Early Rising is overrated

I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning, 5 am with no more sleep coming. Of course, I was too stubborn to just get up, so I laid in bed until I finally roused myself at 7. Usually, four hours of sleep would leave me falling over tired, but I'm actually fairly alert. I spent some time working on my presentation for class today (switched from Wednesday) and listening to rap music as I ate my toast.

People often ask, "What do you miss most about the States?" Aside from family and friends, it's a fairly easy question. I had a dream the other night that sums it up best. For some reason I was in Miami (where I've never been) and I ran into Kobe Bryant (who I'm not even a fan of). We went to get burritos. I presume this needs no further explanation.

Another common thing that occurs is people saying, "I don't normally like Americans..." This happened just the other night at the "party". One of the people that lives in that house is a German woman. After talking to her for a bit, she pulled out that line. Now, you can interpret it in one of two ways. Either, "I don't normally like Americans, but in your case, I'll make an exception," or, "I don't normally like Americans and I don't like you." I didn't like her much, so I didn't bother to find out what she was thinking. Yesterday, however, I realized I've been dealing with that statement all wrong. So now I have a new policy. When someone says, "I normally don't like Americans..." I'll reply with, "I don't normally like people from [insert country of origin]." If they ask why, I'll make them answer first, hear all the stereotypical comments, and then reply, "I don't normally like people from [X] because they tend to stereotype Americans like you just did." Adversarial? Yes. But I'm tired of being castigated or prejudged simply because I originate from the finest nation on Earth. I'm not the ugly American. I know more about the world than where Texas is. So piss off if you go down that road, I say.

[All Brits are excluded from the above. I have never had a Brit utter those words and it will be shocking if they ever do. Mainland Europeans are a different story.]

[All cute girls are excluded from the above as well. I have the right to be arbitrary.]

As I'm in full study mode, I've been living like a refugee of late. Well, that and it's been cold as a brick out. I'm, of course, talking about food. I simply have not wanted to waste the time going to the real grocery store or risk greater frigidity in my extremities, so I've been grabbing whatever I can to eat (usually dodgy food that is probably doing absolutely horrible things to my innards). I decided to stop doing that, however, so I had proper meals yesterday (salmon, homemade salsa, salad, etc.). Today I get to go to the totally sweet Mediterranean spot and hook up a Halal style sandwich wrap dealio. I'm pretty excited to not be eating ass-tastic food.

I talked to the Prototype for awhile last night. She's flipflopping on how long to stay in this country (again). I feel for her because the whole career after grad school thing is a bit tricky and she definitely wants her career to get going. At the same time, though, my interest in her is waning. She's a quality woman but I think she's so consumed with her own internal struggle that she really can't give anyone anything at this point. Live in the moment or don't live at all, I say.