Monday, February 23, 2004

So I went to Junior Show rehearsal after dinner, and quickly realized that not only was everything backed up half an hour, but I couldn't get much work done sitting in an uncomfortable chair listening to people blabber. So I left. And then there was a fire drill in my dorm. Woo-hoo! Ok time for a digression: Why do we have fire drills? We don't take roll outside so we would never know if someone was totally deaf and needed assistance. And how would "practicing" the "escape" help anyone get out of the dorm? Don't we all know how to get out of the dorm already? And if we don't already know, are we really going to learn? Isn't it pretty instinctual to run out of a building when there are ear piercing shrieks (aka alarms) and flashing lights and, in the event of a real fire, fire and smoke? And don't tell me that they're practicing to make sure the alarms can, in fact, function; they could just as easily test that without the students being in the dorm. Basically, if you don't know how to get out of a burning building by this time, there's nothing that's gonna teach you.

So back to the story. I read, I doze, I listen to music. I don't really feel like going back out for junior show rehearsal, but I go anyway. I get there, and Tobe tells us we can all leave. So we're like, wtf? We just walked all the way over here and they're telling us to go back? But it turned out cool, because Alexis, Lindsay of the Philosophy Department, and myself, were walking down from Chapin when I brought up that we'd all be in classes together. Lindsay, I realized later, was in both Phil 100 and Eng 200 with me, and Alexis was in Phil. with us. So we chatted for awhile and it was really cool, because those first people that I met in classes my first year made such a big impression on me. And Lindsay liked Karen C-K, too! We must have been the only two... even though that was an awesome class.

So now I'm back in my room again... Argh, how am I going to write this paper for Friday?

Sunday, February 22, 2004

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!

Friday, February 20, 2004

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!!)

Thursday, February 19, 2004

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).

Monday, February 16, 2004

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 =)

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

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.

Wednesday, February 04, 2004

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...

Monday, February 02, 2004

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...

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

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!

Monday, January 26, 2004

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!

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

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!

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

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!!

Thursday, January 15, 2004

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!

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

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!

Monday, January 12, 2004

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...!

Friday, January 09, 2004

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!

Monday, January 05, 2004

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!

Thursday, January 01, 2004

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?"