saturday, may 13

•••    well. I survived. and I have come to appreciate quarters like never before.
11:33 PM +

•••    wow. get impatient with the weather gods and they'll knock out your power.

gorgeous lightning, though.
9:03 PM +

•••    okay, it's after 8:30. where are my extreme thunderstorms?!
8:30 PM +

•••    robots scare me.
7:59 PM +

•••    am I the only person who just doesn't get this ureach thing? I don't understand the appeal of calling someone when you have much more convenient venues of communication - like email. of course, part of the reason I think that is because I'm very phone-shy; I thought of lots of words for raza but I couldn't make myself actually call the number. still, I really want to know: why do so many people have and use these things? is it just for the novelty of hearing someone's voice instead of reading their words? can someone enlighten me?
7:28 PM +

•••    well. all my stuff is in storage. for the next twenty or so hours I get to live in an empty room with nothing but my computer, a bunch of dirty clothes, and a stack of books and cds. woo.
3:23 PM +

•••    scary animal fact of the day: the blue-ringed octopus is the size of a golf ball but has enough poison to kill 26 people . . . or to kill one person 26 times, I suppose. (even without the poison thing, they get points for being the size of a golf ball. that's almost as good as the thumb-sized primates.)
2:35 PM +

•••    packing tip of the day: never lend out your tape and rubber bands to the rest of the hall before you get a chance to use them yourself. people who tell you they only want to seal up a couple boxes really mean they want to seal up a couple dozen.

of course, considereing all the cool stuff you can do with common household junk, I don't know why you'd ever want to use tape for something as banal as packing.
2:23 PM +

•••    weirdness of the day: as I was walking to breakfast this morning, I saw a little woman with long, flowing silver hair come stumbling out from behind the frat house. it was definitely a double-take moment.
11:51 AM +

•••    HEY! how did the sky get blue again? I haven't gone to bed yet!
5:23 AM +

•••    if I could be anyone for two minutes (a la john malkovich), it would be this guy. yow.
3:52 AM +

•••    I have 2001 playing next to me. I do so love this movie. hal is about to start singing. . . aw. sad.
(I can't believe it's been almost seven years since I read the book. how did I get so old?)
2:30 AM +

•••    so, I'm packing and trying to get all the stuff off my ceiling (most of it glows in the dark, if you hadn't guessed), but the ceilings here are disgusting so now it's kind of raining plaster in my room. yuck.
1:44 AM +

friday, may 12

•••    I took my last final
I turned in all my papers
I am DONE WITH SCHOOL!!
10:12 PM +

•••    :P

(see :)
6:45 PM +

•••    my tongue is blue! :D
6:44 PM +

•••    ooh! check out the supernova!
6:07 PM +

•••    is this a confessional? I didn't think it was, but then I also didn't think I was an exhibitionist. ;) (via blogger, por supuesto.)
5:33 PM +

•••    my reward for finally finishing all my papers: a new cd. yay. it's been way too long since I actually bought a cd . . . the market here is pathetic compared to boston. (by the way, sixteen feet are even better live. of course, swatties already know that, so why I am I posting it? I have no idea.)
5:11 PM +

•••    my mother used to say she thought I should be a musicologist. if only she knew what I just did to debussy...
4:58 PM +

•••    my poor computer. first it chokes on all the french in my paper ("la soirée dans grenade" at the moment), and then blogger gives it a decode thread killing error. :P
anyway, I'm working, really.
2:00 PM +

•••    I went looking for some motivation, because right now I don't have any to write my paper. I was amused by the items on this checklist - and I think I found the source of my problem: high school habits! it's inescapable. high school screws everyone up.
8:44 AM +

•••    now my RA is gone too! everyone's leaving.
(this is making it very difficult to be productive.)
8:37 AM +

•••    it is too dark and rainy and empty around here to be up this early. it's making me depressed.
6:22 AM +

