Caroling, caroling through the slush

One would think I'd have more time to blog now that the semester is finished, but obviously this is not the case. I've been working at the store for the past few days and when I haven't been doing that it's been family Christmas parties and last-minute shopping . . . the holidays are exhausting.

The good news is that all of my wrapping is finished, I'm not working today or tomorrow, and Christmas music will be off the radio in two days. One slight snag is that my mom got Keira a Christmas mix for tomorrow morning. . . she's been asking for it and I fear that it will prolong the season until there are leaves on the Chinese maple in our front yard again. Sigh. For now, though, it's Christmas Eve and I know I'll be singing a few carols with relish along with Erin and Keira before going back to grumbling about them on the 26th.

Oh, and the snow is melting just in time for the holiday. Who planned that one, hm?

Making lists

Winter break is the perfect excuse to curl up with tea and a book, and I intend to take full advantage of this fact. Tomorrow (er, today?) my plan is to get up far earlier than 12:30 in the afternoon and head to the library to stock up for the month. There are so many books that I feel like I should've already read after twenty years on the planet . . . it's never too late to attempt to catch up, I guess.

Sweet Jesus, twenty is a big number. I'm still wrapping my head around that.

Anyways, I have two lists in the works:

The Book List

• The Handmaid's Tale
• Catch-22
• Lolita
• On The Road
• The Satanic Verses
• The Stranger
• Faust
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

The Music List

• Leonard Cohen
• Belle & Sebastian
• Bob Dylan
• Paul Robeson
• Pete Seeger
• Wilco
• Destroyer
• Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins
• Joan Baez
• Odetta

So that's tomorrow. Any suggestions?

Oh, and as far as tea goes . . . before leaving Geneseo I picked up a box of Yogi Tea's Chai Redbush to try and it is my new favorite. Wegmans and Wild By Nature carry it . . . just add a little bit of honey. Or better yet, come to my house and I will share a cup with you.

Also, I'm glad you got a chuckle out of my Monday morning mental lapse. I'm laughing about it, too. Heh heh.

You know it's STILL finals week when . . .

. . . despite going to sleep at eleven o'clock the night before, you wake up five minutes after your eight o'clock exam is scheduled to begin and literally stumble out of the room still wearing the same tie-dyed sweatshirt you wore and slept in the day before with a pair of red sweatpants and male moccasins without socks. You are sweating by the time you charge up the hill and burst into the classroom in a flurry of fleece and puffy hair, but make it to your seat just as the first song identification is being played.

Right around the fourth song out of ten, you realize that you are still wearing your disgusting retainers. Awesome.

You know it's finals week when . . .

. . . while sitting in the library downloading the music for tomorrow's last Woody Guthrie quiz, you realize that you've neglected to put a bra on underneath the shirt you slept in the night before and hide under the tie-dyed tent of a sweatshirt you are wearing.

Fitzwilliam Darcy became a fan of Fine Eyes

An early holiday gift for all you Facebook addicts/Jane Austen enthusiasts . . .

Finals, I will kick your collective butt

I changed my mind, I will totally relish these last six days despite the finals that will either make or break this semester. I woke up to an email from my humanities professor with my latest paper grade attached . . . despite convincing myself that I'd certainly gotten no higher than a C, I aced it and could only laugh. So now it's time for a clean sweep of these crazy classes because when I'm sitting across from my grandfather at dinner on Christmas Eve and he asks me about my grades, I am determined to both shock and delight the crowd with my results and that's all I have to say about that!

Finals week lament

I want to go home so badly. Seven more days . . .

A photo collage with a subtle theme

Hooooo-boy!

Alright, this is it . . . I'm working on my last paper of the semester, which is due tomorrow morning in my Woody Guthrie class. As I told John earlier, the only thought keeping me productive is the fact that if I don't finish this paper on hobos, I will likely become one. I'm using hobo songs to talk about their lifestyles and impact on American history and culture; it's honestly really interesting stuff but I am just so darn sick of writing papers. All I can think about is tomorrow at 10:20, at which point I will put down my pencil and do absolutely no work for the entire weekend simply on principle.

This picture was one of the first search results when I did a Google ImageSearch of 'hobo' . . . sorry if it's slightly offensive, but I had to attach it. I laughed for a good minute when I saw it, which may or may not indicate sleep deprivation. Back to banjos and bindles.

Post script: a bindle is that bundle of stuff on the end of a stick that you always associate with hobos. All I can say is that there better be a "HOBO TRIVIA" category when I'm a contestant on Jeopardy! one of these days.

Final stretch

I just want to live to see my twentieth birthday, which requires hanging on for less than a week. I am only sixteen written pages and a story revision away. It can happen.

The kid sitting at the table next to me in the library may not be as lucky. If he keeps giving his friend a play-by-play recap of last night's World of Warcraft adventure, I may have to slay his sorry self.

Cross THAT off the bucket list

This morning I got an email from Overheard in New York telling me to keep an eye out for the posting of a submission I sent back in March . . . here it is!

I feel so accomplished.

Pre-holiday anticipation

I cannot wait to go home. Realistically, most of my time will be spent writing the two fairly substantial papers I still have to do for next week (I finished Shakespeare this morning), but I am so looking forward to spending time with my family. I miss playing board games and singing in the car with Keira and pretending to hate Ginny . . . something tells me I won't absolutely hate working on stuff because I'll be surrounded by the lovely frenzy that is the Pipe household.

I'm also somewhat excited for the legitimate Christmas season (i.e. AFTER Thanksgiving) . . . I realized before that we'll be able to drive around and look at holiday lights up in Geneseo this year because Katy has her car! Cocoa, Christmas music, and admiring the people who waste energy in the most adorable ways. It's the holiday season.

Shakespeare paper-writing stats

Word count: 62.

Sentence count: 3.

Pages to complete: 9.8.

Cups of coffee consumed: 1.

Hours until due date: 26.5.

I voted for good grammar

I didn't watch 60 Minutes but I may have to find it on YouTube just to hear the sweet, sweet symphony of sentence structure.

Bard break update

Macbeth is so fabulously sinister. I can't get over it. Perhaps it's partly due to its length (or lack thereof), but I think it's just so succinct and sharp and yet packed with human conflict and the supernatural . . . I'm gushing, I know. Anyways, I'm in the middle of outlining my term paper for Shakespeare. It is snowing. I am boiling water for the new tea I got at Wegmans . . . chocolate chai, which I expect will either be completely delicious or completely revolting. I'll let you know.

'Tis the season

One wonderful thing about Christmas products encroaching upon shelves in early November: Keebler's Almond Crescent holiday cookies. I am currently planted in the study room trying to formulate an outline for a humanities paper about the Bible and Dante's Inferno and eating these terribly good cookies. If someone doesn't take the box away from me soon, I will most definitely be condemned to Dante's third circle of Hell with all the gluttons.

So late so soon

Dr. Seuss: It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

The Genny translation: People were wearing shorts on Friday and the temperature hit 70 degrees. By Monday it was snowing. How did it get so late so soon?!

I dunno if it's the weather or what, but all of a sudden I have at least twenty pages of various term papers due before Thanksgiving and another ten right after break, at which point there will only be one week left of classes before finals begin. Oh, and I will be turning twenty in the midst of it all. I would very much like to shout at the person upstairs orchestrating this cruel fast forwarding and tell him/her to ease off the gas a bit, but my yells would be carried off by the wind that will be here 'til April.

Also, the heinously early advent of the red Starbucks cups is NOT appreciated by their best customer. Can we please acknowledge the fact that it is still autumn?!

No end in sight!

I have dug myself a nicely sized hole. Copies of my fiction draft are due tomorrow (uhh, today technically); there is an approximate ten-page minimum and I have almost eight written already but the story itself is nowhere near complete and I am already nodding off.

I'm almost considering writing in a meteor crash to end it in the next page.

Down a rabbit hole

Halloween weekend was totally bizarre, and I blame my choice of costume. While dressed like Alice in Wonderland, I must've fallen down a rabbit hole into some crazy parallel universe . . . a recap:

Halloween itself just turned into a series of unfortunate events. End of story there. Nothing went according to plan and a crummy situation got exacerbated by a lot of bad timing.

