You may already know that I am leaving the graduate dorm and will move into a one-bedroom apartment after my DC internship ends in August. I am SO excited. Here's what's most exciting: the guy who's moving out is moving in with his girlfriend, and so he's selling a bunch of his furniture. So here's a list of things I'll be buying that will be waiting for me in the apartment when I get there. Total price: $400.

bed + mattress
sofa
office desk
armchair
dining table + 4 chairs
television
tv stand
2 floor lamps
2 table lamps
4-slot toaster
microwave
kitchen storage cart
bookshelf
3 end tables
rug
window a/c unit

Again $400, and no moving anything up or down stairs! This is gonna be amazing.

But that's all in August. Now, I have to go back to fighting with a tween superstar. (shaking fist angrily:) CYRUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NO MORE DAYS!
Best afternoon ever. I love having my last day.

ONE MORE DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TWO MORE DAYS!
I did make it through yesterday, so no worries.
And yes, still with the Nez.

THREE MORE DAYS!
Once I make it through today, that is. I'm very, very tired from mostly not sleeping last night. Not only was it a Sunday night for all intents and purposes, but also I had some caffeine late in the evening. Self-sabotage, I believe we call that.

I'm still in love with Mike Nesmith today, in case you were wondering.

I got my university email address today! Dude, I'm seriously going to Yale! Amazing.

I am *so* on top of the New Student Checklist. "May: Receive NetID, SID and PIN # by email and activate Yale email account." Done! Also this week, I sent in all of my health forms, which aren't due until June 30. But I won't have health insurance on June 30, so I had a physical this week. I made the appointment with a new doctor, because the doctor I've had for the last two years is sketch. Two pieces of supporting evidence:
1) Every time I've been there, I've had to wait 1-2 hours for my scheduled appointment, for no discernible reason.
2) On two separate occasions, I've called the office and received a message that the phone is out of order. That means disconnected, kids. Dr. I'm-done-with-you, get it together.

Dr. Cohen was much easier to deal with, although she made me get a tetanus shot, which I didn't really want to do. I don't have an irrational fear of needles, I just don't like shots. And I had 4 on Tuesday. More accurately, three and blood drawn. I walked out of the office looking like a dope fiend.

That's right, it's 2008 and I used the term "dope fiend." I'm bringing it back.

It was all good, though. I got my required health forms filled out, I'm not going to get or give meningitis in the grad dorm, and if I step on a rusty nail between now and 2018, I will not spasm myself into death. One of the shots was a little ridiculous. Apparently, when I was an infant, my parents didn't care whether I got measles, mumps, or rubella. My mother insists I got shot #2 (of 2), but my immunization records only showed #1. And so this week, 24 years later, I completed my MMR vaccination.

Now, why am I so ahead on my to-do list, you ask? Is it because I'm so excited to go to school? Not really -- not at this moment, not right now. Right now, I am ready to PEACE OUT, and so I'm doing things, like, two months ahead of the deadline because getting things done helps me to feel like I'm closer to leaving. It's a head game, and I cannot wait to stop playing.

10 more working days.

I am a few days away from having a subletter! But you know what I don't like sometimes? Having to choose. I put the post up on craigslist at about noon yesterday and had four replies within an hour. I got eight more by this morning, when I pulled the posting.

The thing is, all of these people need a place to live this summer, and none of them is transparently crazy. And since my roommate's friend is signing the lease in the fall, this person will only be living in the house for 10 weeks or so, so the issue of "fit" is not the biggest deal. I did ask everyone to fill in a short survey, which I prefaced with an apology for reducing them to three "scales of 1-10" (in the areas of cleanliness, loudness, and gregariousness.) It did help, though. I struck out one woman who was a self-described "1" on the cleanliness scale -- that is, "obsessively neat in private and common areas." That's just not how we roll on Dahlia St. You can't be on top of Becky for leaving her dishes in the sink. But among the others, I guess I'll just go by whoever emailed first, and go down the list until someone commits.

The beneficial thing about the subletting arrangement, from the capitalist standpoint, is that I get to do a little price-gouging. I had intended to rent the place out for what I pay for it, but even my public-servant roommate is jacking up the price for the summer. So I'm going to probably end up a few hundred dollars ahead of myself. I feel slightly guillty about this, but it doesn't keep me up nights, and I will be cashing the checks.

