Good Bye!

Dear friends, anonymous readers and lurkers alike,

It has become clear to me that "Wings Are For the Birds" no longer represents a collective experience that I can relate to in my new phase of life. Post-graduation, post-near-nervous breakdown, I have reached a place where some very lofty and long-term goals have been met and final chapters have been written. I am no longer trying to squeeze in glib clips or interesting photos between assignments or ruminating on the inhumanity of life and the pursuit of happiness. While certainly I encounter frustration on a daily basis and still carry a passion for socio-cultural criticism, I am no longer in a classroom where material is being forced and my voice being sculpted by another's pen. It's all me, baby.

That said, I hope you will join me at my new blog, Present Perfect, and follow along as I undertake some new and exciting circumstances in the coming months and years. I look forward to dedicating more time, thought and positivity to the blog realm.

Best,

Kimberly

World Cup- England 1, US ...1?

Caroline

I liked that our goal was based on the goalies butter fingers muaaah hahaha

Me

ohhh yeah

i feel really bad for that guy

i mean, we'll take the win

i mean tie

but he s getting lambasted in the media

5:42amCaroline

I am sure he got a super wedgie after

The Finer Points of the Stomach Flu (It's Not What You Think)

Don't you hate when authors use that afterthought? 'It's not what you think'. As in, my writing is not compelling enough to hook you in to my ideas, no matter how unoriginal, but here's an idea that will mask that fact!

But seriously, I've got the stomach flu and it blows. I am currently in my 50th-plus hour of the sickness, holed up on Tim's couch with a bevvy of delights in front of me- Ritz crackers, Gatorade, Ramen (just the broth, not the noodles) and Sprite- and I do not feel well. Though the un-eating has subsided, the eating itself has not yet begun, either. So here I sit, in stomach-pain purgatory, wishing the little demons in my abdomen would stop it with the cheese graters, already.

I am trying to embrace this experience as much as possible. After all, at no other time in my life do I get to spend so much time on the couch, glued to the TV, with my parent's encouragement. Plus, my GI tract does not negotiate with terrorists. So I can get mad, or I can get cozy and ride this bitch out.

I spent the whole day on my parent's couch yesterday, watching the "Law and Order Co-Ed Killers Marathon" (I'll just let you contemplate that one for a moment....) and catching the semi-finals of the Women's College World Series. Now, I am not a particularly big baseball or softball fan. In fact, when it comes to televised sports, baseball ranks about as low as golf on excitement. But, I do like almost all sports competitions. And you can bet if I am going to be sequestered to the couch, I will watch a hard ball game on TV. And it's going to be softball. And it's going to involve the Lady Cats. Why? Because they're awesome.

But I am not going to discuss them now. The Lady Cats deserve far more attention and far less Ritz crumbs than I am able to provide in my current state. Plus, I am currently watching game one of the Championship series and finding it hard to simultaneously write and scream at them. However, I can discuss what has been overwhelmingly relevant in my life in the last 48 hours without much energy output because I have had quite a bit of time to sit on it (literally) and ponder.

And that is this: The unique quandary of the stomach-flu stricken coffee drinker.

Essential to this problem are the intersectional elements that combine to create quite the conundrum. That is,

The stomach ailment: the source of extreme abdominal discomfort that constuitively creates a siuation where food or liquid must be very bland (or not comsumed at all) and activity is restricted to wretching over a bucket or sprawling on the couch.

The composition of the desired consumable: Delicious. Acidic. Not mass produced**. Umm... Dark. The first three are key, but all four seem to discount coffee from the acceptable digestibles.

The physical, spiritual and emotional effects of ingesting said consumable: Better circulation. Euphoria. Relaxation. A sense of Rocky Balboa-style I-can-take-on-anything-barefisted-ness.

The physical, spiritual and emotional effects of NOT ingesting said consumable: Headache. Sweats. A sense of damnation. Despair. Muderous impulses. AND

Lack of suitable substitutes to get through these conditions per the criteria above.

