on the necessity of brain refreshing.

Creative nonfiction is difficult to write, this is something I have come to find. Writing for classes, i.e. hum and soc, always seems so necessarily sterile, like boring the reader is a kind of academic, student-to-teacher obligation. I always bore myself, which is why I so often take such opportunities to develop new interests in things like Slavic languages and bottling water. I have even resorted to looking at lists of ingrediants and wikipediaing bizarre subfoodish listings (see: silicon dioxide, which didn't even sound remotely safe but snuck quite alarmingly into my Land o' Lakes hot cocoa. Oh and, it gives you cancer if inhaled.)

Anyway, my poor uncreative sterile brain has recently uncovered the joys of creative nonfiction via the adorably semi-pretentious yet terribly self-conscious essays of one David Foster Wallace. I haven't read the ambitious, fictional "Infinite Jest", for which is arguably better known... though I'd like to eventually. What I DID read was both "Getting Away From Already Being Pretty Much Away From It All", about visiting the Illinois State Fair, and "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again", chronicling his ultra-pampered voyage upon a commercial cruise ship.

He is hilariously hyperobservant and well-researched. My one critique--I sometimes got the feeling that he narrowly exaggerated appearances and events for the sake of the humor--is more of a skepticism... I can hardly get the guy to prove it. Still, his observations and style make me fall in love a little, and there's a gentleness toward his subjects that really is important.

"...every so often editors at these magazines slap their foreheads and remember that about 90% of the United States lies between the Coasts and figure they'll engage somebody to do pith-helmeted anthropological reporting on something rural and heartlandish."

...

Anyway, now for chocolate fondue (no joke).

In lieu of studying Chinese...

though our skin may not touch skin

"Heart-carved tree trunk, yankee bayonet
A sweetheart left behind
Far from the hills of the sea-swelled Carolinas
That's where my true love lies

Look for me when the sun-bright swallow
Sings upon the birch bough high
But you are in the ground with the wolves and the weevils
All a'chew upon your bones so dry

But when the sun breaks
To no more bullets in Battle Creek
Then will you make a grave
For I will be home then
I will be home then
I will be home then
I will be home then
Then

When I was a girl how the hills of Oconee
Made a seam to hem me in
There at the fair when our eyes caught, careless
Got my heart right pierced by a pin

But oh, did you see all the dead of Manassas
All the bellies and the bones and the bile
Though I lingered here with the blankets barren
And my own belly big with child

But when the sun breaks
To no more bullets in Battle Creek
Then will you make a grave
For I will be home then
I will be home then
I will be home then
I will be home then

Stems and bones and stone walls too
Could keep me from you
Skein of skin is all too few
To keep me from you

But oh my love, though our bodies may be parted
Though our skin may not touch skin
Look for me with the sun-bright sparrow
I will come on the breath of the wind"

I'm having some trouble getting over how fantastic this song is. The sound of it fits so perfectly with the lyrics, the lyrics are so pretty, it's Civil War-era love, it features Laura Veirs... The Decemberists have a thing for people having a thing for dead people, and dead people having a thing for living people, and I have a thing for the Decemberists.

Tonight I was reminded that no matter how many northern winters you go through, you just never get used to that skin-reddening bitter wind, and the primitive, mad desire for warmth. Downtown Chicago is as good as Antarctica, with that wind off the lake.. I am a big-city eskimo.

Now, after hours spent laboring over a still-insufficient hum paper (but one which I did edit according to my TA's suggestions), I will sleep. But first, an actual depiction of how messy my room is in the height of exam distraction:

What child is this anyway?

All you need to get you going is a good existential crisis, apparently. And calming green tea from the depths of China. And Yann Tiersen.

My essay is now half-written, draft sent to my TA to be destroyed, bless her heart. I will probably be too lazy to make the changes she suggests, though, sadly... but requirements are requirements. I included in my email of the draft a bizarre, rambling notice on how I referred to the third person reader as "he", because that seemed grammatically correct and less awkward than the cumbersome "he or she". I said I was a feminist and found this distasteful but necessary. Or something. It was really just completely random.

