I should note that Michael B has truckloads of confidence now. He shakes your hand firmly and looks you in the eye and speaks in an assertive tone of voice, and when he's talking to you, you really feel like he's talking to you. Though he's always been professional, he's grown up, I think. He'll make a fine journalist one day.

Francie's Eastern Reunion Party was great. I thought it would be totally awkward talking to people I hadn't seen in four years and weren't really close to in the first place, but it was just really good to see people, even people you didn't know all that well. There weren't any social groups after four years, so I'd find myself talking to and laughing with and hugging the strangest people without any strain or awkwardness, because none of the 8th grade social strata really matters worth a damn anymore, and I've honestly never found making conversation so effortless, not even with people I hang out with every day. You know how a lot of times talking to people makes you feel small or irrelevent but it wasn't like that. I've never been so un-self conscious.

Of course, no one recognized anyone and had hard times finding things to talk about but everyone was on the same level and knew it and didn't care.

Hey, Angie C! I remember you! How's it goin'?

Good, good.

How's high school?/ Where do you go to school?

Blah blah.

Where are you going to college?

Blah blah.

Great! What are you planning to study?

Blah.

Cool!

And it wasn't really stupid awkward small talk where you try to think of something better to say, because you'd be genuinely interested in how people were, and glad for them. And if you didn't have anything further to say, you as much mutually said "Have a nice life, I'm happy for you" though not in those words and moved off and went on with it, and that was that, no weirdness or emotional fissures. There was closure, I guess. It was all like that. It didn't matter what anyone said so much as being enveloped in an atmosphere of openness and goodwill, and laughter and memories and thunderous applause. We saw the Eastern video and saw how much we'd grown and recognized what a foul pit of stinking hell middle school was and what brats we all were, but affectionately, and cheered for what we'd all gone through. And no matter who you were, (that boy who I/you/we never talked to, that girl who picked on me/you/us) the commonality of experience and acknowledgement of bygones as bygones and all our changes brought us all together.

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

Amen.

At Archaeology, the pizza inspired me. I thought, wouldn't it be cool to have a spherical pizza???? You could have a crust on the outside and cheese and toppings on the inside, though of course since they'd no longer be on top but inside, they wouldn't be toppings, they'd be innings. And it'd be big, and you could slice it open like a watermelon, so it'd be like multiple circular slices of pizza, just like a normal pizza except that orginally, it was a sphere! Except the heel of the sphere, like the heel of a loaf of bread, would be shaped like a shallow bowl. And maybe even you could decorate the crust and cut it open partially and market it as the official Pacman fast food. The only problem would be, because it's melted cheese, once you cut the spherical pizza into slices, all the cheese would fall out leaving you with a ring of crust unless you had very solid cheese, like the cheese in a cheese wheel or cold cheese, but that'd be nasty. Rachel suggested a hollow sphere with cheese coating on the inside but then wouldn't all the cheese fall to the bottom? Mary suggested a spherical pizza with an anti-gravitational field generator inside of it and thought it was a good idea for an RPG, but I wasn't talking about RPGs. I asked Andrew if he'd buy my spherical pizza and he asked how much and I said I don't know, how much would he be willing to pay for it? and he said I should figure it out before I started selling. I asked Rob if he'd buy my spherical pizza and he said no and I accused him of quashing my entrepreneurial spirit and he just laughed at me because I couldn't pronounce "entrepreneurial," and he unlike me could pronounce French words and I was annoyed with the French. Rob said that supply doesn't create its own demand and I said but if something doesn't exist yet how can there be a latent demand for it? and he said that even though there isn't a demand for it specifically there's a demand for the services it would provide and I said I'm sure there's a demand for the services a spherical pizza would provide and he said like what? food? and I said I dunno. But I'm sure people would buy it because as Rachel said, people will eat anything and people will buy anything and she was sure in those two groups that there'd be some overlap. I asked Mr. Thomas, who'd come in for the real pizza, if he would buy my spherical pizza and he said he would if it tasted as good as regular pizza and Rachel said Mr. Thomas would eat anything and I agreed with her, but not out loud. But Rob thought a spherical pizza would be prohibitively expensive to make and I agreed with him because you can't after all deliver a spherical pizza in those nice flat boxes or sell frozen spherical pizzas to stick in the fridge because they are in general very space inefficient, so you'd have to make them at restaurants, though Rachel suggested little ball pizzas. But little ball pizzas aren't as cool as giant spherical pizzas, no? And you could make large spherical pizzas like cotton candy to get a bigger and bigger cheese ball by rolling it in a giant vat with cheese covering the walls, or you could have cheese being painted on layer by layer with a brush as the cheese ball revolved mechanically. Or, I said, you could have instead of a spherical crust filled with cheese on the inside you could have a giant crust ball covered with cheese. Basically you'd make a dough ball and dip it in tomato sauce (if you're not having white pizza) and then sprinkle cheese on and then bake it. Though the problem with a large pizza like that is that the cheese might fall off once it's all melty. And also it'd be hard to get the center of the crust ball all baked. Though maybe you could actually take a large meatball, cover that with crust, then cover that with sauce, then cover that with cheese and toppings, see? But Rachel said what about the vegetarians? and I said instead of a large meatball you take a sphere of cheese, cover that with crust, cover that with sauce, then cover that with more cheese, see? But she found it to be dubious. I said what about a Pizza Dog, like a corn dog? Pizza on a stick? It'd be more cost effective to roll a pizza tube like cotton candy than a pizza sphere. But of course, unlike a corn dog there is no dog, unless it's sausage inside, but that's just gross. I asked Andrew, if I invented a pizza tube, or a pizza burrito, would he buy it? Cuz the cool thing about a pizza tube with the crust on the outside is that it's more portable and less messy so you can carry it around, and he said like a calzone and I said what? and he said a pizza folded over. I said: Oh. And left him alone.

