In the world of Small Things That Make You Happy: I've finally got my Girly/Dido station on Pandora exactly to my liking.  It's taken nearly three years of tweaking, but I realized tonight that I didn't click "dislike" once in nearly two hours of listening.  I am happily bopping around now listening to The Cranberries, and remembering college, and thinking that maybe I have a paper due tomorrow, but then realizing that I don't, and then I feel relieved.

So something new I did today was wear my sunglasses inside, all day.  I am having a hard time this weekend, if you hadn't noticed from yesterday's post, and I didn't really feel like facing people.  When I went into the convention center, I was hit in the face with 25,000 shiny happy people/librarians, and I wanted to hide from all the festivities.  Plus, there was free food, and nothing gets librarians on city-budgets excited like free food.  I was early for my first meeting, and wanted to sit somewhere quiet and read, but I couldn't get away from it all, so I decided to put in my headphones, and put on my sunglasses, and it really was like being in my own little cocoon of a world.  I had Bob Seger on (Roll me Away is one of the greatest road-trip songs ever) reminding me that I've been running against the wind, and the world was a nice shade of muted pastel blue, and no one smiled an annoying bright smile at me, and I didn't care how aloof I looked.  Damn, it was fun.

The only funny thing was when I accidentally walked into a wall because, in all my aloofness, I wasn't paying attention.  Whatever.  I'm a klutz, but I'm an aloof klutz.

Seriously, I'm going to do this Sunglasses Inside thing all the time when I don't feel like facing people.  It's such a good trick, I don't know why I didn't think of it before.

The only other time I've work sunglasses a lot (other than, you know, like in the car driving, and on the beach, and obvious stuff like that) was when I was 17 on a school trip in Europe, and I discovered alcohol.  There were a whole bunch of us from different schools and I made friends with this guy Craig, who was gorgeous.  He was subsequently my "date" to the senior prom.  "date" being in "quotes" because he was gay.  But he was from another school, and pretended that he was my boyfriend really well, and picked me up in a red porsche, so I was stoked.  Besides, I'm a nerd and spent most of the prom studying my flashcards for all my AP tests that were going on the next week.  Yep, you read that right.  In my tiny little beaded purse, I had stashed a set of flashcards on the French Revolution, and an extra lipstick.  I rock like that.

Anyway, Craig was gorgeous.  And there was this other gorgeous girl - I forget her name, but let's call her Kristen, because in my high school Kristen's were all really pretty.  So Kristen was tall and model-gorgeous, and I think she didn't realize that Craig was gay, but she probably figured that they should be together because the two gorgeous people are always together, right?  But Craig had already told me he was gay, and he and I spent all the bus-rides sitting together listening to Andrew Lloyd Weber soundtracks, so we were already tight.  So Gorgeous Girl - Kristen - was super-friendly with me, cuz I think she thought maybe I would somehow be an "in" to Craig.  So it was the three of us, together.  The two model-gorgeous people and me, drinking champagne with diet coke (yes, you read that right.  Champagne with diet coke.  Don't ask).

Actually, I might just be inventing all that in my head.  The motive, I mean.  I just know that it was model-Kristen and Craig and me and I was really drunk for the first time in my life, and discovering the deliciousness of being slightly out of your head, and then having bloodshot eyes the next morning.

Hence the sunglasses, which never came off, the entire trip.

Speaking of being drunk, you know what one of my favorite feelings in the world is?  You know when you're out at a club, and you get really drunk, and the music is throbbing and pulsing, and you're dancing, and you're sweating, and you're laughing and giddy, and the room is sort of spinning, but it's all kind of fun and crazy, and only slightly woozy? And then you go to the bathroom.  And you're in the stall and you're peeing, and for the first time it's like, kind of quiet, except you can still hear the beat thumping around, and you're like, "Ahhhh, this peeing feels really good.  Man, I'm hungry.  What's going on?  Did I just make out with that guy out there?  What was his name?  Or was it a girl?  Huh?  Who's calling me?  What phone number is this written on my hand?  Damn, I'm still peeing.  Oh man, this is taking forever.  I'm just going to rest my head against the wall here..."

I LOVE that feeling.  Like, totally love it.  I'd go out clubbing every night (if it wasn't so tiring - seeing as how I'm not 23 anymore) just to get the peeing-while-drunk feeling.

This has been random, hasn't it?