I just re-read my teacher's notes at the end of my last essay (on the Metamorphoses of Ovid, kind of).. he wrote that I have "a good eye for details, but there's some meandering from idea to idea". Which I think is fantastic, because really, that's how I think. I meander. I aimlessly wander, like a lost old woman with a cane. Only just slightly more quickly.

I am recently obsessed with this video and the showcased song. I have forced at least 4 people to watch (and adore) it.

The line "My love for you is not like friendship" is so simple, but effective. Sometimes you only love someone like a lover, or it seems more intense, or you can't focus on the friend part, even though that seems to undermine the relationship. The first time I watched that video I wasn't paying close attention and ended up thinking the boy was a boy she liked, which got me thinking about what would happen if you fell in love with someone when you were small, you died, and you watched them grow up, and fall for and marry someone else. And all the while you're the same little girl, stuck in time and in love, unable to meet anyone new. Love is such a fascinating emotion.

Obsession #2: Kate Bush's high-pitched rendition of Wuthering Heights--something of which I somehow never tire. I first heard the song performed at a Decemberists show, by Petra Haden, and I loved it immediately. I was then pressed to read the book, which I liked very much, and grew to love... one of those books that somehow take time to sink in. Now I want badly to re-read it.

Obsession #3: "Rue des Cascades" by Yann Tiersen. It's like being somewhere that doesn't exist. And when it breaks into strings + accordian I want to melt.

Now, in celebration of classes being done, and finals week being only a week long, and my room being an incredible mess, and rejecting high heels, and drinking white wine, and discovering the Classics Cafe today, and snow, and fuzzy socks, and accurately memorizing a Chinese dialog, and feather bedding, and the god of green tea...

I go to bed.

early december madness

I am losing my mind... over a humanities paper.

This is ridiculous. I literally, literally cannot get anywhere with it. Every sentence I write falls like a brick... writing should be a flowing, organized activity of release and understanding, not some kind of painfully heavy, awkward excavation in which all I find in my mind is... a wasteland.

Which, coincidentally, is what the paper is about. The Wasteland. T.S. Eliot's glorious mindfuck which leaves me nervous and disoriented and awe-struck. This, as well as Une Semaine de Bonte - a Surrealist work (picture-book of sorts) that somehow manages to leave me even more disoriented. Between all the birdmen and naked women, I. Am. Just. Not. Sure. I think I understand better now, about provocation of the subconscious, and etcetera..

I am to write about these works in the context of collection - how they are collections, fragments, and what that means. I have my thesis, I have (some) ideas, but I don't have any kind of eloquence or grace. Every time I start, I veto whatever I've just typed.

I need to inspire inspiration. Or learn how to get out of this rigid, disgusting formal essay mode. I need it to be crisp, and clear, and sensible. But very little is crisp and clear and sensible. My life is not crisp and clear and sensible. This paper is inspiring an existential crisis.

Just, what I'm wondering is this:

Shouldn't I be excited about this paper? Shouldn't I be thrilled to learn about this and synthesize, to record my thoughts? This was supposed to be the kind of thing I get excited about, but instead I'm in some weird academic paralysis. Can all of the creativity be drained out of you? Is that what too much education does? Is schooling good? Am I in a box? Do I lack the intelligence, or am I suddenly flustered because I'm losing something? ...like passion.

Why are we given a life, and we need to find a way to fit in life?

:D

All he wanted to do was go to Disneyland, damn it!

quiet, quiet, ok

Crumbs from bread on the cottony, ugly purple bedspread. A poster half falling-down. A light bulb too bright. Drawers slightly ajar, draping wrinkled jacket, green neon clock numbers. Cords on the freshly-swept floor, magnets on the refrigerator, holding nothing up. Too many towels on the rack, paper on the floor, poem (that I don't read anymore) on the wall. October calendar dates, midway through November. Shoes in a collapsed mountain, opened contact solution, half-drained perfume bottle.

I like to write. Liked to write? Used to write? The compulsion is coming back. The good, solitary lines in the middle of math homework, the sudden, pseudo-interesting ideas. But I think I'm intimidated by the pen; I've been separated from fiction for a long time. How does one jump back into that?