•••    I know it's wrong of me, but I feel there is something very incongruous about the idea that someone with such a square head could write such transparent, delicate music.
1:23 AM +

thursday, may 11

•••    my roommate just left. it looks so strange in here - one side of the room is completely bare, and the other side is postered and cluttered and lived-in. it feels like half a jail cell. and it echoes. and my roommate is gone!! I don't like it. :P
8:44 PM +

•••    okay - WHAT is blogger doing?!
7:59 PM +

•••    wow - someone actually read that whole long post about lightning. :)
7:56 PM +

•••    um. I am perfectly happy with swarthmore where it is, but philadelphia is not "the quintessential college town." that would be boston - with a little help from cambridge.
(upenn suckup site via raza.)
7:20 PM +

•••    yeah, dark matter! score another one for einstein!
6:03 PM +

•••    it took five tries before I came up with something that could be guessed in twenty questions. but thanks to me, now it knows that the andromeda galaxy does not have eight legs. :P
4:37 PM +

•••    I just finished a six hour final exam. six hours! SIX! and now I have to write a paper for the SAME CLASS! ahhhh!!
3:25 PM +

•••    somewhere over the rainbow is a new blog/journal by a fourteen-year-old. she says in her about page that she wants to be a writer, but she doubts it will ever happen. I beg to differ - and I hope she's wrong, because from the little I've read, I think she'd be an excellent writer. (not that she isn't already.)
8:28 AM +

•••    it is not even one o'clock yet - I should not be this tired. guh.
12:16 AM +

wednesday, may 10

•••    I just love this domain name.
8:56 PM +

•••    meghan: "Am I the only woman on the planet who bought a Mach 3 specifically because I did NOT want a sparkly glittery pink handle? "

well, I bought mine because more blades = less irritation and I have ridiculously sensitive skin . . . but the lack of dumbass colors was definitely a plus.
(via vanessa)
8:46 PM +

•••    made me smile. :)
8:18 PM +

•••    I accidentally got bengay all over my arm, and now I can barely feel it. what I can feel I wish I didn't, because it feels like I have my arm stuck in a tub of liquid nitrogen. :P
8:03 PM +

•••    so, this has turned into a very exciting evening. my roommate and I took some stuff to put into locked storage, which is in a dorm on the other side of campus. there was all sorts of ominous distant thunder, and we were worried about our stuff getting wet while we were waiting in line to sign it in. my roommate went back to our dorm to get cold weather clothing, because the temperature had dropped about twenty degrees, so I was left in charge of the stuff.

I was the next person in line, standing outside the door, when it started pouring. I dragged all our boxes inside . . . and immediately the power went out. So I was standing inside the basement storage room in pitch blackness, and from the light coming through the doorway I could make out something written on the wall in sloppy red spray paint. I couldn't quite read the words. It was straight out of a cheesy horror movie.

(eventually the lights came on and I saw that the wall said "DO NOT WRITE IN SHADED AREAS," which was a bit anticlimactic. apparently they thought we couldn't figure that out even though it was written all over the storage receipt form.)

once I had signed in the stuff and the rain had let up, I decided I would try to make the dash back across campus. No sooner had I gotten on to the wide open baseball field than there was a simultaneous, deafening, blinding thunder and lightning crash. the hair on my arms prickled. I was sure I was going to be struck by lightning, zapped and fried two days before the end of my freshman year in college.

(I wasn't. but it was a good adrenaline rush.)
7:21 PM +

•••    3998 words, spellchecked, edited, and turned in. cognitive science is DONE! woo! :)
4:59 PM +

•••    rain, heatbreak, and a paycheck - all in the course of five minutes! gotta love it.
(1163 words)
1:11 PM +

•••    11:33 am
airplane fray post
12:30 lunch date
889 words in my paper, due in less than six hours
you see my priorities?
11:34 AM +

•••    I will, however, be keeping track of the great blog-off. sometimes the call of the wild . . . er, internet . . . is just too much to ignore.
8:39 AM +

