I know that I've promised to slow down on these for a little while--::grins::--but I did want to make one last update before I left, that I am feeling significantly better (hurrah for vitamins and sleep!), and am highly enthusiastic about my weekend West. I leave in an hour and a quarter, and will most likely not post again until January 3rd or 4th at least.
A very happy New Year to you all.
-Laurel
12.30.2004
Well, she'd have a reputation for being tough on...dirt...
Kristin decided last year that she was going to be president someday and gave us all jobs that we'd be doing when she was elected; I may have put up an entry about it nearly a year ago. I was dubbed her speechwriter, Sam-Seaborn-style, for those at all familiar with West Wing before he left the show.
Well, have just received the following e-mail from Kristin:
Dear [Laurel],
I hope you are enjoying your break.
As my Sam Seaborn I thought it proper to let you in on my presidential
campaign idea. I am going to run on a cleanliness theme. Now hear me
out. What do you think about the Government subsidizing first a
starter program of soap and then a more extensive deoderant program?
I know you must think I have gone off my rocker. But how many people
would vote for someone who vows to make this country smell pretty????
I mean speaking from someone who ends up at arm pit level with
everyone on the subway I think that this is a wonderful idea.
Remember if you are my Sam you have to leave and run for something on
your own too.
I should probably mention that Kristin is four-foot-nine and has to take trains and subways from Long Island to New York City and back, five days a week.
::shakes head, laughing helplessly::
-Laurel
Well, have just received the following e-mail from Kristin:
Dear [Laurel],
I hope you are enjoying your break.
As my Sam Seaborn I thought it proper to let you in on my presidential
campaign idea. I am going to run on a cleanliness theme. Now hear me
out. What do you think about the Government subsidizing first a
starter program of soap and then a more extensive deoderant program?
I know you must think I have gone off my rocker. But how many people
would vote for someone who vows to make this country smell pretty????
I mean speaking from someone who ends up at arm pit level with
everyone on the subway I think that this is a wonderful idea.
Remember if you are my Sam you have to leave and run for something on
your own too.
I should probably mention that Kristin is four-foot-nine and has to take trains and subways from Long Island to New York City and back, five days a week.
::shakes head, laughing helplessly::
-Laurel
Okay, so maybe the nickname "Slug" does fit me...
I am here attempting to convince myself that I really do not have anything worse than a chest cold, despite my sleeping 'til eleven and not feeling like I'd gotten much sleep at all. Plus, when in your dreams you're with friends and go into coughing spasms, and then you wake up and the coughing part is real...
...but tomorrow... ::helpless look::
Maybe if I go to bed early...
In other news, perhaps I do not know how to seize opportunity when it knocks at my door: my mother actually offered me apple pie for breakfast, joking that, hey, it has fruit. She would have let me and everything, but on the theory that more vitamins will mean an end to my sickness, I had two packets of fortified oatmeal. Which also tasted quite good, though that is some quality pie.
My dad's boss got him the pie for Christmas; it is an apple pecan one from Cracker Barrel Restaurant. The humor here is that, just two days ago, one day before this gift, my family spontaneously went to Cracker Barrel for lunch, and we were making fun of the pies because they all have pecans in them, except for the one that's no-sugar-added apple. We made lame cracks about the pecan plant down in Georgia they must have ties with. And then we got one for Christmas, and it's absolutely delicious.
100,000 and rising in Asia. Still have not found any local non-monetary projects (and what do I expect, a mission trip to the site? as if my parents would let me go anyway, even assuming I could get over my fear of the Third World), but then, I never did get to see yesterday's news articles on the efforts here. I should do that; the recycling people come tomorrow. ...I wonder if Sunil is okay. I checked the sponsorship site, but they have no news alerts more recent than the Haiti disaster. ...Neither, for that matter, does our local Red Cross chapter's site, though I know they're doing something or other for Asia.
Okay, time to take a shower or something.
-Laurel
...but tomorrow... ::helpless look::
Maybe if I go to bed early...
In other news, perhaps I do not know how to seize opportunity when it knocks at my door: my mother actually offered me apple pie for breakfast, joking that, hey, it has fruit. She would have let me and everything, but on the theory that more vitamins will mean an end to my sickness, I had two packets of fortified oatmeal. Which also tasted quite good, though that is some quality pie.
My dad's boss got him the pie for Christmas; it is an apple pecan one from Cracker Barrel Restaurant. The humor here is that, just two days ago, one day before this gift, my family spontaneously went to Cracker Barrel for lunch, and we were making fun of the pies because they all have pecans in them, except for the one that's no-sugar-added apple. We made lame cracks about the pecan plant down in Georgia they must have ties with. And then we got one for Christmas, and it's absolutely delicious.
100,000 and rising in Asia. Still have not found any local non-monetary projects (and what do I expect, a mission trip to the site? as if my parents would let me go anyway, even assuming I could get over my fear of the Third World), but then, I never did get to see yesterday's news articles on the efforts here. I should do that; the recycling people come tomorrow. ...I wonder if Sunil is okay. I checked the sponsorship site, but they have no news alerts more recent than the Haiti disaster. ...Neither, for that matter, does our local Red Cross chapter's site, though I know they're doing something or other for Asia.
Okay, time to take a shower or something.
-Laurel
12.29.2004
It takes brains to know you haven't any. -Cyrano de Bergerac
Great Northern Gathering was very good and much-needed. Sorry for skitching out on everybody last night. I think I know why it was particularly bad, and it shouldn't happen again. Dentist stuff today went fine as well; the nitrous thing went way better than last time.
I have a Peanuts calendar, and it is cool. :)
I have presents from my friends, and they are cool, too. :) :)
And I get to spend New Year's with Tim and his family in approximately 40 hours. ::squee!::
But, ruddy crud in a bucket, I still cannot find my way out of a paper bag. Note to self: the map may indicate that a street crosses a major highway, but that does not mean that there is a junction with this highway at any point near that location.
Also: Tim Horton's does not equal Agatina's Italian Restaurant, and one therefore should not turn at the former when they are supposed to turn at the latter. Thank you.
But 'Nanda and Matt were very, very good about getting lost with me, and somehow, incredibly, managed to keep me from feeling all that stupid. So a thousand points to each of them.
Now, let's go on to a game called "Laurel Gets off Blogger and Gets Ready for Bed." This game is for Laurel only...
-Laurel
I have a Peanuts calendar, and it is cool. :)
I have presents from my friends, and they are cool, too. :) :)
And I get to spend New Year's with Tim and his family in approximately 40 hours. ::squee!::
But, ruddy crud in a bucket, I still cannot find my way out of a paper bag. Note to self: the map may indicate that a street crosses a major highway, but that does not mean that there is a junction with this highway at any point near that location.
Also: Tim Horton's does not equal Agatina's Italian Restaurant, and one therefore should not turn at the former when they are supposed to turn at the latter. Thank you.
But 'Nanda and Matt were very, very good about getting lost with me, and somehow, incredibly, managed to keep me from feeling all that stupid. So a thousand points to each of them.
Now, let's go on to a game called "Laurel Gets off Blogger and Gets Ready for Bed." This game is for Laurel only...
-Laurel
12.28.2004
Oh, ech.
It's up to, what, 60,000 deaths in Asia now?
Is there anything I can do for these people that doesn't involve money that I mostly don't have?
Everybody is dropping hints that my tension level is really getting scary. Look, I've been aware of it for five months; anyone have any suggestions a little more creative-slash-helpful than "take yoga"? I've been getting a lot of that, mostly as people trying(?) to subtly tell me I'm scaring them. Even my parents.
-Laurel
Is there anything I can do for these people that doesn't involve money that I mostly don't have?
Everybody is dropping hints that my tension level is really getting scary. Look, I've been aware of it for five months; anyone have any suggestions a little more creative-slash-helpful than "take yoga"? I've been getting a lot of that, mostly as people trying(?) to subtly tell me I'm scaring them. Even my parents.
-Laurel
12.27.2004
Another prolonged jawing, w00t.
I hope Evan is safely in Denver and having fun.
Had to drive my mom to my dentist appointment today; she never really got to like my driving, which makes sense, inasmuch as it sucks. She wants me to sit back farther and stop twitching. About the twitching, she is very good at making me feel like there's something wrong with me when I do it, but never mind.
As for the sitting back, she tells me gravely that the way I sit so far up now, if the airbag ever deploys, it will kill me.
...Great, 'cause I needed another reason to be tense while I'm driving, and to feel amazed that I'm not dead. That's gonna help the twitching so much.
I have two "very small cavities" where my sealants apparently came off--Aneya says that they are caries, 'cause I eat a lot of bread; she learned this in archaeology class. What it means is that I have to go back now on Wednesday to get them filled, and this time my mom gets to drive (thank goodness for that), at least going home, 'cause they're apparently putting me under nitrous just for that. After what happened last time, I'm a little wary, but here's hoping this time they won't give me too much, if that's what happened, or that my brain won't skitch out, if that's what happened.
I got home from the appointment and proceeded to make gingerbread, which is probably an odd thing to do after visiting the dentist, especially when you're informed of your newly-developed caries/cavities, but I like it, and had been planning to make it.
In much better news, I will be with Tim and Tom from New Year's Eve until January 3rd. New Year's with their mother's side of family (including the apparent couple-dozen cousins, hurrah!), ice skating, Andrea and Joe coming to see Tom, and the lot of us going to Niagara Falls on a daytrip. Yay!
But I am coming down with a chest cold, which means that I have been given stern orders (from Tim, not my parents) to sleep and to consume chicken soup. I have had more success with the second than the first, but hey.
Time to do something a little productive, maybe. Goodness knows what; I haven't the energy to play DDR, nor the inclination to organize the APO secretary's binder. Maybe I will read. Maybe I will eat more gingerbread (eventually; right now I'm full of homemade pizza) and read. That sounds pretty nice.
-Laurel
Had to drive my mom to my dentist appointment today; she never really got to like my driving, which makes sense, inasmuch as it sucks. She wants me to sit back farther and stop twitching. About the twitching, she is very good at making me feel like there's something wrong with me when I do it, but never mind.
As for the sitting back, she tells me gravely that the way I sit so far up now, if the airbag ever deploys, it will kill me.
...Great, 'cause I needed another reason to be tense while I'm driving, and to feel amazed that I'm not dead. That's gonna help the twitching so much.
I have two "very small cavities" where my sealants apparently came off--Aneya says that they are caries, 'cause I eat a lot of bread; she learned this in archaeology class. What it means is that I have to go back now on Wednesday to get them filled, and this time my mom gets to drive (thank goodness for that), at least going home, 'cause they're apparently putting me under nitrous just for that. After what happened last time, I'm a little wary, but here's hoping this time they won't give me too much, if that's what happened, or that my brain won't skitch out, if that's what happened.
I got home from the appointment and proceeded to make gingerbread, which is probably an odd thing to do after visiting the dentist, especially when you're informed of your newly-developed caries/cavities, but I like it, and had been planning to make it.
In much better news, I will be with Tim and Tom from New Year's Eve until January 3rd. New Year's with their mother's side of family (including the apparent couple-dozen cousins, hurrah!), ice skating, Andrea and Joe coming to see Tom, and the lot of us going to Niagara Falls on a daytrip. Yay!
But I am coming down with a chest cold, which means that I have been given stern orders (from Tim, not my parents) to sleep and to consume chicken soup. I have had more success with the second than the first, but hey.
Time to do something a little productive, maybe. Goodness knows what; I haven't the energy to play DDR, nor the inclination to organize the APO secretary's binder. Maybe I will read. Maybe I will eat more gingerbread (eventually; right now I'm full of homemade pizza) and read. That sounds pretty nice.
-Laurel
"Time won't leave me as I am/But time won't take the boy out of this man..."
::laughs:: That line reminds me so much of B.
I wish he was content to still let SFE be a refuge for the science second-raters like myself. I learned a lot there before it got competitive. I was lucky enough to be devoted; it kept me on the teams even when I didn't deserve it. My brother isn't so lucky, and has dropped out in favor of the robotics team.
Anyway, had a lovely Christmas. The best thing I got? So hard to decide, but I'm going with the wireless transmitter/receiver stuff that means I am now internet-capable here in my room. Here I type, new U2 CD blasting from my new computer speakers (which I asked for solely because the other ones didn't have a volume-control knob, and it got to be a pain for things like DDR to have to go through Windows to mess with it), and quite happy about it.
The album is quite good; I can't decide whether I admire the music or lyrics more. Bono, in interviews, seems as proud as I am of his line "freedom has a scent/like the top of a newborn baby's head," but when you hear the story behind "Miracle Drug," you have to forgive it, 'cause it's amazing. Has to do with a boy from his high school; paraplegic for much of his life, was it, 'Nanda? Will have to find a telling of it and link.
The lyrics inspire me, for whatever-odd reason, to attempt to figure out who/what/where from my own life each song should be dedicated to.
So far my favorite track on the album is not one of those destined to be most popular, at least by current prediction: "City of Blinding Lights." It was written about (for? in?) London, and that is very cool.
[rest removed due to essential pointlessness. sorry.]
-Laurel
I wish he was content to still let SFE be a refuge for the science second-raters like myself. I learned a lot there before it got competitive. I was lucky enough to be devoted; it kept me on the teams even when I didn't deserve it. My brother isn't so lucky, and has dropped out in favor of the robotics team.
Anyway, had a lovely Christmas. The best thing I got? So hard to decide, but I'm going with the wireless transmitter/receiver stuff that means I am now internet-capable here in my room. Here I type, new U2 CD blasting from my new computer speakers (which I asked for solely because the other ones didn't have a volume-control knob, and it got to be a pain for things like DDR to have to go through Windows to mess with it), and quite happy about it.
The album is quite good; I can't decide whether I admire the music or lyrics more. Bono, in interviews, seems as proud as I am of his line "freedom has a scent/like the top of a newborn baby's head," but when you hear the story behind "Miracle Drug," you have to forgive it, 'cause it's amazing. Has to do with a boy from his high school; paraplegic for much of his life, was it, 'Nanda? Will have to find a telling of it and link.
The lyrics inspire me, for whatever-odd reason, to attempt to figure out who/what/where from my own life each song should be dedicated to.
So far my favorite track on the album is not one of those destined to be most popular, at least by current prediction: "City of Blinding Lights." It was written about (for? in?) London, and that is very cool.
[rest removed due to essential pointlessness. sorry.]
-Laurel
12.25.2004
Traditio-o-o-o-o-on!
Tonight (assuming it's still December 24th at least mentally) has been a night of traditions--Christmas Eve service, driving around to see Christmas lights, drinking egg nog by the fire with my family, giving my brother his present as he gives me mine, playing computer games we played most when we were in elementary school (yeah, Medieval Warriors!)...
...so I uphold this blog's tradition, such as it is (with only two-and-a-half years of existence), even if it's a liiiiiittle late in technicality, and wish my friends a merry Christmas, singling out, as usual, the ones I didn't yet call friends this time last year.
Merry Christmas to the newbies, such as they are, whether they'll read it or not: Albert, Evelyn, Chris, Heather, Kelly, Meryl, Sara, Juliane, and Jenny. Happy Chanukah, belatedly, to newbies Lily K., Gabe, Alexa, and the Prinze-Nadwornys. Good Yule to Casey, for that matter.
Another Merry Christmas to Samweli, and Sunil, and the soldiers. Stay safe, all of you, and it's especially for you guys that I root for peace on Earth.
Merry Christmas, of course, to all my existing best-beloveds; you know who you are. :)
And to all a good day and night.
-Laurel
...so I uphold this blog's tradition, such as it is (with only two-and-a-half years of existence), even if it's a liiiiiittle late in technicality, and wish my friends a merry Christmas, singling out, as usual, the ones I didn't yet call friends this time last year.
Merry Christmas to the newbies, such as they are, whether they'll read it or not: Albert, Evelyn, Chris, Heather, Kelly, Meryl, Sara, Juliane, and Jenny. Happy Chanukah, belatedly, to newbies Lily K., Gabe, Alexa, and the Prinze-Nadwornys. Good Yule to Casey, for that matter.
Another Merry Christmas to Samweli, and Sunil, and the soldiers. Stay safe, all of you, and it's especially for you guys that I root for peace on Earth.
Merry Christmas, of course, to all my existing best-beloveds; you know who you are. :)
And to all a good day and night.
-Laurel
12.22.2004
Lift Between Switches
Thanks to Lily, who gave me Newbery books for Christmas, I am currently in mild awe of E.L. Konigsburg, who has written two of them.
The first, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, is one Lily bought me. It is simply wonderful, first page to last. I read from the first page to the last, all in the same night-slash-morning, something like 90 minutes straight. Which I have done before in my life, many times, but it's been a while since I've done so, and with such pleasure.
Claudia is simply adorable. Jamie is pretty cool, too. The dialogue is brilliant; I laughed aloud multiple times.
Also, it reminds me in several ways of Story of Laurel, Part I--the fiction I wrote for Zinni back in the eighth grade. I have to pinken at the cheeks now, since I know a real twin too well to be proud of it, but as of eighth grade, Zinni and I both had twins, and I wrote out the first piece of their history for her. (Laurel is the twin's name to my real name. That's where the pen name came from, the "flower names" we all had in junior high.)
Like Claudia, Laurel sets out to run away. Both had companions. Claudia's companion, Jamie, was chosen; Jessie, a friend of Laurel's, came along almost by chance. Like Jamie, Jessie was "rich" by ten-year-old standards (Jamie is only nine), but by selling hand-drawn comic books at school, not by cheating at cards. I don't remember how much money Jessie had, but it was not unlike Jamie's $24. ...Unlike Jamie and Claudia, Jessie and Laurel did not worry about taking the bus.
Both escaped to cities--Claudia and Jamie, to New York; Laurel and Jessie, to the city proper of their home in North Dakota, a city I named, never dreaming that in five years the name would be part of my home, Powell.
From there, the stories diverge. Claudia and Jamie are gone for only a week; Laurel and Jessie last eleven days. Konigsburg's characters are hugely careful not to stand out; for Laurel and Jessie, this works for perhaps one day, but then they fall in with a group of children who end up putting the renegades up in their treehouse.