I have fodder. Is that necessary? I once read an interview maybe, maybe just a quote - some writer claiming that no one is sufficiently prepared for writing until they're 35, because by then they've lived. (I may have muddled the exactness of that, but I'm sure of the idea.) That's once thing I hate about writers (or some writers).. they feel like they can make universal statements about writing, statements that are supposed to apply to everyone, because they've published something. I think it's bullshit, and strikingly pretentious besides. Carson McCullers was something like 22 when she wrote "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" - an incredibly mature novel. Life isn't about the years.

I have fodder. Family fodder, an interesting family... who doesn't claim that? Love fodder, or an idea of it. A reserve of bitterness, to be dipped into when I realize I could be treated properly. Some change - of scenery, people. Perhaps an ounce or two of maturity. I know my faults, and I tango with them daily. I know friends and kind people.

[Speaking of kind people.. few really give a shit about kind people. People like interesting people. But think about how hard it must be to be kind. To not think about yourself for 5 minutes.]

Maybe it's not kind people, but kind actions. Some people are just better at them. No - it's a choice. Kindness or not. It's clear, but easy to avoid. Maybe we spend our time avoiding thoughtfulness...

chicago at night.

This weekend was interesting, a bit.

Friday night Upekha and I went downtown to Kay's apartment on Michigan Avenue and met her highly exuberant friends. After several hours of steadily increasing exuberance, we left and searched endlessly (well, for about 20 minutes) for a #6 bus stop. It was a magical search, though, as we came across no less than SIX rabbits. The first one was exciting, caused us to point gleefully and appreciate the unlikely brush with the animal kingdom. The second rabbit was just crazy - two rabbits in downtown Chicago? I mean, sure, this was a park.. thing, such that there were bushes and grasses and trees, but where did they come from? Did they, like us, ride the el trains? Were they sightseeing? Were they sailing rabbits, castaways near enough to the coast to swim to shore? Can rabbits swim?

By the third rabbit we weren't surprised anymore, and the next three were almost to be expected. It was something of a rabbit infestation, but a charming one.

I saw a sizeable rat leaping about on a garbage can, which was thrilling as I'd never seen a rat in public before (except in a pet store cage). I acquired a mutilated green-and-white polka-dotted umbrella, which might be in Luis's room. We sat across from a strange, spontaneously laughing man on the bus. It was altogether a magical night.

Saturday was uneventful and unproductive, but that night Upekha, Zach and I once again took the 6 downtown to watch a movie. We went for Borat, but because it was sold out ended up seeing Stranger Than Fiction, which I enjoyed. It left me feeling warm and content, and afterward we walked around for a while - hoping to go to a chocolate cafe, but it was closed.

We walked to Grant Park, hoping Buckingham Fountain would be on, such that we could admire the prettiness of the lights and the water and the city lights. It was off, but that was okay, because Grant Park is pretty and deserted at night, and we saw four more rabbits and two more rats.

That makes ten rabbits, three rats total. Which is more wildlife than I ever got to see back home.

I spent all of today (not really an exaggeration) reading "The Arabian Nights", deducing that I'm a slow (thorough?) reader. I have that uncomfortable, sterile feeling so unavoidably produced by sitting in my room all day reading what I must get read.

But the ten rabbits make all things worthwhile.

brightening up a marx paper

"...The capital has been used to hire more laborers and solidify the cycle - from surplus value to laborers to more surplus value, creating a widening profit margin for the capitalist. As the desirability of the unicorn became stronger, there were riotous masses storming the streets in search of their own personal mythological masterpiece."

(Thanks, Alex!)

a long-lost violin

Today I learned from Emily that bears don't actually hibernate.

And that I don't like South Indian food. It mostly tastes like pepper. I hate pepper.

I also, along with Upekha, Zach, and Stephen, stumbled upon the most thickly concentrated all-encompassing net of ethnic neighborhoods I've ever seen. In West Chicago, near Belmont. We went from Israeli, to Afghan, to Russian (quite the geographic jump) and ended up in Pakistani/Indian territory. We ate at a place that (if I remember right) was called "The Indian Garden", with a nice slogan, something like "Nirvana Cuisine!" Everything was peppery-tasting, except for the chicken (which was magenta) and the bread. Those were pretty good. So was the water. All five glasses.

The aftertaste left something be desired, slash we just wanted cheesecake. So we headed for the John Hancock building... but not before admiring the irony of "Gandhi Appliances" and "Siddhartha Jewels".

