9:24am: one more for the road
those of you who check mcsweeneys regularly - did you see my letter? ;) i was going crazy and thought i'd just take it straight to the top. they're so kind to print me.

i'm also considering closing this account for good (or just letting it sit and marinate until it dies on its own - as ponderous as most of the writing in here is, i'm not sure i wanna lose it). i'll still read my friends page. i may get a blog.

but my life is changing fast and this part has to change with it. altho i can't leave baltimore till august, dammit.

leave a comment, please, and tell me one thing i should invest in moneywise or timewise that i absolutely will not regret.

8:50am: two thousand and five !!!
holy shit how time flies.

i realize i haven't been commenting, but rest assured (if you were troubled); i've been reading. i miss you guys and i'm thrilled that most of your lives seem to be on the up-and-up, despite the occasional downturn. you all continue to amaze me with your tenacity and all-too-frequent hilarity. seriously, i read livejournal with a big silly smile on my face at work.

my fingers itch and so does my brain. so people i haven't talked to in months (sometimes years) have been getting unusually long e-mails, and in each one i end up talking about
- the engagement of ANOTHER one of my housemates. whenever i explain that two out of six of us are engaged, a boy and a girl, i have to add the caveat "not to each other" which gets even more annoying than you might expect. the newest announcement was a bit of a cause for alarm, b/c she's known him for all of six months and been dating him for two mos., and they're both the type to fall hard and fast and only be aware of what they're getting into way down the line.
- the dodgeball tournament that our IT guy at work entered us in, and how silly and yet absolutely wonderful it was to see clean-shaven nonprofit professionals from all over maryland in t-shirts and sweats, flinging balls at each other in a gymnasium. i very rarely get to see my coworkers outside of work (except for that one bizarre happy hour) as they're mostly married w/kids and lives, so this game was doubly awesome. we got trounced, unfortunately, and it was single-elimination.
- someone just came into the big-ass resource room where my desk is, and asked me how many bottles of water should go into one-and-a-half bags of coffee. i said "depends on how strong you wanna make it" and we settled on two-and-a-half. "see," she said, "i knew it was a half."
- next year. damn, i just did this. with all the mutual respect in the world, my mom and sister do not want me to live at home and neither do i. i think my dad would love to have me home but he's outnumbered three-to-one. thinking about work. thinking about money. thinking about moving to seattle.
not that i know anyone in seattle or have any connections or will be remotely close to anyone i've ever met or have ever been there before. as they say, "that would make too much sense".
fuck sense, i'm twenty-two and i spend more money on alcohol than prescription medication. (which they want to charge me $63 a MONTH for)

9:11pm: my carlessness is beginning to wear on me. my new years plans fell through, i had to forgo james lewis's wedding because i had no way to get there (this is so PATHETIC) and my medication is having rather severe counter-effects, including raising me at four in the morning to stare at the clock.

i postponed my flight (or rather, my parents did) till sunday. i'm not up to travelling.

happy new years.

2:23pm: my first (and probably last) update at a company computer on company time
but it's two days till CHRISTMAS. nobody's HERE. cut me some slack. i'm beginning the downward spiral early so it doesn't hit me so hard in the face when i'm thirty-five.
actually that's a lie. a lot of people are here but it's still pretty chill. some people are working and some are conversating and at least one is cleaning.
i am supposed to come home on christmas but i may be weathered out. if i spend christmas day in the airport i bet i can write an article or something about it. do you think you get free stuff cuz people feel sorry for you if you're stuck in an airport on christmas??!? the only time of the year when the whole damn country's shut down in pursuit of higher things (except for jews and jehovahs witnesses*) and i'll be stuck in transit. i told you...troubles rain upon my head like water from the heavens.
it's not snowing in baltimore but it's pouring down rain. it felt like spring dis-morning.
if you drink by yourself does that make you an alcoholic? or is that only if you do it on a regular basis?


*speaking of jehovahs witnesses and my temporary absence of mind when booking air travel, i am flying out of ohio just in time to miss JAMES LEWIS'S WEDDING. if you don't know james he is my black jehovah's witness highest-honors-in-history friend and if you DO know james you will understand or at least have some idea why i am repeating JAMES LEWIS'S WEDDING in stunned and extraneous capitals. HOLY SHIT.

