This is really interesting. I used to think every woman I knew had endometriosis, then I realized, no, it was just every woman in my family: my mom, her two sisters, all their first cousins, my sister, me. My aunt recently developed lupus, and my mom has scleroderma, both one of those "uh...yeah, I don't know how you got it" diseases. The older I get, the more allergies I develop. It seems rather coincidental, if you ask me, but I'm glad someone out there is doing research on this.

True story: when I was a sophomore in college, I was in so much pain during my cycle that I passed out in the shower of my dormitory. When I came to, I managed to get back in my bed, at which point my roommate went and got a friend and they took me to the emergency because I was basically incoherent. The doctor on call told me he could give something for the pain, but he hesitated to do so because I would become mentally dependent on it and would come running to the emergency room every time I had cramps. Lucky for him I was too sick to get up and kick him where it matters. He left me there in the examining room and never did anything for me. Eventually my friend came looking for me and took me home where I collapsed and stayed in bed for the next two days. That may have been the moment I became an ardent feminist.
10:34 PM


Wow double wow. I finally drove through Martinsville this evening. It looks like a bomb went off. A really, really big bomb. First it was just a few trees, then all the trees, then all the trees and all the buildings, and then it was just wasteland. At first I was pointing things out to Matty, "My god, there was a *huge* warehouse there, and it's gone. Oh, that was my favorite farm house, it used to have a barn, but I guess that's gone. Oh, wow, I've never even seen those houses before, there used to be a forest between them and the highway, and now they're gone, too. " And Matty was commenting back to me, "Look at that!" But then it seemed like all the words ran out and we just drove along in complete silence. It really was stunning. Just devastation. I really can't describe it, it was the type of awesome that makes you want to throw up.

So, I think it will work out to have Matty drive to practice with me. At first I wasn't sure, I tried to sound her out on a couple of things and she wouldn't commit. She's from North Dakota, and she mentioned UND's hockey program, so I said something vague about reading about their new rink, and she said yeah, it was big and fancy, and sounded a little positive about it, which made me doubt that I would get along with her. She didn't mention the controversy at all, so I wasn't sure how she felt.

So, we went to practice, and then afterward, I asked her a couple of leading questions and it turns out she feels the exact same way I do about the Fighting Sioux mascot (I should have come right out and asked her, but I'm a coward!). I thought for a second I was in trouble, she started out her sentence saying, "It's just a name," and I thought she would finish it by saying "so I don't see what everyone is so upset about," but she ended up saying, "so I don't see why they just can't do the right thing and change it." She is apparently from the area of the Spirit Lake Nation and has talked to some Dakota people who don't care about the name. She personally thinks that if it may hurt someone, it should go. And then she went on to talk about why she thinks that the free education Native Americans get at UND is equitable, that she didn't used to, but her mom talked to her about all the ways we oppress Native Americans, and doesn't she think it's time we started turning that around, etc., and she thought about it and agrees. Anyway, we had quite a talk about it, it turns out her mother did a study on retention rates for Dakota students in the K-12 system so she had a lot of interesting information.

And from there we went on to how stupid Bush is, she also voted Green Party (and used the same justification I did), we talked about the Gulf War, and what kind of issue would have to be at stake before we personally would pick up weapons (I quote, "If I had to protect someone I love, that would be one thing, but I'm not going to go to war just so someone can drive an SUV across America"), and just as we got back to her place, we hit on September 11, and had similar opinions.

As it turns out, Catherine was right and I was wrong. I discovered that politics mean a lot to me--if you have similar political ideas, I'll probably make you my friend. It doesn't matter if you're a Christian, or if you're an omnivore, or if you like to shop for shoes--I can overlook all of those if you think Bush is stupid. Well, and it helps if you like sports. That doesn't seem like too much to ask from a person.
9:57 PM


My god, my hand hurts. Clutching a pencil all day is exactly *not* what the doctor ordered. I think I got the interior measurements done. Well, I can already tell I missed a few, but I think I can make it work. It was the exam that really killed my hand. Two hours of scrawling. An hour and a half into it, I was like, "Fuck this, who cares about Kant's categorical imperative, anyway? Only, like, two people I know even know what it is, so why the hell am I doing this?" So I spent the last half hour writing impressions on consequentialist theories of philosophy rather than a full-fledged essay because I was just sick of writing about it.