We also heard Islamic prayer emanating from a building we walked past. It was actually really moving for me, somehow, just to hear. It sounded very.. deep, serious, meaningful. Almost gave me chills.

The rest of the night was pretty standard - cheesecake, dorm, talking. I was lame/overworked enough to think I might read some of my hum stuff tonight - the Metamorphoses of Ovid - but I don't know if I have the concentration. Maybe just a little.. but Karl Marx looms on the horizon, prodding me with sharp objects as a reminder that I have a paper due Wednesday. I'm a little tired of economics.. or economic social theory. Weird - this quarter is almost over. Only a few weeks left.

Today has been OK

Haven't finished my Marx readings, but I did everything else expected of me, so I'm forgiving myself for escaping with my headphones. It's amazing what listening to just one song, in the dark, through headphones, can do.

Tomorrow is Halloween. Shit. I don't feel like I have the energy for Halloween right now... maybe if I could stall it for a week, sort of put it off and make everyone play along when I actually feel like putting on a mask and having Fun. "Fun" is such a weird concept - I kind of wish there weren't established times for it. Trying to have Fun when you don't feel like it is kind of horrible. Like dancing when you don't feel like it. Like people trying to cheer you up when you physically need to be sad or you'll spontaneously combust.

It's a Monday, let me be.

Last weekend was Parents Weekend, or Parent's Weekend, but I don't think so. The weekend does sort of belong to them, but not enough for an apostrophe. I saw my parents - again, as I've seen them a lot lately - and my sister. I went to a lecture on Language and Thought, which was interesting. I ate bad "Texan" food, which was bad. I breathed in smoke, I felt sad, I walked in the cold air, I watched others eat Thai food, I saw an orchestrated and vocal performance of a Carmen song (the one everyone knows, that I love). I ate expensive cheesecake with Upekha's family and my sister, which was good. It was a weird Saturday.

Sunday Gina and I went to Wicker Park, which I like normally. It's tremendously indie, in ways that make me want to gag a little sometimes, but it remains true to the idea that there can be ideas, which is different from Hastings. We went to American Apparel, which seemed exciting. Made in America! But it was all unicolor, somewhat odd clothing. We went to a vintage shop, to a used book store. I bought "Lolita".

There's something occasionally strangely depressing about riding the el at night. Maybe it's the smell, or the dirtiness, or the looks on the people's faces. Someone told me once: "Everything depresses you," which is not true, but valid in the sense that really random things depress me really quickly. Not deeply, just quickly.

I am not depressed right now. I am pondering stupidly. And I am listening to "In My Lady's House", which is a song that sounds beautiful, like a pillow. A pillow is kind of beautiful. Wait, no. A pillow is functional.

I was thinking some about love, and its relationship to touch. To be touched is to be healed, and to be healed is to be cared for, and to be cared for is to bond, and to bond is to love. QED, love and touch are closely related. But it's not an if-and-only-if. Love doesn't require touch, but touch hastens love. Though it should be noted that I'm not in it, it being love, and am pondering stupidly.

Hm. Bed.

Learning in between classes

1) People eat peas even when their parents don't make them.
2) People do cool things, like travel the world. And I mean most people.
3) Chinese leftovers stink, and horribly so. (Sidenote: There IS such a thing as too much Chinese food.)
4) Kissing is confusing. Not the act, just the effects.
5) Everyone likes tea.
6) Peeing with boys in the room makes you much more comfortable around them.
7) There are no mean Asians.
8) Just because there are numerous tasty desserts at every meal, at no added cost, doesn't mean you have to eat them. Still learning this one.
9) Dancing at frat parties is like dancing at the Prom (bad), only more drunk.
10) Music at frat parties is like music at the Prom (bad).
11) It is impossible to shave your legs in the shower. Without having a machete-like effect on them, I mean. Unless you're really good at yoga.
12) The laundry room is mind-numbing.
13) The el train is sure to be slowest when it's coldest outside.
14) Everything in Chinatown is cheap. And the portions are huge. Chinatown, however, is not huge.
15) A lot of people know Chinese. This is strange, but helpful.
16) You meet grad students on the bus, or waiting for the bus, and only there. Unless one is teaching your class.
17) Most Walk/Don't Walk signs may be ignored. On campus, anyway.
18) Bubble tea is wonderful, and wonderfully overbearing.
19) Not everything (but most everything) pertains to China.

freedom and democracy and SUVs for every boy and girl!