5:36pm: troubles just rain upon my head
i'm writing this in the basement of an anarchist bookstore. sweet. i just came from my little corporate office where i took occasional breaks from messing around on the internet to do some of my work. much like school, for those of you who want to know the truth. you sit in front of a computer screen till your eyes hurt and you're massively dehydrated for reasons unknown.

thanks to all who entertained/took care of me on my whirlwind visit to kenyon. i always forget how awesome you guys are. and i suppose you forget how high-maintenance i am.

for many of you this page is all you know about me (at least on a regular basis) so here's all you need to know. i will never fall in love. ever. and by this i mean, no one will ever love me and the most i can hope for is many friends, some good friends and a career that sustains me. what frustrates me at work more than anything else is my personal lack of ambition. i have plenty to do and my brain gets a workout, it's not as mundane an office job as most, but i'm abusing the large level of trust put in me and letting deadlines fly by because i have trouble bringing myself to do ANYTHING. i can look like i'm busy, no problem. and i eat a lot, which is sad sad sad. and plus my office never goes to happy hour - my friends' offices do but i don't want to crash their parties.

i've been reading a lot of books on the bus. right now i'm reading _oscar and lucinda_ and it makes me want to go to australia. i hate the bus, the bus hates me, but so far it's gotten me around town even tho i have to wait for it for hours in the dark on sketchy stretches of road, cursing my circumstances and looking behind my shoulder.

i can count on the fingers of one hand and possibly the thumbs of another the friends i have here.

bethany died and my soul is still reeling. i walk around downtown thinking about her. i spoke at her service and i couldn't turn the microphone on.

i want to move to the pacific northwest or california so bad it fucking hurts. please, hit me up w/job leads (i can't go anywhere till next august tho)

xo

10:07am: @
amy bergen
casa caritas
505 harwood ave
baltimore MD 21212

damn straight you wrote that down.

orientation blows and i am second-guessing myself left and right. pray for me.

3:06pm: and it won't stop raining either
is it possible to have an overdeveloped sense of irony? almost too developed for me to function? i'm at the point that almost anything i read or anything i see i find hilarious. this doesn't mean that i'm cheerful all the time; quite the opposite (c'mon, you guys know me better than that).

so i've been watching VH1 since high school and sometimes i like it ('i love the '90s'! damn that makes me feel old. were care bears on there? i don't remember) but lately between all access and fabulous lives and 'totally obsessed' i've felt something akin to moral outrage. not aggressive, just bewildered. sure celeb culture is a leeeeetle out of hand and most of the music sucks, but seriously - how do these people have so much money and why do we care? ignore the fact that by tuning in to 'it's good to be brad and jen' in the first place i'm employing a grotesque double standard, and please please somebody tell me how i can just gently appropriate one of their millions and ship it to uganda. call me self-righteous- i'm sure i am, much more than i realise - but it doesn't have to be africa, dude, it can even be me or a gazillion people i could name. or give struggling but talented musicians some more air time(this is a little like not wanting your independent cup o'joe to go under for a starbucks; you can holler all you want but eventually you just have to shut your eyes and let the corporate tidal wave sweep you over. but what i love about capitalism is that nobody's forcing you to give money to anything you don't support - ah, shit, i forgot about taxes. i wasn't trying to make a lame joke. i really did forget about them for a second.)

also-ian thorpe is hot.

and i want you guyses snail-mail addresses. i miss sending packages and stuff.

10:12pm: the part where i quote morrissey; i think i'll skip it
so this is what it is to grow up, to be responsible; to drift through the aisles of the places you used to shop, thinking that these clothes don't have an ounce of character, these books won't fit your budget; to stroke the rim of your beer bottle and realise how unexciting bars really are after work; to be so sick of the 22-minute sitcom that you can't even smile, and so tired of 'indecision 2004' that you really don't care if gay people marry their own stem cells as long as your sweet ass is safe from bombs, bills and michael moore; to skip the crossword and read the whole paper; to wonder when you'll ever see your friends in the same place again and miss them so much your heart has settled into a slow dull ache, and you call them and tell them to write, and write and tell them to call, and toss your little phone up and down at the bus stop; to look at a future of forms and files and leases and inexorable weight gian aind paying for CDs and going to the dentist every six months just because you should, and not mind too much because the one thing about growing up is how fucking lonely you get.
i know you're all busy and i love each and every one of you but 'busy' won't let you off the hook this time. comment or call or e-mail and forgive me if i spam you like the plague. books are lovely and so is the radio but they don't make up for real live people, and don't worry - even if you say something small i'll remember it. but dear god i miss you all so much.

