Tuesday, April 19, 2005
What a lovely day! It was gorgeous out. I woke up at 1:20 and didn't do quite as much studying as I would have liked, but I did get some done. It's turning out okay. History and econ are still causing me terror, but public affairs feels closer to shipshape. I am totally starving, for no apparent reason.
It has been an exciting week for the Emo Boys -- we have seen them everywhere! Playing Frisbee, drawing chalk outlines of each other after dark, and standing around smoking and doing incomprehensible things like going "Rarr!" at unseen menaces. What amusing pets they are!
I am still going "Whee!" about having an apartment. It's altogether too exciting. The song of the week is either Take It Easy by the inimitable Eagles, or Here Comes My Baby by Cat Stevens. Katherine has a Pavlovian response to the latter, if she listens to it when the sun is out she literally can't stop smiling. It's highly amusing. I'm working on a list of songs to put on my First Year Mix, just songs that have meant something to me this year. If y'all have any suggestions, chime in, please! I already have like 2 CDs' worth of music, but I would hate to miss anything vital.
Today I feel less crazy again. This is a good thing.
It has been an exciting week for the Emo Boys -- we have seen them everywhere! Playing Frisbee, drawing chalk outlines of each other after dark, and standing around smoking and doing incomprehensible things like going "Rarr!" at unseen menaces. What amusing pets they are!
I am still going "Whee!" about having an apartment. It's altogether too exciting. The song of the week is either Take It Easy by the inimitable Eagles, or Here Comes My Baby by Cat Stevens. Katherine has a Pavlovian response to the latter, if she listens to it when the sun is out she literally can't stop smiling. It's highly amusing. I'm working on a list of songs to put on my First Year Mix, just songs that have meant something to me this year. If y'all have any suggestions, chime in, please! I already have like 2 CDs' worth of music, but I would hate to miss anything vital.
Today I feel less crazy again. This is a good thing.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Well... what's new? Two exams down and three to go. I've been out marauding most nights, some times with better results than others. See: last night's mental episode. I had no idea how far I couldn't trust my senses. Apparently people weren't actually laughing at me. However, I have successfully made myself feel like a very crazy person and caused my friends and res fellow a lot of worry by disappearing for an hour and a half (I think... I didn't have my watch). I should have known better than to go out last night, though. When you start your day with a dream that your mother is playing a piano piece that's making you cry and won't stop even when you ask her to, that is a sign to stay in your room and study all evening instead of going out wandering. Nevertheless, I had a good time watching Chris's copy of Empire Records with her, Emily, and Katherine before all the madness started.
Not much else going on here. The lease is signed and has been sent off to Jeanne for signing and I'm getting ready for my public affairs and economics exams (Wednesday and Thursday respectively). Aside from the little nutty I had last night, life continues apace. I'm excited to go home.
Not much else going on here. The lease is signed and has been sent off to Jeanne for signing and I'm getting ready for my public affairs and economics exams (Wednesday and Thursday respectively). Aside from the little nutty I had last night, life continues apace. I'm excited to go home.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Interesting... Not exactly what I would have predicted. I would have thought something more like "The Great Gatsby", frankly -- a little idealism, a little falling down on the job.
Monday, April 11, 2005
OK, we didn't go with the kitschy apartment we were looking at. We took another look at it and then realized that we'd gone, you know, insane to want it. Foil wallpaper is fun for a while, but it's not something you really want to come home to every day. Anyway, we've found a different one and it's nicer. It's pretty much the same as the last one, actually, only without the extra-extra-crazy decor. Peachy walls: Joy! Jeanne's parents have yet to make their decision (fingers are crossed so hard I can barely type), but I've talked to Jeanne and she seems to like it. It really is a nice place; the only thing I don't like is the lack of dishwasher, but it's not like we can't live without one. Anyway, all day Katherine and I have been goggling at each other going "we almost have an apartment!" in a shocked way, then skittering back to the Ikea catalog to look at the cool bookshelf that I want, and the options for coffee tables. The bookshelf is shaped like a grid, y'all. It's way too cool.