Wow. It's October now.

The past month has mostly been a blur of Adam Smith, vaguely-beatnikish activities, and ethnic food. A good blur, though. I should brush my teeth.

And not eat Lebanese food anymore, because apparently it causes me to almost-vomit at 6 in the morning for no particular reason. Weird.

Yesterday I walked from here, 60th Street, all the way to 35th Street where I got on the green el and rode until Adams/Wabash (I think). Twenty-five blocks may not sound like a lot, but it was reasonably exhausting. I started out thinking I could make it all the way downtown, but that would have taken hours. I will do it, though, eventually. Or eventch, as Alex says.

I came to Chicago somehow thinking the city, the downtown, would be my destination... the downtown is great, but it's all of the in-betweens that make a city so fabulous. Yuppie neighborhoods and their "starvin' vegans", bakeries with cheap pastries run by Slavic immigrants, train folk, singing old black men, bubble tea, Ethiopian cuisine. There's also the university life.. taping chairs to the ceiling, tea-drinking. Ironically, I'm more relaxed now than I ever was in high school.

Oh yeah, and I'm taking classes...

I'm not afraid of Jackson Park

I ride the train, and I ride it AFTER DARK, kids.

I am in Chicago, where all is good. The dorm room, the people, the profs (or at least their little Core description speeches - it's only Orientation Week), the architecture, the city... even the food. Things work here. I fit here. People are crazy and friendly and hyperactively excited about books and math and obscure world music.

Today I skipped my French placement exam, because a) it was optional in the first place and b) I'm not taking French but I AM taking another language. I went to Citibank but my bank account isn't open until tomorrow, so boo. I went to the Barnes & Noble/campus bookstore and bought 3 cheap books and a few dorm essentials. I saw Jon there, and he and I went to explore the exciting region of the Bartlet(t?) Mart thingy, where they sell groceries. Then we found Connie and ate an impromptu lunch (I was still full, but hey). I feel the need to make the aside that Bartlett has the most amazing campus food ever. Anyway. I then got the most expensive Kashi I will ever purchase, but that was fine because it'll last a while. I also noted that the Bart Mart has Sour Patch Kids in ladleable form. This will probably be important in the future.

THEN we went back to the dorm so poor Jon could finally drop off his fan and I could fridgerize the milk I got for my Kashi. And we went onward to our first registration meeting, and I got my course booklet. There's another one tomorrow morning.

Tonight was the B-J "Master's Reception", which involved looking semi-formal and eating catered dinner & dessert, listening to a very short address given by our Resident Master, and then going into the Judson Lounge to watch an African tribal drums thing. Which actually become pretty hoppin' once we started dancing. Not that anyone really knew how to dance to tribal drums. But that's not the point.

Last night was pretty great - we went out to the ImprovOlympics in northtown (near Wrigley Field) and watched a comedy show. Or three, more precisely. I will go to Chinatown with some people soon, I hope, and I'm looking forward to it.. we took the train straight through it and it looked wonderful.

I love Chicago. The school and the city and the people. And everything in between.

T MINUS ZERO.

My manic feelings are best portrayed through the Of Montreal song, "The Party's Crashing Me":

you're such a mystery
i just wanna stand and stare
nibble on your ear
and smell the ocean in your hair
i know you damage me
you leave me tangled in a knot
but when you reappear
i see neptunian blues that eyes forgot
neptunian blues that eyes forgot

still i only feel alive when the VU is flashing
alarms going off in my head
i want to grab you and just kiss you
maybe i should sit down
no sense in catching us now
yeah i only feel alright when the VU is flashing
and bombs going off in my head
i want to grab you, want to scream at you
no icing you down
the party's crashing us now
the party's crashing us now

Four days now....

Longest summer break EVER. I'm starting to feel like I'm still in high school, and I'm staying home sick. Probably due to the little kids on the playground that I can hear at recess, all their disjointed little voices reminding me faintly of 4th grade, and the damp September sand from the morning dew, and trying to get the good swing. Those memories are all a part of staying home sick. And then there's the isolation. And watching television at noon, mostly VH1 shows on Awesomely Bad Celebrity Hair and 41 Cheesiest Music Videos and other inane list shows. My head is full of silly string.

