Wherein Angie Stays Sober, Keeps Her Clothes On and Makes Love to a Palm Tree

So anyway, I went with Melissa to see a men's soccer match in the soccer field, and met up with two other freshmen (Joe and Lola) looking for directions. So we went with them, and talked about how amazed we were about the lack of cliques in college and the way people could randomly introduce themselves, and worried when the window of everyone being super-friendly would close. By the time we got there, it was raining ridiculously, and though it made the men in white t-shirts look good and drove off the muggy heat we got seriously wet and the game got canceled because of lightning. Shortly after, it stopped raining, because God has a sense of humor.

Lola had a car, so we took that to Quiznos, a sub place recommended by Joe who lives in the area, around Fort Meade. He lives in a military family and moves around a lot, which is why Lola says he's super-friendly; he has to be to survive. He says he deals with loss a lot better. I wish I could. We ate and then went to Arundel Mills, possibly the biggest mall in Maryland though I don't know for sure. It also has a Medieval Times (a medieval themed entertainment venue with jousting, melee combat, and "medieval cuisine" including anachronistic potatoes) being constructed; I could see its tacky concrete castle halfway finished. YES! It looks so gay (as gay as anything abstractly inanimate can be), I must go when it's operational! At the real, modern mall, we laughed at the Dee's Nuts mall booth ("You have the biggest nuts I've ever seen!") and the explicit sex guide books in the book store. Overall, we were really immature and had a lot of fun, though Joe and Lola seemed mostly involved in each other and me and Melissa didn't really get in any words edgewise.

Lola said as part of her roommate agreement; no sex in the dorm while one roommate was trying to sleep. We laughed, because it implied people could have sex if the roommate was awake. Joe said as part of his roommate agreement; no sex in his dorm, but I didn't see why people can't have sex in their own bed ("I don't want my room to smell like funk!" he replied) or in the shower, ("Oh that's gross," he said) or his car ("No!"). Joe and Lola talked about their alcohol tolerances (and beer pong tables!!!) much like many other people I'd been introduced to, and porn parties on their floor, and I wondered if I was seriously so square as to be the only person to have never gotten drunk or made out with someone by now. It's not so much peer pressure... why should I be in such a hurry to dispense with innocence?... but that I feel that I may be missing so much of life.

BTW: a semi comical goal I've developed this year is to go to Annapolis and lose my virginity to a midshipman. It was rather scandalous in my dorm... some girl someone knew lost 100 pounds through a stomach stapling procedure and went to Annapolis and shagged two naval officers at a time (or straight consecutively, I don't remember.) Girls were repulsed when they heard this story but I thought it rather sounded like fun.

Then we went to the Foam Party, which is like clubbing I guess except in a vat full of soap suds. I got lei'd, but didn't really know anyone and it looked hella stupid with all the freshmen who also didn't know anyone standing around looking hella stupid but I went into the foam vat just for the hell of it. Much to my surprise, Eric (introduced Tuesday, August 26, 6:20 PM blog); big fat smartass loser Eric, was there. I'd talked to him at lunch and while we had some good conversation about my "information should be free" rant (Monday, August 25, 2:43 blog) and other random things, I rather disliked his negative personality. He'd say things like, "I'd rather be fat than be stupid" and he seemed really defensively arrogant about his weight. I mean, I hardly know this guy and it's the first thing he brings up (he introduces his nickname as "the fat boy in the third row"). He said, "I don't have anything against musclebound idiots but..." (and trailed off) in a way that indicated he clearly did have something against them. It was a very highschoolish mentality. And he has a whiny, Doug-like voice that is annoying (not that Doug's voice is annoying; Eric just happens to have a super exaggerated version of Doug's voice), and he has a pretentious way of speaking.

Earlier in the week he had interrupted our motivational speaker, who was talking about diversity and was using an example of how bias was ingrained in even our language. Eric had to point out that actually terms like blackmail, blacklist, black magic, etc, had been in the English language before the introduction of black people. Later in the week he interrupted a presentation on date rape (Monday, August 25, 2:43 blog) to say that he'd like to kick the perpetrator's ass he'd have a bad taste in his mouth. The audience was supposed to participate and discuss of course, but he didn't bring anything to that discussion except his righteous indignation. So anyway, I got the impression that not only was he a loser, but he was also loser who was so embittered he just turned his defensiveness into moral/intellectual superiority and inflicted it on everyone else. I was bothered though, to come to that conclusion after only meeting someone twice or so. Besides, I've been/still am a fat defensive loser, and know how it felt to be the subject of snap judgements. So maybe his voice, his combover, his big glasses, his weight, his greasy nose (to be fair, it was hot out. We're all greasy), and his tucked in shirt, just negatively impacted my view of his personality in a way that maybe big muscle-bound good looks wouldn't have, I don't know. In any case, I've kind of become his pity friend (someone who hangs out with someone because they feel sorry for them) except I hope not because that's patronizing, and we do have better intellectual conversations than me with other people, even if his looks and personality are serious turn offs.

Anyway, he was at the foam party and I was surprised because I thought he was an antisocial kind of person, so we had a surprising lot of fun throwing suds and rubber balls at each other and pushing each other over in the vat, and we got all huggy cuz he's BIG. He looks okay (maybe because it was dark) without glasses and his hair gelled by the foam so that it's not in the dorky combover; I don't think his weight is as much of an issue as he makes it out to be; his angry dorkiness is self inflicted, methinks. We didn't dance though because he doesn't do that.

Because he wasn't up to it and I probably wouldn't have been up to it with him anyways, I did some ass grinding dances with Joe and another Eric, Pat's (introduced Monday August 25, 12:36 AM) roommate at Susquehana Second North (henceforth to be referred to as Sus. I will talk about it a lot this year; it is after all also Caitlin's floor). He's very cool and easygoing though unfortunately I don't know him very well. Though it was rather symbolic because he's gay anyway, he had a girl (a Stephanie from Sus for the record, though nobody cares) with him so I felt bad about hogging him all to myself. At one point we were dancing with a rubber inflatable palm tree between us, which allowed us to get more wild and intimate (with the tree) than our states of not-knowing-each other would have allowed us to be with each other. It was funny though. I think we ruled the dance floor for maybe thirty seconds (wasn't hard to rule; remember a lot of the freshmen were standing around feeling embarrassed), and that was the highlight of my night. I danced with Joe too, but he was of course with Lola; so it was mostly like a sandwich dance; Lola on his crotch, me on his butt. I danced with... nonsexually this time.. George, a blonde black boy from Sus who has promised to introduce me to reggae videos.

But people started leaving and the dancing never did pick up momentum (to show you what I mean; the room was cold. Usually at dances the problem is that it gets to damn hot) so I left.

But it's not over yet.

As I was walking back to the dorm, these random people (well not that random.. one guy, some girls I'm not that familiar with on my floor) called out to me, "Would you like to streak?"

I said: "Let me think about that." then "Are you serious?"

and they said, "Yes, we will if other people do it."

and I said, "Can I be arrested?"

and they said, "Yes,"

and I said, "Okay but only to my underwear."

So we did, but one girl insisted we get out of the well lit parking lot and go to the dark field, and then she refused to take off her shirt like the rest of us, because she had a rather immodest bra, so we lost our nerve and quit, promising we'd have the help of alcohol next time. The boy, Jim, did streak with his pants off through the women's floor though. The amusement of this was lost on everyone; they'd all gone home for the weekend. Laura, the girl who refused to take off her shirt, offered her dorm room for truth or dare, and I declined, saying I wasn't drunk enough.

It kind of worries me. I do such weird things when I'm sober.

I was talking to Lori and we agreed on this; Being in college and not knowing anyone is like getting wisdom teeth pulled; temporary discomfort. Except after the drugs wear off; it's not like it hurts, it just sucks. It's this continuous feeling of sub-surface suckiness that just won't go away.

BTW, my Greek Archaeology class really kicks ass. Today we looked at random slides... it gives me a good excuse to test my sketching skills, both with speed, accuracy, and variability. (Since there are slides of landscapes, people, objects..) The people next to me are majoring in Ancient Studies. I so want to do that (or anthropology, or archaeology); I'm so passionate about it.

The more I think about it the less I understand my econ major.

Practical, makes good money, yes, yes.

Maybe I'll understand when I'm older; maybe it'll be too late.

Or for that matter, why am I in a major that requires little creative writing? Perhaps this is a pretension, but I believe I do it relatively well. I'm bored. Perhaps this would be a good time to start writing a novel.

BTW, my air conditioning has broken down and won't be repaired until next week. We've just opened the door to let the aircon in the hallway come in.

Didn't do much yesterday. Went to class... boring... first was linear algebra which confused the daylights out of me even though it's algebra for cryin' out loud. Then went to macroeconomics which bored me to death. We talked about scarcity. The people in my class didn't understand the concept of "marginal." My professor doesn't speak English as a first language and was inarticulate at explaining this (to be fair, he was fairly articulate, just not as articulate as I felt I could have been, and also the students were kinda slow.) I was weeping bored by the end of it.

Read some Wizard's First Rule.

Saw the Matrix Reloaded for $2, but of course, like four months late. I didn't think it was too bad, though I didn't understand the plot, though that could be because I came in 10/20/30 minutes late (I don't know how late I was but I was late). Ate really good popcorn. It was such exceptionally good popcorn it deserves mention here.

Anyway, it turns out that I didn't have an accounting textbook. Apparently there are three books I need. One is the textbook, one is the student workbook, one is a book of working papers. The syllabus is very vague on this- it says you need the book, a workbook, and accounting paper. All of these books have exactly the same name ("Financial Accounting; Tools for Business Decision Making, Third Edition") so I, like a dumbass, thought that the student workbook I had was the textbook (after all, it is in textbook format, readability and all) and the working papers I had was the workbook. So it took me forever to figure out why I couldn't find the homework problems. I thought I might have the wrong textbook, but again, the name thing... when I checked the syllabus, of course the title was the same as that on my workbook, I thought to myself, "But this is the same book," and when I checked the textbook writers' website, which had chapters available online, I downloaded a chapter and checked it against my workbook... and it was the same! So it took me a long time to realize that the problem wasn't that I had a completely different book, but that what I had wasn't the complete textbook. So I had to run out and buy the book and do the homework this morning.

Blah. Ick. >__<

BTW, accounting is easy so far; even Fred and George could do it. I always wondered where they learned to run a business. Maybe they attend the Hogwarts version of MK.