I have re-discovered a passion for walking, which I suppose is much healthier than my winter passion for S&M and German men.

Walking makes me really really happy. It's so peaceful every day, I don't give a damn about anything, and for that hour and a half, I have everything in life I wish to have. Today, a boy on a bike, maybe around twelve years old, smiled so warmly at me as he went by that it was like the sun came out (I mean, the sun was already out but it was like a second sun came out), and later on, he was with a bunch of friends in the street laughing as they raced each other on bikes and scooters and on foot. And how can such exuberance help but be contagious? And the Good Humor truck came out, the epitome of childhood happiness, and the boy's friend on the bike rode after it, and life was good.

More offcolor comments in Econ:

Vick: Chinese are dirty!
Xu: You have the plague!

Today in Econ, when asked what our dream jobs would be:

Mr. Baron: What would you like to be?
Vick: A CEO.
Mr. Baron: Of what?
Vick: Of anything!
Xu: Kwiki-Mart!

Ah, racial stereotyping at its finest hour.

Still, it would be funny.. *imagines it now*

Indian dude: I work at Kwiki-Mart..
Random other people: Haha!
Indian dude:... as CEO!
Random other people: .. damn!
Indian dude: BOOya!

Also, apparently Kwiki-Mart makes more money than China. So really. Booya.

I had a dream last night that George (Dubya) Bush came and visited RM. He was greeted rather icily by anti-war people. Though I'm not Bush' greatest fan I was appalled by the lack of respect he was getting in general and I was trying to apologize to Bush about the behavior of the student body as I was walking beside him, when this one curly-haired boy came up and very rudely confronted him about the war in Iraq. I lost all control, got in the boy's face and screamed at him. Though I didn't say anything about it afterwards, I was very embarrassed about my own emotional outburst towards the boy. I found Bush honest, sincere, earnest, and amazingly easy to talk to, though he seemed preocccupied with other things and more profoundly sad than offended by the school's opinion of him, as if he were used to such things. He was very sad in general.

I don't know what this dream says about my subconscious and all that. Maybe I'm a closet Republican.

Look, I just hate the French because it's funny, and I resent it when people like this make it not funny anymore. Now it's for real and they've gone too far.

Dammit. Now I can no longer go on hating the French in peace and making fun of their silly accents and berets without being involved in this ugly, faddish sentiment, by Jingo. Ah, I long for the innocent and carefree days of Gallophobia...

There's no greater joy in the world than a good, long, two-hour walk with birdsong and tall trees. It was very strange.. I felt like I'd turn a corner and see something.. I don't know what, like some lost world I once belonged to, a place where I should be and half remembered.

Have linked to Harry's Blog. Harry, for those of you who don't know, is a guy I used to annoy in elementary and middle school. He currently goes to WJ where he, like Nick, lives for Drama. He shares his blog with a girl I don't know. It annoys me irrationally. There's not much to read, because, as you know, blogger's archiving is all screwy.

So coming back from a journey, or after an illness, before habits had spun themselves across the surface, one felt that same unreality, which was so startling; felt something emerge. Life was most vivid then.

I am happy now because there's not anywhere else in the world I'd rather be or anything else in the world I'd rather be doing. I spend most of my life either looking forward or backwards, but I've spent today all mellow and at peace waiting for something to happen.

I am painfully happy for the beauty of the world. I think heaven must be a sunny walk. Why does the world have to change? I must go on living (school, job, marriage, kids) to be happy, but I'm happy already, so why won't the world stay as it is, with the wind and shadows in the grass? It feels like the end of everything, though I know there are no beginnings and no ends, simply living on as one lived before, and the world continues as before.

Anyone can have ambitions, but being content is God's gift. Let me be content then, at least for a while.