Honestly, I wish I was one of those cool punk rocker chicks who could go to all the shows and hang out with the bands and be so cool she doesn’t even realize the level of coolness she has attained.

I’m 24 years old. I shouldn’t be thinking I’m not “cool”. I’m cool. I’m awesome.

Anyway, I want to see Meg and Dia at the House of Blues next week. It’s a random want. I love their song “Monster” and have yet to discover much of the rest of their music, but I feel like you can’t go to concerts just to discover new music, and besides they’re only opening for Angels and Airways, who are okay, but I’d rather just see Mega and Dia. I feel like I’m also not cool enough to be part of their 109,000 member fanbase.

If Hanson came to town, whoaboy, I’d be there in a second, and I’d be MUCH cooler than everybody else, because I know all their songs and have liked them since I was 14. But the bands I like these days, like Fall Out Boy, Bright Eyes, Jimmy Eat World, and Meg and Dia… they’re just too cool for me, I think. It’s like I’m not supposed to belong to those groups.

*sigh* I am thinking of going to London for my sister’s graduation, but the following things are standing in my way:

• Money. Car stuff + new apartment + more car stuff + the money it would cost to fly to London = disastrous
• Time Off. If I do go to Europe, I’d like to go for 2 weeks and really enjoy myself. Right now, I don’t think that’s possible, and I don’t want to jeopardize my job. Even if the trip’s not till September, taking 2 full weeks off would be very, very hard.

We’ll see what happens. I miss updating my blog, so I’m going to try to do that more often now.

I have “Giants in the Sky” in my head. This morning I went on a Sondheim binge and downloaded a bunch of Into the Woods and Sweeney stuff. It makes me want to watch Into the Woods very, very, very badly, but 1) our VCR doesn’t quite work and 2) it’d be best to wait until after the guests leave since they might not fancy it. Though they like musicals, so who knows.

Things I’m worried about:

* car insurance - it’s so expensive…I’m so spoiled that I’ve never had to worry about it till now :(

* car repairs - they were far more expensive than I had anticipated (I wanted to pay $500…the total cost was over $1,000 for only half of what was needed), and Adriann’s grandma wrote out a check for everything so I can’t very well make minimum payments ;_; I appreciate her effort but it puts me in an awkward spot and makes me very, very anxious

* Adriann - I know she’ll be okay, but she has so much stress right now that I think it’s draining her

* credit card payments - I paid off my car so that my dad wouldn’t have control over it, but that was before I realized I’d have to deal with all the stuff above, so now I have that $2,000 to pay off

*siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh* I am just so ready for the world to end.

I’ve been having bad depression and anxiety lately. It’s most likely because of all the stuff Adriann and I have been doing over the past week and a half while her friends are in from Germany, but it’s taking its toll. Here’s everything we’ve done since last week:

* Vegas
* The Grand Canyon (one of the best experiences of my life)
* 8am-1am Disneyland
* 10am-11pm California Adventure

It seems like there was a lot more, but I guess that’s it. @__@ Oh yeah, and WORK. I don’t know how I fit “work” in there, but it’s there somehow, and I’ve actually not fallen asleep at my desk.

Read that last sentence and you can tell how tired I am.

I didn’t make it to the 2nd round of the short story contest. :( It really bugs me, because there was a story I read that I didn’t think was all that great that made it to the 2nd round. Was my story that bad? Was it just because mine wasn’t exhausted with sci-fi? With cliches? Am I just bitter because I lost?

It’s frustrating when you think something you wrote is actually good for a change and nobody else does. I mean, okay, my friends do, but I’d like for strangers to agree as well, even if that shouldn’t matter much.

We saw Sweeney Todd at a $2 theatre the other day, and it was really good. Again. At California Adventure, we got to interact with Crush from Finding Nemo and he called me “Tubular Tiara”, which I was amused by. We’re going to have a bonfire on Friday, which should be fun, but I’m just anxious and feeling so exhausted, so I hope I can separate myself and at least have some fun.