Apparently John and Will's version of Counterstrike is known as Steam and is not bootleg, but a beta testing version available for free. I have it too now. But technicalities are technicalities... the point is that I don't have to pay for Halflife or Counterstrike.

PS: Played Enter the Matrix. That game is just falling down hilarious. Unintentionally.

Instant Bishounen! by mizery
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Created with quill18's MemeGen!

No, darling, this is Vash.

It was raining cats and dogs tonight, so it rather dampened my plans to go see the Matrix Reloaded (which is being re-released at UMBC many months after its actual theatrical release for an admission fee of $2). Also, I was not enthused about ice cream because I don't want the Freshman Fifteen.

So I went upstairs to John and Will's room, where they have their computers hooked up with each other and was rapidly schooled by them in the ways of Counterstrike and Unreal Tournament. I learned the values of cover, sporadic firing, and had a lot of fun. It's funny... the boys across the hall also were playing Counterstrike, though not with us because we were using the noncompatible bootleg version. But the whole floor is like a gamer's floor. It's awesome. I promised to bring my PS2, and then our domination will be complete.

For Jen in Bryn Mawr

I talked yesterday to a sociology professor, Dr. Rothstein. We talked about the difference between applied anthropoloy and traditional anthropology. Traditional has emphasis on pre-literate cultures, while applied emphasizes the study of human behavior in modern societies, to analyze things like crime or consumer behavior, etc. Obviously applied anthropology leads to more job opportunities. He recommended some books too, which I may never read but you may find useful: "The Human Group" by George Caspar Homans published in 1950 and "Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples" by Margaret Mead. The first book has stuff on Polynesia and Tiki and the Norton Street Gang; obviously the first two things are traditional anthropology and the last is applied.

Had "Principles of Accounting" and "Ancient Greek Archaeology" today. The first one blew chunks.. for the hour while I was learning about balancing sheets I was like.. "Am I going to spend my life doing this?" I am an econ major after all. But Arc gave me hope, although other people found it boring. (But honestly, if you're not interested, why the hell take the class? It's not like you're in archaeology for the money, fucktard.) Is this cool or is this cool? Hurrah! Wars and gay sex! Badass.

People who went to Greece with and Ex-Archaeology Club people who read this will know exactly how I feel, except I feel even better. No more square/round nails and coke bottles for me!

The cynics (most likely Andrew P) will remind me of the living hell that is pottery shards and "creamware," but you can go to Hellas.

Don't rain on my party!

Wherein Angie Has Some Crazy Orgasmic Fun

Discovered, to my joy, that I can call Lauren non long distance from my cell. Yay!

Also:

Asked Caitlin if Andrew D's blog was incomprehensible or if it was just me. No, Andrew's blog really is incomprehensible. I myself don't understand why I don't understand his blog. I don't think my own blog is any more coherent, yet I undersand myself.

Anyway, tonight was "Crazy Fun Night," which I went to with Will* and John, the boys from the room above me. They came, kind of in apology for their air conditioning leaking all over our room (it's since been fixed), and Will was very chivalrous, holding doors open for me and things (!). It was very sweet. John was preoocupied and possibly stressed out; apparently he only got his schedule finalized today, and classes are tomorrow. There was laser tag, a giant inflatable slide, black light pool (billiards type pool, unfortunately, not a swimming pool), karaoke, fake gambling games, a gyroscope, popcorn, cotton candy, sno-cones, drinks and raffle tickets.

The line for laser tag was incredibly long (my roommate who eventually got in said it took an hour) so I didn't go, and pool is accessible any time. But I did go on the giant slide, which is great climbing up hand over hand with the rope as the thing bounces and rocks, and then bouncing all the way down (if you just slide, like I did the first time, you will get friction burn). Learned to play blackjack and the wheel of fortune... lost gratuitous amounts of fake money. Watched people do karaoke, which was hilarious, because it was lively, with people performing like in music videos. Also went on the gyroscope, was the last person in line, and unlike other people, did actually scream while on it. (another person had his loose change fall out) Don't know if it's more fun or more tortuous, but it felt so good after I got off. The guy who worked the slide (by ensuring not too many people got on it) had said to the guy who worked the gyroscope (by pushing it and stopping it): "You should get your wife on this. Maybe then you could make her scream." Paraphrased of course; I didn't get exact words because I was kind of whirling around on my head at the time.

*not Will Cooper, the Will I met for lunch on Sunday. I don't see him around, though we AIM. He does deserve a short cameo in today's blog though; he folded an oragami crane, and gave it to my roommate to give to me. Aww..

Last night, we went to a hypnotist show, which was really funny but kind of creepy. Later, Eric (one of many Erics I know) who was hypnotized, was really shaken and like, "I need someone to talk to." He made me say one of those trigger words, and I yelled, "GOLD!" In the show, when the hypnotist says gold, the hypnotized person think there's a little leprechaun in the room with a potta, and chases it. So when I yelled gold Eric attacked me. He apologized for it afterwards. Bizarre.

Met Lori Rowan, Andrew D's girlfriend, today. She's very nice, and not nearly as freaky as Andrew. Apparently she went to RM. I never knew. Pity. I looked through her pictures (here in these boring dorms it's a form of entertainment) and there are pictures of her at graduation, and at the senior picnic with Malex and Nick. So you must know her, gentle readers. She also has, framed, a photo of Andrew D wearing a crab hat. Apparently it's a graduation picnic.

Honestly though, I think if you're bored, you aren't trying hard enough. You can always come up with things to do, like me. I get so bored that I transcend to this sublime level of happiness; everything seems so exciting. Some people get high on crack; I get high on boredom. But seriously, there are many things you can do. You can paint a picture with toothpaste on your mirror. You can throw rocks at puddles. You can make a paperclip chain as long as your dorm hall. You can throw water balloons at hapless pedestrians outside your dorm room window. You can roll down hills or go land sledding on a cardboard box. You could go on a slip and slide. You can string together bottle caps to make a bracelet. You can have a fake campfire with a fan blowing orange tissue paper, and microwaved s'mores, and blast Kumbaya.mp3 from your computer. And those are just things you can do by yourself... with people, you can play Werewolf, crack-the-whip, red rover, spin the bottle, human jousting.. The opportunities are endless. If you have to resort to drinking and having sex, you are a truly sad person.

(Though if you drink and have sex not as a last resort, you're okay.)

The women's floor lacks the best things about boys; dicks and video games.

These are really cool chairs. They have rockers, so you can lean back in them, but it's kind of creepy we you feel yourself tilting back and you don't know if you'll fall over. I tried this though.. no matter how far you lean though, you simply won't fall.

Also, the air conditioning from the room above us is dripping on us. We've put out plastic cups under the drip but those don't contain all that well. I want to install a gutter.

Wherein Angie Loots, Rapes and Pillages

Went to this thing on sexual assault in which these actors role-play a scenario. There was this drunk chick who had sex and then woke up really upset, and her friends were like "ooh, you've been raped!" and the guy who did it was like "no, it was consentual." I think I was the only one in the audience who didn't think she as raped, because she didn't actually say no. She said "not right now" when she was in the car, which could mean "later" and she said "that's it" while he was taking off her shirt. Now maybe it's just my uptight IB self, which has been brainwashed into never using the word "this" or "that" by itself in a sentence, but "that's it" is seriously ambiguous. Is it "that's it" as in "that's enough" or "that's it" as in "oooh baby, that's it"? That's what? What's what? And the boy was drunk too, and they'd been making out beforehand, so seriously, how much linguistic comprehension do you expect him to possess? And plus, boys are stupid... if you don't say "NO, I'm not having sex with you tonight, stop it" you can't expect them to read your mind or even decypher your cryptic sentences while you're drooling all over them and both of you are raging drunk. Being dumb is not a crime.

I feel like an asshole for not being like, "You evil rapist!"

We also had a talk on file sharing. Apparently, in a wink-nod way while being totally straight faced, the guy said that you can only be tracked on a file sharing program if you're sharing files, so you can really download all you want. Plus, there's always mIRC. I'm morally outraged at not being able to share, which of course is totally irrational because pirating files is immoral in the first place. But I irrationally feel that information should be free; of all things in the world, from food to love to reputation, it seems that only ideas truly are free to be circulated and are the most basic principle of egalitarianism. It's a lovely idea, isn't it? Doesn't reflect economic reality at all though... it costs money to print books, money to maintain satelites, money to maintain wiring and fiber optics, money to buy acoustic equipment, money to distribute records. Somehow though I even hate paying money to talk on my cell phone, money to go online. It's totally reasonable for them to charge of course, but I just... emotionally and perhaps stupidly... feel cruddy that I have to pay to express myself. It really is a pity, because for me it seems that such things as art and music and words should be obtainable (for free) by everyone. It's not satisfying to have to pay for them, which is probably why so many people download, more for that than pure greed. It's like communism; I think communism is morally reprehensible. You shouldn't steal from someone no matter how much you need what they have, no matter how little they deserve their fortune, which is at least one thing Atlas Shrugged has taught me. But sometimes people feel so cheated of something that's rightfully their's that they do steal, even though it's immoral, thinking "why can't I?" "why shouldn't I?" "I deserve this."

And that's how I feel about music, and I continue to pirate.

Yo ho, yo ho...

Yet another reason why Susquehana Hall rules and Chesapeake ... rules less:

Susquehana dorms are routinely invaded by shirt ninjas, who barge into our room and throw paper ninja stars at you with messages reading: "YOU HAVE BEEN NINJAED!"

Chesapeake dorms are routinely invaded by drunks on tequila.

(at least they're hot and male. Don't know how long that will last.)

Not so random people meeting on Sunday as well;

Went to the Inner Harbor to eat dinner with my parents (well not "went." My parents drove me, since they came over to drop off a minifridge and my underwear... heh. ) I fell asleep in the car on the way back and it was quiet and dark and comforting and it almost felt like I was at home again, but when I woke up I was at college, and everything was strange still.

