I was walking towards pioneer square this afternoon (a sort of largish piazza in the middle of downtown) because they were having an italian food and wine festival and I wanted to swing through and load up on carbs and alcohol before I went home. Several blocks before I got there I started hearing sirens. At first it was sort of subconciously, the way you hear sirens but don't really pay them heed when you're in a city setting. But then, I realized that they hadn't passed, they had stopped down the street from me, and there were more and more of them gathering with every passing minute. Finally a block before the square, I was able to make out the flashing lights of ten or so police cars, firetrucks, and other emergency vehicles blocking out three quarters of incoming traffic into the square, I guess for some sort of passenger emergency on the MAX. But the creepiest part was that in addition to the bright lights and cacophany of alarms and sirens, the festival was going on as usual, and over all that I could hear the amplified voice of an opera singer who I assume had been hired out for the occasion. And I don't know what it was, but the combination of sirens and opera in open air in the middle of the city had the creepiest effect on me. I mean, I had to stop and collect myself and wait for the hair on my arms to go back down. I felt like I was suddenly in a scene from Mulholland Drive or Donnie Darko or something. I could not get out of there fast enough.

I'm in like.

You know how when you are dating someone and it's getting a little more serious, and it gets to the point that when you end a phone conversation with them you have a strong urge to say "I love you," but don't because you aren't quite comfortable enough to make it official? That's how I feel about portland today.

only people i trust get to know about this hateful side of me

erin sent me a link to a blog the other day in which the author describes the hate spiral, which is usually a chain of mildly annoying things that happen to a person at a constant rate throughout the day and result in that person exploding in a psychotic rage over something like an inconvenient gust or wind or a bird chirping too loudly outside of their window. i am in the midst of such a hate spiral and this is the only thing keeping me from lashing out physically right now. it began this morning at 7:30 am with me being propositioned for change at the Max stop from the seven hundred thousandth street kid with a pitbull this week. Then the Max was ten minutes late. How does that even happen. Then the girl at Starbucks didn't give me skim milk in my latte. I'm still ok, annoyed but not angry. After class, three more homeless people ask me for money, and one gets aggressive and indignant and yells at me. So I yell back "I'm a fucking waitress and make around 9 dollars an hour, how about you get a goddamn job and then see how much you wanna give your money away to some entitled douchebag stranger!" Then I had to walk down the street a few blocks to the next train stopbecause I was embarrassed about making a public scene (something I never had cause to do anyway before I moved here. This is the second time I've yelled at someone in public in like,three weeks). Then I went home and got a letter that my health insurance had been cancelled due to nonpayment when it was supposed to be autodrafted. Lovely. And now my roommates are having "band practice," and I am attaching a video with sound because I can't quite describe how mo-foing awful they are. I can feel the last straw coming up guys.