Good MORRRRRNING!!!!!!!

Roomie’s working all day so I figured I’d turn on a little TV while I PACK and CLEAN (I’ll really try to spare you how I’m not dealing well at all with the freak amounts of anxiety I’m suddenly wrecked with about moving/subleasing/Germany/etc.)  The View is on, and unfortunately I caught it during “Hot Topics” when they were discussing that Obama gave himself a B+ job so far.  I had to switch to a different channel for a while because do you know who MAKESMESOFUCKINGPISSED?  Elizabeth Hasselbeck.  I think she’s adorable, I watched her on Survivor, as a person I have zero problem with her.  But when she opens her whiny, ultra-conservative mouth and starts going off about how our president is “delusional” and at best deserves a D because he just sucks so goddamn bad to her, my hereditarily low blood pressure gets going and I get quite irate.  So that wasn’t a fabulous way to start my morning.  I liked Charlie Gibson’s answer later that he should have given himself an Incomplete.

Let’s talk about PRESENTS.  We’re 11 days out from the  big day (pass me a brown paper bag, please) and I have a gift for one (1, uno, eine) family member (CONGRATULATIONS, Mom– it’s you.  As if it were hard to figure out.)  My father is the world’s hardest person to buy for so he’ll be lucky if he gets a package of Twizzlers under the tree (hint…hint…ideas, Sir.)  I also have NPH’s gift, only because I got it months ago as an inside joke gift, then realized I’d just hold onto it and pass it off in celebration of Christ’s birth.  And GUESS WHAT– he ordered mine yesterday… then deleted his computer history, the bastard.  I am so so SO the snoopiest person when it comes to surprises.  When I was at home, I’d find my presents hidden in the guest room or a closet.  I wouldn’t advise putting my gifts in a bag with just some tissue paper over it because it’s guaranteed I’ll peek.  I realize this is an asshole thing to do, but I can’t help it, I’m very much about instant gratification.  Surprises are something I can’t decide if I love or hate.  Thanks to my very generous parents, surprises are a normal part of my life, be it a book or box of brownie mix in the mail randomly or “Hey, what are you doing this weekend, let’s go to Vegas for your birthday.”  Methinks I love giving surprises much more than receiving…. <–not sexual.  It’s the holidays, people.

What the aitch is up with pretty major celebrities doing dumb dumb dumb endorsements?  Examples: Christina Aguilera doing DirecTV commercials, Luke Wilson hawking AT&T, Ciara doing some dumb cell phone commercial, and Megan Mullally singing a God awful parody of Gloria Estefan’s “Turn the Beat Around” for a new kind of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.  I doubt any of them need the money that bad (okay… so Megan hasn’t really been doing much since Will & Grace.  Le sigh.  Loved that show.)

Anyway… I haven’t started studying for my one and only final yet.  Probably won’t until tomorrow.  Just couldn’t give a shit less at this point.

Yes we did!!

I just returned from a free screening of HBO’s new doctumentary By the People: The Election of Barack Obama.  Lots of memories, lots of chills.  It was long overdue to see some of my fellow interns, we all played “where were we when…” (RIP Java Juice) and did our most annoying Sarah Palin impressions because that’s just what we used to do.

Caucusing for Barack was quite the experience (and not just because my government teacher was caucusing for Edwards, scoffing at my pick HA.)  Fast forward to August 2008 when I got yet another phone call from the Johnson County Democrats asking me if Istill supported Obama.  Only this time I was parallel-parking my car and was maybe half paying attention to what the caller– who later became my boss– was saying, so when she asked if I’d be interested in becoming an intern I said “Uh yeah sure.” 

Ohhh, Brittney.  Some day you will stop being so complacent and get a backbone and tell people to lose your number (or in a perfect world, not answer the phone when you’re trying to maneuver your car between two other way more expensive ones.)

So somehow I get coerced into SHOWING UP at their office, my first day was actual Barack’s birthday, and I remember thinking ”Holy mother of God some nice lady just brought us a still warm homemade organic cake in honor of his birthday and I didn’t have to do anything but show up and make a few phone calls?!”  Really people, life is too short to not capitalize on free cake whenever it is offered to you.  So I stayed.