Met Caitlin B and a lot of her friends. Yeah, she's pretty, she's nice. She likes Buffy. You all know Caitlin better than I, so this description is probably redundant. Her hall, Susquehana, kicks ass, while mine, Chesapeake. is quiet. Cuz I'm on the "women's floor." No boys to make trouble. Damn women. On her floor is Pat, who brought DDR. He's a major otaku with yaoi posters on his walls, but he is a straight boi. We talked about yuri vs yaoi and Otakon and German penises ("a long word for a short thing"). He is cool. I also met more other people at random, including a whole group of black people. I feel bad because I only remember half their names; in all seriousness, they all look alike, which is a horrible thing to say, but I'm honestly having trouble telling people of the same skin, eye, and hair color apart and also some of the names can be difficult. It's no longer like the IB with like the solo black person... or none. Since I'm already lumping all dark-skinned minorities together (okay Asian people too... can't tell Asian people apart) I feel I should say that I saw Koushik again. WHO? I didn't know either until I saw him today. I haven't seen him "in like ten years," and vaguely remember going to CTY at Sandy Springs with him, way back in the elementary school days. It's very strange; I don't remember him at all but I recognized his face. Watched Chicago on DVD in Caitlin and Allison (her roommate, who wasn't feeling well earlier)'s room. They're bunked together, and their room is the homiest on the floor.

On the emotional side of college, I don't feel anything at all. Not depression, homesickness or giddy happiness at new things.. I'm just stunned and flattened like a landed flounder. The one thing to say is, all the people meeting can be emotionally draining, and when you're alone you feel really alone. But it's also so easy to visit people that I think once I get to know more people better, I will be happy.

Have met some people, mostly at random. This morning, wandering around because my roommate was still sleeping, joined up with Lily and Ariana, two girls who were also looking, futilely, for breakfast. Nothing was open, as only freshmen have moved in so far, so I went to their suite. They went to Gaithersburg High, but knew Ben Evans in middle school. They wonder if he turned out to be cute, and remember him to be sweet and a leader of "Future Farmers of America." Apparently Lily traumatized him in eighth grade on a King's Dominion trip and thinks that Ben would remember her. Okay. They were too cool for me, though not advertantly or in a snobby way, and spent the whole time I was there looking through photos of people on their high school girl's lacrosse team reminiscing on which girls were good/bad/bitchy (none of who I know), hot male friends (none of who I know), and cute Hollywood couples (none of who I know). This is why I don't really get along well with people who know each other already; I don't know any of it.

Sarah, an RM alumni who graduated last year and wears a hajib is here also, and is a guide on my floor. I might have known her. I don't know.

Went to some welcome speech thing about diversity and the way people tend to get together in groups. It was quite good actually. Downside; have been guilted into writing letters home. Let's see if I can get stamps and envelopes and so forth.

Went to ... brunch. Met more random people. Will and Liz, who know each other in the loosest sense of the word in that they met each other yesterday. Will's a talkative comp-sci major who lives off campus. Liz doesn't say very much. I got their AIMs and we gossiped about the antics of our high school teachers.

My parents will be coming in like an hour to drop off my bag of underwear, which I left at home yesterday. Oh yeah, and a minifridge.

T, on Friday before I left for college, visited me for one last time with Mehmet, and gave me some advice:

-Don't be distracted.
-If someone tries to rape you, yell "FIRE!" because if you yell "Rape!" people may not necessarily come to your rescue. (A kind of cynical view of humanity, IMHO, but true.... I've heard cases of people totally ignoring rape in public.)
-Don't leave your laptop on overnight or it'll overheat.
-Don't download exe files from Kazaa.

So there you go.

Got a Trigun wallpaper. I also want a Trigun wallscroll, for real life of course. I'm so addicted. Eeek. Lauren!!! XD

Went to "Playfair," an icebreaker type activity in which people frenetically introduce themselves to as many other people as possible, in the form of many different games and totally random events. It's hell for people who aren't people persons. I don't know if I was a people person or not; I had fun but was embarrassed at the forced social activity.

After I came back to my dorm I anti-virused my laptop; it's a new laptop, and I was amazed to have had a worm already.

Went and talked with the girl who lives in the room next to mine. We share a bathroom between our rooms and so are in and out of each other's rooms often. Her roommate has yet to move in, so in the quad there are three of us; me, Casey (my roommate) and Melissa. Melissa is a pink-haired girl from Staten Island. She plays the guitar (acoustic and electric) and used to have a punk band called Pocky, named, of course, after the Japanese dessert. She has Totoro tatooed to her hip, and she is damn cool.

She thinks our accents are funny, which amuses me to no end.

Am at UMBC. Kind of stressful with my mom yelling at me as I moved, and also not knowing anyone, but I'm not homesick at all, just kind of relieved that my parents left. Getting better though. Food is nice. My room is a bit too blank for me; I need to collect stuff like a hamster. My roomie is nicer than I'd expected from the beer pong conversation.

Partings

Yesterday was both happy and sad. I went to Potbelly's with Malex, after accompanying him on many diverting errands. Also at Potbelly's were Puffy and Andrew D, Jen, Dena, Lizzie, Karina and Ranwa. I ate a sandwich partially, and drank a shake, and it was a fast lunch. I don't remember any significant conversation. In hindsight it was rather a dumb farewell. We finished quickly, mostly so that we could go and visit RM, and we seperated, stalking the school in groups of twos and threes. We visited people, feeling very strange and wondering what on God's good earth we were doing in that place for four years. Everything was all very familiar yet different for some reason. I believe I accidentally left the remains of my partially eaten tuna sandwich in the girls' bathroom. Call it a parting gift. I asked Mr. Baron whether Operation Uranus* was real. Indeed it was, according to Mr. Thomas.. it was.. an operation.. involving.. Uranus... right. It still cracks me up after six months. We visited Mr. Evans, still, even after graduating, holding the History Office in awe as a sacred place. Andrew stole a 2 by 4. Defiler! (Well, from the main hallway) The library where I used to collapse in a comatose pile every morning has shiny, new, (sleek, black and sinister) computers that all work. The foreign language hall's construction paper flags are now painted onto the walls. It is bizarre. Such a clutter of memories and routines that ghost around in my memory.

*Russian plan led by General Zhukov to break out of the siege of Stalingrad during WWII. People who say we remember nothing of high school history should be shot. In Uranus.

We left. Me and Malex dropped off Andrew D at his house, which was deja vu for me.. I remember it when I was there in November and in the bare woods beside his house, and it was cold. I hugged him, he went in the house and we left.

More errands with Malex.

Then Lauren's house to finish Trigun. Yay, Lauren! Yay, Trigun! Me and Lauren conspired quite stealthily not to reveal spoilers to Malex and his virgin ears, but he'd picked up spoilers from fanfic already anyway. I'd picked them up from fan art. Lauren'd picked them up from listening to people. So all of us knew the ending before the end. Wolfwood kicks ass and other things. I love his crossfire but thinking about Trigun too much makes things make less sense. Todd was there also. One of Lauren's friends, and therefore on the stage of life for me, miscellaneous set dressing. He was hot and funny and passed out teatree chew sticks, but he will most likely never appear in my blog again. Why I bothered to introduce him, I don't know.

We had, not at the same time, pizza, "sinfully chocolate ice cream cake" (metaphysically Wolfwood) and pudding pie (metaphysically Vash).

Janis and a bunch of people who I will not bother to introduce came over at night. Todd and Laurens' noses fit together, because he has a Wolfwood nose and she has a Vash nose (convex and concave). You can fit them together like a puzzle piece if you have one person stand upside down.

I called home at around 11, and my dad was pissed, so I didn't go to the Silver Diner with everyone. We said goodbye to Lauren (though I will see her in the year because she's going to MC) and Janis; Malex drove me home. I hugged him outside my house and won't see him again until December I think, but I didn't really get a good look at him last night there anyways, because it was dark. We will no longer live five minutes away anymore. My dad yelled at me for not calling earlier and then tangented into a lecture about discipline and responsibility. I know that parents get irritable with their kids when they get sad and worried about them leaving; it seems a common phenomenon. Well, I know my dad loves me. It's interesting.. parents always want their children to be happy and think they know but don't quite know what will make their children happy. What is most important to them right now it seems is stuff. They want me to major in econ and pre-law and be successful and happy and filthy rich. Stuff. But I am young yet and have the luxury of dreaming, so let me dream now about what I can, of friendship and maybe love. It's not that financial or academic success are unimportant, it's just that in the context of starting an entirely new life, not just a new school, it seems trivial compared to the scope of everything.

I went to bed and was sad. It's worse not during the goodbyes, but after, when you acutely remember what you just left and have no longer. Though it was only a little while ago the goodbyes were said and life procedes as normal, and it seems so illusively easy to reach back into my memory and touch everything, as if the clarity of it would make it real again, and it takes a while to realize that the goodbyes were indeed goodbyes .... and that everything is gone. Give me one day more, one hour more, one minute more, one second more.

But I have no time left.

I talked to my roomey, Casey. She lives in Denton MD with all the cows and goats. For fun, she plays with pigs and also plays beer pong, a game involving tossing a pingpong ball into a cup and drinking the beer in it. She says she has nothing better to do. She has a boyfriend and a 14 year old sister who is entering high school this year. If she could be any type of insect she'd be a lightning bug, which is hick for firefly. But I kid. ^__^ Lauren uses that term too, on her livejournal. But she lives in Olney, so the point still stands. :P It's a bug, like lightning!

Thai Man Dies Laughing

Now that is a good way to go!

Hey, you guys know Caitlin B? The beautiful, the mysterious, the Caitlin B, whose face launched a thousand minivans?

No? Damn. Refresher: She's the girl who, according to Nick B, melted Andrew P's icy heart in middle school, vanquished his wild spirit, and was darn tootin' hot, and very nice to boot. Matt G knew her not from middle school but at drama camp or something, and wrote lovely sonnets to/of her. As a matter of fact, Matt found my blog by Googling for her, though I did a Google search today, and it does not yield my blog anymore. More concretely, she is a girl who used to go to Takoma Park Middle and Northwestern High. But my point is, Caitlin B is a beautiful, mythical, elusive creature who weaves her ethereal webs of high passion and tragedy. Or something like that.

She's going to UMBC this year, says Andrew D, who somehow knows her as well. (I tell you her influence is unfathomable) I should like to meet her, if only to see what all this hype is about.

Wherein Angie Organizes Her Internet Correspondances

Andrew D now has a blog, which I have linked to permanently.

Andrew likes to be called by his full name so he can find it via Google. I feel it's too formal, and call him Andrew D just to distinguish him from Andrew P; otherwise he'd just be Andrew.

Andrew says that Doug may like me, which I think is astounding because nobody's done it before, so it's hard to imagine.

(Also, and totally irrelevantly: Angela J gave me her AIM and chatted with me in a useless attempt to procrastinate from reading "The Long Fuse.")