A short conversation this afternoon.
Me, kind of embarrassed, handing my boss an envelope: Here's my leave notice. I'd like leave at the end of May.
Anissa, unsurprised, brightly: Okay!
Me: I've gotten into grad school, so I'm taking time off to prepare for that.
Anissa, still brightly: Well, we knew you were too smart for us and would leave. It was just a question of when.
Me: Is there anything I need to be do to prepare for the next person?
Anissa, still brightly: Just keep doing what you're doing, because you're doing a good job.

The conversations with my boss around leaving UMD are proving to be much less painful than those I had when leaving DC Prep.

I went to get boxes yesterday. You know, for moving. I had a really ambitious plan that involved me sending things home over a period of weeks, so that I didn't have to do everything in the last two days in town. Then I remembered that (1) I'm gonna want to *use* a lot of my *stuff* because I'm still *living here*, and (2) I don't own a car, so it will be troublesome to make many trips to the post office/UPS.

WAIT! I JUST REMEMBERED THAT UPS WILL DO AT-HOME PICK-UP! I HAD TOTALLY FORGOTTEN UNTIL RIGHT NOW! MY LIFE JUST CHANGED FOR THE BETTER! Okay, then, maybe I can send things home in shifts, because UPS will pick things up whenever I ask them to! Awesome.

To return to my story, I borrowed a Zipcar after work because "I need to get boxes" became shorthand for "I need to do everything I need to do before I go," and it was causing me stress. So I told myself that I needed to just go ahead and do that thing, and even if I end up being slightly ahead of myself and staring at folded boxes for a month, I will also be ahead of the crazy, and that's critical.

Now, I'm not the most experienced driver, and almost all of my experience comes from driving in Houston, which means that I can handle freeways but I don't know much about intersections without left-turn signals. Which is how I almost died yesterday. It was maybe the first time I've looked up to see a car heading straight at me. That is terror, my friends. And that was only one of the three near-death experiences I had yesterday. The other two:
*Getting stuck in a roundabout. Twice. Don't ever ask me about it.
*Flashes of hard rain that made the car windows steam up. I pressed as many buttons as I could, but I couldn't figure out how to make them de-fog, and I just had to keep wiping down the windshield. I'm calling this a collective "near death" experience, because who knows how many times low visibility compromised my personal safety.

I don't know a better way to do this, so please tell anyone you know who was driving in DC yesterday the following: "The girl in the red Nissan Versa with the Zipcar sticker is REALLY, REALLY SORRY. She was not trying to be a jerk, but ignorance and inexperience made her obnoxious and dangerous. THANK YOU for your defensive driving. You saved the life of someone about to go to YAAAAAAAAAAAAALE."

I change the subject now to something not involving death but rather affirming life: I think everyone knows about NKOTB reuniting, so I'll just say that I just watched a video clip on their website, and I saw a woman in her 20s tell the Today show camera, "Jonathan, I'm legal now. Call me." Hehehe. She was 85% kidding, and I appreciate both the part that was kidding and the part that was *not*.

As the days pass, new reasons why I need to leave Maryland continue to reveal themselves. Today's reason: Students. Particularly the asshole ones who write the letters to the editor in the student newspaper, which I read every day as part of my job. Yesterday, this appeared in print:

Waiting not-so-patiently for Skirt Day

Attention beautiful women of College Park: We men are disappointed in you. It is April 17 and you have yet to deliver our favorite spring tradition: Skirt Day. Yes, the return of baseball is great. True, I'm enjoying the opportunity to grill out back. And of course, birds returning, trees blooming and all that nature stuff is cool too. Those things are all fine and good, but for me, spring does not truly begin until Skirt Day has occurred.
I understand some of you may be confused; "What the hell is skirt day?" Well, your buddy Johnny is here to explain. Every spring, there is one day that is so beautiful, it seems that every girl on campus decides it is time to free her legs from the denim dungeon of winter and don a skirt.
I have no idea how y'all instinctively know when Skirt Day is, but, for the past three years in College Park, Skirt Day has, without fail, come calling before the tax man arrives. I assume all girls are implanted with a chip at birth that tells them when it's Skirt Day, as well as other things designed to both bewilder and attract men. Or possibly there is a College Park Secret Hot Girls Club (if you're saying to yourself that there isn't, take a look in the mirror … maybe you weren't invited).
If there is such a club, please do schedule Skirt Day very soon. Now for the past few weeks there have been gentle rumblings of a possible Skirt Day. Yet still, no Skirt Day. This is not a mere request but a biological imperative. Just as in nature many female animals give some sort of demonstrative symbol that its mating season. We're ready for the signal. Let the hunt begin!