So Saturday I volunteered at the haunted house for the last time; there was a cast party afterwards and we took turns trying out this crazy rope swing that you clung onto after jumping off a giant pile of baled hay and went flying across the giant barn. It was terrifying but fantastic. Anyways, one of the actors was taking pictures and after he snapped one of me on the rope swing, he hurried over to me. "Meg," he said, "look at this picture, how weird is that?" For whatever reason, the picture had fogged up. None of the others he took had done so, so I privately started freaking out as my mind began jumping to every horror movie where death is preceded by a warped photograph of the person slated to go. I left shortly after and while I was pulling out of the long, dark, winding driveway, this light flashed through my rearview window out of nowhere at almost the same moment that the pumpkins I'd forgotten about in the trunk slammed against the backseat like a dead body. I drove home down unlit abandoned roads, passing lonely cornfields while continually relocking my doors and scaring myself half to death.

When I woke up Sunday morning and reached for my tear-a-day calendar, the word of the day was scarily indicative of the events that would later pass that day . . . which was creepy. Perhaps the weirdest thing to happen, though, came on Sunday afternoon while Katy and I were sitting in Starbucks doing work. These older ladies were sitting at a table right next to us talking, and after a while I couldn't do anything but listen to them because their conversation basically mirrored my entire life. They talked about a girl named Meghan and threw around the names of my boyfriend, father, and an estranged friend while making comments that were scarily accurate to current situations. Katy and I just eavesdropped, staring at each other wide-eyed until it just got too strange to handle.

I am happy to say, though, that things have come around, normalcy has been restored, and I have never been gladder to wake up and go to class. The moral of the story, boys and girls? Watch where you step. Don't fall down a rabbit hole. Wonderland is a little too weird a place to find yourself.

Our deluxe apartment in the sky

Since signing a lease with my roommate for an apartment next year, it's been increasingly difficult for the both of us to feel content in our box of a room on campus. Every time we sit cross-legged on the floor to eat lunch picnic-style or wash out our coffee mugs in the bathroom sink, all Katy and I can do is just remind each other about the glowing paradise of a two-bedroom place on Main Street just waiting to envelop us. The latest reminder of why being on campus can be lame arrived just before 1 AM this morning when the fire alarm went off. I had fallen asleep about an hour earlier after taking a shower so my hair was still wet and I was totally disoriented and quite angry . . . we waited outside and froze for fifteen minutes while University Police tried to reset the fire alarm that was triggered after some idiot (upon whose head I now have a bounty) used a fire extinguisher for kicks.

Did I mention that there was snow on the ground when I woke up yesterday morning?

Anyways, this isn't meant to be a total bash of on-campus living because there are some good things . . . namely, the magical robots in the basement otherwise known as washers and dryers. They are brand spankin' new and connect to this website, which you can check to see if machines are open or, if in use, how much longer each cycle will take. I used it this morning after class when I did two weeks' worth of laundry; domesticity has never been more fabulous.

So yeah, I get it, there are pros and cons to everything . . . but my daydreams of late always seem to end with a whistling tea kettle and a kitchen table. Patience, patience.

Hilarious yet hopefully not prophetic:

Darcy stood me up

So earlier tonight (well, technically yesterday) I attended an English country dance as part of the Jane Austen class I'm auditing this semester. My professor brought a professional caller in from Rochester along with a violinist and bassist to play little ditties for us to dance to in the college ballroom. With the exception of a few complicated steps resulting in minor collisions and major giggling fits, it really was just like the movies (minus Colin Firth, unfortunately). Some of the dances we learned were pretty sexy; a few steps required holding your gaze with your partner for quite a while and most involved flirtations with men or women other than the person you were paired with. It was far more intriguing than anything we young whippersnappers are shakin' to these days, I'll tell you that. Ninety percent of the class wore everyday clothes, but two of my friends borrowed dresses from Elizabeth Bennett's closet and looked completely fabulous. I didn't have time to get anything together beforehand so instead I took the route of an English country gent for the evening and went to the dance with a lovely lady on each arm. I don't recall Mr. Darcy ever arriving with two dates . . . hah!

Typical Saturday

Today we had a rehearsal for the Haunted Mansion; after walking around an old, unheated three-story house and giant barn for three hours, I came back to my room, put on a pair of extremely fuzzy socks, and curled up . . .

. . . I just woke up. Finding that the sky is dark when you open your eyes is always confusing, but my toes are so toasty right now I really couldn't care less what time it is. Whenever I find myself feeling guilty for not having been productive, I just remind myself: that's what Sundays are for.

I'm listening . . . er, reading

I'm becoming a terrible updater, but the good thing is that it is not due to lack of stories. To be honest, I was a little bit taken aback last time I logged in because an anonymous person had commented on a post I'd written after the anti-homosexual protest in a somewhat accusatory way. I didn't quite know what to say because a) my beliefs were challenged, which honestly hasn't ever happened to me before, and b) it was done in a pretty senseless manner. So when I saw it late Thursday night while curled up in my bed at home (I flew there for the long weekend), I just didn't know quite how to react. The conclusion I've come to, though, is that I'm glad my opinions can elicit some sort of reaction from a person I don't even know . . . because isn't that the whole point of putting my ideas out there in the first place?

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that while it's uncomfortable to be told that I'm wrong or that my beliefs or ideas are not shared by everyone else, I like the challenge because it makes me think about the whys hiding behind everything. My hit counter just surpassed a thousand views so I know that someone is reading this--hey, you! Tell me if you disagree with me! Argue (nicely)! Let's question stuff together.

In unrelated news, I am finding it extremely difficult to not pick up every beautiful fiery-colored leaf I see on the ground, as they are in boundless supply. It is a test of my self-control.

The frost has arrived

This morning on my walk to class I noticed that winter had exhaled her frosty breath across the lawn sometime during the night. It's the first full week of October, for goodness' sake . . . the leaves have only just begun to change. This does not bode well for the future.

Please send gloves and/or an unseasonable heat wave to me, c/o SUNY Geneseo. Thanks.

Sirrah, a word with you

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.

STORY OF MY LIFE. I just handed in my Shakespeare midterm after madly running through Henry IV, Part I and skimming Romeo and Juliet this morning. We all know I love my Will, but Zounds, I am wanting a reprieve from mine Bard lest my humble speech begin to mirror his. I have two more midterms this week, both of which will require further expeditions into that twenty-six charactered jungle.

To move from reading words to writing them, last week presented two opportunities to write that were exciting in that they brought to light the fact that "hey, writing is a somewhat marketable skill!" It is a heartening realization.

Firstly, I am part of a scriptwriting team for a haunted house in Geneseo called the Ford Mansion; we are responsible for writing lines for the tour guides, storytellers and characters along the tour of this four-story mansion. The first writers' meeting was on Saturday, and it began with a tour of the house and the barn on the property . . . it's been said that the ghosts of two horses are still present, and that sometimes the hallways will inexplicably smell of male cologne. It was completely creepy and completely awesome. I went there with the intention of just helping to write, but left committing two full weekends to acting in it as well. I am so excited.

The second opportunity is one that I don't have a whole lot of information about, but a representative from the Department of Asian Studies came into our fiction class to recruit writers for a play to be performed sometime next year about Asian-American immigrants. She has a collection of interviews on DVD that need to be dramatized for the stage, and it sounds like a great project. Plus, how fantastic would it be to see something you wrote performed on a stage? Your name in a playbill? So cool.

Anyways, all I can say is that I'm glad I live for this stuff . . . life this week would otherwise seem quite dismal. Either way, though, I am seriously looking forward to a celebratory few hours of Guitar Hero once my midterms are finished. If you can hear Guns N' Roses from wherever you're reading this from come Thursday . . . it's me.

Our campus is hellbound, apparently

As I was walking to fiction yesterday, I passed the green and saw a big commotion that included several huge signs and rainbow flags. I wanted to stop to see what was going on but I was already late for class so I kept going towards Welles; on my way in, I ran into my classmates and professor, all of whom were going to see what the deal was.

It was an anti-homosexual rally consisting of this man in a leather jacket and mirrored sunglasses and his twentysomething daughter. They held up huge signs emblazoned with misconstrued Biblical passages while the man shouted about how gays and their supporters were all condemned to Hell. About twenty students with Pride Alliance flags were lined up in front of him, singing All You Need is Love while he kept shouting bullshit about how John Lennon was evil. I was seriously proud of us all as a collective because while some choice words were deservedly thrown at him, nobody got belligerent. We just started singing things like "Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so," while same-sex couples stood in front of the guy on his platform kissing and we cheered them on. During this, some kid started waving around a big sign that read I LOVE SCIENCE, so we hooted and hollered about that, too. After about forty minutes of rallying, this kid waving a pole with colored ribbons on it yelled, "Let's all leave! Don't give him anyone to preach to!" That seemed like a fairly good time to regroup for class, so we headed back to Welles and power-workshopped for the 50 minutes left of our class time.