The Totally Chronologically Backwards Post, in Honor of Chrononaughts

Blogger ate my post. I am retyping it, as close to verbatim as possible. Dammity damn! And it was a long post! I know the time stamp says Tuesday, but since it was written at 1 at night, that really counts for Monday night, doesn't it? When, in the course of this post, I say "this evening," or "this afternoon," or "this morning," it means Monday evening, Monday afternoon, and Monday morning. Thank you, kind readers, for your patience.

----

Andrew D wants me to give a shout out to Doug M who will be googling this page shortly.

This evening before sunset my mom let me drive around in an empty parking lot at the local Hebrew Academy. It was fun but tense with my mom yelling at me, and both easier and harder than I thought.

Earlier, we had been walking through Rock Creek Park looking at deer. (We found two, which were small and dappled.) We talked also, though it felt like in different languages. I am not prepared for college mentally. I am not prepared to go anywhere. I don't feel like an adult, but a post-teenager. I am afraid of re-entering the maelstrom of social affairs because there has been one lesson that has been pounded into my head all this summer. If I don't make friends in the first year of college while social groups are fluid and un-codified, I won't make them. I have to frenetically pound out my social circles before the primordial lava has cooled or else the world will be formed already around me. It's kind of funny, because I had friends. I was friends with Andrew D, Doug, Mary W, and Rachel M, but for some reason or another I never figured out in my four years of high school what Malex knew within the first two months of freshman year after the first Introverted White Boys and Angie party: if they are your friends, do stuff with them. So it is four years later now, and that is what I regret the most. I had my own friends, yet we never were a group. (Also, I am afraid that at UMBC will be morons I can't talk to). That is what I tried to tell my mom. She gave me banal advice that didn't address any of my problems: Do more social activities. Go to church. Don't feel uncomfortable at church because many other people there are also nonbelievers looking for friends. Make more friends with girls than boys because boys will be embarrassed to go shopping with you. Befriend new immigrants and offer to make phone calls for them. Ask for homework help even if you don't need the advice.

All gimmicks, I thought.

Blah blah. Blah blah.

I told my mom the things she was saying was more annoying than if she hadn't spoken at all, and she said, "If we don't talk now, when will we?" I didn't really have an answer for her.

Before my mom came home from work, I'd watched the episodes of Trigun on VCD that Lauren had loaned me, episodes 5-9 because I'd missed that viewing last Wednesday. I wuv Vashy! ^__^ Earlier in the day, in a fit of deja vu, I had been afraid that I would miss Malex calling me asking about another Trigun session, because I wasn't home in the afternoon.

I wasn't home because I was at the Aspen Hill Library, where I bought some used books. I am a used book buying addict. I do this because UMBC's library isn't exactly an accessible fountain of fun, unless your idea of pleasure reading is something like, "The Importance of Noserings in Polygamous Cultures of the Polynesian Islands." So, I bought.. "The Cowtail Switch," a collection of West African folk tales because I need to diversify my reading, "The Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, and "Beauty" by Robin McKinley. Yes, in spite of many warnings about boredom, I am giving Robin McKinley another go even after "Deerskin," because she is capable of much better.

I was close to the library because I'd gone for a walk at around noon, when it was still cool. I was around suburbia, and it was gorgeous. There were some belled flowers as big as my face that grew in vined clusters, and there was this tree that looked exactly like a fork, with part of the trunk growing totally horizontally, and three prongs growing from it completely vertical. People have very beautiful gardens, with tomatoes, sunflowers, black-eyed susans, daisies, zuchinni, peppers, myrtle, ... countless things if you care to look, and more than I can name. It seems that I have all the time in the world yet none at all, because in five days I will be starting a different life. As it were, here is a qoute, though not my quote: Live every day both as if you will live forever and die tomorrow.

It turns out that while I was away, Malex did not call me, but Doug did, twice, and left messages on my machine asking for a working e-mail address because the one he got from Andrew D was wrong.

At five thirty this morning, I'd gone outside to look at the moon, half-full in the bowl of the night circling with clouds, and I was amazed at how bright the moon made the sky. I slipped inside for around twenty minutes, and when I looked out the window again the sun had risen, and the sky was bright, and it was as if night had never been. It seems that I am always in love with things only when they are to be imminently taken away from me, or gone already, things that I normally take for granted, for how many of us would wake up at five in the morning to look at the moon? In this way God is infinitely cruel and infinitely kind, and He gives us the winter so that we may be grateful for spring.

It hurts to leave.

Sunday night I'd watched the Discovery Channel documentary on Nefertiti, which was entirely too sensationalized. It's entertaining to watch people drive chariots and other historical eye-candy, but I think the documentary lacked credance as an educational source because of it. It was like, "We can't prove this mummy is really Nefertiti. In the meantime, look at our cool cinematics of a dark-skinned woman looking mysterious! Ooh, ooh! CGI!" Also, in a very superficial way, I just don't trust any egyptologist who has poofy red hair. I'm a poofyredhairist. Sorry, miss!

I watched Anatomy of a Shark Bite too. I wanna be a were-shark! Remember! The were-shark's sole weakness is.. the Silver Surfer!

Sunday afternoon, I'd gone to Lisa's house for her party, and met Andrew D there. I have a list of people off the top of my head who were there as well: Martin, Natalie D, Kate N, Francie, Bert, Yoni, Gavin, Matt B. I should take this occasion to gloat that Lisa and Matt also lost power on Thursday, so I am indeed not the only person in the state of Maryland who lost power power that day. The real reason I list these people though is to show you what type of people were there; people who are nice IB kids who I don't know well. This makes me kind of sad. They were such nice people. I wish I'd known them better. Lisa is really Nice. I don't mean nice, which is a term I use for lack of original description, or a term I use for people I don't know well who seem quite decent. Lisa's Nice. She packs serious Niceness. She is the Queen of Nice. The only other person in the world with such extraordinary Niceness is my aunt. Not only is Lisa polite, which anyone can pull off, but she's warm and welcoming. We had conversations about camping-themed dorm rooms complete with faux can-o-beans and fake smores, and being great fans of Dragon Strike* without actually playing the game. This is unordinary in itself but incredible in context, because most other people I know so not-well begin conversations with me by saying things like: "So... Angie... where are you going to college?" and other formulaic nonsense. Lisa's house is how you'd imagine for someone so Nice; there's a shady crabapple tree in the yard, a sunflower garden in the back and white bell-shaped flowers. Inside, there are homey paintings and framed needlework samplers and clippings of inspirational sayings and scripture stuck to the fridge with magnets. I think I'd like to be Lisa because she's so wonderful.

After playing a group game of Taboo, I played Chrononaughts, a time-travelling history-altering card game, with Andrew D. Andrew has a long tradition of always losing to Rob, but since Rob wasn't there, Andrew beat me quite soundly. Twice.

Friday, I went to Lauren's house with Malex and Janis to watch episodes 10-17 of Trigun. I brought over my Vash fan art. Lauren is nice, but not Nice, since it's not her distinguishing feature. Rather, she's funny and original, and we have.. er.. interesting.. conversations.

Quote: FIRED! (Lauren to Malex whenever he was acting gay.)

Lauren likes Vash and Meryl together, but me and Malex shall convert her to the sexy glory that is Vash/Wolfwood. Or.. um, as Malex says, Vash/Frank. Gross. Vash/Wolfwood all the way! Vashy! ^___^ Wolfy! ^___^ Vashy!!! ^___^ Wolfy! ^____^

I'll stop now, before I start typing in Leet like a bad fangirl.

*Dragon Strike: a hilariously campy 80's D&D style board game with included adventure movie filmed in "Hyper-reality, a suspenseful mixture of live action and computer animation"

Minutes before 2pm, Angie was thinking like this:

...listening to Siny Platocheck, aka The Blue Shawl, a popular Russian song during WWII. I have no idea what the lyrics mean. Anyone care to be a fountain of information?

BY THE POWER OF GREYSKULL, I HAVE... no power.

I seem to be the only one in the state of Maryland who lost power today. It irks me. Mayor Williams said our area is unaffected, but I want a grandiouse, newsworthy explanation for why I, out of all people, had no power.

("CNN reports that all of the northeastern United States and southern Canada is in disorder as the cities of New York, Detroit, Toronto, Ottawa, Ontario, and Cleveland suffered a major power outage, bringing activity to a halt in Wall Street, airports, the subway, offices, and hospitals. Thousands streamed onto the streets or were trapped in elevators when workplaces lost power at approximately four in the afternoon today, and crowds of people were seen thronging across the Brooklyn bridge as public transportation was halted and traffic lights remained dark. Many people continue to be evacuated from subway cars and tunnels, and remain seperated from their families due to lack of transportation and cell phone failure. 140 miners are trapped 4000 feet below ground in four mines in Ontario, where there is no power for the elevators. Though the miners are in no immediate danger, the usage of ladders is certainly a possibility, to which the general response by said miners was, "No fucking way you motherfucking fuckers!" In the meantime, in one house in the Washington DC area, Angela of Rockville also has no power, but for no particular reason.")*

The power was already out when I got up at... 12:40pm (this is what I get for going to bed at 4 in the morning talking to Lauren on AIM and drawing Vash) and I called my dad since I knew he'd be concerned about the fish. He came home and put battery-operated pumps into the fish tanks, so that the fish could breathe.

Me, after dialing 411: "I want Pepco, the electricity people, not PetCo!"

Pepco (the automated lady for Pepco anyways) said they'd said a crew around and my power would come back on by 7:40 at night... but it came back on much earlier than that, at around 3 or so.

I think there is something viscerally appealing about having New York City be reduced to a jungle of stone towers and monuments like Mayan pyramids; not because like Nick said I want to see NYC humiliated, but because it gives the city a raw sense of power, to have such monoliths looming in the dark.

I went to the oral surgeon to get my stitches out, but apparently my stitches are dissolvable, and they've dissolved, except for one which really isn't worth digging around for. Otherwise, I'm good; no bone socket inflammation or anything like that.

*I made all of this up, though it is general paraphrasing of the actual news. Don't kill me. Or CNN. They're good people.

I really should not read Savage Love, a highly dysfunctional sex advice column, before going to bed. Why? Because I get weird dreams.

I do not want to have any more dreams about making out with Nick B, or conspiring with Jen to lie to my mom, saying I'm lesbian.

Other dreams of last night that don't make sense include: camping out on an asphalt basketball court in a forest surrounded by buildings.

Die, subconscious, die.