Claudia was looking to be different--Laurel's goal was more in terms of finding freedom. Claudia and Jamie turned themselves in, so to speak; Laurel and Jessie were caught. Claudia wanted to come home noticeably different, but in a way, never truly did; Laurel, on the other hand, felt as though she'd proven something. Goal of freedom, however temporary, set; goal accomplished, and she was quietly proud of it--but she did learn that it came at a price.
I have half of Part II written, mostly from around tenth grade, but I'm pretty sure it'll never be finished, though I'll eventually give Zinni what I have. There just never was a way to transplant Laurel and her sister to this home, at least none with which I was ever satisfied.
But I was intrigued, to say the least, by what I'd tapped in the eighth grade. Not for nothing does "runaway fiction," as the Konigsburg book is actually classified, get Newbery-honored a lot. What I wanted, in eighth grade, was freedom. Now that I have it, more or less, the stories feel different somehow--but still stirring.
More present to me in a general sense was The View from Saturday, E.L. Konigsburg's second Newbery. This I began last night and finished this afternoon. It's present mostly because it's about a Quiz Bowl team, or at least the sixth-grade equivalent. That alone was enough to win me over, and of the characters therein, it's hard to decide which I like the best, not that such a thing is important. Like Nadia Diamondstein, I am also the only girl on a Quiz Bowl team, but neither of us really think much of it. I liked the part in her story about the sea turtles and their "switches." ...I liked Noah's narration perhaps the most (though Ethan may edge him out once in a while), especially his "factual" sentences. My personal favorite takes place during a wedding: "I had decided what to do by the time they finished their kiss. (Fact: It was a very long and thorough kiss.)" I like Julian's panache, of course. *g*
So that's what I've been up to and thinking about. Whee. Christmas in...two-to-three days already? Man.
Tomorrow, either before or after my present-shopping is done for good, I'm totally going out and getting take-out sesame chicken.
-Laurel
The first, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, is one Lily bought me. It is simply wonderful, first page to last. I read from the first page to the last, all in the same night-slash-morning, something like 90 minutes straight. Which I have done before in my life, many times, but it's been a while since I've done so, and with such pleasure.
Claudia is simply adorable. Jamie is pretty cool, too. The dialogue is brilliant; I laughed aloud multiple times.
Also, it reminds me in several ways of Story of Laurel, Part I--the fiction I wrote for Zinni back in the eighth grade. I have to pinken at the cheeks now, since I know a real twin too well to be proud of it, but as of eighth grade, Zinni and I both had twins, and I wrote out the first piece of their history for her. (Laurel is the twin's name to my real name. That's where the pen name came from, the "flower names" we all had in junior high.)
Like Claudia, Laurel sets out to run away. Both had companions. Claudia's companion, Jamie, was chosen; Jessie, a friend of Laurel's, came along almost by chance. Like Jamie, Jessie was "rich" by ten-year-old standards (Jamie is only nine), but by selling hand-drawn comic books at school, not by cheating at cards. I don't remember how much money Jessie had, but it was not unlike Jamie's $24. ...Unlike Jamie and Claudia, Jessie and Laurel did not worry about taking the bus.
Both escaped to cities--Claudia and Jamie, to New York; Laurel and Jessie, to the city proper of their home in North Dakota, a city I named, never dreaming that in five years the name would be part of my home, Powell.
From there, the stories diverge. Claudia and Jamie are gone for only a week; Laurel and Jessie last eleven days. Konigsburg's characters are hugely careful not to stand out; for Laurel and Jessie, this works for perhaps one day, but then they fall in with a group of children who end up putting the renegades up in their treehouse.
Claudia was looking to be different--Laurel's goal was more in terms of finding freedom. Claudia and Jamie turned themselves in, so to speak; Laurel and Jessie were caught. Claudia wanted to come home noticeably different, but in a way, never truly did; Laurel, on the other hand, felt as though she'd proven something. Goal of freedom, however temporary, set; goal accomplished, and she was quietly proud of it--but she did learn that it came at a price.
I have half of Part II written, mostly from around tenth grade, but I'm pretty sure it'll never be finished, though I'll eventually give Zinni what I have. There just never was a way to transplant Laurel and her sister to this home, at least none with which I was ever satisfied.
But I was intrigued, to say the least, by what I'd tapped in the eighth grade. Not for nothing does "runaway fiction," as the Konigsburg book is actually classified, get Newbery-honored a lot. What I wanted, in eighth grade, was freedom. Now that I have it, more or less, the stories feel different somehow--but still stirring.
More present to me in a general sense was The View from Saturday, E.L. Konigsburg's second Newbery. This I began last night and finished this afternoon. It's present mostly because it's about a Quiz Bowl team, or at least the sixth-grade equivalent. That alone was enough to win me over, and of the characters therein, it's hard to decide which I like the best, not that such a thing is important. Like Nadia Diamondstein, I am also the only girl on a Quiz Bowl team, but neither of us really think much of it. I liked the part in her story about the sea turtles and their "switches." ...I liked Noah's narration perhaps the most (though Ethan may edge him out once in a while), especially his "factual" sentences. My personal favorite takes place during a wedding: "I had decided what to do by the time they finished their kiss. (Fact: It was a very long and thorough kiss.)" I like Julian's panache, of course. *g*
So that's what I've been up to and thinking about. Whee. Christmas in...two-to-three days already? Man.
Tomorrow, either before or after my present-shopping is done for good, I'm totally going out and getting take-out sesame chicken.
-Laurel
12.20.2004
"Image perfecting; please wait..."
So I went to the coffee place with Erik tonight, which ended up being really cool. We talked about how the semester went; neither of us was very happy with it. Erik doesn't like that he did more homework than he's ever done in his life and still failed out of his chosen major, which turned out to be less than ideal for him, if you hadn't caught on to that. He's losing will to go to another college and try, unsure whether to go into auto-body, tool-and-die (dye?), or none of the above.
I don't like how I turned out this semester. I really was a huge nearly-bipolar pain in the butt, and even I knew it. Most of it was stress-related. I thought I knew how to handle stress--what was Aubrey, what was Calypso?--but apparently that's a different type than trying to do too much at once. I was--am--a heap of uncertainties, by turns fire and ice.
Community service is what I want to do, but it is what I am least equipped to do. Since junior high I tried to be let on service projects, missions trips, and every year my dad said I couldn't, it wasn't safe. It's always that, with him. He's been overprotective for my entire life; I'll give examples if asked, but there's no point in doing it here. Now he's got a problem with my being in public service because he thinks there's too much emotional baggage involved. And the frustrating thing is, I haven't done anything this semester to even come close to proving I can handle any form of emotional pressure.
But I'm so sick of painting faces at carnivals. That's not big enough. And the problem is, I've never been anywhere where it's more than that. Even when I ran Leo Club, it was never anything significant. Nobody wanted to follow me; every single person was there for the college application sparkle. I would get into service, and Mr. M would hold me back, saying it was also about fun, too.
I think that's why I'm so desperate to be Vice President of Service for APO--anything, anything more significant than checking tables, please. I may yet rearrange my schedule and swallow my fears (and not tell my father, bare horrible truth be told) and join Rescue Squad. (I ran this past my mom tentatively. She actually didn't mind the thought.) Anything to feel needed. Anything to feel like I'm here for a reason other than to write English essays and give hugs to my boyfriend. They're good things, very. But they're not enough. I can't watch people hurt without wanting to fix it.
And who better to do it than someone who had an ideal childhood, who has good friends and a boyfriend to make the world feel okay, who has never questioned her parents' love for her?
But I have made myself such an incredible pain about APO that I'm starting to wonder whether anybody wants me to run anything, not counting Tim. I can be a service slavedriver, but I will lose all of my friends in the process. But this to me is more than just a hobby; I'm trying to make a life out of it. I keep wanting to scream, like Leo Club senior year, that nobody understands, this is important to me.
But I can't make it their career. I can't be so bipolar. It's the only word I have for it, that some days I'm nasty to anybody in my path, and some days I'm so happy and talking a mile a minute that I scare people with my energy.
I think I scare a lot of people these days. CB was certainly concerned.
I've never been one for New Year's resolutions, but this year I've got a list as long as my arm.
I will not make everyone try to guess how not to anger me. They should not have to make a part-time job of psychology.
I will get more sleep. This is part of the problem, though less than I like to claim.
I will stop being presumptuous, in every sense of the word. I do not know everything, and know far, far less than I think I do, even when I think I have a blast of humility about it.
I will stop getting angry at people in my head.
I will stop being a timid slacker and instead actually show up, more than once/semester, to SonLife. Same goes for the Bible study, if at all possible, and it will be possible if I make it so. I will probably get to know them if I talk to them, like duh.
I will stop being a head case around my boyfriend. On the other hand, I will also stop apologizing for everything, because it's really annoying, even to me.
I will stop avoiding people just because I think they're going to depress me.
I will--this is a big one--shut up about APO a lot more often.
I will--this is an even bigger one--shut up a lot more, period. I am also a lot less funny than I like to pretend I am. And the sniping has got to go.
I will not take all the credit for my success in any of these. Success is one of the many things God offers. Also failure-for-purpose, so I should probably not resent myself so much for my total lack of perfection.
I will make it so that nobody who has not read this entry will know that I am trying like heck to not be such an idiot. I will not complain about it (including explicit away messages). I will not draw attention to it.
I also will not come off as an ascetic, however ascetic this entry sounds. Life is cool and fun, and I should dress brightly and sing along with the funny music in folk dancing, have DDR parties and give lots of happy hugs along with all the feel-better hugs, hang out with John and Lily a lot more often, even if it means hanging out with the APOs less. I should not freak out if I get halfway through the semester and haven't made significant progress in any of these.
But my friends are all starting to drop these hints that maybe I should calm down, and it only ever freaks me out the more, because I think they're starting to hate me. I will not turn into a high-school-Rachel, because people like that drive people away who aren't by thinking that they're driving people away and trying to compensate. I can't do that.
But I've got to beat myself into recognizable shape this coming semester; I need to get back into what high school was like. I was happy then; I'm not as happy now.
That said, I'm going to play DDR until such time as Tim comes online, if he does, which he may not. And then I'm going to read, and then I'm going to sleep.
-Laurel
I don't like how I turned out this semester. I really was a huge nearly-bipolar pain in the butt, and even I knew it. Most of it was stress-related. I thought I knew how to handle stress--what was Aubrey, what was Calypso?--but apparently that's a different type than trying to do too much at once. I was--am--a heap of uncertainties, by turns fire and ice.
Community service is what I want to do, but it is what I am least equipped to do. Since junior high I tried to be let on service projects, missions trips, and every year my dad said I couldn't, it wasn't safe. It's always that, with him. He's been overprotective for my entire life; I'll give examples if asked, but there's no point in doing it here. Now he's got a problem with my being in public service because he thinks there's too much emotional baggage involved. And the frustrating thing is, I haven't done anything this semester to even come close to proving I can handle any form of emotional pressure.
But I'm so sick of painting faces at carnivals. That's not big enough. And the problem is, I've never been anywhere where it's more than that. Even when I ran Leo Club, it was never anything significant. Nobody wanted to follow me; every single person was there for the college application sparkle. I would get into service, and Mr. M would hold me back, saying it was also about fun, too.
I think that's why I'm so desperate to be Vice President of Service for APO--anything, anything more significant than checking tables, please. I may yet rearrange my schedule and swallow my fears (and not tell my father, bare horrible truth be told) and join Rescue Squad. (I ran this past my mom tentatively. She actually didn't mind the thought.) Anything to feel needed. Anything to feel like I'm here for a reason other than to write English essays and give hugs to my boyfriend. They're good things, very. But they're not enough. I can't watch people hurt without wanting to fix it.
And who better to do it than someone who had an ideal childhood, who has good friends and a boyfriend to make the world feel okay, who has never questioned her parents' love for her?
But I have made myself such an incredible pain about APO that I'm starting to wonder whether anybody wants me to run anything, not counting Tim. I can be a service slavedriver, but I will lose all of my friends in the process. But this to me is more than just a hobby; I'm trying to make a life out of it. I keep wanting to scream, like Leo Club senior year, that nobody understands, this is important to me.
But I can't make it their career. I can't be so bipolar. It's the only word I have for it, that some days I'm nasty to anybody in my path, and some days I'm so happy and talking a mile a minute that I scare people with my energy.
I think I scare a lot of people these days. CB was certainly concerned.
I've never been one for New Year's resolutions, but this year I've got a list as long as my arm.
I will not make everyone try to guess how not to anger me. They should not have to make a part-time job of psychology.
I will get more sleep. This is part of the problem, though less than I like to claim.
I will stop being presumptuous, in every sense of the word. I do not know everything, and know far, far less than I think I do, even when I think I have a blast of humility about it.
I will stop getting angry at people in my head.
I will stop being a timid slacker and instead actually show up, more than once/semester, to SonLife. Same goes for the Bible study, if at all possible, and it will be possible if I make it so. I will probably get to know them if I talk to them, like duh.
I will stop being a head case around my boyfriend. On the other hand, I will also stop apologizing for everything, because it's really annoying, even to me.
I will stop avoiding people just because I think they're going to depress me.
I will--this is a big one--shut up about APO a lot more often.
I will--this is an even bigger one--shut up a lot more, period. I am also a lot less funny than I like to pretend I am. And the sniping has got to go.
I will not take all the credit for my success in any of these. Success is one of the many things God offers. Also failure-for-purpose, so I should probably not resent myself so much for my total lack of perfection.
I will make it so that nobody who has not read this entry will know that I am trying like heck to not be such an idiot. I will not complain about it (including explicit away messages). I will not draw attention to it.
I also will not come off as an ascetic, however ascetic this entry sounds. Life is cool and fun, and I should dress brightly and sing along with the funny music in folk dancing, have DDR parties and give lots of happy hugs along with all the feel-better hugs, hang out with John and Lily a lot more often, even if it means hanging out with the APOs less. I should not freak out if I get halfway through the semester and haven't made significant progress in any of these.
But my friends are all starting to drop these hints that maybe I should calm down, and it only ever freaks me out the more, because I think they're starting to hate me. I will not turn into a high-school-Rachel, because people like that drive people away who aren't by thinking that they're driving people away and trying to compensate. I can't do that.
But I've got to beat myself into recognizable shape this coming semester; I need to get back into what high school was like. I was happy then; I'm not as happy now.
That said, I'm going to play DDR until such time as Tim comes online, if he does, which he may not. And then I'm going to read, and then I'm going to sleep.
-Laurel
12.19.2004
London, Part III - Food
Because after the first couple of days in London, the events started to melt into each other (especially now that it's been two months since we went, and feels like longer), I think the whole thing is going to be better discussed by topic, rather than by day. Since it's fun, I'm going to start with food.
So about that English Breakfast thing, that "breakfast like a king, lunch like a peasant, dine like a pauper" philosophy--you can if you want, it appears, but it's certainly not obligatory.
I didn't get a whole lot of breakfast, English or otherwise, going on the first day, because remember how I set the wakeup call for 8:00? That was with the philosophy that when the itinerary said "breakfast - 8:00" and then the first event was listed as being at 10:00, that meant I had until 10:00 to eat. Um, not so much; we were meeting at 9:00 to leave, and apparently everyone had grasped this concept but me. When I realized this, it was about 8:45, so, tying my still-somewhat-wet hair back (this was to be a recurring theme for the week, as hair dryers had to be borrowed from the desk 'cause of the electric outlets, and I always felt too stupid to ask for one), I went downstairs.
They stopped serving the English-variety breakfast around 8:30 most days, in an oddity we could never quite explain (it didn't take long at all to make), but that was just as well, so I went for the cereal option and was given my choice of cornflakes or muesli. I might like muesli if it isn't those little brown sticks, but I couldn't remember and didn't want to take the chance, so I went with the cornflakes.
I did that sort of thing about meals a lot; somehow I never seemed to know how much time I had for them. So the candy I brought from home ended up being put to good use.
I had the weird thing going on, as I said before, with my metabolism or eating pattern or what, in that I wasn't all that hungry when I was supposed to be, and then starving two hours later. Still, I managed to have several food adventures, so to speak.
One had to do with the sandwiches. I am a big advocate of London little-food-shop sandwiches. They can be expensive at times (or they can be really cheap), but they have three huge advantages. First, they are ready-to-eat and take like no time to find and buy; we were on the run a lot and appreciated this. Second, they are clearly labeled with all their ingredients. I am a great big fan of this because I'm a picky little bugger, and will not eat anything with mayonnaise or "mustard mayonnaise" (which I believe showed up on several labels) or horseradish or certain things like that. In America, I am always getting unpleasant surprises like that with store-boughten goods, especially convenience stores. In London, no problem at all.
The only responsibility, therefore, is to know what the ingredients are that show up on the labels. One afternoon when we were left to fend for ourselves, dinner-wise, before a show, Sara (who spent most of the week nursing an asthma-related cold) asked me if I'd go get a sandwich for her when I went out for myself; she wanted to take a nap. So because technically we weren't supposed to go off alone, I justified my solo run by only going down to the convenience store down the street (and, c'mon, where else was I going to get food in a semi-hurry?). I surveyed the sandwiches there, but the expiration dates on most of them were pretty much that day, and I was unimpressed by that. There were, however, four samosas.
Samosas are these Indian-food things in phyllo-type dough--beans and sometimes chicken, and spices and vegetables. I read over the ingredients, but apparently that "chili powder, curry powder, cumin" thing never tripped the mental alarm, because, skeptical of their modest size and impressed by their being cheaper than the sandwiches, I bought all four of them that were left on the shelves--two chicken, two plain-vegetable, thinking Sara and I could have one of each. Because it looked so good after several days straight of water and juice and soda, I also bought a pint of "semi-skimmed" milk (that's 2% for the Yankee), thinking Sara and I could also split that.
And a darn good thing, because they turned out to be so spicy that I got through maybe half of one chicken one, then picked at the pastry, which tasted really good. I polished off most of the pint of milk myself, trying to douse the fire. Sara, who handles spice better than I do, got through one of the vegetable ones, which was even hotter than mine; the other two we took downstairs and offered to anyone who wanted them. Lauren ended up with one; the other may have been thrown out.
