Oops, I forgot to post this last week.

[April 29]
So I've had many days of complete and total relaxation, and now it's time to start preparing for my defense on Friday. It's going to be tough. It's going to be reeeeally tough. So that's how I'll be spending my next 48 hours.

Friday night I got really depressed about my honors project. It was like a breakup, essentially. I formed such a close relationship with it; we spent all our time together for weeks; every free moment I had, it was always there. And then it was suddenly gone. What was I going to do with all my time? I felt lost and purposeless. But, this dark time in my life lasted only a few hours, and then the good feelings came back. Granted, I've dreamt about various aspects of honors almost every night since — I'm editing and can't get it to sound right, I realize I've written something really stupid and can't take it back, one of my readers asks a question about Austria (thanks, Ben's project) and I can't answer it — but I'm adjusting to my new life pretty well.

It was nature weekend for me. I spent hours and hours outside in the sun — it was a beautiful 80-90 degrees every day. Friday was the World Language and Culture Festival, which was a gigantic success. The weather was beautiful, so many people showed up, and my first graders playing their maracas with OSteel were the cutest thing ever.





On Friday night, we trekked southward to a party, but didn't end up going inside because it looked too crowded. (Is this evidence that we're getting too old for big campus parties? Maybe.) In any case, since we were pretty far south anyway, we went to the arb, where we ran into a group of high schoolers. (Well maybe. It's hard to tell the difference between high schoolers and freshmen — no offense, freshmen. Again, evidence that we're getting too old? Maybe.) Anyway, we went into the woods and up a hill to lay down and look at the stars for a while. Then we went back to my house (I had stepped in a giant mud puddle and broken a flip flop), and ended up staying there out on the porch for another long period of time. We managed to fit five people on that trash couch, so, automatic win.

Then Saturday I spent a long time on the porch, and in the afternoon we went to Goodwill. On the way, we saw a car ON FIRE from maybe 20 yards away, which was so cool.


Then I lost my phone, took a four hour nap between 8 pm and midnight, and then couldn't find where anyone was because of aforementioned phone loss, and wandered around until I found Kate and Henry in north quad. Then the three of us went up to north fields to the tower (don't know what it's for... changing the scoreboard when it wasn't digital? sniping the other team's outfielders? playing pirate ship and you're in the crow's nest?) and did more star-watching. Then we sat on the boys' porch and watched all the drama that unfolds on Woodland street at 3 am on a Saturday (ie, drunk football players beating up other drunk football players).

The nature continued on Sunday night, when I went with Abby and Mike to the resevoir to swim. Well, I didn't swim, partly because I had just showered, partly because it was dark, and partly because the last time I swam in not-a-pool I got parasites. I did more star-watching.

Sunday during the day I read the entirety of Happens Every Day and my two word review of it is: "Hot. Mess." I loved it.

Our steel exco concert is next Friday, and our theme is "Pan You Steel the Love Tonight". YES THAT'S RIGHT. We're dressing up in Lion King costumes. I also maaay have helped organize a big (secret) rehearsal just now (I have nothing else to do?) so we can really blow OSteel and our instructors away. I've heard that our exco is one of the best in years, so it should be a really good show (pictures and videos to follow).

Today was our last SITES class — we played a big cumulative Jeopardy game and ate cookies and it was a wonderful success. The Big Parade is this Saturday, and then SITES will really be over!

Also, THE DREADED SWINE FLU made it to Lorain County, so that's cool. Apparently young people with healthy immune systems are more suseptible to, well, death, than older people are. Something about the healthy immune system becoming overactive and then your body kills you, rather than the swine flu killing you. Crazy stuff. Of course this happens now that I'm extremely well-rested, eating regularly, and completely un-stressed. Hmm, how can I acquire a weak immune system...

I know! I'll go give blood.

My "mind baby" has been born.

I came up to my study carrel for the ceremonial signing of the honor code on all copies of my project:

I am finally done.

I titled it: "Things as they are and things as they might be": The Fusion of Orality and Text, Memory and Oblivion in Cien años de soledad.