Went to T's house today, where she warned me not to download exe files from Kazaa for fear of viruses, and not to keep my laptop on overnight in college, for fear of overheating. I will keep this in mind. She made me some miso soup, and I was duly impressed, because I've never had homemade miso soup.

I watched "Adaptation" with her, which she probably burned. It was good, yes. Profound, yes. Beautiful, in its own way, and I grudgingly agree that it really does deserve the title of "best movie of the year," as judged by Washington Post critics anyway. Yes, even over "The Two Towers." "Adaptation" is about Charlie Kaufman, a writer writing the screenplay for a dramatization of a book about orchids, aka the movie you're watching. So it's a movie about the writing of the movie... The acting is very naturalistic, and I recognized many things from life captured perfectly, from that little smile waitresses give you, to the politely charming and emotionally detached smalltalk of people at parties. It's basically the movie version of "To the Lighthouse," with similar thematic emphasis on the superficiality of plot and structure, and the importance of seeing and celebrating life as it is. (Though it has more plot than TTL) The funny thing is, immediately after a scene in which the screenwriter's twin brother, who typically writes thrillers, becomes Charlie's partner with the script, the movie becomes plotted and structured, with one increasingly unbelievable event following another in an incredibly cliched manner. I'd say the first half of the movie, without drug addicts, voyeurism, car chases, adulteresses, armed psychopaths, man-eating alligators, and people dying in each others' arms rings much truer, but I think that indeed is the point.

Something funny; at T's house, I called Malex, wondering if we could drop by, but of course he wasn't in. Turns out he was at Lauren's house with Janis watching Trigun; he'd called me and gotten my answering machine a little while before, and had actually come over and banged on my doors and windows. When I got home, I gave Lauren a ring, and through her had a long and zany conversation with the Trigun crowd over the phone.

More Trigun, Friday; Lauren is also holding an anime party on Saturday.

I'm not sure that I like it that Malex has changed his name to Mike. He may also be dying his hair; and his moving to California is inevitable. It's like he's trying to transform himself into a different person, who is too cool for us. I don't mean it like a snub; just that the summer is ending with the days peeling off, and Mike feels as far removed as a person on the moon.

People drift apart, and Mike pushes off the banks and quietly slashes the moorings and goes gently into that good night.

Around sunset on Sunday night, my parents picked up Jen at her house in a deer-infested neighborhood. When we returned, we would see four deer and a fawn at a moonlit crossing, eyes glowing like lamps, but in the meantime, we saw Pirates of the Caribbean at White Flint Mall. A pleasant surprise in that more people turned out than expected. Along with me and Jen, Janis came in tow with Lauren, and some Janis-groupies I don't know... James, Jessica, and some unintroduced person, who are only names and faces to me.

Pirates was absolutely hilarious. Movie critics seem to give it less credit than it is due, because they compare it to every single pirate movie released in the last 40 years (C'mon! Erol who??). See though, I was born in 1985 and had fun, you old farts. Yes, all the characters are cliches. Yes, not everything makes sense and many things are contrived. Yes, it is a movie inspired by a theme park ride. But it's not a theme park ride I've ever been on, and if people hadn't told me it was based on the ride, I'd never have made the connection. Unoriginal maybe, but everything's fresh to a new generation.

Constant debate between me, Janis, Jen and Lauren over who is hotter; Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom. I maintain that Orlando Bloom looks like a mishappen potato; Janis says that I'm just calling him the ugliest thing that I can think of and that he does not really remind me of a mishappen potato or any related tuber; but no, there are uglier things than mishappen potatoes; Orlando Bloom honestly does look like a one (potato). Janis helped me sort out the plotholes in Pirates also. We had a really long discussion about the physics of shooting forks from cannons, the weight of gunpowder vs the weight of cannonballs vs the weight of forks, the relative motion of a ship required to smack Orlando Bloom with a yard-arm, the effectiveness of a warship crewed by two people, and the appropriateness of mooring a rowboat at a ship's stern. (Janis remembered something about it in Moby Dick; apparently it is there to help men who fall overboard.) Random note: Probably nobody else cared, but I got a kick out of watching the HMS Intercept dismasted with chain-shot, because it was something I'd only previously read about in naval adventure books. Chain shot rocks! Give 'em a whiff of chain-shot, arrr!

I should note, for the record, that Lauren says Keira Knightley is sickeningly beautiful, and we all concur. (She looks like Natalie Portman, and was her double in Attack of the Clones, and also can act. She has grown her hair long since Bend It Like Beckham and looks better for it.)

We talked in the mall parking lot after. I found it touching and a gesture of good will that Janis and the people she was driving home stayed with me and Jen and talked until my parents came to pick us (me and Jen) up. She joked that she wouldn't leave two teenage girls alone in a mall parking lot, especially not with the full moon turning us into undead skeletons, though the counter-joke was that you wouldn't leave two teenage boys alone in a parking lot either, not because something terrible would happen to the boys, but because something terrible would happen to the parking lot. Lauren talked about Otakon and meeting Vash's voice actor, from Trigun. Let it be said for the record that Lauren is officially cool because she laughs at my lame jokes. We get along like fire and wood, except in a good way.

Quotes, in context and without:

Disclaimer: Quotes may be attributed to the wrong people, who may have been standing/sitting in the actual quotees' general proximity. All quotes are paraphrased. I, in a great display of narcissism, will also procede to sometimes quote myself. Alas, one of these quotes are funny anymore, and most of them are completely random. You have been warned.

~
(about one of the criminal charges made against Johnny Depp's character, Captain Jack Sparrow, in Pirates)

me: "Impersonating a cleric of the Church of England.."
Jen: In eyeshadow!
me: Johnny Depp is actually the first gay Anglican bishop!

~

Janis: You are the gayest bunch of sailors I have ever seen! Get me a new crew!
(about her school project, Moby Dick presented as ballet, complete with faux pegleg)

~

Lauren: Johnny Depp is definitely hotter. He's not like Orlando Bloom... *falsetto* "Oh, Elizabeth!!! *crying noises*
(in reference to Orlando Bloom's wussy crybaby character in Pirates of the Caribbean)

~

Jen: We shall combine the French and the German language to get.. GRENCH! A language that is strangely angry yet effeminate!
me: They'll invade Poland, and then immediately surrender!

~

Jen: I was saying things out of the German phrasebook. Ruchita yelled, "Stop threatening me!" (mock tone of injured bewilderment) But I was just asking her if she'd like to buy a train ticket....

~

2001 Space Odyssey on Monday night, all in good company at Mike's house: Janis and Lauren again (who seem inseperable), Silvia, Malex, Valex, Nick, Rob, Erica (it was pleasant seeing her again so soon) and a Bivalve I suspect is Arthur, who I never got to know well in high school.

It was a funny movie, though not intentionally. Only because it was so easy for us to poke fun at the prospect of a HAL9000/Frank/Dave menege a trois. Oh yes, and the monkeys. It was a good party movie because of the artsy weirdness; plus, it had great thematic swathes of total silence, so we could punctuate it with our witty and banal conversation.

Quotes:

Valex: God, that's good! (in response to Malex groping him)
~

*PS: I indeed do know who Erol Flynn is. Please don't kill me.

Been reading "The Fall of Berlin 1945" by Anthony Beevor, which is historical nonfiction. Would like to finish it before the end of summer on the 23rd for me, because I won't have time to do scholarly reading outside my actual schoolwork, and will resort to reading trashy Terry Goodkind novels like the post-teenage fantasy dork I am. Anyway, this book has good quotes:

Suddenly someone shouted above the noise, "Silence!" We saw a small dirty soldier with two Iron Crosses and the German Cross in Gold. On his sleeve he had a badge with four metal tanks, which meant that he had destroyed four tanks at close quarters. "I've got something to tell you," he shouted, and the carriage fell silent. "Even if you don't want to listen to me, stop whingeing. We have to win this war. We must not lose our courage. If others win the war, and if they do to us only a fraction of what we have done in the occupied territories, there won't be a single German left in a few weeks." It became so quiet in that carriage that one could have heard a pin drop.

..and also...

A deserter from the 500th Straf Regiment told his interrogators the well-known Berlin remark, 'The only promise Hitler has kept is the one he made before coming to power. Give me ten years and you will not be able to recognize Germany.'

Okay, Pirates of the Caribbean, 9:10 tomorrow, White Flint Mall. Janis, Jessica, Jen, and the lone A-name, Angie are all arranged. Nick and Malex kinnae come, poor lads (being responsible, as always... Nick has work on Monday, Malex has college stuff).. but we shall see you at Screen on the Green on Monday. :)

Now I go to Best Buy.

I have drunk too much coffee and am dehydrated.

Called Janis last night, got her answering machine. I didn't leave a message; I hate answering machines. You know how some people hate having their picture taken? Well I hate answering machines in the same way, knowing that sometime somewhere my voice is on tape. Anyways, people always sound different on the phone and on answering machines.

This morning, went to UMBC to get my textbooks. Cars make me woozy; not so much the speed as accelerating or decelerating or making many turns in a parking lot. My mom said that since the parking lot was basically abandoned I should practice my driving. Haha, no. Painkillers + heavy machinery = bad.

Jen called while I was gone, sounding strangely tense and high-pitched on tape, saying that she has her Bryn Mawr local picnic tomorrow afternoon and cannot watch Pirates. I assume she means only the 3:20 showing; perhaps she can make it at 6:20 or 9:20. I don't think she got my blog update about rescheduling the 3:00 showing to later though since I checked my blog this afternoon and apparently the edited version of the post still wasn't up. Stupid bloggerhead. I called Jen back at four something and got her mother, who said she was at Best Buy but would call me back. Later my mom asked if I wanted to go to Best Buy to get some Toshiba-thing, and I said no, I was expecting a call. Yes, it would've been funny to meet Jen at Best Buy (presumably the Rockville one) but with my luck I'd probably drive past her car on my way there and her way back.

The best laid plans of mice and men...

Casey e-mailed me. She is my roomie. After looking at my resident papers more closely, I realized that I am not living in a suite with three other people; the only thing these three other people have in common with me is a mutual bathroom, which we are responsible for cleaning. Two of these people presumably live in the room next door. Only Casey shares a room with me. Anyway, she e-mailed me, on my old account, which is otherwise a desolate wasteland of porn and spam (which are not mutually exclusive). I couldn't discern much of her personality from it. I have her phone number, e-mail and AIM though. May contact her, when I stop procastinating, but fear I will get her answering machine.

