Something I posted on a message board in response to someone longing for childhood and feeling his life was slipping away:

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May 8, 2003:

I had a better imagination in childhood, because I didn't know what was impossible, I didn't know that my ideas were already thought up a million times by other people (they were fresh to me), and I think my emotions were more pure, if you know what I mean. When I was happy, I was never like, "am I happy now? is this the best I'll ever feel? should I cherish this?" which is I find myself doing of late. But I remember, in fifth grade, reading Calvin and Hobbes and laughing with Bill Watterson, who spoke in Calvin's voice, about how adults found childhood to be such an idyllic bliss, because I was living it then, and I remember that I thought it really wasn't all that great. And I wondered, while I was reading that comic strip, if I'd grow up to remember childhood as this magical experience. But of course I do, in spite of myself.

I also make myself remember why it wasn't so great. I was lonely sometimes. I didn't really have friends; except that I really wished sometimes I had someone to play with, that I could just for once be the trendsetter and not the trendtaker and be adored, that I could run around with other kids on their level and not be tired, I really didn't notice it until middle school where these things amplify themselves. And I was sick to death of being looked down upon and not having any power to make my own choices.

I find it the reverse of Sparky's [someone who'd commented on how his friends seemed to grow more superficial in secondary school] experience.. I have real friends now. When I was little (elementary school) it was kind of idiotic. Yes, I had playmates, yeah, I was probably happier with them in terms of having fun, but it's only in these last few years when I've spent a long time knowing someone that I can really talk to them. And you discover, even when you're not talking to them, that they're going through the same things you are, and that even people you don't know that well are going through the exact same things. I've given up on this kind of "best friend for life" type thing I used to be enamored with (I was lonely in middle school.. Comradeship used to be a sacred, but unknown ideal to me, like Marriage and Motherhood.) ... relationships fall apart if they aren't maintained. Which means talking to people every day, seeing how they are, having fun with them. And if you stop hanging out with people one day you'll find that you're not really friends anymore because they've changed so much and spend all their time with other people, and when you try to talk you can't, and that's just how it is, and it's not necessarily a sad thing, though it often is sad. And sometimes random strangers can show amazing insight. And the best I can hope for now is having not this big Friends Forever thing I longed for when I was lonely, but just having people I can get along with some of the time.

Maybe I'm just bitter because I'm going off to college next year and four years of work (socially) will be undone and I'm starting all over again and leaving everyone. But I remember leaving middle school and, in contrast, not caring one bit about my "friends": perhaps feeling a sense of loss means that I should appreciate that I've had something to lose.

In general, losing your childhood means losing your ideals. As a kid, everything ahead was always a great adventure: something new and better around the corner, but now the realization comes to me that life will continue as it always has, the daily grind, that there will be no knight, no prince, no doorways and wardrobes opening to other worlds, no long lost islands under waterfalls, no Dream Job, no Dream Marriage, no One Great Family That's Loving All The Time, nothing will whisk me off my feet and with each new phase will be new problems. This is depressing to know sometimes, but then comforting to know that little bits of joy are interspersed with my life like little bits of sorrow.... I don't have to wait around for some Great Big Epiphany to happen in ten years when there's the spring sun or spring rain and fresh cut grass and shady trees outside my door. My life isn't supernatural, but rather ordinary.. and sometimes that's a good thing.
----

Has anyone got any additional tickets for graduation they could give me? I need one more. Two would be nice.

Now it is time for:

Strange LotR inspired shit!

Galadriel's Brooch! I am jumping up and down with girlish glee!

LotR Risk! .. for Malex.

Frodo Plush! If only it weren't so disturbing looking I'd buy it...

The TTT Action Figure Storybook! Like Jen's link to Lord of the Rings retold with Legos.. except this time with action figures. It's surprisingly cinematic.

Noam Chomsky's (Fake) Audio Commentary for the Fellowship DVD! "The dwarves are a Jew-like figure..." This is effin' hilarious!

Reenactment of the Battle of Helm's Deep at Castle Bardi in Italy! Dammit! How come the Italians always have to look so good! For one thing, when they LARP, they don't look like total losers!

You're the psychotic grin, and no one can quite tell
if you're insane or just really hyper. You scare
people, and I mean scare them a lot. Kati'd be
friends with you though. You two could have
sleepovers together and make pasta at 4 am.


What Kind of Smile are You?
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Dark Platypus Studios

I have no idea what this is. Chintzy fantasy art, I suppose. The name is funny though. Also, since it's one of Quizilla's sponsors and I've been partaking of mad Quizilla joy for the last hour or so, I might as well linky.

Your Heart is Yellow


What Color is Your Heart?
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Yup. I'm a true China heart. HEY! Was that last bit a racial slur?

I've been chewing on Atkins Advantage bars. They taste like cardboard and leave a Diet Pepsi type aftertaste.

Mmm. Cardboard. *chewchewchew* I suppose you can get used to it though.

Slim Fast bars are richer and creamier, but on the downside, hard as bricks. You could kill someone with those things.

I should start up a Diet Gourmet Snack Food Magazine. You'd have luscious photos of Nutrigrain bars artfully adorned by golden lemon coins and sprigs of parsley.

You Have the Power of Teleportation!


What's Your Magic Power?
brought to you by Quizilla

I hope that as a teleportee that I don't have to travel through wormholes of that ghastly wavey green-black color though. My world is not a peppermint patty for a reason.

Nice quiz. Dumb images. I think I should start an Online Quiz Review, where judges rate online quizzes for their accuracy, cleverness, and aesthetic values. God knows it's about time online quizzes got a Snobby Literary Elite.

The Fake Senior Banquet on Saturday was pleasant, though the seating arrangements were convoluted. There were so many people we dominated one long table and a round table at the end, like an exclamation mark squished together. This made it so that people sitting at one end couldn't talk to people at the other. I had got there late and so had been relegated to the round table, but I bailed out on Malex and Ruchita and Silvia (and James) and other latecomers at the roundtable by switching places with Sarah Gordon who had been sitting in a fairly central position at the longtable. I hope the roundtable people didn't feel too abandoned in the periphery. In any case, though I can't speak for other people, I had a good time, talking with Rob, Cathy, Jen, Elissa and Carmel. Apparently, she's this mysterious Melly character I keep seeing around blogs! Man.. I shoulda won the Washington Post Award for Most Oblivious.

Jen: What's this for?

Teehee. I won for Most Easily Amused though.

Went to Ben and Jerry's afterward. Nick got Rob to sit on his lap, and put his hands around his waist. Rob looked rather shocked and uncomfortable, before bolting. I think this kind of destroyed his "we naive Southerners" defense he was using to shield himself against all the Carmeltalk. ("Can I have your cherry?" She won for Most Likely To End Up In Somebody's Lap). And after Rob had won the Victorian Sex Award too.

Malex: Rob, honey, I'm always open!

On another note, I think the "we naive Southerners" defense is a really lame reason for not knowing how to use chopsticks. I'm finding that I don't really like the food at Tara Asia (a lot better food could be found for $15) but it wasn't bad, just unspectacular, or maybe I just don't know what to order.

Went to the Archaeology dig, which was blessed by beautiful weather despite forecasts of rain. Wholesome air and greenery everywhere and Amish people who come down from Lancaster to sell their woodwork and stay for a week (a woman at the dig said that though they aren't allowed to own them, they can hitch rides from trucks driven by other people). I want to move to Clarksburg, with its population of.. oh.. 1,800. My mom thinks I'm crazy. Talked a lot to Mary, mostly about mages and lycanthropes, got dirty, were interviewed and photographed by people from the Gazette (who probably thought we were nuts- the whole lycanthrope thing, probably), and had a lot of fun. I was proud of our pit. I actually got the walls to look relatively straight. We found plate glass, green glassware, creamware, blessedly few nails (all of the square variety, just for your information), and massive bricks at least the size of your fist. Some people sent over from MK.. er.. MC... unearthed a brick and joked that you could see the imprint of Rodney King's head in it. On a totally random note, one of the MK people is one of Mary's mom's students. They found a random metal farming implement too, like a plow or something. I found a very tiny shard of blue-glazed ceramic, and also The World's Biggest Earthworm. (Dear God.)

Mr. Hines did a French and Indian War musket demostration and I screamed like a little girl when the thing shot. It sounds more like a loud clap than a bang (I didn't hear the 'whoosh-bang' sound he was talking about). I guess I've never heard a gun being fired up front before. We (me and Mary) went back to Needwood Mansion in the back of a station wagon sitting on the toolboxes with the musket wrapped up in cloth slanted over the back seats, with the back door up and my feet sticking out of the back of the car, and we could see the road stream away from under us.

