Lots of good stuff on Mer's blog, I hadn't checked it out in awhile! Chickens in "Odull" taking shelter from the rain, surprise birthday parties, Zen accusing her of being tardy to class... I'm afraid I haven't anything that funny to post, but... oh well!

This weekend was immensely boring, really. I went to meals with Dale, which was cool, but then I didn't, well, do anything else. I got holed up in my room doing homework, basically. So I was telling Dale the plan for the weekend apart, and how I was getting reacquainted with being in my room alone again. She was all happy for me. Until I said, "And then I realized how boring it is to be in my room." Yep. Mind-numbing, really. Now I remember why I try to have lots of activities going on constantly. Must remember this in future to avoid leaving having weekends totally devoid of the fun stuff that weekends are made for (movies, going out with friends, shopping, laughing).

Next weekend will be far superior. Junior show and Andrew!

What a day!

I got up at a decent hour and it was a little sad because I knew I wouldn't be seeing Andrew tonight. But then I got busy. I walked Kobe and we met a little white furry dog and Kobe batted at it with her huge paw and got its ear dirty. Then she acted like a dog on crack, or a dog on rabies, and refused to go back inside after we had taken a walk and played fetch. So I finally pounced on her and grabbed her collar, then hauled her back in the house, lamenting all the way about how she was being completely unreasonable. Kobe of course didn't get it, and watched me from the window as I was leaving, as usual.

I rushed back to my room and then thought I had more time than I did; I thought I had to be at the English department at noon for the group lunch instead of 11:50, so when I remembered the real time I booked it over to Shattuck. Luckily, they hadn't left yet. Me and two other English majors were scheduled to eat lunch with a professor MHC may hire to teach fiction writing. His writing samples were awesome. Last night I stayed up till three am reading his stories and something by Harriet Johnson about disabled persons and Singer. Well. Lunch was good, we had a few awkward pauses but on the whole it went well, I think. We almost didn't get dessert-- one student declined dessert when the waitress offered it to us, and the prof. was going to follow whatever we wanted to do. So I said I wouldn't mind seeing the desserts, and it ended up three out of four of us ate dessert. Yay me! Today is the day of inflicting my will upon others! I had a yummy hectagon of tiramisu, and two cups of earl grey tea (I would have stolen tea packets but the waitress took them away from us).

Later, I was able to see the interview-ee speak to the faculty about his teaching philosophy and about how he sees fiction writing classes. He was totally engaging, and I just loved being in the same room as all these profs. I had Profs Demas, Shaw, and Quillian to talk to, it was wonderful. I love our english department! On my way to dinner I ran into Miranda and Dale; we ate at Wilder and Dale made us deviled eggs.

I've relaxed, read, done laundry, and been on duty tonight. Weird. So this is what Friday nights used to look like.

So "A" sent me some news articles online as we're making an inspiration board for my short story seminar out of newspaper and magazine articles. (I think we can all figure out who "A" is.) So A. sent me an article about a camel that got loose in sweden because its stablemate, a horse, wasn't there, and another about a piranha in the Thames. This is A.'s idea on how to connect the two into a really great story:

A: you could do a story about all these crazy random animals
A: maybe about a south american piranha and a mongolian camel who met on the internet and traveled the globe to finally meet
A: but the piranha got lost in the thames, and the camel got sidetracked in sweden by a horse
A: then you could make up the ending! it would be like finding nemo on crack
Pink Poodledog: hahahahah

(just had to post that. yay I've actually updated my blog twice in 24 hours!!)

After yesterday I'm feeling the need to update. And while eating dinner I was reading the creative writing class stories and was feeling the need to write something before reading for quillian's class. So here goes!

Weds was the big day. Two public speaking adventures in the space of 5 hours. The sorts of things I normally stay away from. Weds morning I did some reading for my Spanish presentation, and then met up with my group at the library. We were feeling pretty confident, but I think all of us except for Corinne were pretty nervous, too. I ate lunch over my notecards, rehearsing what I'd say during the presentation. I sat through Lit. Crit. & Theory and then ran off to Ciruti for Spanish. Very nervous at this point, and needed to use the bathroom (drank too much water at lunch). The presentation was going ok, very mellow and comfortable, when Michelle handed it over to met earlier than I had expected. Then my mouth started getting dry and I kept stumbling over long Aztec words. At one of these words (as Corinne told me later) I said "caca" in the process of sounding it out (hey, that's what was written!!). Naturally, a couple of girls in the audience laughed. I didn't know WHY they laughed though, so I just got totally distracted and embarrassed, thinking that they were laughing at me. I think this was the beginning of the end. So I cut out all the cool things I had wanted to say and just ended it in my stumbling Spanish.

But, this turned out ok, because we actually were two or three times as long as our professor had expected. She assured us that we had done a wonderful job and had set a high precedent for the rest of the presentations, but, we all know I didn't do very well on my part!!

After Spanish I ran back to my room to get ready for the poetry reading. At which I hoped to redeem myself. (Yes I know that that was a sentence fragment). I waited in "The Dirty" for awhile, until Kim found me and we drove over as the two MHC representatives. We found the house, and wandered upstairs looking for the hosts. The apartment was amazing looking, very Asian inspired decorations and bookshelves on every wall. A very pink satiny love seat in the living room, and the best flatware, very Martha-Stewart-shopping-at-the-Pottery-Barn-esque. More people kept trickling in, so we kept reintroducing ourselves. Out of ten students reading, only one was a guy. Everyone was pretty cool in very different ways.

At dinner, I got pushed to the end of the table since the Amherst girl had her mother with her at the dinner (wtf?) The conversation was dominated by the two Smithies (talking about playing this game, Assassin) and the Amherst girl & guy (Amherst girl was nice but too much like me when I'm trying to be social so of course I didn't like her. I tend to dislike people that are like me). I sat by the quieter Umass gal, who was a senior and nervous to be reading in public. Neither of us had read in a public setting like this before. The dinner was amazing, rice and some sort of lentil topping and salad with grapefruit sections (beautifully sliced) and duck. Dessert took me awhile to eat because I was shy to just take the dessert fork that was at the place setting next to mine (seemed like bad manners?) But dessert was amazing, we had pie pieces of fig tart and cubes of what tasted like fresh pistachio ice cream, bliss.

After, we walked over to Converse Hall together. I was quite nervous. Loved hearing people read their poetry, all the more enjoyable because I was at least casually acquainted with everyone now. Kim was very supportive, and I read without making any mistakes (even though my voice was a little shaky). Prof. Shaw was there, chatted with me afterwards. Laura came which was super exciting, and we took the PVTA home together (after sampling some amazing chocolate dessert cups with raspberries. Oh raptures!)

It was a very productive day, I don't think I was in my room for more than 2 hours between noon and midnight! Also a day of realizing that I enjoy poetry writing more than fiction writing. And I'm in a short story writing seminar. Oops. Also realized me-as-poet is a very egotistical creature. Seemed like a lot of the five college poets reading were of a similar nature. Or am I just imagining this?

Today I ran many errands and did everything that I was supposed to do (up to this point).

Good things about today: I got a lot of work done in the morning, had a yummy salmon and caesar salad dinner at prospect with Lindsay and Irena, actually went to a junior show meeting, discovered that the decadent looking pie at Uncommon Grounds is, in fact, the pie version of my all time favorite: the raspberry cream cheese chocolate bar. So I just ate that, and wow, wow...

Bad things: I was sad in the morning, the junior show meeting really had nothing to do with my being there and I didn't need to be there (wasted hour, could have been napping), and, uhm... that's all, I guess it was an ok day, overall.

Last week was soooo busy I didn't even post, partly because I was busy and partly because it would have been basically like this: today I woke up, hurried out to classes, hurried to do homework & eat, went to meetings/ did more work. Not so exciting. Two good things: Thursday was our Verbosity meeting and lots of people came!! Yay us! And Lindsay and I had a lovely dinner at the Rockies and she gave me the most adorable valentine's day surprise -- a pink poodle bookmark!

So let's just talk about my weekend now since that was lovely and it was Valentine's Day, after all.

Friday: I ate dinner at Wilder with Hollin and Alyssa, and others that I had just met so I don't remember their names. I took some chocolate pie and challah, and wasn't very productive back in my room till Andrew came. I did start a possible short story, though. When Andrew arrived, we talked with Dale a bit and then started getting his dinner together. Between the three of us, we constructed quite the meal. He had soup, I had bread & dessert, and Dale had salad. So we all sat down in the formal dining room of our hall with Ashley and ate together. That was fun =) Plan to someday eat tv dinners down there at opposite ends of the table and provide some comic relief for the people doing homework in the common rooms.

After, we watched Thirteen, which was a rather disturbing movie about two wayward young girls. Crazy kids, I sure wasn't into that stuff in middle school. We decided to cheat and exchange gifts Friday night (but it was technically Saturday, it was after midnight!!) I showered, and at some point we fell asleep with the lights on, and didn't wake up till like 6 or 7 the next morning. Oops. Granted, I do this pretty often when I'm here alone, but now I'm dragging Andrew into my bad habits.

Saturday: The good thing about falling asleep was that we got up in the morning at a decent hour. I think we got up around 10, so we had plenty of time to get ready to go out for brunch. We took this winding road (was it route 9? I'm so bad with picturing this stuff in my head) that reminded me of country roads back home. It let out right at the breakfast place Andrew had picked. It was a really cute place, a rustic feel and very small and intimate. Old baking tools up on the walls, and signs and such. And really yummy food, apricot bread and cornbeef hash. We pretty much stuffed ourselves. Then we went to the Quabbin Reservoir and walked about, took pictures and had our picture taken. We started walking across the dam but it was too cold. So we drove further up, and we saw this lookout tower thing, and the snow was a sheet of ice on top so it was shiny and pretty.

We took a little trip to Target for Buster supplies and candy and a dvd. We looked at plastic tubs for quite awhile, it was funny. Had a dispute about shades of blue. At some point we came back here and relaxed for awhile. We got an early start out to Northampton, where we wandered about looking at books before heading to the restaurant. It was a really gorgeous place, The Union Station. It was also a very crowded place, so luckily we did have reservations! We waited awhile, but it was pretty entertaining because we were sitting next to this really snotty couple for awhile (the feminine half of which I think goes to MHC, ack!) and they were bickering. By the time we got seated we knew just what we wanted to order, and then we attacked the salad bar. I had the biggest salad ever. I think we kinda filled up on it, because we had leftovers for Sunday's dinner. Everything tasted good though, and I had real cottage cheese (as opposed to dining hall cottage cheese)!