•••    I have a four-thousand-word paper due at five o'clock today. so far I have around six hundred fifty words. so that's what I'll be doing today. :P
8:28 AM +

tuesday, may 9

•••    I just inherited a half-full tub of lyechee jellies. cookies and lyechees all in one day - I am one happy chickie. (I'm also torn between eating them now and saving them until I get home so I can freeze them . . . ooh.)
10:57 PM +

•••    breaking all the rules of good judgment, and proud of it. welcome to the last three days of finals week.
9:47 PM +

•••    there's a new webring (pointed out to me by kelly) on my sidebar today - college blogs. I really like reading weblogs written by other college students. . . it makes me feel like I have a common frame of reference with someone. I always get excited when I see a .edu in my status bar. ;)
6:52 PM +

•••    one more reason I'll be glad to leave pennsylvania and get back to boston next week: less arsenic.
4:26 PM +

•••    my mom knows how to make me smile. :)
3:41 PM +

•••    we just had a water balloon fight outside in the courtyard - I am drenched, head to toe, through and through. and wow, does it feel good. :)
1:22 PM +

•••    uhhm. never mind. I don't like orbital motion anymore.
but I do like special relativity!
and now physics is DONE!
(for three months anyhow)
12:56 PM +

•••    physics final. wish for lots of orbital motion problems. I'm good at those. :)
8:34 AM +

•••    my physics final is tomorrow. I was taking a break from work and eating sugary snacks in the lounge with my hallmates, and as it neared midnight, I mentioned that I should get back to it because I had several hours of music to listen to. a senior physics major, who knew that my final was tomorrow morning at nine, told me I should just go to bed now - because, as he said:

"I have always found that physics is a lot easier to do when you're asleep."

I wound up on the floor with iced tea all over my face, unable to breathe because I was laughing so hard.
12:35 AM +

monday, may 8

•••    for the first time in three days, it's almost nice outside. a few degrees lower and about half the humidity, and it would be a perfect night. (of course it's still disgusting inside, but what can you do.)
9:21 PM +

•••    radioprotective spices! for some reason I find this incredibly funny. I have a mental image of a mother bacteria chasing her squirmy bacteria children around, trying to shake red chili powder over them to keep them from getting irradiated. kind of like the microbial equivalent of when my mother used to chase me around with sunscreen. :)
5:05 PM +

•••    the about page revolution? huh? all derek did was mention that he wished more people had "about me" pages. have there really been that many new ones since then? am I that out of it? (yes.)

how odd that the "about me" page would have become a rare breed. I always considered them sort of the original personal page; web-self-publication in its purest and most resilient form. like bacteria. (I mean that in a good way.)

which is not to say that mine doesn't need work, because it does, but as usual I don't have time. I always miss the revolutions!

(except for the headphones. I was way in front of that one.)
2:59 PM +

•••    JEEZ I'm boring.
2:29 PM +

•••    I think I've forgotten how to do physics. I've been going over some of the homework problems that I did myself only three weeks ago, and they don't make any sense to me. ahhh!
2:17 PM +

•••    most of the time I eat meals by myself . . . I'm antisocial like that. but today I had lunch with one of my roommate's best friends, because she wanted someone to eat with her my roommate wasn't here. we talked about our classes and our family history and stuff. it was a really good conversation. I was shocked when I got back to my room and discovered that I had been gone for an hour.
12:19 PM +

•••    I'm a list maker. my lists are almost always a little too ambitious, but I like making them and having them around. right now I have three lists taped to my desk (for physics, cognitive science and music; the math list is gone!) and one written on my door. my door says -
today I will:
- study physics and compile notes + solutions
- finish researching and write cogsci robot essay
- listen to two music pieces
- scan pictures
- contemplate packing

I've already scanned some pictures (note my lack of prioritizing skills), so maybe I actually will get all this stuff done today. now that I've posted my list on the web I have to do it, right? :)
10:15 AM +

•••    on the other hand, zenbear thinks I'm more green than blue.