And it got harder.  Voters weren’t always nice to me.  I wasn’t always nice to voters.  Hours were long, homework was neglected, sleep was forgotten, tears were shed, doors were slammed in my face.  I awkwardly found out where some our psych patients live, eating was dependent on if someone had volunteered to feed us that day, my non-Barack loving parents weren’t thrilled.  I missed parties, handed out fliers only to watch people throw them on the ground in front of me, and once I even made my boyfriend walk from his dorm to the campaign office to get my car to drive to Hy-Vee to buy the office plastic forks.

Last time I checked, though, we won.

I’m not going to get into all the reasons why I voted for Obama (besides the obvious, did you see the other guy?!)  As tiring as the whole experience was, the friends I made during it and that I can say I had even the most miniscule part in making history made it all worth it.  My boss once told me I complained the most out of all her interns (I know– you’re shocked by this), but I worked the hardest.  So GO ME!

It was a year ago then that it all came to a close– I had to do some poll watching and reporting for a class at my precinct, I ate a loaf of Jimmy John’s day-old bread for dinner (48 cents, best deal in town), then went to the Sheraton poll results watching party for the county support staff which was MASSIVE.  When it was announced he’d won Ohio, we all knew he’d taken the whole thing, but something in me didn’t want to be there when it was made official.  Like it was too personal of a moment to be shared with 300 people packed into a roaring ballroom, whatever.

So boyfriend-at-the-time and I go to my apartment, literally a stone’s throw away, to watch the rest of the results.  I’m feeling all like Ooh this is weird, it’s over, he’s gonna win, did I do the right thing?!  And of course I have to pee because I ALWAYS have to pee, so I go to the bathroom and when I come out BF goes, “Babe, he won!”

That’s it.

In my many months of speculating how that moment would go down, I can assure you THAT is not how I’d ever pictured it.  I didn’t even get to see it on the flippin’ TV screen myself, some D-bag in my living room ruined it for me (some readers may now be starting to piece together why a mere three weeks later said D-bag and I parted ways…)  I was all, “Oh, cool…” while really wanting to choke him for taking that moment.  My next rational thought was that I needed to be sharing this moment with the people who I worked for this with, so flee the apartment, Brittney.

I just ran out.  Like, literally ran back across the street to the Sheraton party.  Someone wasn’t too impressed when he came running after a minute or so later, pffff.  ANYWAY, we watched McCain’s I suck at Life speech and then Barry O’s acceptance speech and then I think I went to bed.

So that was a year ago.  This month is going to be filled with a lot of “a year agos” and I’m not looking forward to them and I won’t tell you about all of them, President Obama is the only good “a year ago” I’ve got.  Ooh except for my “a year ago was the first time I had In-n-Out Burger.”  That is an excellent, excellent anniversary indeed.

I would like my future planned out NOW, thank you very much.

Things I know:

1. I only have three courses left this semester (one got dropped because it’d be more helpful to take it after studying abroad, one was only for ten weeks.)  Not only have I done homework in advance for two of these, there is generally no good reason why I shouldn’t have a 4.0 this semester.  THERE– I SAID IT.  Now Mom & Pops are gonna sit me down when grades come out, this post in hand, saying “Brittney, dearest daughter of ours, is there a reason you barely passed freelance reporting and writing?” (The obvious answer to this hypothetical confrontation is of course, that I loathe reporting, not to mention grading in that class is completely subjective.)

2. In 64 days my happy ass will be strapped into a plane, flying 4,500 miles to live in Germany for four months.  In the words of Owen Wilson a.k.a. “Cowboy” from the hands down best-ever made full-lenth feature drama Armageddon, “I’m like 98% excited, 2% scared.  Or maybe it’s more 98% scared, 2% excited…”  He dies on the asteroid, by the way.  I’m hoping for a slightly different outcome.

3.  Before number two can happen, I need someone to take over my lease on my apartment AND I would like to have a concrete idea of what I’m doing when I come back.  One word: internship.  It’s no longer something I’ll willy-nilly be applying for, it’s actually quite imperative that I get one.  My insane wit and brilliant people skills will only get me so far with zero experience.  (I’m thinking PR internship, but given my love-hate relationship with it, I’ll take anything at this point.) Finding one for the summer in December is a bit unrealistic I realize, but I’ve been bitten by a bug that says SPEND EVERY WAKING MOMENT COMBING THE INTERNET FOR LEADS.  For some reason I can’t wrap my mind around Germany being anything but the bomb-ravaged Nazi-controlled shithole of my father’s WWII movies and guess what, they didn’t have the Internet back then.  Some Lamaze-like breathing and practical thinking usually brings me back to reality however, and I remind myself that I will have full access to my UI e-mail account as well as any internship opportunities posted on the great World Wide Web.

