Did some more work on my website today. Woohoo.

Also took a quiz which, like so many other quizzes I take, was found on Mama Cat's Livejournal...


You are ... about to kill me for asking you these
questions.


Who are you in the Harry Potter or Hogwarts Universe?
brought to you by Quizilla

I feel productive. I was just doing some work on my website. My website which will still end up with next to no info or anything on it, but will at least be redone and, in time, hosted on SCCS at school. Which, I believe, means no more annoying banner ads and such. Very good news.

Back from Chicago. It was a nice visit, and I already miss him some. But it's less than 2 weeks until I go back to school.

I'm hoping to make the most of that almost-2-weeks-long period. I haven't done anything very productive during break yet. But I did start reading a book on the train up to Chicago, and I have plans to finish it and read others before I head back to school and all the academic reading that entails. I also intend to sleep quite a bit, but I need to get into some semblance of a schedule before I go back to Swat, and I also need to get myself motivated to do things so that the new semester doesn't blindside me.

But I still have some time before I have to get into a schedule. So for now I'm going to stay up late and sleep even later.

Lucy (the fat cat) just got off my lap, and feeling is slowly returning to my legs... But now she's sitting on one of my feet, so now that's going to fall asleep. I'm glad she's happy and affectionate, but sometimes I wish she was a little less so -- like a minute ago, when she was licking my arm. Now I appear to have insulted her, and she has gone to go sit on the other side of the bed, with her back turned to me. Oh well.

I leave for Chicago tomorrow. Wait, I guess I leave today, since it's after midnight. Anyway, I leave around 6 am, which means I'm getting up really early. Blech. But it's worth it, because I'm really looking forward to the trip.

The weather here has been crazy... Way too warm. But that's going to change -- tomorrow it's supposed to get cold, and there's a chance of snow. I'm not sure if I should be happy (because snow is fun) or grumpy (because Chicago is usually cool anyway, so now it will probably be really cold... Brr...). I suppose a bit of both, but I'll probably be quite happy unless I get sick. I'm battling a cold right now, and I'd really prefer that it go away and leave me be for at least the next few days or so.

Time to get some sleep.

One more day until I go up to Chicago. Woohoo!

Now I do have an actual reason to feel better. Yay for email and someone knowing exactly what to say.

Because random things like this amuse me and cheer me up:

A thing borrowed from Mama Cat:

1) Using band names of bands that you like, spell out your name

Jimmy Eat World
Exies, The
Nine Inch Nails
Natural History, The
International Noise Conspiracy
Finch
Eels
Rooney

2) Have you ever had a song written about you? Not that I know of.

3) What song(s) makes you cry? There is no one song that makes me cry... A lot will depend on my mood -- If I'm in the right mood, anything could make me cry. But "Winter" by Tori Amos is definately in the running as a tear-worthy song.

4) What song makes you happy? Again, no one song. Though the Fraggle Rock theme song is pretty cool as a happy tune.

5) What do you like to listen to before bed? Usually whatever I've been listening to throughout the day. Though certain bands make very good bedtime music, such as Portishead, Radiohead, Damien Rice, and Tori Amos.

6)Name a song by Coal Chamber I would, but I don't know any

7) Who was/were your idol/s when you were younger? Don't really remember having any.

8) First album you ever bought? TLC, CrazySexyCool, I believe. On tape.

9) Name a song that reminds you of someone. "Winter" by Tori Amos reminds me of all the WFC girls, especially Claudia.
----

Three foods you didn't like as a kid that you like now: Well, I can tolerate spinach now... Can't think of others.

Three things you want to do before you die: Learn to play guitar, have some of my writing published, have a job I love

Three names you would name a dog: Sadly, I cannot think of anything right now.

Three things you wish you'd never bought: Some clothes that I don't wear all that often... Can't think of exactly what, but I know they're somewhere in my closet.

Three names from your past that cause an emotional reaction (good or bad): Dooley, Rusty, ... can't think of a third that's officially from the "past"...

Three celebrities you'd banish to the north pole: Britney Spears, Howard Stern, John Ashcroft (not sure if he counts as a celebrity, but he's still getting banished)

Three things you want for christmas: More CDs, more books... That's all I ever want for Christmas.

Three things you lie about on a frequent basis: Actually lying? Can't thin of anything. But there are numerous things my mother knows that my dad doesn't, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Three songs you'd play to drive someone crazy: Punk music/hard rock for my father. Bubble gum pop for my brother. Can't think of any songs in particular, but almost anything in those genres would work. And for Colleen, that step-by-step dance song, whatever it's called. And the Macarana for just about anyone else.
---
1. What did you do in 2003 that you'd never done before? In no particular order: Graduated high school, went to college, had a radio show, played poker, took the train by myself, wandered around Central Park and other areas of NYC by myself, had a roommate, had my very own computer, turned 19, got a tattoo, took a road trip with a friend, and a few other things.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year? Don't think I made any, and probably not.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Nope.

4. Did anyone close to you die? No one super-close, but someone I would have considered a friend.

5. What countries did you visit? Just other areas of the US

6. What would you like to have in 2004 that you lacked in 2003? More free time, more sleep...

7. What dates from 2003 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Graduation and giving my speech (for obvious reasons), getting my tattoo (the nervousness and pain), my first day at Swarthmore (also for obvious reasons), my one month anniversary with Matt (a special celebration), my first radio show (yay for the power going out half-way through it), the day before finals (Primal Scream and stress!)

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Hmm. Graduating high school 2nd in my class, and making it through the first semester of college.

9. What was your biggest failure? Not being number one? Though I don't really consider that a failure... So... Not keeping up with my emails and therefore not keeping in touch with a lot of people.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Nothing beyond the normal sniffles and cracks and pops in my joints.

11. What was the best thing you bought? My tattoo, if you can call that "buying" something... And my laptop, though technically that was my parents buying that one.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Hmm. Have no idea.

13. What famous person had the most botox in 2003? No idea.

14. Where did most of your money go? Books, various stuff up at school, CDs, poker

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? Going off to college, coming home for break, getting my radio show, Ben getting his fellowship, me getting my tattoo, doing things with Matt, seeing furry creatures when I was pet-deprived at school.

16. What song will always remind you of 2003? I don't know...

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
Sadder? No
Thinner or fatter? About the same, I think.
Richer or poorer? About the same (yay for parents paying for school)

18. What do you wish you'd done more of? Read, wrote, socialized, emailed

19. What do you wish you'd done less of? Procrastinated, cried, worried

20. How will you be spending Christmas? I spent it at home, with my family.

21. What's my mother fuckin' name? Don't know. Who are you?

22. Did you fall in love in 2003? Yes.

23. How many one-night stands? None.

24. What was your favorite TV program? I didn't watch much TV... The Simpsons, I guess.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year? Hate is a strong word. Dislike... Yeah.

26. What was the best book you read? Hmm. So many choices, and no answer.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery? A tie between Ozma, Ted Leo, The Postal Service, and Pretty Girls Make Graves... Close seconds include (International) Noise Conspiracy, Death Cab for Cutie, Denali, and The Junior Varsity.

28. What did you want and get? To enjoy college

29. What did you want and not get? Sleep

30. What was your favorite film of this year? Pirates of the Carribean or Return of the King

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? Many cards, some jewelery, some fuzzy warm socks, various food items... 19

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? More sleep, I think...

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2003? So many options, yet so predictable... As I fall back on jeans and either a band shirt of a plain tee again and again.

34. What kept you sane? My friends, Matt, my mom... This, of course, assumes that I am indeed sane.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Hmm. Orlando Bloom, I suppose.

36. What political issue stirred you the most? The war.

37. Who did you miss? My mom, my pets, my friends from home

38. Who was the best new person you met? Matt, but Marci and the rest of the hall are a close second. And David, Andrew, Alex, Mark, Nile, Rob, Professor Raff, Sensi Carolyn, Cuddles, and some others are awesome as well.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2003: Hmm. That even when things aren't logical, they can still feel and be right.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

So many choices, but this one works for at least a few aspects of the year...

Hello, I'm neurotic...
Creating problems that don't exist...
Don't believe me when I say it's alright.

Let's go to my apartment;
We'll pull the sheets up over our heads,
Forget all reasons to go outside.

Beats pulse, they're automatic...
Locked inside of my apartment,
Make confessions with the television on...

Hello, I'm neurotic...
Creating problems that don't exist...
Don't believe me when I say it's alright and I'm fine.

Let's go to my apartment;
We'll pull the sheets up over our heads,
Forget all reasons to go outside.

Beats pulse, they're automatic...
Locked inside of my apartment,
Make confessions with the television on...

Hello, I'm neurotic...
Creating problems that don't exist...
Don't believe me when I say it's alright...
And I'm fine!

-Pretty Girls Make Graves, "Blue Lights"
---

And this last part comes from The Mayfly Project... My year in 20 words or less:

An end, a beginning. New love. New friends. Plenty of work, not enough sleep.
---

And that's the end of that. I feel a bit better now... I don't really know why. Distracted, maybe?

Oh... One thing I forgot. My brother is quite entertaining when he's drunk. Goofy and rather hyper, which is not his normal demeanor at all. I think it was scaring my mom.

Happy New Year, everyone.