By the time we got back home we were pretty stuffed and tired. Andrew fell asleep, and I followed suit. We woke up about an hour and a half to two hours later, around 2, and brushed and went back to bed. But then we got up early, again!

Sunday: I woke up a little after 9, and urged us out of bed, ready for another full day of weekend! We looked for Valentine's day candy at the Big Y (they were lacking in the post V-day sales), but ended up going to CVS in Amherst for such things instead. We intended to eat at Thai Corner, but as that was randomly closed we went to Fresh Side. Which was good, because it definitely improved my impression of the place, I had help ordering =) Yum!

Back here, we started watching Fargo. Really intriguing and hard to stop watching. But we had to stop at some point to rest and eat and then head off to the library where I had to meet my Spanish group. We both were in the lobby, me with my group and Andrew with his book. Then we went to Kendade for my Post Colonial Studies movie. Black and white and slow and hard to follow (maybe because it was in French and we just had subtitles? Hard to get to know characters' voices). Andrew fell asleep. I ate candy and stuck it out. Finally it was over and we were able to leave! We finished watching Fargo, which was super disturbing and what's the word, poignant? And showered, and went to bed. Sunday nights are always sad.

This morning we got up before our alarms and rested awhile. Monday mornings are always so sad =( Now I must do my reading & homework, blah!

Work is so difficult after a lovely happy weekend! And the happiest Valentine's ever =)

Ack now I can't remember what I did last week. Thursday is kinda blurry, so let's start with Friday:

Friday: It was snowing/raining/gross out, and I wasn't sure how I was going to get to Boston for the weekend. None of the pathways had been shoveled yet, even by 11 am when I was heading out to run some errands and eat lunch. Everyone was slipping all over and the snow was avalanching off the roofs. The mail center was closed (the door was locked and I could see a paper sign with something about the weather scribbled on it). There was a festive feel at lunch, I sat with Stephanie and Erin and looked at alloy catalogs. I was quite antsy to get out of Peer Mentoring, since it was probably the only class meeting that afternoon in the whole valley. It turned out that another member of that class was catching the Boston bus, so we headed over together. We met some cool people on our way, including this gal running by who wanted us to delay the bus so she'd have time to get her birth control pills! It was a really nice bus ride, no bus switching or anything, so I napped and read some.

Andrew arrived about 5 minutes after me at the Framingham stop, and we headed to the mall right away to eat something. We wandered around for awhile and sat right by a big plotted plant. At his apartment I sat through the last Ed of the season(which, I admit, was pretty funny). A night of firsts, I enjoyed Ed &, well, yeah.

Saturday: I didn't leave the apartment all day! Very relaxing and pleasant day. I read a little, and we baked cookies (with smokey results, we discovered that wax paper does it, but we didn't know what was wrong and Andrew was worried about leaving me to get his hair cut, but it was fine, the smoke alarm didn't go off!), and we had pad thai for dinner and a game of scrabble (he won, by a lot). After dinner we all watched Seabiscuit, which was highly entertaining and good due to lots of horses being in it. Then we watched a little bit of SNL (for weekend update, the rest wasn't very good...) and I showered and we went to bed.

Sunday: After an apple & croissant dough experiment (which turned out pretty yummy) and breakfast, we read a bit and then headed out. We wandered around Newbury St. and got some good candy, looked at music and exploratory fun stuff, and had coffee (or tea, in my case). Then we got to see his friend Carlo's new apartment, which has been very tastefully and elegantly re-done. His parents were there, which was cool, so we all ate dinner together. And I met Kiwi the pug, who was single-mindedly going after my wool scarf and mittens. I was a little sleepy on the way home, but perked up as we watched The Royal Tenenbaums.

Monday: Very hard to wake up. Slept on the bus and read a bit. Elizabeth was on this bus, too! So we sat together. It was a little strange getting back into the swing of things... Then I had the awards ceremony at 4, and Lindsay was there! Sarah W. scholars pretty much just stood up and sat down, but still! Then I socialized a bit over snack food, and met one of the gals next to me, Darcy. Then me and Lindsay met for dinner, and I found out that the girl I'd just met, Darcy, lives right next to Lindsay. Small campus! I was pretty sleepy after the huge gracious dinner... but it was fun, Dale, Miranda, Lindsay, Thomasena, Rachel, and Jos were there. I ended up sleeping a bit over my homework, until Michelle called to update me on the Spanish presentacion. I must sound strange when I first wake up.

Today: Was crazy. I woke up and immediately started trying to find a sub for today in the mail center, because Rachel F. needed a babysitter and I thought the prospect of spending the afternoon with Hieu and Newton was far more appealing than working in the mail center! So I found someone during ballroom dance (learned the foxtrot today) and proceeded to have a relaxing afternoon playing dogopoly and petting Newton! Also managed to pop a huge yellow balloon, but luckily H. forgave me.

Oh, and my mother sent me Valentine's Day window decals! Which are now all over my window and mirrors! And my book came for SAW, and a little care package from Grammy & Grandpa's church.

And I am full-time worrying about this oral short story due Thursday.

Classes have been figured out: 300-level English: Intro Post-Colonial Studies, 300-level English: Short Story Writing, 200-level English: Literary Criticism & Literature, 200-level Spanish: Latin American I Lit, 200-level Interdisciplinary: Peer Mentoring (so that I can work in the SAW center next year and get paid for reading and attending classes instead of working for Res Life). Yesterday was a good day because 1) I figured out these classes to take (oh and I'm taking ballroom dance!), 2) both of my ebay buys arrived, and 3) it snowed beautifully & I had a nice dinner with Lindsay & friends! Things definitely turned out well even though I started the day off on a hectic note when I slept through my alarm and woke up about 25/35 minutes before my first class started!

Today was also quite busy... I read, had lunch, turned in some stuff for Karuna at the CDC, read some more, sat around with everyone waiting for the door to be unlocked for Eng. 280, had a happy class, rushed to the bathroom and to Ciruti and still got to my Spanish class about five minutes late, participated more than usual to make up for my tardiness, read for an hour in 1837 before dinner, had a lovely dinner with the ladies of the English Student Board, then came back here! Quality quote from dinner: "I didn't want to serve Justin Timberlake a nasty hot dog." - Emily, who did, in fact, meet J.T. Megan had her point proven that any subject and verb can be made to sound dirty if said in the right tone of voice: "Hey, wanna tie my shoes?"

Things seemed to move slowly today, it felt like I'd been awake longer than I had been. Maybe because last night I fell asleep with the lights on and without brushing my teeth, so at 8 am I brushed and turned off the lights, then woke up again at 9:30. Strange. Must stop doing that. But my bed is so comfortable...

Oopsy it's been awhile... Very busy. Can't figure out classes yet. I had my best ever snowy walk with Newton last Thursday, we met a cockapoo named Willy. I had three meetings with Quillian on the subject of my classes, one while I was running from Shattuck to the Tower Room looking for our creative writing class, and Quillian called "So have you decided?" and I yelled back "No!" and kept running. One of those MHC bubble moments, there. My first Peer Mentoring class was interesting and strangely parallel to Res Life training. "Are you a hammer or a nail? An ocean or a forest? A leader or a follower?" My first shift back to the Mail Center was odd but good, it's been awhile, and Bernice and I, surely, have some catching up to do! New rule: must push the pulley rather than pull the pulley. Why? It could cause back pain.

Now the weekend I can recall in more detail, so here we go:

Friday: After my Peer Mentoring class I got ready for Andrew's arrival, and tried to round people up for dinner! I rushed Andrew from his car to Wilder, and we had a crazy dinner! It was a Thanksgiving-ish dinner (turkey, squash, mashed potatoes, stuffing, that sort of thing), with challah bread and two desserts and matzoh ball soup (without any matzoh balls). Lindsay, Korisha, Emily, Beth, Andrew, and myself were there, and it was crazy, I think we were all talking the whole time! I couldn't stop laughing, Korisha did the "food testing" test with Andrew and he responded the same way I did for the last like 2 years. And Lindsay had her hilarious dorm-life accounts, which are definitely accurate (esp. the blow drying in this cold weather!) After dinner we went upstairs for a game of Cranium, but me and Andrew weren't allowed to be partners! It was still fun, of course, even though me and my partner had a little trouble getting off of start!

Saturday: Since we got to bed at a decent hour the night before, we managed to get out in time for brunch. We tried Karen's Kitchen, which was yummy and rather casual, with a "store feel" inside. We sat and drank coffee and tea afterwards, in the midst of the closing chaos. We decided against going into Amherst, and instead we headed back to MHC to get some work done. We took a little stop at Atkin's to avoid said work. Finally though, it couldn't be put off any longer, and we had a nice work session in the English lounge of Shattuck (which may become my second home, soon). After the sun stopped steaming in through the windows we decided it was time to go out for dinner. Took a bathrrom break and hurried off to see if anyone wanted to go with us! Everyone was pretty much in for the night, so we went to Amherst by ourselves for dinner. I had Bueno y Sano for the first time! It was good, except there was a hair in my burrito =/ But at least I didn't dump my burrito on the floor, scrape it back onto a plate, and eat it, like the girl at the next table over from us!

We found ONE book I wanted at the used book store, not the greatest luck! Had a tissue incident. And a trip to CVS. And a cold walk to the car! Back at MHC we had coffee and dessert from Blanchard, and then speed walked over to see Pirates of the Caribbean on the big screen in Gamble. It was really good, even a second time around. Very entertaining! We almost watched some Sex and the City at the hall activity, but the room was too packed looking.

Sunday: We got up fairly early, and then recruited Dale & Miranda to eat brunch with us! We went to Abbey for the crepe bar, which was pretty good. I ate my old classic three plates, but without the old bloated feeling. Ahh I miss you, Kathleen!! We ate with Alyssa, too, and ran into an old Amherst friend of Andrew's (and his first year MHC gf). We did a bit of reading in the afternoon, but soon got distracted. So we played a game. Took a trip over to The Thirsty Mind and continued reading, then we picked up supplies (for the Super Bowl get-together, and my floor activity on Tuesday) at Big Y. Before going to Phoebe's, we picked up Fanny, a really cool gal from France who's here for a year and knows Phoebe from a class. This marked the first time in years that I watched a football game, and kinda sorta enjoyed it! It was pretty exciting towards the end, we were all hoping for the game to end without a tie and overtime! Finally got to bed, I had a weird dream with Torrey's architecture and Andrew. I need to have a more coherent one before Weds so I can turn in a dream fragment for my creative writing class!

