Like last Saturday, I spent the day in my pajamas, alternating between lazing about and sleeping. Unlike last Saturday, I remembered to eat when I woke up. All in all, a better day.

I watched The Incredibles last night, and Blade Runner tonight. Both were good, though Blade Runner confused me. Turns out I watched the director's cut, which is lacking some voiceovers. After reading the text of these missing voiceovers, things make much more sense. However, the love scene - described in the summary I read as him teaching her how to reciprocate love - stills seems more like a rape (throwing someone into a wall just leaves that impression, I guess). And the synthesizer-y music irks me. But a good movie nonetheless. Interesting.

One more day left in July. This summer has gone by really fast...

I was asked to continue working at the library during the school year. I said I would, and now I have to figure out how many hours, when, etc. So, with colored markers and a class schedule card in hand, I am attempting to plan out my semester. This of course doesn't take into account things like RA duties, my radio show, and an attempt at a life...

Absolutes: classes, time to eat

This crosses off the block of about 12 to 4 pm on Monday and Wednesday, 12 to 4:30 on Tuesday and Thursday, and 12 to 1 pm and then 2 to 5 pm on Friday. I will not be working afternoons, it seems.

That leaves mornings and evenings. Also weekends, I guess, though those are kind of sacred time and messing with them is to be avoided. Same goes for morning before 9:30 at least. My first class isn't until 1 pm this semester; I am not getting up early. I assume I will be doing much of the same stuff that I've been doing this summer, with the focus on dealing with gov docs. Either way, I'm sure I'll be working in tech services, not doing homework while sitting at the circ desk. It helps to have people around to answer questions/tell me what to do. Said people probably don't work on weekends or in the evenings. It looks like I'll be working mornings.

I told myself that I'd try to get to the gym a few mornings a week. While this will probably go the route of the noncredit yoga class (skipped for sleep, catching up on reading, last minute work, etc), I still don't want to abandon the idea before the semester even starts. Since I have ballet on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, I don't really want to go to the gym on those mornings. That means gym on M, W, F or some combination thereof.

That leaves Tuesday and Thursday mornings for work. This nicely corresponds to the days that the labels for the gov docs come in and need to be dealt with. Now, what time? I said nothing before 9:30, and I meant it. So perhaps 10 to noon? (4 hours a week, the minimum) Or 9:30 to noon? (5 hours)

A backlog of about 2 weeks of gov docs (i.e. all the docs that came in while I was gone - I don't think anyone touched them, they seem to have become my special job) took me basically an entire day to get through. So 4 or 5 hours should be enough to deal with them as they come in, I think. I don't know. Meh. I'll talk to my boss about it tomorrow, try and figure it out.

Now to wash dishes and get to bed.

More swimming today, this time with other people, so we played some basketball. It was fun, and marks the 3rd day in a row that I've gone to the pool. This is quite possibly a record for me, as I am generally not a huge swimming fan. However, the heat has made a convert out of me.

It stormed a bit this evening... I'm not sure exactly how much rain we got or anything (I was asleep for much of it, yay naps), but hopefully this will break the heat. The weather forecast seems to claim that it will, but as I don't actually feel much difference in the temperature yet, I am hesitant to get too hopeful. Either way, there will be ice cream for me at work tomorrow. Woot!

I napped on and off for about 2 hours this evening, but now I think it's time to actually go to bed. I made the mistake of staying up a bit too late yesterday evening, chatting with people and playing some Soul Calibur, and I was dragging today. And sadly, gov docs do not wake a person up, so I was a bit of a zombie until swimming this afternoon.

It is miserable in my room. My fans are doing all they can, but it just isn't enough. It is hot, I am sweaty, and neither of these seem to be about to change.

I just got back from the pool. Usually I go with a group of friends, like I did yesterday, and we play volleyball (or, in the case of last night, basketball). Very little real swimming is involved. Today, I went by myself. I therefore felt compelled to actually swim. This I did, for at least an hour. I was tired, and really didn't want to do more laps, but I felt silly not doing anything, and the prospect of going back to the sauna room was also unappealing. So I swam some more.