With that out of the way...
I feel rather crappy at the moment. I managed to lose $10 again (at least this time $5 of it was my dad's), so that sucked. I'm somewhat sick (a cold or something along those lines), which is never fun. And then I just feel rather insecure at the moment and somewhat isolated and just... I don't know. Today I didn't do a whole lot. Slept late, lazed around the house, hung out with my brother and his friends some (DDR and then poker), and that was about it. No major New Year's bash or anything. No invitation to anything, either, or questions about what I was doing.

I think that's what's hurting the most right now. I've only done a few things with people since I've been back. I feel just kind of distanced from the world in general. This isn't a new feeling for me, but that doesn't mean it's any easier to take. And it's no one's fault really, other than me and my hypersensitivity to stuff like this. I don't know. And I'm missing some people a lot too, which makes the situation that much harder to cope with. And then seeing Ben with his friends makes it even harder, because even though they've both been very nice to me and are really cool, they're still very much his friends, and I've just been included in a few things. That makes me feel like an extra wheel or something.

Then, in another situation, I just feel like this sort of occasionally nice-to-have toy. And that really, really sucks. Because I have being a convienent fall-back. I want to be important. That sounds selfish, but it's true. I don't want to be second-best when it comes to certain things. Even though I know that it's not at all intentional, I still feel forgotten to some degree, and it really upsets me. At the same time, I hate broaching things like this, because I do know that it's not intentional, and then I feel like I'm needy or nagging or something, and that also really stinks. So this is just a lose-lose situation all around.

On the plus side, I do have my cat with me, happy curled up at the foot of my bed, looking cute and purring in her sleep. But that doesn't outweigh the bad feelings that are floating around inside my mind right now.

Played poker again tonight, this time with my dad, Ben and two of his friends, and a friend of mine. I ended up losing all $10 I put in, which sucked. Saka ended up ahead, as did my dad and brother. Oddly enough, one of my brother's friends, Andy, is actually really good at poker... Wins money at casinos and such... But he didn't do very well tonight. Of course, bluffing was hard to manage, and we were playing some odd games, so that may have been part of it.

I think I'm actually going to get to bed (relatively) early tonight. I'm rather tired, considering I slept in until around 1 pm today.

My internal clock is incredibly screwed up. I haven't gone to bed before at least 3 am for the past 3 nights, and I don't think I've gotten up before 10 or 11 am for the past week. It's screwed up, but at least I'm getting a decent amount of sleep.

I have reached new heights (or lows, depending on how you look at it) in laziness. I rolled out of bed around 11 this morning to eat some pancakes, then loafed about until my dad, brother, and grandma departed. Then I went back to bed.

Around 3 or 4, I recieved a phone call, and I woke up enough to carry on a conversation. I then made my way downstairs, where I proceeded to be lazy and watch TV for the next few hours. Somewhere around 7 pm I ate some dinner, and finally, at 9 pm, I decided I should probably take a bath. So I bathed and changed out of my pajamas into a different pair of pajamas. And then I played video games. All in all, a highly productive day.

I am the queen slug. I love winter break.

Alright. It is 3:18 am (the blog is still in eastern time), and I am just about done with the CDs... I'm on my last one.

I was just checking my email, and saw a link off to the side. It was for 10 holiday-themed proposal ideas... Curiousity got the best of me, and I clicked on it. The ideas are actually pretty cool -- definately the sort of stuff that makes you go "Awww, that's so sweet." I'm curious if anyone actual does these things... Though I guess the sweetness factor is hurt a little bit by the fact that the guy would be getting the idea from MSN. Still... Some of these require some effort, so I guess even if the idea isn't original, the time and love put into it make it awesome anyway.

I'm getting sappy now. I think sleep would help.

I'm still ripping CDs, so I had to find some way to occupy myself. Therefore, I give you quiz results:


You are naturally born with a gift, whether it be
poetry, writing or song. You love beauty and
creativity, and usually are highly intelligent.
Others view you as mysterious and dreamy, yet
also bold since you hold firm in your beliefs.


What Type of Soul Do You Have ?
brought to you by Quizilla


Compassion: You are there to share your sympathy
with others. People would consider you
affectionate and caring, and someone to look up
to.


Which Characteristic From the Samurai Code Matches You Best? (You may find out your best trait)
brought to you by Quizilla


Congratulations! You're Elrond!


Which Lord of the Rings character and personality problem are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Many other quizzes were taken, but these are the most interesting/notable results.

I'm up to 1.5 days of music, and there are about 6 CDs left that I may rip... Yay... *yawn*... I'm sleepy, but I'm almost done.

I'm currently ripping some of my brother's many CDs onto my laptop. According to iTunes, I have a day's worth of music on my computer now. Isn't that special?

The rabbit is hopping about my room, trying to decide what he's going to do. I thought he was going to leave, but then he changed his mind. Now he's sitting in the corner, hanging out. Hopefully he won't start chewing on anything. That's really rather annoying, especially in the wee hours of the morning when I want to sleep. Because the moment I decide to ignore it, it will turn out he's chewing on something important, like an electrical cord or a book or something. So I have to wake up enough to find him and go and convince him that no, whatever he's chewing on is really not that tasty. Silly rabbit.

I leave for Chicago in a little less than a week... Yay! I'm looking forward to it -- for obvious reasons, of course, but also just for the chance to get out of the house and Quincy for awhile. I am enjoying my break and sleeping in and being lazy, but variety is supposed to be the spice of life, so I might as well go and be lazy in the Chicago suburbs for a few days.

I am now up to 1.1 days of music. Yay...

Alright. Just finished playing poker with my dad and brothers. Two of my friends were in earlier, but they had to leave around 11:30... And we went on a whole 2 more hours. So, since we started around 9:30 pm and ended around 1:30 am... That makes for 4 straight hours of poker. I ended up putting in $8... And I made a $4.30 profit. My dad lost about $5. Bwahahahaha (No, that's not a hint of smug pride in that laugh, not at all...) Actually, I was down fairly early on, as was Ben... And my dad and Tim were up. But then the tables turned... Ben ended up $7 or so.

Anyway, it was fun. We played some different rules, including Black Maria. It's 7 card stud, except you split the pot between whoever has the best hand and whoever has the highest spade in their down cards... And, as an added twist, if the Queen of Spades shows up, then you all have to toss in another ante and redeal. It can lead to very large pots -- which is how I came back. We also played 7 card Sweat and Reveal. You get dealt 7 cards, bet, pass 3 to your neighbor, bet, pick your best 5, arrange them in whatever order you choose, then show them one at a time, with a round of betting after each set of cards revealed. Again, large pots. There were some other games too, but those were the 2 I liked the most.

Other than that... Hmm. Earlier today I ended up going out to eat with my mom and my "adopted" aunt and grandmother, plus their brother/son (not quite an adopted uncle yet). That was fun... Lot's of interesting stories and laughs.

The laughs continued this evening, when my brothers decided to break out one of my Christmas presents: Dance Dance Revolution. They had never played it, which leads to interesting sights of flailing and such as it is. Add the sight of my oldest brother, 6'4" and no sense of rhythm and well... Let's just say it was a sight to see. A very scary, yet humorous sight. I'll probably have nightmares about it.

That's assuming I go to bed... Which I should probably do. It's already past 2, and I need to get up and meet people for lunch tomorrow. Whee.

Goodnight, all!

Christmas is officially over now... It was a good one, though, even if (or perhaps because) it was pretty low-key. We decided to just go with lights on the tree and there were no extravegant gifts. A lot of books and CDs (and video games for me).

So in-between family togetherness things and such, I've been filling my ears with Tori Amos, Hey Mercedes, and Ozma. There are other CDs that also await my listening pleasure, but they'll just have to be patient and wait their turns. I've also been playing some SSX 3 (very fun) and, of course, Soul Calibur II (sooo addicting). All in all, quite a lot of fun. And I haven't even broken out the DDR stuff yet -- that'll be my exercise for the remainder of break, I imagine.

I didn't end up going to church last night... I just went to bed instead. It was probably the best move, since I felt much better today.

And now, a quiz:


You're chocolate. You're the old soul type, people
feel that they have known you their entire
life. Many often open up to you for they view
you as thoughtful and trustworthy. Although
people trust you, you have a hard time trusting
them. You prefer to keep your feelings bottled
up inside, or display them very quietly. It is
alright to open up every once in a while.


Which kind of candy are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Mmm. Chocolate. Yummy.

I feel horrible right now. I have a headache, and I'm dead tired... I slept until about 11 or so, and then slept more from about 2 until dinner. And I still feel tired and have no energy to do anything at all. My family is supposed to do presents soon and then go to church at 11 pm... But I have a feeling that I may be bailing on church because I feel so crappy. I feel guilty about that (especially with this whole church issue with my brother), but staying up late and having to deal with noise and such is not going to make me feel any better. But we'll see.

Other than that, merry almost-Christmas to everyone.

The holidays are here. All my shopping is done, my brothers are home, and my grandmother is on her way up tomorrow. Which means she'll be here in time for the Christmas Eve service. Which I will be attending (it's the one church service I actually enjoy, and I promised a friend I'd go... She's involved in the service)... But it's unclear if one of my brothers will be going.