Now I'm sitting about with tea, about to do some reading! Then I'll print out some more reading at the library, read that, have lunch, and start with classes! Oh and make signs for my floor activity...

Yesterday was the oh-so-exciting Res Life mid year "retreat." What we were retreating from, I'm not sure. It was basically a time to listen to some cliched PC discussions and to bitch about everything wrong with MHC (ie, the budget). But I was strangely awake for it all. Which was good, because I hadn't slept much. After, I went with Lindsay and Adrianna to the "convenience store" (some clever Mohos have dubbed it the "inconvenience store" in way of protest). The checker guy from Wilder was there, and I had a Silence of the Lambs-esque moment when he started stalking towards me and said in a low voice "Hello, Rebecca..." Yeah. At that point Adrianna decided she was NOT leaving me alone there! It turned into a normal enough discussion about the weather, luckily. We also had a rather cool hall committee meeting at The Thirsty Mind, where I had a yummy decaf vanilla latte and sat in a beat up old chair.


Last night I was SO tired, I actually climbed into bed while talking to Andrew a bit after 11. I then promptly fell asleep. I woke up again at 3 am, and decided it was a prime time to take a shower. So I did. Then I let my hair dry a bit, and went to sleep.

I woke up this morning, slept in a bit, and woke up again. Then I went on my Kobe walk and ran some errands. Then I had a a "social outcast lunch" (meaning I sat by myself in an insanely crowded dining hall) before going to walk Newton. I still haven't gotten the rest of my books (maybe it would have been good to preface that with a comment about how I went to check my mail. oops), but I did get my final paper back from Quillian. It was a "satisfying end to the course" but not quite the same quality as my mid term paper. Argh, I will always be trying to beat that paper!

Continuing with my day of solo adventures, I read some English theses for about an hour. Lots of original poetry, plays, stories... someone wrote on Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 (among other things). Then I felt like a grown up going to pick up my dry cleaning. Simple pleasures, right?

I fell asleep again this afternoon, and Dale came a couple of times to wake me up. I got to dinner rather late, and had a nice meal with Lindsay and Irena. Yay for Wilder being open again!! When I got back to my room I didn't know what to do with myself. I had a very active evening. Looking for things to do before classes start tomorrow, I redecorated my door (actually it was hardly decorated in the first place), organized my top desk drawer, made a collage, and tried to get my paper lamp shade on a lamp (not exactly successful on that one).

So yeah, in honor of the first day of classes I've decided to dress up tomorrow!

To begin with the beginning:

Thursday: I don't really remember Thursday anymore. I think I walked Newton and Kobe, I'm sure I ate stuff, but mostly, I wrote my paper. I decided the weekend WOULD be free and happy, so I sat down around 3 and started writing my Sappho's Muse paper. I was definitely the first one to hand it in!

Friday: Jill emailed to cancel my Kobe walking duties for today, so I had an unexpected amount of time on my hands. After my last Sappho class, and a weird thrown together lunch, I cleaned my room, braved hurricane-like winds to get another rug from a student living off campus, and got ready for Andrew's arrival! For dinner we went to Blanchard, but the new station wasn't even serving anything good. So we just stuck to the old menu. After, we watched Ed with Korisha and then headed back to my room.

Saturday: We got a fairly early start today! After eatching "brunch" at Blanchard we went to Springfield to see Love Actually. It was really great and sad in parts but always entertaining. Then we went to the mall so I could return my two right shoes. I proceeded to buy a toggle sweater and a too short skirt (which we'll be returning next weekend). I returned the toggle sweater after finding another one very similar for less.

Afterwards, we hurried to Northampton for dinner. I met Phoebe (an Amherst friend of Andrew's) and her bf and we had a happy dinner and then ice cream for dessert. It was really cold though! I don't know why we feel like eating ice cream in this weather, but it's just too good to resist. We had a brief stop in a candy store before saying our goodbyes and speed walking to the car!

Since we got back home at a decent hour and SNL was a repeat, we didn't know what to do with ourselves. So we talked and relaxed and got to bed rather late.

Sunday: We made it to brunch where they weren't serving the promised banana bread french toast we saw on the menu. But we did get a chance to schedule a Balderdash (beyond balderdash, actually) game with Korisha. And Dale somehow made it to MHC just in time to eat brunch with us! After finishing a weird movie that I don't think we ever really got into (The Everlasting Piece), we learned how to play Balderdash and proceeded to win! Everyone else was sick of playing by the time we won, but... oh well =)

At this point we were quite hungry, so we went out to the weird Chinese food place where the waiter was a little, er, stand-offish? Same instrumental music and everything, but we've now figured out that it's on shuffle play, because last time "Dream" was followed by that song from Ghost and this time "Have you ever seen the rain" was the following song. Decided that the huge goldfish in the fish tank must be the object of some cult worship. Then we watched Y tu mama tambien, which was pretty racy but I think we got the driving points. Then it was beddy bye time!

Now I'm trying to stay awake before getting ready for Res Life training! Yes, again, res life training... it never ends!

This morning I woke up, oddly, before my alarm even rang. After last night's drifting off and having a bad dream REM stage within like 45 minutes of being in bed, I would have thought my body would want to sleep some more. But no, it woke up promptly at 8 AM. So after lounging in bed awhile I eventually dragged myself out and got to class on time after a quick breakfast. I was late for lunch, as I stayed after to get approval from the professor for my paper idea. So tomorrow I need to write my paper, and then Friday I'll turn it in so the weekend can stay free!

I had my last creative writing group, only three of us today. It was short, but pretty productive. Then I had some free time before waiting waaay too long at the bus stop. I stood there, staring into the sunset, looking for the Amherst bus, for at least 15 minutes! It did arrive (luckily), and Lindsay and I chatted on the way. We had another super leisurely dinner, and met a certain Emily R. of Valentine, who filled us in on the Amherst view of things. They do, in fact, call us "Mo hos," and we're seen as rather, well, I'd say floozy to sum up. Of course my explanation for this is that the only Mohos people see are the ones that get off this campus, which generally is the same thing as saying, the ones that are drunk and partying. Anyway. We had a good dinner, despite the fact that the dishwasher was out of commission (which meant that we ate off styrofoam with plastic utensils). Lindsay bottled some pineapple juice. And I stole some tea.

Our class was pretty awesome. Prof. Sanderson seemed rather excited at the prospect of colored chalk, and proceeded to write on the chalkboard in blue and pink (she eventually thought better of it after the color rubbed off on her, too). She talked about how marriages become less happy when the first baby is born. But, as good news, she told us that all marriages experience a decrease in satisfaction. Her explanation: "You know, like we all like oxygen but we don't appreciate it every day." Pretty clever, huh? And her conclusion: "Marriage is a whole hell of a lot of sacrifice." We clapped.

On the bus ride home, it was just me and Lindsay. We talked relationships and guys (of course, after our class, who wouldn't!) Our bus driver pulled over in Amherst on the way, left the bus running, and ran across the street to a little gas station mini mart. Me and Lindsay were rather confused, and considered taking over and driving ourselves back to MHC! Luckily he came back before we resorted to such drastic measures.

Now I'm waiting for my clothes to dry, as they were dripping wet from the washing machine. They're on their second dryer run as I type. Yay for over priced, moldy, decrepit washing machines!

Back at MHC after the best weekend ever, it's kind of hard adapting! But the problems of constructing my spring semester schedule and obtaining textbooks has been offering plenty of distraction. Here's where I was and what I was doing:

Friday: After a botched attempt at french manicuring my nails (yeah I know I'm making up verbs) I swore off self-nail painting (although I know I won't stick to that). I finished getting ready just in time, dragged my baggage downstairs, and had a surprise meeting with Ashley! Then Faith (the kind soul that drives me to/from Boston) showed up, and I was on my way! I realized soon into the trip (within the first, oh, ten minutes) that I hadn't eaten much that day. The next logical realization was, of course, that I was hungry. Looking through my bag I had one fruit snack packet and two fortune cookies. I ate the fruit snacks and then had a fortune cookie for dessert. The creepy thing? I picked the one that read "You are almost there." So you know where I'm going from now on when I need advice (no, not the Career Development Center or my advisor): Fortune Cookies.

For awhile I kept awake in the car by playing The Alphabet Game. But after getting through the alphabet one and a half times I got rather bored, as playing against one's self isn't very challenging. So I fell asleep. By the time I woke up we were nearly there, and I needed to pee. I wandered around the Alewife station until some woman (who must have heard me lamenting on the phone to Andrew that I needed the bathroom) came up and directed me to the restroom, warning me that she didn't know how clean it was. Indeed, it wasn't just not clean, it was filthy. But no one else was coming in, so I used the big handicapped stall to keep my baggage safe and prevent me from bumping into any mysterious substances on the walls, etc. By the time I got back to the pick up area, Andrew was there!

We ate at a great Thai restaurant in Harvard Square, and ducked into stores as necessary to avoid the cold while walking about. And we got to see Big Fish, which was wonderful but really sad, I was all choked up for the last like half hour! I get a little sentimental about movies... Anyways, we then had a little supermarket visit and dessert and attempted to start a fire (in the fireplace, don't worry).

Saturday we had a leisurely breakfast and then went shopping in Boston. Andrew found cushy down slippers and I bought two right shoes (which we will be returning NEXT weekend =/ ). Andrew found the one last pink unicorn shirt at the American Eagle, in a size XL. But, after taking his advice that I should ask someone that worked there if they had any left in the back, I was presented with an XS, a small, and a medium! So now me and Mer have matching shirts!

For dinner I had my first real not in a dining hall sushi experience! And it was surprisingly yummy. And after picking up kindling on the walk home (we must have looked sketchy rummaging about in the dark in the little plots of grass), we had a real fire! Ahh, very romantic =)

Sunday we had a great brunch in Jamaica Plain (Lindsay you will be familiar with this place?), and even though it was in the 30s and "slushing" (mix of snowing and raining, I think it should be a verb), it felt downright balmy after the negative temps BEFORE wind chill. Keeping in the Asian food theme, we had Thai food for dinner! We watched this crazy new show on HBO called "The L Word" which was pretty racey and fun to watch. The next day was kinda sad just because it was the last day I could spend there! We ran some errands, watched Flirting with Disaster, had some ice cream, and stayed up late.

