saturday, september 2

•••    sometimes I get this inexplicable need to read poetry, and absolutely nothing can make it go away. it's very inconvenient when I'm supposed to be doing homework. right now, though, it's kind of nice.

anyway, I've been reading where the world is made, by daniel tobin. I'm sure I'm missing some of the religious subtext, but it's really fulfilling regardless.
but weren't griefs there, too, palpable as shared blood?

good poetry makes me feel very humble and very, very inadequate. I think I have a poetic mind, but not such a poetic tongue. I need a better translation subroutine.
9:03 PM +

•••    I just wanted to point out that day 17 is looking damn spiffy these days.
7:46 PM +

•••    ctrl-alt-ego is one of my absolute favorite domain names ever. right now it also has elephants, which makes it even better (though I miss the orange just a tiny bit). faith is smart, funny, and a trekker - always a happy combination. :) I've been a fan of her personal site for years, so you can imagine how thrilled I was last spring when she started a weblog. being an ex-manhattanite (still pining for central park), I love the new york minutes. and boris! if you don't know who boris is, go read until you figure it out.

(I'm doing the "why these blogs are in my linklist" thing again; remember that? time gets all distorted when your computer isn't working. or my computer, in this case. )
7:13 PM +

•••    my roommate is back! it's weird having her stuff here, but good weird. uninhabited beds and shelves and desks and stuff are creepy. last year when she left for winter break a few days before I did, she stripped her bed and took all the sheets and blankets with her, so it was just the empty frame and bare mattress. it scared me every time I looked at it - I felt like I was living with a ghost.

anyway, I have no idea where she is now - dinner, probably - but yay, my roommate's back. :)
6:31 PM +

•••    we're trying to teach my ca partner how to play blackjack. tonight is casino night - complete with cards, chips, drinks, guys in shiny purple vests . . . but no betting. gambling is illegal in pennsylvania, so chips can be traded in for raffle tickets. raffling is not illegal. how dopey is that?

anyway, right now my partner is having a little trouble adding up to twenty one. he really likes dealing, though, just for this exchange:
"hit me."
"with pleasure!"
poor frosh.
12:39 PM +

•••    you know, before I went to a school that consistently ranks in the top three of the us news & world report's college rankings (horrors, we're number two this year), I didn't care one way or another about them. now I hate them. apparently a perfect school is one that's hard to get into (but admits a lot of early decision kids), even harder to flunk out of, and has a lot of rich alumni. blech. exactly what I was trying to avoid by not going to an ivy.

on the other hand, I really love swarthmore, which means that on some level I agree with usnews. that makes me feel slightly slimy inside. luckily I didn't even know that swat was ranked until after I applied; otherwise I probably would have always had some sort of lingering doubt that I came here just because of some stupid number.

higher education is such a racket.
3:22 AM +

•••    I just finished with my last frosh group committment. we have two days left of orientation before classes start, but now it's just general entertainment stuff in the evenings because they're all busy with registration and textbook shopping during the day. we got them through the swimming test, the library scavenger hunt, and the network tutorial. we didn't kill them or seriously injure them as we led them blindfolded through the woods. we didn't humiliate them too much with our icebreaker name games (I am ridiculous rabi, by the way, and there are definitely some frosh who are going to call me ridiculous for the rest of my time here). we provided counsel. we took them to dinner. and tonight, we won the midnight madness cross-campus treasure hunt. whee.

I lucked out and ended up with a bunch of really cool people in my group. (if you have any doubts, consider this: out of thirteen freshmen, two of them were vegan! two!) at the end of our first meeting I thought it was going to be like pulling teeth getting them to do stuff, but they turned out to be really responsible and mostly enthusiastic about everything going on. I think they'll make good classmates. they're already good swatties. and I turned out to be a pretty decent campus adviser, I think.
1:40 AM +

friday, september 1

•••    I added theoblog to the dropbox linklist over there. it's good. it has boiled cabbage, a neat-looking header font, and lots of green. it's funny. it's interesting. and, as an added bonus, it's attached to a really great personal site.
9:23 PM +

•••    I fixed my computer!!!!
8:16 PM +

•••    there seems to be a recent trend in writing about college life and froshie stuff. . . I guess it's that time of year. anyway, since I have been sleeping, eating, breathing, voicemailing, and scheduling scheduling scheduling orientation lately (two more days, whee), I can't keep quiet on this one.

on sex: no one ever told me to wait a week, but I know plenty of people who didn't. I guess they decided they might as well enjoy their carefree orientation days before the notoriously insane workload started. (our bookstore sells a t-shirt that says "swarthmore college: guilt without sex.") we have two mandatory sex related workshops, acquaintance sexual assault prevention and safer sex. asap was incredibly traumatic and I spent most of the time drawing rocketships and asteroids on the back of my campus resources handout while all these people I barely knew sat around me chattering about what really constitutes rape. the second one was just silly - we watched a swattie-produced video about safe sex that featured a very large, very naked man (apparently a former student) and his girlfriend demonstrating proper condom technique. then they gave us condoms (mine was orange) and latex gloves, apparently just in case we were too nervous to go get them ourselves from the medicine cabinet or the health center. (personally I think if you can't handle getting your own condoms, you shouldn't be having sex, but whatever. on the other hand, I was in the health center once getting blood drawn when someone came in and complained very loudly that the dental dams in the drawer weren't flavored - so discretion can be good, too.) I think some people who were spared the inner-city-public-school sex class where you play with condoms and cucumbers and dildos found the video slightly informative.