You'd think I might savor those memories, but actually they just really make me want to leave. So does that freaking recorded organ music from the Methodist church that goes off every 12PM and 6PM for 15 minutes at a time. I'm so sick of that.

It's weird, during the day I'm SO ready to leave, but really late at night I start to feel kind of scared. A little like subdued panic.. just because I won't have strings tying me to anything. Like Pinocchio learning to walk on his awkward wooden feet without his puppetmaster. Where would he go? Right now that sounds terribly ideal, refreshing, liberating - but at 2AM, it feels scary. But of course, 2AM is not a time to be trusted. It puts emotions on cocaine.

So now I'm just waiting. Reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, which is good, but complicated. Taking 6-8 allergy pills a day, trying to keep my lately hyperactive sinuses in check. Drinking chamomile tea. Studying calculus (seriously). At least I'm starting to understand related rates problems, which is more than I can say about last year. So on the good side, I'm reading and learning math. On the bad side, my left eye hurts and won't stop watering, and my ears feel like they need to pop, but whenever I plug my nose and blow, which usually works, I just feel like I'm going to pass out. Opening my jaw really wide doesn't help either.

My body is such a machine of dysfunction. I think if I had lived in Victorian times, they would have branded me "sickly" and had me lay on a couch all the time. Or I could go back to 6th grade on some retro situation comedy. All I need are braces and thick, coke-bottle glasses to complete my look.

I wouldn't be feeling this insecure if I wasn't being so antisocial, and I wouldn't be antisocial if there was actually life around here. Instead it's just incoherent children's voices at recess and that obnoxious organ.

Why I Love My New School

24902. Telling the Truth: Skepticism, Relativism, and Bullshit. N. Hansen. Spring, 2007.

hard at work or hardly working? HAW.

I am at work, sitting on the floor behind the counter, making use of the laptop. If I don't, who will? I have an hour before I get to go home, crawl into bed, and attempt to go back to sleep. Last night sucked; I got all emotional, and then I couldn't sleep, and then I talked to Connie which is good because she's lovely, and then I couldn't sleep some more. When I did fall asleep, I woke up several times until finally at 4AM I got up and suffered. I suffered because I am of the feminine persuasion and I chose not to have a baby. God (or vague floaty conception of such) is punishing me at 4AM for not having a baby when it was conceivably possible, given my biological status. The pain was not fathomable. Not even the fetal position brought comfort. Not even a hot water bottle, in which I somehow managed to melt a hole with hot water (how is that possible?) God finally gave in to 2 Ibuprofen and allowed me to sleep at 6AM. And then I got up at 7 for work.

I am lately plagued with anxiety, I think. I have a number of reasons for thinking this, and one of the most interesting is the fact that this morning I woke up with a constellation of red spots on my leg. It closely resembles the Little Dipper, in fact. I am bewildered. Last week I had a similar constellation on my stomach. My mom thinks my cats have fleas and they're biting me in my sleep. A disturbing notion, to be sure. But I don't think my cats have fleas, and if they did, I don't think they would suddenly take to biting star patterns into my skin.

I am a little anxious, maybe, about school. Not about living kind of far away or about the radical adjustment, but about the math placement test. And sharing acommunity bathroom with boys. Not that I'd voice objection, because then I'd be that girl that voiced an objection, and then I'd have to walk up or down a flight of stairs every time I'd have to pee, and I have a small bladder. Or, worse, all the guys would have to and they'd whine. I don't really mind, save for my own embarrassment. I think it'll be kind of a fun experiment.

I know not to be anxious, because I have a plan for the math exam. And the bathrooms - we're all just animals anyway. I'll just transition back over to my mindframe of incredible euphoria, and think about how I'm going to be living in the city of Chicago, riding my bicycle along lakeshore, learning with a new sort of intensity, eating salad and ice cream whenever, meeting strange and intriguing people, and partying atop the John Hancock building, amongst other places. I will drink wine and eat fancy cheese. I will wander. I will talk a lot.

