Come Again

I asked Jeremy once why he was so good to me, because he has asked the same question of me. I have not been able to answer that question to my satisfaction, so I really should not demand the same of him, especially when it gets so close to that infamous, tricky, "Why do you love me?" patch of thorns that girls present to their men so often. I could not resist the temptation once and asked anyway.

He said, "Because you're you," which I think is a logically unsound statement. Of course I am myself.... A is A, and therefore cannot be Not A. If his answer were "Because you're me," then I would be concerned.

The Men in the White Coats Have Come to Take Me Away

Epee is beautiful.

Jeremy is beautiful when he fences epee.

Good fencers, when they fence, have conversations with each other through their actions. Jeremy is quiet. He is low on bravado and spare in his movements. When he moves he does it with a great degree of precision, which in its own way can be described as beauty.

All my friends are having messy breakups.

Shit + fan.

I wonder how long I will last.

I made a giant cardboard anime sweatdrop, which can be held up on a stick.

This is step one in my plan of reducing all my emotions to cardboard props, like question marks and @__@ eyes, soon to eliminate the need for me to have any facial expression whatsoever.

Also joined UMBC's Writers' Guild.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo! Trying to write a 175 page novel in the month of November!

Being that I essentially live at Erickson with Jeremy in the lap of luxury (well... the armpit of luxury, this being a boys' suite), when I came back to Chesapeake I looked around at my room and was like "What kind of shithole do I live in?"

I cleaned up a bit, so now it looks better.

You Know You're An Ancient Studies Dork When

You're playing Scattergories... the letter is H, the subject is 'People in Uniform'... and three people in your game simultaneously come up with: Hoplites.

Went to Rennfest yesterday, and had shitloads of fun though I was less impressed this year. I think last year, when I went for the first time, I had this "Ooh, look at all these people putting so much time into so much stuff" feeling that wore off this year, but it was still pretty cool. Basically spent the time watching really campy stage fighting (fencing has really ruined that kind of stuff for me though since I get to see real bouts twice a week) and dragging Jeremy around, trying on ridiculous clothing.

He got four hours of watching me struggle to breathe and having my ribs crushed by metal girders in different corsets/bodices (fun) and I got to drag a jerkin over his head and also doll him up in various big floppy (pink, feathered) cavalier hats. Plus, he got to play with swords and bought a pair of psi's.

Some strange episode to tell about: for some reason, we both knelt when they announced, "God save the Queen!" as "Anne Boleyn" passed, after watching the entire entourage as one get on their knees. I wasn't in garb and I wasn't being paid so I don't see why I, for no reason at all, got on my knees for someone who is, if you think about it, most likely a middle-aged English teacher living with her husband, two kids and a dog in suburban Maryland. Afterwards I was a bit bewildered and asked Jeremy, "Why did we just bow?" and he said, "Because she's the queen" and I said, "The queen of the Renaissance Festival!!" and felt a bit stupid. Jeremy said that is what you're supposed to do, but I felt a bit weird about bowing to a theme park princess. I suppose people will go to any lengths to find leader figures to bow to just because they appeal to something romantic and reassuring. People want to be led, and though roleplaying is just for entertainment of course and requires some degree of suspension of disbelief, it did make me wonder about how easily my knees were willing to give.

You know...

when your mom says, "You and I grew up in different worlds; you have to realize that you can't just stop doing things because you don't like them. No matter what you do you have to work hard. You don't realize how lucky you are! You're young and have to take your future into account. What kind of job are you going to get? You'll see how the world really is when you're struggling to pay the bills and the taxes and can't find a job, and then you'll see how much you "enjoy" your field! But fine, do whatever you like. We'll support you no matter what you do" is not very supportive.

You know, mom, why I never call you? Because I already know what you're going to say to me ahead of time! You say you want me to call so I can tell you about my life but if you want me to talk to you so much how come you never listen?

-_-

Anyway.