The Plan

Pirates of the Caribbean on Sunday at 3:00 (or the time closest to 3:00) at Wheaton Plaza. If there are problems, contact me.

Update Blah: Nick has a Vassar thing on Sunday from 2-5, and is going shopping on Saturday afternoon. Me and Jen most likely can't do Saturday morning, meaning that this thing is either going to be Saturday night or Sunday night. (aka 9:20 on Saturday, 6:20 or 9:20 on Sunday. 6:20 on Saturday is sketchy.) This of course means no matinee.

Update Update Blah: Malex can't come, and Jen has a Bryn Mawr thing, have not contacted Janis yet...

Wherein Angie Discovers She Is A Jew

Holy Jesus! According to this rather comprehensive online quiz, I am 100% Reform Jew. I knew I wasn't totally an atheist, but 100% Jewish?? I am floored! ^___^

Yay! I'm Jewish! I'm Jewish! I'm Jewish!

Oooh, woozy. See, Malex, it's eating that makes me faint, not not eating that makes me faint. I don't even get hungry, but eat a little every once in a while as a matter of routine. Also, being online makes me nauseous, so I have to rest a lot, while I check my spam mail. I've stopped bleeding though, and can now rinse my mouth and brush my teeth (gently). I talk with a lithp. I can technically pronounth 's's if I really want to but it'th just eathier talking with a lithp.

What have I done today:

-Downloaded some very nice mp3s from the Warcraft III soundtrack. That is a quality game.

-Downloaded Cartman's German Dance and the Animaniacs song "Schnitzelbank." Along with Rammstein, Sturmwehr, Blind Guardian and E Nomine, which I already have on my computer, I am one day going to burn these and Ride of the Valkyries onto a CD I shall call "Evil Kraut Music."

-Got my UMBC residential information. Apparently I live in Chesapeake House with three other suite-ies. I should contact them but I am lame and unenthusiastic about this. Erica, during camping, said she got along with her roommate like oil and water and T's roommate has been ambiguously hitting on her. Since everyone I know's roommate sucks, I'm not sure I really look forward to discovering if I have better luck. However, they are (and right now these names mean squat to me) ... Casey S Lord from Denton MD, Ethel Mojoko from Silver Spring, and Melissa L Roche from Staten Island. There, if they Google themselves, they should find my blog.

-Andrew D wrote me back. Aw, how sweet!

-Edited old blog posts, mainly because I have this annoying pattern of randomly omitting words. Aka, last post: "... In existing groups that heirarchy's already been rigidly established and you'll always [be] the person who's left out." I'm sure there are many such mistakes all over my blog. I don't feel like hunting them down though, and if you do, no, you will not get a cookie.

-Read a news article about two Iraqi boys injured in the war who are in England getting outfitted with prosthetic limbs. Prompted me to do surf websites about prosthetic limbs. Find it jarring when website operators who are amputees engage in... limbchat: "Hey Bob, what's your favorite knee?" "Oh, John, I was wearing XL47 yesterday but it's really a bitch going up stairs, but my aunt's friend at church recommended LightLeg2000!" "I have one of those, Bob, and it works like a dream! I'll stick it in the scanner so you can see what it looks like!"

-Speaking of news articles... my friend Azoriel (yes, Nick S, the one named after a demon) has been giving me lots of links as of late. Here's one which is rather amusing from the New York Times: G.I.'s Have X-Ray Vision.

-Am on the fence about gay clergy and gay marriage. Peer pressure though makes me say I am all for it for fear of being labeled a bigot. More about this later. Now... time for dinner, then bowling.

Since everyone has deep thoughts about camping, I feel I should put mine here.

Malex said that he's sick of me following him around, which is something I was angsting about all during camping, because I was having a hard time interpreting it. Now, it's a pretty obvious statement, but the matter is whether he's sick of me following him around or whether he's sick of me following him around. Because the crux of the matter is whether he doesn't like me following him around because he doesn't like me, or if it's just the following him he doesn't like, or if it's the following that makes him not like me. And how long it's been going on for, whether it's just in Rocky Gap or over the last two years wherein he's been sick of me.

Sometimes I feel like the reason why I am so socially detached from people is because I don't invest myself emotionally all that much in them; I don't know your goals, your fears, your aspirations, your favorite food, your favorite color, your dream lover, what book you'd take with you on a desert island, the most embarrassing moment of your life, the happiest moment of your life, the worst moment of your life. And for the most part, I don't really care, so I guess you could say that I reap what I sow, because I don't care about other people therefore people don't really care about me. But often it feels that I'm afraid to care too much about certain people because it ends up that I like and need these people far more than they need me (nobody really needs me for anything) and one day these people will discover this loser Angie-site latched to their leg sucking their blood or whatever and scrape me off. So that's all there really is to it, because I need Alex emotionally but he doesn't need me because he has other people.

I am not quite sure how this bizarre dysfunctional relationship started but I think I have some idea.

See, the thing is that despite being with all you fine people for the last four years, I feel that I hardly know you, and in camping all of us fell into clearly divided groups, like The Mads, and then Nick&Alex (who seem like best guy-buddies) , and then Lisa who freely associated with everyone, and then Paul and Erica. It was minorly depressing, to physically be with people but not be able to really connect with anyone.

Ideally in friendships everyone in that social circle is a friend of everyone else. These are the tightest-knit and most fulfilling of groups, very bonded and insular. Often though, I feel that I'm not really friends with a lot of people, but merely know people as 'friends of a friend'. And you have to actively form your own group of friends (by calling/IMing/talking to them/arranging social shit) while cliques are gelling instead of trying to join groups that already exist, because in existing groups that heirarchy's already been rigidly established and you'll always be the person who's left out. This is something I didn't know in 9th grade, when I was already part of a small insular group, and was unaware of this group's potential to seperate and expand. I fully expected to be with Nick, Malex, Rob, Puffy and Andrew for the rest of high school and was rather bewildered to find Nick and Malex branching off in different directions. I'd have a hard time becoming friends with people they were friends with; we'd have nothing in common except for mutual friends and nothing to talk about. I read something that says the best way of making conversations is to ask people what they're doing, since that's what they like talking about. "What are you reading?" "What music do you listen to?" So on and so forth I guess. This sounds helpful, because the majority of my conversations these days are basically like "What's up?" "Nothing." I think I've discovered since that in order to become friends with someone, beyond 'friend of a friend', you actually have to hunt them down individually (not with a gun, but with a telephone or something) and talk to them one-on-one while they're not around the mutual friend, and forge your own individual bonds independently, or they'll forever be talking to you through a middleman. This is too late for me though, at least in terms of high school, but it is good knoweldge for the future.

I make no sense. May post more when coherent.

I had the two wisdom teeth on my left side extracted today, and am feeling rather woozy. Being put to sleep is rather bizarre; I remember them sticking a syringe in my arm, drawing blood, then drawing blood in reverse (???!!!) by pushing on the syringe handle. This probably was to put me to sleep. Then they told me to stick my arm out straight, and they put it into a bracket of some sort. The next thing I remember is having a large block uncomfortably in my mouth to keep in open and thinking "Holy shit, I'm in the middle of surgery" and being kind of annoyed by having a block in my mouth and wanting to go back to that warm and fuzzy place in my brain and then I remember the room looking different and the nurse saying, "It's over." What's weird about it is that I never actually remember falling unconscious, that hanging sensation you get as you're on the verge of falling asleep. One moment I'll be quite conscious following some train of thought, and then the next moment I'll open my eyes and realize I'd just been out, and that my train had derailed into the realm of dreams. It's like one moment what you're thinking is fully comprehensible and then agabateazb zabeatah balkhetklahtalhlhb wa.

Like that.

After it was over the nurse took me to the recover room where I slept on a cot, and I have to say that that was the best and sweetest nap I've had in a long time.

The left side of my mouth was all numb and there was gauze in it. I went home, and went to sleep again, and when I woke up the Novacain had worn off and it hurt like the dickens between the time the novacain wore off and the painkillers I took came into effect.

I'm all drowsy, currently, and when I take the gauze off to change the dressing there are two gaping sockets in my jaw.

I'm glad Dat Phan won on Last Comic Standing. MWAHAHAHA! Beware the Asian Invasion of the entertainment industry!

I mean, I don't usually feel a lot of ... race pride .... or whatever, but Asian comedians are just cool like that.

Happy Campers

Friday

Erica picked me up at three thirty on Friday afternoon, and as we drove up, every radio station systematically died on us until we were stuck with country and Christian Rock by the time we lurched into the park. Our tents were split between two camp sites, and over the course of the next two days I would trek between the both of them along a forested gravel road. Scattered to the side of the road in the woody shadows, gypsy-like, were other sun-burned families with pitched tents, trailers and RV's, laundry lines stretched between trees with clothes hung out to dry, and blue woodsmoke rising through the air, and children who would travel through the camp on the back of pick-up trucks, legs dangling out of the back.

The fire at the other campsite was already lit and smoking, albeit weakly thanks to Nick. This very much (comically) exasperated Lizzie and Ruchita, who arrived later, complaining, "Leave it to the women!" Despite Nick's protest of it being physically impossible to make the fire any bigger, it indeed did get bigger, after Lizzie manfully split some wood for kindling. We all roasted weenies on a stick, or in the case of Erica and Lisa, veggieburger patties. Veggieburgers are green and lumpy and look like goose shit, but they taste real good and I think I'm addicted to them. I felt very rugged roasting my food over an open fire.

Erica is apparently vegetarian because she feels that meat is an inefficient use of energy; Lisa only eats free-ranging meat after she heard the awful cries of dogs that were being tested on in the lab where she works. We joked about this: "And ever since that moment, I no longer eat dog meat..." But seriously, after that, she thought that cows, which are penned up like the lab dogs, must cry also. (I didn't think about this then, but this is something my non-beef-eating grandma believes too. You aren't supposed to eat the ox that plows your fields, and supposedly it sheds tears when you kill it. My aunt says this is a rural Chinese superstition, and my mom says it is a holdover from Indian Buddhism, which I take with a grain of salt.)

This is something I notice about Lisa: she's very empathetic with everybody, and is upbeat and positive and looks at the world with wide-eyed enthusiasm, loving the forest and sky and the softness of moss.

