the danglies

Corinne used to use "the dangly ones" to refer to the males, but in this case, I don't mean humans of any sort, but rather, the dangly caterpillar trees that have taken over campus. For the most part I have successfully avoided them--I know they're there, I know that they dangle from those slightly gray-green fuzzy trees, and I know that you have to give them a wide berth if you don't want a new caterpillar friend. But my question is, why do they dangle? Why have I never seen them before? And why are there SO MANY of them?

Today, however, I nearly ran into a treeful of them--it was a narrow escape. Apparently a trip to Tressidder can be a hazardous journey--not only did I almost get caterpillared, but I had another encounter with the complit grad student who is apparently stalking me, (who I originally met just last friday at the shopping center and managed to rather awkwardly decline to give my phone number) and who continues to be embarrassingly unfunny. And I ran into one of the TFs who I seem to run into on a regular basis (though he's cool so that's not really a hazard). Still. It's much easier to hop over to Cubberley, if I can just remember to have some cash.

On a different subject, I'm on the apparently never-ending hunt for at least 1, hopefully 2, acceptable swimsuits. After ordering two from J. Crew and finding them on the whole unacceptable, I'm starting to realize why I seem to find it so difficult (well, aside from the fact that J. Crew sells out of EVERYTHING swimwear related about two weeks into February). I think it's because I have no idea what to look for in a swimsuit, seeing that I have historically disliked swimming and therefore have bought exactly two swimsuits since I was in sixth grade, one around sophomore year of HS and one around sophomore year of college. Let's compare that to something that I can practically buy without trying on: dresses. With some exceptions, I know whether a dress is going to look good or bad on me without even trying it on. That makes sense when I realize that I probably have at least 10 dresses in my closet, and I've probably tried on at least 50 over the past eight years (if not many more), as opposed to about four swimsuits. Anyway, still trying to figure out the right way to go on this one. The J. Crew bikinis made my boobs look saggy, and I'm pretty sure that I don't have saggy boobs.

I saw the movie Brick on Sunday night (apparently the only time one can find parking in Palo Alto) and really liked it. I'm currently trying to decide whether the main actor, http://imdb.com/name/nm0330687/, is cute. At first I was afraid he was going to be like, 18, and therefore too young to be cute,but as it turns out, he's actually older than me, which seems to be the usual story. Anyway, it turns out he's the same kid from 10 Things I Hate About You--what do you know!

Actually, going back to the clothes and the trip to the shopping center on Friday. . . so I was looking for a dress to wear to Jason and KS's wedding. I was going to wear the butterfly dress of Oxford and Senior Formal, but I put it on, and then I tried on my blue dress of HS and Stanford graduations (yes, I wore the same dress for both), and I decided that they were dresses for very skinny Nina Stargirl, not Nina Stargirl who sits in her office all day and eats cinnamon rolls. It's not that they didn't fit at all, it's just. . . well, okay, it was an excuse to buy a new dress, and this dress: http://www.bananarepublic.com/browse/product.do?cid=5023&pid=389452 looked promising. So I went to Banana Republic and tried it on in a size 6, and it was literally falling off. They didn't have a 4 in stock, so the girl gave me a size 2. And what do you know, the size 2 fits. Perfectly.

I'm not trying to make a point that I'm skinny. I'm trying to make the point that this is RIDICULOUS. In high school, when I weighed about 10 pounds less than I do now, I would wear a 4 or 6 from Banana Republic. Aside from that, I'm simply not the person that should be wearing a size 2. Size 2 should be for anorexics and tiny Asian girls, not just perfectly ordinary fairly thin people. No wonder Banana now advertises "now available in size double zero!" on the clothes on its website. Double zero? A size like that has no excuse for existence. Even XXXL has more reason to exist than double zero. Apparently now you're not really thin unless you've doubly negated your waistline.

I do quite like the dress, though. It's not too yellow for a wedding, is it?