Plans for the future.. getting feedback in young fantasy writer's workshop, going to edit, revise, put in standard manuscript form, and send my short story to various fantasy magazines, wait for 8-12 weeks, and no doubt get rejected. Teehee... me vs. "Realms of Fantasy" (competitive as hell!) Five cents per word, baby! It will be comical how I get thrown out on my butt. ("You expect us to pay $200 for this shit???") Still, should be good experience. I think I'm good enough to get into small press and webzines though, and other things that pay like 1 cent a word, or less, or a flat rate. That's what.. $40... and recognition, and things to put on my cover sheet next time I submit.

More plans for the future; Hey, dudes. I live what... a Metro ride away from the Smithsonian? That's like.. the best collection of prestigious museums in this country. I'm sure at least one of them can have a use for unskilled/semi-skilled labor this summer. I figure that "two years American archaeology with Maryland Park Service" could look pretty okay on a resume (though this is just BS for "RM Archaeology club") as well as whatever courses, including "Introduction to Greek Archaeology" that I'll have taken this year. I could realistically get a job filing and cataloguing some old shit, or moving it, or setting stuff up, or taking it down. I figure that if I get some job experience during college it'll help me with the infamously difficult search for jobs by Ancient Studies majors..

Grandiose acts of stupidity

You know that I never go to econ. Why? Because I took it last year, and this year all we do is listen to the professor lecture from the powerpoint slides, which are online anyways. Since I took econ already, it's not like I need an hour and fifteen minutes of him explaining the slides, especially after math on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He never gives regular homework, the syllabus doesn't even say what we're doing each day... so I never went, especially with other things going on.

You can see where this is leading.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I missed my exam.

Bravo.

I get to make it up, thankfully, but I'm really pissed off at myself.

I need a 3.25 GPA to keep my scholarship. What is that? Two A's and three B's, with all five classes? I, thankfully, can do this thing called "audit" in which I have one class count for credit but not count for GPA or graduation requirements, and that'll work well for econ if I should need it, considering that I've already placed out of it with my AP exams anyway. Kay says, in a supportive manner, that audit just means, "I'm here at this class to listen, but don't want it to count against me." But still, other classes won't be as forgiving. Look a biology which is easy but where I lose points over stupid things (anti A serum means it has no A blood cells,... absence of midigital hair is recessive.. shit.. fuckers.. ) and accounting where my accounts never seem to balance and linear algebra for which the homework is graded on correctness not completeness so that so far my grade (with two homework assignments each worth 30 points) is a very non-A, non-B, 70% (and what will I do on tests where I'm timed and can't use the book hm?) and unlike calculus I have no idea in hell what any of this is used for. The only thing I'm doing well in is Archaeology which I'm acing with nearly 100% I believe. It's a scholarship for everything, and I suddenly realized how desperately I don't want to lose it. My family is knee deep in debt; I'm not sure I could afford to go here without it and even if I could they'd never forgive me.

I don't want to go.
This is my home I don't want to be evicted I don't want to leave and even if I go back to Rockville (don't go back) what would be left for me there except for a family whose disappointment in me would be worse than anger?

But what's left for me here the way I'm going except for a mediocre life? I have been fortunate enough to know people who love econ with a passion, who dream up demand curves and tear through the Wall Street Journal like the latest Harry Potter, who read Wealth of Nations for fun. I have known you and I am not you. I'm just a mediocre mind. Someday I'm going to wake up at my desk in my cubicle at my 9 to five job with my mug of coffee with a stack of ledgers on my desk going What the hell did I do in the last twenty years?

I know what I want.

I want to major in Ancient Studies, I want to write.

English classes of course make me puke, so the latter is basically out of question, except maybe if I can find some writing workshop courses or something to pad my schedule when I find the time.

Reasoning for the former is very simple: I enjoy it; it excites me, it makes me want to get up in the morning. Additonally I'm good at it, I have experience in it. While I'll only be a pretty shitty economist, I think as a.. um.. Ancient Studyist I'll be damn good. When Jeremy studies for his test I already know all the answers without having taken the course. I've (all for fun, btw): been to Greece, taken a college level etymologies course, done archaeology with the Maryland Park Service (okay, school... but technically it still is MPS, Andrew ^__^) for the last two years, read the Illiad, Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy, her Theseus duology, the Nature of Alexander, literally every article in Electronic Library about Alexander the Great, gone through every single National Geographic since 1990 for articles on Greece/Egypt, and just read a ton of nonfiction books in general.