I'm always a little perplexed because it seems like a lot of other people take these tests and say "yeah, that does describe me pretty well!" and I generally feel like they're maybe sixty percent accurate at best. my results are usually pretty close to a tie between two things though, so that's probably why.
9:57 AM +

•••    I like record breaking temperatures. they make me feel like less of a wimp for thinking it's too hot.
8:38 AM +

•••    yeah, I do that too - except I don't just mentally tag my massages, I actually label them in eudora. five different colors, and sometimes they still sink.
(going to write email now)
2:56 AM +

•••    I've known my share of sensitive guys . . .
2:43 AM +

•••    my true color is blue. I'm kind of sad that I'm not purple. I still feel purple. :) anyway, the description was sort of accurate ("you are most likely a contemplative person who values time spent alone") and sort of not ("cool and collected, you rarely overreact"). I am quiet and thoughtful, but I am not at all level-headed. I don't really think it is my "calming presence" that attracts people to me, either. I'm actually never really sure why people like me. I guess I'm interesting. I hope I'm interesting. you can never be sure about such things.
2:37 AM +

•••    I feel guilty for not being productive, but my laundry has half an hour left in the drier so I can't go to bed, my roommate is asleep so I can't scan rugby pictures or do anything else that makes noise, and it is too freaking hot to sit anywhere but in front of my fan, so I can't go somewhere and read.

therefore, I have no choice but to waste time on the web. :)
2:33 AM +

•••    1:30 am - what time is it?
it's laundry time!
1:28 AM +

•••    I have fresh aloe goo! whee!
(so easily entertained. . .)
12:03 AM +

sunday, may 7

•••    speaking of philosophy, emodes has reassured me that I am me, and not some information age simulation. yay me. however, it also said I should label my underwear: "during an identity crisis, it's usually the first thing to go." ?!?!?!
(actually, some of my underwear is labeled, as a pre-emptive strike against the perils of the college laundry world. so I guess I'm ready for anything.)
7:34 PM +

•••    one thing that sort of bothers me about psychology, especially when it's one of the less-fluffy sides of psychology like cognitive science, is how people who make so little sense are still taken so seriously. maybe I am being a snot-nosed realist, but I don't think you can understand the way minds work by thinking about imaginary martians, and I don't think a thermostat has intentions, no matter how you define them.
when you come right down to it, I guess the real problems is just that I would make a bad philosopher.
7:13 PM +

•••    I'll miss hearing from rick while he's in europe, but now we get a double dose of jonathan. :)
5:26 PM +

•••    wow! awesome redesign, elise.
(yay, samples! :D)
5:15 PM +

•••    "to become vegetarian is to step into the stream which leads to nirvana." I wonder what you do to get your feet out of the mud and start following the stream? (not that I would know what to do with nirvana once I found it.)
5:05 PM +

•••    apparently I look like princess leia today, because people keep telling me so. I think that's just because I have braids somewhere other than on the back of my head; I really don't look much like leia at all.
3:19 PM +

•••    if I were an intergalactic explorer, I would be a seeker. upon reading the descriptions I think I'm equal parts seeker and scientist, but the test does say it's unreliable. ;) (via weird wired world.)
12:18 PM +

•••    the clothing situation is definitely bad when I have to wear a dress. it is too hot for sleeves, and this is the only thing I have that is clean and sleeveless. (I admit I am a bit of a heat wimp.) it was either a dress or my pajamas...
laundry? what's that? ;P
10:45 AM +

•••    on the other hand, I love the brunching shuttlecocks. but you already knew that. :)
9:48 AM +

•••    I'm really not a fan of brunch, except that it's a cool word. I don't like the actual meal though. I want breakfast and then lunch - not a weird combination of the two, and certainly not both in one sitting (I know some people who do that). mostly I just don't like waiting until eleven o'clock to eat. grr!
9:46 AM +

•••    so I pretty much took the day off after I finished with my exam this afternoon. I went to a concert, walked around campus, socialized (!) with some hallmates, played with my gooey toys, surfed the web, read old email, and spent most of the night working on a website for my rugby team. (no link yet - not until it's finished!) it feels so good to do something other than schoolwork!
1:52 AM +