The third big advantage of the boughten sandwiches, though, is their creativity. There were things like turkey on white with tomato and lettuce, and tunafish, and what have you. But there were also some really interesting ones that tasted really good. They've got a thing for putting fruit on their sandwiches, paired with cheese or cucumbers--or both,I think. I ended up making a meal of a cranberry-compote-and-brie sandwich that I bought at the National Theatre food stand, which seemed so European that I got a complete touristy pleasure out of it. I was glad for the whole varietal-sandwich thing, really. And if "varietal" was not a word before, it hereby is, henceforth. I've been to the Globe; I've got that authority now. :-P
Another wonderful thing is London's apparent pure-food kick; they sell a lot of natural and organic food on a very mainstream level, and are very into things like unadulterated juice--apples, oranges, pears, or etc. liquefied and straight into a bottle, neither water added nor vitamins (like, not usually together--usually just one type of fruit, but they got creative with the types). A whole little cafe near The Globe Theatre sold only things like that, if I'm not mistaken. It's not significantly more expensive, and it all tasted really good. Especially the unadulterated apple juice, which I look back on sort of wistfully; I was semi-addicted by the end of the week.
The low-carb thing has, unfortunately, wormed its insidious way into London, but not nearly to the degree that it has in America (and, in Montignac Diet form, France, but maybe that was just the late '90s). I didn't see a lot of that. There was still a significant about of information about purity of beef, after the mad-cow/CJD thing. I didn't end up eating any cow-type products, though. ::shrugs::
I went to McDonald's twice, another totally touristy thing to do, and have discovered the following:
1) You cannot get chicken nuggets with honey in London. The closest you're going to get is curry sauce, which I tried, and I like curry in mild forms, but this stuff just wasn't my thing. They tried too hard to tone down the spice, which's quite a statement coming from me.
2) British McDonaldses, instead of having a "Dollar Menu", have a "99 Pence Menu" or a "Pound Menu", depending on where you go. On this menu are the local version of Flurries--I say "local" because it's local candy. I got Cadbury Dairy Milk in mine (which's just milk chocolate, but really tasty), but it wasn't as good as, say, Oreos.
About the candy bars. Oh, man...Cadbury, especially, needs to start selling its good stuff to America, 'cause we're getting left out in the cold. I should know; the thing about London is that, the way my money-exchange bill size went as compared to the daily price of a subway ticket, which does not give paper-money change, I ended up with a lot of coins, a lot of coins. At the end of the week, I had so many that I spent a lot of time in Gatwick Airport buying candy bars from the dispenser machine. I calculated it later for customs and realized that, across the whole week (not just that day, I don't think), I'd spent roughly £20 on them, which's $35 American if you get a good exchange rate, and $40 if you don't. Let's just say that startled me. But I didn't eat all of them; at least half ended up as gifts, and the others were spread out over the first month or so away from London. :-D
I didn't like Flake bars as much as I expected, and the bubbly-chocolate thing is only cool, like, once. But the "biscuits and chocolate" stuff is great (especially "digestive biscuits", which Katie bought because she liked the name so much), and the gummies are quite good, and the Yorkie bars are just fun (plain good-tasting chocolate, but how can you pass up something that says "it's not for girls!" because it's too thick to fit in one of those little preteen purses?), and other stuff like that.
London likes to flavor things--candy, medicines, and otherwise--in "blackcurrant," which's kinda like raisin (kinda, but it can be more like grape-with-a-bitter-undertone), and as a flavor is very hit-and-miss. I thought this was interesting. I usually liked it. Sara usually didn't.
I also bought some Ribena (pronounced rye-BEAN-ah), which's this fruit-type drink that Dr. M remembered from when he was a kid. It was all right--lots of sugar with the fruit-flavoring. That came in blackcurrant as well, if I remember, and Sara took some back for Cloud Nine, which apparently had a line about Ribena in it.
Lily, Lily K., Tori, and I went to a restaurant one night called ASK, and got pizzas. Mine had spinach and hard-boiled egg on it, which was cool, but it took a long time, and I had to give money and duck out before everyone else, 'cause it was on one of the free nights, and Sara and Juliane and I were going on the Jack the Ripper tour, which Sara was all keen on.
The Jack the Ripper tour brought us into Whitechapel, which's technically just outside of London, and in one of the neighborhoods where one of Jack's murders was committed, we saw a sort of Arabic version of McDonald's--run very much like one, with the same style, but all in Arabic characters, and with different types of sandwiches, more chicken-oriented, I think.
We got dinner from one in London on our last night; Sara, Juliane, Katie, and I went to go see Batboy (oh dear, more on that one later), and when we finally found the theater, we had half an hour to spare, so we decided to grab dinner there. Part of the menu was in English, I think, which was good. The problem was, the guy running the place had a very thick accent, and only Sara could consistently understand him. However, her cold had progressed so that she didn't have much of a voice at all, so it was an interesting situation. But most of us ended up with chicken patties smothered in ketchup (like doused, but they still tasted pretty good), and Katie (one of the trip's five vegetarians) had some falafel that she said was good, so all went well. The other thing was that we all bought sodas, and they were all worldwide brands, like Sprite, but not a one had a can in English. Some were in Arabic, mine was in German, and I think Juliane's was in a language we couldn't identify.
Finally, because I'm running out of thoughts, I will share the following: in a Greenwich pub, Sara and I had fish and chips. ...It was okay. But not the best I've ever had, which was in a down-to-earth little brewery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, right on the ocean. :)
Oh, and English bacon is really salty and kinda odd, but really good.
That's it for now.
-Laurel
So about that English Breakfast thing, that "breakfast like a king, lunch like a peasant, dine like a pauper" philosophy--you can if you want, it appears, but it's certainly not obligatory.
I didn't get a whole lot of breakfast, English or otherwise, going on the first day, because remember how I set the wakeup call for 8:00? That was with the philosophy that when the itinerary said "breakfast - 8:00" and then the first event was listed as being at 10:00, that meant I had until 10:00 to eat. Um, not so much; we were meeting at 9:00 to leave, and apparently everyone had grasped this concept but me. When I realized this, it was about 8:45, so, tying my still-somewhat-wet hair back (this was to be a recurring theme for the week, as hair dryers had to be borrowed from the desk 'cause of the electric outlets, and I always felt too stupid to ask for one), I went downstairs.
They stopped serving the English-variety breakfast around 8:30 most days, in an oddity we could never quite explain (it didn't take long at all to make), but that was just as well, so I went for the cereal option and was given my choice of cornflakes or muesli. I might like muesli if it isn't those little brown sticks, but I couldn't remember and didn't want to take the chance, so I went with the cornflakes.
I did that sort of thing about meals a lot; somehow I never seemed to know how much time I had for them. So the candy I brought from home ended up being put to good use.
I had the weird thing going on, as I said before, with my metabolism or eating pattern or what, in that I wasn't all that hungry when I was supposed to be, and then starving two hours later. Still, I managed to have several food adventures, so to speak.
One had to do with the sandwiches. I am a big advocate of London little-food-shop sandwiches. They can be expensive at times (or they can be really cheap), but they have three huge advantages. First, they are ready-to-eat and take like no time to find and buy; we were on the run a lot and appreciated this. Second, they are clearly labeled with all their ingredients. I am a great big fan of this because I'm a picky little bugger, and will not eat anything with mayonnaise or "mustard mayonnaise" (which I believe showed up on several labels) or horseradish or certain things like that. In America, I am always getting unpleasant surprises like that with store-boughten goods, especially convenience stores. In London, no problem at all.
The only responsibility, therefore, is to know what the ingredients are that show up on the labels. One afternoon when we were left to fend for ourselves, dinner-wise, before a show, Sara (who spent most of the week nursing an asthma-related cold) asked me if I'd go get a sandwich for her when I went out for myself; she wanted to take a nap. So because technically we weren't supposed to go off alone, I justified my solo run by only going down to the convenience store down the street (and, c'mon, where else was I going to get food in a semi-hurry?). I surveyed the sandwiches there, but the expiration dates on most of them were pretty much that day, and I was unimpressed by that. There were, however, four samosas.
Samosas are these Indian-food things in phyllo-type dough--beans and sometimes chicken, and spices and vegetables. I read over the ingredients, but apparently that "chili powder, curry powder, cumin" thing never tripped the mental alarm, because, skeptical of their modest size and impressed by their being cheaper than the sandwiches, I bought all four of them that were left on the shelves--two chicken, two plain-vegetable, thinking Sara and I could have one of each. Because it looked so good after several days straight of water and juice and soda, I also bought a pint of "semi-skimmed" milk (that's 2% for the Yankee), thinking Sara and I could also split that.
And a darn good thing, because they turned out to be so spicy that I got through maybe half of one chicken one, then picked at the pastry, which tasted really good. I polished off most of the pint of milk myself, trying to douse the fire. Sara, who handles spice better than I do, got through one of the vegetable ones, which was even hotter than mine; the other two we took downstairs and offered to anyone who wanted them. Lauren ended up with one; the other may have been thrown out.
The third big advantage of the boughten sandwiches, though, is their creativity. There were things like turkey on white with tomato and lettuce, and tunafish, and what have you. But there were also some really interesting ones that tasted really good. They've got a thing for putting fruit on their sandwiches, paired with cheese or cucumbers--or both,I think. I ended up making a meal of a cranberry-compote-and-brie sandwich that I bought at the National Theatre food stand, which seemed so European that I got a complete touristy pleasure out of it. I was glad for the whole varietal-sandwich thing, really. And if "varietal" was not a word before, it hereby is, henceforth. I've been to the Globe; I've got that authority now. :-P
Another wonderful thing is London's apparent pure-food kick; they sell a lot of natural and organic food on a very mainstream level, and are very into things like unadulterated juice--apples, oranges, pears, or etc. liquefied and straight into a bottle, neither water added nor vitamins (like, not usually together--usually just one type of fruit, but they got creative with the types). A whole little cafe near The Globe Theatre sold only things like that, if I'm not mistaken. It's not significantly more expensive, and it all tasted really good. Especially the unadulterated apple juice, which I look back on sort of wistfully; I was semi-addicted by the end of the week.
The low-carb thing has, unfortunately, wormed its insidious way into London, but not nearly to the degree that it has in America (and, in Montignac Diet form, France, but maybe that was just the late '90s). I didn't see a lot of that. There was still a significant about of information about purity of beef, after the mad-cow/CJD thing. I didn't end up eating any cow-type products, though. ::shrugs::
I went to McDonald's twice, another totally touristy thing to do, and have discovered the following:
1) You cannot get chicken nuggets with honey in London. The closest you're going to get is curry sauce, which I tried, and I like curry in mild forms, but this stuff just wasn't my thing. They tried too hard to tone down the spice, which's quite a statement coming from me.
2) British McDonaldses, instead of having a "Dollar Menu", have a "99 Pence Menu" or a "Pound Menu", depending on where you go. On this menu are the local version of Flurries--I say "local" because it's local candy. I got Cadbury Dairy Milk in mine (which's just milk chocolate, but really tasty), but it wasn't as good as, say, Oreos.
About the candy bars. Oh, man...Cadbury, especially, needs to start selling its good stuff to America, 'cause we're getting left out in the cold. I should know; the thing about London is that, the way my money-exchange bill size went as compared to the daily price of a subway ticket, which does not give paper-money change, I ended up with a lot of coins, a lot of coins. At the end of the week, I had so many that I spent a lot of time in Gatwick Airport buying candy bars from the dispenser machine. I calculated it later for customs and realized that, across the whole week (not just that day, I don't think), I'd spent roughly £20 on them, which's $35 American if you get a good exchange rate, and $40 if you don't. Let's just say that startled me. But I didn't eat all of them; at least half ended up as gifts, and the others were spread out over the first month or so away from London. :-D
I didn't like Flake bars as much as I expected, and the bubbly-chocolate thing is only cool, like, once. But the "biscuits and chocolate" stuff is great (especially "digestive biscuits", which Katie bought because she liked the name so much), and the gummies are quite good, and the Yorkie bars are just fun (plain good-tasting chocolate, but how can you pass up something that says "it's not for girls!" because it's too thick to fit in one of those little preteen purses?), and other stuff like that.
London likes to flavor things--candy, medicines, and otherwise--in "blackcurrant," which's kinda like raisin (kinda, but it can be more like grape-with-a-bitter-undertone), and as a flavor is very hit-and-miss. I thought this was interesting. I usually liked it. Sara usually didn't.
I also bought some Ribena (pronounced rye-BEAN-ah), which's this fruit-type drink that Dr. M remembered from when he was a kid. It was all right--lots of sugar with the fruit-flavoring. That came in blackcurrant as well, if I remember, and Sara took some back for Cloud Nine, which apparently had a line about Ribena in it.
Lily, Lily K., Tori, and I went to a restaurant one night called ASK, and got pizzas. Mine had spinach and hard-boiled egg on it, which was cool, but it took a long time, and I had to give money and duck out before everyone else, 'cause it was on one of the free nights, and Sara and Juliane and I were going on the Jack the Ripper tour, which Sara was all keen on.
The Jack the Ripper tour brought us into Whitechapel, which's technically just outside of London, and in one of the neighborhoods where one of Jack's murders was committed, we saw a sort of Arabic version of McDonald's--run very much like one, with the same style, but all in Arabic characters, and with different types of sandwiches, more chicken-oriented, I think.
We got dinner from one in London on our last night; Sara, Juliane, Katie, and I went to go see Batboy (oh dear, more on that one later), and when we finally found the theater, we had half an hour to spare, so we decided to grab dinner there. Part of the menu was in English, I think, which was good. The problem was, the guy running the place had a very thick accent, and only Sara could consistently understand him. However, her cold had progressed so that she didn't have much of a voice at all, so it was an interesting situation. But most of us ended up with chicken patties smothered in ketchup (like doused, but they still tasted pretty good), and Katie (one of the trip's five vegetarians) had some falafel that she said was good, so all went well. The other thing was that we all bought sodas, and they were all worldwide brands, like Sprite, but not a one had a can in English. Some were in Arabic, mine was in German, and I think Juliane's was in a language we couldn't identify.
Finally, because I'm running out of thoughts, I will share the following: in a Greenwich pub, Sara and I had fish and chips. ...It was okay. But not the best I've ever had, which was in a down-to-earth little brewery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, right on the ocean. :)
Oh, and English bacon is really salty and kinda odd, but really good.
That's it for now.
-Laurel
12.18.2004
One month 'til classes start... :-P
Well, here I am at home.
::cricket cricket cricket::
No, it's not that bad yet; just that Saturday nights, apparently everyone has a life but me. :-P 'Cause totally I got back from a family thing and went to work on the APO website like the hyperobsessive nerd I am.
Next semester's classes, for the curious, are as follows:
Cultural Anthropology: This's the obligatory second social-sciences credit (AP psych took care of the first one, yeah!), but apparently I've landed in a very good class; so far everyone I've talked to who's taken it has recommended it wholeheartedly. Evan has a funny story about it--when asked on a test to name, I believe, Afghanistan's primary export (which apparently is opium), he couldn't remember it. After thinking about it for a while, he finally figured the heck with it and wrote down "Osama bin Laden." ...He got full credit for the answer. ...Casey will be in it with me, which should be interesting.
Introduction to Critical Analysis: As much like a scary English course as this sounds, it's actually a scary Spanish course, more 300-level. Emphasis on reading and writing, or so they claim, but Advanced Practica this semester was supposed to be the speaking-skills equivalent, and we did just as much reading and writing as speaking. (Incidentally, I got an A in the class, which means that I actually did better at 300-level than I did last year in 200-level, which was A-. Not a huge difference, but it still amuses me.) ...On the other hand, she had us do a lot of debates and essays in Spanish. Could this course mean papers instead? ::is suddenly worried::
Social Psychology: I am not a Freud person or an abnormal psych person; I do not really want to study either the superego or schizophrenia. I am also only lukewarm about many forms of biopsychology (though some really are very cool). I am primarily in this minor for the interpersonal aspects of psychology. So I was super-excited about this class until I talked to Rachel and Alexa, two psych-major friends, who told me that the professor is horrible and that makes the class really boring (though the material is, according to Rachel, good). ...Nobody else teaches it, and Social Development, besides being at 8:20 in the morning (::keels::), is not really the one I want to take, judging by the course description. This one is, but I have a feeling that SocPsy is going to go a lot like Psych Meth/Stat this past semester (A-, but just barely; the extra credit made a letter-grade difference for possibly the first time in my whole life), where I show up to class, but I work on Spanish homework the entire time. (Towards the end of the course, this's why my grade in the class started dropping; not because she noticed, but because I had a hard time with the first stuff I hadn't seen in AP psych. Perhaps I have learned something. Unfortunately, perhaps not.) ...SocPsy classes are double the length of Meth/Stat; perhaps I'd better bring lots of Spanish homework. Maybe that will keep me from skipping, since Rachel claims no attendance is taken and says that if you know the material, it's just as well if you don't show up. On the other hand, if the text is good, I may pull a junior-high-English and just read twenty pages ahead during lecture.
Language of Literary Art: This class may end up being my reason to leave the hill on days measured in single digits Fahrenheit. ::snorts:: Too bad it's my last of the day. ...But seriously: Lily, Lily K., Anna, and now John there with me, plus Dr. M (yes, as in London) team-teaching with Dr. Zen-Ben (who apparently is very nice; I should not make fun, but I like the rhyme, because it's so true). I still can't get over John being an English/Math double major now. He thinks the English part is going to be easy, 'cause it's all, shall we say, blatant sophistry in his opinion. I think he's in for a big surprise. And if he is daunted by LoLA (which Dr. M is calling "Lite Art", as if it was somehow a low-calorie course), wait'll he gets to Survey of British Lit.