8:14am: it looks like i've (inadvertently and certainly not willingly) hidden or disallowed comments. what do i do?

and while you're helping me with that*thanks guys*, can somebody help me with this? a fellow camp counselor promised to tell me the answer and then we both forgot about it and last night at 2 AM or so it made its way to the front of my head again and freaked me out when i started staring at all the creepy shadows in my room. i am such a little kid.

there are twenty-two men in a prison. their warden, a compassionate yet oddly sinister man, calls them all together and announces that he is going to put them each in solitary confinement indefinitely. at some point in the future, he might (but he makes no promises) take one of them or some of them or all of them out of their cells one at a time and escort them into a room with two light switches in it. the prisoner will then flip ONE switch and go back to his cell. he can't leave anything to show that he's been in the light switch room and he can only go in once. he won't see any other prisoner, ever.
but being a compassionate man, the warden will set them all free IF at any point a prisoner can tell him, correctly, that all 22 men have been in the switch room and flipped a switch. the warden expresses his deepest regrets that he cannot honor wild guesses. if a prisoner's wrong, they all die.
they don't know the initial position of either light switch.
they have an hour to plan.

dude. throw me a frickin bone here.
xo

10:43pm: did you see the inflatable fish on the riverfront?
it was sweet. take my word for it.

happy birthday miss rafferty and miss pollins....you're both old as the hills.

i found out the names of my housemates for next year. i'm sure we'll be fast friends but i'm still really nervous about all the awkwardness and social networking that will precipitate friendship. we have a coed house which is rare for LVC - buncha hippie chicks (no worries, i'm way proud to be one of them). keep me in your prayers as i keep you in mine. i can't wait to move out but it's still scary as hell. not the least of my worries being that they stretch out orientation over 5 days (how much of that is going to be spent sitting in a circle discussing what 'intentional community' means to us? level with me, megan. are these going to be the most taxing 5 days of my life?)

bergen house party, if it happens at all (i hope i hope stay tuned) in addition to all kinds of lovely people, may very well involve godfather III - although i love the apparantly far superior I and II i've never been able to finish it and i hate leaving things unfinished - and one of those bottles of wine with a penguin on it.

i'm listening to the new wilco right now. i like it. still not sure why 'i am trying to break your heart' had a gratuitous scene of jeff tweedy being sick during recording sessions. poor man.

nothing i write in here is of terribly great depth (not that it ever was). but if you ask me questions i will answer them. "why don't you have your license" will get you blocked. anything else is fair game.

2:17am: courtney brkic fans
she has a wee article in the july 11 NYT magazine. apropos of which, is it just me or is the ethicist getting a little snarkier each time? and mr. enoughfood - the cover story made me think of you. fer heaven's sake call me.
xo

10:15am: PDA PDA
"does PDA apply to counselors too? oooohhhhh" thanks kids. yes, we *are* a professional camp. we don't even hold hands till after hours. campers, on the other hand, aren't allowed to hug or high-five (until very recently). i'm not kidding.
b/t/w camp ended up ruling and i'm sad it's over. i'm gonna miss these kids. i fed them rainbow sherbet and animal crackers last night, compliments of a parent who gave me $100 to spend on her kid's bday party. damn, i hate being trusted that much. especially when i could make short work of a bottle of malibu right about now.

if anyone wants to see me, now's the time to do it. i tried to swing a second session after i told them i could only do the first one and they replaced me and then i changed my mind but it was too late and i suck at planning ahead. i rule, however, at getting stranded with very little money. which is more interesting? there's a guy here who's lived all over the country and hasn't had a paycheck in a year. he's a poet, too. i didn't think i'd ever have the good fortune to meet someone who actually lived out of a book bag. FABULOUS.

the notice on my computer says "the tuition hike you save may be your own".

sorry i've been lax w/the comments.
xoxoxoxo

3:49pm: for the next 3 weeks at least. possibly 6 but i hope not.
amy bergen
c/o summer institute for the gifted
Bryn Mawr College
101 North Merion Avenue
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 19010-2899

there are 35 pple on my friends list. i'm counting for 35 letters, mixtapes, mailable happiness, and i will gladly reciprocate 35 times. i'm counting. i'm good at counting things since i count 13 girls as many times a day. camp is absolutely fucking nuts. i get yelled at if i don't remember everything and i'm not in 300 places at once.
at home (home?hmmm??!?)i'm at 834 weldon ave columbus OH 43224
jenna, i had a dream about you last night and it was REALLY WEIRD. how far are you from philly?
xoxoxoxoxo