So that brings us up to today! I took the bus home, got a lot of reading done, walked the dogs, checked out the textbook situation, had lunch and dinner with Korisha, and watched some hilarious American Idol try outs! And now I need to get to bed!!

So cold here. Yesterday I whined to FM until someone came over and ripped my curtains off, a side effect of the intended action: to seal the edges of the windows. Definitely has cut down on the cold draft effect.

Lindsay and I decided to try out the Amherst College cuisine while we're on campus for the psych course. Turns out centralized dining doesn't seem that bad at all. They have JUICES! And not just orange and apple juice! But, me and Lindsay got yelled at when we accidentally left our silverware on our trays instead of throwing them down the specified shoots. Oops.

Last night was the first ever scrabble match between Andrew, my mum, and myself. Andrew won, mom beat me, and I definitely lost. Typical!

Yay Merrie! I just read your blog, a perfect documentation of the weather conditions back in Oregon. I especially loved the snippets from the Letters to the Editor: I hope that superintendent loses her job over such poor decision making. All she had to do was turn on the weather forecast and her decision should have been made. Especially considering that it rarely snows so much in our county, it's ridiculous to risk the health and safety of children just so they can get to school late, sit in freezing classrooms, and then endure a perilous journey home.

Speaking of bad weather conditions, the "high" tomorrow will be, oh, 7 degrees! I will be trudging about between my classics course, lunch, creative writing get-together, dinner at Amherst College, and close relationships class. Busy day! Looking forward to the weekend!

I am finally back on campus!! Andrew rescued me from Windy's house, and we had a good weekend despite the frigid weather. Saturday we stayed in the village commons, played scrabble (not just scrabble, deluxe scrabble) and ate dinner. SNL wasn't, well, as good as it could have been. Being John Malkovich (I hope I'm spelling that right) was a brilliant movie, why didn't I see that when it first came out?? Sunday we did lots of new things: Andrew had his first Holyoke Mall experience (we bought sweaters! I refrained from buying another really really cute scarf set), we both had our first Springfield $2 movie theater trip (second run movies, since you never see everything the first time around, a nice cheap option! School of Rock was much funnier than I expected, and the little blonde girl was so so cute), then our first trip to this Mexican and South American restaurant in Noho, La Cazuela (really yummy, I gorged myself. but the rice and beans aren't as good as the Crazy Pepper's back home). We had a scrabble game in the evening with Korisha and Emily, Andrew definitely won but I was close!!

Today it was back to the routine... I did most of the discussion leading in my "group" but that was fine with me, I had lots to say about everything. And I had an, uhm, overly eventful Kobe walk... First she dragged me to the neighbors' house for dog biscuits, then she refused to move from their driveway until they gave ME the dog biscuits. Then someone's dog that was obviously loose, no leash or anything, followed us and got Kobe really excited, which meant lots of tugging and lunging that, well, isn't too safe with slick roads and sidewalks. So I dragged Kobe back to her house, the other dog was like, in the middle of route 116, and then finally after I got Kobe safely situated inside, the other dog left. Yeah, not cool to let your dog roam around loose on busy streets...

Dale came up for a visit today! She went to a very lackluster dinner with me and Lindsay, then accompanied me to Amherst for a movie showing, Beautiful Girls. Which we loved! The entire room was laughing when Will was going after the 13 year old girl, and I was practically in Dale's lap when Birdy was getting beaten up.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day...!

Uh oh, I haven't updated in awhile! Uhm... I'll try to remember stuff...

The rest of Monday: After realizing that me and Lindsay had a movie to attend that night, I raced to Windy's (basically so that silly dog could piddle and eat some cheese off the top of his dog food that he still hadn't eaten from his previous dinner) and then back again to scarf down some food at the rockies and literally run with Lindsay to the bus stop! The movie was pretty good, Singles. And it started snowing so I had a nice very late night walk back to Windy's. And I took a nice bath, dragging my laptop into the bathroom for music!

Tuesday I blissfully did nothing but laze, give Windy a couple of walks, and read. Lots of reading. Finished Slaughterhouse 5 and read all the Sappho fragments and the packet of poems for comparison. Also started the novel we're reading in the classics course. Oh, and Mum called, saving me from falling asleep in the afternoon! There was a "snow squall" during my evening walk, it was a clear night and suddenly there was a gust of wind and snow just started falling. Within about ten minutes there was half an inch on the ground. Luckily it did not continue at this rate!

Weds. was another crazy day (like Monday). Walked Windy, walked to school, had my classics class (that sounded funny, didn't it?), ate lunch at the Rockies, had a brief kinda-sorta creative writing meeting (as in one person showed up and we chatted for awhile), walked back to Windy's to give him a walk and dinner, walked back to school for a lovely thanksgiving-esque dinner with Lindsay, had a leisurely walk to the bus, had an awesome first relationships class at amherst, bussed back to MHC, walked to Windy's while it snowed very lightly. Then I took a bath and relaxed!

Thursday: Another day like Tuesday. See a pattern developing? I slept, read, watched some "must see tv." Friends was great, Ross in a woman's sweater... disturbing. The Apprentice is more entertaining than I expected, unfortunately I had to take a break to shower. Good news: I'm only a packet and a chapter away from having my reading for Monday done!

Friday: I'm sitting here, having woken up indecently early (6:45 am) in order to check my email for creative writing stories. Uhm, no one has sent one yet! So if they send them all an hour before class, obviously I can't comment much on them since I won't have time to read! Oh dear. Well, we can always read everything aloud since there are only 8 possible people who could show up, and if it's anything like Weds not everyone will...

Good news of the morning, grades are posted and I maintained my A's!

Thursday morning I woke up around 9 am for my antibiotic, and looking out the front door I saw snow, and only snow. Everything rather foggy and white, steady snow falling. Not thinking much of it beyond "that'll be fun to take a walk in later with Mer," I went back to bed. I woke up to widespread panic. Tim was doomsdaying, Mom was looking for a ride to the airport, and I started a whirlwind packing spree. All caused by some snow. Yeah. So Mom and I waited for 2 hours for a bus that showed up after we had left and decided on a Plan B... Tim drove us down an extra tire (in case we had tire problems...) and me and mom slowly, slowly drove to Portland. Actually we kept up a decent clip, but we had PLANNED to drive slowly...

In Portland, the cheapo motel was booked up, so we went to a nicer hotel and had a nice dinner and ice cream and I attempted to get some sleep. That didn't work out, however. Very nervous at different points. Esp. in the plane after taking a nap. The panic hits me after i've drifted off and forgotten about it.

Everything went smoothly, despite my worrying. It was lonely at first, being back in South Hadley, but Andrew surprised me and drove out on Saturday! So now I'm recovering from another lovely weekend, we wandered around in Northampton (and I had ice cream!), fixed dinners together, watched Annie Hall & Mona Lisa Smile, and played games. I enjoyed Mona Lisa Smile more than I thought I would!

In a particularly bright moment I didn't mark in my planner that my J term class started today, so I had a panicked run over to the prof's office! Luckily he caught me up and I'm ready to start the reading!!

Now I'm rather hungry... will update more later!

Monday night the pipes froze. Which meant that we didn't have water. Which meant that Mum's emergency water stash (ie, the water she stores in old pop bottles and milk jugs under the front porch "in case there's a terrorist attack out here"). Which meant that we were all a little grumpy about the water being icy cold, and, well, not so readily available.

At some point Tim identified the point that was frozen. Luckily, Mom prevented him from using a propane torch. Instead, he used a hair dryer to warm up the pipe. Cries of "It's dripping!" and "It's running!" and "We have WATER!!!!" were heard throughout the house, as we turned on every faucet full blast. Then for some reason Tim climbed on top of the shed and fiddled with the electricity (turning it off, then on, then off and on again). Somehow he slid off and fell. But he's ok now, except for a rather sore back.

After the madness ended (as much as it ever ends around here) Mum and I headed out for the Dalles. We had wildly successful trips to Maurices and JcPenney's and Fred Meyer's. I picked out a shirt and sweater for Mum, and she got some cute flattering jeans. Yay Mum! I bought lots of cute stuff. Mum almost lost her JcPenney's gift card in the bathroom of the store, but luckily she ran up at closing time and found it after realizing it wasn't in her wallet.

Fun times, shopping.

Today Mer went with me to a Crazy Pepper lunch with Audrey, Joanna, & Lindsey. We had lots of catching up to do! It was lots of fun, I brought pictures of me and Andrew and the twins had all sorts of updates about our class. I never hear any of the gossip!

After, me and Mer watched the third Lord of the Rings. Wow, amazing, fantastic, perfect. Makes you sad when it's over because, well, it's over, and you don't live in the Shire or with elves or exciting battles of good vs. evil. Hell, you don't even live in a time when you can easily identify what good and evil are. I guess that's why they call them fantasy. We could speculate on why fantasy movies are suddenly so popular in mainstream culture...

But, anyway. So now I have either reading those books to look forward to, or the next fantasy movie that comes out. The Last Unicorn should be awesome. I wish they'd make movies out of The Last Vampire and The Blue Sword.

Tonight was kind of crazy. Scott and Linda brought Nibbles, the very old and very strange red-nosed dog with gas problems. We ate, talked, watched some of the John Lennon video and Twilight Zone episodes. Then of course we watched the ball drop! Happy New Year! =)

Funny things:

"Jack Lalanne isn't dead, he says it'd ruin his image if he died." - Tim after a quarrel with Scott over whether or not JL has passed away yet or not. Scott had some story about him dying while dragging a tugboat in the English Channel or something equally far-fetched.

"A tree that's green
Is a sight to be seen
A tree that's brown
Can burn your house down"
- clever poem brought to you by the Hood River Fire Department.

"I still wouldn't let someone with AIDS lick the salt off my potato chips." - Merrie, very late at night while eating Pringles. Merrie just now, not so late and perfectly in her right mind: "Do you think that might be offensive to some people though?" Me: "uhm...no?"

A day of changes of plans. Mum did, indeed, schedule a dental appointment for me. And the funny part was, it was with Lindsey’s dad’s office! So we saw Calli’s mother again, and I had my whole head x-rayed. The machine made a space age sort of fluttery noise as it was going around my head. But I had my eyes closed because I wasn’t sure what one is supposed to do with one’s eyes while one’s head is being x-rayed. I suppose it’s silly to close your eyes as if that’s going to protect your eyes from the x-rays, when we all know the big lead apron thingy is the only thing that’s going to block them. But yeah, I still closed my eyes.