Maple Syrup: The Real Thing: The final honors seminar I have to take (and should take, considering my schedule, but should Dr. T ever run her C.S. Lewis one again--or Tim manage to co-teach an honors-sem on puzzles for his thesis--!). Tim got all excited when I said I was going to take it, 'cause he was in it freshman year, and said I-should-do-it-I-should-do-it. Now that I'm signed up, he tells me that, because there's only so much you can say about maple syrup, the course got boring pretty quickly. ::pause for effect:: But I'm looking at it this way: first of all, it's the one I wanted to take anyway, so no loss there. Secondly: Chris, John, and me (and Katie Goetschius, or however you spell it, of laxative-cookie infamy, but I don't know her as well as Tim does)...plus tree-based sugar...plus cooking with said tree-based sugar...plus field trip in snow to professor's house in middle of woodsy nowhere...plus field trip to all-you-can-eat pancake place with aforementioned hungry boys...equals self-made honors-geek entertainment, and plenty of it. I'll show that twin, that doubting not-Thomas-that's-the-other-one! We'll have so much fun, he'll feel it! :-P
And then there's choir again, and now I'm on the committee to plan the next international trip, and apparently the incredible odds we beat in getting out of Peru without any damage worse than we had have not fazed Luanne a bit, and she's dismissing all the really safe places as too normal. Oh, joy. Stay tuned for the next episode on that one, assuming I don't find a creative excuse to jump the committee.
Hurrah! Have just heard that Matt and Kathy's first college choice is my school! As I have just told Matt, it's about darn time someone else from our high school came down to the one-light town. And they'd love it so much, especially Matt. :-D
Okay, so I've just taken like an hour to type all that up, so I'm leaving everything else for later.
-Laurel
::cricket cricket cricket::
No, it's not that bad yet; just that Saturday nights, apparently everyone has a life but me. :-P 'Cause totally I got back from a family thing and went to work on the APO website like the hyperobsessive nerd I am.
Next semester's classes, for the curious, are as follows:
Cultural Anthropology: This's the obligatory second social-sciences credit (AP psych took care of the first one, yeah!), but apparently I've landed in a very good class; so far everyone I've talked to who's taken it has recommended it wholeheartedly. Evan has a funny story about it--when asked on a test to name, I believe, Afghanistan's primary export (which apparently is opium), he couldn't remember it. After thinking about it for a while, he finally figured the heck with it and wrote down "Osama bin Laden." ...He got full credit for the answer. ...Casey will be in it with me, which should be interesting.
Introduction to Critical Analysis: As much like a scary English course as this sounds, it's actually a scary Spanish course, more 300-level. Emphasis on reading and writing, or so they claim, but Advanced Practica this semester was supposed to be the speaking-skills equivalent, and we did just as much reading and writing as speaking. (Incidentally, I got an A in the class, which means that I actually did better at 300-level than I did last year in 200-level, which was A-. Not a huge difference, but it still amuses me.) ...On the other hand, she had us do a lot of debates and essays in Spanish. Could this course mean papers instead? ::is suddenly worried::
Social Psychology: I am not a Freud person or an abnormal psych person; I do not really want to study either the superego or schizophrenia. I am also only lukewarm about many forms of biopsychology (though some really are very cool). I am primarily in this minor for the interpersonal aspects of psychology. So I was super-excited about this class until I talked to Rachel and Alexa, two psych-major friends, who told me that the professor is horrible and that makes the class really boring (though the material is, according to Rachel, good). ...Nobody else teaches it, and Social Development, besides being at 8:20 in the morning (::keels::), is not really the one I want to take, judging by the course description. This one is, but I have a feeling that SocPsy is going to go a lot like Psych Meth/Stat this past semester (A-, but just barely; the extra credit made a letter-grade difference for possibly the first time in my whole life), where I show up to class, but I work on Spanish homework the entire time. (Towards the end of the course, this's why my grade in the class started dropping; not because she noticed, but because I had a hard time with the first stuff I hadn't seen in AP psych. Perhaps I have learned something. Unfortunately, perhaps not.) ...SocPsy classes are double the length of Meth/Stat; perhaps I'd better bring lots of Spanish homework. Maybe that will keep me from skipping, since Rachel claims no attendance is taken and says that if you know the material, it's just as well if you don't show up. On the other hand, if the text is good, I may pull a junior-high-English and just read twenty pages ahead during lecture.
Language of Literary Art: This class may end up being my reason to leave the hill on days measured in single digits Fahrenheit. ::snorts:: Too bad it's my last of the day. ...But seriously: Lily, Lily K., Anna, and now John there with me, plus Dr. M (yes, as in London) team-teaching with Dr. Zen-Ben (who apparently is very nice; I should not make fun, but I like the rhyme, because it's so true). I still can't get over John being an English/Math double major now. He thinks the English part is going to be easy, 'cause it's all, shall we say, blatant sophistry in his opinion. I think he's in for a big surprise. And if he is daunted by LoLA (which Dr. M is calling "Lite Art", as if it was somehow a low-calorie course), wait'll he gets to Survey of British Lit.
Maple Syrup: The Real Thing: The final honors seminar I have to take (and should take, considering my schedule, but should Dr. T ever run her C.S. Lewis one again--or Tim manage to co-teach an honors-sem on puzzles for his thesis--!). Tim got all excited when I said I was going to take it, 'cause he was in it freshman year, and said I-should-do-it-I-should-do-it. Now that I'm signed up, he tells me that, because there's only so much you can say about maple syrup, the course got boring pretty quickly. ::pause for effect:: But I'm looking at it this way: first of all, it's the one I wanted to take anyway, so no loss there. Secondly: Chris, John, and me (and Katie Goetschius, or however you spell it, of laxative-cookie infamy, but I don't know her as well as Tim does)...plus tree-based sugar...plus cooking with said tree-based sugar...plus field trip in snow to professor's house in middle of woodsy nowhere...plus field trip to all-you-can-eat pancake place with aforementioned hungry boys...equals self-made honors-geek entertainment, and plenty of it. I'll show that twin, that doubting not-Thomas-that's-the-other-one! We'll have so much fun, he'll feel it! :-P
And then there's choir again, and now I'm on the committee to plan the next international trip, and apparently the incredible odds we beat in getting out of Peru without any damage worse than we had have not fazed Luanne a bit, and she's dismissing all the really safe places as too normal. Oh, joy. Stay tuned for the next episode on that one, assuming I don't find a creative excuse to jump the committee.
Hurrah! Have just heard that Matt and Kathy's first college choice is my school! As I have just told Matt, it's about darn time someone else from our high school came down to the one-light town. And they'd love it so much, especially Matt. :-D
Okay, so I've just taken like an hour to type all that up, so I'm leaving everything else for later.
-Laurel
12.07.2004
::having a rather "Sapri Tamar" kind of morning, at least in terms of tune-expressing-life::
Actually went to bed at 9:45 last night and got up at 5:15ish this morning. Nearly three hours later, I have gotten my wash put away and part of my closet cleaned. I have discussed sweaters and subways with Kristin and The Giver with Albert (dude, what if Jonas had managed somehow to slip back in time after he passed the boundary of his colony-thing, almost like The Truman Show, but time-wise, and that's what the ending was? Wouldn't that've been spectacular?). I have showered and dressed and dried my hair. I have checked my e-mail and several blogs. And I am right about on schedule with my homework, with a nice folkdancing-music soundtrack to accompany it.
I am laughing heartily at myself, seeing how much I get done when I get up at a time when (for a while) nobody's on AIM and my boyfriend is sleeping.
Much to my chagrin, I should really do this more often.
-Laurel
I am laughing heartily at myself, seeing how much I get done when I get up at a time when (for a while) nobody's on AIM and my boyfriend is sleeping.
Much to my chagrin, I should really do this more often.
-Laurel
12.02.2004
So this sleeping-in-on-Thursdays thing, why doesn't it work half the time?
I'm liking this idea that, next semester, however things work out with my schedule, I will have no Thursday classes. Right now I have one (well, two, counting choir), and it's not 'til the afternoon, but that means that I can never fully enjoy the morning, because I have the homework hanging over me. :-P 'Cause the way things turn out, it doesn't often get done on Wednesday nights.
I have a busy tomorrow even though that's only two classes, too; those are early, a psych quiz (open-note, but considering how consistent my attention span has[n't] been, I'm going to have to review and add majorly to those pages) and a Spanish class, which's fine except for the journal entry being due as almost-always.
After lunch I pack up and head down to my uncle's near here to meet up with my family, and we will then drive to Connecticut, where a friend of my dad's lives, and from there the next day they'll take us into New York City, where my cousin Tara's having an art show in a gallery. This should be okay. It's a lot of travelling (even if that's the British spelling, which it may well be) for what will probably be like an hour of Tara's art, but only twenty minutes total of Tara herself, and my parents got kinda cranky about seeing any of NYC while we're there, 'cause it'll be night and winter. On the other hand, this would be an excellent time to finish reading MFK Fisher for Lit class, this twelve-type hours total of travelling that I'm to do. And it may just take me that long to slog through another 300 pages, since when the book cover says A Life in Letters, wow, they're not kidding. I've gotten through some thirty years of her life and I'm only done with about 25% of the book. True that I only need 350-400 pages read of the 500 total, but looking at it from page 140-something, that's still pretty disheartening.
If Mark runs his Leadership and Civic Responsibility course next semester, I promised him I'd drop anthro (since it runs every semester anyway) and sign up for his class and karate instead. Mark isn't particular about the karate, but I need to get some form of requirement done this coming semester, and the gym one would be one that didn't involve, say, an 8:20.
I mentioned this to Tim and Lily, who're in karate now, and Lily got all excited 'cause it's a fun class. ...Tim, for his part, burst out laughing at the thought that there is now a possibility, if hazy, that, as Lily (one cousin of a pair) and Tim (one twin) are now in the same class being, like, kick-partners or whatever, I (other cousin) may yet end up in karate with Tom (other twin). Which's an odd thought in the sense that I didn't, for whatever reason, ever assume that he'd be interested in kicking things and going ki-yah, whereas Tim and Lily, I can see it better.
...Then again, it's a weird thought that I'm likely enough to be in it. I'm actually more amused by the idea that I may be taking classes from both Mark and Laurie, seeing as I'm in Maple Syrup for honors at that point. I don't know why this's amusing, but it is.
So stay tuned for the next episode on that one. The London narrative will continue soon, since now it's, like, a month and a half since I went.
-Laurel
I have a busy tomorrow even though that's only two classes, too; those are early, a psych quiz (open-note, but considering how consistent my attention span has[n't] been, I'm going to have to review and add majorly to those pages) and a Spanish class, which's fine except for the journal entry being due as almost-always.
After lunch I pack up and head down to my uncle's near here to meet up with my family, and we will then drive to Connecticut, where a friend of my dad's lives, and from there the next day they'll take us into New York City, where my cousin Tara's having an art show in a gallery. This should be okay. It's a lot of travelling (even if that's the British spelling, which it may well be) for what will probably be like an hour of Tara's art, but only twenty minutes total of Tara herself, and my parents got kinda cranky about seeing any of NYC while we're there, 'cause it'll be night and winter. On the other hand, this would be an excellent time to finish reading MFK Fisher for Lit class, this twelve-type hours total of travelling that I'm to do. And it may just take me that long to slog through another 300 pages, since when the book cover says A Life in Letters, wow, they're not kidding. I've gotten through some thirty years of her life and I'm only done with about 25% of the book. True that I only need 350-400 pages read of the 500 total, but looking at it from page 140-something, that's still pretty disheartening.
If Mark runs his Leadership and Civic Responsibility course next semester, I promised him I'd drop anthro (since it runs every semester anyway) and sign up for his class and karate instead. Mark isn't particular about the karate, but I need to get some form of requirement done this coming semester, and the gym one would be one that didn't involve, say, an 8:20.
I mentioned this to Tim and Lily, who're in karate now, and Lily got all excited 'cause it's a fun class. ...Tim, for his part, burst out laughing at the thought that there is now a possibility, if hazy, that, as Lily (one cousin of a pair) and Tim (one twin) are now in the same class being, like, kick-partners or whatever, I (other cousin) may yet end up in karate with Tom (other twin). Which's an odd thought in the sense that I didn't, for whatever reason, ever assume that he'd be interested in kicking things and going ki-yah, whereas Tim and Lily, I can see it better.
...Then again, it's a weird thought that I'm likely enough to be in it. I'm actually more amused by the idea that I may be taking classes from both Mark and Laurie, seeing as I'm in Maple Syrup for honors at that point. I don't know why this's amusing, but it is.
So stay tuned for the next episode on that one. The London narrative will continue soon, since now it's, like, a month and a half since I went.
-Laurel
11.26.2004
Peace on Earth
Hear it ev'ry Christmastime,
But hope and history won't rhyme--
--so what's it worth?
This "peace on Earth",
This "peace on Earth"...
-U2
Post contains 150% Recommended Daily Allowance of angst. Please think carefully before ingesting. Do not double the dosage.
There are times when I feel like I can save the world. I made a publicity poster this morning for APO to hang in the freshman dorms, possibly the best PR I've ever done, my parents both wholly approved, I couldn't wait for this Sunday to come so I could show it off.
I thought about Christmas presents and making people happy, about how my parents have gotten used to the idea of my working for a charity instead of being a writer, and glorying in how much my fingers, my eyes, my voice already has done, what it can do.
We felt like that, too, 'Nanda and Daf and I, with "For Pete's Sake", which became Leo Club--sent fliers to teachers, looking for one to help us change society, rock the foundations. Ms. Zicari was among the best we could have found.
But it's the same story I've told since this blog began. Aubrey came, Calypso came, we had other problems, big problems, but never clear-cut--you can't really diagnose a (para?)suicide, an eating disorder, in this information age; the more talk there is, the more people are caught, but the better smart kids hide, and the more posers (there are posers) blur the line. I've known girls to discuss suicide and not mean it, but make a good show; known people to scare others for attention, and I'm the one for whom "gullible" was always written on the ceiling. I panic over the slightest potential problem and it's never as bad as I think; I would make a horrible psychologist, especially because eventually, if it goes on for an extended time and the news never gets any happier, eventually I just burn out, avoid contact, lose all hope.
Or I do stupid things, stupid, bitter, tactless things, lose my patience and berate people for what I think is wrong with them, when usually I only know half of what there is.
I could work all my life and save one life each day, and it would never, ever be enough to fix even a fraction of what's wrong. As there are countless people experiencing all forms of joy, there are countless people in all sorts of pain. The Search for Snout implied that there are more in pain, at any given moment, than there are happy. Cynical. Is it true?
But if not me, then that's one less hand. I can do nothing else. I just can't pin my happiness on it. That's hard to do.
Which reminds me of this, which was my blog title of the moment even before tonight.
I'm sorry. This was going to be an entry about dog-sitting and bread-baking, which I did today (the former very uncharacteristic of me), and about my thoughts on whatever. But I started out the day thinking I could do so much, and have ended it realizing that I'm so powerless whenever it counts. Everyone tries to tell me it's the small things, hugging and listening and carrying. I never quite believe it. I don't know what would teach me. So far nothing has. My mind acknowledges chains, strings tying the universe together, chain reactions that brought me to Alfred, brought me Tim, small things melding. I wish I could be content with that. All the listening in the world never seems to change what's happening, only how somebody feels about it. As important as that is, it leaves everything incomplete.
Anyone know how to fix a God-complex?
-Laurel
But hope and history won't rhyme--
--so what's it worth?
This "peace on Earth",
This "peace on Earth"...
-U2
Post contains 150% Recommended Daily Allowance of angst. Please think carefully before ingesting. Do not double the dosage.
There are times when I feel like I can save the world. I made a publicity poster this morning for APO to hang in the freshman dorms, possibly the best PR I've ever done, my parents both wholly approved, I couldn't wait for this Sunday to come so I could show it off.
I thought about Christmas presents and making people happy, about how my parents have gotten used to the idea of my working for a charity instead of being a writer, and glorying in how much my fingers, my eyes, my voice already has done, what it can do.
We felt like that, too, 'Nanda and Daf and I, with "For Pete's Sake", which became Leo Club--sent fliers to teachers, looking for one to help us change society, rock the foundations. Ms. Zicari was among the best we could have found.
But it's the same story I've told since this blog began. Aubrey came, Calypso came, we had other problems, big problems, but never clear-cut--you can't really diagnose a (para?)suicide, an eating disorder, in this information age; the more talk there is, the more people are caught, but the better smart kids hide, and the more posers (there are posers) blur the line. I've known girls to discuss suicide and not mean it, but make a good show; known people to scare others for attention, and I'm the one for whom "gullible" was always written on the ceiling. I panic over the slightest potential problem and it's never as bad as I think; I would make a horrible psychologist, especially because eventually, if it goes on for an extended time and the news never gets any happier, eventually I just burn out, avoid contact, lose all hope.
Or I do stupid things, stupid, bitter, tactless things, lose my patience and berate people for what I think is wrong with them, when usually I only know half of what there is.
I could work all my life and save one life each day, and it would never, ever be enough to fix even a fraction of what's wrong. As there are countless people experiencing all forms of joy, there are countless people in all sorts of pain. The Search for Snout implied that there are more in pain, at any given moment, than there are happy. Cynical. Is it true?
But if not me, then that's one less hand. I can do nothing else. I just can't pin my happiness on it. That's hard to do.
Which reminds me of this, which was my blog title of the moment even before tonight.
I'm sorry. This was going to be an entry about dog-sitting and bread-baking, which I did today (the former very uncharacteristic of me), and about my thoughts on whatever. But I started out the day thinking I could do so much, and have ended it realizing that I'm so powerless whenever it counts. Everyone tries to tell me it's the small things, hugging and listening and carrying. I never quite believe it. I don't know what would teach me. So far nothing has. My mind acknowledges chains, strings tying the universe together, chain reactions that brought me to Alfred, brought me Tim, small things melding. I wish I could be content with that. All the listening in the world never seems to change what's happening, only how somebody feels about it. As important as that is, it leaves everything incomplete.
Anyone know how to fix a God-complex?
-Laurel
London, Part II (and about time!) - Thursday, October 14th
I got threeish hours of sleep total on the plane, in various contorted positions (no one sitting to my left, though the guy two seats over may have resented me by the end), and woke up for good to a sunrise over Ireland, which we were approaching. Not that I could see Ireland, mind, but the clouds brightened into pastel streaks and the disc of sun made me squint.
I figured I ought to sleep some more, but I started talking to Lily K., and then breakfast came around, and that ended all hope. "Three hours?" I asked her, uneasy.
"Yeah, we did that in Israel--the plane lands and you just begin the day," she said.