According to that guy, I am hellbound on two counts: for supporting gay rights and for being a Catholic, because apparently the religion does not exist. Oh, darn. A girl interviewed me for our paper, and when she asked me what I thought I told her that he was making a mockery of faith in general. Because he was. Not to mention the fact that he was telling some of my friends and classmates that they are fundamentally flawed. Which is bullshit. Whoever he is, that man is a repulsive waste of a human being and I couldn't be prouder of my campus for responding to his mindless slander in such a positive way. The man and his daughter left around six, finally giving up after six hours of shouting nonsense to the wind. I couldn't help but think about the conversation they would have on the ride home--were they proud of their day's work?

All I can say is that we should all invest in SuperSoakers before he tries stepping foot on our campus again.

Post script: I realize that this was not the best-written entry. Sentence structure hath given way to strong sentiment . . . sorry.

Keeping tabs on Mr. Sun

The World Sunlight Map is now the first website I check upon opening my web browser. It shows the cloud cover and sunlight over the entire planet at the moment you look at it; by viewing it right now I can tell you that the sun is setting on the eastern coast of South America and that tomorrow's sun has already risen in half of Australia. I know that if Michal were to look up this second there would be no clouds in her Israeli night sky. How amazing is that?

It weirds me out a little bit, though, because seeing the progression of sunlight makes the passing of days so very tangible . . . part of me always wants to push the darkness back to the east and extend time. What would I need to bribe the sun with for a little more weekend?

DARLA!

Proof that Finding Nemo never gets old: I am snorting with laughter on the quiet floor just looking at this.

Will work for . . . fun?

For those of you who don't already know, I was laid off at the library last week along with the other temp service employees due to budget cuts. My consolation has been the fact that they lost one of their better employees; I know how to use the fax machine no-problem, I am a Library of Congress shelving guru, and--big shocker--I'm nice to people.

So anyways, I am presently sitting upstairs in the library trying to catch up on work I missed while deathly ill last week and concurrently feeling a little nostalgic and really bad for Milne Library. There are stray books all over the place and when I went to sign out a power cord for my laptop, I had to tell the kid working where to find it and then remind him to give back my ID card.

I have the sincerest urge to just grab a cart and start organizing and reshelving, but I have a hazelnut coffee and an unwritten paper in front of me.

Again, their loss.

A nice little cocktail

The over-the-counter drugs I'm supposed to be taking are as follows:

• Claritin
• Robitussin
• Robitussin PM
• prescription-strength Advil
• nose spray
• Sudafed
• Tylenol

Something tells me that this is not the healthiest of combinations. A quick trip to Wal-Mart and I could have my own little meth lab in the dorm rooms. Anyone have a hotplate?

To Billy: I have tissues if you need them.

On Friday, Billy Collins' new book of poetry finally arrived in the mail and since then I've been reading one or two poems a day to make it last. I have also been increasingly sick over the past few days; today has been the worst of it yet so I decided to just read them all as consolation.

Bad idea.

Ballistics is not the Billy Collins of yore; some of the poems in this book seem shallower than any of his past work, and the profound poems in the book deal with musings of separation and death. He just seems so sad, and while this may sound completely ridiculous, after reading virtually all of his work I can't help but feel as if I know him in some capacity.

So instead of feeling slightly better after sharing a cup of tea with my favorite poet, I have that secondhand sadness you feel when someone you love is unhappy. I just want to give him a big ol' germ-ridden hug.

I would usually insert an italicized sigh here, but in my present state it would lose the drama by turning into a hacking cough.

A neaky ituation

A few days ago I was walking to class when I realized that the 'S' of 'Steuben' outside my residence hall was missing. I noted it but assumed the letter had fallen down or something so didn't think much of it.

Since then, though, I've been noticing other cases of a missing 'S' around Steuben--or more appropriately Teuben--Hall. The S on a big white board in the front lobby has been erased, a big wall decoration on the second floor now reads "WELCOME TO TEUBEN," and I am completely convinced that this is an intentional prank.

I find it quite hilario.

Just my luck

I just opened my used copy of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and found a four-leaf clover pressed between its pages:Things like this remind me why I am in love with people as a collective.

Two other updates:

• I won the position for hall council!
• Did you know that a banjo is basically like a big tambourine (sans jingling) with strings and a long neck? Professor Kimball was playing one today, along with an autoharp and his guitar. I'm starting to love old country music.
  

Snippets of home life

Today was the first real test for me as far as being away from home again is concerned and I believe I passed with flying colors:

Last night I went to bed before eleven because today needed to be a productive day. I woke up before ten and was able to go to the 10:15 mass as opposed to the 5:30 I usually attend. Church is probably what reminds me most of home here because it is very clearly a family activity. Anyways, I was there by myself and this family of four was sitting in front of me being adorable and such and I observed them without feeling sad.

After dinner, I was shooting around at the courts when this man and his young son and daughter show up. All of the baskets were taken except for one with a crooked rim, so I invited them to play at mine. We talked and played and the kids asked me a bunch of questions about school and invited me to live at their house and it was completely cute. The important thing, though, was that I felt content and happy with the fact that I was in a situation that reminded me so very much of playing basketball with Erin and my dad instead of wishing I were home doing so.

Anyways, I feel like both situations are indicative of how well the semester is going so far. Hall council elections were tonight . . . we'll see what happens.

I can has chuckle?

I have come to the conclusion that I will never be too mature to enjoy goofy cat pictures with grammatically incorrect captions.

Live from the Blake basement

So today was our (my and Ellen's) first radio broadcast of the semester . . . I won't say it was disastrous because it wasn't at all, but I left thoroughly shamed. Before telling you this story, though, let me first disclaim that I recognize my complete lack of knowledge when it comes to music in general; one of the reasons I enjoy radio so much is because I'm always hearing something I've never been exposed to before.

Anyways, today during the show a slip of paper printed out of a machine near the sound board directing us to run a weekly broadcast test (when you hear a few long, shrill beeps randomly and a muffled voice telling you that "this is a test of the emergency broadcast system"). I never had to run one last semester and had no idea which button to press, so I sent an instant message to the radio director. He was really cool about it and told me what to do, turning on his own radio to check and make sure it worked. After telling me it had gone through, he sent me a random person's name followed by a question mark, as if checking to see who he was speaking with.

So I respond, "Nope, this is Meghan and Ellen," then realize a split second after sending the message that the name he'd sent was the name of the artist playing on the radio at that moment.

DUH.

So, uh, moral of the story: save your pride and always stay up on the current jams.

Side note: I didn't share the name of the artist because I HAVE ALREADY FORGOTTEN IT.

I'm hopeless.

Scandalous!

I made a conscious decision to do no work tonight. So glad I can stick to my goals.

Today was crazier than usual; instead of the weekend train slowing normally and letting me off at Monday, I had to jump off full-speed at Tuesday. Not a pleasant transition. Yesterday I forced 200 pages of Moll Flanders down my throat for British Literature . . . Katy and I were reading in the common room and every ten minutes or so I would look up at her and announce the status of the titular character; examples of such expulsions are as follows:

"Her lover just paid her to marry his brother."
"She just had three kids with her biological brother without knowing it was him."
"A cuckolded banker just divorced his wife to marry her."

With all this ridiculous eighteenth-century scandal going on, you'd think it would be an interesting read. Not so. It must take a whole lot of skill to make something that raunchy so positively bland.

Dr. Asher, however, is a doll. Am I allowed to call my male professor a doll? Because he is. He sounds exactly like Bill Murray except for the joking, and he's completely laid-back and genuinely interested in anything and everything that his students offer during class. We meet once a week, on Tuesdays.

The time is now 12:36, and the library will be closing in 24 minutes. Time to go wake people up.

The social experiment

Last night was the first radio party of the semester, and Ellen, Julie and I attended.

In preparation for said party, I bought a six-pack of IBC cream soda and packed it in a little brown J. Crew bag to come with us. When we arrived there, we countered their Coronas and Yellowtail with our own glass bottles filled with amber liquid, and nobody questioned a thing. We laughed and danced to Of Montreal like we would any other time, and people had no problem joining in because they thought we had been drinking as well. At one point, a friend of ours walked over and we encouraged him to dance with us too. His reply was "No, I really haven't had enough for me to dance, really," so we let him in on our secret. He didn't believe us until he tried a sip, laughed, and allowed himself to be taught the Dino Dance.

It makes me think about social drinking as a concept--it's like a medium through which people feel "allowed" to be silly and fun together without being judged for their words and actions . . . it really is interesting. I still have another six-pack of party drinks, so I believe we'll be trying it again fairly soon.