After the IB English exam, tossed a frisbee around with Malex, got prom tickets for me and Rob. Puffy is going to prom with Karina despite thinking himself not cool enough for her when she asked him. (RM is so Sadie Hawkins it's ridiculous). Also he found it exceptionally funny for some reason that I was going to prom with Rob. Then went to Potbelly's with Malex and Nick for a "manly lunch." (Heehee, whatever.) We were foiled by Ruchita, Ranwa, and Sarah, who were there. Nick set up Sarah with Kevin Robinson as prom dates though they don't know each other, and Malex and Ruchita gushed how perfect it was. I couldn't really appreciate the perfectness of the match since I don't know Kevin all that well, but people were happy all around and it was good. Afterwards, we went to Regal to see "Bend it like Beckham" at 12:50, (without Sarah and Ranwa) and were met up with by Lizzie, Dena and Andrew. We dominated the theater.. it was just us and a bunch of retirees. ^__^ I love being "truant." In the movie, lots of "walking in at an inconvenient time" humor. It was kind of goofy and funny when it wasn't supposed to be. Like those pretentiously silly glamor shots of Joe looking pretty. And the dramatic slow-mo goal kicking shots. And Tony coming out of the closet by saying, "I really like Beckham" (does anybody do this??). And the fact that Jess and Jules are in such deep awe of Mia Hamm. (It was like: "Oh my GOD! Mia HAMM!... *starry-eyed* We should be just like her and play football in AMERICA!" Yes. Because we all know that the US is some kind of exotic and glamourous soccer Mecca. Andrew said that Mia Hamm actually is a big deal. I think I just take her for granted because she's on the local team. It kind of feels like, gee, if I wanted to watch her play, I can go out to my backyard. Actually, the fact that she's the only soccer player besides Beckham that brings any recognition by name and puts any sort of dent in my sports-indifferent consciousness shows that she probably is very very big.) And Jess admitting her deepest darkest secrets to her David Beckham poster. Yes! David Beckham is God! I expected to see him come to life off the poster and begin walking on water or crying blood or something. XD

Loved the music though.

I still think "Bend It" sounds obscene.

It was so very nice to have so much time... at the end of the movie I was like.. wow! It's only three!

Malex drove Andrew home and then me. Andrew has a very nice neighborhood, which is ridiculously close to Frost Middle. He is considering taking fencing classes there. I hope he does. I am taking the same class, on Fridays, starting from May 9th, but at the Bauer Drive Community Center. Anyhow, me and Malex were envious of Andrew's neighborhood's hillyness. I loved his lawn. Such a nice lawn. Andrew was cranky about the amount of time he spends maintaining it. But I think he's as much rewarded as one can be by a great lawn. Maybe he takes it for granted because he lives there. (Er... in the house there. Not literally on the lawn.. in a cardboard box.. though I would do it.) But honestly, Andrew, your lawn kicks major ass and I can't compliment you enough on it. It is so frikkin' cool. I told Malex that I liked Andrew's bushes.

Malex: Andrew has a really nice bush.

>_< ALEX!!!!!!!

Anyhow.

As opposed to my own lawn where I was pooed on by a bird.

Me: Oh shit! Literally!

That was a first.

But otherwise, a nice day.

VortexMR: if only their was a pause button on death
SFX 87: indeed.
VortexMR: we could PAUSE HIM!
SFX 87: I think we should freeze death in a large ice cube.
VortexMR: not just any ice cube
VortexMR: an ice scream cube
SFX 87: no, it must be an ice cube
SFX 87: because it should be transparent
VortexMR: ice cream can be transparent
VortexMR: or plastic!
VortexMR: and it doesn't melt easy
SFX 87: a large bubble
VortexMR: YES! so he leaps about scereaming
VortexMR: and you laugh
SFX 87: a giant soap bubble
VortexMR: maybe we should be less sadistic
VortexMR: OH BRILLIANT!
VortexMR: so he can float around!
VortexMR: but what if it pops?
SFX 87: then we can freeze him! In a cube!
VortexMR: right!
VortexMR: your brilliant
SFX 87: thanks!
VortexMR: i mean wow
VortexMR: taht's like... god
SFX 87: except not.
SFX 87: God comes in popsicles.
SFX 87: Godsicles!
VortexMR: .... hmmmm
SFX 87: It's like grape-flavored communion godsicles.
VortexMR: i can't eat that
VortexMR: i would emplode~
SFX 87: you can imbibe the blood of christ in all its fruity godness. Er... goodness. Fitting typo though.
VortexMR: i think godness is better
VortexMR: they should serve godsicles at church
SFX 87: it is indeed.
SFX 87: Also, toasted communion wafers.

I'm being blasphemous today.

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Third Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Low
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

Hurray for Gluttony. I'm actually not that treacherous, IMHO. I just don't have a really great.. Friend-Radar... You know. One of those devices that endow their owners with the quality of knowing Exactly What to Do and Exactly What to Say. My total lack of Friend-Radar makes me awkward around people who are in shitty positions, (like people who randomly start crying) so that my instincts lean more towards getting the hell out of there than actually helping/comforting anyone. This same awkwardness means also that I'd rather discreetly avoid family members I don't get along with than stay around and act painfully Nice- and if I had a major falling out with them I doubt I'd even consider keeping them deeply involved in my life. (They don't like me and I don't like them and it's not like they're missing much.) But anyhow, so much for sticking to people through thick and thin, eh? Rest assured though, I've never gone about actively backstabbing people.... or so I'd like you to think. MWAHAHAHA! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Do I have a moral obligation to remove skinhead music from my computer if I have no idea what the lyrics mean? From a practical standpoint, I ought to find out what the lyrics mean, if only to prevent myself from singing along and humming and tapping my toes to what could turn out to be the German equivalent of 'zeig heil zeig heil let's kill all the jews hurrah hurrah.' More abstractly, I have a moral responsibility to know what I'm listening to, since indirectly the products I consume are the product I endorse, even if I paid no money for this mp3. I have been trawling Google for an English translation of the lyrics to no avail, but have found out enough about the type of people who like this band to be pretty sure that if I were to figure out what these lyrics mean, I would not like this song at all.

Strange that it's not a particularly angry song. It sounds sad, like dying flowers maybe... my kingdom for the meaning of the words. And yet.. perhaps not. What would I do then, if they turned out to be ugly bruising words and rob a song of beauty? (like ripping through a butterfly's wings it'd seem a sin)

Sturmwehr, why do you sing so beautifully, and yet are what you are and do what you do? How are you so capable of beauty?

Am going to prom with Rob out of expediency. He's in Dena's Massive Group now. It should be fun.

Ah yes.. going on a "date" to save 2.5 dollars. ^__^

German S&M Pong: Der Painstation. No, I am not making this up.

Speaking of amusing forms of pain: have found Xu's blog. Via him creating such a buzz in bloggerland, of course. Yes, he does have talent, for all his bad grammar. I'm surprised and impressed.

Was v. annoyed all afternoon that Jen already has dibs on Malex for prom, since he has been my Boy Next Door for the last, oh, four years. I am fatter but Jen is shorter but neither of us have acne; which one of us has better hair depends on what type of hair Malex likes; but I also have a more unpleasant personality; but Jen asked him first except I faintly remember asking him when we saw Chicago or something but he said no, I wonder why. All of which is an atrocious way to think but that's how I was amusing myself for an hour in the afternoon after missing the bus. I may need to grow out my hair for my dress since short hair looks bad with it. Yet another unknown variable. I was also hoping that if Malex wouldn't go with me I could go with Jen in a girly group of Bitter Singles ala Sarah G, but with Malex and Jen going with each other that's two birds in one stone, except those were my birds, dammit. Who will I go with? Is it a Social Requirement to go with a boy to prom? I remember talking to an adult somewhere about it. My mom remembers it being Irene, Sharon's friend (neither Sharon W, the Sophomore, nor Sharon C, the Sharon, but Sharon H, a lady friend of my father's social circle). She asked me if I knew my prom date yet as smalltalk and when I said no I was going in a group she gave me this weird look of horror and pity and asked, "Why?" Going to prom in a big non-datey group of friends had not at the time seemed unusual to me at all, but now I'm getting Anxiety that going to prom with a guy is this Fixture (like lighting, electricity, heat, and plumbing) of American Culture, which Malex seemed to affirm when he said he was going with Jen as a non-datey type date because it was Custom. Coupled (ha) by the fact that they're already selling Tickets for Two now so I need to figure this out now. Julia and Hershel and Francie and Vanessa in Stat were discussing logistics like a war campaign and I could not concentrate ("Seven Seas?" "No, but Kit doesn't like Chinese food." "She's only one person in a group..." and so on and so forth). How will I get transporation? What if I get lonely and everyone ignores me because they're all focused on their Dates? Is there a girly group of Singles going that all does makeup and hair together? There should be, being that IB girls are massively outnumbered. Do Ruchita, Ranwa, Sarah, Silvia, Cathy, and Lianna have dates (because surely Dena and Sharon C and Milla and Lizzie do so surely Hank and Seth and Ed and Nick are taken)? Are they even going? Who could I ask? Rob.. eh.. *imagining Rob in a tuxedo*...no.. Matt G.. but he doesn't like social occassions or loud music and is clinically insane and I'm sure wouldn't like being dragged around in a tux... Michael B but we have nothing to talk about... Andrew P.. ha... no.... Andrew D.. eh.. nice boy, yes, prom boy, no... Gordon Y.. haha, no... Humza... he's nice but I don't know him that well and he's a sophomore... Puffy.. I don't know well at all. Anxiety.