And that's what I did. It was about 8 AM when we came to a pretty eventual stop in Gatwick (like, we taxied for a long time). We got off the plane, got our luggage, and--whee--got in the line for customs. Anna was hyperactive already, and Dr. M pretended not to know her, but we did all get talking to a lady from--oh, goodness, Maine?--who knew all this stuff about London and was all into the idea of college students traveling. M was about ready to let her be the guide for the week and leave us.
First thing I discovered about London (besides that everybody around there has--here I will be a complete touristy girl--an incredible accent and it's a truly wonderful thing to witness and hear) is that the female bathrooms do the picture of the lady, like American ones, but some of them give her a really billowed-out skirt, like they've got colonial-era hoops under there a la Laura Ingalls Wilder or something.
(The bathrooms are clean and they flush. Score one for the First World.)
We exchanged money--I rather more than everyone else, but I was convinced that my credit card was not going to work overseas (note: I was right; thus should end my parents' insisting that Europe deals with Discover)--and bought tickets for the Gatwick Express, which was going to take us to Victoria Station, since Gatwick is, oh, a little far-flung from Paddington and the subway system. Sat with Katie and Anna and Lauren (considering their subject matter all the way over, was rather sorry I had) and got a truly horrible picture taken of my unwashed, bespectacled, speckled self (with yellow teeth), next to, I believe, Katie. Dr. M sat farther back and pretended not to know us. This actually did not become a theme of the trip; at the beginning I imagine he was rather skeptical of traveling with nine females, but by the end he would look sort of benevolently upon us as we talked about clothes or classes or life, and would ask us for stories and gossip about fellow professors (I don't know why, as he knows and tells worse stories of them than we do. I keep saying, and it's true, that I have so much liking for him, but so little respect--it's kinda bad).
We got to Victoria, which I remember practically nothing of, bought subway cards (used one of my cool ten-pound notes and got a bunch of change in coins; the pocket full of change was to be one of the recurring themes), and got on the subway for the first time, the city-wide London Underground system. This is the name of the subway as a whole; the different routes on it are known as lines. If you've never really been on a subway, and I never really had (once in NYC on a very-large-group school trip doesn't count), the Circle Line, which we took, is a good place to start. You never have to worry, I don't think, about going out of your travel zone (that's how far your subway card will take you before you have to buy a wider-ranging one), and if you get on in the wrong direction and have never navigated a subway before and are too afraid to move, all is well if you've got the time to kill while it makes a full circle (if I'm not mistaken, that is, since I never actually had to do this).
Our subway cards, the ones we bought every day all week, lasted all day (Day Travelcards, they're called, actually)--after I think 9:30 every morning, the price went down by a pound or two because it was off-peak timing (all of the weekend was off-peak as well). They were Zones One and Two, which got us everywhere we ever needed to go--it took more than just the subway to get to Greenwich, but I'll tell that story when we get there. To get on the subway, you had to stick your ticket into one of a lot of readers all in a line, blocking the way in. If it read right, the doors swung open at the end of the reader. If your ticket was all-day, like ours, it also gave you your ticket back through a slot on the reader's top; otherwise it sucked them in.
We got into Paddington and did some walking until we got to the Mitre House Hotel, which was cozy, if a bit small-seeming in comparison to, say, a Holiday Inn. We divided into room groups, refiguring based on Tori's coming later and last-minute mind changes; Sara and I ended up together instead of Katie and me, the original plan, 'cause Katie wasn't part of the class, but had come with Anna, so roomed with her. Sara and I were in the only double room. The triple held the freshmen--Juliane, Lauren, and eventually Tori. That left the self-regarded party suite, the quad room, as Lily, Lily K., Anna, and Katie. Dr. M, of course, had a room to himself.
Sara and I were the highest of the student rooms, a door or two down from M., on like the third floor up (Room 414, I think). The elevator in the lobby was old and slow and creaky, so I went into somewhat of a panic when I was told by a cleaning girl that no stairs went up that high and the elevator was the only way, but the lady at the desk (one of the owners, I think, since it's a pretty small and independent-type place) told me how to get up the stairs, which were right through a door off to the side.
This is where I owe Sara lots and lots, because much of the time, she wouldn't leave me to climb up all those stairs alone, but struggled up with me. This was harder for her than me, 'cause she was sick--something to do with sinuses or allergies--and was that way all week.
The stairs were steep and narrow, and at the first floor up, we had to go through the door and cross the hall, pushing the fire door open every time--their idea of "fire doors" are ones that you need to swing open, but there's no alarm involved--they're just weighted to swing back behind you and shut (and hold--they're relatively heavy) of their own accord. A few steps down the hall was the door to the other side of the stairs (I guess; it's sort of complicated to explain, at least for me), and from there we went all the way up to our floor.
I turned the key, opened the door, and surveyed the room. Sara said it best.
"It's a little small."
Yes. London hotel rooms, at least ones outside of the chain-hotel type, are rather snug. Immediately to the right wall, a little past the door, was a heater. At the end of the heater, about two or three steps from said door, was the first bed, a little narrow, and very tightly made (that is, getting the covers out took a stronger pull than usual), but feeling pretty good, and with nice pillows. There was about a step and a half's distance to the next bed, at the other side of which was the next wall. I realize that in a hotel room in America there isn't much space between the beds, either, but figure somewhere around a half-step less of space, maybe a little narrower even than that, such that a person trying to sleep on the floor between the beds could do it, but not easily (with the exception, for home-friends, of somebody like Shelley Wilson; school friends will please mentally substitute Kristin).
To the left of each bed was a small end-table, more deep than long or wide, with a decent-sized cabinet inside that proved to be truly invaluable. A step or two past the ends of the beds (as in, not the part with the headboards) was a dresser, decently long in length if I remember, with a closet attached and a TV on top of the dresser. To the left of all that, on a sort of diagonal towards the door, was the bathroom. Like, okay, take a square and cut the upper-left corner off. What you cut off, the corner you have in your hand, is roughly the bathroom, though it was a little less triangular. It was roughly square, but the door was at a sort of angle.
Anyway, the bathroom was also pretty small (smaller than the one in our cabin in Peru, but that was a pretty normal size), consisting of a sink just to the left of the door, a toilet farther up from that (looking in through the door and thinking of forward as "up"), and a shower to the right (looking in again).
Sara got the bed farthest from the door, which gave me the one closest. ...I think we just flopped down for a while, hoping to get to sleep for a while, but knowing we really wouldn't.
After the free time given us by Dr. M was up, we went back down to the lobby-area, which was to be the general meeting-place all week. The lobby had a sort of living-room area to the left when you came in the door--the part more to the right was the check-in desk, and to the right of that (still looking through the doorway), through a sort of archway, was the bar area, worth noting only because in an alcove off to the right side of that was a pay phone, which, as it turned out, I would spend roughly 90 minutes of one night occupying, but that's another entry.
Every time we left the hotel, we turned in our keys at the desk (is this standard procedure for hotels in America, too? I didn't do that in Oneonta, and I don't remember doing that for Ocean Bowl)--this first time, we went back to the subway, which I will hereinafter call the tube or the Underground, and got on the Bakerloo Line for Charing Cross. There is really not a whole lot important about which line we took, unless you need to know for future reference, but I like pointing it out anyway, because the Underground fascinated me. It was something actually logical enough for me to figure out within a day or two. I used to sit while riding the tube and stare at the Underground maps, looking at the different-colored lines marking, well, the different lines (that is, routes). So many, and all of them with such interesting names (well, 'cept maybe the Circle, but that one's cool just 'cause!), and going so many places with such cool names, so many I recognized from books.
I should also mention the term "mind the gap", because it's practically the theme of the Underground. In a lot of cases, the tube cars don't stop quite flush up with the platform (such as it is), so you have to watch your step a little, I guess. I can't think of how anyone would fall into this gap, unless they had small feet, but maybe they just don't want people tripping. So when the car doors opened, in a lot of places, especially Paddington, a computerized voice over the station PA system would say "mind the gap". There were different voices for this warning; only a few stations would have the same one. The Paddington one was this guy who sounded rather late-middle-aged, with a deepish voice, who kind of paused ever so briefly after "mind". Like, it was obviously pre-recorded, but what I could never figure out was whether it had once been a human, or whether it was totally a computer.
Anyway, we got off at Charing Cross. I only knew it for the hospital (yeah, Sherlock Holmes!), but as it turns out, it also holds (so to speak) Trafalgar Square, site of historical monuments, two of the world's more awesome art galleries...
...and four lion statues, which, being ourselves, we promptly climbed all over and took pictures of ourselves on, just like all the kids around. We also, like the kids, did a little pigeon-chasing. Juliane got rather good at it. ...Dr. M got attacked by one; I don't remember what night, so I'm sticking that fun fact here. He actually went off on his own at Trafalgar, telling us to meet back at five o'clock (it was something like three at the time, give or take half an hour).
So we ended up going pretty much en masse to the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery. Oh my goodness grapefruit, they were beautiful. History just drips in these places, and the art is totally classical and lovely and understandable and well-explained.
And totally free. One thing I love most about London, of all the nearly-countless things to love, is that the great majority of museums are completely free of admission charge; they live on souvenirs--and perhaps government funding; I don't know, but with all the tourism, I doubt they'd need much of it. So there Lily, Lily K., and I were, standing in front of the portrait that's on the front of our Brit-Lit textbook (Volume I, that is :-P), talking in hushed English-nerd whispers about the parts the cover had cut out (such as, say, the fact that Queen Elizabeth is standing on top of the globe). That is seriously one of the only things I remember about that whole experience, but I was massively impressed.
I bought two postcards in the gift shop, though, 50 pence each. One was a painting, a little abstract, of David Bowie, upon which I wrote, later that night, a message to Aneya (thanks to our high school jokes, with Bethie, about Bowie's "astroplane" of weirdness, among other cracks); and one of an illustration of Roald Dahl with a bunch of his book characters, I think done by Quentin Crisp, who did a lot of the pictures for Dahl's books; this I sent to Erica from high school, who had asked for a postcard.
50p is not as cheap as the 10p postcards outside any random shop, especially when you take into account that every British pound equals two American dollars, but it buys less than two American dollars would at school (or, indeed, at home) because of prices comparable to New York City (you know, the $8 sandwiches, which were indeed about £4 in London). Still, the 50p postcards were always the cool ones, so I bought those to send out.
We also, that day, walked by a bunch of government buildings--Whitehall, Downing Street (we couldn't see Tony Blair's house, 'cause there were big gates to ward off unwanted visitors such as ourselves), Parliament Square--we saw Big Ben, the outside of Westminster Abbey...
...and a pancake stand. A small, random, fragrant pancake stand, which delighted Lily because of its sheer weird cuteness. I don't think we ever found more than one other one in all of London, and the thing is, I don't think any of us ever bought any (I know Lily and I never did), but it was nice to have around, and everyone seemed to appreciate it.
We went back to the hotel to change for dinner--I believe I took a shower at this point. Getting the water to the right temperature was a bit of a challenge, because the faucet control was a little stubborn, but it worked out in the end. Not knowing yet about whether the water was drinkable, I tried to keep it out of my mouth. If that was a question we'd covered in Petra's info-session, I'd missed the answer, and I read somewhere that you shouldn't drink any foreign country's water, though, considering especially Canada, I had my doubts about that to begin with.
We were eating with a cousin of Dr. M's and said cousin's girlfriend (wife? No, I think girlfriend). We ate at a newish place that the cousin knew about, I believe called "Quod", I believe located in Piccadilly Circus, which's pretty glitzy by night. It was very comfortable, though it took forever to get stuff (in part because the relations got there late and we were waiting on them for a while before we decided to go ahead and order). Not being very hungry, Lily and I just had bowls of pumpkin soup, which neither of us had ever had before, and which was delicious and very autumnal. And water--seeing cosmopolitan Lauren drink it, I figured I'd take my chances, even though it was very local and I was sure it wasn't treated. I spent a lot of that meal, though, struggling to keep my eyes open and not yawn at the cousin, who, having just been in my home city a few weeks before, was really very interesting, especially to me.
Got done with that and went back to the hotel--I was thirsty again by that time and had about three glasses of water, figuring I'd know soon enough whether it was flukily nondrinkable. Also ate some fruit snacks I'd brought along, if I remember, and wrote my two postcards while Sara was in the shower.
That was one thing I learned from Peru that really did come in handy in London: bring some food of your own to keep in the room. You never know when you'll need it. In Peru, I learned this the hard way, after we came back from that seemingly-eternal boat trip at almost-three-in-the-morning and the Divina staff was essentially like, food at this time of night? Are you *kidding*? Breakfast is in five or six hours; you'll eat then!, even though we none of us had eaten anything for between ten and twelve hours, and I would have shelled out double the usual price for so much as one of the little ice cream sandwiches they sold in the pool area. (Not that I am bitter. ::sigh::) ...I begged pretzels off of Tim and Tom at the time, since my antimalarial medicine (by then a good nine hours past when I was supposed to take it) had to be taken with food, or else Negative Side Effects would occur (I love the part of the label that warns you that if the medicine makes you throw up, it "may be less effective"). Still, I felt bad at how many I ended up inhaling, since they, you know, belonged to the twins.
I decided that, for London, this should not be, so I brought with me the most travel-friendly quick food I could find, sugar-filled and nutritionally-useless, for the most part. Namely, Fruit Gushers fruit snacks, in the teeny pouches, and a bag of Hershey's Nuggets (the chocolate-and-almond deals). This ended up being a very very good idea, because London did a weird thing to my eating patterns; they switched over imperfectly. They didn't stay at American times, but when we were supposed to be eating, for a good half of the trip, I didn't tend to be very hungry at all, but then, an hour or two after the meal, suddenly I'd be starving. A couple of Nuggets would usually take care of the problem until I could get near some actual food.
So after that, we switched the lights off, and I thought back five hours ('cause it turns out London's not six hours forward, but five, on Greenwich Mean Time). It was about quarter after nine PM in London, which meant...which meant...holy cow! Chris and Jenny were in lit class, writing a final essay that, had I been there, I would have been writing with them--and I was in London, ready to go to sleep!
This was to create a sort of hollow that got filled, Gusher-fruit-snack-style, with missing-Alfred-loneliness sometimes during the trip. For now, though, I looked around the room, listened to Sara's congested breathing, and calculated the hours left until 8:00 AM, when the wakeup call was. Liking the answer I got very much, I let myself sink into sleep, never waking until the call that next morning. And that was the first full London day.
-Laurel
I figured I ought to sleep some more, but I started talking to Lily K., and then breakfast came around, and that ended all hope. "Three hours?" I asked her, uneasy.
"Yeah, we did that in Israel--the plane lands and you just begin the day," she said.
And that's what I did. It was about 8 AM when we came to a pretty eventual stop in Gatwick (like, we taxied for a long time). We got off the plane, got our luggage, and--whee--got in the line for customs. Anna was hyperactive already, and Dr. M pretended not to know her, but we did all get talking to a lady from--oh, goodness, Maine?--who knew all this stuff about London and was all into the idea of college students traveling. M was about ready to let her be the guide for the week and leave us.
First thing I discovered about London (besides that everybody around there has--here I will be a complete touristy girl--an incredible accent and it's a truly wonderful thing to witness and hear) is that the female bathrooms do the picture of the lady, like American ones, but some of them give her a really billowed-out skirt, like they've got colonial-era hoops under there a la Laura Ingalls Wilder or something.
(The bathrooms are clean and they flush. Score one for the First World.)
We exchanged money--I rather more than everyone else, but I was convinced that my credit card was not going to work overseas (note: I was right; thus should end my parents' insisting that Europe deals with Discover)--and bought tickets for the Gatwick Express, which was going to take us to Victoria Station, since Gatwick is, oh, a little far-flung from Paddington and the subway system. Sat with Katie and Anna and Lauren (considering their subject matter all the way over, was rather sorry I had) and got a truly horrible picture taken of my unwashed, bespectacled, speckled self (with yellow teeth), next to, I believe, Katie. Dr. M sat farther back and pretended not to know us. This actually did not become a theme of the trip; at the beginning I imagine he was rather skeptical of traveling with nine females, but by the end he would look sort of benevolently upon us as we talked about clothes or classes or life, and would ask us for stories and gossip about fellow professors (I don't know why, as he knows and tells worse stories of them than we do. I keep saying, and it's true, that I have so much liking for him, but so little respect--it's kinda bad).
We got to Victoria, which I remember practically nothing of, bought subway cards (used one of my cool ten-pound notes and got a bunch of change in coins; the pocket full of change was to be one of the recurring themes), and got on the subway for the first time, the city-wide London Underground system. This is the name of the subway as a whole; the different routes on it are known as lines. If you've never really been on a subway, and I never really had (once in NYC on a very-large-group school trip doesn't count), the Circle Line, which we took, is a good place to start. You never have to worry, I don't think, about going out of your travel zone (that's how far your subway card will take you before you have to buy a wider-ranging one), and if you get on in the wrong direction and have never navigated a subway before and are too afraid to move, all is well if you've got the time to kill while it makes a full circle (if I'm not mistaken, that is, since I never actually had to do this).
Our subway cards, the ones we bought every day all week, lasted all day (Day Travelcards, they're called, actually)--after I think 9:30 every morning, the price went down by a pound or two because it was off-peak timing (all of the weekend was off-peak as well). They were Zones One and Two, which got us everywhere we ever needed to go--it took more than just the subway to get to Greenwich, but I'll tell that story when we get there. To get on the subway, you had to stick your ticket into one of a lot of readers all in a line, blocking the way in. If it read right, the doors swung open at the end of the reader. If your ticket was all-day, like ours, it also gave you your ticket back through a slot on the reader's top; otherwise it sucked them in.
We got into Paddington and did some walking until we got to the Mitre House Hotel, which was cozy, if a bit small-seeming in comparison to, say, a Holiday Inn. We divided into room groups, refiguring based on Tori's coming later and last-minute mind changes; Sara and I ended up together instead of Katie and me, the original plan, 'cause Katie wasn't part of the class, but had come with Anna, so roomed with her. Sara and I were in the only double room. The triple held the freshmen--Juliane, Lauren, and eventually Tori. That left the self-regarded party suite, the quad room, as Lily, Lily K., Anna, and Katie. Dr. M, of course, had a room to himself.