Side note: Six bottles of cream soda cost $2.47 at Wal-Mart. The money saved went to possibly the best slice of pepperoni pizza I've ever had from Mia's.

All in all, the night was a big win.

Hi, I'm alive . . . just busy as heck

I am officially in love with this semester. I feel like this is my first fall at Geneseo because last year was so clouded with anxiety about having friends and not having a roommate and whatever that I didn't notice a lot of things. I'd elaborate, but after one day of classes I already have plenty of work to keep me busy. Expect something tomorrow night at work . . . I'm closing at 1 AM.

Side note: I went to sleep before eleven last night and woke up before eight. EPIC.

Me, myself and . . . sigh.

"I HATE EVERYBODY. EVERYBODY HATES ME," reads my paperback diary circa second grade, all-caps rage scrawled in purple marker shouting my personal vendetta against the world. I'm positive that I am not who I was on that angry day in second grade, because I've decided that I would like to meet everyone before deciding that I hate anyone.

I came across my old diaries while packing today, so instead of boxing linens I sat in the middle of my messy room and revisited my former selves. It was weird; every time I scoffed at something ridiculous I'd written about a boy or my sister or whatever other crisis was at hand I felt I was betraying myself a little bit. It made me think about whether or not we are the people we were at earlier ages, and if we are in part, to what extent we were our current selves then. Does that make sense?

A question for you: what span of time does your "current self" encompass? Do you believe that you are the same person you were last year, last month, yesterday?

I've been trying to answer that for myself, and if I think about it enough, I'm never satisfied beyond a day, a moment if I'm overthinking. Which I am, at the moment.

Barbara-isms

(while showing me a rug she'd purchased at Kohl's)
"See, it says 'Peace, Love, Faith.' Ain't that nice? I'm real into that stuff now, now I'm a Born-Again Christian 'cause everything they say is the damned truth."
(later)
"Do you have any angels here, anything like that? I'm into that big time, I'm into figures, elephants, crystals . . . look, I've got these crystal bracelets and I'm wearing my jade elephant right now."

(she pulls out a calendar filled with pictures of Billy Ray Cyrus posing shirtless with various tractors and muscle cars)
B: Do you like Billy Ray Cyrus? You like him?
M: Yeah, that Achy Breaky Heart's pretty classic.
B: Well, look at this. I saw him in concert how many years ago . . . look at that, when's it from?
M: 1994.
B: Well me an' my daughter rented this great red car and saw him in concert at Westbury then; he's just the best. Y'know who I love now though? (puts hand on heart) That Ricky Martin is just dreamy. That Livin' La Vida Loca? Ahhh. I've got big posters of him all over my room, big ones in glass.

(after telling me about how she cursed out the teller at Chase and got a plastic pink pig keychain out of it)
"You take a lesson from me, I'm smart. I know what I'm doing."


And then she said the one thing I couldn't dispute:

"I'm gettin' crazy in my old age!"

Portrait of a bag lady

Well, she isn't a bag lady by definition because this woman does have a home (if her stories are true), but on all other counts Barbara can be adequately described as such.

Barbara is swiftly becoming the local wraith of East End Shirt Company. She's a random lady who visits the store daily, giant shopping bags in tow, bartering for trinkets and jewelry with anything and everything she has on her. After counting back the years since she'd seen Billy Ray Cyrus in concert (14, by the way), I learned that she is sixty-five . . . which shouldn't have surprised me because she asks for a senior citizen discount at least three times during each visit.

The answer is always no.

Barbara's hair is wiry and black, streaked with strands of white only slightly longer than the witch hair growing out of her chin. Behind glasses bent in such a way that it looks like she was punched on the bridge of her nose, one of her watery brown eyes is clouded by a cataract, so she's constantly asking whoever is working to tell her the sizes and prices of various store items she's interested in "buying." Her tops vary, but she almost always wears an ankle-length bohemian skirt. Even if she hadn't told me several times that she recently lost fifty pounds ("I used to be a hundred and fifty-something, but now I'm a hundred twenty-something!") I would've guessed as much because although she's on the smallish side, the extra skin on her arms create bingo wings like you've never seen. One day she was wearing a strappy green peasant top that didn't quite cover her lacy, light pink bra, and didn't cover her sunburned back at all. Because of this, I could see a protrusion right in the crease of her back, a pinkie fingernail-sized growth hanging off her skin so precariously that I wanted terribly to flick off--if it wouldn't require making contact, that is. Each limb sparkles with costume jewelry--chunky, beaded bracelets, a rhinestone-studded watch, fake silver anklets. She wears more necklaces at a time than I own altogether.

When she dropped by the first time, I wasn't super-friendly towards her because I had zero patience for her questions, her stories, or her bartering. But then, of course, she starts going on and on about how "nobody is nice to her," playing on my stupid conscience. She totally played me, and before I knew it I was hearing about how she gave the people at Chase a piece of her mind because it wasn't her fault that four checks bounced, blah blah blah, then I was showing her how to use her brick of a Nokia cell phone . . . she gave me a handful of Dum-Dum lollipops before she left because she's nice to people that are nice to her. She says.

More to follow.

On losing a friend

suddenly the transition between is and was
is like learning past tense in a foreign language
(when did "we are so close" become "we were so close?")
training my brain to naturally say
I was you were he was

while thinking about the strangeness of that foggy place
where the present is sloughed off
in a seedy bus terminal
of departures marked by tears
or by shouting and spite

and in the tumult there is me,
dry-eyed, shoulders sagging as I watch you retreat
fading into past tense
as the back of your head becomes lost in the crowd

later, alone on a train headed home
I'll watch dusky backyards through my reflection
in the window and conjugate, murmuring
you were he was we were

Amber is the color of your energy

I may not have remembered this verbatim, but I promise you that the following conversation happened between me and some woman yesterday.

Woman: There is too much going on in the city. It is just so much better out here; this is where I am meant to be.

Me: Oh? Whereabouts in New York do you live?

Woman: In the Village, St. Mark's Place. I mean, it's nice and all, but I just can't sleep at night sometimes and I really feel my glow there (she waves her hands around her torso), you know? It just glows and I have to get away. I'm trying these crystals (tugs at the amethyst necklace she's wearing) but it is just too much there; I need to escape and relax near the water.

Me: (smiles and nods)

Woman: Well obviously I would need to be on the water, I mean, hello . . . Pisces! I don't know if you are familiar with astrology but water is our element. The coast is where I am meant to be.

She begins walking out the door.

Woman: We Pisces are very straightforward, but also very romantic.

Reading trumps sleep again

I'm on a book binge . . . I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns a few minutes ago. Part of me wishes I had something to write about, but for now I'm content in having the time to read anything and everything. Next on the list: We Were The Mulvaneys, to be started tomorrow because I'm going to the track at eight.

Gah. That is five hours and nine minutes from now. Goodnight? Good morning?

Side note: why is goodnight considered a compound word while 'goodmorning' is not? V. curious.

Gas guzzler

I have driven to and from Port Jefferson five times today.

You are flushed cheeks

The babydoll tee that shrank in the dryer
Cellulite on pale thighs
Tight clothes
Stage mothers
Prepubescent beauty queens
You are lying about your age
Named Tiffany or Brad
Teenage angst
Dancing in groups
You are band night at the Y
Boys with shaggy hair
Writing a word in lowercase and capitals
Using Myspace
Goatees
You are failing to grow a beard
A half-buttoned shirt
You are hair gel and highlights
Hoop earrings like bangle bracelets
Forced laughter
You are trying too hard
A declined credit card
You are paying with nickels
Pretending you’re drunk
Beer goggles
You are talking too loudly
Giving your twins rhyming names
You are Willy Loman
A résumé in Comic Sans
Coffee spilled on the front of your shirt
Avoiding eye contact
You don’t get the hint
Singing off-key
Empty seats
You are reunion tours
A one-hit wonder
Made-for-TV
Watching sex scenes with your family
Unibrows
You are the same lame joke
Kissing relatives
Bigoted grandparents
Political correctness
You are canned goods
Margarine
Stubble
Using a public restroom
Farting in class
You are forgetting to brush your teeth
Bed-wetting
Alzheimer’s
And pretending not to watch

"The Nearsighted Ninny," a parable

Once upon a time, there was a girl who ventured into the city of New York one summer Saturday. By the end of her adventurous day, she was grateful to sink into the backseat of a cab and simply watch as Museum Mile, Columbus Circle and Times Square sped past her tired, heavy-lidded eyes. When the cab pulled up to Penn Station, she scooted out of the yellow chariot without a backwards glance--thus unable to see that her beloved eyeglasses lay forgotten on the black pleather seat. Alas, the poor dimwit was no princess, so hopes of a dashing young prince finding the glasses and returning them to her were nil.