I can understand his logic. Going to keep Grandma pacified is kind of silly, and it is patronizing to say that she wouldn't be able to handle it. But as my mom pointed out, it's also true. This woman is not in good shape. She's a devout Christian who doesn't have the best grip on things, and I can easily see how having one of her grandchildren be rather blunt about their lack of faith could upset her. I don't think anything has been decided yet... One semi-arguement has already occurred, and I can only imagine that it will get worse when my dad becomes involved. Having stubborn people go head to head in something like this is not a very pretty sight.

But it's a sight that will probably be common over the next few days... Because you can't have the two of them together for long without something erupting. This has been demonstrated time and again during family vacations and the like. So it's bound to happen, which will make life in the house quite jolly.

I just used the word jolly. Hmm. I do believe it's time for me to go to bed.

First update since I've been home. The lack of updates has been mostly due to the fact that the it's hard to spend lengthy periods of time on the Internet at the moment, since the 2nd phone line has decided to stop functioning.

Anyway. The trip pack was fine (my bag -- the Bag of Doom -- was too large, but the guy checking it was nice enough to let it slide), and sleeping in my big bed has been quite nice. I haven't done anything productive, really... Though I have watched some movies. I saw Pirates of the Caribbean (fun), Return of the King (great), When Harry Met Sally (cute), and Kissing Jessica Stein (good).

I've also gotten a chance to see some of my friends, which was nice. My boyfriend came to visit, but he's been sick most of the time... Flu, we think. I feel bad for him, the poor guy. But he's hung in there and handled my family and friends very well. He goes home early tomorrow... And then I get to see him again in a little over a week. (Go ahead Marci. I know you want to tease me.) Hopefully he'll be feeling better by then.

Most of tomorrow will be spent down in St. Louis with one of my brothers as I run around frantically doing all of my Christmas shopping. Then we'll swing by the airport and pick up my other brother and bring him home.

And now, I'm going to go catch up on my online comics and such. Whee!

Psych is over, and I'm confident that I did well. Now I have about 5 hours until I leave. Woohoo! I'm really looking forward to going home right now. I need a break, and the idea of sleeping in my big cozy bed and seeing my family, friends, and animals is very appealing. I also have an urge to spend hours playing video games and watching movies and reading for pleasure. *sighs happily* A whole month without school or work. How wonderful is that?

Off to pack now!

Just finished my English email exam and sent it off to my teacher. It wasn't too bad... I'm fairly confident about it. Tomorrow is psych, which I need to do a little last minute studying for. Before that, though, I think I'll do some packing... I don't want to have to do all of it tomorrow afternoon, since I'm bound to forget something that way.

Hmm. So I decided to check on my bike (which I haven't ridden for awhile, seeing as the hill up to campus is a beast). I haven't really kept it locked, since the bike rack is inside the building... And the bike rack is basically full anyway, so it's hard to find a space to actually lock your bike onto. Anyway, I figured I'd lock it up before break. Only it doesn't appear to be there. This is not cool. My lock, which was wrapped around the handlebars, was on the ground where the bike should be. Hopefully it was just borrowed by a person who was in a rush to get to a final or something. (I can hope!) Otherwise... Rar. I'll just lose a bit more of my faith in people in general.

Either way, I'm going to start locking my bike.

So I just realized that my English exam is due by midnight tomorrow, not Friday. Gah. So I either have to do it tonight, tomorrow afternoon, or tomorrow after I get home. The last 2 options do not sound like much fun, so I guess I'll be setting aside 2 hours this evening to do it. *sigh*

I'll be so glad when this is all over.

So my history final is over now, and I think I did decently on it. Now I just have to do my English and study for my psych exam. And pack, of course.

I'm really tempted to take a nap right now, but I know I shouldn't. But I'm also not in the mood to write more essays, so English is a no go. That leaves me with studying psych. So I guess I'll go do that. Fun stuff.

I've worked on my history a fair amount... But I still need to do more, get it cemented in my mind. But it's so hard. Gah.

I really don't want to see my grade for this class. I didn't do very well on the 3 quizzes, and while I know I will pass the class, it will not be with the sort of grade I have become accustomed to. But I guess that's part of coming to Swarthmore. And anyway, can I really be that upset when I've fallen asleep during lecture so much? No, I can't.

I also need to finish studying for psychology (tomorrow's project, after my history final is over) and pack. And I really should do my English thing as well, though in theory that's not due until the 18th... So I could do it at home on Friday. But I don't know if that's a good idea. However, at this point, I may have to. Hmm. I'm not sure how I should handle this...

I definately have to finish up history tonight. There's no other option. Psych can be tomorrow afternoon or evening. The English exam has a 2 hour time limit, so I guess I could either fit that in tomorrow or maybe I should do that between my psych exam and going to the airport. Hmm. I'm not entirely sure how much time I'll have then, though. My exam gets over at noon (I really doubt it will take all 3 hours, though...), then I need to eat lunch, do my last minute packing, and then I think my shuttle to the airport will be between 3 and 3:30 (but I need to check on that). So... Hmm. Doesn't look good. I guess I'll have to try to do it tomorrow, then. *sigh* I really should have done it this weekend, but I chose to be lazy instead. Shame on me.

Okay. Time to finish history.

My history final is tomorrow. I still need to get ready for it. That's a daunting and not fun task. Which is why I kept on rolling back over every time I woke up, unwilling to leave the lovely comfort of my bed to do work. But now it's officially the afternoon, so I really can't justify going back to sleep again. Gah.

But when that's over, all I have left is psych and a 2 hour English email final. Neither of those are too scary to me, so I'm not that worried about either of them. And after that I need to pack. That is a fairly frightening task, actually... But it has a nice reward of getting to go home and sleep and see people.

But now... History. Well, actually... Shower, and then history. But history work will be started fairly soon.

We finally made use of the half of the extra-big bulletin board that's been sitting behind our door for the past couple of months. It's now on our wall, with a few posters and a lot of odd magazine cut-outs. Most of them are ads, because when the only magazines you have available to cut up are Times, well... You're limited in picture choice. Unless you want pictures of political figures or fighting in Iraq. But we didn't. Instead, we have a large reptilian eye and a waterfall, among other things. Woohoo.

I still have not read much more psychology. But I've decided I'm just going to read the summaries. I feel guilty about it, but at least I'll be studying something.

I'm feeling rather lazy and really have no desire to read my psychology (though I know I should) or prep for my history final (though I need to). Bleh. I'm looking forward to going home and being lazy... I plan to sleep a lot and play many hours of video games. Whee!

I'll also be revamping my old website. I downloaded a new HTML editor onto my laptop, and I have some space to host the site on through school (no more ads, to the best of my knowledge... Woohoo!). So over break I'll do the coding and everything, figure out how I want stuff laid out, figure out what I want to keep, what I want to get rid of, etc... And then when I get back to school, hopefully I'll be able to upload it onto the actual site. This is the plan. But I've been planning on redoing my site for awhile, so we'll see if it actually happens.

Other than that... Not much going on. I went to a party for a bit last night, which was pretty fun, and then came back to ML and ended up talking to people until about 2 am. All in all, a pretty good night.

Around 10 am, my roommate's boyfriend came to see if she was awake yet (which was a bit of an ordeal, seeing as he's currently on crutches, the poor guy)... Which she kind of was, so he came in and told us the news about Saddam being captured. We talked about that for a bit and then talked about some other political stuff in general.

And since then I've gone to brunch, done my laundry, and read some psych. I have to read about 2 chapters a day to get done before my final. And this, my friends, is why you do not leave the reading until the last minute. I'm seriously thinking about just reading the chapter summaries, since most of this stuff is just a repeat of what I learned last year in AP... And I learned that information rather well (thank you Mrs. Soebbing), so it's more of a matter of just refreshing my memory (and allowing the information to be recalled more easily) than actually learning it. Plus, the book is only so-so in terms of writing and organization of info, so it's not a quick easy read... Not very condusive to skimming.

And that's it for now...

My philosophy paper is done and has been emailed to my prof. It's actually longer than the required 8 pages. Okay, it only goes over onto the 9th page a little bit, but I'm still proud of it. Overall, I think it's a good paper, and I hope my prof will agree.

I feel like such a music geek. I'm listening to Peter's music on shuffle, and an unlabled song popped up. It sounded familiar, so I sat and listened to it and eventually determined that it was Jeff Buckley. I just tested my theory, and I was correct: it was indeed Jeff Buckley's "Corpus Christi Carol."

And now, back to the last few paragraphs of my philosophy paper.

Okay. English paper and portfolio are now done, and I am very happy about that. I dashed up to campus (well, walked fast) and got it turned in about 10 minutes before the deadline. Whee. Walking up there was hellish, though... My shin splits, which had been gone since track season, made a magical return, and they hurt. But I couldn't slow down, because I was scared that I wouldn't get to LPAC on time if I did.

And now, after finally eating lunch at 3 pm, I'm going to crawl into bed and sleep until dinner. After that, I get to finish up my philosophy paper and email it to my prof by midnight.

Isn't finals time lovely?

Oh yeah -- basically all of the snow is gone now. It melted away last night. Or, as Uber-Matt would say, it was eaten by the rain and fog. Either way, it's gone, and now everything is just kind of brown and yucky, with some white here and some green there. It was nice while it lasted, though.

I feel very ready for the Primal Scream. It takes place tonight at midnight. I'm already screaming silently to myself, so screaming out loud with the rest of campus won't be a very hard transition to make.