The good news: the wisdom teeth can wait till May to be plucked out (ok, cut and wrenched out would be a better description, but plucked makes it sound so simple and painless). The bad news: that I have wisdom teeth in the first place. They aren’t very “wise” teeth, either, to be coming in like that without my wanting them. If they were smart they’d find a way to come in without being hard to brush and without causing infections or cavities. The pain in the ass teeth would be a better name.

So… afterwards we went to Artifacts and I found a volume of Catullus’s poetry, but it’s a different translator… but it was only a dollar so I bought it anyways.

Then we had a visit with Grandma R., who is definitely worse from the last time I saw her. I got a little, well, nostalgic and stuff, and it was difficult to see her in such a different state from how I’d like to remember her. But we did it— I suppose that’s important.

An old woman came up to us in the Alzheimer’s unit and kept asking Mom “what is it?” She was curious about the fabric of Mom’s coat… Then she came up to me and touched my coat which I was holding and she was rather excited about it. I told her it had some wool in it. I guess she enjoys fabrics or something. Then another woman in a wheelchair was sitting in her room in the dark and one of the assistants came up to her to ask what she was doing. And she said “I don’t know but it must not be right.” That made the assistant laugh and say it was a good answer.

We also saw our great uncle, Johnny… Who’s pretty sharp with his quotable comments, although he pauses before he speaks. Very cute fellow, Johnny.

The little jabs continue, as Tim will simply not take his boots off and he tracks in snow which melts which I step in and which causes my socks to be damp. I hate damp socks. But, I soon will be back, fending for myself in MA, pros and cons to both locations…

Yesterday was more eventful than today, so, let's start with that:

Saturday: We got out of the house early (as in, noon) for our shopping trip to Portland. We went into all sorts of mind-numbing teen/twenty something clothing stores, frustrating Mom and disgusting Merrie. I did, however, find a few items. Shopping will continue Monday, as I'm looking for boots. Got some random books at Barnes and Noble, in retrospect wish I had gotten some Don DeLillo as I'm about done with The Body Artist. Oh well. Next time. After, we got lost in Portland looking for Old Town Pizza. Mom was cruising around in circles, asking people on the street for directions (they didn't know where it was), stopping at a gas station (they didn't know where it was, either, although one guy remembered seeing the pizza delivery guy on a bicycle), and eventually asking someone that actually knew what street the restaurant was on. After parking, we were quickly walking to get inside out of the rain, and someone was yelling obscenities and "hey girls" and I assumed he meant us, so of course I didn't turn around, and when it turned into "f-ck you" I was particularly glad I wasn't acknowledging it.

Well! So even though we were a quarter of an hour late, Patti and the girls were late, too. All turned out well, we girls sat at one table and our mothers at another. We had lots to catch up on, but I think we barely scratched the surface! Hope to see them again soon! We all have fond memories of weekends spent together back in the old days...

So today! Uhm... I woke up really late, felt really faint and yucky in the shower, watched some tv, read some of my book, took a nap, ate dinner, had fun talking to Andrew, read some more and talked with Mer and Tim, and now Mer's watching the Garfield Christmas video finally. That's about it! More later =)

My throat this morning was definitely worse off than yesterday. I stumbled out of bed and promptly began making this fact known to the entire household. Naturally, Mum called and made a doctor's appointment for me. The doctor's office... not so crowded. I whizzed past signing in and getting weighed and actually saw the doctor within ten minutes of arrival! Yay Dr. P--! So he talked to me about college (he has kids around my age) and looked in my ears and at my throat. My right ear was apparently red and worse looking than my throat (funny, my throat feels waaaay worse than my ears), and apparently at the beginning of an infection (I'm not crazy! I knew my ears felt funny). So I'm thinking my ears are... extra-weak in constitution, because I distinctly remember having swimmer's ear in high school and I definitely didn't do a lot of swimming.

So now I'm on the miracle-drug-ever-since-the-1940s, frequently sought out by not-so-smart parents to cure their children's viruses, the antibiotic. but, for once, I apparently don't have a virus! woo-hoo! and I don't have strep throat, which was the other not-so-pretty bacterial choice (involving a big fat needle to las nalgas or a ten day purple liquid regiment). Uhm... I don't feel miraculously better yet, though...

After the doctor, we proceeded to downtown Hood River, where I redeemed the Silverado gift certificate. Managed to get both a necklace and earrings with amber. Then the happy-dappy wal mart trip, where I bought everything I might need going back to college (including the best kind of notebook ever, a BUNGEE notebook! and in purple, a three subject, couldn't find it in that color last summer! this is going to be a good semester!) Oh! And I bought a couple little things for Mer as it's her birthday Jan. 14 and I won't be here and I don't have much opportunity to be sneaky! Also got some too-dry otis spunkmeyer m&m cookies (in place of my usual chocolate chip). And then we headed over to mcdonalds because I wanted dippin' dots! Yum!

Oh, and now I'm updating really late because i fell asleep with wet hair and thought I'd best blowdry it before going back to sleep. Goodnight! Good morning!

Christmas Eve I woke up a little more sick feeling... I had quite awhile to relax, however, before Mer & I headed down to Hood River to meet up with Dad & Margy. (I read part of Santaland Diaries to Mer on the way down!) They got a motel room for a couple of nights so it'd be easier for us to see them. Since of course there isn't a Christmas tree in the room, they fashioned a "tree" out of a lamp with gift wrap around it. We had a nice little gift exchange and Dad really really liked the clothes we picked out for him, so we were happy! The 70 channels is too much of a temptation for Dad, however, so we watched some of a Bruce Lee documentary and part of some black and white movie. We almost went for a drive to see Christmas lights, but Mer was just not up to the task of driving anywhere new at night!

On to the next Christmas festivity, we drove to Tim's mother's. We beat Mum & Tim down, so we socialized with Scott, Linda, and Arlene for awhile. And of course the orange cat Morris, who is not allowed inside due to his excessive shedding habits. We had a nice dinner, the usual homemade chili, and Arlene's dining room looked like something out of a Martha Stewart Living magazine spread. Tree with gifts, table perfectly set... Robin & Maribeth arrived with the baby (Makenzie, now two years old and cheerful and cute and talking!!) and we gradually started the gift unwrapping. Makenzie definitely stole the show, she got super excited over everything given to her. She received not one, not two, but three stuffed dogs! She kept playfully attacking us with the dogs throughout the evening, and looking into the birdhouses that Mum made for everyone, trying to find the birds!

Last night Mer ended up sleeping in my room, and I listened to a little of the Nutcracker music before bed. Tub woke me up at like 7 am by being cute -- she laid down across my arm so I could hug her and pet her, although I did eventually fall back asleep. Unlike when we were, oh, say, five years old, we started the gifts at 11 in the morning! Mum pretty much picked out the perfect things I needed/wanted, and we're going shopping for anything else that requires our selection within the next couple of days in Portland. I think everything I picked out was well received, yay =) Mer loves the green zip up sweater, and Mum actually wore her red hat around for awhile! Mer did, indeed, pick out the things I pointed her towards, and some cool things she found all by herself! And she actually like the necklace I made her! yay, Res Life actually taught me something useful!

Well, now I think it's time for breakfast and relaxing, my throat's a little more sore than normal today, what is wrong with my immune system!!??

Visiting Grammy & Grandpa today, had to give them the whole story on Andrew. Things my grandparents enjoy: hearing about college and questioning me about this new fellow that shares my grandpa's birthday! We chatted for quite awhile, I love grandparents... especially mine! =)

We saw Dad walking in Hood River but couldn't find him by the time Merried looped back around... Finished the Christmas shopping craziness, thank God.

I had another happy visit today, I continued the new tradition of watching old Christmas specials with Lindsey! We watched Garfield & the muppets, drank hot cocoa and ate caramel corn. And the new puppy is so soft and cute and already so smart!!

Tonight... was strange. I was cold so I wanted to shower, and accidentally was in the shower while Tim was in the other bathroom taking a bath. So I definitely had a cold shower which wasn't helpful! Now I'm warming up with hot tea, however... Sometimes I can't wait to be back at college... I'm going to enjoy having Windy's whole house to myself...

Ahhh so much has happened!

So... last Thursday after I handed in my paper I slept, and I slept until Kobe's dad called and let me off dog walking duty for the day (he was down with the flu and home from work). Dale came in and worked on her paper on my laptop after we had a "lunch" at Blanchard... a goodbye lunch with Lindsay! This girl from Res Life training gave me a M&M brownie ice cream sandwich, which was very appreciated after I got ripped off for a little orange sherbet push up pop! Anywho, in the evening we walked to Prospect and realized that we weren't being fed dinner! So we unearthed Dale's car from under its pile of snow and ice (with help of One Card and Rite Aid card), then Dale finally turned in her paper and by like, what, 9 pm? We headed out for the grocery store!

I ended up buying $24.67 in food stuffs (since Res Life reimburses us for up to $25 if we stay till Saturday to close up the dorm), and Dale and Miranda got Chinese food. We had a little dinner at the nice dining table downstairs, and I stayed up rather late...

Friday! Everyone was leaving... and I walked Kobe... then the mail center didn't need me, so after talking to Priscilla awhile I headed off again! Had to come back to pick up a package (it ended up being my verse writing portfolio... course grade: A!) Then I cleaned up my room, visited with D. Becky, returned library books, and mailed letters. Got ready in the evening to see Andrew! I dragged my cd player/alarm clock into the bathroom and blasted music while I showered, it was fun! I definitely took advantage of having the dorm to myself! (or at least hypothetically, if someone had been so inclined she could have stayed and eluded us closing the dorm.)

After looking around online, Andrew & I went to Amherst for dinner at Judie's, which was really fun! We sat at a Matisse table, and Judie herself with talking at the table next to us so we got to overhear random tidbits about the owner's life... It was so cold though! I was "ice skating" on the frozen over snow outside Pearsons!

Saturday was rather sad, and I was nervous as usual before traveling. Andrew was an amazing help with getting me ready and to the airport! I was definitely feeling rather sick and scatterbrained and he was calm and helpful, and, well wonderful =) Sad leaving but it helped that he really had to leave me at the airport as there were police cars around and his car was "parked" in the "actively loading/unloading" area!