on RAs: mine last year was amazing. she even took care of me when I broke my brain playing rugby. you just can't say bad things about anyone who will stay with you in the emergency room until four in the morning. so no bashing your RA until you know exactly what he (or she or it) will go through on your behalf.

on library scavenger hunts: at least it's better than a mandatory library tour, right? I'm going to be late for mine unless I leave right now. and I would never abandon my freshmen!
2:47 PM +

•••    I don't usually do relationship quizzes because they seem so horribly contrived and shallow, but I got this one in my email and everyone else was doing it...

apparently I go for sensitive guys. putting aside the problem that it's ridiculous to pigeonhole and classify people, the description is sort of interesting:
Isn't he sweet? You definitely go for the guy who has a serious case of feelings -- whether he wears them on his sleeve or not. Manners seem important to him, and to you. And it's a good bet your soul mate would as easily tune into ballads on the radio as he would stage a protest against cruelty to animals. Tapping into his soft side, however, may not always be so easy. A guy who's clued in to his feelings may also be protective of them. So if you find yourself face-to-face with one of these sweeties, don't wait for him to make the first move. Let him know you want to get to know him better. Sensitive types think with their heart as well as their brain -- he'll get the hint.

all of that describes me perfectly, though obviously not at all comprehensively. isn't the saying opposites attract? am I just an egomaniac? or since my mr. right sounds a lot like me, does that just mean I am going to be a hermit with just myself all my life? shouldn't I be going out with a jock? shouldn't these self-help quizzes make my life easier? (I am a little sleep deprived today...)

also, just as an addendum, I really dislike the word "sweetie" as applied to anyone post-pubescent - but especially grown men. even sensitive ones. yick.
1:40 PM +

thursday, august 31

•••    my computer is having issues.

yesterday morning it froze, and since then I haven't been able to get it to start windows in anything but safe mode, which of course is completely useless. I haven't been able to figure out what happened, but I do know that the winboot.sys file has mysteriously vanished. of course I don't have a w95 cd (for some reason I never did) and I can't find the startup floppy I made three years ago. I would love to be able to blame this on the network tinkering that's been happening, but I'm not sure that's actually the reason for this digital self-cannibalism. ugh.

so for now I'm stuck on the public imacs with netscape 4.7, which doesn't seem to like blogger or wockerjabby much - legible, thankfully, but not especially pretty. oh well. with all the orientation stuff going on I'm not sure how soon I'll get my computer back in working order, but hopefully I'll be able to track down some dorm techs within the next few days. in the meantime . . . well, sigh.
1:30 PM +

wednesday, august 30

•••    yes.
but it almost always isn't true.
9:49 AM +

•••    okay, this is really disturbing: now they're using lard as a fuel for running boilers.

one of the slightly frustrating things about being vegan is that you really can't avoid animal products completely. you learn to deal with that, but other people tend to think you're being ridiculous for avoiding things like magnesium stearate, and they don't understand why you always want to know if foods have refined sugar in them (about fifty percent of the sugar produced in the united states is filtered through charcoal made of animal bones). being vegan means consuming animal products as little as possible (I use "consuming" to mean any sort of use; the textbooks I bought yesterday, for example, have animal-based glue holding the bindings together). so, the thought of having boilers running on lard is bothersome - I don't eat them or wear them; why should I have to use them for energy when other things work just as well?

also, yes, I am an environmentalist and I think we do need to find cleaner fuel. but fuel made from dead pigs is really not what I had in mind. ugh. (corn oil also works for powering things, it just takes more modifications and thus is more expensive. of course we wouldn't dream of spending a little extra money to clean up our air when we can just use pig-slaughter leftovers.)
9:11 AM +

tuesday, august 29

•••    nighttime is louder than daytime. at night all the crickets come out, and I think they have a bigger population than the cicadas, because somehow they manage to make a lot more collective noise even though individually they're not half as loud. cars sound like little animals on the prowl. the peepers in the creek are stuck on one peeper refrain. the clicking of a beetle's wings as it lands and takes off again are perfect and clean and clear. fingers on a keyboard sound like a castrated jackhammer. my voice is in the wrong place when it comes out of my mouth instead of staying in my head.