I really want to start writing again. I think once things settle down here and Adriann is back on track, I’m going to devote 5 hours/week to writing. That’s like 260 hours/year, which seems pretty good to me.

*sigh* Time to go. :( :( :(

Here’s some ideas for the wedding that could be. ;)

Christine - I mean, Adriann! Cast your vote on the best dress for my lovely.
1.

2. (the back is corseted)

3.

And now for the bridesmaids! Choose your favorite <3

1.

2.

3.

And of course, moi!

1. (obviously I’d have better pants and colors x.x!)

2. (in black, obv)

3.  ….there is no number three, because tuxedos suck. x.x Somebody find me a #3.

I always post about the negative things, so let’s start with the positive.

We are moved out and have been living in our new place for an official week tomorrow. The cats have really taken to this place, as it gives them soooo much more room to run around. They adore the stairs and are even more fascinated by the streams outside. We don’t let them out but just opening the patio door and getting to watch the stream trickle along is wonderful for all of us.

Living with Deana is nice. ^^ We all get along and it’s like having a neverending slumber party. We’ve been ordering pizza a lot. That’s always a good thing in my book. I am a pizza monster.

Adriann and I are considering getting married. =^__^= The circumstances surrounding that out of the blue announcement are not the happiest, but thinking about getting a domestic partnership is actually really making me happy. Even if it doesn’t happen, that’s fine, but I love Adriann more than anything in the world and would love to say we’re officially never leaving one another.

Now for the bad stuff.

Pippin, one of Adriann’s dogs, died several weeks ago. I didn’t want to write about it for a variety of reasons, one of which was that he was just the smallest, sweetest dog in the world. :( I already miss playing fetch with him and watching him roll over on his belly, and getting to cuddle him. I guess he had liver failure and just…died. The last time Adriann and I saw him, he was so thin and not eating or drinking. The other dogs wouldn’t even go near him, something that is so much eerier than it sounds. I cried a lot when he died. It still makes me feel so sad thinking about it, but I’m glad he’s no longer in pain at the very least.

RIP Pippin <3 <3

After that, I found out about my dad and the car, etc. That is at least fixable.

So are you ready for the best part? Oh yes, it gets worse:

Adriann was fired on Tuesday.

The whole situation was out of the blue, which is what made it so unbearable. Her supervisor basically sat her down and said, “Sorry, your sales suck, pack up your stuff”. No notice, no warning, just pack up and get out.

My job is currently unaffected, but mentally, it’s broken me a bit. The way it was done bothers me and of course the fact that Adriann’s friends are coming in from Germany in two weeks and basically she can’t get a job till they leave (who’s going to accept her if she says she has to take a vacation for two weeks a week after she starts?) and that we just moved out, etc… Yeah.

Luckily, Adriann can get on unemployment and they cashed out her vacation and sick days, all of which should pay for rent for the next two months or so. She’ll also be getting two commission checks from work, which will probably pay for another month. Plus savings, plus what I’ll be making (I got a $150 bonus recently, which is good timing).

So there’s an update in the life of Tiara and Adriann. I’ll keep you all posted…but honestly, I don’t much feel like writing here these days. Nothing against journal writing or this specific journal, I’m just too exhausted and mentally stressed that it doesn’t feel relaxing. :(

Maybe I’ll win that short story contest and get $1,000. Yay.

my dad’s moving because he hasn’t made house payments in 3 months.

he can’t pay on my car, so i have to do that now.

i have no car insurance if i don’t find that soon too.

thanks, dad.

I don’t fucking understand how he can let his life get like this. GET A FUCKING JOB sdglshagsfgg T___T I can’t even describe how annoyed and angry and frustrated I am. He can fucking get married and buy cars and a huge fucking big screen and yet he can’t help my sister or even pay his own fucking house bills.

:( I loved that stupid house. I hate what it’s become to me, but I loved it while living there, and I’m never going to see it again. I don’t even know where the hell my dad’s going to live or what he’s going to do. It hurts. I have no clue how to feel or what to feel except that it all sucks. I’m moving next weekend and I can’t even enjoy thinking about that because I have to worry about everything now.

he couldn’t even CALL me to tell me. he kept sending emails with the subject “merry christmas”.

fuck you. :( fuck you.