Realizing her blunder minutes before the train left, there was no chance of recovering the forgotten glasses. For a week afterwards, the nearsighted ninny squinted over the steering wheel (though still fully capable of driving safely, she wishes to note) while pining for her black and red frames. When the time finally came to see her optrician, it was discovered that her pupils were not the same size. As if realizing she had an asymmetrical face wasn't disconcerting enough, she was directed to reschedule an appointment with an opthamologist for further insight concerning her Picasso eyeballs. Request to simply get another eyeglass prescription: DENIED.

Chaos ensued, frustration culminating as she screamed obscenities over Coldplay in the car after being told that she couldn't keep her most recently rescheduled appointment because she needed a referral from her physican. The nearsighted ninny felt completely foolish for losing her glasses in the first place.

Did she mention that there were no princes involved?

Moral of the story: Risk increasing your tool factor by wearing your eyeglasses on a cord, because when you go back to replace your dearly loved frames, heartbreak will ensue upon realizing they're no longer made.

Wanderlust

There is now a map pinned to one of the walls at work, and we're all marking the hometowns of customers who come into the store. It's only been up for two days and already we have two pins in South Africa (Johannesburg and Durban), one in Buenos Aires, one somewhere in Peru, and a scattering of them east of the Mississippi. I could've pinned six European countries off the top of my head, but the rule is that we're starting fresh so they don't count.

I can never decide whether I think the world is tremendous or tiny. Meeting people from all over the place makes me lean towards the latter, but I also haven't ever been out of the country (excluding the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, but the border doesn't really count, eh?). Yet. It will happen. In the meantime, I'll just practice my geography at the register.

Loose chains and video games

Yeah, I heard the "ooooooh" you expelled upon realizing that the layout is new. If I were you, I'd be impressed by my computer skills too. I'm kidding: almost all technology-based knowledge I have has been acquired on a trial-and-error basis . . . and I don't think I can brag very much about luck.

Anyways, it's time for a change. I've recently dumped some baggage (see: tools) that I've been carrying for way too long, and I can't even express to you how liberating it feels to have an uncluttered mind. In terms of Atari, my thoughts are more Pong than Pac-Man.

In unrelated news: I caught a shoplifter today; this woman tried to lift a Cap and Tee from the store in her baby's stroller. Classy. Perhaps I'll share the story when I'm not nodding off, yeah?

A letter to the hammers and wrenches

Dear Tools,

I'm starting to think that traits like cleverness and charm are simply shoddy attempts to mask your collective personality flaw. I'm all about the "live and let live" thing, but hustle me and I'll hold an eternal grudge. You may succeed in throwing me off for a while with seemingly intelligent conversation and party tricks, but don't be hasty in claiming a victory over my Tooldar because my moderate level of intelligence will kick in eventually.

Blips on the Tooldar include:

• Telling a story that is exaggerated beyond recognition.
• Knowing something about everything . . . news flash that is impossible. Sorry.
  
• Withering when not the focus of attention.
• Eagerness to take and never to give.
  

So, uh, think of this as an olive branch of sorts. When I punch you in the face, you won't be able to say I didn't warn you.

Meg

Siiiiiiiiiiiigh.

Everything is just a big ol' sigh. I can't even be more eloquent than that.

Word of the day: polyglot

True fact: sometimes I do really dumb things.

Example being the present. I stayed up far too late for no reason at all and will now get at most six hours of sleep. Awesome.

The past week has been pretty crazy (in the best way), but has certainly messed with the feng shui in my room: an air mattress is taking up most floor space, and the rest is littered with laundry and towels. My "Word Of The Day" tear-a-day calendar rests on my windowsill, and when I rip off the previous day it's usually as I'm scrambling to go somewhere so it just gets strewn wherever . . . I am now sleeping with a week's worth of lofty vocabulary words. Go derive a metaphor from that. I'm going to bed.

Sometimes I really miss Geneseo.

Viva la Vida

My bar is being lowered considerably day by day as far as work ethic and concentration go as the concert date approaches . . . today Viva la Vida was released (finally), and opening the store today went as follows:

1. Obtain caffeine from the green mermaid
   
2. Unlock doors and turn on lights
   
3. Coldplay the stereo
4. Fold and refold sweatshirts in a dreamlike state (repeat several times)
   

Yes, Coldplay is now a verb. I would absolutely love to go off on a winding tangent about my thoughts about the album (people leaving all the time/inside a perfectly straight line/don't you wanna curve away?), but I will spare you from reading and the fingertips of my left hand from typing. Suffice to say that I have already listened to it start to finish at least eight times: I have six days to know these ten songs by heart. Give me 'til Thursday.

Why do the fingertips of my left hand hurt, you ask? My guitar came yesterday in the mail! Thus far I have learned the names of all the strings (EADGBE, from lowest to highest) and the A family of chords (A, D, E). The guitar (which is yet to be named) came strung with steel strings, which hurt like hell while learning to play . . . hopefully I will develop callouses before long and it'll be a little easier. My goal for the end of the summer is to be able to play the chords for "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Part I;" I'm not sure if this is too lofty a goal or not, but as my well-meaning but completely inept public speaking professor from last semester would say:

"Shoot for the stars and even if you miss, you could land on the MOOOON!"

I wouldn't exactly call a lunar landing failure. All systems go!

Analyze this

The radio at work is set to Sirius Radio's Coffeehouse station; it's self-described as "acoustic reinterpretations from your favorite singer-songwriters" and while there is a lot of repetition when you listen to it for forty hours a week, it is generally a pleasurable listening experience. So Dave Matthews was on the radio before playing an acoustic version of "Grace is Gone," and the song was prefaced by Dave talking about how the song was written either for or about his stepfather . . . I was helping a customer at the same time so I didn't catch exactly what was said . . . anyways, it piqued my interest. In ninth grade, we read "Romeo and Juliet" in my English class and had to do a project in which we made a soundtrack to the play, choosing songs whose lyrics we felt described the play and its characters, scenes, etc. Well, ninth grade marked my discovery and subsequnt obsession with Dave Matthews Band, and one of the songs I chose to include on the soundtrack was "Grace is Gone." I was so convinced that this song was written about Romeo drinking the poison; I could justify every line's connection to the play and have it make perfect sense. Apparently not! My ninth-grade self would've been very disappointed to hear it.

Anyways, it's just another classic example of how anything can be twisted to mean what you want it to mean. How many times have we each listened to a song and thought we'd found our personal anthems? Read something and been convinced it was written expressly for ourselves?

Interpretation is so gray, which is at once a wonderful and a terrible thing. Too often I find myself reading into situations and interpreting the "he said, she saids" with ridiculous scrutiny, always seeming to forget that my take is usually radically different than someone else's. My sincerest condolences to fellow English majors suffering from that same inability to separate literature from life.

I love people

Encounters with interesting people make nine-hour shifts go by much easier:

Earlier this morning, a woman came in to order shirts for the business she and her husband are starting; it's a biodiesel fuel supply company! The two of them drive a 2003 Jetta powered by waste vegetable oil, and they're in the process of converting their home's energy needs to waste vegetable oil as well. How cool is that? My mom asked her if she and her husband have degrees in science and she replied, "Nope, he was in the Air Force. We both just have very green lifestyles."

Then, I was on the phone a few hours ago ordering heat-applied lettering from a company called Stahl's, and the operator I was speaking with was completely nice and friendly. She had a minor stuttering problem (which is not what I found funny, how m-m-mean do you think I am?) but the thing I couldn't get over was that while otherwise speaking normally, she said my name like a computer would: "Okay, so I have ten sets of pro-block in the letter U as in uncle, is there anything else I can help you with MEGHAN?" The absence of a comma after 'with' is intentional. Props to Stahl's for not having job discrimination against cyborgs!

And most recently I was serenaded by a five-year-old. He came into the store with his mother to buy a few shirts, and while I was ringing up the sale he told me he had a talent show in school that day; his talent was singing Raindrops On Roses. The little troubadour didn't need much coaxing to sing the entire thing to myself and my mom. ADORABLE. If you ever see me on America's Most Wanted for kidnapping, just know that I had good intentions.

I can has pen name

While my guitar gently sleeps

I just placed a bid on eBay for an acoustic guitar!