Bleh. I was in McCabe from about 1 to 5 today, and I feel like I've accomplished nothing. I have my paper sort of figured out, but then there's this secondary source thing looming over me. I know that I should have dealt with it earlier, but I just haven't had time. *sighs* And the paper, along with the rest of my portfolio, is due at 3 pm tomorrow. After that, I have to write my 2nd philosophy paper, which is due by midnight. And when that's all over, I have to start getting ready for my history and psych finals. Gah.

None of this is made easier by the fact that I really just want to either stare blankly into space or sleep for hours on end. Bah humbug.

A quiz that I got from Mama Cat's site...

You Should Get a Tribal Tattoo!

"Primal, earthy, and naturally sexy"

Describes both you and your tattoo

Subtle tattoo + subtle sensuality = perfect match!



What Tattoo Should You Get?

More Great Quizzes from Quiz Diva

The picture is almost exactly like Kristin's tattoo... Nifty.

Most of today will be spent in the library, working on my English paper. Woohoo. Of course, before I can do that, I need to take a shower. Which means sitting and waiting for a bit until I can actually get in the shower. Until then, I think I'll sit around a bit and listen to music. Whee.

Very last radio show of the semester... I went the whole semester without repeating any songs, but for the last show I decided to do ahead and pick some of my favorite artists/songs that I had played this semester.
So here's the playlist:

*Mando Diao: Sheepdog
Pedro the Lion: When They Really Get to Know You They Will Run
Radiohead: 2+2=5
*Denali: The Instinct
Ozma: If Only I Had A Heart
Poe: Could’ve Gone Mad
Belle and Sebastian: Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying
Modest Mouse: Paper Thin Walls
Damien Rice: Volcano
Dashboard Confessional: Bend and Not Break
Death Cab for Cutie: The New Year
Sleater-Kinney: The End of You
Pretty Girls Make Graves: Chemical, Chemical
(International) Noise Conspiracy: Smash it Up
Weezer: Only in Dreams

The Modest Mouse song was a request from my brother. He listened last night, and I felt special.

I had every intention of sleeping until noon today, since I don't have class. Instead, I woke up around 9:50 and couldn't fall asleep again. Gah. But if I get sleepy later today, I'm taking a nap, and I won't feel the least bit guilty.

Went to the a capella concert tonight... It was good. An all-girl group sang a version of Tori Amos's "Leather," and the all-guy group sang a Guster song.

Today was my last day of classes for the semester, and tonight is my last radio show of the semester. Whee. I get to sleep late tomorrow, which is very nice, since I'll be going to bed sometime around or after 4 am. Yay...

This song seems oddly appropriate right now...

See the strange boy talking to his shadow,
He's got a secret to tell.
His imaginary friend knows everything,
Don't let him go out.
He says they won't believe you,
You don't know what you're talking about.

Cause his eyes are always red, can't sleep at night,
Doesn't feel like being positive all the time.
Doesn't sit still, doesn't look well,
Give him something, make it chemical chemical.

You'll feel better when you cannot feel.

See the strange girl talking to her shadow,
She's got a secret to tell.
Her imaginary friend knows everything,
Don't let her go out.
She says they won't believe you,
You don't know what you're talking about.

Doesn't sit still, doesn't look well,
Give him something, make it chemical chemical.

You'll get use to cranial niches,
Smoothes out neuro-tramsmitted glitches.
You'll feel better when you cannot feel.

We'll have such a fabulous time,
Almost imitate a normal life.
You'll feel better when you cannot feel.

You'll feel better when you cannot feel...

-Pretty Girls Make Graves, "Chemical, Chemical"

It's actually worse than I thought... Which is absolutely horrible. At the same time, none of it really feels real yet. I've been given information, but I haven't seen or experienced the situation... So it hasn't really sunk it yet. I don't really want it to sink in. I want it to not be real.

Alright, enough people (enough being two...) have asked about the drug thing that I might as well explain a bit further. But you'll be recieving no names, because... Well, just because.

A guy I know back in Quincy (a sort of friend... Never a close friend, but we hang out with some of the same people, and he's a good guy) moved into an apartment of his own sometime late this summer or so. He was already smoking some pot, but he started smoking some more. Some new neighbors moved in on the floor below, and they used some harder drugs. Apparently he got involved in that. I'm not sure what he was using... I know that he used some acid at least once, and maybe also some Ecstacy, but other than that, I'm not sure... Anyway, one night he was on some stuff, borrowed his mom's new car, and totalled it. He has since moved back in with his parents and checked himself into some sort of rehab/therapy thing.

So the whole situation is pretty sucky. He's cool and pretty smart. He's done some stuff at the local community college, and he went to a college out here in the East for about a semester... But he didn't like it, so he came back to Quincy. But I think he was looking into other 4-year colleges to transfer to sometime in the next year or so. And now this happens, and I don't know what's going to happen. I hope everything works out alright.

So. That's that.

Listening to Ozma's "Korobeiniki" makes me want to play Tetris so much... But I have to come up with a thesis for my paper on Beloved instead.

There's so much stuff going on in the book that it's hard to focus on just one thing... So I'm kind of at a loss. Gah.

My mom is spoiling me. I got a cake and a tray of cookies for my birthday. Yummy. I've been nice and shared, of course. Because I'm certainly not going to be able to eat it all by myself.

Okay. Thesis-development time. While playing Tetris. Multi-tasking is great.

So now I know more than I did, which is good, but also not. This is the sort of thing that I never want to hear about. Not because I want to live in a bubble, but because I just don't want it to actually happen. Drugs don't exactly scare me, but they do worry me a bit. I'm fine with people drinking alcohol, though I'm a firm believer in moderation. I can handle people doing pot, even though I don't really approve... But when it gets to harder stuff, then I get worried and not happy and such. I just don't like it. Maybe part of it is that I don't understand the attraction at all. I watch movies like Requiem for a Dream and I hear about things like this happening to people I know, and I just don't understand it. But I'm glad I don't understand it, I think... Because it's sort of like a guard against something like this ever happening to me. But it doesn't help people I know. So I still worry about them. Such is life, I guess... But I really wish it wasn't.

And now, a song...

I woke up...
Tried to get dressed.
But I was alarmed, I was distressed.

Though I always, always try to do my best,
I had become a sniveling mess...
A sniveling mess, a sniveling mess.

Will you love me if I'm a mess?
Will you love me if I'm a mess?
Will you love me?
Will you love me?

Hold on...
I want to make sure you comprehend.
Hold on...
I need you to be comfortable.

Did you understand?
Did you understand what I am?

With that resolved,
I guess I'll go...
Pack my bags,
Move to Borneo.

When I get there
I'll live in a tree...
I'm tellin' all y'all that's where I'll be
If you need me.

Will you love me if I'm a mess?
Will you love me if I'm a mess?
Will you love me?
Will you love me?
Will you love me if I'm a mess?

Hold on...
I want to make sure you comprehend.
Hold on...
I need you to be comfortable.

Did you understand?
Did you understand what I am?

-- Steve Burns, "A Sniveling Mess"
(Yes, that's the Steve from Blue's Clues... Odd, isn't it? But the music is good.)

We went into Philly last night and ate dinner at an Afghan restaurant. I had a lamb and rice dish, and it was delicious, especially when paired with the mango juice. Mmm. Yummy. We played poker last night too, which was cool… I put in $5 and left with $10. Woohoo.

Just before midnight Claudia called, which was really cool. She wished me happy birthday, and then when I went back across the hall, everyone there sang to me as well, which was really nice (though slightly off-key). This morning my parents called, and while I was on the phone with them, I guess Heather called. I feel quite loved.

I was working on my history paper, trying really hard to be productive. My mind kept wandering though, which created a bit of a problem. One thing that my mind hit on a few times is this whole situation I’ve heard about involving a guy I know back home.

All I know is what I’ve managed to piece together from an email and some blog entries… Not enough to know what’s going on, only enough to have the words “overdose” and “rehab” going around in my head, without any idea of what else is going on. No idea if it was an accident or intentional, no clue what drug, no idea how he’s doing… Nothing. And yeah, I’m a bit worried. We were never really close, but he’s a good guy. Funny, nice to talk to, cool. So… I’m wondering what exactly is going on, but I’m also a bit afraid of finding out.

Life is a sleazy stranger who looks vaguely familiar,
Flirting with a bimbo named Disaster at the end of the bar.
– Ani Difranco, “The Million that You Never Made”

On a lighter note, go to Google. Type in “weapons of mass destruction” and then click the “I’m feeling lucky” button (not the normal search button!). It will send you to a rather amusing site. Or if you’re feeling lazy, I suppose I could just give you the link to the site… It’s here. No matter how you choose to go there, whether through Google or the link I’ve given you, go check it out.

I feel tired, and I really don't feel like working on my history paper. I'm on page 2 at the moment. Blech. I have to leave soon to go into Philadelphia for a special hall dinner, and by the time we get back, I'll probably end up playing poker or something.

So that means I'll have to work on the paper tomorrow, since it's due in class on Monday. Working on a history paper on my birthday. Sounds like a great deal of fun, no?

Going to go brave the cold outside and trek to the train station now. Whee.