So what if I can't get a job? I won't be able to get a job if I keep sucking wang like this in econ and lose my scholarship anyway.

Girl (and Boy) Interrupted

Me and Jeremy have been interrupted in the middle of things by:

-Ryan ... Quote Upon Entering: "I'm leaving. You can have the room to yourselves."

-Niall ... Quote Upon Entering: "Oh my God! I'm sorry!"/ "I just walked in on the act of procreation!"

-Kay .... Quote Upon Entering: "Jeremy, are you okay- I'm sorry! I thought you were sick!"

-Casey ... Quote Upon Entering: "Are you decent? I can come back later!"

-Jeremy's parents via phone .... Quote Upon Entering: "Hello? We're downstairs."

-Chesapeake dorm, fire alarm

Like cowboys with quickdraw, I have developed the skill of putting on my clothes really really fast.

Interesting Developments

Emotionally, anyways.

Today was marked, in the world of Jeremy and Angie, among other things, by great tenderness as well as quiet, noncommunicative states of angst in encapsulating bubbles.

Fencing, as usual, is therapeautic.

Please Be Gentle

So Friday was D&D. Jeremy's character kicked the bucket. It didn't matter very much; he just made another one. Tabletop RPing is kind of weird to me in how easy it is to just be like, "Oh, my character's dead, whatever." I would think I'd get attached to them.

The majority of Saturday was spent doing things that are none of your business. The other part was spent watching Jeremy play Warcraft III, which of course invites a bunch of Malex-esque jokes like, "Your momma was on reduced difficulty last night!" Talked, kind of, to Lori, and Andrew D and Will visiting from William and Mary, and Caitlin B, the face that launched a thousand minivans. Apparently her face launched Will's thousand minivans, because she always seems to dress up for him, and he is falling for her like a brick.

Also watched Jose and his roommate Brian lose badly at Jedi Knight, while reading a short story Jose wrote in high school for English class. He is, self-admittedly, an engineer and not a good writer, but wants to adapt his story into a White Wolf campaign. It has very good concepts, but in execution reminded me of the type of cringe-worthy story I used to write in middle and high school. I instantaneously generated a piece of advice for future English students. Never ever ever write anything in the epic fantasy/horror genre for a short story assignment. Write a happy story about the first time you learned to bike, or some other sentimental life-is-short style tripe. If I ever become an English teacher, which I will not, and I have to end up reading some student's appendicied Gothica or anything like what I used to churn out in seventh grade, I am going to shoot myself, with a blunt spoon.

Jose's story, however, provides such unintentionally comical lines as, "Kali threw her throwing knives at the demon" and "The demon looked like a dog with ivory horns" (... a dog.. with.. ivory?? ... *headexplodey*) which make me crack up at totally wrong moments just thinking about them. Something else that cracks me up is, "Hello, fallows, I'm Mr. Shmallow!" which is not in the story but is funny for no reason whatsoever. It's something Jeremy's friends quote all the time, most probably from Homestar Runner though I wouldn't know. I'm getting on with Jeremy's friends okay, though I don't know what they think of me. I'd introduce them all by name here but I'm lazy. Anyway, I have a suspicion that Jose was annoyed with me bursting out in fits of laughter over his story at inappropriate parts, but (he said, anyway) he was glad I enjoyed it.

Jose, I'm sorry.

It's still funny.

I ran back to my dorm to grab my toothbrush and play Zelda Ocarina of Time for literally 15 minutes, if only on the principle that I should not live with Jeremy 24/7.. therefore he gets 23:45/7. I stayed with Jeremy overnight. It was a really bizarre thing to wake up to. I opened my eyes and I was in his possessed Dionysian deathgrip holding me to him rather convulsively. Some hand was up my shirt or trying to get up it, a window was open and letting in an autumn draft and insect sounds, and I was like where the hell am I? (No, he was not drunk. No, we did not fuck. I give these disclaimers not because I imminently expect these things to happen, but because I expect that some of the nosier of you will feel like asking.)