Sara and I were the highest of the student rooms, a door or two down from M., on like the third floor up (Room 414, I think). The elevator in the lobby was old and slow and creaky, so I went into somewhat of a panic when I was told by a cleaning girl that no stairs went up that high and the elevator was the only way, but the lady at the desk (one of the owners, I think, since it's a pretty small and independent-type place) told me how to get up the stairs, which were right through a door off to the side.
This is where I owe Sara lots and lots, because much of the time, she wouldn't leave me to climb up all those stairs alone, but struggled up with me. This was harder for her than me, 'cause she was sick--something to do with sinuses or allergies--and was that way all week.
The stairs were steep and narrow, and at the first floor up, we had to go through the door and cross the hall, pushing the fire door open every time--their idea of "fire doors" are ones that you need to swing open, but there's no alarm involved--they're just weighted to swing back behind you and shut (and hold--they're relatively heavy) of their own accord. A few steps down the hall was the door to the other side of the stairs (I guess; it's sort of complicated to explain, at least for me), and from there we went all the way up to our floor.
I turned the key, opened the door, and surveyed the room. Sara said it best.
"It's a little small."
Yes. London hotel rooms, at least ones outside of the chain-hotel type, are rather snug. Immediately to the right wall, a little past the door, was a heater. At the end of the heater, about two or three steps from said door, was the first bed, a little narrow, and very tightly made (that is, getting the covers out took a stronger pull than usual), but feeling pretty good, and with nice pillows. There was about a step and a half's distance to the next bed, at the other side of which was the next wall. I realize that in a hotel room in America there isn't much space between the beds, either, but figure somewhere around a half-step less of space, maybe a little narrower even than that, such that a person trying to sleep on the floor between the beds could do it, but not easily (with the exception, for home-friends, of somebody like Shelley Wilson; school friends will please mentally substitute Kristin).
To the left of each bed was a small end-table, more deep than long or wide, with a decent-sized cabinet inside that proved to be truly invaluable. A step or two past the ends of the beds (as in, not the part with the headboards) was a dresser, decently long in length if I remember, with a closet attached and a TV on top of the dresser. To the left of all that, on a sort of diagonal towards the door, was the bathroom. Like, okay, take a square and cut the upper-left corner off. What you cut off, the corner you have in your hand, is roughly the bathroom, though it was a little less triangular. It was roughly square, but the door was at a sort of angle.
Anyway, the bathroom was also pretty small (smaller than the one in our cabin in Peru, but that was a pretty normal size), consisting of a sink just to the left of the door, a toilet farther up from that (looking in through the door and thinking of forward as "up"), and a shower to the right (looking in again).
Sara got the bed farthest from the door, which gave me the one closest. ...I think we just flopped down for a while, hoping to get to sleep for a while, but knowing we really wouldn't.
After the free time given us by Dr. M was up, we went back down to the lobby-area, which was to be the general meeting-place all week. The lobby had a sort of living-room area to the left when you came in the door--the part more to the right was the check-in desk, and to the right of that (still looking through the doorway), through a sort of archway, was the bar area, worth noting only because in an alcove off to the right side of that was a pay phone, which, as it turned out, I would spend roughly 90 minutes of one night occupying, but that's another entry.
Every time we left the hotel, we turned in our keys at the desk (is this standard procedure for hotels in America, too? I didn't do that in Oneonta, and I don't remember doing that for Ocean Bowl)--this first time, we went back to the subway, which I will hereinafter call the tube or the Underground, and got on the Bakerloo Line for Charing Cross. There is really not a whole lot important about which line we took, unless you need to know for future reference, but I like pointing it out anyway, because the Underground fascinated me. It was something actually logical enough for me to figure out within a day or two. I used to sit while riding the tube and stare at the Underground maps, looking at the different-colored lines marking, well, the different lines (that is, routes). So many, and all of them with such interesting names (well, 'cept maybe the Circle, but that one's cool just 'cause!), and going so many places with such cool names, so many I recognized from books.
I should also mention the term "mind the gap", because it's practically the theme of the Underground. In a lot of cases, the tube cars don't stop quite flush up with the platform (such as it is), so you have to watch your step a little, I guess. I can't think of how anyone would fall into this gap, unless they had small feet, but maybe they just don't want people tripping. So when the car doors opened, in a lot of places, especially Paddington, a computerized voice over the station PA system would say "mind the gap". There were different voices for this warning; only a few stations would have the same one. The Paddington one was this guy who sounded rather late-middle-aged, with a deepish voice, who kind of paused ever so briefly after "mind". Like, it was obviously pre-recorded, but what I could never figure out was whether it had once been a human, or whether it was totally a computer.
Anyway, we got off at Charing Cross. I only knew it for the hospital (yeah, Sherlock Holmes!), but as it turns out, it also holds (so to speak) Trafalgar Square, site of historical monuments, two of the world's more awesome art galleries...
...and four lion statues, which, being ourselves, we promptly climbed all over and took pictures of ourselves on, just like all the kids around. We also, like the kids, did a little pigeon-chasing. Juliane got rather good at it. ...Dr. M got attacked by one; I don't remember what night, so I'm sticking that fun fact here. He actually went off on his own at Trafalgar, telling us to meet back at five o'clock (it was something like three at the time, give or take half an hour).
So we ended up going pretty much en masse to the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery. Oh my goodness grapefruit, they were beautiful. History just drips in these places, and the art is totally classical and lovely and understandable and well-explained.
And totally free. One thing I love most about London, of all the nearly-countless things to love, is that the great majority of museums are completely free of admission charge; they live on souvenirs--and perhaps government funding; I don't know, but with all the tourism, I doubt they'd need much of it. So there Lily, Lily K., and I were, standing in front of the portrait that's on the front of our Brit-Lit textbook (Volume I, that is :-P), talking in hushed English-nerd whispers about the parts the cover had cut out (such as, say, the fact that Queen Elizabeth is standing on top of the globe). That is seriously one of the only things I remember about that whole experience, but I was massively impressed.
I bought two postcards in the gift shop, though, 50 pence each. One was a painting, a little abstract, of David Bowie, upon which I wrote, later that night, a message to Aneya (thanks to our high school jokes, with Bethie, about Bowie's "astroplane" of weirdness, among other cracks); and one of an illustration of Roald Dahl with a bunch of his book characters, I think done by Quentin Crisp, who did a lot of the pictures for Dahl's books; this I sent to Erica from high school, who had asked for a postcard.
50p is not as cheap as the 10p postcards outside any random shop, especially when you take into account that every British pound equals two American dollars, but it buys less than two American dollars would at school (or, indeed, at home) because of prices comparable to New York City (you know, the $8 sandwiches, which were indeed about £4 in London). Still, the 50p postcards were always the cool ones, so I bought those to send out.
We also, that day, walked by a bunch of government buildings--Whitehall, Downing Street (we couldn't see Tony Blair's house, 'cause there were big gates to ward off unwanted visitors such as ourselves), Parliament Square--we saw Big Ben, the outside of Westminster Abbey...
...and a pancake stand. A small, random, fragrant pancake stand, which delighted Lily because of its sheer weird cuteness. I don't think we ever found more than one other one in all of London, and the thing is, I don't think any of us ever bought any (I know Lily and I never did), but it was nice to have around, and everyone seemed to appreciate it.
We went back to the hotel to change for dinner--I believe I took a shower at this point. Getting the water to the right temperature was a bit of a challenge, because the faucet control was a little stubborn, but it worked out in the end. Not knowing yet about whether the water was drinkable, I tried to keep it out of my mouth. If that was a question we'd covered in Petra's info-session, I'd missed the answer, and I read somewhere that you shouldn't drink any foreign country's water, though, considering especially Canada, I had my doubts about that to begin with.
We were eating with a cousin of Dr. M's and said cousin's girlfriend (wife? No, I think girlfriend). We ate at a newish place that the cousin knew about, I believe called "Quod", I believe located in Piccadilly Circus, which's pretty glitzy by night. It was very comfortable, though it took forever to get stuff (in part because the relations got there late and we were waiting on them for a while before we decided to go ahead and order). Not being very hungry, Lily and I just had bowls of pumpkin soup, which neither of us had ever had before, and which was delicious and very autumnal. And water--seeing cosmopolitan Lauren drink it, I figured I'd take my chances, even though it was very local and I was sure it wasn't treated. I spent a lot of that meal, though, struggling to keep my eyes open and not yawn at the cousin, who, having just been in my home city a few weeks before, was really very interesting, especially to me.
Got done with that and went back to the hotel--I was thirsty again by that time and had about three glasses of water, figuring I'd know soon enough whether it was flukily nondrinkable. Also ate some fruit snacks I'd brought along, if I remember, and wrote my two postcards while Sara was in the shower.
That was one thing I learned from Peru that really did come in handy in London: bring some food of your own to keep in the room. You never know when you'll need it. In Peru, I learned this the hard way, after we came back from that seemingly-eternal boat trip at almost-three-in-the-morning and the Divina staff was essentially like, food at this time of night? Are you *kidding*? Breakfast is in five or six hours; you'll eat then!, even though we none of us had eaten anything for between ten and twelve hours, and I would have shelled out double the usual price for so much as one of the little ice cream sandwiches they sold in the pool area. (Not that I am bitter. ::sigh::) ...I begged pretzels off of Tim and Tom at the time, since my antimalarial medicine (by then a good nine hours past when I was supposed to take it) had to be taken with food, or else Negative Side Effects would occur (I love the part of the label that warns you that if the medicine makes you throw up, it "may be less effective"). Still, I felt bad at how many I ended up inhaling, since they, you know, belonged to the twins.
I decided that, for London, this should not be, so I brought with me the most travel-friendly quick food I could find, sugar-filled and nutritionally-useless, for the most part. Namely, Fruit Gushers fruit snacks, in the teeny pouches, and a bag of Hershey's Nuggets (the chocolate-and-almond deals). This ended up being a very very good idea, because London did a weird thing to my eating patterns; they switched over imperfectly. They didn't stay at American times, but when we were supposed to be eating, for a good half of the trip, I didn't tend to be very hungry at all, but then, an hour or two after the meal, suddenly I'd be starving. A couple of Nuggets would usually take care of the problem until I could get near some actual food.
So after that, we switched the lights off, and I thought back five hours ('cause it turns out London's not six hours forward, but five, on Greenwich Mean Time). It was about quarter after nine PM in London, which meant...which meant...holy cow! Chris and Jenny were in lit class, writing a final essay that, had I been there, I would have been writing with them--and I was in London, ready to go to sleep!
This was to create a sort of hollow that got filled, Gusher-fruit-snack-style, with missing-Alfred-loneliness sometimes during the trip. For now, though, I looked around the room, listened to Sara's congested breathing, and calculated the hours left until 8:00 AM, when the wakeup call was. Liking the answer I got very much, I let myself sink into sleep, never waking until the call that next morning. And that was the first full London day.
-Laurel
11.25.2004
-a thankful aside-
At some point during this break I will post another installment of London. I really mean it. If I don't, hang me upside down by my little toes from the Joel's House stairwell when I get back.
But it is Thanksgiving, and I thought I'd say thank you to everybody who's reading, since I'm thankful for all of you. I thought also that I would point out that, no, "safe travel and safe cooking" is not a traditional phrase in a Thanksgiving grace, but my feeling is, if my parents don't want me saying weird things like that, they should stop making me deliver it every year. It was only a matter of time before I forgot the Iraqi soldiers and said something bizarre, and this was the year. :-P ...Hey, d'you know how many firefighters must have to respond on Thanksgiving?
So anyoldway, I'm also sending a yay for health and happiness and AIM and e-mail and houses with stoves and ovens(!!!!) and not having much homework over the break. The local newspaper ran a story about readers' things they're thankful for, and somebody mentioned blood donors, who helped him(/her) live.
Random factoid that at least amused me: Mike, in a good mood last night over AIM, actually apologized to me for being such a "nightmare this semester for PR", APO-wise. ::laughs:: Not just him, everything has! But I do feel a little appreciated.
'kay, more on London next time. Reallyreally.
-Laurel
But it is Thanksgiving, and I thought I'd say thank you to everybody who's reading, since I'm thankful for all of you. I thought also that I would point out that, no, "safe travel and safe cooking" is not a traditional phrase in a Thanksgiving grace, but my feeling is, if my parents don't want me saying weird things like that, they should stop making me deliver it every year. It was only a matter of time before I forgot the Iraqi soldiers and said something bizarre, and this was the year. :-P ...Hey, d'you know how many firefighters must have to respond on Thanksgiving?
So anyoldway, I'm also sending a yay for health and happiness and AIM and e-mail and houses with stoves and ovens(!!!!) and not having much homework over the break. The local newspaper ran a story about readers' things they're thankful for, and somebody mentioned blood donors, who helped him(/her) live.
Random factoid that at least amused me: Mike, in a good mood last night over AIM, actually apologized to me for being such a "nightmare this semester for PR", APO-wise. ::laughs:: Not just him, everything has! But I do feel a little appreciated.
'kay, more on London next time. Reallyreally.
-Laurel
11.03.2004
-a brief political aside-
The presidential election will be what it is, and I will have no comment here upon it (or, for that matter, anywhere else).
But yaaaaaaay for super-awesome Barack Obama getting elected as Illinois senator. He's the guy who did the spectacular bipartisan-type speech at the DNC that I excerpted in the July post "Vive."
I hope he totally is as smart and sweet as he sounds. We could use a senator like that.
That's seriously all I have.
-Laurel
But yaaaaaaay for super-awesome Barack Obama getting elected as Illinois senator. He's the guy who did the spectacular bipartisan-type speech at the DNC that I excerpted in the July post "Vive."
I hope he totally is as smart and sweet as he sounds. We could use a senator like that.
That's seriously all I have.
-Laurel
11.01.2004
-an aside-
Back to London next post, but in the meantime, caught the following list off a friend's lj of books that are or have been banned (I don't know how widespread the ban, but a couple of these I remember reading about), and some of them I can at least trace the reasons, but The Giver?! Whyyyyyyyyy?!
I feel that way about some of the other ones, too. So, though some of the titles are a little blunt, in the interest of protest I'm putting up the entire list, here for your entertainment. Apologies for the lack of proper title italics.
-Bold the Ones You've Read-
1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou [I remember that Megan and I felt really weird watching this in English class as a movie, but I went on to read it later, and if you're old enough to handle it, it's fine...]
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling ['kay, this's really more the past, right, since now the Pope got behind it and fewer people object? If you ban these books, you should ban Lord of the Rings for its sorcery, and you should ban The Wizard of Oz for having Glinda, and you should ban like five works of Shakespeare for having characters with magical powers. Anyone has the perfect right to object to these books, but if you do, please be consistent.]
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson [wait a goshdarn second, isn't this one a Newbery, too? ::checks:: ...Yes. Yes, it is.]
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor [Not for those under thirteen, it's true, but...c'mon, Alice?]
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier [I honestly cannot remember anything that would be offensive in this book. And I believe this, as well, is another Newbery.]
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry [why, why, why?]
15. It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck [This has to be because it insults Baptists for like one sentence, right? ::sigh::]
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna [Okay, I say, anyone stupid enough to read a book by Madonna in the first place...]
20. Earth's Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson [huh? I thought this was a children's book. But I've never read it.]
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle [I've heard the reasons, but disagree severely with them. And if they thought this was bad, I guess they better not read her--which one is it, Troubling a Star?]
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous [I've flipped through it. C'mon, age control, people!]
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard [This's gotta be a political-correctness thing, it's just gotta.]
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George [::humongous blink:: What?]
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What's Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee [yeah, but maybe this one was only banned by the still-prejudiced, in which case we already know they're out of it.]
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton [can't remember whether I've read this book. I think maybe not.]
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein [I think I've read this, and if so, huh?]
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl [I don't remember whether I read this or only saw the movie, but oh, come on]
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What's Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume [::sighs tiredly:: oh, please. this book does not insult Christianity just because the girl doesn't fully understand it.]
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding [Well, this's a horrible book, but that's no reason to ban it. ::giggles::]
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain [Well, little-kid version only, but I get the gist.]
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where's Waldo? by Martin Hanford [what?!]
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene [aw, and this's a good book, too]
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman [okay, this one I can at least trace the reasons, but if they're going to do that, they should also ban Dr. Doolittle. ...Didn't they in a few places, though?]
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell [Let me guess, they had a bunch of little kids copy it and then feel a little sick. ::shakes head::]
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
...Conclusion: Just judge age, and look at your kids' books before you let them read 'em, okay? Read them yourself first--wouldn't that solve a lot?
I can't believe there're like four or five Newberys on that list. ::wails::
-Laurel
I feel that way about some of the other ones, too. So, though some of the titles are a little blunt, in the interest of protest I'm putting up the entire list, here for your entertainment. Apologies for the lack of proper title italics.
-Bold the Ones You've Read-
1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou [I remember that Megan and I felt really weird watching this in English class as a movie, but I went on to read it later, and if you're old enough to handle it, it's fine...]
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling ['kay, this's really more the past, right, since now the Pope got behind it and fewer people object? If you ban these books, you should ban Lord of the Rings for its sorcery, and you should ban The Wizard of Oz for having Glinda, and you should ban like five works of Shakespeare for having characters with magical powers. Anyone has the perfect right to object to these books, but if you do, please be consistent.]
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson [wait a goshdarn second, isn't this one a Newbery, too? ::checks:: ...Yes. Yes, it is.]
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor [Not for those under thirteen, it's true, but...c'mon, Alice?]
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier [I honestly cannot remember anything that would be offensive in this book. And I believe this, as well, is another Newbery.]
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry [why, why, why?]
15. It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck [This has to be because it insults Baptists for like one sentence, right? ::sigh::]
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna [Okay, I say, anyone stupid enough to read a book by Madonna in the first place...]
20. Earth's Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson [huh? I thought this was a children's book. But I've never read it.]
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle [I've heard the reasons, but disagree severely with them. And if they thought this was bad, I guess they better not read her--which one is it, Troubling a Star?]
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous [I've flipped through it. C'mon, age control, people!]
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard [This's gotta be a political-correctness thing, it's just gotta.]
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George [::humongous blink:: What?]
