05.13.01 - 10:28 p.m.

No one emails me on the weekends. This could be because others have real "jobs" and aren�t obsessively combing the internet at all hours in their rooms, but still. I�m like Morrissey, I need to be loved.

It�s been a weekend of large indifference. I took lots of naps. I went on a date with the 20-year-old waiter who a) told me he�d been to a PROM the night before, b) took me to the Chicago Botanic Gardens, c) also told me he was bipolar and had "a mild form of psychosis." The gardens were beautiful, though � I could imagine going there with a picnic lunch and a boy I really like. There was a vegetable garden. I ate a mint leaf and wanted to pull a beet out of the ground.

The entire day, I had this eerie feeling of being on vacation. All this nature, right at the northern edge of Cook County. I felt like I wasn�t here at all, but�I don�t know, maybe Delaware, or Vancouver, or any other of the various big garden places I�ve been dragged to with my family over the years.

We went to eat at this Cajun restaurant west of Deerfield, because he wanted to show me Bannockburn or something, I wasn�t quite following. But the restaurant had a Disney-ish fake bayou theme to it, which only added to the surreal quality of the day. I really felt like I wasn't anywhere, disembodied. I was so exhausted after all this new fake stuff that I had to escape the boy and sleep.

And today I couldn�t take sitting around my room anymore, so I said "fuck it" and walked out the door. So I have orange hair again. It�s more tasteful than last time, as a concession to my upcoming professional status, but I still like it.

I went and hung out with Caroline, my new soon-to-be anal roommate, and she liked me, so I guess I�m moving in a month. ROCK N� ROLL! We went shoe shopping - the second best way to bond with a girl. (The first, drinks, was nixed because Cute Neighborhood Bar was closed.)

I found Powerpuff Girls postcards in the GoCard kiosk at the grocery store.