My flight was SO long! I went to Atlanta, ended up having to switch planes, then sat next to some gals home from boot camp all the way to Portland. Time in the air: about 8 hours! My lower back was killing me. Luckily I had lots of music to listen to, Andrew and Lindsey made the best mixes ever!

So in PDX Mum & Mer & I were standing around, and my luggage was definitely not riding the big belt circle thingy... a bad premonition was in the air. My luggage was definitely still in Atlanta, no doubt just hanging out on an identical big circle thingy, going in endless circles, subject to any random person going by and stealing it... I think the Delta customer service guy heard me bitching about "what a huge inconvenience this is" and how they'd "better drop it off at our house, we don't want to drive all the way here just to make up for THEIR mistake..." and about how "there's not much time before Christmas and my gifts are in that bag!" Yeah. Because he was super duper helpful! And my luggage was delivered to our door yesterday!

Yesterday... I didn't do much. Partly because my clothes were in transit still. I was bumming about the house in sweatpants and a hole-y sweatshirt. We did decorate the tree, however, and I watched the Homecoming air guitar video! I kinda tipped the tree over a bit (think the leaning tower of pisa) and had to readjust the damn thing (my hands were all pitchy afterwards) while trying to make our vcr work (didn't end up working for me). Cleaned my room and unpacked finally! Threw lots of junk out. Had hot chocolate with a candy cane and fell asleep in my bed a little early!

Today was a good day =) Mer went to the library and I did some more shopping, then I directed Mer to what I want for Christmas and she bought stuff for me with the money I loaned her while I waited! Funny, huh? So I have a good idea of what she got me... Oh! and she ended up buying this sweater I found from Anthropologie at the second hand store in Hood River that was only $14 and looks new. In the catalog I bet it'd be over $100... so I told her she should definitely buy it, if she hadn't I would have! She needs sweaters though... On our way out of town we went to McDonald's and spent the last of our cash (she'd forgotten her wallet and I had used my credit card for nearly everything as I don't carry much cash on me) at Mcdonalds... Yes, like the silly girls we are, we sat together and split french fries in the empty restaurant!

So now I should go eat dinner! Tomorrow I get to see Lindsey and the new puppy!!

I just physically handed in my paper... Quillian was in his office so I got to hand deliver it! Here's how it went:

Quillian: Do you like this paper?
Me: I hope so.
Quillian: No no, I mean, do YOU like this paper?
Me: Well, I did last night, and then I got jittery handing it in.
...
Quillian: Don't worry, you did fine. And I'll see you next semester! ... Have a happy holiday!
Me: You too!

Something about delivering a paper in person is so much more... rewarding. Handing in a paper I wasn't totally enthusiastic about would be easier with any other professor, but one just doesn't want to hand in anything less than perfect to Quillian... Oh well, I tried, I have had my vision!

A blog in honor of the wit of Merrers:

Pink Poodledog: I'm going to walk to the library with dale (at 2 am, mind you), print my paper, and then scurry over to quillian's office and leave my paper on the box on his door
MuskratFan: hahah. Why? To get your paper in like, earlier than everyone else or something?

...

MuskratFan: oh my goodness
Pink Poodledog: and then "well I was married at 19, and grandma was married at 20, so we're thinking it's probably going to happen to you"
Pink Poodledog: hahahaha
MuskratFan: omg. The whole freakin' Bambi thing AGAIN!
Pink Poodledog: hahahah what???
MuskratFan: last night, I forget what we were talking about, but she said "it could happen to you.."
Pink Poodledog: hahahaha
MuskratFan: and I was like, mom, that's the whole twitterpated speech the owl gave
Pink Poodledog: HAHA oh DEAR!
Pink Poodledog: so true!
MuskratFan: yeah, it was ridiculous. It was something totally unrelated to relationships though

...

MuskratFan: it's really starting to annoy me at school, seeing all the couples cuddling and blocking the hallways!
MuskratFan: it really pisses me off. Like now that it's almost break, people are spending more time together or something?!
Pink Poodledog: hahahaha
Pink Poodledog: just wait till one of your crushes and you get together, then "it'll happen to you"
MuskratFan: ack!

...

MuskratFan: I'm adopting if I ever want kids. If I get too desperate, please get me a small lap dog. I have no feelings for children except they're cute at times as a "novelty sort of thing"
Pink Poodledog: hahahahaha
Pink Poodledog: will do mer, I'll get ya one of them dogs that have the reincarnated spirit of a monk in 'em, the wiggly caterpillar lookin' ones
MuskratFan: ha. Those caterpillar dogs
MuskratFan: well, I suppose I should let ya go now.
MuskratFan: sounds like you have a mission to carry out

And in her blog, if you haven't read her latest:

Oh yes, I forgot to add previously that there is an angel in my bathroom. (As in a small lighted plastic angel that mom traditionally sets up in the living room around Christmas time).
posted by Merrie @ 10:52 PM

Mum IMed me today, so yes, I'm going to copy and paste some tidbits instead of actually writing anything new!

SITA3783: are you typing away?
I got your sheets changed. I think they were already changed, but it was hard to tell for sure, since the Tub (and Mebes) [the cats] had tucked themselves in a few times

...

SITA3783: did I tell you about the girl over here who landed in the Hood River on one of her first driving lessons?
Pink Poodledog: haha! nope!
Pink Poodledog: what a story
SITA3783: she was driving with her stepmom, down there where I took you, on the port front.. learning to park. anyway I guess she hit the gas instead of the brake
SITA3783: and they landed in the Hood River and they had to kick out a window or something to get out . they were totally submerged

...


SITA3783: I had to change a light bulb, kinda had to rob peter to pay paul
SITA3783: did you know you can die from water poisoning?
SITA3783: merrie was like telling us you can actually drink too much water
SITA3783: like if you drink a couple gallons
SITA3783: it dilutes out the potassium and salt and stuff.
SITA3783: anyway that was a weird thing to learn

(who says this?? love you mum!)

And from Merrer's blogspot:
I asked Becky about what song I should use to represent me in English class...then realized with the answer its implications! Hilarious is right...

MuskratFan: I can't decide on one! What about something from The Last Unicorn? Hehe..
MuskratFan: or Cake? Or Mundy?
Pink Poodledog: mundy'd be cool
Pink Poodledog: what's that song...
MuskratFan: yeah..I don't know which one
Pink Poodledog: the something and something sky
MuskratFan: gin and tonic sky
MuskratFan: oh no! Not that one!
Pink Poodledog: haha why not??
MuskratFan: There's this joke in that class...
MuskratFan: 'cause of that near-empty alcohol bottle that Zen found after I house sat!
MuskratFan: that was consumed most likely by that other guy that was staying there!
MuskratFan: and it came up in class again today that my song would be something about a drunk Irish man! And Mundy's Irish! And he's singing about gin and tonic skies!
Pink Poodledog: hahahaha
MuskratFan: now that's hilarious
Pink Poodledog: oh my gosh, that's hilarious
Pink Poodledog: yeah, precisely, I saw you typing that the same time I was...!
Pink Poodledog: but I finished anyways to show how apt the word was :-)
MuskratFan: so funny. Glad I thought about it before I used that one! Hehe. But it would have been funny anyway


For the record, Lorenzen asked my freshman high school class the same question, what song would we pick to "represent us" or be the "soundtrack to our lives." And I think I said Paula Cole's "I don't wanna wait"...

I just wrote a 13 page paper in like, 24 hours. And it didn't feel the least bit rushed. By page 6 I had a vision of my paper turning out well, so I hope it has! Must read it over and see if there's anything I should tweak a bit, but I think it's basically done! Wow, only a year and a half left of MHC life! I'd better get on those grad school applications!

“I love how flashlights can sit up on their ends… who created that?” – dale on the second to last day of finals, while reading sociology in my room and moving a flashlight so she can spread out (yeah, my room's a mess, the flashlight is still by my fridge, from when the mice were running around).

Ok! So I only write one page tonight, but after sitting and staring at my screen for over half an hour and eating popcorn instead of typing, i realized I am just not in the place to be writing an essay right now. Definitely need some sleep to function properly again. Luckily I have absolutely nothing I need to do tomorrow except fill up the next 9 pages with a development of my idea of what these novels are about. I have a general thesis and I made up a little outline of what points I want to get through in what order so I can pick out appropriate quotes tomorrow from what I've marked as "most important" to do close readings on. I couldn't actually type so the outline seemed like a good idea to get me on track tomorrow morning.

So to bed now, and tomorrow morning/afternoon/evening i'll be typing away!!!

Ahhhh!!!! Three down, one to go! I studied art history this morning, walked Kobe, studied some more, and then the test went QUITE well, I think. He seemed to pick out pieces I remembered enough about to write a decent amount, and that I at least thought I remembered the date to rather accurately. It was structured just like our quizzes, same amount and type of questions (thank you Prof. Staiti!) but with tons more time (thanks again Prof. Staiti!) Then I took the rest of the afternoon off & had dinner with Dale, Miranda, Elise, and another Katie of '05 at Abbey-Buck. Food was surprisingly decent tonight.

I made an ever so brief visit to the library (because people are sick and nasty in the library, even my obscure under the stairs hiding place is completely defiled and disgusting. Note to people dirtying up the library: learn to throw food IN THE GARBAGE! TRY to act as if you have some class! Stress is no excuse for this large scale debauchery!) and I found bits that I may use to support my Woolf paper, but frankly, I think this is going to be all about taking the text and analyzing it to death and proving what I want to prove. My thesis changed a bit after reading an essay & relooking over all the passages I marked. And of course marking the bestest passages with sticky notes!

Ahh. So, tonight the goal is to write the first three pages. And tomorrow to finish it.

"I see stacks of books and piles of papers,
The sick studying day, the paper-writing night,
And I think to myself, it's finals week."

Ok so that didn't really sound like "what a wonderful world" but yeah, it's finals week. And compared to everyone else who isn't finished I feel, well, on top of things. Not gonna lose any sleep, either. Dale and Miranda were camped out downstairs with work all day and I can hear someone coughing in the room next to me. Now does everyone see why I was able to actually get over this cold when I left to see Andrew for the weekend??

Elettra's question of the day... we'll reveal that later.