But then I read from Malex's blog that Dena is organizing a Group Thing, so all is relatively well. I shall tell her tomorrow that I am Interested.

You are Pope Pius XII. You're efficient and
dedicated, but not very approachable.


Which Twentieth Century Pope Are You?
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You can tell how familiar I am with people by whether I use their last name in our fake senior superlatives and in my blog. Not something I do on purpose but just something I've noticed. Lara S is always "Lara S" even though there's really only one Lara of any significance at our school. (No, who do you think I mean, Lara Croft?) But I use her last name nonetheless. Andrew is very often "Andrew P" when I talk to people who don't know him that well but just "Andrew" with everyone else. "Alex" is always reserved for reference to Malex, while Valex must be content with always getting the V header. Rachel was called "Rachel M" in my earlier blog posts when I didn't know her all that well, and I still address her as "Rachel M" when I'm just mentioning her casually. "Sharon" is nearly always a reference to the sophomore, not Sharon C, which probably confuses people because the latter is the Sharon everybody knows. Puffy is always Puffy but I've noticed that people actually call him "David B" using first and last name which I found sounds weird to me now. Anika and Carmel, though I don't know them that well, are still just Anika and Carmel, but this is simply because there's no one else named Anika and Carmel and you all blog readers know very well who they are (more so than I) and refer to them in a similar fashion. Mike was "Michael B" when I first saw him again at the Eastern Reunion Party (I had to endure being called "Angie C" there in a similar fashion) but is now just "Mike." Nick is a common name, and sometimes called "Boe--" for convenience, most often in conversation with Alex, but he's most often just "Nick." Matt G, I used to call "Bob" in middle school but with less familiarity it's reverted to "Matthew G" again. My sisters and brothers-in-law used to be referred to as "my oldest sister" or "my younger sister" or "my oldest sister's husband" but are now referred to by name, the fact that readers don't know who I'm talking about be damned.

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word... but you know the rest.

Went to Churchill's show, "Present Laughter," on Saturday night since Mike, who as it turns out is in the Thespian Society, is in it. I haven't been to Churchill since before it was renovated, so it was quite a shock to see it again. It has a real theater, for one thing, with seats complete with little brass plates on them, and your tickets have the row and number of your seat. It was sort of amusing having assigned seating, seeing as there was an extremely preppy audience of maybe forty people and maybe fifteen people on cast and crew altogether. (I'm sure we're just as white and middle class and preppy but we just don't notice) So the audience was rather frigid: Mike said later that it was their best audience yet. People really must go to Churchill plays if only for pity's sake; their tiny audience is just pathetic, which is a shame because the play was actually quite good. I thought the atmosphere in general was colder than RM's productions (though maybe it's because I didn't know anyone except Mike)... from them having such a professional looking theater and assigned seating for an audience that scarcely fills the first few rows, to the fact that you can't go onstage after the show and the actors don't come out. You wait by a windowed door leading from a hallway outside the auditorium for your friends to emerge after changing and washing off makeup and whatnot. There were a bunch of Churchillites bearing flowers and hugging people who emerged, looking happy, dazed and faintly exhausted. It's a good deal like waiting at an airport. But the show was great, once you get over American high school students trying for British accents. Either they got better further into the play once they warmed up or I just got used to it. Great acting, great comic timing, and it was the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. I wish people would write plays like that nowadays.. not this reality tv trash. You know the English can write... they've had the language for 1000 years, of course they know how to use it by now.

I'm not sure if I blogged about Hello Dolly. I saw the second show two weeks ago, so I'm not like everyone else in their belated Dolly blogging. It was good, possessing a quality commonly known as "razzle-dazzle" (aren't I quotalicious today?). Yah. Lara Supan stole the show (she's spectacular), Nick got seduced, even if he can't sing... good stuff. I should also note, with kudos to Lianna and Vanessa Gonzalez and Xiaofei and Gordon and Meg, that the set rocked, especially with the backdrop painted from one of those early 20th century photographs. I wish I were more emotional about it being our last production, but I'm not. Oh well. We did a damn fine job, which is as much as can be expected of anyone.

Am not going to Hong Kong this summer because of that silly "SARS" thing. Will go next year over winter break. Am happy with this because I want to hang out with people over the summer since this is our last year together, it delays me from seeing my dysfunctional family, and because I can escape the tropical heat of a Hong Kong summer and freezing North American winters.

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

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

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

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

Good, good.

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

Blah blah.

Where are you going to college?

Blah blah.

Great! What are you planning to study?

Blah.

Cool!

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

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

Amen.

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

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

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

More offcolor comments in Econ:

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

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

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

Ah, racial stereotyping at its finest hour.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Am better from viral fever, since Wednesday. Having a viral fever for four days is the shits.

Now, for your entertainment...

.... it took me a while to figure out what this was.

Bad National Geographic. Evil National Geographic. Evil. Evil.

(Oh yes, for the record, this is only the second time I've blogged about this topic.)

I am sick with a viral fever. Blah. Fever of 102. Sore throat, can't talk or swallow, runny nose, headache, fever, chills.

The only thing I've been looking forward to in life is my medication. It's a six hour medication, but it takes one hour to take effect and it wears off around the fourth hour, and it's wretched and disturbing to see my fingernails turn blue and purple with chill and my skin waxy and gray like a kurdish gas victim.

The tyrant has fallen, and I am inexplicably happier than I have been in a long time.

Here's hoping, after Our Dumb Century, for a world starting to become safe for democracy.

Would you like to buy a Wheel of Time sword?

Ah.. merchandising, oh sweet merchandising.

I find it severely disturing that both Viggo Mortensen and Hugo Weaving are in their early forties, but they play, respectively, Arwen's lover and her father.

Imagine having a boyfriend and a dad the same age....

Yikes, creepy.

They could reminisce about the good old days together...

Very nice day. Went to the National Museum of Women and the Arts with Rachel (she's actually a very interesting person if you get to know her). Malex was right; the architecture is breathtaking, though I said it was Napoleonic and Rachel said it was Victorian. I think I agree with her now. You go inside, and it doesn't look like a museum, (a public, government institution), but quite private and exclusive, like a ballroom, with grand stairs (complete with pale stone balustrade) sweeping upwards to the left and to the right onto a mezzanine. With plastered Corinthian columns and padded satiny wallpaper (wallcloth, to be more accurate, though I must invent words) in soft shell pink, and paneled ceilings, from which hung droplet chandeliers. First we saw works by women silversmiths, which thrilled me because I didn't know women could be silversmiths. I just never thought about it. It opened my mind. Then we looked at art by women in Imperial Russia. It was absolutely extraordinary; many of the paintings we quite literally couldn't tell weren't photographs until we read the captions. I thought they would be fat and manly, but many of the women in the paintings were still beautiful and luminous after several hundred years, with eyes that were clear and bright. There was an oil painting of two sisters, the daughters of a duke, and later on in the gallery, I discovered two seperate portraits of each sister, but about fifteen years older. It was like an instant of time-travelling, seeing those little girls grow up. Great art renders me inarticulate.

Museum cafeteria: great food, atmosphere, very classy, but tremendously overpriced. $1.50 for a fucking glass of iced tea. I should be a museum food critic. T'would be tres amusing.