Anyway, I was a bit disturbed and woke Jeremy from his demonic half-sleep. We got out of bed, got back into bed, spent the rest of the morning in an aura of warm and sunny entropy in a cocoon of green bedsheets. We were interrupted via the phone when Jeremy's parents said they were downstairs, so we put our clothes back on and went to meet them, and it was passing strange. You know that feeling you get being the only outsider in someone else's family? Well, that was that, literally. It was.. Jeremy's mom, dad, sister, dog.. and then me. They were like, "So, Jeremy, who's your friend?" and "Are you from China?" and I kept getting (not really appropriately since it was nothing like that) flashbacks of Ian's family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

Jeremy, I imagine, has this little invisible knob attached to maybe the back of his neck or something, like a tuning peg. When he is in the same room as his family, something turns that little knob, and, visible only to me, his composure becomes just a little tighter, a little closed, a little more cold and a little more controlled.

But around me he is different.

Wherein Angie hung out with guys in Jeremy's D&D group and pulled the skin off their nuts

-Mike boiled some acorns and we peeled them. He will boil them again and then bake them and coat them in brown sugar. In the meantime, we played the Captain Park's Imaginary Polar Expedition, another fine Cheapass Games product.

-Being that I am spending every waking moment either in class, doing homework, calling my parents to tell them what I'm doing, or with Jeremy, I have neither the time nor inclination to blog, as it seems increasingly irrelevant. (Time Spent With Jeremy can usually be divided into subsets of Talking, Walking, Eating, Following Him Around, Being Draped Over One Another, Romantic Interludes, and Stabbing Each Other, which is therapeautic) I apologize for the brevity of everything. The blog has been not a very private place but I think it shall become increasingly moreso, especially regarding him. It is not that he is not important, because he is most important to me, it is just that there is not very much you "need to know." Suffice to say that my mood is not anything like it has been in the last month of this strange place known as college. I feel much better.

I believe Andrew D and Lori demand a place in my blog. Yes. I saw them on Tuesday. I am mentioned in perhaps a sentence of their blogs; therefore, they get a sentence in mine. I apologize for ignoring you (Lori especially) but will continue to do so.

Fun fact: Jeremy can fart on demand. He uses this dubious ability to punctuate arguments.

He also uses the word lightning bug instead of firefly. Like Lauren. And my roommate.

I got to see my nephew today. He looks just like me when I was a baby, and is soft and squishy.

Romantic Interlude, or Something Like It

On Friday, we got back to UMBC at around five and went to play Sid Meier's Civilization, the board game. Or rather, Jeremy played with a bunch of his friends at the Erickson lounge and I gave him back rubs, or as Jose said, "Immoral support." It's a lot like Settlers of Cattan. It was fun for the first four hours or so. We went and got dinner. We came back and played more Civ, and went on until 10 at night, unfortunately, because Civ is the Ring Cycle of board games.

Then we went to Jeremy's suite to play D&D 3rd edition, and it took a while rolling up characters for all the new people. I'm a halfling barbarian, just so you know. Jose and Eric IV (one of our many fencers named Eric) went down to get food, which left me and Jeremy alone in his room. We weren't too loud about it. After about fifteen minutes, Niall, in the other room with Mike, said "Where's Jeremy?" so I closed the door, for a reason. Niall came and opened it. I screamed, Niall yelled, "I'm sorry!", bolted out of the room terrified, and me and Jeremy fell over laughing like crazy. We went into the common room, still laughing like crazy... apparently Niall and Mike had both fled. There was a knock on that door, and Eric IV and Jose returned with their food, and Niall and Mike with them, and when they saw me and Jeremy laughing like crazy they starting laughing like crazy and Eric IV and Jose thought we were insane.

And then we started roleplaying.

This is our campaign story...