First of all, sorry it's been so long! Andrew noted an inverse relationship between Spanish papers & blog posts =\ I get a little distracted! So here are some vague recollections of the past week:

Weds: I think I started feeling a bit crappy this day, which was too bad because it was the last day of classes! We had pizza in my Spanish class & suddenly we were all friends with our profesora after everyone's been complaining about her all semester. But the pizza & cider definitely boosted morale. I knew I was getting sick & Thomasena offered the wet sock advice, but I didn't follow it (for better or worse). Quillian's class we watched To the Lighthouse, which he likes even though some of us were a bit disturbed with the liberties taken with the plot. But I guess movies are a different medium and I shouldn't judge on that...

I got out early from Quillian's class (although it seemed to drag on, I wasn't feeling well) & spent the next, uhm... 3 hours? helping Katie get our floor activity set up. We somehow lugged over media services equipment from the library that weighed as much as us, got a copy of Pirates of the Caribbean, and spent about 60$ on food! It took forever, but we finally got the equipment to work (with the help of our HP) and we watched the movie through a cool projector system set up through Katie's spiffy laptop! Ate lots and lots of good junk food! Got to bed too late considering my sick state.

Anyway. I started writing my Spanish paper earlier that night, yay for productivity!

Thursday: Definitely felt like crap this day. I worked pretty much all day while Dale & Miranda went to the mall for holiday shopping. Took a break in the evening to stagger around in the village commons in search of christmas cards & gifts. Uhm... not recommended. Walking around while you're kind of woozy from a combination of sitting all day alone with your laptop & being sick, vainly trying to make decisions... I think I looked at cards for like half an hour. It was ridiculous. Anyway I DID finish my paper, and got a full night's sleep!

Friday: Bustling day! All morning I found art history images for my flashcards, then I walked Kobe, had some chips & salsa (to stave off the crappy sick feeling, ie, a sore throat), worked in the mail center for an hour, picked out hours for next semester, then printed and handed in my Spanish paper! I turned the corner to profesora's office just as Whitney opened the door from the stairwell, and we slid our papers under the door when whoosh, there's Kristin! So we had a little chat with our profesora & then scrammed! I imported all my art history images to a word document, resized each picture, and printed! Then in my incoherent sick daze I packed to catch a bus to see Andrew. It took me forever to pack, like a bad dream where you're late and nothing comes together and you're all panicky and nervous. Things that contributed to the feeling: carrying projector equipment back to the library with Katie, being questioned by Ramona "you're going to Boston? don't you have any finals?", forgetting to water D Becky's plant and reentering the room to do so.

So I was at the bus stop before 5:15 (when the bus was supposed to be there), and I waited for like 15 minutes until I was sure it had left without me! I was walking back, looking behind me all the way, and there's the damn rectangle on wheels coming straight for the bus stop!! So I high tailed it back, hitting a car in the crosswalk with my bag on my way, saying "sorry" as if the car could hear me, and puffing out "I thought I'd missed you, I was just heading back when I saw you!" to the bus driver before plopping into a seat. And somehow, even though the bus driver was definitely late and caused all sorts of anxiety because of it, I couldn't believe my good luck! I was sitting on the right bus!

Met Andrew in Worcester & we did a little, uhm, food shopping for the sick before going to his place! We had chicken soup together that night, I love lipton's chicken soup, especially with Andrew =) Watched a funny episode of The Family Guy, and I'm not sure what else... it was a relaxing evening!

Saturday: Started feeling the cold more today. We went shopping and then watched The Ring which wasn't as scary as the first time around... I think a dark room up alone with Merrers contributed something to the scariness. SNL was pretty good though, Elijah & Kattan... weird. Strangely similar.

Exchanged gifts in the evening, Andrew gave me the most amazingly color coordinated gift ever, and better than anything I could have picked out for myself =) I picked out Taboo, because it's different from other games we play & I thought it'd be hilarious to play it with a group! Dale's already excited about it, too -- we'll have to see if we're as good at this game as we are at most others ; )

Sunday: Snow was predicted, we had a quiet day in. I worked on my art history flashcards and slept in as my cold had its little peak (I think) on this day. Andrew saran wrapped his window so it was a lot warmer. More chicken soup, more tea, and a game of Trivial Pursuit! We put off thinking about bus schedules!

Monday: Being naughty we slept in, then I was rushed to Newton for the bus! Which I caught, and made a few wrong decisions on which buses to take, so got back a bit late! Missed one meeting but was able to get Windy's key and walk Kobe before seeing Dale and going to dinner. Now I'm showered & ready to study for art history!! Tomorrow's the final, then I've got a couple of days to write a paper for Quillian. I'm going to write on Mrs. Dalloway & To the Lighthouse, on the underlying "net" that connects everything... or that's my vague theory right now. More later!

KruMatata: becky

Auto response from Pink Poodledog: english department winter social!!!!

after a full day! yoga, compiling poetry, art history, lunch, verse writing, a meeting with prof. pesola, quick dinner at blanchard...

KruMatata: mice!!!
KruMatata: ekk!!!

I knew you'd understand, Karuna... I remember your little run-in with a mouse last year!!

An excellent, but busy, day. Staving off illness, I bundled up for yoga this morning, which was a huge class with people trying to make up for absences. I put together my poetry portfolio and made copies of my latest poem, then picked up the package that I got a yellow slip for yesterday. Turned out to be from Grammy & Grandpa's church. I tried eating the oreos tonight but they tasted like the lavender sachet!

Our last verse writing class wasn't anything spectacular, but it was a little sad when we all left. Elaine gave everyone hugs. I decided to eat a real lunch today, by the way! I went to Prospect and had some yummy almost-Chinese food. Hot mustard sauce is definitely a good thing when you're feeling a little on the verge of sickness. Ate with Caitlin, which was cool, since I never see people from her corner of the floor.

Also had my meeting with Prof. Pesola today, which was uhm, not as productive as it could be because I hadn't formed a really solid idea of a thesis yet. We ate popcorn and she got me thinking. Then I grabbed a quick "dinner" at blanchard, hurried home & changed for the winter social! It was one crazy night... we DID have raspberry cream cheese bars!! So yummy. And Prof. Brown read something cute about cats and Christmas, then something more by Langhston Hughes. Prof. Lee read from Practical Magic & Molly Makes up her Mind. Quillian read something by I think Jonathan Berger? Something Berger. Uhm, wow! A cool excerpt about Caravaggio and sleeping together (which I found particularly good to hear, it definitely confirmed thoughts I already have), then a bit about a woman leading a goat into the forest to be bred while the snow's starting to fall. Megan was about to grab me when Quillian got to the part where the goats actually have sex, it was hilarious! Talk about shaking things up. Also loved the part about chickens getting shaken and then thrown up into the air. HILARIOUS!

Took a nap, now I'm up thinking about what all I want to talk about in my spanish paper!!

Parents (and sisters) say the darndest things:

SITA3783: wel l jeez, you can't have mice taking over your room, that's ridiculous
SITA3783: exactly!
SITA3783: well, to those folks who said that you were so cruel, ask them if you could release them into their dorm rooms
Pink Poodledog: hahahaha
SITA3783: Tim says those ppl are a bunch of uneducated geeks

...

MuskratFan: damn, I hate mcdonald's new ad campaign
Pink Poodledog: what is it? the white meat chicken mcnuggets?
MuskratFan: exactly
MuskratFan: damn "i'm lovin' it"
MuskratFan: positively ridiculous. I bet if those kids knew that white meat=inactivity for the chickens they wouldn't be "lovin' it"

...

MuskratFan: mom again: "are you guys laughing at me behind your collective backs?"
MuskratFan: lol..that doesn't even make sense!
MuskratFan: It should be "behind my back."
Pink Poodledog: hahahahahaha
Pink Poodledog: oh mum
Pink Poodledog: you say the best things
MuskratFan: mom: "she better not quote me on that. She will now."
Pink Poodledog: hmmm.... not a bad idea :-)
Pink Poodledog: come on mum, be a sport, you know you say stuff like that because subconsciously you want me to quote you!

...

MuskratFan: it's chilly in here too. The door's been open for mom to bring in wood. Ironically enough

...

MuskratFan: Unicorn Unicorn running free
I am so glad you can be here with me
Unicorn Unicorn You are so special
Uni in unicycle Uni in You.

(Mer's friend, Jodi, wrote that)

Kobe escaped today! I went chasing her all over, I was NOT happy with her! No more playing fetch after walks! Continuing the mouse-infestation clean up. Finally did my laundry!!! So proud!

Got Kathleen's postcard, too, beautiful!

Something funny from the weekend: Beth and Korisha forming a congo line (is that what they're called?) and making us dance with them down the hallway to Barry Manilow. Their neighbor opened the door, and Kate took one look at me and Andrew and said "oh that's why, they're wasted!" "no, you'd hope so...but no." Then someone decided that a closet door would make an excellent sled, so Beth and Korisha started dancing with one and then blocked someone's door with it. Then knocked on the door and ran, so we ran, too!

Ahh, another lovely weekend, I'm getting spoiled! Andrew came on Friday & as a snowstorm was predicted, we got provisions at the Big Y and a movie. I had Mcdonald's in the first time for ages! I missed their french fries. No dippin dots here though =( We waited for Korisha to do some calculus homework, and then had a Cranium rematch!! Beth misread "Runway model" for "Runaway model", which caused some hilarious guesses! And me and Andrew definitely won again ;) Mum, I recognized the picture of a columbine flower, you would've been proud!

Of course the big news of the night was my mice. When I got home from the mail center and started cleaning my room, I was noticing lots of little black dots in corners and random places. And when I finally sat down to look at my mail, I saw something dart out of the corner of my eye towards my fridge. So I was like, damn, was that a big old house centipede again? I started moving my fridge around and from underneath I could see two big black beady eyes looking up at me! Yes, it was a mouse! So of COURSE I called Public Safety, as every MoHo knows to do in such an emergency, and tried to corner the little bastard under my fridge. Somehow it must have gotten away, because by the time the two heavily accented FM men arrived with sticky traps the little bugger was no where to be seen. Well I started cleaning more and discovered in the corner of my closet a peanut butter cup wrapper and a pile of mouse shit. Yes, the mouse had obviously been gorging itself on junk food.

So after Andrew & I played Cranium he checked the traps for me, and found not one but TWO mice in ONE sticky trap. As much as I pretend to be a cold hearted survivalist, I couldn't handle seeing the little furry bodies stuck on there. Luckily Andrew has a slightly warped sense of humor ;) And he threw them out, as the Public Safety people said to do, into a garbage can. Where they probably had heart attacks &, I hope, died quickly. But back to being mean, they somehow got onto my top closet shelf and were eating whatever they came upon in my food supply, as in, half a snickers bar! Ick! Icky mice, I'm totally opposed to rodents right now...