We went to the Natural History Museum too and saw 'Back to the Cretaceous: Tyrannosaurus Rex' on the IMAX, about a girl and her magical T-Rex egg. It had absurdly bad acting. Though nobody pays $7.50 for a movie called 'Back to the Cretaceous: Tyrannosaurus Rex' to watch the acting, I still expected that with these people's twenty foot tall heads hovering before an audience so that you could intensely study each and every pore and pimple, it would have been in their best interests to not embarrass themselves. (falsetto) Oh, daddy, you spend so much time with dinosaurs you don't love me anymore! Why won't you let me go on digs with you? Boohoohoo. (deep voice) It's just too dangerous for you out there, sweetheart. (falsetto) But daddy! I know I'm mature! I can help you out by cataloging artifacts like Andrew P! You know I'm smart and sincere because I work at the Smithsonian! Look! I drew a picture of a T-Rex! Daddy, please??? (deep voice) Hi! I am Charles Knight, dinosaur painter extraordinaire! You can tell you've gone back in time due to a freak accident because I have an atrocious English accent. Watch me pronounce Tyraunosaurus. Tyraunosaurus! Tyraunosaurus! I'm British! Smashing!

Get a life, little time-travelling girl; I didn't pay $7.50 to see you walking all moony-eyed through a studio pre-historic jungle. Anyone who positions herself between an oviraptor and a T-Rex yelling, "Give her back her egg!!!!!" really deserves to die. I was waiting for the T-Rex to bloody bite her head off.

(falsetto) Oh, daddy! (/end falsetto)

More 3D generated dinosaurs, I say. It should be a law: IMAX movies should be forbidden to have plots. Still, the 3D flyovers were spectacular.

Rating: Two stars. Thank you. That was: Museum Movie Review. It should be a permanent column feature, like Stephen Hunter.

Also saw exhibits on Inuits, where we discovered, in their scrimshaw, an amazing level of realism in their art that we never before attributed to tribal societies. And we saw the beginnings of the Southern American cultures exhibit, the mainstay of which was a mounted nomadic native man hunting an emu, like a cowboy. I want to do that. It's my new hobby. Hunting emus on horseback. Saw, as we walked through, some dinosaurs, the ice age mammals exhibit, the Iceman exhibit, and the Trade and Empires exhibit which is all Ancient World. Apparently the average old world woman was 5' 2". I hope it made Rachel feel better about being short.

Got my meningitis shot. May fall into a fever tomorrow or the day after. Then ate at the Cheesecake Factory and went to White Flint Mall with my mom. Woo.

Rammstein Karaoke warm-up exercises!

Step 1: Find a quiet place free of distractions.
Step 2: Clear your mind or everything but the sexiness that is Rammstein.
Step 3: Horsewhip yourself repeatedly.
Step 4: Break bottle.
Step 5: Smash against head.
Step 6: Repeat.
Step 7: Make 'i am dying' coughing sounds.
Step 8: Hack up phlegm.

Now, do you have a good 'basso profoundo'? Good! Now you're ready to begin!

Random Rammstein Lyrics Generator Song 1: "Pies"

You
You Made
You Made Pies
You Made Pies
You Made Pies With Steak
The Bed is on Fire
You Made Pies With Steak

You Made Pies With Steak, And I Am Filled With Cream
Cheese

(Incoherent angry yelling in German)

Ja! Ja! Volkswagon!

Rammstein caresses my brain.

Mmmm. Ah.

(Disclaimer: Years later, I will look back on this post and be embarrassed.)

These lyrics are pretty f-ed though. I wonder if they're supposed to make sense. It is time for! RANDOM RAMMSTEIN LYRICS GENERATOR!!!!.. Malex!

*clapclap*

Manslave!

Fetch me a generator!

Wow, I can't believe it's snowing again! The grass is green, the flowers are out, and the snow falls like petals in my face.

Wow, I can't believe it's snowing.

Had gone out to dinner with my extended family, where it was revealed that Maggie and Dongwoo had bought a house, and during the toast at the end of dinner, was enveloped in a bright aura of promise of the future as we toasted their house, Stella and Jonathan's baby due in September, and me going to college, and it seemed that a new and wondrous page was being turned in everyone's book of life simultaneously.

After dinner I got into the car with my parents and the mood left me as my mom talked into the dark of the car about being upset that Maggie didn't consult them, her own parents, about the big decision to buy a house, and my dad being "disappointed" (in that soul-crushing way where your parents being "disappointed" in you is worse a hundred times than them yelling at or punishing you;) that although Maggie knew that he was a realtor and was having a hard time selling houses she still didn't think to buy from him or at least even call him to talk about it. And here he talks about how when he was getting his license with only two months remaining, his friend just went out and sold his house, and my dad was like.. couldn't he have waited just two months to help out a friend? And how you can't count on anyone and the only one who can help you is yourself. It was horribly depressing.... I think I would have done the exact same thing as my sister, though I heard in the car how much it hurt my parents, and was sorry and burdened with the guilt for what I would have done in twenty years- I think of my dad as my dad and never consider having a professional relationship with him. It would be weird, like having your dad as your lawyer or agent or psychiatrist. And being two responsible married adults who want to start a family, buying a house would be our decision- not that it's none of our parents' business, but that I'd just never think to seek their approval beforehand. And I told my mom this in my rough Chinese that sounds fluent, but in reality can express only the concrete well and the abstract badly, and she dismissed it because I am a teenager and don't know the ways of the world. When Maggie told us at dinner about buying the house I didn't notice anything at all wrong, and only was glad for them that they'd be moving out of their apartment. And Stella and Maggie are very close to each other so my parents speculated whether they had talked to each other about it beforehand and if so, why hadn't Stella told Maggie to consult with our parents? So there it is, the collective guilt of the three American daughters.

Went home, and read some To The Lighthouse: For that reason, knowing what was before them-love and ambition and being wretched alone in dreary places-she had often the feeling, Why must they grow up and lose it all? I am a teenager and don't know the ways of the world and when I grow up I will lose it all or what I haven't lost quite yet (which is probably an extraordinary amount that I take for granted), and am sad for it but can't stop growing. And was made even more horribly depressed tying the two random thought threads together like some Virginia Woolf character, because FOR GOD'S SAKE, real estate and my sister and lighthouses have nothing to do with each other!!! Why I am connecting them, (like how Lily in the book, with her Chinese eyes, connects philosophy and Andrew and pear trees and kitchen tables at the bloody same time and makes for a damn annoying read), I have no idea. Malex IMed me asking me, "what's up" as I was typing this post, and though I had a lot to say, at the moment I couldn't say anything except "nothing" and he logged off five minutes later and my opportunity to talk to a friend passed, and now I am being wretched alone in dreary places again.

Went to the barber's, which for me is the basement of an Asian woman's house by Emory Lane (on Hornbeam, actually). She was with another client, so I played pingpong (formally known as 'table tennis' to the uptight) in the basement with my mom, was pleasantly surprised that she knew how to play. She was pleasantly surprised I knew how to play. It was fun. Was glad the hairstylist noticed I lost weight. Cuz obviously, if you tell people you're on a diet they'll be belatedly like, "Oh, yes, I can see you're a lot skinnier" but you can never tell if they're being polite. Her cat gave me horrible allergic reactions since it jumped and stayed on my lap while I was getting my hair cut (I think it was the cat though it could have been a ton of other things) before it ran away from the blow drier, so that my eyes got all swollen and my nose got clogged up and my throat constricted. But I'm better now. Shall need to go over to Malex's house one day in a living experiment to see if close proximity with cats does cause my allergic reactions.

Went home, took a fun online IQ test that my mom took and printed out at work and compared with her coworkers- I asked her if she didn't have anything better to do at work. Well, it's a government job. I'm 135: Word Warrior. My mom is 129: Visual Mathmatician, which is good for an engineer. Those visual math problems annoyed me.

In Angie's Angry War News: Heard this morning on the radio coming to school about the two marines who died sleeping when they got run over by a marine vehicle. Was outraged about our own idiocy, but even more morally outraged over the shooting by Iraqis of thousands of civilians in Basra who tried to escape the city. See, at least when we hurt people we're just morons, while when they hurt people they actually have malicious intent.

Asian American Assembly was remarkably good, though it could be much improved, being just its first year performed. For example, I disliked all the emphasis on martial arts.. it's not like the only thing Asian people do. The umbrella/fan dance was very pretty, though not choreographed as well as it should have been... the move that everyone inarticulately calls "that circle thing" was really fantastic though. It was hilarious that what was dubbed as a 'traditional' fan dance was actually performed to a Chinese oldie.. I was sitting with all my third period Chinese class people, so we were all cracking up about that. I wonder if anyone else noticed. The actual official pop dance, J-pop I assume, was performed without much gusto, so it looked basically like Asian step team but suckier. Still, I'm glad they had the guts to go onstage and break musical stereotypes. Yes. Asian people can be "down with it." If only we actually were. I really liked the videos; the Japanese-American soldiers in WWII video was great for showing stuff we actually didn't know. The video on influential Asians suffered from bad editing. Ex: when running the outtakes/credits from "Rumble in the Bronx" for the Jackie Chan segment, they kept on the captioned names of other miscellanious actors, which probably made no sense to anyone who hadn't seen the movie. Whenever the news switched to a shot of a white anchorperson in the Connie Chung clip, the editors would do a fade so that the white person would slowly and surrealistically morph into Connie Chung's face, like a CNN version of Dali's Persistence of Memory, with the melting clocks. Editing problems aside, the video was good for showing Asians in atypical job positions like Connie Chung and Yao Ming and Margeret Cho, as well as the usual subpar slew of martial artists. Though Xu, now known as Ray, got a lot of flak for the "Mongolians have small eyes" comment from Mr. Gaffney (who was subbing for Econ) and you often couldn't hear the interviews over the music, the stereotype video was humorous and down to earth, and the break dancing wasn't educational but a crowdpleaser. The martial artists were very good, much better than the white samurais we got on International Night who everyone was making fun of.

