One of these days, I'm going to take control of my life. No, for real this time!

So, here I am, awake at 4:45 in the morning because I stayed up late watching Neil Patrick Harris clips on YouTube and then decided it'd be a good idea to catch up on online episodes of "The Simpsons" and "American Dad" I hadn't seen yet. *sigh* I will start sleeping at a normal time soon, I promise! At least I have stuffed animals to sleep with now! I got a stuffed pig named Hamlet from Julia for my birthday/Christmas, and I brought a couple of teddy bears from home, one of which is a Snuggles bear I received at 2 years old - he was my oldest stuffed animal! There is something to be said for not living quite alone, especially when "not living alone" means "living with mute animals" or "living with inanimate objects that look enough like things that would make you happy but would bother you too much if they were actually alive."

So, I'm back in the Binghamton area, living in my apartment by myself until my roommates all return, sometime after the next two weeks are up. I returned to a super-disgusting apartment that was filled with garbage because I have been living with emotional and behavioral children masquerading as college students. Having decided that a month of anger in a smelly apartment would be useless, I went on a cleaning tear and made my apartment be a place that I love! I am almost sad that I will have to leave it to live in a place by myself, but I'm sure that when the kids come back I will hate it again. It gives me hope, however, that there are two new roommates that may help to enforce cleaning rules better than I have been able to do thus far. Tomorrow I'm going to do a drive-by of all the 1-bedroom apartments listed on the Off Campus College website whose leases come up on June 1st, to see if they're real sketchy or okay or whatever, so that I can see about a cheaper and nicer place to live - and by "nicer," I mean "a place where I'm not pushed into cleaning up after emotional and behavioral children."

I'm also having fun going to Carmen rehearsals on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays. I really like being in choruses of things, but life will be easier when I make the choruses be memorized in my brain. I like the woman who is playing the title role (who is nice enough to try to learn all the choristers' names!) and despite all of the childish, high school-esque behavior employed by most of the members of the company, being involved in opera is the dream of my life and Carmen is one of my favorites and even being onstage doing it is enough to make me be full of glee!

Christmas was pretty much the awesomes in all the possible ways, including but not limited to the time I was able to spend with my fam. The aftermath of Christmas appears in my enjoyment of all my presents! My GPS unit is really cute, and it tells me where to go in a British woman's voice, and I think I'm going to take a cue from MST3K and name it "Sherrie." I have watched all the Law & Order episodes in both DVD sets, although I may watch a couple of the SVU episodes again, just for some choice shots of one Eliot Stabler, whom I love a whole lot, so, we're adding him to my crush list. I say we, but honestly, this is not at all about you. To recap, here is the list:

1. Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics who I love especially more since he posted this comic (just substitute "Ryan North" for "T-Rex" - I'm sure it was meant for me!)
2. Eliot Stabler, Christopher Meloni's character on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
3. Jack Aubrey, Russel Crowe's character in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

I'm removing The Ninja of AskANinja.com because he wears a mask, so for all I know, he's just another guy who looks like a 40 year old with Downs syndrome. But Ninja, let me make this clear: you are awesome, so if you are in any way attractive enough to show my friends, please, please call me. No, for real.

So, now I'm in a clean apartment, trying to catch up on reading and life and doing things. Last weekend I went to go see "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" for the second time because it's real real fun and then we all went out to this club called Club Instinct where they had a smoke machine that was shaped like a skull! I became friends with the skull because it turns out he knew my John the Baptist head...it's a long story. The point is it was pretty fun! I have been practicing and going to the gym like a good girl, as well as reading my Opera News and Classical Singer magazines that arrived while I was at home. Tomorrow I am going to make a crock pot meal for LaToya and me, as well as have lunch with Dave Kolb, who is going to be in town for a voice lesson! I have a voice lesson of my own on Friday. I'm going to try to sell Tim on the idea of "Je veux vivre" as an audition piece for Chautauqua, but I don't really know how he'll feel about that. There's always one of the baby arias if he doesn't like it. In the meantime, I'm also looking for more recital material...this is nuts (recommendations if you have them, please!). Every time I start thinking about all the things that need to be done by the time school starts, I start freaking out. Then I remember I need to just take it one day at a time, and I'm okay again. SHIT I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING TO WEAR FOR THE AUDITION. ALERT! ALERT! ABORT! Hold on, we're not aborting...we'll find something...someday...somewhere?

The point is I really like doing life when other people aren't involved in it. It's better that way! I am going to try to be sleeping at this time, because I'm getting up to make the crock pot recipe at 9 and if you think I'm skipping the gym you're wrong. Oh, what a crazy life I lead!