I think darkness amplifies soundwaves.
11:58 PM +

•••    I have so much to say, but no good way to say it.
10:43 PM +

•••    at some point in my life I want to go scuba diving in the ocean on europa. yupyup. :)
1:05 PM +

•••    so far, all the freshmen seem pretty nice. we're still missing about five, but we've moved over twenty people in and sent them off to do all that froshy first day stuff. (I think I do great impressions of the buildings on campus, by the way. my directions are spiffy.)

everything has gone smoothly except for a few annoying parents. first there was the really nasty parent who snapped at me to "wait for the boys" to help me carry a computer moniter in. I wanted to tell her that I've been carrying computers around for six years, I play rugby, and I can carry anything the "boys" can. but since today I am friendly, helpful, responsible, well-adjusted rabi, I smiled and asked if there was anything else I could take instead. she gave me the evil eye.

then there was the completely uncooperative parent who for some reason refused to talk to any of us. I tried to introduce myself and she hardly even looked at me. (she was perfectly communicative with the rest of her family, so I don't know what her problem was.) it was kind of creepy. I felt like I had done something wrong and no one would tell me what it was.

finally there was the parent who dropped a big rock on my leg. I was helping her prop the door open with bricks, and for some reason she decided I hadn't done a good enough job, so she picked the rock up just high enough to immediately drop it. it bounced off the door and sort of slid down the back of my calf. I'm actually not too upset about this, because now I have a really neat tattoo bandaid with a pouncing tiger on it. still.

our shirts say "calmer than you" on the back. and, shockingly, I think I actually am calmer than most people. I'm certainly calmer than all the parents. I'm definitely calmer than I was when I moved in last year. yay me. if I can stay calm through this whole day I will be very impressed with the universe.
12:44 PM +

•••    the frosh are here! aieee!
9:35 AM +

monday, august 28

•••    I look forward to reading bluishorange every day. alison has a really wonderful writing voice, not to mention great design sense. and I like the things she writes about. I especially like the way she writes about things going on in houston, so that you feel like her blog has a definite place where it belongs in the world. I read something once, in tv guide I think, that said "mad about you is the quintessential new york sitcom, whereas friends is a sitcom that could take place in any big city." so bluishorange is the quintessential houston blog, whereas most blogs could really take place anywhere. which is not to say any blogs are like sitcoms.

anyway, yeah. alison is supercool. she writes good email too.
11:28 PM +

•••    YAY
11:37 AM +

•••    the thing about being a natural science major is you spend obscene amounts of money on textbooks. and you tend to keep your textbooks, because everything is cumulative (unlike, say, english lit, where you can sell back your books without worrying that you're going to forget some vital equation). my relationship with physics is off to a rocky start - I just dropped $130 on two books. it's one thing when you spend over a hundred dollars on a slick bio or chem text, with glossy pages and color pictures, but it's pathetic when you have to spend that much on physics books printed on transparently-thin paper in only black ink. jeez.

div, grad, curl, and all that has the cover and title page printed entirely in lowercase, which is amusing. but not worth twenty five dollars.
11:32 AM +

•••    my little brother is nine years old today.
happy birthday, dylan! :)
8:11 AM +

•••    kama, author of the lizard room, is a native of new zealand (a place I've wanted to visit for years and which I fully intend to see sometime soon) and is fanatical about rugby (the sport I play, love, and bleed for). how can I not like her weblog? (are you still not convinced? it has a lizard! with a long tongue and a curly tail!) kiwirugbylizards. yeah. :)
12:03 AM +

sunday, august 27

•••    my colorquiz results were, I guess, a little bit more accurate than brenda's (although I agree completely with her assessment of the colors - most of them were pretty nasty). but the quiz with all its different categories and assessments ultimately said only one thing about me, reiterated several times: I'm sensitive. yup. I knew that.

still, I have to do the editorial thing:
Sensitive; needs esthetic surroundings
yes, but all my surroundings are aesthetic. the whole entire world is beautiful. even this stupid room that I don't want to live in, draped with airing-out clothes and littered with almost-empty boxes is beautiful, the way the shadows fall and the way you can see the brushstrokes changing directions in the paint on the walls. the symmetry in the hall is beautiful. I like conventionally aesthetic surroundings too, of course; I don't think anyone would argue that swarthmore's campus is ugly. it's gorgeous and it makes me happy. but I can find what I need right in my head, at least as far as aesthetics go.
11:08 PM +

•••    for a few weeks now I've been meaning to do this, but now that my links are all squished into that drop box on the left, I am definitely doing it. all the blogs I link to are ones I read every day, sometimes several times a day. I wanted to share my reasons for doing that, because I think all the weblogs over there are definitely worthy of your attention - and I don't want anyone to forget they're there, even though they can't all be seen at once.

so. a few a day until I'm finished, yes?

I like /usr/bin/girl simply because zannah has charisma coming out her ears. (that's a good thing!) somehow she makes one-liners and comments on the most random links both funny and fascinating. she also updates so often most days that there's almost always something new. and I love her creative take on the english language.
9:26 AM +

•••    somehow, no matter what time I go to bed and no matter how tired I am when I fall asleep, I keep waking up just after seven.
8:50 AM +

•••    can a phrase or sentence that contains the word "nonsequitur" be a nonsequitur? I can't figure this out and right now it is bothering me. probably I will get over it once I have slept some.
2:02 AM +