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What's Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee [yeah, but maybe this one was only banned by the still-prejudiced, in which case we already know they're out of it.]
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton [can't remember whether I've read this book. I think maybe not.]
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein [I think I've read this, and if so, huh?]
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl [I don't remember whether I read this or only saw the movie, but oh, come on]
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What's Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume [::sighs tiredly:: oh, please. this book does not insult Christianity just because the girl doesn't fully understand it.]
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding [Well, this's a horrible book, but that's no reason to ban it. ::giggles::]
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain [Well, little-kid version only, but I get the gist.]
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where's Waldo? by Martin Hanford [what?!]
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene [aw, and this's a good book, too]
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman [okay, this one I can at least trace the reasons, but if they're going to do that, they should also ban Dr. Doolittle. ...Didn't they in a few places, though?]
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell [Let me guess, they had a bunch of little kids copy it and then feel a little sick. ::shakes head::]
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
...Conclusion: Just judge age, and look at your kids' books before you let them read 'em, okay? Read them yourself first--wouldn't that solve a lot?
I can't believe there're like four or five Newberys on that list. ::wails::
-Laurel
10.26.2004
London, Part I - Wednesday, October 13th
On the Wednesday that we left, I was one huge flutter of insanity, having gotten up that morning at around 4:30 to work on my Place in the Universe (environmentalist literature) final project (a half-semester class)--due, for me, that day, as I wouldn't be present the next day during class. I had lived off of Easy Mac, a can of Chef Boyardee spaghetti and meatballs, and I don't even know what-all else, but I had not gone to psych meth/stat, though I had gone to Spanish, which was rather pleasant. I had gone to lunch, too, but had spent it munching with one hand and scribbling journal entries with the other. Packing occurred in the last half-hour before I left--I knew full well I was going to forget something, but had not the time to figure out what. My room was in a state, to be sure, and Tim came in to find me at the eye of the hurricane. He helped patiently, reminding me to unplug things and giving hugs.
We had two goodbyes, one before I went to drive my luggage down to the parking lot (not because I had a lot; I'd packed very lightly, but the distance from the house to physical plant's parking lot is ridiculous even without a checked bag and a carryon), one after I brought my car back to the house (to walk back down to said parking lot without any encumbrances). Tim had a class to get to the second time, and I know he ended up late, but he didn't seem to care much, and I wasn't about to protest.
There were nine of us: Lily, my cousin; Lily-for-Real (hereinafter referred to as Lily K.), an English-and-education major and friend; Anna, a crazy, hyper-happy English major in our year; Sara, mentioned in my "cast of characters" column on the side of this blog; Juliane, a quiet freshman who would stick a lot with Sara and sometimes me; Tori, a gregarious freshman friend of Juliane's who grew up in the same city as Lily K.; Lauren, a well-traveled freshman, kind of cosmopolitan; Katie, a junior who'd come to London with McDonough the year before and was smart-alecky enough to fit in well with us; and me. And then, of course, McDonough, but he was meeting us at the airport.
Anna was supposed to drive one of the vans, and a guy from the University the other, but as it happened, we all fit into the University van, being driven by a man whose name I immediately, of course, forgot, but he was from England and wished he could go with us.
"Everyone got their passports?" asked Anna in her cheeriest responsible-RA voice. "Yes," we said, and most of us pulled them out to prove it. The van pulled out--it was about 3:45 pm, and we were off.
The ride was one long string of chatter and people eating snacks (I should have thought about the lack of garbage can before devouring my apple, but I was hungry...). The following major points were established: that Tori, despite growing up in Philadelphia, cannot find her way around (which baffled street-smart Lily K. completely); and that, despite what Anna always believed, puncturing your eardrum will not cause your head to explode.
We arrived at the airport, greeted my parents (who had come to see Lily and me off), and were confronted with the biggest problem our trip would face: Tori hadn't done the passport check for Anna...and had left her passport back at school. Try though she did, her roommate couldn't find her until it was too late to bring it up for the flight (we had extra time, but not that much), and Tori was put in an interesting situation: waiting an extra day for her flight to London, going solo.
So while McDonough was helping Tori with hotel stuff for the night and doing--which he'd forbidden from the start--paperwork, the rest of us (minus my parents) hung round in the terminal, generally having fun, trying to buy food (corn muffin!), and talking about things like piercings (insert here the inside joke about the high-fives for being able or unable to see our bellybuttons).
A few of us also used cell phones. Quote from Lily K. (out of context, of course): "Dad, I want you to call the bank and be like, 'Hey, bank!'..."
We were hungry by the time we flew to Detroit; we were hungrier still having landed. Lily K. and I sat with everyone's luggage who went to Chili's; in the meantime, we talked to McDonough, saw his pictures of his son (who is already acquiring his rogue look, but is nevertheless adorable), and discussed Jewish school and APO (the first Lily K.'s topic, the second mine). When the others came back, Lily K. and I tried to cross the seemingly-endless concourse to get food. We had something like forty minutes until boarding; this should have been simple. But no sooner had we gotten 2/3 of the long way there than the PA system announced our flight's boarding--some fifteen minutes early. Lily K. and I dashed all the way back and boarded the plane...which made us sit there until the normal takeoff time, and didn't serve dinner until 11 pm (we'd been in the air for like an hour).
We ate very hungrily--five of us were vegetarian, so there was a lot of pasta being consumed; I had the chicken dish, which came with a lot of stuff (mashed potatoes, cheese and crackers, this weird cake-thing, a salad), and came to the conclusion that the overall quality of each item was within one standard deviation of a TV dinner, assuming this is mathematically possible.
I started Don Quixote, a copy I'd bought at a book sale that was so old the pages broke into flakes over the course of the trip (it was only fifty cents, so hey, but I didn't expect that...), and sometime after midnight, decided to try to sleep.
Thus ended the first day of our trip.
-Laurel
We had two goodbyes, one before I went to drive my luggage down to the parking lot (not because I had a lot; I'd packed very lightly, but the distance from the house to physical plant's parking lot is ridiculous even without a checked bag and a carryon), one after I brought my car back to the house (to walk back down to said parking lot without any encumbrances). Tim had a class to get to the second time, and I know he ended up late, but he didn't seem to care much, and I wasn't about to protest.
There were nine of us: Lily, my cousin; Lily-for-Real (hereinafter referred to as Lily K.), an English-and-education major and friend; Anna, a crazy, hyper-happy English major in our year; Sara, mentioned in my "cast of characters" column on the side of this blog; Juliane, a quiet freshman who would stick a lot with Sara and sometimes me; Tori, a gregarious freshman friend of Juliane's who grew up in the same city as Lily K.; Lauren, a well-traveled freshman, kind of cosmopolitan; Katie, a junior who'd come to London with McDonough the year before and was smart-alecky enough to fit in well with us; and me. And then, of course, McDonough, but he was meeting us at the airport.
Anna was supposed to drive one of the vans, and a guy from the University the other, but as it happened, we all fit into the University van, being driven by a man whose name I immediately, of course, forgot, but he was from England and wished he could go with us.
"Everyone got their passports?" asked Anna in her cheeriest responsible-RA voice. "Yes," we said, and most of us pulled them out to prove it. The van pulled out--it was about 3:45 pm, and we were off.
The ride was one long string of chatter and people eating snacks (I should have thought about the lack of garbage can before devouring my apple, but I was hungry...). The following major points were established: that Tori, despite growing up in Philadelphia, cannot find her way around (which baffled street-smart Lily K. completely); and that, despite what Anna always believed, puncturing your eardrum will not cause your head to explode.
We arrived at the airport, greeted my parents (who had come to see Lily and me off), and were confronted with the biggest problem our trip would face: Tori hadn't done the passport check for Anna...and had left her passport back at school. Try though she did, her roommate couldn't find her until it was too late to bring it up for the flight (we had extra time, but not that much), and Tori was put in an interesting situation: waiting an extra day for her flight to London, going solo.
So while McDonough was helping Tori with hotel stuff for the night and doing--which he'd forbidden from the start--paperwork, the rest of us (minus my parents) hung round in the terminal, generally having fun, trying to buy food (corn muffin!), and talking about things like piercings (insert here the inside joke about the high-fives for being able or unable to see our bellybuttons).
A few of us also used cell phones. Quote from Lily K. (out of context, of course): "Dad, I want you to call the bank and be like, 'Hey, bank!'..."
We were hungry by the time we flew to Detroit; we were hungrier still having landed. Lily K. and I sat with everyone's luggage who went to Chili's; in the meantime, we talked to McDonough, saw his pictures of his son (who is already acquiring his rogue look, but is nevertheless adorable), and discussed Jewish school and APO (the first Lily K.'s topic, the second mine). When the others came back, Lily K. and I tried to cross the seemingly-endless concourse to get food. We had something like forty minutes until boarding; this should have been simple. But no sooner had we gotten 2/3 of the long way there than the PA system announced our flight's boarding--some fifteen minutes early. Lily K. and I dashed all the way back and boarded the plane...which made us sit there until the normal takeoff time, and didn't serve dinner until 11 pm (we'd been in the air for like an hour).
We ate very hungrily--five of us were vegetarian, so there was a lot of pasta being consumed; I had the chicken dish, which came with a lot of stuff (mashed potatoes, cheese and crackers, this weird cake-thing, a salad), and came to the conclusion that the overall quality of each item was within one standard deviation of a TV dinner, assuming this is mathematically possible.
I started Don Quixote, a copy I'd bought at a book sale that was so old the pages broke into flakes over the course of the trip (it was only fifty cents, so hey, but I didn't expect that...), and sometime after midnight, decided to try to sleep.
Thus ended the first day of our trip.
-Laurel
10.19.2004
::waving enthusiastically::
Hello to all from London, 3:26 pm local time (10:36 Eastern Daylight). I love this place. Today was our free day, so Sara, Juliane, and I got to split off and do some stuff we wanted to do. We saw Platform 9 3/4, sort of. It's not the real one, most likely because they don't want a bunch of people going onto the actual one and crashing into the wall. They marked one off at about 8 3/4 and stuck up half a luggage dolly so it looks like you're going into the wall. We took pictures, silly tourists that we are.
Also saw 221B Baker Street and the adjoining Sherlock Holmes Museum. I'm questioning whether it was worth £6 (that's some $10 to $12 American), but since the national museums here are all free, I should really shut up about admission prices; it's not everyone that gets to see the Rosetta Stone for free, as I did several days ago.
The plays here have been good, but not great; this is not the fault of London per se, but of what we've been seeing. Cheap theatre is not the same as excellent theatre.
I have so much to tell when I get back and hardly know where to start; I'm thinking that I'll post a series here going day by day. I'm trying to write things down, but it's hard, we're just so on the go all the time.
As spectacular as this is, I would like to come home. Tomorrow I spend all day doing that.
More within the next few, I hope.
-Laurel
Also saw 221B Baker Street and the adjoining Sherlock Holmes Museum. I'm questioning whether it was worth £6 (that's some $10 to $12 American), but since the national museums here are all free, I should really shut up about admission prices; it's not everyone that gets to see the Rosetta Stone for free, as I did several days ago.
The plays here have been good, but not great; this is not the fault of London per se, but of what we've been seeing. Cheap theatre is not the same as excellent theatre.
I have so much to tell when I get back and hardly know where to start; I'm thinking that I'll post a series here going day by day. I'm trying to write things down, but it's hard, we're just so on the go all the time.
As spectacular as this is, I would like to come home. Tomorrow I spend all day doing that.
More within the next few, I hope.
-Laurel
10.11.2004
"Ma navu, insert-other-Hebrew-words-here, shalom..."
Yeah, Tom sending me 152 songs' worth of folkdancing music was definitely a bad idea. ::giggles:: 'Cause it's like, here you are trying to concentrate on something, and all you can think of is "Ersko Kolo" and the part that goes eeeeeeee-you!
Also a bad idea: reading Tim a story from Icebound Summer (Sally Carrighar), this really cool book I'm absorbed in (the project on it for Lit is due in two days), about arctic wildlife. ...As a general note to all female readers: Don't ever read your boyfriend funny habits of arctic terns, because he will get ideas and try to present to you a Ritz cracker as though it were a large and particularly tasty fish. And in answer to Albert's question, no, he did not attempt to chew it for me, ew. :-P
I really should've guessed that I was asking for it on that one. ::giggles::
So since Tim was cool and came to general non-denom church service with me last week (the part most trying to him was not the unrecognizability to him of the music, but rather the dozens of renditions of, oh, so *you're* Tom's twin!, since Tom frequents chapel and Tim hadn't come before), I went with him this morning to Saint Jude's for the whole Catholic-mass thing, and rather enjoyed it on the whole. A change, I know, from "Genuflect" (archived entry from February of this year), but I'm more used to it by now, though Mike would lead us to one of the pews in the very front, facing another front pew across the room, so that I totally couldn't hide my blatant Protestant ignorance. ::giggles:: No, it's all right, I got on pretty well 'cause it's so traditional and Bible-based. Still not my denomination of choice, but all the stuff in the missal, at least, was pretty universally-Christian material, no problem there. ...And, hey, I have no problem with sneakers on altar boys. ::giggles again::
Anyway, I really ought to go to bed, since as yet there is no such thing as Weekday Morning Time. I consider that one of Dave Barry's finest ideas: at seven o'clock in the morning, all clocks go into "a space-launch-style 'hold'", and everyone gets two hours to do with what they will, and no one's allowed to, say, assign more homework to be done with the extra time.
I could get a Weekday Morning Time if I skipped psych tomorrow, but considering how I think I fared on Friday's test, perhaps I ought to start paying more attention in lecture anyway. :-[
More before London, I hope.
-Laurel
Also a bad idea: reading Tim a story from Icebound Summer (Sally Carrighar), this really cool book I'm absorbed in (the project on it for Lit is due in two days), about arctic wildlife. ...As a general note to all female readers: Don't ever read your boyfriend funny habits of arctic terns, because he will get ideas and try to present to you a Ritz cracker as though it were a large and particularly tasty fish. And in answer to Albert's question, no, he did not attempt to chew it for me, ew. :-P
I really should've guessed that I was asking for it on that one. ::giggles::
So since Tim was cool and came to general non-denom church service with me last week (the part most trying to him was not the unrecognizability to him of the music, but rather the dozens of renditions of, oh, so *you're* Tom's twin!, since Tom frequents chapel and Tim hadn't come before), I went with him this morning to Saint Jude's for the whole Catholic-mass thing, and rather enjoyed it on the whole. A change, I know, from "Genuflect" (archived entry from February of this year), but I'm more used to it by now, though Mike would lead us to one of the pews in the very front, facing another front pew across the room, so that I totally couldn't hide my blatant Protestant ignorance. ::giggles:: No, it's all right, I got on pretty well 'cause it's so traditional and Bible-based. Still not my denomination of choice, but all the stuff in the missal, at least, was pretty universally-Christian material, no problem there. ...And, hey, I have no problem with sneakers on altar boys. ::giggles again::
Anyway, I really ought to go to bed, since as yet there is no such thing as Weekday Morning Time. I consider that one of Dave Barry's finest ideas: at seven o'clock in the morning, all clocks go into "a space-launch-style 'hold'", and everyone gets two hours to do with what they will, and no one's allowed to, say, assign more homework to be done with the extra time.
I could get a Weekday Morning Time if I skipped psych tomorrow, but considering how I think I fared on Friday's test, perhaps I ought to start paying more attention in lecture anyway. :-[
More before London, I hope.
-Laurel
10.03.2004
Oh, what new madness is this?
Have a sore throat tonight; looked above my tonsils in the mirror and found a white spot, just like last time right before I got so sick. In a low-grade panic, trying to kill what germs I could, hoping against hope on that one (since the last was a virus anyway), looked for my Scope. Couldn't find it (I may not have brought it, come to think of it).
Actually got desparate enough that I dipped a Q-Tip in vanilla extract (ha, that I have!) and applied it to The Spot. ( Warning: Slightly gross narrative ahead. Quid Pro Quo assumes no responsibility for any disgust accrued by reading further.) As it turns out, vanilla extract has double the alcohol percentage in my mint Scope, so I'm thinking it's not such a surprise that said white spot actually came off onto my cotton swab. This was a little icky. ...So I checked the place again fifteen minutes later. Red mark where the spot was, looking like a small groove, like the skin is even slightly broken. This is what makes me think it was not just food.
...And then I found another white spot, farther in where I wasn't looking. I cannot remove it with a regular, unsaturated Q-Tip, and I am so not gonna put any more vanilla anywhere.
Thi-i-is is not good.
Related icky reading on people who get drunk on mouthwash: http://www.anchoragepress.com/archives/document3fe2.html.
On another note, 'Nanda and Daf (and Jeff) did come today, and we did play DDR, and we did watch DangerMouse, and Tim did feel glad to know two people I've gone on so about, and it was brilliant. Hurrah.
-Laurel
Actually got desparate enough that I dipped a Q-Tip in vanilla extract (ha, that I have!) and applied it to The Spot. ( Warning: Slightly gross narrative ahead. Quid Pro Quo assumes no responsibility for any disgust accrued by reading further.) As it turns out, vanilla extract has double the alcohol percentage in my mint Scope, so I'm thinking it's not such a surprise that said white spot actually came off onto my cotton swab. This was a little icky. ...So I checked the place again fifteen minutes later. Red mark where the spot was, looking like a small groove, like the skin is even slightly broken. This is what makes me think it was not just food.
...And then I found another white spot, farther in where I wasn't looking. I cannot remove it with a regular, unsaturated Q-Tip, and I am so not gonna put any more vanilla anywhere.
Thi-i-is is not good.
Related icky reading on people who get drunk on mouthwash: http://www.anchoragepress.com/archives/document3fe2.html.
On another note, 'Nanda and Daf (and Jeff) did come today, and we did play DDR, and we did watch DangerMouse, and Tim did feel glad to know two people I've gone on so about, and it was brilliant. Hurrah.
-Laurel
10.01.2004
::with U2's "Vertigo" lodged firmly into my brain, thanks to 'Nanda and iTunes::
So apparently I am thoroughly unable to eat just one cherry-flavored Airhead in a sitting (this phenomenon has been observed quite a few times, including right now). Lucky that they're only ten cents each at the local dollar store.