So, I was supposed to go see Love Actually last night. That didn't end up happening, since the movie shuttle wasn't running due to the snow. Grr.

Still, after some minor problems, the night went well. Though I managed to be an abusive bed partner and kick him out 3 times in my sleep. *feels bad* He ended up sleeping on the floor for about 3 hours. He slept on the floor in his own room. *feels worse* Damn twin beds.

It's so cool to see some of my hallmates react to the snow... A few of them have never seen it. One guy was giddy when I saw him earlier today, and apparently he was taking pictures of the snowy campus. Another guy just finished making his very first snowman and took pictures to send home to Florida. It's great... It's been a really long time since I've seen anyone get this excited by snow just because it's snow (and not say, a snow day).

Playlist from last night:

*The Shins: Kissing the Lipless
Pixies: Gigantic
The Postal Service: Such Great Heights
*Elbow: Ribcage
*The Holy Ghost: Seein’ is Believin’
Alkaline Trio: Private Eye
*Broken Social Scene: Stars and Sons
*Denali: Hold Your Breath
A Perfect Circle: Lullaby
Poe: Dolphin
The New Pornographers: Mass Romantic
*Irving: The Guns from Here
Weezer: Say It Ain’t So
*The Natural History: Dance Steps
Rooney: Blueside

It's snowing... Well, actually, it seems to have almost stopped now, but it's been snowing since around 7 am, so there's plenty on the ground and trees to make the campus look pretty nifty.

I need to finish my English paper now. Such fun.

The possible awkward situations issue has been resolved for the most part. This is good, because the idea of playing an unusual version of Russian Roulette when I opened my door was not going over well with me. Now I'll know when to knock and when to just go right on in. Yay.

In other news, I'm tired. I really want to sleep. I may just end up sleeping here in the library for a bit this afternoon. But before I do that, I have to at least make an attempt to get some work done.

My basic work schedule for the rest of the semester...

Thursday, Dec 4th and Friday, Dec 5th: Work on English paper (due Friday at 5 pm)
Saturday, Dec 6th and Sunday, Dec 7th: Work on history paper (due Monday in class)
Monday, Dec 8th through Friday, Dec 12th: Work on another English paper, work on final portfolio for English (both due on Friday at 3 pm), work on final philsophy paper (due Friday by midnight)
Saturday, Dec 13th through Wednesday, Dec 17th: Study for history final (Wednesday), study for psych final (Thursday), do English take-home final (due Thursday)
Thursday, Dec 18th: After taking psych final, finish packing, head for the airport, and go home.

Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? And somewhere in there you have to fit in radio shows tonight and Tuesday, some stuff for my birthday this weekend, and some time to relax and sleep and such. Whee.

Oh... Last night I went to a debate between students representing some of the Democratic presidential candidates... Clark, Kerry, Edwards, Dean, and Lieberman were represented. The guys for Kerry and Lieberman were okay, but not spectuacular. The Edwards supporter was very energetic and interesting to listen to, but it was more because of the guy talking than the actual candidate. The girl for Dean was good, and the guy for Clark really knew his stuff. All in all, it was an interesting debate.

Okay. Off to do work.

Woohoo! Just got an email... The 10:30 am Astro class was going to be lotteried, but enough people switched over to the 9:30 one that it's not going to be lotteried after all. This means that for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday my first class will be at 10:30 am. *does happy dance* This is so cool.

Walking into my room has become a bit of an adventure lately. It's a bit like this...

*Jen walks down the hall, notices door is shut. Her mind begins to go through the possibilities. Bracing herself, she opens the door and either lets out a sigh of relief, chokes back laughter, or resists the urge to turn and run right back downstairs or outside or somewhere else.*

It's safe during the day. After about 5 or 6, though, all bets are off. And by 10 pm or so... Well, then it can get interesting. If no one was there when I left my room, it might be safe. And if not... Well, that's when I enter with caution. I only fled once. I've laughed many times. And when I get to sigh with relief? That's just really nice. Though it's getting rarer.

My philosophy paper has been successfully completed. Booyah!

Good news: Hotmail seems to be cooperating with my laptop again.

Bad news: I have a philosophy paper due tomorrow that I haven't started writing, we're hosting a study break tomorrow (and we haven't really figured out what we're doing), and I feel incredibly lazy and don't want to do much of anything at all.

I'm really looking forward to winter break.

For some reason, Hotmail doesn't want to work on my computer. It's working fine here in the library, and it worked on other people's computers, but it won't cooperate with mine. This is not good.

It's kind of snowing outside. Not sticking at all, but there are pretty light flurries coming down. It's nifty.

This is my last full week of classes. I have 2 days of class next week, a few days of downtime, and then finals shall be upon me. Whee.

I have a bit more than an hour before English class. Must go do something productive.

Oh... By the way, I decided to get rid of Squawkbox. HaloScan has been working nicely, so I'm just going to go with that.

I stayed awake through all of history class today. Philosophy, however, suffered because of that. I'm sleepy still, but I have work to do. Blech.

I have two more radio shows left this semester... One this Thursday, December 4th... And then my last show is on Tuesday, December 9th. Why Tuesday? Because classes on Monday and Tuesday of next week follow the Friday and Thursday schedules, due to Thanksgiving break... So the radio also follows that schedule, it seems.

So anyway... If you haven't listened to me yet and you feel so inclined, catch me on the air this Thursday or next Tuesday night, from 2-3 am EST. Just follow the links at the WSRN website and you can listen online.

This was written while I was waiting to get to on the plane back to Swarthmore...

I’m sitting in the St. Louis airport, composing this entry to be posted whenever I get to my dorm and have Internet access. It looks like that will be awhile, unfortunately. As it was, I was going to be sitting here for longer than usual… My dad had a flight earlier today, so my brother and I were dropped off at the same time as he was. That easily added 2 extra hours of waiting time… And then when I check in, I discover my flight has already been delayed and is now set to leave a half hour later. Add this to the excess time I always have fit into my schedule anyway (on time for flights is good; early is better), and that means that I’ve been sitting here for awhile. And it’s just a little after 5 pm, so I’ve got probably about 2 hours to go. Gah.

Of course, I should be using this time to do something productive. Like read history or work on my English paper. And I have read some, but it’s so hard to focus while sitting in an airport. There are so many interesting people to watch (2 people have walked by that look really familiar, and then there was one guy that was clothed solely in shades of camel and mustard yellow), random cell phone conversations that are hard to block out, and the ever-present music. The current music, since it is officially the holiday season, is jazzy instrumentals of Christmas songs. Woohoo. I think airports do this on purpose. Maybe the theory is if you have upbeat holiday music in the background, people will feel really guilty about being grumpy and hassling the attendants despite all the crazy delays, over-bookings, and so on. As long as “Jingle Bells” is playing, no one will get (seriously) hurt, or something.

I don’t know. I’m probably just making up bizarre theories because I’m bored out of my mind right now. But I can’t take a nap, because I’m paranoid that a) someone will steal my stuff or b) I will sleep through them calling my flight and never get back to Swat. I think I’m more worried about b than a, actually. I have a decent amount of faith in people (or I could drape myself over my belongings), but I have little faith in my body to wake up at the appropriate time.

Someone next to me is reading East of Eden. A girl on my other side is showing a friend a dress she bought (cute dress, by the way). A woman walked by wearing pink pants and corresponding scarf. Everyone but me seems to have a cell phone. There’s a girl whose scarf is an extremely bright and disturbing shade of yellow. Nothing exciting is going on, and it’s only 5:24 pm. An hour and a half left. A girl walked by wearing a shirt that said “Ciao Roma!” and I immediately thought of Eddie Izzard and his impersonation of Italians driving around on their scooters saying “Ciao” to everyone. God, I’m bored and tired.

I feel a strong urge to sleep, or at least sprawl out on the floor and lapse into a state of pseudo-unconsciousness, whatever that would entail. Staring at the ceiling, probably, and ignoring the world around me.

It’s 5:31 now. Gah. I suppose I’ll go back to reading history. That’s almost like being pseudo-unconscious…

*Sometime later*

Okay, I just went and checked on my flight. It seems that the departure time has been pushed back to 7:42 pm. If I could, I would bang my head against something. But that could be deemed suspicious behavior and be reported to the authorities and get me kicked out of the airport. And we definitely don’t want that.

I wish I was back at ML right now.

*And now*

So I'm back at the dorm. Yay! When I went and found Matt, he greeted me with food, since he knew I probably hadn't had much of a dinner. How sweet is that? *grins all happy-like*

However, now I'm tired, and I need to sorta unpack some stuff before I can go sleep in my now-seemingly tiny (yet still really comfy) bed. Whee.

It's snowing! The snowflakes are really small and light, but it's snow nonetheless.

My body seems to be a bit taken aback by this whole idea of sleeping as long as I want. So I got about 8 hours of sleep, and then my body woke up and was not interested in going back to sleep at all. At least it didn't wake up after my usual 5 to 6 hours... I would have been very grumpy.

Ooh, the snow is actually sticking to the ground. Nifty.

I'm home!

My room and bed seem much larger than before... It's quite nice. Seeing my family again has been cool, and I'm quite happy to be able to see my furry creatures once more.

My dad accidently found out about my tattoo last night. I bent over to pick something up, and he spotted it. Whoops. I hadn't thought about it at all... It's really easy to even forget I have it at times. But he seemed to take it really well, so it's okay. Not much he can do about it now anyway.

