let's stumble towards success and pack some snacks for little breaks

Dan's going to be a chaperone at the lockin. A responsible adult, making sure we foolish children don't break the rules. Dan. I am amused.

A student told me today that I am now his "all-time tutor" and said in the student comments that he wanted to work with me again.

I got a book of short stories by Dostoevsky from the Plaza library today, and I'm reading a collection of Harlan Ellison, and I got a book from the Penn Valley library called "La Tâche du Petit Pierre." That last is interesting so far- it looked like a fairy tale type story, but half a page in, a ten-year-old kid was watching his mother die after a life of working her fingers to the bone to keep the two of them from starving. Then he sat in the graveyard in the rain, crying and wishing he could have died with her. Not exactly Goldilocks, mmm? I'm having fun learning new French words, though.

Rain and Ben beat my pants off at chess.

I'm in a weird mood. I'm eating more than I need to, and I feel like I should get a lot of sleep, but this has happened before, and when I let myself sleep as long as I want after feeling like this, I wake up lethargic and depressed. Hormones, I guess. I don't like it. I wish it would stop.

No, I don't really have anything to say.

Of course the only day in, like, three semesters that my mom has refused to drive me in to Penn Valley for no reason has to be a) the first day of classes, b) the first day of my job at the TLC, c) the day after I was woken up at 2 AM by a squalling child and couldn't get back to sleep for friggen forever, and d) the day my morning routine was thrown fifteen minutes behind due to my brother's bathroom-stealing.

( Despite my family's best efforts, however, I had a fairly good day. )

Mindy, the Student Activities Coordinator, and Nancy Harrington, last semester's honors seminar teacher, have both agreed to write me letters of reference, as well as zdmania, who is a graduate of Reed. I have a list of other people to ask as well. The Reed admissions office said I could include more letters of reference than the required number, which they may regret if I get as many as I'm hoping to.

Last night I stayed up till 3:30 AM writing my honors seminar paper draft on the biology of HIV/AIDS, which ended up 12 pages including glossary and references. It remains to be seen whether it's what the teacher was looking for, but I worked damn hard on it.

Today was the Halloween party at the library. Laura wore this wonderfully skimpy ballerina outfit, the tutu of which kept coming off. Kim... I want to like her, I really do, and I think we could probably get along fairly well, but the very first thing I ever heard her say was how "gay" something was as an insult. I know it's commonly accepted slang in high schools, and I know for a fact that she's not homophobic, and I've heard other people I like use the term, but... I guess first impressions really do last. I can't seem to get over it.

Laura, Zak and I started an academic group, the purpose of which was never really decided. Laura is the official History Geek, Star is the Art Geek, Tom is the Math Geek, that kid whose name I can never remember is the PC Computer Geek, Rain is the Drama Geek, and I'm Dictator because I couldn't decide between Biology Geek, Mac Computer Geek and English Geek. DDR was played, various fruits and vegetables were carved, Chipotle was eaten (not, however, by me, as I refuse to support McDonalds in any of its ventures, no matter how delicious), and a really really bad Rob Zombie movie was watched. I decided about two-thirds of the way through that I didn't need to waste any more of my life on it and left, soon followed by Rain, who was having some really bad imagery issues with the movie. (There was some naaaasty shit in there.) We wandered into the kids' section and curled up in the globe chair, which I really need to take a picture of because I've spent so much time there. We talked about many things and had an amusing conversation with three little kids. Then Rain's mom drove me home, where I found the rest of the family getting ready to go out to Boo at the Zoo. I don't do zoos, so I stayed home and dicked around on the computer. I haven't had the time to waste time on the Net in a long time, so it was kind of nice. Not that I really have the time to do it now- that Darwin's Cathedral summary is due on Thursday and I've barely started reading the book, plus I have French homework and the English group project, and my honors seminar presentation. But nobody wants to hear about my homework, so I won't elaborate.