We went swimming in Lake Habeeb sometime during that "roasting meatlike objects over a fire" period. I noticed that as we get more primative, eating is not an "event" in your day like a normal meal, at a table with a definite beginning and an end. So we ate, went swimming, came back and ate again (or for people who arrived later, for the first time) in a very fluid and unstructured manner. The evening was hot and humid but the water was surprisingly and pleasantly cool, and we tossed a frisbee at each other and socialized as if not chest-high in water, doing rather little actual swimming. There was a roped off part of the lake where we were supposed to swim, but the lifeguard had gone (apparently he is gone after six) (though someone had appropriated his high chair to get a better view of a beach volleyball game) so we slipped under the ropes and went into deeper water like rebellious teenagers. On the lake bottom the imported beach sand comes to an abrupt end, turning into thick black mud that is very soft and pleasant on your feet if you don't think how disgusting it is, and lake plants curl at your ankles, making you feel like you're caught in something. Though Paul, who knows these things, said that the lake at its deepest is 20 m deep, we didn't go nearly so far because those plants pulling at us were rather disturbing. Malex got partially pantsed, which did not look half bad.

We went back to our main camp site, the one with the screen house over the table, to eat, again, and toast smores. Malex yelled at people to not eat the chocolate by itself. It got dark- very dark in comparison to our illuminated suburban nights; out came individual flashlights that made small and pathetic dents in the darkness, and candle lanterns inside the screen house that made it quite hot inside, and an electric lantern set outside next to the fire and the night pushed in on us. We tried unsuccessfully to tell stories by the campfire, we whose common culture is determined now by the tv, the internet, the newspaper, books, radio and school. Oral tradition flickered and died; me and Nick ended up alternating in telling the Scary Story of Zimbardo's Prison Experiment. (Philip Zimbardo is the president of the American Psychology Association, and he is infamous for creating an experiment on prison life at Stanford.) I wonder how he would feel if he knew he were the subject of campfire mythology; we no longer have ghosts and vampires and franken-monsters to be afraid of; our horrors are ourselves and the modern world.

The skies opened up and it rained. We fled into the screen-house with the hot lanterns, and tarped the mesh screens to keep the water out. With the skies closing in on us and the lights from the center of the table, the Madrigals sang and sounded beautiful in the forest. I always find it amazing that they can sing without sheet music, and whether it's twelve people together or three, they always manage to blend their parts together. Malex and Nick protested the exclusiveness of this activity though. Nick sung/howled Kumbaya very loudly and was shouted down. In the end we all ended up singing Beatles songs and the Lumberjack Song, which everybody knew. We had great fun but perhaps the commonness of the music made Ruchita and Lizzie impatient to be singing their own songs again. I think the Mads, when they sing, have so much fun and comraderie they often forget just how it feels like not to be them.

We went and played Mafia in the actual tent, and it was creepy. A park ranger rapped on our "door" with the annoying sarcastic comment, "All in favor of being quiet?" and we were embarrassed and went to bed. Me and Erica and Alex and Paul went back to our own campsite, where Paul observed that the sky was suddenly remarkably clear. He strapped on a red headlight (the wavelength or something of which allows it to illuminate things without ruining a viewer's night vision) and hauled his 100 pound telescope out of the trunk of his car. We helped take it to the nearby field and were setting up when great beams of light coronated the horizon of a nearby hill and a ranger's car, with its high powered lights, rumbled over the hill down the gravel road and blinded us to high heaven. Malex, shirtless in his swim trunks, went to ask what was the matter but Paul who was less scantily clad decided it'd be better if he took care of it. The ranger, very politely, simply made sure it was indeed a telescope and then was on his way, apologizing for ruining our night vision. I thought it was rather annoying to be checked on by rangers twice in one night, despite their noble intentions, but was distracted from this thought, or every other thought, by simple astronomy.

It's probably not the most exciting of hobbies if you think about it, peering at tiny blips of light through a telescope, but I found it very serene annd calming under the heavy silence and the pinprick lights of a scattering of stars, clearer, brighter and more beautiful than anything that can be found in the city. There was a fog rising from the ground, but we looked through the trees at Mars (which according to the Washington Post is closest to the Earth on August 1, and according to Paul, indignantly, is not) and saw it in great detail, with its ice cap and dark splotches on its red surface. Mars would swim out of the telescope's field of vision as we looked at it, more like a creature under the lens of a microscope than a telescope, and Paul commented that normal non-astronomical people seldom think of celestial bodies as moving objects, and the epiphany that the sky is constantly moving, or rather, the Earth is moving under it gave me a fantastic feeling of revelation and peace. We looked also at the Square of Hercules, and some double stars that were actually double-double stars on closer observation, and some other things, and when we looked up from the telescope Erica noted: "Mars has moved again" and indeed, it had. Paul pointed out another celestial body to us, a haze of light shining over the trees to our left: Cumberland, where the C&O Canal ended, and where some prison was built, and there was a historic district. He could list no other city merits. After a while, it had become chilly, and mist clouded Cassiopeia, and we no longer needed flashlights because we could see through the night with the eyes nature gave us.

Saturday

I woke up the next morning and trotted down to the other site, feeling very much like a homeowner who's going to greet the neighbors down the block. Breakfast. Sometimes I thought that I heard the sounds of rain, and would do this repeatedly through the day, but it turns out that it was just rainwater splashing from one layer of leafy canopy to another. Nick and Malex drove to Cumberland to buy some stuff for his contacts- Cumberland the backwater city in rural Maryland, where the C&O Canal ended, made glamorous by Paul's introduction to it as a celestial body; a haze of light to our left in the nighttime forest. In any case I couldn't go because Malex said "there was no space" in the van, which to me was like a kick in the gut after everything that "there is no space" implies. But he didn't say it knowing that precise wording would hurt me, aside from the fact that there literally really was no space. Lisa started a game of Taboo which she is a great fan of, often asking about activities by wondering if they are "more fun than Taboo?" Taboo is a game in which someone has to describe a word on a card without being able to use certain other words, so his or her teammates can guess the word. Ex: the word on the card is Drunk, and the person has to give hints to his teammates so they can guess the right word, without using the worlds alcohol, or drinking, or something. This was fun, and we got better as we went.

Went to the camp store to get oil but were met up by Malex and Nick there, and Malex said he had oil, so we didn't need to buy it. We got flipflops for Lisa and firewood, and then we went back to have lunch, and then we split up for either kayaking or hiking. I went hiking with Nick, Malex, Paul, Erica and Lisa, on the loop trail around the lake, which is like four miles something. Malex set a brisk pace, so a lot of the hike was spent looking down to make sure you didn't trip over things, as opposed to looking at the view; we joked about having the River Anduin (you know, the Uruk Hai) music start playing as we marched through the woods. I don't think this prevented us from enjoying ourselves, other than having Malex stop every once in a while to let us catch up with him. Halfway around the lake was the resort, where we went in to fill our water bottles, which was in an area fantastically hilly with hammocks stretched lazily between trees, and grassy, with flowers. We also hit the beach and swam a bit to cool down and watched kayaks and sailboats glide by beyond us in deeper waters, and then went on hiking. I liked this area better, once we were out of the forest and now really had a clear view. Across the lake we saw clouds casting shadows on the vast mountains we had hiked through (and then a whole lot we hadn't been through); while I was in it I had kind of missed the forest for the trees, so the view made me appreciate it more. We walked by areas of shrubs and flowers where there were wild blackberries and raspberries (and also a strange, bitter, but obiquitous bright red berry), and lamb's ear, a soft and felty flower. Malex and Lisa ran ahead; the rest of us followed Nick at a normal pace until we'd gone a full circle; he went back to the camp. I went to the camp store on the beach with Erica and Paul, and we got ice cream (or rather Paul got ice cream and Erica bought some for me) and Erica and Paul went back to the campsite.

I joined Lizzie, Ruchita, and Dena on the beach, as well as Lisa who'd gone ahead. It was the same beach as Friday evening's swim, but looked different with the sun out and the sky full and blue, instead of setting pink. I lay down on a towel on a beach and tanned a bit, creating a mold in the sand where my body was, while Lisa commented on the beauty of the sky, and Dena and Ruchita read beach paperbacks. I fell asleep blissfully and woke up and we got hot we went into the water (except for Lisa, who napped) and made a sand castle and Dena dove like a mermaid and made her golden hair float, Ruchita wore kelp behind her ear, looking Hawaiian, and everyone coronated themselves with crowds of lakeweed and Dena took pictures. At one point Ruchita was trying on a lakeweed necklace, and was wondering if it went with her crown and sprig behind her ear, or if it was too much, giving aquatic plants all the serious cosmetic contemplation of a fashionable woman's jewelry. I had had no idea that Dena, Ruchita and Lizzie could be so giggly. We came out of the water and lay in the sun again and I stared at the sky which looked like a blue dome above us. We were very mellow and refreshed by the end of it.

We went to take a shower; I took a long time figuring out whether I wanted to (because the bathrooms are dirty but the lake is clean, or at least feels clean) so went in last and came out last. By the time I was back in the campsite feeling very happy about the invention of hot water, people were hard at work cooking fajitas in a group effort, roasting bell peppers over the fire (now made again), or (Ruchita) chopping onions or (Nick) slicing peppers or (Dena) browning the onions in a pan. I rinsed out some cans (of chicken.... I didn't even know there was such thing as canned chicken and thought it was tuna) (for recycling), browned some onions, and then slacked off. Malex toasted fajita skins in the pan, melting cheddar on them, and damn they were good. I fried some bananas, but they turned out gooshy, though greasy and tasty. We made smores, concocting ways to melt chocolate on graham crackers, or just eating chocolate graham crackers with marshmallows, thereby combining the chocolate and the graham cracker.

Paul, with his meteorology knowledge gleamed from his passion for astronomy and his pilot's knowledge test, saw cumulonimbus clouds backlit by lightning and predicted rain for us; we put outside things inside, tarped the screen house, and played Mafia outside around the fire until we became listless. As it started raining, me and Malex and Nick retreated into the tent with Ruchita and Lizzie, where we sat as if in a small room mostly silently among ourselves with the lantern swinging from the tent's peak. The rain abated some; Malex and I got kicked out and went back to our own campsite, and went to sleep. Malex went into his tent with Paul, and I went into my tent with Erica, and I heard the drumming of rain against the tent and saw the lightning flashes blue through the cloth and talked to Paul and Malex in their other tent a few feet away from ours, their voices carrying through the tent walls so that you could hear but not see them like disembodied voices. Me and Erica had only one flashlight (mine) between us since Erica had forgotten hers and I planted it in the middle of the tent like a lamp where it lit our tiny room like a sapphire bubble, the only light source in a tiny world, and I felt very lonely in the middle of a tent in the middle of nowhere.