Dinner was great (and early in the day), and now everything has calmed down. I think I may try to do some work... Maybe get some of my prep work for my philosophy paper done. What a vacation.

I just realized my birthday is in a little more than a week. I'm almost 19. Whee.

Alright... I leave in about 40 minutes. My bag is huge. Well, not huge. But larger than one would expect for 4 days. It is not, however, because I'm bringing lots of clothes. Nope. It's because I'm bringing home stuff to work on. My psych textbook is in there, as is my philosophy book, some notebooks, and a few books from English class. How much work I'll actually get done remains to be seen, but I can at least make an effort to try and do something.

Alright. Time to pack up the laptop.

Just spent two hours discussing everything I've read in English class this semester. It was interesting, especially because every single text we've read was somehow related to another text, and not just in a superficial, "Well, both authors confess something" type of way. So that was cool, and it should prove useful for the final exam. Which is good.

Other than that... I have my last history quiz tomorrow. Yay for history being almost done!

And tomorrow I head off to the airport and go home for a few days. Whee. I get to see people and furry creatures and eat homecooked meals and sleep in my big bed. And possible invest in Soul Calibur II. Fun stuff.

Observing this whole situation, I'm really glad that I'm in a good relationship right now, one that is stable and makes me really happy. It's just one part of life that could be horribly stressful and complicated that has been made relatively sane and simple. Not entirely sane or simple -- problems do arise and must be dealt with -- but it works quite nicely.

Good news of the day: one of my brothers got a fellowship to spend 2 years studying in Cambridge, England. It's very, very cool.

I'm actually not that tired right now, so I think I'll go soak before I go to bed.

I preregistered for classes today. Whee.

I'm all caught up with my history sourcebook reading. Double whee. Tomorrow is my last history quiz. Gah, yet yay, because the end of that class is in sight.

I have multiple papers due in the next 2 weeks, and then more after that. The "read, read, or read" work situation is quickly turning into "write, write, or read and write"... It should be interesting. It does mean that I really should get some work done over Thanksgiving break, though, which sucks. I just want to lounge around and hang out and be lazy. But I suppose I will have to wait for winter break for that.

Another reason to love iTunes... A girl on the network has all sorts of Poe songs... Random things from soundtracks, covers, different mixes of other songs, etc. Whee.

However, there is a reason to be disgruntled with my computer. It won't let me use MyTunes. Some guy came up with a nifty little program that lets you download songs off of people's computers via iTunes. And my computer rejected it... It let me download and install it, but when I tried to use it, it gave me an error message. So I can only listen to some of the wonderful songs I've come across when certain people are online. And of course, it seems like some of the people with the best music are the ones who are on the least. Gah.

Off to read more history... And hopefully not fall asleep this time around.

Oh yeah... Today is 2 months. La!

I went to the chamber music concert last night... Well, the first half of it, anyway. I left at intermission because I was sleepy and needed to do something to wake up. But the first half was all that really mattered to me, because I got to hear the quartet that Nell is in. They played Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8, Opus 110, and it was amazing. It's dedicated to the victims of facsism or some such thing... And the music definately reflects this. The first movement is kinda of sad but nice, then the next two have this attack thing going on, which is throughly creepy, and then the last movement goes back to the sad. I don't know how else to describe it really... But it was good. The quartet recieved uproarious applause. They left, and the applause continued. They were brought back, and they got a standing ovation. I'm sure the two trios that went before them (playing Beethoven and Mozart, respectively) were thoroughly jealous. But while they had been pretty good, the quartet was great.

Anyway. After that, went back to the dorm for a bit, killed some time, and then played poker for about two hours. It was pretty fun... I lost some money, but not that much. The main problem was that one of the guys was crossing the line with some of his comments. I think everyone warned him to back off at least once, but he just kept going. After the last straw, I dealt him a few punches. The consensus of the other four people playing was that he deserved it completely.

After that, hung out for a bit more, then got some sleep. I've eaten brunch now, but I'm still in my pajamas and am feeling utterly unmotivated... I really need to read history, but the idea is not that exciting. I also have essays to ponder: English, final essay in English, and philosophy. And then there's things to read and so on. Gah.

I think I shall kill just a bit more time, then go be productive.

Tonight's playlist...

Sleater-Kinney: Oh!
*The Kills: Hitched
Maroon 5: Not Coming Home
*Elbow: Fallen Angel
*Portastatic: In the Lines
Ani Difranco: Shy
*The Natural History: Do What You Should
*Mando Diao: The Band
*Irving: White Hot
*The Holy Ghost: Or Dead
*The Clientele: Missing
Muse: Sunburn
Ozma: No One Needs to Know
*The New Pornographers: The New Face of Zero and One
OK Go: There's a Fire

Notice the prevalence of playlist songs (9 to 6 of "my" songs)... There's a very good reason for this. A couple, actually. The main one is that I didn't make a tentative playlist prior to the show. I usually do that in psych class every Thursday (it keeps me awake), but today I was mulling over my English revision. Another reason: none of my CDs seemed overly appealing to me tonight. And finally, there was a lot of stuff on the playlist that looked pretty interesting/good. And most of it was good, so it worked out rather nicely.

Sleep calls now. Yay.

Alright. I currently have both HaloScan and Squawkbox commenting systems on this blog. Use the HaloScan. If it's cooperative and such, I'll get rid of Squawkbox.

I got my English revision done in the knick of time. Woohoo. It's still not the greatest; I'll probably revise it again for my final portfolio. Still, my one required revision is done, which is nice.

I'm pondering changing comment providers. Squawkbox doesn't seem to want to be cooperative all of the time -- I know Colleen posted a comment (it showed up under my "Managing Comments" thing), but it didn't show up on this site. It's screwed up. So, I'm going to give HaloScan a trial run and see how it goes.

I'm feeling a bit better today. Yipee.

I had a meeting with my advisor today. It went well; she thought my schedule looked good. It seems she'll be on leave next year though, which means I'll probably get assigned a new advisor. That makes me a bit sad, because my current advisor is pretty cool and very easy to talk to. Such is life.

I really need get some work done on my English revision. I decided against asking for an extension on it... So now I really have to get to work. Or revise the 3rd essay (I have to have at least one revision), but I don't know if that's a good idea. That'll be pushing it to the last minute, and I'll have my final paper to work on by that point too. But this paper is just not wanting to come out. I figure I'll end up revising it for my portfolio no matter what... It's just a matter of making the Thursday deadline. Bloody hell.

I still don't feel very well. My stomach still feels queasy, I have a mild headache, and I just feel utterly lethargic. Not good, especially when I have a lot of work to do.

I finished my English assignment for today, but my revision is due Thursday. Gah. I'm pondering asking for an extension for that. I'd really like to do a decent job of it, and it's going to be more of a complete overhaul than just an editing job, so it's going to take some time. Add in my feeling crappy and well, I just don't know if I can get it done by then.
I also have a lot of history reading to do. Gah again. And I have philosophy to read for tomorrow. And eventually I have to catch up on all my psych reading (maybe that will happen over break...)

And while I try to do all this stuff, I just feel like hell. Well, purgatory, maybe. It's not unbearable, but it's annoying. And it's also causing me to go to sleep early (midnight last night), which means that time I would usually use on working is being spent sleeping. Not neccessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't really help me get done with the work any faster. Though since I feel bad, I haven't felt like socializing much, so I've been working instead of getting distracted by the chaos in the hall and such. That's a good thing, though I do feel slightly bad about it as well. Such is life.

Okay, my break is over, I think. Time to go read The Poem of the Cid, "one of the finest of epic poems and the only one to have survived from medieval Spain," for history. I can hardly contain my excitement.

I've decided not to go to aikido tonight. I can miss this one class, because the sensi was nice and gave everyone two extra attendences... So I can still make my 20 classes.

I feel kind of yucky. My stomach hurts... I'm going to blame the tandori chicken I ate for dinner (because I refuse to blame the ice cream). Besides that, I'm just sleepy and a bit out of it. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since I went to bed by 1 am for the past 3 nights. Rar.

Since I'm not going to aikido, I have just gained more work time. I think I shall use it to read my history sourcebook. Fun stuff.

Quizzes...


Yorick: You are dead. Sorry. But we knew you
once.


Which Minor Hamlet Character Are YOU?
brought to you by Quizilla

Poor Yorick...


My life is rated PG-13.
What is your life rated?

Well, seeing as I'm over 13, that's just fine.

Time to do some work.

Picasso at the Lapin Agile was quite good and rather funny. Unfortunately, the fire alarm went off about half-way through the play. So the show was stopped, the building was evacuated, and after a good 20 minutes (after Public Safety had done it's thing and found nothing wrong), we went back in. The actors picked up where they had left off, and they did quite an admirable job even though the flow of things had been screwed up. All in all, a good show. Though Elvis showing up was really odd.

Still have the wind ensemble to go to tonight, and then maybe a game of poker. And no, I haven't really done any work today. I feel bad, but it's also been a really good day, so I don't feel that bad.