My character and Eric IV's character work at this shitty ass bar at a shitty ass fishing town that smells like rotting fish and rotting driftwood all the time, and the people are mean, saying things like "Buy somethin' or giddout!" (all NPC accents hilariously courtesty of our kickass DM, Mike). Anyway, we meet up with the party. They have to travel to this town called Pina (as in, Colada) in the area, and Eric IV's character knows where it is, so we volunteer to take them to it. We cross this plain, and are attacked by a sphinx, and we kill it. We're crossing this desert when we see this turbaned NPC (middle eastern accent: "A thousand gods be thanked!" "No, Mike, that's Indian" "Okay, he's Indian then") half buried in a sand pit and screaming for help. We try to help him, but the sand slides in, and he falls into a hole in the sand, like an hour glass. We follow him, and end up in a cavern. We go to a door, which leads to a ledge supported by pillars over a giant pit, with many Egyptian acolyte types in white robes doing repetitive tasks.

Some people climb or fly or fall into the pit from the ledge. We do our will saves. To those who don't fail it, the acolytes suddenly appear to be undead. Kay ("I cast magic missile... into the darkness"), the other halfling in our party, whose favored enemy is the undead, and has a wisdom of like.. 2... goes berserk and starts attacking them. Jeremy's character, who is a hot semi-evil necromancer chick (cuz it's Jeremy), goes berserk on Kay, yelling, "No!!! My friends!!" or something psycho like that. Jose's character, a cleric, begins turning the undead. Jeremy's character is now raging pissed. Niall's character descends some stairs and leaves the room.

Okay, paraphrasing and artistic liberty to follow but:

Necromancer: You have one warning. Stop your unprovoked attack of innocents or your life is forfeit.

Cleric: Innocents?? They are innocents, who are forced into eternal servitude, and I am sending them back to where they belong as is the way of my god. Turn undead!

Jeremy's char attacks Jose's char, and it seems like the beginning of some party killing. Suddenly, there's a rumbling sound, and a huge current of water sweeps in from an opened flood gate, and begins flushing the necromancer and all the undead ("Jeremy, you are now swimming in zombies!") to the other side. The necromancer manages to cling to the wall as the zombies are washed away around him. Kay, being a loyal friend, and halfling with a wisdom of 2... jumps into the water and tries to save the necromancer, despite her absolute rage at him for killing the undead just a few moments earlier. Kay manages to grab onto the necromancer and keep her from being swept away, and the water recedes. The halfling has just saved the necromancer's life, so she considers the debt even.

In the meantime, Niall's char is in another room, when he hears the rushing sound of water behind him. He flees down the stairwell into another chamber, where there is a mummy on a throne. The mummy demands, in the DM's fantastic dessicated mummy voice, "Where are my servants?!" Right on cue, two undead surf the floodwaters into the room, deposited at Niall's feet. The mummy screams, "What have you done??" as the water engulfs it, and Niall's char is caught up in the water as well. In the 10 foot high room, the water level continues to rise, the mummy and Niall struggle to cling to the wall, the mummy is becoming soggy and unravelled and disintegrating in the water. The mummy grabs a lever by the throne... a hole opens in the ground... the mummy clings onto the lever, but is overcome and is flushed into the hole with Niall. They're in this drain pipe thing, and the mummy manages to grab onto the side, when Niall slams into it, causing the mummy to pinwheel down this tube into oblivion. Fortunately, Niall takes the opportunity to grab the sides of the drain, but he's unable to breathe, and the water gushes around him. He claws his way out of the tube, five feet each round, and is nearly comatose by the time he gets out.

Back in the first room, Jose's cleric and Jeremy's necromancer have a murderous "difference of alignment." Kay makes a bet with Eric IV's character (being the rogues that they are) that the necromancer will win the duel, and then me and Kay and Niall go to the throne room, and climb down the now dry hole in the ground. After all, Niall must find his new friend, the mummy. In the meantime the cleric and the necromancer duel, in a hissy catfight of magic users, in which they mostly miss each other because they're spellcasters standing what, two feet away from each other? Then the cleric casts bind evil. In this time, the DM has determined.. Jeremy's character is no longer neutral chaotic, by her actions. She's just plain sick.

