday celebration) and I'll also have time to heal a little bit before I fly home.
Good enough for me. Starting school next Monday.

Sorry, this post has become a jumble of words. I should close my eyes and my laptop.

Sweet afternoon dreams, world.

The 2nd Irish Incident and the Fallout

I love the above picture. love it. love it. love it.


They told us their only regret was that they didn't start hanging out with us sooner.
We regret that too.

Before they left, Maddie, Katie and Eric went to the bar to wait for them while I went and got them (Sally the van was at the time dead, later deemed to be direly in need of fuel). We met at the bar and the evening commenced.

I am wild about these boys. They are hilarious. They don't take themselves too seriously. They are out to have a good time (a great time). They like trouble. So do I (in moderation, of course).

I enjoyed them immensely. Hunter, however, has not been enjoying them so much. Eh, I told him, I'm young, I want to go out and play. So even though he's not too sure he likes it, it's going to happen. We made a compromise. I'll behave myself and always be home on time. We've been talking a lot about the future lately and I've been getting scared. Not intentionally. Unintentionally. It's just real and sort of weird.

It's really not my fault I much prefer boys to girls. Girls are so catty and scary. Boys are just funny.

We had fun. So much fun. Too much fun to write about here. Your "Fun-Meters" (if fun-meters were really a real machine, I'd totally need one) would break. Oh my, it's a wonder we didn't get kicked out.

But here they are, the surviving pictures of that night.

When I got home something in the early morning, I still had nearly four pages of a six page paper to write and babysitting at 8am.
I got a 95% on the paper, even though it was written at 7:30 am. Yess! That paper was worth 50 percent of my grade.


I'm trying to convince them to come to Colorado next weekend, but I'm not sure they'll want to drive all the way from San Francisco. (Who knows? Maybe they will. That'd be wonderful.)

The Irish Incident

I re-decorated my space here. I hope that you find it to your liking.

This summer my friend from high school, Maddie, her roommate Katie and I have been playing trivia every Sunday at a local bar. Our usual competition is comprised of the team that sort of works there (ugh, complete with the most annoying man alive), some random team, and the Irish. The Irish are four guys spending the summer over here.

We drink with them and learned how to play darts last week. Since it's their last week in town, we decided to cook them an officially American meal: sloppy joes. Apparently "manwhich" has a very different connotation in Ireland. So late last night, we made them dinner, complete with potato salad and fruit salad. They were in charge of bringing beer.

An interesting detail: they are the proud parents of a hamster. I forget his name, but he will be journeying with them to California. I hope they decide to leave him here with me.

We were given the roof of their $400 minivan "Sally" to spray paint. The rest of the van says quite interesting things. We added "O'Bama" (get it? Irish?) and "Free OJ" as well as a bullseye and some polka dots.

Then we went to the neighboring house to attend a party. We were probably there all of ten minutes when something happened and we were asked to leave. We assume that one of the girls with a boyfriend got upset about them talking to her (oh no!) and asked the boys there to kick us out.

So we got in the minivan (an experience, I must assure you) and drove downtown, blasting loud music and dancing wildly. (At this point I must interject that there was a designated driver.) The Irish opened the sliding door at times, quite effective air conditiong, I must say. We all got downtown to this bar called "Joes" which apparently has $2 pitchers on Tuesdays. The line outside of it was over an hour long and it was already getting late, so we attempted to talk our way in with the bouncers.

My favorite of the Irish so far is a guy named David, who looks remarkably like Jason Segal (star of the tv show "How I Met Your Mother" and the movie "Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Him and I were standing by the bouncer when David told him that he was in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and he'd give him an autograph if he let us in. Ha. The bouncer's reply: "Get away."

There was a poor girl throwing up next to a lamppost, so I went over to her and gave her the bottle of water that I had brought with me. She murmured thanks, never lifting her head, but grabbed the water.
The Irish boys were taking pictures with a motorcycle gang at that point.


So we went across the street.

And that's where the fun began. Dancing! I've been wanting to go dancing for so long. I can't dance, that is a known fact, but after a certain point, you must throw all dignity away and wave your limbs around. It's fun. We all danced and drank and chatted (yelled over the music) until our attention was captured by a happening on the other side of the bar.

That's how I came to ride the mechanical bull. David and another one known affectionately as The-One-With-No-Nickname who is Paul rode the bull and then it was my turn. I stayed on for so long. I was terrified, thrilled, overwhelmed with utter joy. I finally fell off to applause.

The night wound on, dancing, a girl from my Shakespeare class was there, we wrote "303" and "Denver" and "KtBarry" and "MadD House" on the walls of the bathroom, Irish boys, Irish boys, Irish boys. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent.

The adventure didn't stop when we left the bar, however. The train ride home was immense as well. I ran into another girl I had class with once. And then we got on the train which was late and delayed, so we chatted with the guys sitting next to us on the train. They had quite enjoyed my mechanical bull riding performance. Maddie could hardly get up on it, but rode valiantly. They told us that someone had gotten knocked out right as we left after falling off of the bull and then being hit in the head. Sad that we missed that.