Stay tuned for auction updates.

Spidey sense

One reason why summer drools: bugs.

There I was, lying in bed and typing about how one must wade through the air because it is so humid outside when I caught something moving from the corner of my eye: it was a spider the size of my big toe, scuttling across the ceiling over my head.

I ran into the bathroom and got a wad of tissues, then leaped onto my bed and tried to grab it without leaving a splattering of bug guts. However, my hesitation in smushing the stupid thing gave it half a second to jump off the ceiling and onto my bed, thus causing me to jump off my bed and go crashing to the floor with a squeal. How girly. Jainists, I'm sorry, I squashed it without mercy after that.

The spider run-in reminded me of a dumb story, though . . . flash back to Meghan in the first grade. Chapter books were my crack addiction, and as such, I had these preconceived notions about what everything was supposed to be like according to these stereotypical children's books: the nurse's office always had a scary stigma to it, new babies always stole the spotlight from their older siblings, and classrooms always had class pets.

To my dismay, Mr. Hommel did not have a pet in his first grade classroom. It became my sole mission that year to find a pet for our class, and adoptees ranged from a small plastic dolphin floating in a soda bottle filled with water to a tadpole from the pond near the primary school. After the dolphin and before the tadpole, though, I found a spider and put it in a fish tank with twigs and torn-up grass. Sadly, one of the girls in my class let it escape one day. Tool.

It seriously amazes me that I was able to retain friends throughout grade school.

Down a latte and quit mopin'

So I'm over myself. I stayed up all night watching decent movies and taking a bath for the first time since I don't know when, and getting no sleep actually feels pretty good. I will take part in the morning hours for once!

Also, I would like to take this moment to explain Charlie Bucket three posts down in saying that I WON TICKETS TO SEE COLDPLAY AT THE END OF THE MONTH. Point to be made: stop being a big crybaby, Meg, because as several people have already told you, you are a lucky bitch.

Is Starbucks open at six on Saturday mornings?

Ugh.

To be blunt, today just sucked.

Prefaced by the fact that I'm sad to be out of touch with some of my friends, I received news that another good friend really isn't doing well at all and could use some pick-me-up mail . . . I just feel so incredibly sad for her because if I'm feeling bummed, my heart practically breaks at the thought of her on her own waiting to hear from her friends.

I just hate today. I want to be everything and everywhere I'm not.

Sorry for the melodrama.

Two things

1. The inordinate amount of sleep I've been getting recently is starting to weird me out. I go to bed at twelve and wake up uninterrupted twelve hours later. No one requires that much sleep.
2. Correspondence (or lack thereof) is really getting to me. Enter sad face here.

It is 12:28 and I am supposed to be at work in half an hour. Let's see how this plays out.

I'VE GOT A GOLDEN TICKET

hypotheses

the great scientific mysteries
of eighth grade lab science
were hypothesized in
if, than
statements:

if
oil and water are mixed
then
they will separate according to density

if
a plant is grown in artificial light
then
it will not thrive as it would in the sun

if
you step off the seesaw
then
i go crashing back to earth

if
a tree falls in the forest but you aren't there to hear it
then
i listen to the boughs snap by myself

if
then
then
now
see
saw

take me back to middle school
when long distance meant your friend
was in a different homeroom

Al Green, that folk singer guy

I was working today and this older man was trying on hats; he must've put every single one in the store on his head at one point or another, and when he finally came to the conclusion that not a single hat fit him just right, his wife began looking at jewelry. So as she's trying on necklaces in the mirror, he comes up to the counter and starts talking to me. I had Al Green playing again and he asked who it was on the radio; after I told him he said, "Oh, that Al Green, have you ever seen a picture of him?" I said that yes, I had, and he went on about how shocked he was to see him because his voice was so soulful and far-ranging, he'd thought he was black; he didn't think a white man's voice could sound like that.

Now, as we all know, Al Green is black. For once I decided that I would just smile and nod instead of correcting the person, and he kept rambling on about how Mr. Green had this place up in Lennox near the Berkshires, and how there was a diner there that served an "Al Green omlette" because he and his wife would frequent there, and blah blah blah . . .

After about five minutes of him talking out of his posterior, he goes, "HOLD ON, THAT'S JAMES TAYLOR I'M THINKIN' OF!"

You're killing me, Smalls.

If you're crazy and you know it, clap your hands

I have come to the conclusion that my life is a series of embarrassing moments.

"Life" being this week. But still. I'm at work again, and there is this STUPID GNAT that has been trailing me all day and refuses to be killed. So I'm behind the counter, trying to smush it by clapping my hands and trapping it, when I look up and see a woman in the children's section.

The customers that come in here must think, "Wow, that East End Shirt Company sure is swell for hiring young adults with special needs!"

Note to self: singing at work is NEVER appropriate

WOW I AM SO EMBARRASSED RIGHT NOW I CAN'T EVEN USE PUNCTUATION

So I'm at work pricing new inventory and listening to Al Green at a fairly loud volume because there really isn't much foot traffic on Wednesday afternoons.

Now, "Love and Happiness" always requires backup singing. It's just a rule. So I'm singing along and pricing, completely oblivious to anything going on, when I see two guys in their early twenties looking at shotglasses. There is NO WAY they didn't hear me.

Can you feel my embarrassment radiating through your computer monitor?

I thought so.

Coffee with the boys

Today is my first day off in a week. Unfortunately, the clouds are back on duty. Sigh.

I drove Keira to school this morning; she had full reign over the iPod and chose to listen to the Beatles! The young grasshopper is learning well. After dropping her off, I picked up a bagel and coffee and went down to the beach to finish listening to Abbey Road.

It's kind of nice not having much to write about for a change. Even though I've been working all the time, being home just feels like a long exhale.

Cars, trains, and aeroplanes

I just watched a video posted on Coldplay's website and tried to express my feelings about it here, but it just didn't work and I ended up erasing everything I'd written. Watch it and you'll understand what I mean.

Since voicing political observations is fruitless, here's a social observation! Today I had to drive to Ocean Avenue to pick up an order for East End, and had to stop to let a train go by when I was going through Ronkonkoma. Later, I was driving back east on the Expressway when I saw a plane fly directly in front of me on its way to Islip. It was just a weird thing to see different forms of transit even while moving myself from point A to point B; even weirder was when I thought about what would happen if everyone just stopped.

Only in dreams, I suppose.

Maybe 'Socks' would've been a better name for the cat

After an few uncertain days, Ginny and I are now on excellent footing. I arrived home Thursday night, relieved that Jamila (the anthurium) made it home safely in the car, only to find her waxy pink flower and broad leaves completely demolished when I woke up in the morning.

The tooth punctures in the remaining bit of the flower gave Ginny away.

She even ate the entire pistil.

Despite the fact that she is merely a house plant, I defended Jamila's raggedy self by holding a grudge against Ginny for a few days. She fully redeemed herself about five minutes ago, though, when she crawled under my blanket and curled up on top of my frozen feet.

True fact: keep my feet warm and I will love you forever.

I'm listening to Sufjan Stevens right now and imagining the pair of fuzzy socks he undoubtedly keeps with him, waiting for the day we meet* so he can give them to me.

*Meet = get hitched.

Happy places

This afternoon, I was driving with Keira back from Port Jefferson and while waiting at a red light, she asked me, "So, trick question . . . where are you happier to be: here or Geneseo?"

I just stuttered for a few seconds, trying to come up with a truthful response and finally replied, "Well, I'm really glad to be home right now." She laughed and said that of course I was, that's why it was a trick question.

It made me think, though, about the duality of my life now. Being happier here would mean that there is somewhere better for me than the place where I live two-thirds of the year, which I don't necessarily think is true. I don't know. The fact that a large portion of my belongings is in storage 300 miles away is so weird . . . I've felt for a while that my life is spread out in different places--on Long Island, in Geneseo, following my friends abroad or in various college towns--but having my stuff planted elsewhere is concrete.

It almost makes me want to live out of a backpack. Or be a turtle.

My grades came back; I didn't do as well as I'd expected and missed the Dean's List by hundredths of a point. Can't wait for my relatives to ask about it. On the plus side, I will never return to my freshman year of college again . . . I'm happy that Geneseo is on the other side of summer, but unspeakably so that it will not be a continuation of the past year.

This is not the time to be thinking about next semester, though. Cheers to a three-month summer!

Migrating

Driving south,
I think about birds

(the way they always
fly in arrows
pointing homeward)

and the concept of home

(the way that for birds
it is always the place
in which they feel warm)

while the headlights
point directly towards
the hug I will receive
at the front door.