However, bind evil fails, and the characters pull out their melee weapons, and procede to give each other smackdowns. Jeremy is doing badly, because he's getting unusually bad rolls (and he's cursing up a storm: "Jesus fucking shit!") and Jose, who is usually cursed with bad rolls, rolls well. However, Jeremy wins after his bad roll streak ends, because he's just sexy like that (seriously) and goes to finish off the cleric.

Eric IV's character draws his bow, aiming an arrow at the necromancer's head and yells, "Hold!" In the meantime, the cleric heals himself and then slumps down, exhausted. The necromancer pins the cleric to the ground with her staff, and says, quietly, "I will spare your life, but first you must concede that you, as pronounced in the verdict of divine trial by combat, have been shown by your god to have sinned." The cleric refuses to acknowledge that his unprovoked turning of "innocent" undead was morally wrong. Seething, the necromancer lets him up anyway (being that there's kind of an arrow aimed at her head). They are not on speaking terms, getting on like a block of ice, and there is no doubt they will try to kill each other again.

This is where our session ends... and there is this sudden release of tension, and the rest of us who have been watching the duel applaud. Jose and Jeremy, the real people, not the characters, continue yelling at each other, arguing the theology involved in killing undead.

I like watching Jeremy when he's angry/intense. There's nothing sexier than a guy who plays D&D well, especially the roleplaying aspects. The fact that Jeremy can in all seriousness persuasively roleplay as a necromancer chick, speaking her dialogue and everything, and actually hold his ground and have no one laugh at him, attests to his roleplaying abilities. Also, I like watching him kick ass. That's my boy!

Activity of the Soul

So yesterday, I went with Jeremy for a walk. Around us on campus, streams surged high and clear, and trees had been snapped like toothpicks, sometimes still connected to their stumps by a sliver of wood, and their soft damp heartwood showed bright against the black bark. I was reminded of UMCP around this time of year... two years ago. We walked around the pond that I showed Lori, previously brown and murky and filmy, but this time the water was high, almost overflowing its embankment, and grey and smooth almost like a mirror, casting the distorted reflection of trees on the surface of the water. Small branches and leaves were littered all over the dirt path, drying the mud, and I walked with Jeremy a bit of a ways until we were blocked by a fallen tree that had not been there before. So strangely enough, the pond is more beautiful after it storms.

We walked through the suburbs outside UMBC, and all the way to central Arbutus, MD, a small town with a main street, and stores around it. It felt old fashioned and quiet... not picturesque old fashioned and quiet, but in another way. In the residential areas the houses each look different, all different colors and designs, not like our Rockville Levittstown. The stores had handpainted signs and were small and dark, and there was a store that sold records still, and the comic book store had 50 cent Flash Gordon issues and Star Wars gear from the 70s and nothing wrapped in plastic. The proprietor apologized to us; most of the stores were closed, due to flooding, or power failure, or a combination of both. Jeremy noticed there was a High's, a chain of dairy store that had closed down around his area; we went inside out of curiosity, and it was very much like the camp store at Rocky Gap; a store that wasn't very commercialized, wasn't very hip, but sells what you need. Around somewhere, a firearms store in the basement of a building, the door covered by a rusty grille, was closed. We walked under a vehicular bridge and a railway bridge past the black swastikas and 'KKK' scrawled on the concrete walls and I held hands with an Aryan boy, but we are in the 21st century anyway and everyone has the right to love. I am a little bit paranoid but I can't imagine how people used to live like that all the time. Anyway, I'm just a wee careful who sees me with Jeremy walking down the street, and it is not a big deal, and if Malex can live with it regarding boyfriends, then so can I.

Down by the end of the railway bridge someone else had struck an anti sign across the swastika and scribbled 'sucks' under the 'KKK.'

We talked a lot, mostly about our lives at home, and I was happy when I was with him.