I love iTunes. One guy has a ton of Ozma songs, as well as some Sleater-Kinney, lots of Weezer (including live stuff and B-sides), and plenty of other good stuff. He also has the Invader Zim "Doom" song. It's great. Someone has a massive amount of game and anime music... Final Fantasy stuff, Cowboy Bebop... And Soul Calibur II music. One girl has an amazing variety of things, including musicals, classical, and soundtracks. And the Fraggle Rock Theme... Yes, I am currently listening to the Fraggle Rock theme... Not a cover, but the actual thing. This is so cool.

I am such a freak.

And now I just discovered that the Eels have a song on the Shrek soundtrack - "My Beloved Monster" ... And it's pretty good.

It's discoveries like this that have made me not do much work today.

I just downloaded iTunes. This is a good thing. Why? Because I have access to my fellow MLers' music. Namely, I have access to Peter's music. Peter has good taste in music, and he has a lot of it. Yay!

A quiz!






Take the What's Your Song? quiz and visit Castle Diqueria.


Not the greatest picture of Tori, but such a good song...

Last night was pretty fun... Grabbed dinner from the campus cafe-thingy (mmm... chicken finger wrap), went to the jazz ensemble concert, and then watched Clue.

The jazz concert was really good... My only complaint is that there were no trombones. That's not really their fault though; they can't force trombones to join the ensemble. Other than that, the music was very good... There was one song with a great flute part... Jazzy flute = very nifty.

Clue was also fun... There were some technical difficulties in the beginning, but those were dealt with, and much merriment ensued.

This morning has also been pretty good so far... I ate lots of yummy food (delicious chocolate chip muffines, amazing biscuts, and good applesauce-cinnamon pancakes), and then my cat noises were declared better than Jeff's. This is quite an accomplishment, since Jeff is the king of cute, weird noises. You can't see it, but I'm glowing with pride right now.

Today... A play this afternoon -- Picasso at the Lapin Agile. It's by Steve Martin. It's about Picasso and Einstein meeting in a bar and chatting. It should be interesting. And then wind ensemble concert this evening. Probably not as cool as jazz, but it will still be enjoyable. Somewhere, in the midst of this all, I must fit in a good amount of work. Whee.

Oh yeah... Thursday night, I went to see John Brady Kiesling speak. He's a '79 graduate of Swat, and he used to be a diplomat until he resigned over the Bush administration's policy regarding Iraq. He was very interesting, and his 20 years in the State Department as a diplomat showed in the way he spoke... Lots of thought and care. His talk was a bit scattered (it was completely off the top of his head though, so that makes sense), but very interesting overall. At least half of it was him answering questions, which was cool as well.

And that's all I really have to say about that. Or anything right now.

Playlist for tonight... Whee.

*The Strokes: What Ever Happened?
Pedro the Lion: When They Really Get to Know You They Will Run
Tori Amos: A Sorta Fairytale
*Sun Kil Moon: Gentle Moon
Jimmy Eat World: Blister
Saves the Day: Shoulder to the Wheel
*Communique: Ugly Moon
Damien Rice: Cannonball
*Scout Niblett: Until Death
Ani Difranco: Both Hands
Something Corporate: I Woke Up in a Car
*The Natural History: Facts Are
Dashboard Confessional: The Good Fight
Taking Back Sunday: You Know How I Do
Luna: Black Postcards

I finally found the Ani CDs. They're in the folk section, as is Guster. Good to know.

Strange things occurred on the show prior to mine (I walked into the studio... 3 people were crowded around the 2nd mic... One was playing a toenail clipper, one had a shoe sole, and the other was just making noise. Don't ask, because I don't know. And I'm not sure if I want to...), and then I was incorporated into the show after mine. It was quite random... Crunchy cod. "The crunchiness emphasizes the codness." Yeah. Again, I'm not really sure if you should ask.

Sleep sounds very good right now... G'night.

My psych notes are so very odd. First of all, for each lecture, there is the steady decrease in legibility. They go from my normal handwriting, which is rather neat, to a scrawl that may or may not be in English. And then usually at the very end (when I fully wake up again), they're neat once more.

So it's bad enough that the writing gets all screwy while I'm taking notes in that class... But today my thought process went totally awry. Actually, it just went from being awake to dreamland. And it switched right in the middle of a sentence. I was supposed to write something along the lines of "Reinforcement leads to repeated behavior"... What I wrote, however, was "Reinforcement leds to repeated insanity, my life." Yeah. And then I wrote something else that didn't make much sense either... Then I woke up enough to read it and shake my head in confusion.

I'm not sure if this is better than the incident in AP Psych last year, where notes about sight or hearing turned into something about musical. I must say, falling asleep in psychology classes can yield interesting results.

I went to the gym again today (it's beginning to look like it'll be a regular thing). My arms hurt again, mostly because of this one weight machine. I can't remember the name of the exercise, but I swear the muscles it works are not used in daily life unless you're a bird and need to flap your wings. My legs aren't too bad in comparision, and neither are my abs. This is good. Maybe I'm not a completely out-of-shape whimp after all.

Some quizzes before I get started on my psych paper:



What Anime Vampire Are You?


Morpheus


?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla


You're a consumer whore! And how!


which rejected character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Mmmm... fangirly.

You're a bishounen!

You're male, but people often mistake you for the other option. You're unfeasibly thin and pretty and always have perfect hair, often surrounded by sparkles/sakura/roses. You almost certainly have a tragic backstory which involves one or more of your parents, and are liable to have a Tragic Destiny (TM). You were almost certainly invented by a female mangaka, are worshipped by a female audience, and your life is characterised by periods of extreme pain and angst. Sucks to be you. Which generic anime character are you?

You know your mind and don't take any bull. At your heart you are cynical, sarcastic and unique... and prone to pessimism. Don't shut out other people. Don't drown out what you don't want to hear with your own talk. Listen.
Which monkey are you?
Another pointless diversion from Bijouriel

All of these quizzes were reached through Bun-Bun's quiz results site. Yay for Bun-Bun.

So last night I realized that I had spent quite a lot of my weekend in front of the computer, doing various things for history. This was an unhappy realization, because while it meant that I had accomplished things in history, I hadn't done anything for my other classes. Gah.

I'm really tired right now. I took some time off last night to go to Target, talk to Collen, talk to my parents, and hang out with people. I really had not other choice. The constant staring at the computer screen was starting to get to me. Of course, because I took this time off, it meant that I was just starting page 5 of my essay around 1 am. So around 3 am I'm nearing page 6, since I'm writing and editing all at once, and my brain is functioning very, very slowly by this point. I can barely keep my eyes open and my mind is wandering... And my essay is showing it. So I give in to the need to sleep -- sort of.

I take a 2 hour nap, so at 5 am I'm up again. By 6 the paper is done, and I crawl back into bed and get up again at 7:45. So last night I got roughly 3 and a half hours of sleep last night. Whee.

I got my history quiz back today. I didn't fail, but I also didn't do extremely well. However, this came as no surprise, so I'm okay with it.

Philosophy class was good today. Raff was on the top of his game, and what he was saying was actually making sense. It may have had something to do with having a larger audience than usual - this is the tail end of Discovery Weekend, so there are lots of specs around campus. My philosophy class usually has 10 people. Today there were about 25 people there. That's right -- the specs outnumbered the actual students. Anyway, Raff tried to make sure they understood what was going on, which meant that the rest of us followed him for once as well. It was cool. It'll probably never happen again, though... But I still love that class.

Okay. It's time for me to go read Beloved until I fall asleep. Yay.

I played a Belle and Sebastian song on my radio show awhile back... "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying," I think, or maybe "If You're Feeling Sinister"... Anyway, one of the guys on the hall really liked it, and lately whenever I see him he seems to be humming or singing somet Belle and Sebastian song. Apparently he downloaded a fair amount of their music.

Right now I'm playing Weezer's Blue Album, and "Buddy Holly" just finished awhile ago. While it was playing, the guy asked me what it was... And just a bit later, he was singing it. So maybe I've managed to get him to download lots of Weezer music now.

Bwahahahaha. Feel the power.

Last night was fun... I played poker with some of the guys (put $5 in, took $6 out, yay!) and then got ready for the fall formal. When we got to the formal, it was pretty empty, but that actually wasn't a bad thing... We basically had the whole dance floor to ourselves, and we could be silly and have fun dancing without caring about looking dumb. Eventually more people showed up, and a good time was had by all. Whee.

And now, to go write my history paper. Blech.

One of the reasons why I may be up is because I had a bad dream. I mean, I intended on getting up early today anyway, but the dream kind of made me follow through with that.

I think the worst part about it was that it was so realistic - at least the part that I remember. It wasn't like one of those nightmares where when you wake up you know that it could never happen in the real world. Nope, this could definitely happen.

So I woke up feeling horrible, with a pit in my stomach, in desperate need of reassurance. Luckily I could just roll over and get a hug and cuddle... But the last part of the dream, right before I woke up, which just overwhelmed me with a wave of rejection and other not nice feelings, has been repeating itself now and then throughout the morning. *shakes head* Not nice at all.

Going to go be productive and do work now. That is, after all, why I planned on getting up early today anyway.

I am up, fed, showered, and dressed. It is not quite 11 am. It is Saturday. How scary is that?

So, I went and saw Matrix: Revolutions tonight. It was alright... Very nice special effects and all, but the acting was pretty stiff and I felt a bit beaten over the head with the Christ symbolism and all. The first was definately the best, but the other 2 were fun. Just not amazing.