The room is less sauna-like than it was before I went to the pool, and hopefully it will be even less so after I'm done with my shower. The high on Thursday is only 80. I anxiously await Thursday.

Downside of taking the day to just sleep and lounge about in bed: somehow, eating is forgotten. This is especially true when your fridge is pretty much empty anyways, and nothing left sounds appetizing.

Downside of forgetting to eat: the stomach revolts, in, well, a revolting fashion. I threw up twice, luckily making it to the bathroom in time. Crackers have eased my grumpy stomach somewhat, but I really wish I had some Sprite or something. Sadly, that is one of the drinks that the vending machine does not have, so I'm out of luck. At least my stomach has embraced the crackers and not rejected them...

Back to work tomorrow, whee. The periodical shifting project, which was nearing the ends of the A's when I left, is apparently in the H's now. Very exciting stuff.

Tonight was nice. Dinner with friends, hanging out with everyone, a movie (Y Tu Mama Tambien), an experiment (yes, the Brita filter does improve cheap vodka), and Soul Calibur II. All in all, a very good night. Tomorrow: lots of sleep and then unpacking. Then it's back to work for 2 more weeks...

Fall concerts for me to begin pondering: Rainer Maria at the 1st Unitarian Church on Sun, 8/28; Bloc Party at the Electric Factory on Sat, 9/10; Sufjan Stevens at the TLA on Wed, 9/28; the Decemberists at the Electric Factory on Fri, 10/7; the New Pornographers at the Troc on Fri, 10/14; Death From Above 1979 opening for NIN at Wachovia Spectrum on Sat, 11/5.

The hugeness of Wachovia makes me not want to go there; the cheapness of 1st Unitarian Church, which I've been meaning to see a show at, makes me definitely want to go there. Sufjan Stevens is on a Wed, which is bad, but choir may have to be skipped. Unsure about the rest. I will have to think these over, but now it is time for food. Mmm.

Back at Swat after my two week excursion into Moving Purgatory and Real Estate Hell. Pity my parents and their agent, for they have to deal with Dr. Bizarre and his ever-growing team of crazed henchmen. With luck, it'll all be dealt with by Friday, but there are no guarantees.

First time I've been online in awhile, and I'm kind of regretting it. Lots of email messages from people at Swat to the list, arranging fun things to do that I won't be involved in. No more emails from people in Quincy, which kind of sucks, as I got very few responses from anyone about me leaving. Though it does make it easier to leave and not look back, at least.

Moving sucks. I love the new house, but the actually packing, moving, and unpacking part is god-awful. Especially the loading and unloading of the smaller truck we rented. Ben and I loaded the 23 foot truck, took it down to storage, unloaded it, brought it back to Quincy, and then reloaded it with others' help. Sucky day, resulting in many scrapes and bruises. I'm mostly unpacked, but rapidly losing motivation and energy. Tomorrow is going to be no fun, as we have to go back to Quincy and clean the house to get ready for the 4 pm walk-through. Blah. I'm enjoying spending time with my mom and pets, but I'm looking forward to going back to Swat and seeing people.

Got and read the new Harry Potter book. We had it mailed to us, and picked it up Saturday evening. I sat down with it and read it all in one sitting, finishing up around 2:30 am. It was quite good, and I am of course eager for the next one to come out, even though I'm sure it'll be at least another 2 years.

I'm at home, and it's weird. The house is full of boxes - when I got here, my room was the only one that really looked like a room. Now it's got boxes too, along with pictures propped up against the wall, piles of things to sort through, and the suitcase I'm living out of. I'm going through boxes of stuff that I've saved over the years. Some things I can get rid of easily, because I've forgotten what they were. Some things, generally small and otherwise inconsequential, I can't bear to part with. Snowball, this fuzzy creature I had. A little baby Kermit. An old, broken car with 2 Fraggles in it. An insanely ratty Grinch - I was going to get rid of it, but then my mom told me the story that goes with it. Apparently that was my first stuffed animal, brought to me by my brothers right after I was born. As she told me this, I clutched it against my chest and got a little teary-eyed. It went into a box of things to be saved.