Or, the cliff's notes version: coffee is both a routine and blissful part of my day. Un/fortunately, it is habit forming and has physical consequences when not ingested. Call it an addiction, I call it necessary. And in the case of the stomach flu, not having coffee makes me contemplate ending it all, because by its very nature, successful consumption relies on the stomach to be in fairly good working condition. My stomach is sitting on the couch in briefs living off workman's comp.

A love for coffee is a beautiful thing. Coffee is a divine beverage. It's composition builds character. It is right up there with the nectar of the gods, the juice of the jehovah, the fountain of life. It takes the drinker to heights undiscovered and elevates to a state of nirvana.

Or it makes you want to die, if your stomach is under the weather.

**There is an assumed level of coffee proficiency and standards in the criteria.

Stuff I Like, pt. II

NiceNeatNecessarykNowledge

Stuff I like... Cats N' Bike

Pictured: Happy thoughts.

Summer, Lately

Kitters assuming her afternoon nap alter-ego: The Trashball

Bell Peppers, Danver's Half-long Carrots, Roma Tomatoes

Petunias, doomed Lavender. Not pictured: Sweet Basil

The cappucino at Luce- I may or may not have

taken a sip before I was able to capture its

beauty. It's Soy. Of course.

My brother looks so handsome in his doctoral graduation

outfit...and crab bib.

GRADUATION!

Things have finally settled down in my little sphere of existence. This week, I had the chance to scrub my bathtub (!), mop my floors, clean my kitchen, sweep my patio and finally shelve stacks of textbooks. These banal tasks were significantly satisfying because I had to budget time and energy during the last weeks of college and the inaugural days of summer- the cleaning account got no love or deposits during this time. Those that know me well are aware that I rely on a clean kitchen in the morning/evening, a working coffee pot, and a tidy room to sleep well at night. Beyond that, dust collected, the tub got a little dirtier and my patio looked more akin to the sahara than a space for commiserating and leisure time. In other words, if it didn't make me hyperventilate to see less than clean, it got the kabash in the daily routine.

In addition to giving attention to these neglected tasks, I also undertook a new venture in yard maintenance: cactus wrangling. Over the last few months, as Tucson received unseasonable amounts of rain, a certain large cactus next to my house, who we will call "Burb" in light of its species (Burbank Spineless), has grown to Hulk-sized proportions and slowly taken over my walkway, roof and some power lines in the complex. I have had several close calls with "Burb", missing s/his racquet sized pads by inches with various parts of my body. On Monday, though, things came to a prickly head with Burb. Literally. I walked strait into a wrath of pads, covered not with spines, but little pokey baby hairs, akin to hundreds of splinters. Adding to the injury of the encounter was the simultaneous verbal protest issued by Tim in the process, causing me to flail about like a half-seized spazz and forcing the contact of my face, forearm and right hand into the mix. If it had not been painful and traumatizing, the whole scene would have been hilarious. Once I calmed down enough, Tim took a look at my limbs and face and proclaimed that I had quite a bit of baggage sticking out of my extremities. To which I responded by stomping back to the house and seizing the tweezers for an hour-long, semi-successful removal session of Burb's five-o-clock shadow(s).

The incident alone would have been enough for me to decide to take action against my encroaching friend, but the missed hairs stuck in various parts of my body provided a constant reminder of the necessity of scaling back Burb's sphere of influence. I undertook this task yesterday.

Luckily for me, I possess of some heavy duty gardening gloves, certain saw-shaped bike tools, Google and an iota of creativity. The first two were used to protect my supple flesh from anymore unwelcome encounters with Burb's fuzz. The second two were put to use researching effective ways to remove the pads from the cactus without causing harm to the plant at large, as well as looking up the ways to prepare nopales. I don't know if Tim and I will actually get around to cooking the cactus, but I imagine the satisfaction I'd feel ingesting something that caused me bodily/psychic annoyance in the past would be significant. You know, kinda like Hannibal.

Here's Burb.

I know, wtf, right? He's like the Barry Bonds of cacti.

C'man

ONE female athlete out of EIGHTEEN on Breakout Athletes of 2010? Fuck you, SI. It's 2010. Those statistics take us back to 1970.