Anyways, on to Saturday! The snow was gorgeous, and we ate at Blanchard while it was falling heavily. We went to the Thirsty Mind and drank coffee & listened to this woman sing the first like 30 seconds of various songs. And we played scrabble again (Andrew won again). We watched SNL in Korisha's room, which was hilarious! Al Sharpton & Michael Jackson on a roller coaster and Paris Hilton appeared & Pink was ridiculous (and it was remarked that she wants to be Gwen Stefani).

Sunday we went to brunch in Abbey, Elizabeth was there, too! We then watched In the Bedroom which was good but I think it's hard to get into a really dramatic and depressing movie when I'm happy and the sun's shining and there's snow on the ground! After, we dropped off the movie, did some pick up shopping at the Big Y, and went to get dinner at Boston Market. For dessert we ate another pint of ben & jerry's =) Watched Habla con ella, which was really good and well done. The Practice was pretty good, too. Shore is excellent and makes even the most run of the mill cases exceptional.

It was really weird to come back to my room alone this morning =( I ended up trying to write my poem for Tuesday and sleeping till ten!! But it's a pretty day out and not so cold. More later!

Dale holding up a spoon at breakfast: "This is a pretty spoon." [waits a bit, then whispers] "It looks like a vagina!"

Then we went to Ashley's room for a peak at the Christmas tree her mother and grandmother sent her. Very pretty, even though all the glass ornaments broke in transit!

Ok, plan for today: go walk Kobe, have some soup and something else at Blanchard, then work in the mail center till 4:30 pm. Then clean up my room before Andrew gets here!!

Looking at Mer's blog, I found this:

Word o' the blog: Parzival: An epic poem written by Wolfram von Eschenbach. -Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary

// posted by Merrie @ 7:55 PM

So of course I'm thinking "Hmm, sounds like Percival or Parsifal of King Arthur." And sure enough, the first thing that comes up on google is this site: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15683a.htm

Basically, in the 13th century this German fellow dictated an epic poem telling of Parzival: "It is the well-[known] story of the simpleton who passes through struggle and temptation and in the end wins the highest earthly happiness and becomes King of the Holy Grail"... Of course, he stole this from the French. Memories of Eng. 316 & Chretien de Troyes! So, I salute you, Merrers, on a good word of the day.

As a funny sidenote, Dale actually said this today when she was about to go back to her room:
"Ok, I'm going to go soak my crotch now."

A blog in fragments, not in chronological order:

An encouraging day: a low A on the Spanish paper & an invite to read some poetry. Snow flurries continue. Breath-takingly cold out. Distinct draft from my window. Cranium rematch scheduled for friday night! Finished rereading To the Lighthouse. Warmed up some caramels over my radiator (which I had to request to have turned on earlier, and the man at the central heating plant, after asking my name, told me that his great-niece born today was given the same name, to which I replied that it's a good name =) Took a nap and woke up thinking it was morning and couldn't figure out why my computer was turned on. Went to a not-so-good dinner at the Rockies. Dale is back & happy! Last night was first night in awhile I had to sleep quite alone, ten days or something? Room seemed lonely. Have resumed using my illegal extension cord. Between really hot showers & tea & blankets I can almost fight off the draft from the window.

Quotes!

Merrie: Oh oh oh! Becky! I got another perfect score on my math quiz! I got better than a perfect score! I guessed my score and got extra points! This is the third week in a row! I'm on a roll!

Andrew upon seeing me dump corn nuts into my mouth: So did you spend a lot of time in bars when you were little?

Ok, now all the madness is over and I'm too itchy to sit down and read so I'm going to update! So last we heard, I was stuck in the Somers library, doing a mix of work and procrastination (read an excellent article on the upcoming Lord of the Rings). Well, Joni & Dale called, but in my hurry to make the ringing stop in the quiet library I hit the "end" button instead of any other button which would have connected me! Luckily in about ten minutes they showed up and off we went! Dale wasn't feeling too well at this point, and by Sat. morning it had developed into a flu or cold of some sort. Thank God we had a couple of hours of peaceful sleep after the pug left with Dale's grandfather. That dog snored even when it was awake, you can't imagine the bone rattling racket she created in her sleep! I had a nightmare of suicides and unearthly dogs that chopped down trees with their jaws on Thursday night, which I'm blaming on that dog. Anyway, Dale was quarantined in her room at this point, and I spent most of the day reading and cuddling with the cats.

In the afternoon I got ready to see Andrew, and questions mounted as to what I was going to do if Dale wasn't well enough on Sunday to drive up to MHC. Joni assured me she'd bring me up to MHC, but that seemed like an awfully long day and lots of trouble (big travel day and 3 hours in each direction with traffic). So when Andrew arrived in the evening he learned he was going to have a stowaway on his drive up! I greeted him at the door with Selena the rat (who is greatly enjoying her new condo). Maybelline warmed up to him (naturally, since she's mostly white and he was wearing black fleece), but Dunlop behaved herself (maybe for my sake) and didn't act like a slutty girl, although as Joni says, usually she likes anything in trousers ;) Theseus saw fit to invade the bathroom via the cat door, too. So our date plans changed, rather, since now it seemed like a better plan to get an early start up to Boston rather than being out at all hours of the night. We had dinner at a Chili's (my first experience with this one), and then went back to Dale's to fetch my things. I think Dunlop is going to be angry with me for a long time, after I made her cuddle with me all the time and then I left =(

The drive up was good, I subjected Andrew to my oldies CD and one of my girly favorites mixes. We stopped for corn nuts & fruit mentos, and time flew by. We caught the latter half of SNL with Justin Timberlake (who can't act or sing); weekend update was funny but way too short. Got to bed at a decent hour, no late night scrabble matches!

Sunday morning we definitely slept in, but it was an odd sort of sleeping in as I was expecting to catch a ride either with a student or on the bus back to MHC. So I wasn't really content. But we had a nice brunch & went on a walk looking at some cute stores and revisiting Jamaica Pond (lake, really) & the albino squirrel. Got a better picture of our white furry friend!! (make sure I send it to you Merrers.) At some point the idea was raised that I could just get a bus in the morning and relax Sunday evening with Andrew. So once that was voiced as a viable possibility, I felt very sure that that was what I wanted to do. With the help of Madalyn I did my Spanish paragraph-on-final-paper-plans and was able to watch The Practice with Andrew (second time in two weeks!) We had yummy pasta for dinner from The Cheesecake Factory (if we do this again I must remember to just eat like a third of an entree we split and then have room for the cheesecake!)

Again we got to bed at a decent hour, and woke up at a horribly early hour, 6:15 am... =( I don't think I've been up that early for months. But I was pretty awake! Andrew dropped me off at the bus station, and I ran up the steps and into the building as if I knew what I was doing. This illusion was promptly broken when I was unsure of where to go, to the left or up the escalator. Luckily a woman waved me up to the 3rd floor for buses. Another crisis when I found a completely deserted ticketing counter. There was a sign from Bonanza buses about a bus to Rhode Island leaving at 8 am, and I was quite sure that this was the bus I needed to take (pay the driver at the bus). In something of a daze I considered calling Peter Pan about what bus to take and how to pay, and I absent mindedly wrote out some luggage tags. Then I wandered around a little bit, and finally realized the ticketing counter on the other side was open! So I did get my proper ticket from Peter Pan from a super friendly woman. At this point I decided to get a chocolate donut to reward myself for finally figuring out the station.

Got on the bus without a problem, but unfortunately got a rather sleepy seatmate that was perpetually on the verge of tipping over in his napping onto me. Luckily his balance held out (usually the bus would jolt him awake over a pothole in the road before he was in a deep enough sleep to capsize) and at Springfield I snatched a seat with a girl in my Spanish class. I had almost talked myself out of going to Spanish, but even with arriving at MHC five minutes late I had time to ready myself for class and bolted off. I didn't have my interpretive question for "Chac Mool" (I forgot) but Prof. Pesola smiled when I said "me olvide" and let it go. Did get to hand in my paragraph, which at least one person hadn't done yet (I like to measure myself against worst case scenarios like that, it makes me feel happy about myself).

I had a rather extended lunch of soup and carrot sticks, and ate my ice cream on my way to Kobe's. Kobe was in fine form today! We took a walk and did a little fetching, she ran full on into me at one point, and was throwing stuff around for herself. She skidded out trying to catch up a tennis ball in her mouth and actually fell down, did a half roll, and picked herself up again for another try. Crazy dog. Some guy in a red car slowed down while I was walking her, and had the goofy "I know you know I want to ask you something, thanks for stopping there and obliging me as I roll down my window" smile. So I waited, and he finally asked "Is that a Leonberger?" To which I replied, yes, the couple down the street own her, I'm just a student who walks her. He has one too, apparently, down the same street in the opposite direction. There was a snow flurry, so I explained away my trying to tug Kobe on her perhaps not liking the snow and going in the direction of the wind. But really I always have to tug her along after she sniffs at one plot of dirt for five minutes.

Newton was likewise admired on his walk by a couple of FM workers who didn't think he could see with all his fur in his eyes. Saw Newton's father again as I dropped him off.

I hate it when professors say they'll put something out for you and then forget or do it after you stop by... Must go to Prof. Pesola's door again this evening, as I'm nervous about how I did on my Spanish paper that I didn't like and wrote before the fire alarms were supposed to go off.

Daley's gone =( And she would have so enjoyed Prospect's dinner tonight: quesadillas!

Yay I posted a lot today. Tonight must continue with To the Lighthouse (which is much better the second time around) & attend a hall committee meeting.

Dear Lord, I must have missed about a week of your posts, Merrers! Because I just read them instead of getting ready for my Kobe walk!! Totally understood your confusion on the stand as-Raymond or as-Merrie... ack!! Sounds like the next class was a hell of a lot easier though, you seriously cut out paper snowflakes and talked about what you're thankful for?? Damn. Maybe I should get that AP English book out for you so you can get some additional studying in ;)

Glad you saw Scotty for his b-day, I just sent him a card/letter thingy. Tell me how everyone is?

Uhm, as for where the heck I've been since Friday, I'm going to leave that for a later post, maybe tonight when I have more time to include details for once!