Which kicks financial butt, I have discovered: the ones at home can be a bit of a rip, but this one actually sells Colgate toothpaste for a dollar, large bottles of shampoo for $1.50 (well, the Suave kind, anyway), and pretty much all major brands of deodorant for $1.50 as well. A little better even than Wal-Mart, if I'm not mistaken, and a much shorter drive.
I am in no way, however, affiliated with Dollar General. ::giggles::
Anydangway, here it is October, which sounds late until I realize that I've been at school for about five weeks, and then I'm like, wow, only that long? Yes, time does funny things in college. How come it never slows down first thing in the morning, or late at night?
In other news, 'Nanda and Daf are visiting tomorrow from Fredonia, which makes me super-happy, even though they're not even staying the night. We shall watch DangerMouse cartoons (remember them, from the 80s? Yes, you do, you just don't remember that you remember), have a DDR party with my school friends, and be merry. And Tom, as an RA, shall count as negative people if we get more for DDR than I expect. Thus spake...Zarathustra. I don't know.
This means I have about twelve hours to clean my room, which should be, ehm, entertaining. Must get on that. Will do it now. Or something.
Oh, wait a sec, though, I didn't mention Quiz Bowl last weekend. In two works: it rocked. In an additional sentence: Out of sixteen teams, we took fourth place. ...And we learned that Of Mice and Men does not equal City Slickers, and we're going to put the formula for tungsten on our t-shirts. But I leave those jokes to those who truly wish to know.
Cheerio!
-Laurel
Which kicks financial butt, I have discovered: the ones at home can be a bit of a rip, but this one actually sells Colgate toothpaste for a dollar, large bottles of shampoo for $1.50 (well, the Suave kind, anyway), and pretty much all major brands of deodorant for $1.50 as well. A little better even than Wal-Mart, if I'm not mistaken, and a much shorter drive.
I am in no way, however, affiliated with Dollar General. ::giggles::
Anydangway, here it is October, which sounds late until I realize that I've been at school for about five weeks, and then I'm like, wow, only that long? Yes, time does funny things in college. How come it never slows down first thing in the morning, or late at night?
In other news, 'Nanda and Daf are visiting tomorrow from Fredonia, which makes me super-happy, even though they're not even staying the night. We shall watch DangerMouse cartoons (remember them, from the 80s? Yes, you do, you just don't remember that you remember), have a DDR party with my school friends, and be merry. And Tom, as an RA, shall count as negative people if we get more for DDR than I expect. Thus spake...Zarathustra. I don't know.
This means I have about twelve hours to clean my room, which should be, ehm, entertaining. Must get on that. Will do it now. Or something.
Oh, wait a sec, though, I didn't mention Quiz Bowl last weekend. In two works: it rocked. In an additional sentence: Out of sixteen teams, we took fourth place. ...And we learned that Of Mice and Men does not equal City Slickers, and we're going to put the formula for tungsten on our t-shirts. But I leave those jokes to those who truly wish to know.
Cheerio!
-Laurel
9.23.2004
Upon Request
John asked me to put this up here, so I will:
We have decided that when we are very old, we will get houses right next door and bother each other. John will hassle me to come play video-game Jeopardy from the early 1980s, like now, only he'll be too blind to see the questions. But he will have memorized all the sequences back when he was 50, and tell by a frequency (that only he has learned to receive) which sequence is playing.
And Tim and Tom will be around somewhere, whacking each other with their canes, but John says we'll all be so old that not only will anyone be able to tell them apart, they won't be able to tell themselves apart.
...Ha, considering the twins' memory problems now, I don't think I disbelieve it. :-P
You can tell that it's been way too long since the two of us hung out. But Saturday is the Quiz Bowl tournament, and a day with Chris, John, Ryan, and Zack promises to be entertaining from the get-go. Well, except for the get-go, since that's 6:50 AM.
But yeah.
-Laurel
We have decided that when we are very old, we will get houses right next door and bother each other. John will hassle me to come play video-game Jeopardy from the early 1980s, like now, only he'll be too blind to see the questions. But he will have memorized all the sequences back when he was 50, and tell by a frequency (that only he has learned to receive) which sequence is playing.
And Tim and Tom will be around somewhere, whacking each other with their canes, but John says we'll all be so old that not only will anyone be able to tell them apart, they won't be able to tell themselves apart.
...Ha, considering the twins' memory problems now, I don't think I disbelieve it. :-P
You can tell that it's been way too long since the two of us hung out. But Saturday is the Quiz Bowl tournament, and a day with Chris, John, Ryan, and Zack promises to be entertaining from the get-go. Well, except for the get-go, since that's 6:50 AM.
But yeah.
-Laurel
"You can lose your mind--maybe then your heart you'll find..."
Since the eBay guy is finally sending my refund for the defective Jars of Clay CD (which I shipped back to him prior to leaving for school, if that's any indication), soon I will have it, and therefore will have to, if I want to be a good little child at all, delete the two mp3s from that CD that I still possess on my computer. One of them is "Sunny Days", source of this entry's title (this ramble will have very little to do with said title, I assure you; it's just that that's what was playing when I started this entry), and a large part of the reason I bought the CD in the first place, so that's a little disappointing. I probably would've saved myself a huge hassle by waiting a few more weeks and then just buying that one song on iTunes. ::snorts:: But I've never done that before, so it's not something I'm sure I want to start.
Then again, since I send music to friends when they ask, and sometimes I get some of theirs, what exactly is the difference? ...It doesn't matter; when I get the money, I'll delete the two songs.
When I listen to "Razreesh", a song by this female acapella group called Mediaeval Baebes, then, and only then, am I sad that I've dropped out of acapella, and only because it's unlikely now that I'll ever get to sing something that sounds like that. ...But I could get a small-group together within choir to do just one song for something. We've done French dinners, Italian dinners--instead of doing something weird like a German dinner, we could do something wyrd and have a medieval dinner instead. If elected female choir-officer, I should see what kind of support I have on that.
...If elected choir-officer, it is likely that Liz and the two freshman girls whose names I forget (also leaders of the female acapella group I just dropped out of) will be very annoyed with me, since I told them I had to leave because I couldn't handle any more extracurricular activities. Which is absolutely true, so even though choir is not half the time commitment that acapella was, perhaps I will tread very carefully on that one.
Only one class today, because choir is a guys'-sectional and Thursdays are mercifully easy, at least in terms of number of classes, as opposed to what I have to do for said classes.
Ooh, which reminds me--tomorrow I get to make lots and lots of cookies after my classes end at 12:10 and I don't have any acapella practice! :) :) :)
So on Tuesday in folk dancing, we learned "El Gato" from--oh, I never remember her name, hold on--::rereads e-mail::--that's right, Cecilia. She's assistant-teaching a couple of Spanish classes this semester (not mine, but she came one day just to watch). So learning an Argentinian folk dance was very cool--and very amusing. It has this part where the girls have to twirl their skirts (even if imaginary, as mine was) in a sort of skewed box-step, and the guys have to do this--this thing with their shoes, this step-stomp-stomp-step deal where they're trying to impress us, except that mostly they make us laugh instead. It looks like Argentinian Riverdance or something. Though I admit I'm a little impressed that they can keep it going for so long.
But I was going to mention Bridget.
Bridget from my high school graduating class died last Saturday in a horse accident--she got kicked. She loved horses--like, you look at the majority of honors students in my school, and you can find them in three or four extracurricular clubs, or at least chorus or choir--and if you're Daffy or me, it's all of the above, plus a couple of Caspy's plays. Bridget shows up once in a Ski Club picture, and that's it. The rest of her out-of-school energy, from all I can tell, went into riding--you can find her name in all sorts of riding scores (I have no idea what they're called). That was her major, equine studies.
It does seem cruel that such a part of her life turned into her death, but what actually creeps me out the most in this is that I can't remember for certain what classes I had with her and which I didn't have. People like, say, Christine, another horse-lover--I remember having English with her in ninth and eleventh grade, psych in twelfth. Sometimes I get blurry about whether I've had her in others (as I imagine I have), but those three, I know for certain. Bridget, I know I've had her in classes--but which ones? I try to picture her face in a seat nearby and fail. I think she was in eleventh-grade English with me, near Christine. But was she in psych? AP English, AP stats? I've heard her name since the fourth grade--I think I remember the way she looked the first time I saw her in elementary school, with a long brown braid, singing the greasy-grimy-gopher-guts song with somebody. As far as my mind is concerned, I may well have never had her in a class at all, except that I know I have.
...and how many other people have I done that to, that when they die, I'll have a recollection of, but nothing specific to fix my mind on? My mind feels like it's floating when I try to pin it down to Bridget. It goes back to the only concrete thing it has--her senior picture. But I looked that up when she was dead. And when she was alive, but in passing, probably looking for more-familiar faces within my graduating class.
As I did with Adam's death in twelfth grade (there's an entry about that, too, from long ago), to make sense of it I have to look around. How many people am I doing that to now, noting in passing without really knowing they're there? I don't have one class now where I know everyone's name, even the one with only six of us. That, at least, should change.
I should take a shower or something now, though. I was going to be offline half an hour ago.
-Laurel
Then again, since I send music to friends when they ask, and sometimes I get some of theirs, what exactly is the difference? ...It doesn't matter; when I get the money, I'll delete the two songs.
When I listen to "Razreesh", a song by this female acapella group called Mediaeval Baebes, then, and only then, am I sad that I've dropped out of acapella, and only because it's unlikely now that I'll ever get to sing something that sounds like that. ...But I could get a small-group together within choir to do just one song for something. We've done French dinners, Italian dinners--instead of doing something weird like a German dinner, we could do something wyrd and have a medieval dinner instead. If elected female choir-officer, I should see what kind of support I have on that.
...If elected choir-officer, it is likely that Liz and the two freshman girls whose names I forget (also leaders of the female acapella group I just dropped out of) will be very annoyed with me, since I told them I had to leave because I couldn't handle any more extracurricular activities. Which is absolutely true, so even though choir is not half the time commitment that acapella was, perhaps I will tread very carefully on that one.
Only one class today, because choir is a guys'-sectional and Thursdays are mercifully easy, at least in terms of number of classes, as opposed to what I have to do for said classes.
Ooh, which reminds me--tomorrow I get to make lots and lots of cookies after my classes end at 12:10 and I don't have any acapella practice! :) :) :)
So on Tuesday in folk dancing, we learned "El Gato" from--oh, I never remember her name, hold on--::rereads e-mail::--that's right, Cecilia. She's assistant-teaching a couple of Spanish classes this semester (not mine, but she came one day just to watch). So learning an Argentinian folk dance was very cool--and very amusing. It has this part where the girls have to twirl their skirts (even if imaginary, as mine was) in a sort of skewed box-step, and the guys have to do this--this thing with their shoes, this step-stomp-stomp-step deal where they're trying to impress us, except that mostly they make us laugh instead. It looks like Argentinian Riverdance or something. Though I admit I'm a little impressed that they can keep it going for so long.
But I was going to mention Bridget.
Bridget from my high school graduating class died last Saturday in a horse accident--she got kicked. She loved horses--like, you look at the majority of honors students in my school, and you can find them in three or four extracurricular clubs, or at least chorus or choir--and if you're Daffy or me, it's all of the above, plus a couple of Caspy's plays. Bridget shows up once in a Ski Club picture, and that's it. The rest of her out-of-school energy, from all I can tell, went into riding--you can find her name in all sorts of riding scores (I have no idea what they're called). That was her major, equine studies.
It does seem cruel that such a part of her life turned into her death, but what actually creeps me out the most in this is that I can't remember for certain what classes I had with her and which I didn't have. People like, say, Christine, another horse-lover--I remember having English with her in ninth and eleventh grade, psych in twelfth. Sometimes I get blurry about whether I've had her in others (as I imagine I have), but those three, I know for certain. Bridget, I know I've had her in classes--but which ones? I try to picture her face in a seat nearby and fail. I think she was in eleventh-grade English with me, near Christine. But was she in psych? AP English, AP stats? I've heard her name since the fourth grade--I think I remember the way she looked the first time I saw her in elementary school, with a long brown braid, singing the greasy-grimy-gopher-guts song with somebody. As far as my mind is concerned, I may well have never had her in a class at all, except that I know I have.
...and how many other people have I done that to, that when they die, I'll have a recollection of, but nothing specific to fix my mind on? My mind feels like it's floating when I try to pin it down to Bridget. It goes back to the only concrete thing it has--her senior picture. But I looked that up when she was dead. And when she was alive, but in passing, probably looking for more-familiar faces within my graduating class.
As I did with Adam's death in twelfth grade (there's an entry about that, too, from long ago), to make sense of it I have to look around. How many people am I doing that to now, noting in passing without really knowing they're there? I don't have one class now where I know everyone's name, even the one with only six of us. That, at least, should change.
I should take a shower or something now, though. I was going to be offline half an hour ago.
-Laurel
9.19.2004
This-that-and-the-other-thing
Arr and avast, me hearties and mateys--happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, and thanks to Daffy fer remindin' us all.
Okay, so I've cut out of acapella. It was nice to get in, but first of all, five extracurricular activities and 18 academic credits are driving me crazy. They leave me no time for anything, and that means I keep being up too late, and then being tired, and getting miserable, and seriously, by the end of the semester, Tim may be the only one who can stand me--and maybe no one at all, considering sometimes I even get mean and cranky with him. :(
Secondly, acapella itself was driving me crazy. I'm sorry, but that group was not what I had in mind. Basically we were just singing 60s and 70s tunes without a piano--no sound effects or anything (the guys have a guy who can do percussion with his mouth, which kicks), and not really much talent. There's more to acapella than what we're doing, but we have no idea what else to it there is. And I include myself in that. I just know it feels pale and weak, what we've been doing. ...Plus, I don't like the way that Ross is running the group even though he's there by invite because none of us can play piano.
Basically, it was a female version of how the ninth-grade-guys' chorus always got put through a bunch of oldies songs, and though I may eventually end up looking like Pete Best, I simply don't have the patience to stick around until we find our feet. I've dropped it. Thank goodness for commitment-free Friday nights.
...I guess all my friends are worried about me, the way I'm running myself round half to death. Lily and John told my parents on me, so to speak, so I got no disappointment at all from them on the anti-acapella deal, which would otherwise surprise me, since they (my mom especially) were so excited to see me get into it.
::sighs:: I've got to get to the career center or something; if I'm going to do this every semester, which I'll have to if I want one major and two minors, I'd better be darn sure that I want the end-result.
In other news, my honors seminar for next semester may be all about maple syrup, which is as bizarre yet awesome as it sounds. It's a back-by-popular-demand kind of seminar--Tim and Tom took it the last time around, and Tim got pretty excited when I told him I was thinking of signing up for it.
My parents and Lily and her family and Tim and I went out for dinner last night, and then to five minutes of the Bardic Circle (I'm telling you, guys, you've got to come up to my school; we do the weirdest, coolest things) and this awesome juggling show called TWO (go and see it if you ever, ever have the chance!).
My dad commented this morning that Tim is very nice and he likes him. This is very good. ...My mom liked him already; she's had an affection for the entire clan, for goodness's sake, since she met them. ('Course, considering that Glenn's mother was never interested in meeting my family, is it much wonder?)
But, yeah...my parents disclosed yesterday the phone bills the two of us ran up while he was in Milwaukee. :-[ ...I don't know what long-distance service my parents are under, but if school's can beat it, there's a big problem there. Ruddy crud, that a few hours in a month should cost that much!
Okay, time for half an hour of random work-type crap, followed by dinner and APO, followed by more work, followed eventually and blessedly by sleep.
-Laurel
Okay, so I've cut out of acapella. It was nice to get in, but first of all, five extracurricular activities and 18 academic credits are driving me crazy. They leave me no time for anything, and that means I keep being up too late, and then being tired, and getting miserable, and seriously, by the end of the semester, Tim may be the only one who can stand me--and maybe no one at all, considering sometimes I even get mean and cranky with him. :(
Secondly, acapella itself was driving me crazy. I'm sorry, but that group was not what I had in mind. Basically we were just singing 60s and 70s tunes without a piano--no sound effects or anything (the guys have a guy who can do percussion with his mouth, which kicks), and not really much talent. There's more to acapella than what we're doing, but we have no idea what else to it there is. And I include myself in that. I just know it feels pale and weak, what we've been doing. ...Plus, I don't like the way that Ross is running the group even though he's there by invite because none of us can play piano.
Basically, it was a female version of how the ninth-grade-guys' chorus always got put through a bunch of oldies songs, and though I may eventually end up looking like Pete Best, I simply don't have the patience to stick around until we find our feet. I've dropped it. Thank goodness for commitment-free Friday nights.
...I guess all my friends are worried about me, the way I'm running myself round half to death. Lily and John told my parents on me, so to speak, so I got no disappointment at all from them on the anti-acapella deal, which would otherwise surprise me, since they (my mom especially) were so excited to see me get into it.
::sighs:: I've got to get to the career center or something; if I'm going to do this every semester, which I'll have to if I want one major and two minors, I'd better be darn sure that I want the end-result.
In other news, my honors seminar for next semester may be all about maple syrup, which is as bizarre yet awesome as it sounds. It's a back-by-popular-demand kind of seminar--Tim and Tom took it the last time around, and Tim got pretty excited when I told him I was thinking of signing up for it.
My parents and Lily and her family and Tim and I went out for dinner last night, and then to five minutes of the Bardic Circle (I'm telling you, guys, you've got to come up to my school; we do the weirdest, coolest things) and this awesome juggling show called TWO (go and see it if you ever, ever have the chance!).
My dad commented this morning that Tim is very nice and he likes him. This is very good. ...My mom liked him already; she's had an affection for the entire clan, for goodness's sake, since she met them. ('Course, considering that Glenn's mother was never interested in meeting my family, is it much wonder?)
But, yeah...my parents disclosed yesterday the phone bills the two of us ran up while he was in Milwaukee. :-[ ...I don't know what long-distance service my parents are under, but if school's can beat it, there's a big problem there. Ruddy crud, that a few hours in a month should cost that much!
Okay, time for half an hour of random work-type crap, followed by dinner and APO, followed by more work, followed eventually and blessedly by sleep.
-Laurel