I felt we needed more representation from non-Chinese and Japanese cultures, like Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Mongolian, Nepalese, Malaysian, Filipino, Polynesian... though in particular we need more Indian/Pakistani culture. It's the Indian subcontinent for God's sake, India being the second most populous nation in the world. Where are my dark-skinned brothers?

The [East] Asian American Club, as Andrew dubbed it. Xu told me in econ that AAC and Desi simply didn't get along, though I don't know if I believe him. It'd deserve some satirizing in the Tid, except that many of the people the article would be aimed at wouldn't have the English proficiency to actually read it. Of course, I'm too lazy to actually write it.

I think Archaeology has become amateur story time, as Rachel detailed the book she will write, about Leonardo Da Vinci's fictional apprentice, part of her planned Atlantis series. I, in all my geeky glory, was reminded of Catherine Janeway. I tried to explain it to Rachel.. "Um, she's Leonardo Da Vinci's holographic apprentice.. I mean.. the holographic Leonardo Da Vinci's holographic apprentice.. I mean.." I didn't work out very well, but I amused myself. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who's inspired by IB European History to write novels. History is more inspiring to my writing than actual English.

Mary tells next week, and I the week after that. I ought to get my act together before then.

Well, helicopters are actually getting shot down by Republican Guard anti-aircraft now. I'm not sure if it's more reassuring that they're being taken down by enemy fire and not themselves, or if it severely sucks that helicopters are being shot down.

Despite my bitchings about the war, I still think, to rebuff the main argument of anti-war protestors, we're doing all we can to avoid civilian casualties, and Saddam's forces are lowlife bastards. All of this comes at a price: we peacefully approach Iraqi soldiers and civilians who wave the white flags of surrender, only to shoot at us when we come close, we avoid cities and population centers only to have us attacked from behind once we pass them, and we have civilian men shooting at us from buses and taxis.... I think it's something for anti-war activists not to take lightly: every time we go out of our way to spare Iraqi lives, every time we compromise strategic gain for moral reasons, it puts American lives at risk. This is definitely not to say we ought to go around killing innocent bystanders or that they don't matter, only that we must appreciate the extreme risks our sons and daughters are taking in order to save these civilians. Anyone in this country who perceives our military as 'American imperalistic butchers' (it's understandable for the Iraqis caught in the middle of all of this) are being grossly ungrateful. Not to mention that in Nasiriya Iraqi soldiers are forcing civilians into the streets to be human shields and wiring bridges and city buildings with explosives, killing their own civilians to blame it on the Allies... we are showing remarkable restraint in light of all of this and I admire our soldiers for what they do.

PS: Though I know you aren't reading this, a word out to my online friends in Iraq. Come home safe.

Yesterday was spent randomly moving furniture around, making space for more furniture. Apparently, this guy my dad knows is moving back to Hong Kong and so was like, "You can have all my furniture for $1000." So, being the packrats we are, we took the offer and for a while on Saturday morning and afternoon my house was literally barricaded as lamps and easy chairs and cushions and other household debris blocked the way into the living room and my bedroom and random carpets were piled up in the bathroom. Amazingly, due to the same bizarre phsyics-twisting laws of household time and space that allow a month's worth of groceries to, after much rearranging, all fit into one refridgerator, we've moved things around so that while my house has the same volume as before and we had enough furniture before, all of the new furniture has somehow been crammed in, and we're still in this state of enough furniture. My house is, actually, neater now with more stuff. Go figure.

Why do we suck so much? We shot down the British!

We are so seriously retarded.

Way to go, making our allies hate us more.

I had gone to International Night last night because I felt I ought to get out more. Even if it is just going to school, but I can delude myself. Mostly I was motivated by the free food.

Performances can only be described as ghettofabulous. Good, I guess, for a non-humorous high school ethnic talent show. Xu was in the show, in Chinese dress, as were a lot of random Chinese people I know but don't hang out with. Joyce and Xue were there and quite graceful in the Maiden River dance and I was envious again like I was as a little fat kid watching gymnasts and ballerinas. Lucy was the announcer some of the time and seemed very stiff about it. Many of the performances were quite well done. Most were. Some were not, like the singing of Chinese pop songs.. The audience, however, was horrid: during the super-serious samurai staff ritual performance various people in the audience were yelling "Ai!!" imitating the fighters' karate yells and snickering, and during an Indian wedding dance were singing in fake Punjabi falsettos, like chingchongchingchong but Indian. I was like, "Could you be more offensive?" and I would have yelled at the people behind me except that one of them was like an 8 year old girl. Racism is not something I generally think of as common in minorities (which was most of the audience and nearly all of the performers), so this shocked me. I don't think these people were so much racist as transcending to levels of incredible disrespect. And of course, the audience could never shut up, even while the announcer was introducing people. Were we this rude during Mr. RM? I know we were loud, but I never thought of it as really rude. I'm not sure if I just have different standards because when I know people in the show, it's 'enthusiasm' and when I don't, it's 'rudeness.'

Something traumatizing: Anya bellydancing. I kid you not.

She was very good at it.

Meg and EdandMilla were there but I didn't really talk to them much. Meg, I think, was still traumatized by Anya bellydancing, and EdandMilla I left to their own devices because they seemed more interested in each other than in me.

The food was good, though being literally all carbohydrates. I think there were like, fifty different kinds of rice. I have a theory that poor countries eat a lot of wheat based products since they can't really afford meat, fruit, or vegetables. Atkins is very much the result of an over-rich nation.

Had a long talk and walk and got all muddy in Rock Creek Park with Spachee, who is, as she noted, more my sister than my actual sisters. We were both in general despair over the world, but I told her that it's more that humans are idiots before and we simply never realized. I think people had to feel so helpless in World War II and I, with the new technology and bizarre causes and the entire world going to pot, which is slightly uplifting to know that people have gone through the same thing before and survived, but depressing to know that people have gone through the same thing before and survived but not learned. I think this war is incredibly absurd. More people are dead from helo crashes than combat, and all of our wounded are a result of a grenade attack by one of our own soldiers, and 200 civilians (says Iraq anyhow), are wounded in Bagdad. Madness, madness.

One thing I never thought I'd think: How beautiful the explosions over Bagdad, the red curling smoke and flashes of light in the brightness of the living night, like fireworks, or the horsehead nebula.

I feel, for the sake of posterity only, that I ought to say something about the war though I really have no political or even ideological opinion, and when really it doesn't affect my life except in terms of the surreality of it all- when you see war news splashed over the front page of the paper (which I never thought to see in my lifetime), and sometimes fear, and sometimes it breaks my heart and makes me want to cry. In not so strong a term: more like it makes me want to want to cry. It plants the seed of tears, it puts me in the somber heartshardsbrokenglass mood where if something else happened crying would be possible. And though I consider myself both a hawk and a patriot, I avoid it on the news and I hope that the war ends quickly, and though I did not think I would feel pity, as we eagerly await news on the status of Saddam and his sons and smoke over Bagdad and fire in the night I feel sad if not but then again sorry that we must kill a man.

Rain, rain, go away. Am in the habit of going to Archaeology on Thursdays again mostly because it gives me a chance to chat with Mary and Rachel M, and am looking forward to the dig next Saturday. I'm getting back into my groove. We had a good bag, not a nailbag like the one that haunted me late last year and early this. We had so much interesting glassware, with textures (which Mary said reminded her of her cat's fur but stylized and mused on if the glass was once a cat statue) and patterns, and a piece of fiber, and pottery and some other stuff we couldn't identify.

Have finished rolling up my multi-class, multi-personality D&D gnomish vegetarian plant-hating ranger-cleric and have given the sheet to Mary, since she, for very good reasons, would not allow me to play a Gelatinous Cube ("You don't have a brain." "But I could consume one!"). We decided that how we'd meet is, I'm a patient at a mental institution, Andrew's half-orc fighter is an orderly there, Shannon's rogue is hired to break in to steal something/free someone (whatever) and steals a chest containing me inside it (either intentionally or not), and Joanne's bard is a friend of Shannon's rogue. Ah, there. The wonders of D&D.