There are patterns in the things I've saved over the years. Trophies and awards, of course. Programs from choir concerts, musicals, plays. Maps from trips I've been on. Old artwork. And lots of writing. There are essays from grade school, reports from 3rd grade, a book I wrote and illustrated for my Quest class, my middle school writing folder, and more. Then there are the nonacademic writing pieces. I now have an storage bin filled with my old journals (which I've been keeping for about 10 years now), poems, song lyrics, stuff from WFC, and the quotes I've gathered. In the years to come, I imagine I'll go through this stuff again, and I'll be able to let go of more things. I'm already getting rid of a decent amount of stuff, stuff that I used to think was so crucial. But I don't think that the writing will be as easy to cast aside. Even the shortest school essays from grade school capture my past in a way that no other memento can. The papers, with their changes in handwriting, tone, style, vocabulary, and subject matter, embody me.

Alright, time to sleep. My mind is getting a bit mushy, it seems.

There is something very odd about packing to take a trip home, deciding what is essential for the duration of the trip. This weirdness is surpassed, of course, by taking a trip home with the main purpose being to change homes. There's a bit of a strange unrooted feeling, though not a major one - we're not talking identity crisis or anything. Just a bit of an odd feeling.

The hole in the ceiling is getting bigger, which means more water is leaking. This is very bad. I sent another email to workbox, reminding them about the issue and saying, in a polite way, that I was leaving for 2 weeks and would really prefer not to come back to a swamped room/mold/any other nastiness, and could they please come do something. We'll see. As it is, the towel is beginning to be insufficient, and the bowls I have are not large enough to handle 2 weeks worth of dripping. Gah.

Finally got my English grade - an A-. I'm thrilled, especially given the frantic last-minute paper-writing frenzy that occurred when my first thesis for my final paper fell apart.

Something I learned yesterday, while I was in the Treasure Room at McCabe (otherwise known as the Special Collections room) - W.H. Auden taught at Swarthmore. He was apparently here for 3 years in the mid-40's. There was a note from him, dated 1966, on the desk in the Treasure Room that apparently accompanied some manuscripts he sent to the college. So cool.

All of the sudden, I'm realizing that summer is about halfway over, and there's a bunch of stuff I still need to do. Meep!

Yesterday was fun - hanging out, a BBQ, and a movie. I baked, alone, for the first time, and it turned out really well - I made shortcakes to go with strawberries for dessert. There was volleyball and water balloons and frisbee, a BBQ with good food and lots of fun people, and then Independence Day on a big screen.

Today, more fun stuff, then fireworks. And tomorrow it's back to getting up early and going to work...

Looking at tattoo pictures, just to see what people have. There are some really interesting "geek" tattoos - chemical symbols, an argyle design on someone's leg, an amazing pi tattoo, various initials done in binary, calculus functions... All sorts of stuff. Then there are tattoos from art... Some guy is getting a picture from Where the Wild Things Are done, another guy has Starry Night on his back. (Both look amazing, expensive, and painful) Then there's this amazing tattoo with the caption "Pain becomes beauty" and it's also called "Flowers in the Attic backpiece." It has to be from something - there's another version on someone else, only in color (doesn't look as cool).

*googles it in various forms, finally finds it*

It's a t-shirt design, apparently - I think I may have to get this.

And it's been ordered. Yay!

Mmm. Just finished reading the archives for Narbonic. It's on Modern Tales, so it usually requires a membership to join in order to get the archives. But the strip is free for awhile because it's up for some awards, so I took advantage of that and am now up-to-date and can now read for free, assuming I don't miss updates.

To balance the reading of 5 years of archives in 2 or 3 days time (I had a deadline - the free archives end on the 3rd), I will now watch Chocolat, since I finally got ahold of it at McCabe. No, I don't know how watching a movie balances the comic reading, but whatever.

Still deciding whether or not to drag myself out of bed at an ungodly hour to go into the city for the Live 8 concert. There will be so many people there, it will be very hot and uncomfortable, and I am quite tired. On the other hand, it is a big, free, concert, the likes of which I will most likely not get to attend again. Decisions, decisions.