Kate said I should call it: One Hundred Days of My Life Gone Forever: My Honors Thesis.

I am 98% relieved and 2% sad that it's over. But I am definitely 100% exhausted, so now I am going to turn in these copies and take a nap until the festival.

T minus 14 hours

I can't believe that this foul-looking, exactly-the-same-color-as-my-highlighter-seriously-no-joke liquid is what I am living on:

AMP: IT'LL MESS YOU UP.

I'll probably be in the library until late tonight... I would like to be able to print out my project (three copies, one for each reader) tonight before the library closes at 2 am, but I think that's being unrealistic. Even though it's definitely hand-in-able now, there is always more I can do with this paper, and I don't think I'll want to stop revising until the last minute.

Tomorrow a bunch of us honors zombies are meeting at 10 am for breakfast at Dcomb. I'll probably be at the library at 9 to print things out... and at noon I will be free. Then I will nap until I have to be at the festival to set up at 3:30.

Ohh, sweet release. I can taste freedom now. And it tastes like... AMP.

Brick face.

I've been working on my bibliography for about two hours now, and guys, it is really hard. I have to somehow cite an interview that appears in this physical book that I'm holding, but that is reprinted in this book from another book, but it was reprinted in that other book from a newspaper in Bogotá. Seriously, how does one pack that much information into a citation?

But, as usual, my life is full of wonderful discoveries:

1) These chips are the best chips I have ever eaten and no I am not being hyperbolic!
My mouth is on fire and I love it. Here are ALL the ingredients in these delicious potato morsels:

Potatoes, safflower and/or sunflower oil, honey powder (evaporated cane syrup, honey), salt, garlic powder, jalapeño pepper, ground ginger, onion powder, habanero pepper, dried parsley, citric acid, cilantro extract, ginger oil, cayenne pepper, white pepper, lime oil.

Healthy and delicious! I would eat these chips every day for the rest of my life.

2) In the latest episode of Scrubs, the ending song was a cover (as sung by Ted) of Outkast's "Hey Ya". I've never really listened to the lyrics before... just mostly the "shake it like a polaroid picture" part. I would never have imagined this song as acoustic folk, but it totally works.


3) Ben and I went on a rollerblade/bike ride last night sometime between 2 and 3 am. It was absolutely perfect biking weather, about 60 degrees, and we ended up going roughly 4.2 miles (thanks, Google Maps) altogether, up North Professor out of town, along Butternut Ridge Road, and then back down Pyle South Amherst Road back to West College. All of that route was basically through the middle of nowhere, and it was really cool to see Oberlin's surroundings. After honors, we'll probably do more exploring.

4) I'm having that thing happen to me again where I'm always seeing movement out of the corner of my eye and I look and nothing's there. This happened to me last summer in the PT library all. the. time. and it's been happening for the past few days, but only here in Mudd, so maybe it is a library thing. Is it because libraries make me paranoid? Is my peripheral vision messed up? Am I being followed by library-specific ghosts? Or am I just kind of losing my mind right now? Any and all of these options are quite plausible. Abby said that I'm being haunted by GGM's ghost, but GGM is very much alive, so there goes that convenient explanation.

Back to work! Maybe today I can manage to finish my now-2.5-page bibliography.

[UPDATE]
Finished the bibliography — 4.5 pages.

The "warthog" was probably just someone sneezing in a nearby room.

Last night, at around 1:00 am, this happened in the library:



I really did say that I wanted to eat my book, in all seriousness, so that I could "absorb its knowledge".

There is a part in OHYOS where it says:

Sir Francis Drake had attacked Riohacha (100+ years earlier) only so that they could seek each other through the most intricate labyrinths of blood until they would engender the mythological animal that was to bring the line to an end.

Last night I read this aloud and then said that I felt like GGM had only written OHYOS so that, 42 years later, I could be tortured by it. Abby replied that she knew most people would say that as a joke, but that I actually meant it. And I do. I feel like GGM and I are communing or something. Things are getting really strange up in this carrel...