Mmm, the future. Thirteen days..

15 days and counting...

Entering my final stride, my last two weeks before I leave for Chicago.

I've been tentatively packing - really more like shifting my Stuff to and fro - and tonight I came across some things I definitely will not be leaving in the easy-access vicinity of my parents. Namely, diaries and the like. Notes; terrible, drippy poetry; unsent letters (shiver). No, these things will definitely not be observed by anyone who ever wants to take me seriously again. Still, in a way, I don't want to take them with me, either. Why cramp my dorm room with my past when the point is to leave the past behind me? This is a dilemma indeed.

I also came across my calculus notebook (horrors!) and a set of precalc notes that brought an uncomfortable point to the surface - I've kind of, um, forgotten all the math I've learned over the past few years. Since I'd rather the university faculty not deem me Hopeless and send me packing, I'm going to have to study (no! pain!) some math before I leave. Math really inspires a special kind of dread in my heart...

On a lighter note, I'M LEAVING SOON. I'm going to be learning things and sleeping in my own blankets and using my own toothpaste and shampoo and sampling the city and enjoying life (when I'm not doing homework). I'm trying to decide which classes I want to take, and I'm thinking of doing 3 instead of 4 during the first quarter so I have room to adjust. Especially if (sigh) math is part of my curriculum... but I really have nothing pinned down for certain.

I'd like to take a new language - and I'm thinking that language will either be Chinese or Arabic. It's kind of a toss-up. I guess I'm more attracted to Chinese. It's the most spoken language in the world, so that's good. Except everyone who speaks it is waaaaaaay over there --->

or over there <--- (I have a terrible sense of direction)

Tomorrow I'm getting paid for walking and feeding the neighbor's dog, as well as killing both of their fish. Killing the fish wasn't actually part of the deal, in fact I was supposed to feed them, but they happened to die on my watch. Within a day of each other. Clearly, there was some meddling on my part... yet I did what they told me to do. I fed them a pinch of food every day (is there much discrepancy in a "pinch"? Perhaps I pinched too much. According to Wikipedia, fish don't know when to stop eating and can die from being overfed). I also changed their water after 5 days as was clearly indicated in my instructions. I believe that therein lay their tragic death! Sure, they were swimming around fine for a day but the next day goldy had died, floating obscenely at the top of the jar (who keeps their fish in a jar, anyway?) I called and told the neighbors, also commenting that blue-y was looking a little... inactive. "That one always looks like it's dying" was the response I got. But I knew what would happen. And low and behold, next day he was dead, only he was down at the bottom of the jar. Did he drown? Can a fish drown? How the hell did I manage to kill fish?

Any knowledge on the part of fish owners or fish experts would be appreciated.

In truth, my fulfilling of their expectations might have been a little unsatisfactory. In addition to the Dead Fish Incident, my parents, who so generously walked the dog for me one day, also very generously and accidentally fed him one of my brother's Tegretol, an "anticonvulsant and mood stabilizing drug" with side effects like "drowsiness" and "impaired motor coordination"... it sure was nice to be approached by my dad the next morning and told, "Maybe you should check on the dog.. and see if he's still alive."

He was, incidentally, albeit rather mellower than usual. Which I didn't mind, after the hyperactive tornado of an animal let loose a massacre in the living room.

Casualties include but are not limited to:
1 decorative pillow
1 children's book
several pieces of mail, apparently seized from the table
1 straw mat

Actually, after the complimentary cleaning of their living room immediately following 5 busy hours at work, maybe I do deserve the money.

Today I learned that the word "ain't" developed as one of the two contracted alternatives to "are not" (the other obviously being "aren't"). There was nothing distasteful about it at the time of its inception, but eventually people came to accept "aren't" and reject "ain't" as vulgar, poor slang.

Aah, linguistics - how deeply satisfying you are.

firstly,

It seemed like a moderately good idea to destroy my last blog, perhaps because it was a year old (soo 12 months ago), but mostly because I'm about to embark on the next phase of my life: life in Chicago. Now is a good time for renewal.

...and what is the significance of "dragonfleece"? None, except that I find the pairing of words utterly delightful.

Work, now. And quite possibly an elephant ear at the ever-exciting Summerfest + a look at our yearbooks in their completion. :\