So…it’s over! I just turned in my entry for the NYCMidnight Writing Contest. Adriann helped me hardcore today go through the last draft and make it as good as possible. It turned out to be 2,411 words, just under the 2,500 word count limit, and I’m mentally exhausted but so glad I pulled through. I don’t think I’ll know for some time whether or not I mad it to the next round (considering my “heat” is the last one posted, I assume I’d be last to know either way) but I am so incredibly hopeful. I did the best job I could, and at the very least, this experience took me out of my comfort zone and pushed me to try something new.

If you’re curious (and I’d appreciate your honest thoughts), here is the final draft. Enjoy.

Displacement by Tiara Louise Rea

Frank Rosenthal had one simple ambition – to create a Time Machine. To Frank, there had never been anything more exquisite than immortality, and the idea of moving forward and backward in time at his will had always intrigued him. At twenty-two, he dropped out of a prestigious English University and moved to the countryside, where he devoted the rest of his life and fortune to his eager dream. At 54, he died a quiet, relatively unnoticed death in a lonely estate, leaving behind one known relative – his son, Milo.

            While alive, there was very little that Frank Rosenthal had understood about his son and truly less that either of them had in common. With his father’s death, Milo noticed little difference in the silent house on the hill. Milo had, in fact, known this death was coming for several years. Since his father had done nothing to attempt treatment, it wasn’t exactly a surprise when Milo came to visit and found his father listless on his waterbed. The last attempt (and subsequent failure) to prove that his Time Machine worked had resulted in an intense bout of clinical depression, leaving Frank in a state of mental collapse. No one had so much as seen him after that, until the day Milo had found him.

            Kneeling on the old wood planks that made up his father’s living room floor, Milo finished boxing the last of the scattered machine parts – junk as the dictionary might call them – that had once littered the kitchen, dining room, and bedrooms. More concerned with clearing the house for profit than any sentimental value involved in the process, he tossed part after part into unlabeled boxes and pushed them aside.

            A buzzing, whirring sound from the next room over caused Milo to glance to his right, spotting the small, rusted robot known as Ana. His father had built her when he was only seventeen, a miraculous feat at the time, though she was currently on her last leg. It would be easy to simply take her down to the dumpster and recycle her, as she was worth half (at best) of what the newer models would cost. When he sold this house, he would be able to afford better.

            “Bring those here, Ana,” he called, and like an obedient dog, she followed the sound of his voice and rolled to a stop before him, an armful of old papers and computer parts tumbling from her rusted frame and into the box he held out. She was built quite human-like with moving facial features and over 1,000 pre-programmed expressions, though years of overuse and water damage had left her in a sad shape, more boxy than busty. The newer models other scientists had come up with were quite a great deal better technologically and sociologically. They were built to interact with humans – she had been built first as a toy and then as a maid, and she often stuttered in speech and her movements were quite jerky in comparison. “Why were you heading towards the door?”

            “There is someone waiting out there for Frank,” she said evenly, her tone almost eerily human. “I was going to tell her he is no longer home.”

            “You can say that again,” Milo sighed, leaning forward to look out the small porthole of a window near the front door. Through the video screen window he could indeed see a woman, in her early twenties at the latest, with short black hair, thick mascara, and long limbs.

            Standing, Milo watched the girl as she went so far as to knock at the door impatiently. Quirking a brow, he folded his arms and regarded her through the one-way portal. “Do you know her?”

            Ana mimicked his movements, extending her neck an inhuman distance to peek around the corner curiously and regarded the girl in the portal along with Milo. “Yes,” she said matter-of-factly, her rusted head squeaking as it bobbed gently. “She worked with Frank on the Time Machine for the last few years. They were inseparable until the last committee meeting.”