11:25pm: caring is creeeeeepy
i went to visit megan in baltimore. it was wicked fun. we walked around and rode the bus a lot and i got to see the place where i'll be working next year (my job description is still so confusing...but i have at least a small idea of what i'm doing, and i get COWORKERS in SUITS and a CUBICLE and CARDS WITH MY NAME PRINTED ON THEM and honest-to-god Casual Friday...no, seriously, they were all really nice) but i freaked out and didn't go and see what might be my new house. i realized any street smarts i ever had have quickly dissolved into the small-town sweetness of graham-bier, ohio, and i still smile at everyone and stare blankly at streetlights. somehow my guardian angel, the one that gets me home when i am drunk, will have to help me in the city. nevertheless i want to live in a city again. lights!camera!coastline!peoplewatching! cities are so much fun even tho they scare you spitless. i miss edinburgh, god how i miss it.
but i am way stoked about living in maryland. i'll be near my gramma and i'll have lovely people to live with, who i hope will be able to stand me, and i will learn all this real-world stuff really fast. i don't know my address yet but once i get it i'll tell you and there better be mail. copious mail. nice mail, none of this letterbomb business. and visits. mmmhmmm. please come.
i am still a little sad that i missed the shins tonight. did anybody go? did it rock hard? since i wasn't there, of course, it was the awesomest concert in the universe. don't let me down.
i'm reading books about the mormons and autistic people and lieutenants who cheat on their wives, and playing lotsa tetris and being so fucking lazy i can't stand myself. right now i am wearing pajamas with teddy bears on them. my sister thinks this is hilarious. my sister thinks just about anything i do is hilarious.
my job starts next week. it's gonna be raining small children. hallelujah.

i MiSs YoU gUyS

xoxoxoxoxoxo

7:09pm: forgive the frequent updates. they're easy while i'm sitting around waiting for my life to happen (altho i'm pleased that it will in fact happen, and not be put indefinitely on hold.)

my brother's playlist just switched from rush to sarah vaughan. mmm. i feel like a cigarette and a cocktail.

in the midst of lamenting my wheel-less and directionless life, i stopped in this weekend to see a friend who has sweet wheels that she drives with a sweet stick shift, whether she likes it or not. last year at this time she was walking with a walker and designing christmas cards. now she lives at home with her parents and watches cosby and her cat running around. steroids have swelled her body till only her smile, peaceful as ever, is recognizable. her parents have to put her to bed and get her ready in the morning. she's twenty-one.
we go way back to pre-school when she was a violin prodigy who later picked up flute, oboe and saxophone and had to wear a neck brace when she was nine because of a spinal cord tumor. she wrote the letter to my fifth-grade crush, under my dictation because i didn't want him to recognize my handwriting, and we used to sit outside of church and give each other love advice and have spontaneous sleepovers where we talked about how immature all the boys at our church were, and write each other letters on pooh stationery. she was talented and i was jealous, i had long braided hair and scribbled bad poetry in my notebook and wore those ridiculous wool skirts and couldn't cook to save my life, and i always reminded my mom that "she was making banana bread with her mother when she was three" and "she's so pretty". she went to college and her cancer came back and now we're both in the homes we grew up in. strange what happens to people, how their lives spin out in different directions. of the eight of us kids in church that grew up together (there were lots more kids, of course, but we were born within three years of each other, 4 boys and 4 girls, mismatched and bizarrely different and usually friends), three are married, one manages a restaurant, one is in Hungary on a missions trip and three of us are chilling at home and still going to church where people in pastel suits ask us the same questions five hundred times.
but my friend is going strong, and tries to get out as much as she can. she finally talked me into watching titanic with her last summer and i remembered why everyone fell in love w/whatshisname dicaprio in the first place, even though the movie sucked. and she's one of the sweetest people i've ever had the privilege to know either in or out of a wheelchair. all that you hear about pain bringing out the best in good people and the worst in bad ones may actually be true, i don't know if i'll ever figure that one out. why would God do this to someone whose future would have been so fantastic? as for me it's not like i'm doing a helluva lot on my feet, but she was talented, she had boys after her, she's just incredible. i'm so confused i can't even write a straight sentence. but that's okay, none of my teachers will read this and yell at me. and plus it's SUMMER and my brain shut down.
xo

12:59am: i promise i don't make noise
sorry, i feel terrible making a blatant request for a ride and it's a helluva long shot

BUT
if you are going eastward towards philadelphia (or anywhere in an eastwardly direction) anytime the week of june 20-25 (before friday)

can you please please please take me??!?
i have a job to get to and i don't wanna bother my family too much




and i really hate allstus

xo

9:02pm: there is
- a collection of the onion a.v. club's interviews w/"B-list" celebs and rockstars that includes one with your friend and mine, tom waits. there's this one part where he says apropos of nothing "you know what the most preservable food is? honey" and goes on to talk about how they excavated some pharoah's tomb and found honey in it. he is also married with kids (what??!) and talks about his kids w/the greatest affection.

- an article in last week's (or the week before's) NYT Magazine about ryan seacrest. and how he exemplifies Personality (as opposed to personality). nice but not larger than life. seriously. ryan fucking seacrest. are they running out of material? cuz i know some VERY interesting people.