Now, pictures!
( Two pics, under a cut because they were being a flist pain )

Perhaps I should explain that. The Flying Karamazov Brothers have this bit in their show where they ask people to bring up random objects, and then they have the audience cheer for each object and pick the three most popular for one of them to try to juggle. People who know about the "challenge" beforehand bring the weirdest objects to the shows. This time, there was a roll of toilet paper, a rotten pumpkin, a phallic squash, a stuffed Barney, and my Emergency No Parking sign, among other things. The sign, the pumpkin and the squash were chosen. The champion juggler gets to make three modifications to the objects. He broke the end off the squash, then bent my sign in half, then bent that in half again (that counted as two because he tried to juggle it between folds). It was amusing to watch, but on the other hand... they killed my sign! At least I got it autographed, and it'll be a nice mantelpiece story for my grandkids. Sigh.

I need new icons.

*points to title* That's what today was. Seriously, it was the best day I've had in a while.

I got up at eight, had a bagel, and trotted off for the bus, Student Activities Council collage in hand. My algebra teacher is a moron, but I'm doing all right anyway, I think. Check with me again after I get the results of tomorrow's quiz back. I was supposed to have SAC office hours, but there was nobody there. They were all tie-dying with the UPS guys out front. Which is honestly pretty cool. I chatted with a UPS guy for a while, then went to the library with the intention of starting in on homework. I sat down, pulled out a pencil, and proceeded to spend an hour writing an essay about the concept of loving America and how I relate to the idea. This was not homework, by the way, just something that popped into my brain, and I felt better after I'd written it.

In French, we were supposed to team up into pairs and compose a conversation consisting of the vocabulary words we've learned so far. Leanne, my partner, had somehow located a list of French swear words. The teacher was listening with a great deal of amusement to quite a bit of our argument over whether or not it would be okay to use any of them in our dialogue, so I knew she wouldn't be horrified by much... so when Leanne insulted me in her part of the dialogue, I responded with derision, "Mange moi!" ("Eat me!") Far from being horrified, Madame Brandt, after she stopped laughing, actually gave me extra credit for creative use of French. I shit thee not. I love this teacher.

Then was the Advocates 4 Better Government officer meeting, which four of the five officers attended. At one point, we voted on what topic the first general debate will be on, and the vote was split in half. I jokingly suggested Rock, Paper, Scissors, and no one could think of a better idea, so I beat Victor's pants off in a two-out-of-three game. As secretary, I'm responsible for recording the meetings, typing up the minutes and sending them to Stephanie to check over before passing them out. After the meeting, I went to the computer lab to type them up because I had some spare time, and I was there for about five minutes before Victor sat down at the computer next to me and engaged me in a roughly 45-minute argument about Macs vs. PCs. During this time, I was typing up the minutes. I noticed he was watching my screen, so I added in, "The vote was split evenly between Iraq and Social Security. Julia and Victor debated using Rock-Paper-Scissors to determine the outcome- Madame Secretary’s sk1llz far surpassed those of the lowly historian, and the debate topic will be Social Security." His reaction amused me, but the e-mail returning the checked-over minutes amused me more: Stephanie actually left it in, "lowly historian" and all. I cracked up for about ten minutes when I got it.

I tried and failed to enroll in honors seminar- apparently I need a letter from one person, a form from another and permission from a third before I can enroll in a class that Ms. Harrington supposedly kept open for enrollment. It's a pain, but it would be more of a pain if I had to take classes next summer. It'll get sorted out tomorrow, though, and all is well.

Chess club went well. Ryan was there, Mollie's brother, and so was his mom. She actually said hi to me, albeit not too warmly. I played an hour-and-a-half-long game with Kat, which I almost managed to stalemate again, and then a maybe ten-minute game with a kid called Thomas who played fast, wildly and well. I spotted Kat with the new Andrew Clements book, "Things Not Seen," and we had a brief wrestling match between there and the reference desk to determine who got to check it out first. David said he could order another and have it in tomorrow, though, so no hard feelings. Right, Kat? Right?

I got home, wrote my response to the English reading and went over algebra for the quiz tomorrow. I'll do the French audio if I have time before class- must remember to budget time for that tomorrow afternoon. I called Karen, and it looks like I'm going to get to go to the Renaissance fair and help with her psychic booth in exchange for free admission, lunch, and tips. That should be fun.

I'm feeling very optimistic right now. Life is going well. Now, hot tub and bed.