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. :\