We listened to a lot of MJ unpacking, but to be honest, I didn't feel it. I didn't listen to much pop music until I was 11. There were a lot of Michael Jackson songs that I'd heard but didn't realize were his. (Ian is, needless to say, a little surprised.) The first time I heard Thriller? College, when Sing Alliance was cheated out of an award.

We moved to a bigger apartment, but somehow we threw out so much stuff -- our beloved L-shaped sofa was just the beginning. (It wasn't going to fit through our door unless we paid someone $500 or so to take it apart and put it back together.) But board games, books, shoes, nightstands, lamps ... not to mention the storage cart my parents bought me when I moved into the freshman dorm ... all gone or going. It's actually kind of hard for me because I don't like throwing things away. Oh well. Such is the life.

Oh, and I'm finally understanding why contact paper is so important. There are these weird spots in our dresser drawers. I don't know if it's oil, soap residue or what (clearly it's nonpolar), but now I know why Mom always nagged me about it ... and now I'm lining our kitchen cabinets, wiping up bits of leftover rice/dirt and wondering why the previous tenant or the interim cleaning service never thought to do so ...

I don't understand -- I don't think I have that many books, but they're still such trouble to pack (and unpack). Not that I really want to be packing. Maybe I really should ditch Career Plan B for Plans C-F since Plan B would require more moving and Plans C-F could possibly mean a house or a long-term lease. Why can't I concentrate? If I could concentrate I would have been a much better student like all my friends. Shoot, if I could concentrate I'd eat more, too, since my attention span for food isn't that great (which is why I seem to be constantly hungry these days). You know who can concentrate? My cousin Emily. I'm supposed to edit an essay for her for dental school, which is important because root canals are expensive and I'm counting on her to handle my future root canals for free if I can get her into dental school. According to her essay she scored in the top 1 percent on the entrance exam, but only the top 0.5 percent of entering freshmen qualify for medicine-related job in Taiwan. On one hand this is a great filter, but what about all those other smart kids? *speaking as someone who could conceivably test into the top 1 percent but only if it were a simple test like the PSAT. We really need to make our standardized tests harder.* I think I was supposed to go to the drugstore today for something the doctor wanted me to do, but it's not that important, and I've got my books sorted into all these piles -- China, US, Watergate, "smart" fiction, "fluffy" fiction, editing, other. If I don't clear these, we don't have a place to sit for dinner. I threw away a diary. It covers nearly a 10-year span of whining. That's what I do best, really. Whine. If we were suddenly in a situation like, say, Afghanistan's, I'd be dead in a year because I wouldn't be able to keep my mouth shut or be strong enough to dig up potatos along the side of the road or whatever. We just ate lunch, but I'm hungry. But I should pack up another box of books before I look into this alleged purchase of ice cream that Ian was alluding to last night.