--

I couldn't sleep at night after D&D, so I went on a walk with Jose around the campus since he makes it a point of honor not to let a woman walk in the dark by herself. We went around and around, our campus being enclosed by a giant circle of asphalt, and the power went out briefly at around six in the morning, and the streetlamps blinked out so that we could see the sky grow light in the east. We went around and around and my legs would not rest because my heart would not rest. We talked about Jeremy mostly, with my thoughts buzzing around in my head and bouncing off the inside of my skull, but what's said in the night stays in the night. We watched the sun rise from Sus balcony, and the sky went pink with the coming of the day, and I thought that of all the people in the world and all their little sadnesses, being in love in itself is a minor miracle however long it may last, and all the nighttime thoughts melted under the brightening sky.

To Mike/Malex

I didn't fuck him, you moron!

Wherein Angie Loses Power

At 11:47 PM on Thursday night, Angie was typing her blog. "Oh my God," I heard from down the hall, "Look at the window!" I hit post and publish, got out of my room and went to look at the window at the end of the hall, which was streaked with rain, and whistling, thundering and vibrating. A large puddle seeped through the carpet under it, which of course unwary people exiting from the stairwell stepped obliviously into, a second before people thought to say, "Don't step in the- damn." A few moments later, the lights in the hallway fizzed out, followed of course by girly screams of horror. There was a strong hum, and the lights came back on, and we all sighed either in relief or disappointment, and then we were abruptly plunged into darkness again, followed by more girly screams of horror. For several minutes, we were in a state of blind confusion (which may be worse in a dorm because you're stuck with all these people in the absolute darkness) before people began fumbling for flashlights, which swung their beams around through the cinderblock halls like miners' lamps. My room was lit up by my laptop. I tried to blog again and AIM people, but ResNet (the UMBC network) had crashed of course with the rest of the campus' power, so all I had was one battery powered laptop with no net connection. In retrospect I am glad that someone called out to me about the window; I had published my blog not thirty seconds before the blackout (and the post below would have been a bitch to rewrite).

I turned off my laptop, turned off my power grid, and begged Melissa to borrow her flashlight, which I used to fumble around looking for my cell phone, my wallet, and my roommate's flashlight, the location of which she helpfully did not tell me before leaving for the Eastern Shore. I rummaged through her stuff and found it though. (Moral scruples, boo hiss) In the lounge, people were collecting to play Murder, which I supposed was Mafia/Werewolf with another name. I think it's well established that I hate that game, so I left, called my parents (who were living by candlelight in Rockville) and called Lori, who was quite comfortable playing cards at Erickson second east, and Jeremy at four north. He was going for a walk and said he would meet me outside of Erickson, so I went to look for him.

I went downstairs, where a dozen people with shirts emblazoned with "Baltimore Co. Fire Department" in block letters stood around in a huddle. Outside was lighter than in, the night sky lit bright crimson, and sirens flared and the blue and red lights of a fire truck in front of Erickson circled my head, and in the glare of a dozen headlights I lost my night vision. The rain was gone, but the wind stronger than before. I went around to various exits and whenever I saw human figures I shined the flashlight at their faces, which did not help me recognize them. Over by the Pit a dark mass cheered as they slid around in the mud and more people streamed out of the buildings as those got increasingly more stuffy and cramped. I gave up hope on identifying any one person and people began breaking up the crowd and sending us back to our respective dorms.

I went into Kirsten and Alice's room (girls on my hall)... Andrew (introduced in Wednesday, September 10 blog) and his friend Neil were there also, though they said that IDs were being enforced now more than ever. We raided the warming fridge and had a Melting Ice Cream party, but we couldn't finish it all and I distributed the rest of the cookies n' cream to a ravenous pack of people down the hall.

In my room I peered out the window and shined my flashlight out of it; across the courtyard from me in Harbor Hall someone swung a beam of light straight into my eyes and lit their window pane in flashes of amateur Morse code. I illuminated people still walking throught the courtyard below, who arced their lights up at my window to answer me. I figured all of this back and forth was a good way to go blind. I went into the dark (though not quite so dark with the blinds pulled up) and went to sleep and had girly dreams, and was woken up at 7 AM by all the ice cream in my stomach, and the strange fact that a flourescent light was on in my room at seven in the morning.

Our power was back, but there is no school today.