THUS, I have concluded the following:

1. Lean Pockets are probably not that great for me.  I live my life in phases and right now is definitely Frozen Dinner Phase.  (Previously it was Bratwurst Phase and before that, Sushi Phase.)

2. I’m not sure I want to live in Iowa City next summer.  It really SUCKS trying to speculate what I’ll be thinking/feeling/doing after the whole Sprechen Zie Phase of my life, but I’d like to entertain the thought that I don’t need to rush back here.  Of course I’ll come visit– Bestie & my 21st birthdays are within three weeks of each other– but I don’t want to rule out…. living at home…. for the sake of my future career.  (Dad?  Are you still there?  Keep breathing, don’t say no quite yet.)  Des Moines is rife with many more opportunities than this place, and I need (will need– Luneburg has the most bars per capita in Europe second only to Madrid, Spain) a break from the bar scene.  Especially is the subletter who I WILL find wants to stay til July 31, I won’t have to go through the headache of finding a place to live for three awkward months.

3. In addition to said internship, which I’m just assuming will be unpaid, I’ll need a job.  I really want this to involve some sort of bakery.

4. It is the first Tuesday of November, I most certainly remember where I was one year ago tonight.  Perhaps I will post about that tomorrow, if I feel so moved, since I consider that the true anniversary.

I’ve been up for approximately two hours and am already going to chalk this day up as an L.

The news of Obama’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize greeted me on my various social networks, with people’s reactions ranging from “Oh.Em.Gee.  Move over Rob Pattinson, Barack Obama is once again the only altar to which I bow” to “I’m going to punch him and the entire Nobel committee in the neck.”  My feelings were somewhere in between on this spectrum, leaning more towards the “Huh. Well whaddya know” but mostly because I remembered that I had pumpkin spice granola in my cabinet and suddenly getting a bowl of that for breakfast became priority numero uno. 

 ANYWAY, after getting the scoop on CNN & reading some people’s commentary, I’ll go ahead and say the whole Nobel Peace Prize thing is a bit premature (snicker, snicker, insert immature joke about ejaculation here).  I love Barry O as much as any other guy (perhaps more if the “other guy” happens to reside in the deep South, my hometown, or is a writer on SNL) but to quote a very limber pelvic-ed man, “A little less conversation/a little more action, please.”  Granted, the only other Nobel Peace Prize winner I could name without Google is Dr. King, so maybe there’s a litany of other winners who have done some so-so stuff and Obama’s win is par for the course. 

IN OTHER NEWS: after polling approximately six people, I dyed my hair.  It did not turn out well.  The following conversation happened yesterday.

Me: So I bought hair dye.  It’s called CinnaStick.

Kayla: Is it red?  Just don’t go red.

Me: No, it’s not red!  It’s called CinnaStick.  It’s just like brown.  And it’s not permanent so it’ll just kinda fade out.

At some point today, I’m going to have to call her back to let her know that in fact my hair IS red and that CinnaStick can go suck it.  Okay, it’s not that bad.  It has like a reddish tint (it didn’t really change much at all) which could also just be blood from my scalp since there was quite the burning sensation when I realized that I’d in fact left it on for FIFTEEN minutes when I was only supposed to leave it on for ten. but I have a completely plausible reason for losing track of time that may or may not involve me NOT WINNING a free burrito on Twitter Trivia AGAIN.

The good news is, it’s supposed to wash out in 28 shampoos (so with my hygiene schedule, it may or may not be back to normal by Christmas… ha.  That was a joke, feel free to guffaw.)

AND FINALLY, it’s Homecoming weekend.  I couldn’t give two shits less EXCEPT that I work all weekend so will get to enjoy absolutely zero of the festivities.  Oh, and we’ll probably be hellaciously busy at work, which I really won’t mind since it makes the time go by super fast EXCEPT then I won’t get to eat my free sandwich til after I get off at nine and I think you all know what happens when I don’t eat every fifteen minutes.

What should I be for Halloween?  Taking any and all suggestions.  Double points if it’s hilarious and half the people who see me won’t get it because it’s super intellectual.  Triple points if it’s half of some sort of pair since the IC bestie and I are obviously going to dress alike (keep in mind he is over six feet tall and has a beard that rivals most Amish.)