Soon I will escape to sell SITES t-shirts at TGIF. I will drink a beer in the sunshine, and soon everything will make more sense.

Reefer Madness tonight! Until then, work. After then, work.

http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001444.html

In the past 24 hours I have sacrificed:

- not having caffeine jitters for drinking an Amp and doing work.
- honors work for exam-studying.
- exam-studying for Splitchers and socializing.
- sleep for WOBC hangouts.
- sleeping in for more exam-studying.
- three dollars for a protein shake breakfast/lunch.
- two afternoon work hours for a much-needed nap.
- four dollars for a Reefer Madness ticket.
- another work hour for sitting in the sunshine.
- watching the Freethinker exco debate for quiz-taking.
- my sanity for I'm not sure what payoff exactly yet.


In the next 24 hours I will sacrifice:

- 24 hours for work.


One of Kate's penpals from Mexico wrote her an email (in English) the other day that contained the phrase, "Do you like the hard emotions?" I have no idea what it means; naturally, therefore, it instantly became my favorite catchphrase. I am feeling lots of hard emotions today. Time for a mental health break that will also be a physical health break as I feed myself a meal somewhere.

Mudd has everything I need: a place for eating, a place for socializing, a place for studying, and a place to sleep. I wish I could just move in here.

So I never wrote about how awesome the Mountain Goats concert was two weeks ago. Well, it was awesome. I didn't know any of the music ahead of time and I still thought it was one of the best shows I've ever seen, so that's saying something. Also John Darnielle has the same speech patterns as my Uncle John, so that was pretty weird. Here's a short sample, one of the only ones I could find on Youtube (towards the end of the video you can see a guy in a hat on the left right up next to the stage, and if the person filming this had turned his or her hand like a millimeter more to the left you could've seen me... alas):



I sat in on Henry and Ben's radio show the other night, which was really bizarre and fun. They let me read a PSA, so at some point around 2:45 in the morning last Thursday, I was on the radio talking about breast cancer! I know I know, my life is devastatingly glamorous. Anyway, you too can listen to WOBC via the internet and iTunes! Technology! Their show — "The Score", which is a show of film scores, funnily enough — is on the air between 2 and 3 AM Thursday mornings, or really late Wednesday nights if you're an insomniac college student. And if you're already up that early/late, you might as well stay tuned for Virginia's show — "But It's a School Night!" — from 3 to 4 AM. AND, if you don't want to go through the trouble of calling a phone number to request a song, you can IM the DJs at WOBC DJ. Wow okay I'm done being an advertisement for WOBC now.

Our commencement speakers have been chosen! Yay!

I've been progressing with honors pretty well... all I have to do is tackle an intro and a conclusion, and do all the revising/citations that go along with this nonsense. As much as I'm dreading next Friday, I'm also relieved that the end is near. Here is the rest of my work for the year:

4/16: ed psych exam
4/23: ed psych presentation
4/24: honors project
4/27-5/2: honors defense
5/1: last day of SITES
5/7: ed psych paper (5 pages) due

And that's it! It's pretty scary that we're coming to the end of the year so quickly, but I'll be very happy when my work is done. Verrrry happy.

Last night I was in the library nonstop (with a two-hour break for a nap/dinner) between 12:30 pm and 12:30 am. Today I've been here since 1:00 pm, I'll probably have a 3 hour break for dinner/Steel exco, and then I'll be back until 12 or 1 am. It's a loooot of library time, but incredibly necessary. Everyone I know is pretty much in the same boat, so I've been taking study breaks to visit people in their individual study rooms/scholar studies, but it definitely has the potential to drive me a little bit stir-crazy. Good thing it's a really ugly day out, or I would be having real trouble.

I just found a nice napping place, so I might never leave...

ALSO.