Johnny Mathias
Senior
Government and politics


Awesome, right? A column appeared in today's paper in response. Well-intended, but I wish more people understood that snark is not a good foundation upon which to build compelling arguments. Not if you actually want to convince someone of something:


Guest column: I Will Not Be Hunted

The Diamondback has made Johnny Mathias a lucky man by giving him, for who knows what half-brained reason, the opportunity to "holla at" every woman on the campus ("Waiting not-so-patiently for Skirt Day," April 17). Now I can't respond for every woman on the campus. Some, on the 100 percent positive gender relations end, may be flattered by the celebration of their sexuality. You say, "Work it, ladies!" They respond, "Damn right, I'm gonna work it!" Power to them.

Cool. How about the rest of us? Those of us who struggle, for instance, or at least have boundaries? I have had men yell out of their car windows at me since I was 12. I didn't (and don't) tend to dress in a particularly provocative way. Going to CVS because there's nothing better to do in the suburbs at age 12 is hardly soliciting oneself. I get the stereotypical Latino guys catcalling in pickup trucks, sure, but I also get middle-aged white guys positively staring at me instead of looking at the road. Am I attracted to a balding, probably married man driving a mid-life crisis convertible? No. Did I step out of my house for the sake of his sexual gratification? Hell no. Can't I just loosen up and take it as a compliment? Well ... forgive me for being difficult, but no.

Now you listen, and you listen good: When I bare my tattooed, au natural dancer's legs to the world, I am doing it for my sake. I choose when and where not to work my sweet thang based on my own inclination, not some universal biological cue. And when I feel compelled to attract a "mate," I will do so on my own terms. Mathias used the word "hunt." Another word for hunting is predation. Let me get this one thing straight, Casanova: I will not be hunted.

Finally, it was very sweet of you to suggest that any reader who didn't find your "hot girls club" joke funny is ugly. Go get 'em, tiger. Gotta love a man who thinks he's entitled to define female beauty and make suggestions to facilitate his exploitation of it. I will obligingly show you my middle finger, sir, and suggest to you as I have wished to suggest to so many men driving by: Go f--- yourself.

Now I wonder what kind of flattery that little gesture will earn me. Bitch? Dyke? Man-hater? Ugly? Frigid? I've heard it all before. That doesn't make it true. Or perhaps you'll take the other common route: "Ooh, I like it feisty!" If that's the case, I'm afraid I'll have to tell you that I don't like it feisty. If you were really trying to be a nice guy and give us all a compliment, I apologize and recommend instead that you learn how it's done respectfully. Start by thinking of us as people with multiple layers of identity even as we shed our winter layers of clothing. Assume we all have different needs and desires. Because you know we have them, but you don't know what they are and can't find out by looking at our legs. You can think before you speak. Keep your appreciation to yourself, or express it with the whole woman in mind.

Speaking of whole women, I would like to quickly address something that has been grinding my and my guy friends' gears. Lately, I have overheard different girls calling themselves fat in a disparaging tone at least three times a day. I turn around to look at who's speaking and for the life of me can't find the fat girl. Please, fat girls, if you're going to announce yourselves like that, stop hiding when I turn around to gawk at you.

Otherwise, I just might have to assume that there are no fat girls, and that you are in fact skinny, healthy or moderately plump girls suffering from poor body image. Ladies (and gents): You are beautiful the way you are. I mean it. People will be mean. That's their problem, not yours. Given all the crap you've ever taken about the way you "should" look versus the way you do look, it will be difficult to stop being mean to yourself. That's okay. You're worth the effort.

Rebecca Ogle is a sophomore English major who is a presiding officer of the Hot Girls Club. She can be reached at answer42@umd.edu.

Things are moving along...
I'm leaving DC at the beginning of June, rather than stay at Maryland and continue to flirt with imperiling my mental health. So I'm going home for the summer! I expect to:
1. Fold sweaters.
2. Watch the movies I REALLY should have seen if I'm going to be a "film student." It would be good, I think, to have seen one French New Wave film. Some of these are going to hurt. There's a *reason* I like movies produced for the masses. Foreign films can be so weird.
3. Read some stuff. Maybe.
4. Learn to embroider!

I'm leaving DC before my lease is up, but the rest of the house is staying put, so: If you know anyone who is moving to DC and would like to live in an inexpensive basement of a group house in Takoma, DC, send her my way! Five total in the house (all very cool people), the basement has its own 1/2 bath (that is, toilet and sink), and it's a very safe 3-4 blocks to the Metro. Available the first week in June!