In Chicago, the trains sometimes run express, which means they skip a bunch of stops and then let you off at a random one. Last night, the train we were on ran express from Belmont to Jarvis. A sweet gay guy asked us for cigarettes, which we obviously didn't have, and then struck up a conversation with us. We ended up polling the entire platform to see who had ever gotten off at Jarvis. One girl, the girl I had class with once, had gotten off at Jarvis to buy drugs.

Laughter ensued as everyone began to joke about money, and the strenghth of American currency and the barter system. And then we got on a train. The man asked the man on the other side of us if he was homosexual (he drew the word out, like, "Excuse me, sir, are you a ho-mo-SEX-u-alllll?") The man laughed and said no. The other man approached him, touched his collar and said, "I love the V-neck tee."

It was a nice shirt.

We made it home. There was a dreadful minute where I was worried that I'd lost my keys, but they were safely at Madeline's.

Hopefully this sort of adventure can occur again before they head out.

Finals

This is the beginning of a sort-of hellish week for me.
It's finals week for the summer semester, so that means I have two ten-page papers to write by Friday.
The grunt work still hasn't been done for those, so I'll be curious to see how it all works out.
I'm shooting a short film this week too. I was contacted by the director who's seen some of my more interesting internet work and cast as the Girlfriend in this film. Basically, I'm going to be playing the sort of imagined love interest. It's a small role, but I'm still busy shooting on three days.
And then babysitting is going to be mixed in.
I'll survive though.
The Irish boys that we met at the bar where we play trivia are spending their last week in Chicago, and in honor of that, we're going to make them sloppy joes on Tuesday night. They bought a van for $400 and are planning to drive it to San Francisco before they fly back to Ireland in September. Ha, I'll take pictures and post them. It's terrible. It's what Mom used to drive back in the 90s, but it's spray painted with random things. One of the doors says "Single" with an arrow pointing up to the driver. The back says "Go Cubs Go." They're going to get pulled over numerous times on their way cross-country.

Hunter and the boys signed a lease a block away from me! They'll be living in a three bedroom apartment that they somehow managed to get for $1050 a month. Wow. Only one bathroom though, which I'm not necessarily looking forward to.

Class commences!

Mates.

Summer sessions are nearing the end. Thank goodness. The last six weeks have flown by and lagged all at the same time. Perhaps this is the meaning of time and aging. Everything is a blur but at the same time, you're hardly able to survive from one dawn to the next.
Anyway.
You've probably heard the buzz about those "Twilight" books. Well, they're young adult books that have caught the world by storm (think Harry Potter-esque devotion). Emily's sisters love them. She loved them.
I read them. I cry every book. It's a long winded (four story) love story between a human girl and a vampire. Their love is just that, pure love. It's beautiful. It reaffirms my shockingly strong belief in love and has raised my curiosity about mates.
Animals have mates; certain species mate for life.
How do they know? Is it convenience? It is possible for a human to mate for life? I asked Hunter all of these questions while I sobbed on him the day (It was a happy cry, something he's never experienced before). He merely looked on, quite bewildered (I'm not sure he's had a girlfriend with the emotional depths that I seem to possess), and patted my shoulder, "sshh"ing me softly.
But. Something to think about.
Maybe his aversion comes from the fact that I'm constantly updating him on the plot lines between the characters: vampires, best friends, werewolves, evil covens, blood, humans, etc, squeaking with excitement that they go on a date, or hug, or get married, etc. etc. Manly stuff, obviously.
Soul mates. The horrific disasters that come from burned, scorned lovers. or even from mistimed or misguided love.
Also, love is a petty word. I can't encapsulate what it means to me, nor would I ever try. I wouldn't. Simply couldn't.
But it's falling asleep in my nap spot, warm and cozy, listening to a heartbeat. Something like that.
It is most definitely not Shakespeare class. I am stupid. I should have avoided Shakespeare at all costs. It bores me. It annoys me. I realize that I can't sound educated while I say these things, but if that's what educated is, I'd much prefer ignorance.

He taught me how to play Texas Hold'Em. It's some sort of poker. I played with his money. He's now down four dollars. Fine by me. I held my own, beating out four before ending third.

July in Pictures

This is the new system of parking here in Chicago. Major Daley sold our parking meters (all of them) for $99 million dollars for some insane amount of time. Thus, we get these. You can use your credit/debit card, so that's nice, but

Buckingham Fountain. I'd actually never been to it until a few weeks ago.
Flowers. Out of focus.

My favorite
The city of Chicago as seen from Buckingham Fountain (I'm facing west)

The fountain. The fountain pictures didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. Dusk was coming, lighting was moderately mediocre and my battery was dying.

Bird.



My favorite Metra stop in Chicago. Metra are the trains that go to the suburbs.

This fountain is constantly changing faces. When they were building it, they got a bunch of pictures of Chicagoland people and put them up.


The state of Illinois in sidewalk ark. Yes, the Cardinal is the state bird.

The bean! The bean!
Me.
i love this

Tall building.