I'm going to try to make myself get up at a reasonable time tomorrow and get some work done. Note the use of the word try. I'm not sure if it will actually occur.

I bought Damien Rice's CD tonight... I just started listening to it, and it's pretty good. Very nice and soothing-like so far.

Soul Calibur II is rearing its ugly head. The movie theatre had it... But it was in use, so I didn't get a chance to play. But one of the guys I was with has it on Gamecube, apparently. He said I can come play whenever. I have a feeling I'll take him up on the offer, just because the temptation is so great. I know I'll end up buying it over Thanksgiving break, winter break at the very latest.

Oh yeah... 11 of us went to the movie. 2 girls, 9 guys. And the other girl wandered off with one of the guys (No, nothing like that... At least I don't think so. I hope not.), so that meant it was me and 8 guys. It was a bit odd. I mean, usually it's me and about 5 guys.
Really, though... I hang out with so many more guys than girls here. It's not that I don't know girls... I do. And I talk to them, but when it actually comes to doing something, it's usually with a group of guys. I guess it's because I do a lot of stuff with people from my hall, and the guys on the hall are usually here while the other girls are not.
I guess the uneven ratio doesn't really bother me. The guys are all really great and fun to hang out with, so it's nice.

In fact, I think I'll go hang out with them now.

I think I'm going to take art instead of philosophy next semester. That means my schedule will probably be this...

MWF: Astro 1, 10:30-11:20
TTh: Abnormal Psych, 9:55-11:10
Studio Art, 1:15-4:00
F: Milton seminar, 2:15-5:00

So... Only one class on Monday and Wednesday (and at 10:30, too!), and two on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Not bad.

I need to go see if my laundry is done yet. Whee.

So I took my history quiz today. *shudder* I know it went badly. Luckily, it's only one of the three quizzes in that class, and the quizzes are only 10% of the grade. And it's pass/fail anyway... And I'm in no danger of failing.

Still, I'm not too happy about it. But I'm so tired right now that I don't really have the energy to care... Instead, I'm going to go take a nap.

Quiz!



i am extremely intelligent and very wise. i think logically and rhetorically in order to get problems solved. if i'm not mad now, i'm getting very close.

how mad are you?

this quiz was made by piksy

Hmm. I'm not sure if this is a good thing...

Tonight's show was an all-female vocalist affair, because last week was accidently all-guy, except for the very last song.

Poe: Hello
*Scout Niblett: 12 Miles
Lennon: Brake of Your Car
Hooverphonic: Plus Profound
*Pretty Girls Make Graves: A Certain Cemetary
Fiona Apple: Paper Bag
Tori Amos: She’s Your Cocaine
*Essential Logic: Wake Up
Bif Naked: Leader
Sneaker Pimps: Roll On
*The Kills: Superstition
Garbage: Only Happy When It Rains
Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Y Control
Sleater-Kinney: Banned from the End of the World
Emiliana Torrini: Tuna Fish

I completely slacked off on my playlist duties tonight. Oops.

Dear lord. I'm going through my history notes, looking for dates to construct a timeline. My notes are scary... You can tell the days I was really tired -- the handwriting is horrible, and things just trail off and run together and stop making sense altogether. It's pathetic.

A girl on the hall noticed a potato chip bag in her trash can shaking. When I came back from dinner, she was standing in the hall eyeing it warily. We investigated it, discovered it was a mouse. He was cute and small, and we took him outside... But he'll probably be back.

Got involved in a discussion in the hall... Sort of political theory, in a way... Hard to explain. Anyway, I think I may be more cynical than I thought. It's interesting.

I have a history quiz tomorrow. I am not that ready... I am not ready at all. I am either going to do not so well, or I'm not going to get much sleep tonight. Actually, since I have my radio show, it will probably be both.

Pass/fail, pass/fail, pass/fail, pass/fail...

Claudia has moved house again... It's still called Sharkey's Days, but it's at a new location. Hopefully this will be the last switch for awhile.

Played an interesting board game last night... Kill Dr. Lucky. It's sort of like Clue, in the way that you're in a big old house and one of the players is responsible for killing the owner of the house. Only the point of the game isn't to solve the murder, it's to commit it. And you try to stop the other people from killing him first. It's a bit hard to explain, but it's actually pretty easy to play. The cards are the best part, though... They include such things as shoehorns, a killing joke, a crepe pan, a chainsaw, and a Civil War cannon as weapons... And slipping on a banana peel, getting distracted by an ice cream truck, being very, very stupid, and having a wizen karate master jump out are all possible failure cards that people can use to prevent the murder. Like I said... Interesting.

I stayed awake through all of psychology class today. I was so proud. Granted, I was reading the Phoenix (Swat's newspaper) for about half of it, but I was still awake and taking notes.

I'm not as sore as I expected to be today... My arms ache a little bit, but it's manageable. Yipee.

The book that we starting reading in history this week, a primary source entitled The Murder of Charles the Good, is insane. But it's insane in a very nice way: half of it is footnotes. Footnotes that I don't have to read. It's great. They'll be maybe 2/3rds of a page of text, then the rest is footnotes. One page was about 5 lines of text, with the rest of it footnotes. And there are big margins, especially on the bottom of the page. So even though the reading assignment initially looks lengthy, it really isn't. It's great.

This weekend is going to be not much fun, I fear. Well, actually, it should be okay. I'm going to go see a movie tomorrow night, and then the fall formal is Saturday night. But the rest of the time is going to be spent doing work. Lots of it. I have a history paper due Monday, psychology to read, a psych attachment paper due on Wednesday, I have to finish reading Beloved for Tuesday, and if I get my English paper back, I'll need to work on a revision for that. And somewhere in there I really, really want to get lots of sleep and email people. Hmm.

Off to go read my history sourcebook until it's time for English class. Such fun.

I let myself get talked into going to the gym today. Actually, it wasn't bad, even though I haven't really lifted weights since the end of track. I got to use the scary, pretty machines (yay for diagrams and directions, otherwise I may have accidently killed myself...) and felt like I had accomplished something. I did some leg stuff, but mostly arms.

That, in retrospect, was not a wise move. Because I went to aikido tonight, and they broke out the weapons again. Last time I was in the staff group (which has a much cooler name that I don't remember); this time I was in the wooden sword group. It was really cool -- my 2 favorite aikido classes have been the ones with the weapons; there's something really calming and centering about the repition of the movements. However, there was lots of arm movement which turned into arm strain and pain... Which means I'm really not sure if I'm going to be able to lift my arms very much tomorrow. Owie.

On that note, I'm going to soak in the tub and massage my muscles into some semblence of relaxation.

I'm feeling rather lethargic at the moment... Don't want to read or do work, really. I'm even too lazy to want to play on the computer, which is just sad. Blech.

Been thinking about classes... Have a tentative schedule figured out:

1) Intro Astro (taken pass/fail, because I can, and I might as well make use of the 4 other pass/fail options I have)
2) English seminar on Milton (the prof is apparently amazing, and I need a class of pre-1830 literature to be an English major)
3) Abnormal Psychology (also supposed to be a good class, and I'm interested in this sort of thing)
4)a. Moral Philosophy (with one of the best philosophy profs here, which means it'll be tough to get in)
b. Modern Philosophy (with the prof who teaches my intro course, who is cool but a bit out of it at times)
c. A studio art class (because I would get to draw and such, and it's been so long since I've taken an art class)

The really cool thing about this schedule is that if I get the Astro section I want, I won't have class until 10:30 on MWF. Though if I take power yoga the second half of the semester, I'll have that at 9 on WF, but I think I can handle that... And I may take fencing instead, because that would be fun. TTh classes would start at 9:55, but that's not bad... That's what I have now, and I'm okay (well... I do fall asleep in psych on occasion, but that has little to do with the time of the class and a lot to do with the lecture setting and the comfy seats).

Anyway. Time to get some sleep... Maybe that way I won't fall asleep in psych tomorrow.

I've been feeling like I've been behind in my work lately, and I've been feeling guilty because of it. Tonight I buckled down and did a big chunk of reading, so I felt nice and productive. It was good... Next semester, I'm going to try to get a balance between reading-intensive and other classes. Next semester I won't have the cushion of pass/fail... And my perfectionist ways are not going to let me settle for mediocracy.

Last night was really fun. After dinner, some of us played some foosball and then headed to the Vertigo-go show. It was improv comedy, and it was really funny.

By the time that was over, it almost time for the ML party to start. So we went back to the dorm and got dressed... By the time I was ready it was past 11, but that was fine, because I really had no intention of staying from 10 to 2 anyway. So we headed over to the party. The breakfast room was incredibly crowded... Wall to wall people, barely enough room to move, and very, very warm. I danced some, talked to some people, had a few drinks, and by 12:30 I had decided to call it a night. After all, I had only gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before (yay for WSRN!) and a nap in the afternoon, so I was pretty sleepy. Of course, with the party still going on, it was impossible to actually sleep... But at least I wasn't surrounded by an insane number of people.

All in all, it was fun... But not something I'm going to be doing every weekend. A party here and there is nice, but I'd rather just hang out with people and talk or watch a movie or something.

Anyway... It's almost 1:30, and I'm still in my pajamas. I think I'll go shower, and then I get to spend most of the rest of the day reading psych.