Have new 3rd edition D&D group, with Mary GMing, Joanne, Andrew Durfor, and Shannon, some girl Mary and Joanne know but I do not. Have decided to meet on Tuesdays at lunch instead of Mondays to avoid James Durfor and Alex Haley, the insane munchkin duo who insist on being 'half celestials.'

Abuse of Webcam:

(For reference, this is Steve who I was/am semi-dating from Louisiana. Carry on.)

SFX_87: stir things up. Get a mohawk.
theodrekt2t: Gah.
theodrekt2t: i could strip.
SFX_87: yah, uh.. close the doors? ^__^
theodrekt2t: o.O Really?
SFX_87: no!
SFX_87: ^__^
theodrekt2t: No doors...but...dun hafta worry about that...
theodrekt2t: Lemme take off my pants, then... ^_^;
SFX_87: were you really gonna do it???
theodrekt2t: ...well...yeah...
theodrekt2t: *blushes*
theodrekt2t: *tilts head at you*
SFX_87: I can live without male stripping for a while.
theodrekt2t: *sighs*
theodrekt2t: You sure...?
theodrekt2t: *was actually getting into the mindset of it*
theodrekt2t: And no one else is watching.
SFX_87: It would be amusing, but please keep your pants on.
theodrekt2t: Bah
SFX_87: actually... depends. Are you ripped?
theodrekt2t: No.
theodrekt2t: Which is why Iw asn't gonna take off the shirt.
theodrekt2t: Just enough to show...umm...the little guy.
SFX_87: wise.
theodrekt2t: JUST it.
SFX_87: no, don't do that.
SFX_87: don't do that.
theodrekt2t: *nods*
theodrekt2t: Blaaah.
SFX_87: *hides*
theodrekt2t: Then send ME a picture...!
theodrekt2t: I never saw what you look like.
theodrekt2t:
SFX_87: You're threatening me with stripping?
SFX_87: dear god.
theodrekt2t: ...
theodrekt2t: o.O
theodrekt2t: ...YES.
theodrekt2t: YES, I AM.
SFX_87: THE HORROR! THE HORROR!
theodrekt2t: Oh, don't make me
theodrekt2t: That's the belt.
theodrekt2t: The pants will be unzipped next.
theodrekt2t:
SFX_87: yikes
theodrekt2t: Yeah
theodrekt2t: That's right!
theodrekt2t:
theodrekt2t: Push me!
theodrekt2t: Go ahead and do it!
SFX_87: uh.. *pushes*
SFX_87: I'm going to have nightmares about this, I swear.
theodrekt2t: ...
theodrekt2t:
theodrekt2t: Fine...
SFX_87: ah!!!
SFX_87: window minimize!!!
theodrekt2t: Mrr
SFX_87: haha! Foiled again!
theodrekt2t: Blah.
SFX_87: oh, good.
SFX_87: you're back.
theodrekt2t: Yes, and I'm not wearing pants.
SFX_87: greaaatt.
SFX_87: You should wear a kilt. It would make a great conversation piece.
theodrekt2t: I want to.
theodrekt2t: Anyway.
theodrekt2t: Want to see it? o.O
SFX_87: sure.
SFX_87: *mumblemumblemadscotsmanmumble*
theodrekt2t: Well...are you sure?
SFX_87: yah
theodrekt2t: Not the kilt.
theodrekt2t:
SFX_87: but don't make me see you change.
theodrekt2t: No...NOT THE KILT.
theodrekt2t: Not see the kily.
theodrekt2t: *kilt.
SFX_87: Wait.
theodrekt2t: I'm asking to make sure you're not confused./
SFX_87: You're asking me if I want to see your notkilt?
SFX_87: if I want to see you not in a kilt?
theodrekt2t: Yes.
SFX_87: agh, no.
SFX_87: put some clothes on, man.
theodrekt2t: Blah.
theodrekt2t: I dun wanna.
theodrekt2t: *has 11 hours of work tomorrow*
SFX_87: TOGA! TOGA!
SFX_87: TOGA!
theodrekt2t: *is relaxing*
theodrekt2t: *sigh* Then I'm a turn it off.
theodrekt2t: Cam.
theodrekt2t: -_- Me wanna be naked...bottom down, at least.
SFX_87: wear shorts?

(I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had mentioned what the stakes were.)

Do I put on a good show of being interested? I'm indifferent, even in my banter, except that it's a chore keeping it up. I promised myself not to push guys away, because I'm attracted to unattainable assholes. By the nature of that attraction, I repulse nice boys who like me, and therefore I must fight my twisted nature of pushing away nice boys by being ultra-accomodating to geeks on the internet, even if I don't like them, because I don't know if me not liking them is because they're actually losers, or because of my screwy Freudian psychoshit. Common Sense would tell me not to date people I don't like, but seeing as that people I do like are assholes who're not good for me, by that approach I'm going to end up fucking some homicidal drunk.

I don't know if I'm nuts one way or nuts the other.

Change of tone:

Friday:

Mr. RM was hilarious. Good job, guys. I'm glad we got so much IB representin'. Po' Puffy didn't make it into the top 5 (which Xu did with his mad raver skillz): he was good but didn't project an image. His image should've been the suave math geek thing that's made him popular these last four years, but he was really serious about the whole contest, to his detriment. Kira is right though. He is ripped.
It was good we had such an enthusiastic audience though. Including Malex (who did come, forgoing the Bivalve party) yelling, "TAKE IT OFF!" and chanting "PUFFY! PUFFY!" Good stuff.

Saturday, went to Potbelly's at 5:30, had a nice dinner with a bunch of random RMers I don't know all too well or at all (including Kevin, Tara who looks like Cynthia from Clan of the Cats, Kainoa CHANG- which he proved is more common a Chinese name than Wong...). The 7:25 showing of Chicago was sold out, even though I had my ticket already it didn't matter since not everybody else could get tickets. Me, Nick, Malex, Lizzie and Sarah decided to hang around until the 9:55 showing (I just exchanged my ticket) after much argument: some of the juniors left, some of them who'd already had tickets for the 7:25 showing just went and saw that. We sat around at Ben and Jerry's, then comfy armchairs at Starbucks, then we went to CVS so Malex could buy mechanical pencils. We harassed the historical county courthouse fountain and statuary, and Malex noted that Justice is quite busty, at least from an angle. Just to show that Rockville has no nightlife, which Malex labeled, if it were to exist, "The 5:30 Club." We lay down on the grass of a park nearby and looked at the stars and the moon, before going to the theater obscenely early, so we got to watch the.. trailers for the trailers, so to speak. LAME.

Chicago kicked ass, with hot Welsh women that Nick adored. Her role wasn't actually all that big though. And, um, yes.. scantily clad female inmates, who all inexplicably wear eyeshadow and lipstick in prison. The main female character looked enough like a hot and blond Ms. Shay to disturb me for the first fifteen minutes of the movie before I really got into it. Though I would've preferred a different ending.

Last few days:

Exploring watercolors, painting fruit. So hard to control. Results: satisfactory. Janay has been depressed over Rashad's death, since she had been his sweetheart, apparently. People tell her she could have saved him; if she had dated him, he would've come to school to see her and wouldn't have stayed home that day. It does not make her feel better. Despite spring and watercolors, art class has been in general very down. I never even knew the guy but I'm beginning to miss him even, from Janay talking about him and the funeral so much, and the mother whose son is 6 feet under and whose daughter is in Juvie until she's 21, and so has basically lost two children at once. I had expected it to be a drug related death, or a car accident, but being stabbed by your 12 year old sister over a cell phone is such a cruelly needless way to go, that it's very sad and I mean it. 1987-2003. I wonder what it'd be like to die tomorrow.

Nice weather, sunny, balmy. Spring should be here soon, hopefully, though I liked winter very much, the weather made me very happy. That and, perversely, giving blood. Nothing makes you feel better physically than a good bloodletting. (Don't know what's wrong with me but there we go.)

Been spending my lunches recently with Humzaa and Sharon (and John From My Bus)'s group, alternating with Mary and Joanne's group. Realize it may be sort of loserly hanging out with lowerclassmen but I don't care. Though it may be unwise to make form new social circles in second semester senior year.. you'd think I had the last four years to do it. I don't know if I'd like to be closer friends with these people who are currently on level of "People I Can Talk To About Interesting Things" or if I shouldn't bother. Am currently surveying people, for Zifei's benefit as an animation major tweaking his character designs, of who the hottest male and female cartoon characters are. I will publish the results on here.