Break out the packing tape

The only thing barring me from summer is an informal five-minute presentation for Critical Reading tomorrow morning.

It's a weird feeling.

I took my astronomy final at noon; I feel pretty good about it, but I also felt confident about my calligraphy work and OH, I got a B+. Don't get me started on that.

I've been working on a few mixes for the ride home with CiCi and Aunt Rosie . . . 'Open Highway' is more folk and acoustic stuff and 'Pumpin' Gas' has a bit more pep, but they're both pretty good (in my humble opinion).

Aside from writing out a few notes for tomorrow morning, I'm DONE with my freshman year of college. Isn't that crazy? I feel like my biggest success is living through it, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. I think it is.

Expect either a jubilant or a crestfallen post later this afternoon when my professor posts the astronomy results.

The astronomy cram begins

Oh, and there were so many fewer questions when stars were still just the holes to heaven.

You say it, Jack.

Two o'clock, I'm throwing in the towel. I put in a solid few hours of studying until my concentration flew out the window about five minutes ago. Tomorrow my amount of studying will be of astronomical proportions.

I'm going to bed before another terrible pun slips.

Only in Genny

I did my hair today for the first time in approx. one week . . . the need to reacclimate myself to societal norms is becoming increasingly apparent, as most everything in my room is boxed up and ready to go. Three days left.

Things I will not be able to do at home:

• Stay up until three every night
• Wear moccasins out in public instead of normal shoes
• Finish an entire pizza pie with Katy at 2 AM
• Be teased for the fact that I call entire pizzas 'pies'
  
• Leave my house without wearing a bra
• Walk next door and plant myself in my neighbor's room
• Eat soft serve and Lucky Charms with every meal
• Bang on the wall to summon Carly
• Cook amazing food in the middle of the woods
  
• Always have a sense of the time thanks to Sturges

Podunk

Today's "word of the day" on my calendar:

Podunk n: a small, unimportant, and isolated town

Needless to say, my first thought upon seeing it was "Oh! Geneseo!" Not in an "Oh, how depressing" way but rather an "Oh, huh! How 'bout that" way. This may or may not be a good thing.

Slight chaos

I missed my final group presentation because I was sick. Direct quote from my professor: "Yeah, I'm glad you didn't come, I don't want you throwing up in my classroom."

I will seriously miss her next semester.

Anyways, I'm being doubly productive today to make up for the approx. 20 hours I spent in bed from Wednesday night to Thursday afternoon. My room is torn apart as I'm attempting to get a lot of packing done this weekend. The reward for my toil? I found a $10 Starbucks card at the bottom of my desk drawer. SCORE.

The comforting thought during all this? Everyone has chaos (er, cows?) in their lives.

Nine boxes

This weekend was a series of wonderful little adventures that I wish I was happily reminiscing about at the moment. Instead, I am only counting down the number of scribble-filled boxes on my calendar between now and home. I am so frustrated/annoyed/angry/upset about so many things right now, things that not only bother me in themselves but because they're distracting me from the truckload of work I have to complete before next Wednesday.

On the plus side, Carly brought the Volv back to school with her and we are going cruising later. "Cruising" entails a trip to WalMart. Classy!

Namesake

I want to go outside with a sheet to see if the wind will catch me like a stringless kite.

Day of rest

I am stuck at the library for my usual hour-long shift, after which my friends and I are cooking and baking and doing other fantastic things. As such, the shift is slower than usual.

There is much work to be done between now and next week, but today is not the day to do it.

Grrrrr.

There is a "special weather statement" for upstate New York. And I quote:

...WIDESPREAD FROST AND LOCALIZED FREEZING TEMPERATURES EXPECTED OVERNIGHT AND EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING... AN UNSEASONABLY COLD AIR MASS WILL SETTLE OVER THE REGION OVERNIGHT AND WEDNESDAY. MOSTLY CLEAR SKIES AND LIGHT WINDS WILL MAKE CONDITIONS FAVORABLE FOR THE FORMATION OF WIDESPREAD FROST LATE TONIGHT AND EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING ACROSS ALL OF WESTERN AND CENTRAL NEW YORK. THE FROST WILL OCCUR MAINLY BETWEEN 2 AM AND 9 AM WEDNESDAY MORNING AS TEMPERATURES FALL INTO THE LOWER 30S. SOME OF THE NORMALLY COLDER INTERIOR SECTIONS COULD EXPERIENCE TEMPERATURES IN THE MIDDLE TO UPPER 20S.

I didn't include the part warning farmers about sensitive vegetation and the growing season. Tomorrow is the last day of April . . . right?

In other news, I didn't place in the writing competition. I'm in one of those moods where I feel like everything I write is absolute crap; the contest results didn't help much. I should be getting my paper from Critical Reading back tomorrow, and I know my Chancery Cursive plate is graded so I'll be receiving that in calligraphy. If I don't do well, I think I may hitchhike out of town on a beet truck or something. Also, today was the first day all semester that I didn't hand in an assignment on time . . . it's so frustrating to have broken that streak.

I'm just frustrated in general. Home, please.

Cause she knows that it's demanding

I am on a Flaming Lips binge. "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1" makes me want to play the guitar SO BADLY. And save the world from evil robots with black belt karate prowess. For now I'll have to settle with writing a really good paper for anthropology tomorrow, and focus on everything else after that.

The world is moving about in my favor today; my hair doesn't look bad despite the fact that I slept on it wet, I got to creative writing to find out that all we had to do was sign up for conferences later in the week so we didn't have actual class, and had a lovely lunch at Bank Street with Ellen and Kelly. Hopefully the trend continues.

Home in sixteen days . . . there's so much to be done between now and May 14th. If I think about it too much, my brain comes dangerously close to a point of explosion. Better take lots of vitamins, cause I know that it'd be tragic if those evil robots win.

Concerning hobbits and weather

I am back from a weekend with Amy at Brown replete with Lord of the Rings references; it was lovely. Coming back, though, I felt almost guilty about having so many negative thoughts about my own school while I was there. . . being in Providence highlighted the reason why I'm sometimes unhappy here--feeling like I'm stranded, basically--and because of that I unwittingly continued to make other comparisons to Geneseo. Anyways. The point of this circular blathering is to say that while distance may be a vantage point (as I told Amy earlier about something completely different), sometimes it obscures the wonderful things about a place. And, in the words of Gandalf, even the very wise cannot see all ends. So I am decidedly happy . . . this may or may not be influenced by the fact that I'll be home in less than three weeks, but whatever!

The forecast for western New York includes rain for the next ten days. While this would typically be a depressing scenario, I'm actually glad because a) it will drive me indoors to get some real work done, and b) I will not feel resentful that I am inside working at the circulation desk and missing the prime of the afternoon on the green every day.

Side note: the taxi driver who brought me to the airport on Friday asked me riddles for a good twenty minutes. He said I was able to answer the most out of any of his customers to date. Am I bragging? YES.

I will end with one of his riddles (which I did not answer correctly); if you get the right answer without googling it, I will be very impressed:

What did the fish say when he swam into a concrete wall?

Wanted: one pair of ruby slippers

Rome may not have been built in a day, but this paper will construct itself in a night. I'm a girl on a mission.

"There's no place like home" is my new mantra. Call me Dorothy.

Hear me roar

I am in such a foul mood right now. Seriously, do not mess.

Oh, great

Today is G.R.E.A.T. (Geneseo Recognizing Excellence Achievement & Talent) Day at Geneseo; there are hundreds of presentations and readings going on all day and we have no classes . . . it's pretty exciting. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to take part in anything because I'm working at the library. Of course. As soon as my shift is up I have to get to work on the paper due tomorrow that I have not started writing yet.

It's a great day, basically.

Pick your poison

Sincerest apologies for not updating in a few days; my dearest Erry came to visit for the weekend and we had a lovely time doing a whole lot o' nuffin'. Actually, that's not true. Mostly nuffin'. She co-hosted the radio show with me on Saturday night and was hysterical as always, our one listener (my roommate) enjoyed it.

Right now I'm at my usual table next to Shakespeare in the library . . . I just finished my calligraphy project and now I'm about to start working on the 8-10 page paper due Wednesday that I have yet to begin writing. Unfortunately, I haven't finished the reading required to write said paper yet, so . . . yeah. I don't expect to be leaving this chair very soon. Fortunately, Erin and I went to Wegmans before she left and picked up two four-packs of my poison of choice:


Expect a new post somewhere around 1 AM or so.