            “Go turn yourself off for the rest of the day,” Milo said dismissively, knowing Ana would just invite the girl in. “I’ll tell her about Frank.” He pressed the small red switch to the right of the portal. On the outside, his image was reflected through, as if they spoke between panes of glass. “How can I help you?”

            The girl’s green eyes lit up and widened. “You must be Milo. I’m here to—”

            “He’s dead,” Milo said, beating her to the punch, though he didn’t expect her eyes to look into his in the way they did. Full, emotional, heartbroken. “I…didn’t mean for it to come out so bluntly,” he lied.

            “It’s alright,” she said, shaking her black hair from her eyes and folding her arms. “I knew it was going to happen. I didn’t expect him to last much longer. He was…” She paused for a long moment, regarding Milo as he watched her. “May I come in?”

            Glancing over his shoulder, Milo noted Ana had taken to a small corner of the hallway and turned herself off. Assured by what Ana had said about this girl’s relationship with his father, Milo opened the door for her. “Yeah,” he said, “I’m sure you want to pick up some things, having worked with dad and all.” He shrugged as she entered and waved towards the basement. “The Time Machine stuff is down there. Have at it.”

            Her beautiful face contorted a little at the tone of his voice and she was silent as she entered and cautiously crossed his path towards the basement stairs. “My name’s Alba, by the way,” she said.

            “Nice to meet you,” Milo replied as he shook her hand, though he wasn’t and sensed she knew that.

            Watching her go, Milo thought he saw the same kind of fire that his father had when obsessed with his current project, and a lump formed in his throat.

            Though he and Alba had made a small lunch together in the kitchen and it had been a welcomed break from their separate work, Milo wasn’t interested in making a sudden friend with his father’s strange protégé. He was more interested in where his father had found someone like Alba (and her interest in the Time Machine) than anything else. Of course, he could only imagine what a 50-something bachelor and a young girl her age could find to do together. The thought irked him, made him slightly ill.

            “How does this thing work anyway?” he asked while sipping from an ancient coffee mug. It was nearing midnight, and he had only just realized Alba was not picking up the pieces but fitting them together in a feeble attempt to make the Time Machine work.

            “This thing,” she stated matter-of-factly, shaking her dark hair from her eyes, “Is a Temporal Atom Displacer.”

            Milo grinned. “A Time Machine?”

            With a roll of her eyes, Alba moved in front of the large white machine, her cool eyes scanning its smooth surface. “Your dad always called it a Time Machine. Said it was his boyhood dream, but it’s pretty lame, calling it a Time Machine, when it doesn’t really control time at all – just displaces the atoms around us to distort how we see it.”

            “Yeah, well, my dad pretty much lived on dreams and in them, so that doesn’t surprise me.” Milo approached her side and inspected the machine in a perfect mimic of Alba’s motions. “So it…displaces, um, atoms? I…have no clue what the hell that means.”

            Laughing outright, Alba nudged his shoulder in a playful manner Milo had never really experienced, having never had many friends as a kid or anybody close enough to have had that sort of physical relationship with him. Rubbing his arm where she nudged it, he watched her cautiously, as if afraid she might hug him next.

            “Milo, your father described you so perfectly.”

            “Is that a compliment?”

            “The Temporal Atom Displacer works just like it sounds. It takes the very particles that make up life and time and space, and displaces them or shifts your perspective of them and everything around you. In laymen’s terms, you never really leave where you started, but the ‘Time Machine’ places you inside a snapshot of the past or future. Especially where the past is concerned, you are merely a witness to the events that are displaced around you, controlled in a sense so that you can view them here and now.”

            “That’s laymen’s terms?” Milo asked, sitting on the old green couch his father had often fallen asleep on. “So why doesn’t it work? My dad spent ages trying to make it do what you say it should. I can’t imagine how all that effort didn’t pay off.”

            Alba frowned again and took a seat next to him, shrugging. “We tried everything. Your father poured his every last penny into this. It was his life’s ambition to make it work and to…” Pausing, she glanced over at Milo, her brow furrowed just like his father’s had always furrowed. “Milo, your father talked about you. Quite a bit.”