Random Hallway Gossip: Apparently Mike Correll has been getting around. If you get my meaning. Well, ast it goes.. "Correll's been making out with.. blah blah blah." To which I respond, "Which Correll?"

Happy days, traumatizing the freshmen!!! ^__^

In non New-York News:

1) As of Saturday, we now have Dish Network, since my dad wants to watch the Golf Channel. Which means, for the first time in my life, I have cable.

2) Italian choral concert was kinda blah for me. I came really late (4:40) and paid $8 for a dinner (it would've been $3 if I had made reservations) which I didn't get to finish (to my satisfaction anyway since finishing in all you can eat meals is subjective) before rehearsal, and I didn't get to socialize cuz people were already in rehearsal. Went to rehearsal. Madrigals, Resonance, and Testostertones the stars of the actual show as usual, sounded great, as usual. I didn't really care. We went, I got stuck in the soprano section after intermission despite asking people several times "What voice range are you?" with answers being "Oh, it doesn't matter." Bah. I can't sight-read for shit with singing and rely on listening to other people around me sing, so it didn't work well. Didn't sing/sang soprano part/sang alto badly, meaning all my rehearsal time was worth diddly. Won a "Kinkade print," Moonlit Sleight Ride at the silent auction for $6, then discovered it was basically a piece of cardboard with a pencil sketch over it. (When I think "print" I want like a poster dammit, in all its lovely glossiness.) Bah. Raised money for Italy though. But I'm not going. Bah.

Felt sorry for Malex not selling his dinner, but don't think he can really justify charging $75 for a meal cooked by a high school senior with no reputation, served at his house. It may be inspired by the Inn At Little Venice, but if I were inspired by Jenna Jameson still no one would pay to see me in porn.

3) Blood drive + heavy menstruation = eek.

How bad? Weelllll... I don't believe Pharoah would appreciate me going anywhere near the River Nile in the next few days.

The blood drive was nice though. Not painful or even gross to watch. I was kind of detached from it; I didn't think of it really as my blood, and anyway, it's not like you could really see it graphically squirting all over the inside of the bag, which was the case when I went in for blood testing for the first time, the first time I'd ever had my blood sucked out by a needle. (This was my first time donating, with the chief differences being the forms you fill out and the size of the needle and the amount of blood they take.) Also, the people didn't have to jab me with the needle repeatedly to find my vessels this time either, though they did a lot of Concerned Whispering and poking my inner arm with their fingers looking for a vein. I got light-headed after they finished though and I saw pretty colors. On the plus side, ate lots of tasty shortbread, have free t-shirt and stickers. Got some punariffic stickers orginally, like a sticker with a dalmation saying "I was SPOTTED at the blood drive!!!!!" and then just threw them away because they were too lame to live. Overall though, it makes me feel like a good person. It makes up for me not going to Choral Day, which I was lukewarm about in the first place.

4) I need to reap in my services hours with Archaeology and Concert Choir.

Friday in New York:

Woke up, before the wake-up call, to find the day cold and clear. Stayed in bed, pleasantly, for 20 minutes before having to actually wake up wake up. Was glad to have a new pair of socks after the wetness of the day before, got dressed, went downstairs. Found Malex, plus Andrew in his Indie hat, Rob, Lizzie, Sarah and Karina and hit the Greek (?) cafe across the street which was not fancy but very filling in the way that solid plain food is. We did some minor souveneir shopping, but didn't find much interesting.

And off to Sony Tech labs, which was extremely trippy. We were inside a sunny public plaza made of granite, which was designed to look like you were outside though you weren't, with high-set skylights and vines and patio furniture, and welcoming robot and a very cool bullet elevator. After waiting in line for a long time, amusing ourselves with rock paper scissors, and then a few badly run games of Animal Vegetable Mineral, we took the elevator up to a dark and star-filled room (really, just wallpapered with black cloth and white pinpoint lights) that led into the exhibits after we "logged in." It took a badly lit photo of us and a voice recording and saved it on our card, so in later exhibits we could manipulate the freakish photo and sound clip. There were some activities inside... saw this short film "Goodnight Tokyo" which existed just to show off their high-definition theater. I was very impressed though. It was all very.. high definition. Me and Rob looked at clips from historically important movies, and went, among other things, on a simulated trip through the digestive system and tried to clean up a simulated oil slick. We were fairly put out to find that the welcoming robot in the plaza was actually controlled by a human ("Nooo! The robot isn't real!!!!"), who looked at the people downstairs through a camera mounted on the robot and talked through a mic. It was fairly lame, aimed for younger children, but presented very well, so that it was a good experience over all.

We went to Times Square, in all its blazing glitz and glory, passing in succession St. Paul's Cathedral, the Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, and NBC studios and a street hosting lots of plays which I guess was Broadway but I'm covering my ass if I'm wrong. Times Square is a great place to be in, though it looks more like a triangle. Everything moves and blinks and shines and flashes and glows, and the giant cup of Ramen Noodles really steams and the Nasdaq ticker tape really tickers, red on black, and in general advertising has been elevated to a great artform. It's fantastic. The ground rumbled with the subway below us; if you live in Manhattan you must get used to the rumbling- it was there during the Fed, (I had thought, not seriously, that it must've been like those basement minecarts in Gringotts but turns out I wasn't half wrong) and during dinner the night before. We went shopping at Virgin Records, and ate at an Italian dive off of TS, and went through the nifty revolving doors into the greatest Toys R US in Manhattan, which has an indoor ferris wheel with chaser lights and screaming children. We, unlike last year's class, didn't bump into the Naked Cowboy, but we did encounter two Veg Girls, who, as the giant, lush airbrushed sign hovering above the Square demonstrated, sexy women hired by the PETA to protest meat-eating.. by wearing only strategically placed lettuce. And eating hamburgers, though I didn't think PETA hired them to do that. There were also some camera crews there. We didn't bother them.. much. Some people had their pictures taken with a cop. I didn't find it extraordinary. We also passed a swarm of Musicians on Strike, with signs and picketing in an orderily manner behind a metal fence against/with a group of Spanish instrumentalists playing on the sidewalk. It was amusing, and made national news, as I heard later.

Then, onto the subway, where we couldn't manage to all get on one train, since the doors did close on us. We waited for a while in the rich chords of a guitarist on the opposite platform, who was drowned out every once in a while by passing trains. I would have tossed him money, but my arm was not that good. We got off at the financial district, or fairly close to without the World Trade Center station anymore, and out, in South Side Manhattan where you can see the sea, unblocked by buildings and flat and clear to the horizon. We got to the Commodities Exchange building, waited a while sitting on the window sill when lo and behold, the curtains automatically rose behind us, dazzling us with sunlight. That was our cue to go further in, and we did. We rushed into the bathroom, timing people for the fastest time (39 seconds for the guys, 41 for girls I believe) so we could all have a go. A whirlwind tour of the history of the exchange, with really cheesy plaster reconstructions, and then, the cream of the crop, the ComEx trading floor.

It looked like a 24-hour party. With crowds of people in rainbow colored clothes gathered around pits waving and yelling, and big screen tvs situated all around the trading floor, and index cards being whipped like ninja stars into the pits and the ticker tape racing around the upper edges of the room and numbers and letters flashing on the LCDs. It all became more frantic and wound up as it edged towards closing time, until the horn/bell(?) sounded for closing time and paper burst into the air all around the pits like gunshot confetti at New Years. What a job.

A race, for us, then, through Battery Park (which I'd never seen frosted in snow) so we wouldn't miss our boat. Into the Staten Island Ferry Terminal, where pigeons nested in the lights, and onto the boat, where me and Malex went outside to watch the Manhattan skyline, sans two towers, slide away, and to watch Ellis island and the Statue of Liberty approach us and then pass us by on our right. It was winter, and the seagulls didn't dip and race along the side of the boat as I remembered them doing four years ago. But times are different, anyhow.

As we were approaching Staten island, I snapped a picture of Malex standing on the stairs with the sign reading "No standing on the stairs until ferry has docked," which it hadn't. That's an explanation of the photo for posterity. Just a little joke which no one will ever understand.

And then it was the bus. For "Fletch" and "Men in Black," two lackluster movies, and when we were in Maryland, I was glad to be home.

Thursday in New York: A Blog in the Form of Edited AIM Transcript.


shpachee: how was ny

SFX 87: great.

shpachee: tell me about it

SFX 87: I dunno what to say. You need to see Blue Man Group. they really kickass. I mean they really kickass.

shpachee: you've seen them live?