Sunday

I woke up the next morning to church bells; God knows where they came from. All of us woke up at approximately the same time, which is a phenomenon in tents. Since there is little privacy and the rustling of plastic and unzipping of things is very loud, once one person gets up, pretty much everyone else must as well, even people in the other tent. Being in the other tent may provide a barrier against watching people of the other sex change, but it's no barrier at all against noise. Conversation (and other exchange of noise) between two closed tents can be carried on perfectly well. Malex had gone off to wake up the unfortunate sleepers at the other campsite with his CD player blasting "Fanfare for the Common Man" on speakers.

It was dreadfully lonely at night, but in the morning, everything seemed clean and refreshed in the forest with rising blue woodsmoke. Camps are good places to face mornings. We ate breakfast and packed up, and I marveled at how Paul's tent could fit into a small bag. (I thought I lost my wallet but actually didn't)

Lisa said we could've stayed for a week.

Malex is sending me links to Trigun slash. Awww. So cute! He's turning into a little yaoi fan!

Turn Off the Idiot Box

Watched two episodes of "Jag" today back to back because we have cable and Jag is a constant on the USA channel, which has lots of similarly patriotic programing. I used to watch it in middle school and my mom still watches it. It was a better show before they started taking it to Afghanistan and whatever country is fashionable to invade at the moment; I felt it rather cheapened and sensationalized the premises, concentrating more about the gimicks than the people. I guess post-911 popularity got to its head.

My mom is watching some strange Bruce Willis movie right now, about him as a cop or FBI agent or in some other hard-boiled testosterone packing occupation. In any case, he has to protect this savant autistic boy, who inadvertantly cracks a government code, from being killed. Now, why on earth do all autistic kids in movie have to be savants? Is there no such thing as dumb autistic people? Are normal autistic people too "uninteresting" for daytime televison? It seems like a rather patronizing point of view.

Assorted Topics Party Mix

Topic 1: I feel sorry for Saddam, as a father who has lost his sons if nothing else. I heard on the radio that $30 million is going to the Iraqi tipster who helped us catch the sons, but I have mixed feelings about this. While I am grateful that.. uh... the war on terror... or WMD... or whatever it is now.... is going well, it seems like a rather vile thing to do to betray your own country and (if it was the case) guests (symbolically at least) under your protection at your house. However, it is hard to judge: I am reminded of, due to my History EE, the accusations of treason made by British diplomats to German nationals who tried to warn them about Hitler's ambitions and convince them to go to war over the invasion of Czechoslovakia before something else was attacked. I doubt neither Qasay and Uday nor the rest of Saddam's regime did the tipster any favors in the last ten years; perhaps he suffered from persecution like the rest. And houseguests like Qasay and Uday who (I'd imagine because of their violent natures and dire straits) force their way in by putting a gun to your head are hardly houseguests at all.

Topic 2: AP exam results- 4's in everything. IB exam results- 5's in mostly everything, even Chinese. Booya. Physics was a 4. Math Studies, from last year, was a 6. I am getting a diploma, yippie-skie-yay.

Topic 3: What I Did Today.

I went to the Oral Surgeon (no Malex this is not a sexual euphemism) for my consultation on my wisdom teeth extraction. I need to get four extracted through surgery, but we've decided not to do all four at the same time, so it's two on one side, then two on the other. Date of first surgery is next Wednesday, date of second surgery is yet to be arranged. It makes me kind of nervous with possible complications and everything and having a big gaping nose from my mouth to my sinus.

Also went to Rock Creek Park and splashed around in the creek with my pant legs rolled up. Walking on the rocky (well duh) creek floor is better foot massage than anything my mom managed in Hong Kong. Water bulges against the weather side (if such terms can be used for a water current instead of wind) of my legs in compacting ripples like the grooves of a record; on the lee side, there is a little dimple where the water is more shallow. I fell in at an area where the creek flew whitecapped and bubbling over a terrace of black rocks, the water level high from thunderstorms, got wet up to my waist, cut my right big toe on something sharp. Pretty dumb, wading in Rock Creek, god knows what's in it, but I am young, and invincible.

If people ask me about what I did while I was young enough to have energy and not good senses, I can tell them, God as my witness, that I walked in a (possibly polluted) creek, and it felt good.

I called Erica after a short game of phone pingpong (*ring* "Hi, Erica is out, she'll call you back if you leave a message," *ring* "Sorry, Angie will call you back in ten minutes," *ring*) and we've decided she'll pick me up at 3 on Friday. Apparently she wasn't in my psych class.

Stuff

What've I been doing... I've been going to Lebanese Taverna and Monkey Mall. Normal things.

Tacked myself onto the list of people going camping in Rocky Gap State Park on August 1st, next weekend, probably much to everyone else's dismay. Malex said on Sunday night there wasn't enough room in the Malex-mobile for me with him, Nick, and Dena and all those gosh-darn tents, but apparently, as plans stand finalized as of Monday afternoon, there is enough room for Karina. She's always been smaller than me. At any rate I've gotten a ride with Erica Morgan who I don't know all that well except that she sat across the aisle from me in Pyschology in junior year I think and I remember watching her a lot and occasionally attempting to draw her. Her face gets blurred in my head with Debb and occasional Victorian ladies of Pre-Raphaelite oil paintings. That I won't have anything to talk to her about for the four hour round trip to/from Cumberland while Nick and Malex and Dena and Karina make memorable gay jokes in the Malex-mobile and that had Erica not been nice enough to accept I would've had to join the merry nine campers a day late and that had Erica not been nice enough to accept my parents would have had to drive around rural Maryland for eight hours total (two hours to Cumberland Saturday morning, two hours back, two hours to Cumberland Sunday afternoon, two hours back) (assuming I'd on my conscience let them) is of no consequence to anyone, because there is no space for me in the Malex-mobile. In all fairness Karina probably faced a situation like this too, so it was merely a calculation on Malex's part of who he likes better.

Went to Screen on the Green on Monday with Malex and Karina. We were supposed to watch Mutiny of the Bounty on the Mall but it was raining cats and dogs, a formidable challenge for even our umbrellas, jackets, plastic, blankets and towels, so we went to Chipotle, blooming into social animals, and then Borders, where we retreated into antisocial shells. It was fun though, mostly walking around in the evening and the middle of the night. I was amused that on the Metro to Rockville Station where Malex's van was, we were all silently, simultaneously and independently checking out the guy sitting across from us. Karina said, after a brief silence, as we got off the Metro: "Did anybody think that guy was hot?" and we all agreed, spontaneously, telepathically knowing exactly who "that guy" refered to. Malex said it was a particularly unattractive Metro car; there really was only that guy to look at. I personally thought he looked better in profile than from the front, as it is with some people. Malex dropped Karina off at her house so that luckily enough for her, she was inadvertantly quite clear of the van before me and Malex had a Something the Hell Happened. (One of those things between a Falling Out and a Dialogue where the next day people who weren't with you would still be like, "Something the Hell Happened between you and Alex last night.")

See, Malex wondered if I was insulted that he chose to give Karina a ride to Rocky Gap and not me, and I didn't answer, and he gave me time to collect my thoughts. Here they are:

It was on the topic of why there is this wormhole in time space that allows there to be enough room in the van for Karina but not for me but the answer of course is that I am obnoxious and while I am a person who you would not object to watching screen on the green with I am not a person who you would trust with teamwork activities such as setting up tents. (or directing Sharon's Personal Profiles and fucking it up so that my media productions teacher says 'i think you owe sharon an apology' like i enjoy screwing up). It is very discouraging that someone on the brink of college and independence should feel all of eleven years old again and it seems that I am not entering college but middle school where an unspoken communication passes between people and they all in a group move away when you enter a room and there are times when i would like to be anyone except for myself. High school was great in that I could sit down and eat a sandwich at at least one table with nobody objecting to my presence, because having every single cafeteria lunch table turn you away ('this seat is saved for someone, there's no space for you') and eating standing up is the shits. (and also standing on the outside of a great barrier that is more transparent and invisible than glass yet harder than crystal that stretches in each direction between you and the rest of the world and warmth and people who laugh all the time and loneliness that is not a thing and a demon you can kill so much as a giant spreading deafening nothing empty of anything at all.)

There is a small core of people within my world. Everyone else exists outside of it, like Sharon and Ruchita and Lizzie whose lives seem so tidy and well-organized and so together like little suburban lawns. People walk the bridge across the gap between my world and the other all the time. Most of the time they leave; Nick has left and Malex is leaving, but also they come in and I think of the letters that Andrew and Doug wrote, and they wrote not because they had to but because they wanted. I think though that I have a strong and quiet pillar of humanity that I share with no one, and if that is taken away only then would I contemplate putting a pistol in my mouth and shooting myself. And it will not be taken from me because I have either the faith or stupidity to believe that things will be all right for me in the end and I may come out a better person.

I really feel bad for sending Malex on a mad guilt trip though (having conveyed some of the above to him in the midnight dark through an intensely awkward silence) because he's a nice boy and all he said was "Well you're kind of distracting." Jesus Christ, I bet he didn't know I was such an emotional piece of work. :P Hell, I didn't either. This, my friend, is why you should date MEN.

Malex called the next day with a "Hope you feel better" message on my answering machine which would've been funny had my parents gotten it (I can imagine: "What... did you have a fever?") but I got it and he invited me to watch Trigun with Janis and Lauren and it was a good show and Lauren was great and we got on swell which goes to show how well I can get on with people one-on-one if they aren't defensively huddled in with twelve other people at a party. And then I came home and had issues and read some All Quiet on the Western Front which made me even more depressed and had more issues and then checked my family email because my mom was expecting a message but there were 401 messages most of them spam probably all of them except that my connection kept dying at message #137 so I kept trying to Get New Messages and I'd get 136 of 401 and then my connection would die and I'd try again and get 136 of 401 and again 136 of 401 and again 136 of 401 so that I got four duplicates of each spam letter: 4 times 136. So I deleted them all, turned the computer off and went to bed.

I am sorry that Haie Westhus died because I liked him.

Today I got my learner's permit (very belatedly) so that hopefully a year or so from now I won't need to find space in someone else's minivan, and wrote, the old-fashioned way, to Andrew at camp and Doug the Eagle Scout and Jen recovering from surgery at home.