            “Right,” he said, looking down into his empty cup before setting it down at his feet. “Did he mention the time he neglected my art shows for his seventeenth committee hearing? Or maybe the time I told him I was gay and he promptly offered to escort me to the nearest hotel? Or when I came to visit several summers ago and he was too busy to see me? Those must have been fascinating stories.”

            The silence between the two of them dragged on for several minutes, and the more it did, the more Milo realized that he had both been wanting to get these feelings off his chest for years and that getting them out in the open in front of this strange girl made him feel guilty and full of remorse and anxiety.

            “Sorry,” he murmured. “You didn’t ask for my life story, and I’m sure you’d rather not know it anyway.”

            “No,” Alba said, her voice quiet and very serious. “I wanted to ask why you never visited, why he said he hadn’t seen you in years… I’m sorry, Milo, but he did love you, very much in fact.”

            Milo laughed, standing quickly to his feet and ready to burst. “Just because you’re his lover, you think you can—”

            “I’m his daughter, Milo,” she blurted, standing to face him.

            “Excuse me?” The room was spinning and Milo’s pale cheeks burned.

            “I know it sounds impossible, but he and my mother had an affair a long time ago and—”

            “Does that make you…my sister?” Milo had never imagined in his wildest nightmares that he could possibly have any other relatives. Everyone he knew was dead or had abandoned him.

            “Half-sister, I suppose,” Alba said gently. “Trust me, I was shocked that I had a brother, when dad told me.”

            Milo cringed at the ease way she said dad like it was just that simple to become a part of Frank Rosenthal’s life, when he had been trying to do so for all of his. It was as if this stupid girl had weaseled her way into his father’s life under the guise of helping him with his Time Machine, when they were actually bonding over years of absence and distance. Running both his hands through his hair, he turned to look at the source of all his frustration, which seemed now to tower above him, ominous and overwhelming.

            “This stupid piece of shit,” Milo snapped suddenly, face contorted in pain. “It was so easy for you, wasn’t it? To bond over this…this….piece of shit with my father, to show him you were smart enough, fast enough, good enough to understand it all. And I bet he went on for hours about me, I really bet he did, and all the ways he’d rather have you for a daughter than me for a son. Anything but me.” Real tears were swelling in Milo’s eyes, and for a moment he forgot himself as a sob wrenched from his small, skinny frame. “It’s not your fault,” he added, trying to fight the emotions pouring from him. “I don’t care. It’s not worth it anymore.”

            Alba was at his side in an instant, her arms wrapped around his shoulders. “Milo, I don’t know you at all, so I have no right to tell you how to feel or what to feel…but in the time I’ve known your father, he has changed quite a bit. He was so cold until we talked about his Time Machine, and finally, he began to tell me things. He was really sorry for all of it, Milo. I know it. He wanted so badly for you to understand his work.”

            A whizzing sound overhead alerted Milo to the presence of Ana, who seemed to be making her rounds again around the large estate. The sound was almost comforting, breaking the silence and easing the blow of the last words out of Alba’s mouth. For a moment, Milo could imagine himself as a young boy, sitting down on the small green couch, watching his father work on his Machine, asking questions as Ana brought them tea and lemonade. He had never tried to show interest, had never bothered to learn the intricacies of his father’s ambition. Everything had simply seemed too far removed from him, too big or too hard or too large a commitment. In the time it took for Alba to say what she had, realization dawned on Milo – he would never see his father again. He would never be able to watch his strong fingers wandering against the ancient machinery or hear the gears as they worked friction between rusted metals or feel the sting of his father’s empty words.

            There was no longer a chance at knowing he was worthwhile in his father’s eyes. But there was the opportunity to try and learn what had made him who he was – the only chance left was to understand the Time Machine itself and to possibly assist in making it work. It would have been the only tangible thing that could have made his father proud.

            “How does this thing work again?” he asked quietly, staring up at the towering mass of springs, coils, metal, and glass. He could almost hear it whizzing with life.