- a part in the disney movie aladdin when aladdin says, sotto voce, something that sounds very much like "all good teenagers, take off your clothes". it's when he's on the balcony talking to jasmine. my brother heard about this from one of his friends and we scene-hopped until we found it. this is what we do with our time.

- a definite probability, although i have not yet given anything but verbal consent, that i will be in baltimore, MD next year volunteering for maryland nonprofits under the auspices of the lutheran volunteer corps (read: working for no money and loving it).

- an acute desire on my part to see those of you i can and hear from those i can't.

9:01pm: graduation roundup
friday night lightning storm = fantastic. trees down all over campus, including half the "wedding tree" and a huge tree in the south quad, reportedly (altho i didn't check) knocking over the cross by hanna. this is actually kinda sad.
burke girls = fabulous. i kept feeding them wine.
john snow = huge disappointment. he talked about how good the economy was and then he had some meeting to go to. my brother says a few profs turned their backs on him, which i actually didn't see, but i did see "not in my name" on a few professorial robes. also disappointing in its timing b/c damn that would have been some good news.
fred baumann = huge hit; he read all of our names with enough gusto and aplomb and emphasis to make us actually really proud of everybody, even the pple we didn't really know or didn't really like
fred baumann reading, at the request of andy "b to z" williams, every single one of andy's 25 legal middle names = MORE AWESOME THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE
james michael lewis = got the biggest cheers out of everyone
randolph robert ketcham = hugged prez when he got his diploma (he was one of maybe 2 pple to do this). i love those boys so ridiculously much, and i hope they know how much they're generally loved.
perry lentz = wonderful. i love him like i love morrissey; even if pple think he's a pompous ass and he makes me miserable sometimes (and yes, heaven knows i'm miserable now), he still rocks my world. even after all we've been through i was still "a pleasure to have in class".
being stranded by a tornado warning in sunset w/everyone's families and all the english profs and an apparently limitless supply of champagne = heaven in a handbasket
leaving = sucked and i did it as quickly as possible.

i got just what i wanted for my birthday. peace, time and ALLSTUS. for those of you in the columbus area, i wanna have you over. i'm thinking about a time.

10:38am: brought to you by the numbers 2, 3 and 4
3 things i want before i die:
phi beta kappa
a long draught from the fountain of youth
a birthday allstu

the first one's shot but 2 out of 3 ain't bad. may 24 WORD i'll be 22 that's #%(*ing old.

in 24 hours i will graduate from college holy shit i will have letters attached to my name and then i will be a GROWNUP

that's right. miss bergen to you, punk.

but i'm still not one bit okay with this. not at all.

7:23pm: addendum
it seems i didn't reciprocate...how gauche.

you are all ALL welcome to come visit me, which will be in columbus (*sniff*...sad) for at least the next month. not at my camp job, unfortunately (i'm an RA for middleschool girls...rock, rock hard) but before and thereafter, wherever i happen to be.

in other news, i am more depressed than i ever remember being. but this has NOTHING on how i will feel upon arriving home. even the wilting lilacs stuck in my tanktop straps can't make me smile.

hurry the #%(* up, elusive butterfly of happiness.

9:37pm: oh by the way
holla if i can come visit

even my renegade readers who never otherwise comment

but be forewarned, this is not an empty threat. i *will* show up on yr doorstep or at the station or wherever. i will try and bring a wee housewarming present.
(megan...i'm working on getting to baltimore. that last DUI took away my wheels, 'member?)

12:47pm: props to all who came or respectfully declined saturday. it was wonderful. i love you all so much.
whicn is one of many reasons that you leaving and then me leaving already hurts harder than anything else has ever in my life. it feels like a vacuum inside. all i want to do is cry and i have about 30 pgs between me and end of term and then everybody packs up their rooms and such. if this is what the real world is like, somebody stop it so i can get off.

4:52pm: KC people
if you know me IRL you may have gotten an email to this effect.
if you don't know me so well, the invitation is still extended.

tomorrow night (saturday) i am inviting my bestest nongraduating friends to come make awkward conversation and intricate social networks in the room i am never in (but i'll be there then, of course). i will have drinks&such but "be encouraged" (as mr. lentz says, but he means "do it, dammit" whereas i mean you can if you like but you don't have )to contribute. god, what an awful sentence.

Leonard 330, the south side of the building
8 PM (whenever you get here) to 11:30ish (whenever you leave)

if you're lucky (or she's lucky) you'll get to meet my roommate :)

we'll see. i'll post any changes/cancellations, but so far so good.