SFX 87: YAH.

shpachee: WHOAAAA

SFX 87: DUDE.

shpachee: DUUUUUDE

SFX 87: YAH.

shpachee: what did they do

SFX 87: DUDE WELL..they had glow in the dark paint in their drums so when they hit it it'd go FOOOSH and they played plastic tubes.. and we played with toilet paper, which was really fun. like they turned on the black lights so the toilet paper was glowing, and they had like four rolls attached to this balcony and people in the back grabbed it and would pass it on to the people in front of them so there would be like these giant glowing globs of toilet paper converging on you.

(editing note: We also wore protective ponchos, in the front row against squirting banana cream, which glowed purple in the light, and there were rotating glowing plastic tubes above us, and plastic glowing tubes with water-tornadoes. Very trippy.)

shpachee: yeah i've seen them do the drum/paint thing lol!

SFC 87: but also they had the strobe light on so I'd miss the toilet paper sometimes..and the music was rilly great. it was very ravery. I wasn't expecting it to be ravery.. I thought it'd be kinda new-age like those intel commercials.
but it wasn't. It was ravery. With lots of glowy things. it was trippy. i guess it sounds kinda stupid when I talk about it. I mean, they had various sketches and stuff too
Like comedy skits in between. They wouldn't talk but they wore LCD screens on their backs with dialogue which doesn't sound exciting, but they were funny.

shpachee: oooh@

SFX 87: also, they took a dude and strapped him by his legs and painted him blue and swung him by a rope so that he smacked this giant piece of canvas and made a living painting.

shpachee: ooh i've seen that before too. i keep seeing blue mans gorup on tv. oit's great. i think when they did that on tv though. they used a celebrity

SFX 87: yah. I saw it on tv so I didn't find it that exciting

shpachee: ohh

shpachee: yeha i think they should come up with new things to do cuz it just sounds like the same things i saw back like two years ago or osomethin

SFX 87: like with the skits they had three posters, and the posters would say 'pick a poster to read and stick with it' and every five seconds or so they'd flip the page (cuz it was like a giant notepad but with posters)

shpachee: LOL

SFX 87: so that there'd be no way you could read all three posters at the ssame time

shpachee: hey do they talk EVER

SFX 87: and the posters would say things like "don't you know that the time you've spent reading this poster could be spent on other posters" or "the odds you've read only this one poster for the last 5 rounds is 4441515 to 1"

SFX 87: no, they don't. they seemed really anti-internet though in the skits that had a point but they did it in a good way. oh, and they had little video clips and stuff too.
like they'd mix their musical pieces with comedy skits and random video clips.

shpachee: ohh i haven't se nthose but why were you guys seeing them anways

SFX 87: no reason.

shpachee: was it supposed to be educational or something

SFX 87: no, but it was at 7 at night anyhoo. we spent all our school hours being edumacational. we visited the Federal Reserve Bank and the New York vice president of the bank talked to us.

(editing note: The Bank impressed me immensely. Though I live in a suburban bubble in the richest county in America, and am used to luxury, indulgence and comfort, am not at all accustomed to grandeur and gravitas. I don't know very much about economics, but spent my time in awe at the architecture and interior design, looking at the bronze classical statue of a man with a lyre, the oak conference table and paneled woodwork and leather chairs with brass studs in it, and the gothic ceiling vaults with their chained medievalist chandeliers in wrought iron [the massive amount of chains and chandeliers and spiked gates made me comment to Malex that the bank looked like an S&M dungeon, causing HIM to make a rather horrid pun about bondage... get it..? Bondage... gah. On the plus side, during the tour I got my little "briquette" of shredded money as a souveneir. I thought it was neat.)

We got to look at this dumb exhibit on the history of coins. Actually, it was pretty cool, but dumb compared to blue man group.

(editing note: Educational fact of the day - coins were historically made through casts or stamps, aka mints. Casts, like in China, allowed for much faster coinage but wasted more metal. I thought it was nifty how historical coins could be like giant plates, or really really thin. Or really really weird, like shell shaped coins, or giant stone coins.)

and we got to look at their shitload of gold they kept in the basement that made me flip out. I was like.. "goooollld! goolllld!!!" cuz like ONE bar was worth like several million dollars you know? I scratched some bars with my nails but it just broke my nails. cuz the VP dude was joking "you should scratch the bars with your nails and see if you can get gold dust" and I thought it was worth a try. But gold's not as soft as it's all cracked up to be. anyhow, they're really accurate in weighing the things anyhow.

(editing note: I was actually fairly numb to all the gold initially when we went five stories down from ground level to the basement, because it just looked like so many piles of shiny yellow bricks it didn't really register. I actually thought it looked kind of fake, though I knew it was real... but I could reach through the metal grate and touch it, which is when I flipped out.)

shpachee: LOL that's awesome. so how much gold was there really? you know gold is soft, meaning it's bendable

SFX 87: hum. More than Fort Knox. But it's not all our gold see. A lot of it belongs to other countries. yeah. but not softer than my fingernails unfortunately

shpachee: not that it's gonna scratch off

SFX 87: right. the dudes who work there have to wear these magnesium shoes so if they drop the gold while they're transporting it they don't like.. break their toes. "AUGH MY FOOT!"

(editing note: Magnesium! Lighter than aluminum, stronger than steel... better than mithril, and burns dramatically... *notescribble*.. v. good fantasy metal. Shall be, in fiction, forging magic swords out of it real soon. I also thought it would suck to work in the Fed vault.. I mean, you spend all your time handling gazillions of dollars and then you go home every Friday with your minimum wage check.)

SFX 87: Also. The door to the vault is 8 feet thick steel. I was wondering how they'd do that.

(editing note: I was contemplating to Andrew the idea of seperated shifting plates, since he'd brought up that 8 feet of steel is impossible to manipulate all at once, and must be made of plates fused together. Funner idea: seperated shifting plates that open vertically... so that when the vault door closes, it slams into the ground like a portcullis. Pity the man trapped under that.)

But what it was was.. it was this giant metal cylinder with a passage through it. So to let people through they'd rotate the cylinder so that the passage would match up between the door leading into the vault and the door leading out.

(/end convo)

Ingenious. So, how was my day?

To begin again...

It started with a long, four hour busride, sitting with Rob watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark (which traumatized me as a kid with the melting-skull-Nazi). He industriously finished Farewell to Arms. It did not prevent him from asking finicky questions like, "Why are the snakes still alive in the pit after having been buried for the last 3000 years?" I suggested reproduction and then subsequent cannabalism, but anyhow. Raiders. Good movie. Bad Nazis. We drove past Ground Zero. I had thought it was a parking lot until it was pointed out, so there wasn't as much emotional impact as I thought there would be. We had a very rushed lunch at Southstreet Seaport, very much like Baltimore's, and were sent out into the driving snow along Wall Street, humming the Indiana Jones theme around Andrew who had the misfortune of wearing an Indie hat. It was a dumb joke that would last both days.

Up north, snow was aggressive and stung our faces. It was very angry snow and it hurt. After hitting the Fed, we invaded a Starbucks, then Trinity Church, a beautiful, peaceful place that was once the tallest building in New York, though now it's dwarfed by other things. Both Lizzie and I remembered it from Time and Again, and I from my eighth grade New York trip. Going inside and looking up between the tree-like columns (a throwback to paganism, Andrew noted, apologizing in advance for blasphemy) made it feel like the tallest building again. We looked at baptismal fonts, stained glass, chapels and statuary, all under an aegis of serenity. Outside, there were old, snow-dusted gravestones we could hardly read ("Here Lies William... who?") through the bars of the fence (the graveyard was closed to visitors). We were late to meet up with the rest of the groups because we'd misheard the times so they were mad at us for making them wait in the cold. It was the only time church has ever made me late for anything.

We took the metro (subway) to Grenwich Village, trekking through slush. No one was in the mood for shopping, so we dived into the NYU law school bookstore to do some reading and were quickly bored. We plopped down at a cafe down the street the clerk recommended and camped there, reading the Times for about an hour before dinner.

Dinner at the Times Cafe (elsewhere). A very calm.. relaxing.. BIG.. (too much) dinner with an entire group of friends. (Malex, Andrew, Rob, Sarah G, Karina, Lizzie). We took two hours. It was very nice, and something I think we ought to do more often.

Then.. Blue Man Group... then.. the hotel, a shower, Rob telling me that everyone in his room was busy getting ready for bed and to please stop harassing him at night, me rooming with random people who wouldn't shut up and let me (or the people next door) sleep, and then bed, and then unconsciousness.

Good night, good night. Sweet dreams to the sound of traffic.

At dinner last night, my sister (Stella) announced that she's expecting. Woohoo! I'm gonna be an aunt in September!