My mantra for the next two weeks and one day is going to be "backtoworkbacktoworkbacktowork"

Discoveries of today:

- The iTunes "Genius" playlist feature is actually genius! You click on one song and then click on the genius button and it makes a playlist out of your own music that's related to that one song. So if you're listening to a certain mood of song and just want to keep listening to that type of music, it totally works! Awesome!

- Chai in smoothies is great! Cool!

- After spending weeks scrunching up my shoulders in order to type at my carrel desk (this is why short people get back problems, I think... desks are not made for people who are 5'3"), I decided to pilfer a cushion from somewhere and make my own little booster seat. Much better!

- Ben can drive his remote-controled car around from his fourth floor scholar study. It was fun sitting in Wilder bowl for a while watching people be bewildered and amused by the little car following them around on the sidewalk. One guy pretended to Jedi mind control it, and Ben played along. Wonderful!

- Antarctica isn't owned by anyone. Some countries have "claims" on the land down there, and their territories are like pie slices that radiate outward from the south pole. Weird!

- I still can't find the library book I have probably lost. Whoopsie!

- Abby and Kate left notes for me in my carrel:
Yay!

- In my constant quest for places I can go and work when I need change of scenery, I found this charming area on the third floor:
You can't tell, but I'm sitting on a loveseat with my feet up on a big plastic yellow block. Mudd library is the coolest ugly 70s building ever. This picture can't really convey the absurd amount of yellowness that is going on here. My one-world exclamation for this discovery therefore must be... Yellow?!?!

At least the daffodils in front of my house aren't covered in snow anymore

Today is a wonderful day and I feel wonderful in it. Last night I went to bed before 2 am, and so I was up on my own at 10:30... and it's pretty awesome being able to do work before lunchtime.

Yesterday here in Oberlin we accumulated about an inch of snow, and instead of bemoaning the improbable Ohio weather as usual, I decided to embrace it. Snow always makes me happy anyway. And today it is just over 50 degrees and sunny and beautiful, so it all works out.

For the rest of the SITES year — which is actually only something like 5 classes — we are doing culture, and our designated countries for first grade are Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. So, today we had a nice discussion about passports. First I showed them my drivers license, because that's something they're all familiar with, and we talked about what it's for, why you need one, and what kind of information is on it. Then I showed them Ben's old passport (I didn't bring mine back with me to school, which was foolish), and they were really into it because it had a picture of Ben when he was little. Then I gave them each their own little passport to fill out with their name, birthday, and nationality. I also took pictures of them (adorable!), so I'm going to have to do all that printing and cutting and glueing of their photos before next class, when we're going to take a Google Earth trip from Oberlin to the Caribbean!! Whoooo!! I think I'm going to set up the chairs in the room like it's an airplane, and stamp their passports as we "land" in Puerto Rico. It should be really fun.

For some reason, everything is converging on April 24. That's when my honors project is due, that's when our world language and cultures festival is going to be (I got OSteel to play at it! yay!), and the day before is when my one presentation for my one class of the whole semester is, which is just the worst kind of luck I can imagine. But, so it goes. My honors draft will be done this week, and then it will be revisereviserevise for two weeks straight.

This morning in Walmart an old lady stopped me and said, "I wish I was young! Maybe then I could keep up with my husband!" and she hobbled along after said husband, who was about twenty yards down the aisle, crusing along in one of those motor scooter shopping cart things. I hate Walmart.

Drag Ball; or, "You're not sure if you're dancing with a boy or a girl and it's a little awkward"

Here are some pictures of last night's madness:

Abby and I went as newsies. We watched the movie beforehand to get into character.


It took a long time for us all to get ready. And by "us all" I mean those of us who were going as ladies.


Abby and her starry-eyed prom date. The theme of the evening was "So Over the Rainbow" — accordingly, one room was decorated as "Oz", another as "Kansas", another as "Smoke and Lasers".


This is how we think dudes dance. The beer is a prop to add to the illusion.


Very convincing ladies.

I think that the show from freshman year was better, but it was an overall better experience this year. Way fun, and totally worth the inordinate sum of money it costs. And I got a cool new (very itchy) cap! Excellent.