42 DAYS TILL L.A. . . .

I have realized that Friendster is exhausting. It is not turning out to be the cool voyeuristic experience I expected it to be. The first couple of days, I was a continuous fit of giggles. Now, I am stressed out.

I have been feeling an idiotic compulsion to accumulate "friends." This is the epitome of ridiculous because I KNOW who my friends are! I KNOW that I don't have many "close" friends, and I am very selective with who becomes a "close" friend, and I like it that way. At last count, I have exactly five Friendster "friends" -- fortunately, they are all near and dear to me in real life, so I feel okay about having "accumulated" them . . . but I have no idea who their friends are! Frankly, I don't know that I actually care that much . . .

And then there's the random messaging. Just last night, I received an email from a friend's friend, familiarly joking with me about our mutual friend. No, no, no! Don't DO that! I don't KNOW you. Don't EMAIL me. Don't JOKE with me as if I'm your new best buddy. That is so . . . CREEPY!

See, it's one thing if you read someone's blog, and leave them a little note letting them know you appreciated (or didn't -- whatever the case may be) their entry for the day. It's an entirely different thing to just start emailing some random person out in the universe because you think you might have something in common. There needs to be a foundation, however flimsy. Otherwise, you're just a freak. Or maybe I'm just trying to justify my own blog-lurking tendencies (sorry, CaffeineGuy) . . .

On a totally different note: it's hot. I dislike hotness. I loathe summer. Actually, maybe it's just the humidity that accompanies summer that I loathe, but being an East-Coaster, the humidity is unavoidable; thus, I loathe summer. It has only really been hot for the past two days, but already my summer malaise is setting in. My appetite has been reduced to a miniscule mockery of what it once was: I only want to eat watermelon or cold Korean noodles. Every other food makes me morose. I can't sleep, even though I've resorted to sleeping almost fully naked (shh, don't tell anyone . . . I'm blushing as I write this). Unfortunately, my parents don't believe in sleeping with the air-conditioning on all night, and opening the windows when it's a stagnant and damp 68-degrees outside doesn't do much to prevent me from wilting. So, I toss and turn in my bed, breathe shallowly, try panting through my mouth to see if I cool off like dogs do, count backwards from 100 before realizing that the energy produced by thinking is probably making me warmer, then slowly slide off my bed to lie spreadeagle on the floor in the hope that it will be 1 or 2 degrees cooler down there. Pathetic, I know. I can't wait until October.