At least I'll always have coffee

Today is one of those days when I feel like I'm wasting my life. It's so beautiful out, and all I want to do is have an adventure. This feeling may or may not be influenced by the fact that contrary to my level of confidence upon handing in my astronomy exam today, I did not do well on it like I thought I had.

Right now I'm outside trying to write my creative nonfiction essay; we have to choose a word and expound upon it in five paragraphs, three of which are personal anecdotes relating to the word, and the other two are more philosophical/academic perspectives on the word.

I'm writing about coffee. Obviously.

I just want to feel successful. Argh. Everything is frustrating at the moment.

When Debbie Met Frodo

There is no lack of things to write about at the moment, I'm just trying to sort everything in my mind. One of those nights.

I'm studying for my astronomy test tomorrow, and the unit covers black holes. The idea of a black hole is just so far from human conception--or my human conception, at least--and while I understand what I'll be tested on it just still drives me crazy thinking about its implications.

Also, we're reading Nabokov's autobiography Speak, Memory in my Critical Reading class. Nabokov was a self-proclaimed chronophobiac; he was afraid of time and its passing, describing our existence as "but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." My professor asked the class if any of us had ever thought about death before, and he was surprised to see that we'd all raised our hands. Death is for someone his age to contemplate, he said.

As we get older we begin to conceptualize things in a less infinite manner, seeing timelines instead of horizons, and it's strange to realize that I'm beginning to do that myself. Since when do I not have enough time to be everything in the world I want to be?

Wow, sorry to be such a downer! While I have more work than I can reasonably manage at the moment, things really are good, I promise. Just know that my morbid universal musings are tempered with things like the Celtic alphabet, which I abuse to no end during calligraphy class:

Business as usual, basically.

Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?

I'm trying to think of a good metaphor for this shift at work. I am at the laptop desk--my favorite place, as most of you know--and seriously, the SECOND I sit down someone comes up to the desk. I get up, help them, resettle myself with my book and VOILA, another person magically appears with a dead battery. It's to the point where I'm getting passive-agressive; I'll snatch the person's card from them but then be really friendly. Yes, I realize I am sick.

Side note: bad pick-up lines just make me laugh a LOT.

I bleed caffeine

So I woke up at 2 o'clock and the sky was blue. There was no trace of snow. For a minute, I thought I'd dreamed it all.

I am still exhausted and grumpy, and I may or may not find the need to employ toothpicks to prop my eyelids open with. For now, though, I will continue drinking the Venti coffee next to me; I tried the new Pike Place roast from Starbucks . . . it's quite good. Geez, I love coffee.

Spring is still hibernating, and so am I

I just got out of the shower. I have been awake all night at Relay for Life. Obviously I am having difficulty stringing together sentences more complicated than simple statements.

'Bizarre' is a good word to describe my present state. It is snowing, and the wet, white flakes against the newly green grass is somewhat disconcerting. It's as if spring peeked around the corner in all her innocent sweetness, then retreated back in shyness and left us with God-awful snow in the middle of April.

I'm rambling. I need sleep.

I will leave you with this question, though:
If April showers bring May flowers, then what do April flurries bring?

Rain and reminiscing

I may have to break the promise I made to myself and leave my room and my pressing work in order to go outside and walk in the rain. Like two minutes ago I heard a rumbling sound, and then all of a sudden it was like someone above us had wrung out a wet towel. Thunderstorms are a far more beautiful aspect of spring than budding flowers, a mon avis.

The sudden rain just reminded me so much of my first night at college; I had walked over to a carnival-like thing set up at south campus to meet up with my roommate (who hadn't moved in yet), when all of a sudden the skies opened up and drenched us all. I pulled off my leather sandals and just ran barefoot back to my room, completely soaked and by myself but not caring in the least because it was the beginning of some new adventure. A lot has changed since then; I feel older in some ways and younger in others. Different, certainly. Would I have changed any of it? I don't know.

Maybe I'll tie a key to a kite and conduct some electricity like Ben Franklin . . . perhaps I'll be struck by some brilliant idea for my paper in the form of a current to the brain.


Side note: the carillon is nice and all in small doses, but you know what they say about too much of a good thing.

The answer is not "wonderful."

Falling for a number of things

Today I took a 'trip' down memory lane back to my klutzy tween years, to be painfully punny. I had a meeting with a professor whose class I'm going to audit next semester, after which I ran back to my room to get a few books before work at the library. On the way from Schrader to Livingston, I was fumbling for my phone to see what time it was because I was worrying about being late and wasn't paying attention to where I was walking, and BAM! I walked right off the sidewalk and did a face plant in the dirt.

The most unfortunate part about it was the fact that I fell right outside the floor to ceiling windows of the dining hall. I have no doubt that quite a few people saw me. After picking up all my books, I gave new meaning to the term "walk of shame" as I sped away with my my head hung abashedly.

Despite the bruised knees, today has been a pretty excellent day. We're reading Nabokov's Speak, Memory in my "Critical Reading: Autobiography" class, and on Monday my professor was talking about how Nabokov had synesthesia. My immediate thought was of one of my favorite Dinosaur Comics, and after class I went out on a limb and decided to send him the link. Well, he really enjoyed it, and proceeded to print it out and share it with my class today. So basically we're getting married, despite the fact that a) he could be my grandfather, and b) he has quite a thing for Freud, as Tim and I discussed earlier. I've decided that I can put up with an Oedipus complex in exchange for a relationship brimming with Shakespeare and Dinosaur Comics, though.

"Socially inept" is not a excuse

The extent of some people's rudeness just really amazes me sometimes. I'm sitting at the IDS desk (which isn't usually busy at all), reading my book, when all of a sudden I hear this extremely loud, extremely obnoxious fake cough. I look up to see two people standing in front of me, waiting to be helped; there was a guy right in front of me but I knew it was the girl behind him with the unfortunate tickle in her throat because she was snickering immaturely. So naturally I raised my eyebrows and gave them both death stares, and the guy looked apologetic on the girl's behalf and was super-polite when I gave him his books.

I just wanted to be like, "Really? Really?" to that girl though, ESPECIALLY because she was wearing a 'Reference Help' shirt (meaning she works here, too). The lengths some people will go to in order to be as obnoxious as humanly possible is quite astounding. I pride myself on my self-control when saying that I did not reach across the counter to slap her in the face.

A lovely buggy Monday

Things are on such an upswing for me these days. I don't have time to elaborate at present because I have close to 300 pages of reading to catch up on and a paper to write, but I will suffice by saying that I found about twelve ladybugs in the stairway this afternoon.

Coincidence? I think not.

Geneseo student in April: "Hey, have you seen my scarf?"

So I'm going through old documents I've saved on my computer and just organizing and reading things I haven't looked at in weeks/months/years (I've had my computer that long?!) . . . . it's an interesting process.

Often times when I'm sitting in a public place with my laptop, I'll eavesdrop on conversations and type out any particularly amusing ones . . . here are a few I stumbled upon just now:

My grandfather, sitting in our car at the beach: I went to Pete’s house eh, last Sunday, and his mother-in-law was there; he said she lost weight but I can’t figure out where—I still can’t get my arms around her!

Girl using the common room stove, after being asked why she was using oil to fry her egg: Because you're frying it, dorkus! It tastes mad (expletive)ing good! We take that yellow shit out, and it cooks when the white gets (expletive)ed up.

People are so funny. I would totally create an "Overheard in Geneseo" blog, but it wouldn't be very entertaining because chances are, you'd know who said the stupid thing and just lament the fact that you did.

Written in the stars

Want to know the best part of my moon lab?

THE FACT THAT IT'S DONE!

I'm fairly happy with it, actually. Percent error was less than a tenth of a percent . . . so yeah. Go me. In the process, I also came across a new favorite website . . . Sky & Telescope Magazine has a website, and there's this awesome program on it called Interactive Sky Chart. You basically look at the night sky on it, and can track the progression of the stars and planets and Moon at your exact location on whatever date and time you choose ranging from the year 1600 to the year 2400. I looked up the exact position of the stars the minute I was born. Isn't that wild?! Essentially, this program means that we can look at the sky at any given point in our lives, far beyond our deaths, even. Our entire lives compiled into the movement of the stars.

I suppose you could argue that that's a morbid thought, or one that renders us insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but I really don't see it that way. Rather, I feel like being a part of the motion of something so much larger is just that--being a part of it. We are witness to something that has existed long before us, and will continue to exist way after we die. There's meaning in that.

Anyways, enough late-night abstraction. Definitely check out the website, though . . . you have to register with your email address, but it's free and totally worth any spamming that may follow.