Emily told us after she'd gone with us to look at the shag pad again that she does not know what she would have done had we taken the place. Apparently coming to visit us would have been out of the question.
Tonight was fun. Female Chris (as opposed to Male Chris), Katherine, and I wandered over to Emily's to harass her and use her television. We got some Timmy's, and I learned to play the riff from You Shook Me All Night Long because Nate is a prince among men and is willing to teach simple power chords to putzes like me.
Exams approach at terrifying speed: poli sci is in about 77 hours. AIEEEE. My studying is nowhere near where it should be, but we've had apartment stuff going on all this weekend, and it's been rather crazy. Or so I tell myself. At least I have no more assignments this year. Nary a one! It's rather exciting.
Friday, April 08, 2005
The End is Nigh!
It’s coming up to the end of school. Exams are starting. Today I handed in my last assignment of first year (a French essay on a topic of my choice, in case you’re wondering). We had a truly excellent public affairs review session and went over the exam format, which I am ashamed to say actually looks kind of fun. Katherine and I are almost settled on an apartment – we have one more that we’d like to look at, we’ll take some photos and get Jeanne’s approval, and then hopefully sign some documents! Assuming of course that the landlord is well-disposed to give it to us. He’s a little on the mafioso side, in a “my assistant will show you ze apartment. Bar-bah-ra, show them ze apartment” way. He drives a very delightfully shiny black Benz. The apartment itself is equally pimpin’. It looks like somebody found some plans from 1974 and used them to build a new apartment. The shag carpeting is nice and fluffy, the living room is fairly huge, the balcony has Astroturf (!!!) and a really nice view of the Mooney’s Bay park area. The kitchen is a good size, though a little closed off. We may have to get ourselves some Hugh Hefner smoking jackets and a huge circular bed, but we’ll manage to fit in. It’s in Emily’s building, so we have friends around, and there is an indoor pool. Much excitement!
Tomorrow we’re going to see the apartment again, and have a look at another one in the same building that could also work. We’re leaning toward the shag pad at the moment, though. It’s just that cool.
Called Jeanne this morning and had a conversation composed largely of yawning – a preview of upcoming mornings, I suppose. She doesn’t seem too scared of moving, which is good. I am über-psyched for her to come.
It’s coming up to the end of school. Exams are starting. Today I handed in my last assignment of first year (a French essay on a topic of my choice, in case you’re wondering). We had a truly excellent public affairs review session and went over the exam format, which I am ashamed to say actually looks kind of fun. Katherine and I are almost settled on an apartment – we have one more that we’d like to look at, we’ll take some photos and get Jeanne’s approval, and then hopefully sign some documents! Assuming of course that the landlord is well-disposed to give it to us. He’s a little on the mafioso side, in a “my assistant will show you ze apartment. Bar-bah-ra, show them ze apartment” way. He drives a very delightfully shiny black Benz. The apartment itself is equally pimpin’. It looks like somebody found some plans from 1974 and used them to build a new apartment. The shag carpeting is nice and fluffy, the living room is fairly huge, the balcony has Astroturf (!!!) and a really nice view of the Mooney’s Bay park area. The kitchen is a good size, though a little closed off. We may have to get ourselves some Hugh Hefner smoking jackets and a huge circular bed, but we’ll manage to fit in. It’s in Emily’s building, so we have friends around, and there is an indoor pool. Much excitement!
Tomorrow we’re going to see the apartment again, and have a look at another one in the same building that could also work. We’re leaning toward the shag pad at the moment, though. It’s just that cool.
Called Jeanne this morning and had a conversation composed largely of yawning – a preview of upcoming mornings, I suppose. She doesn’t seem too scared of moving, which is good. I am über-psyched for her to come.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
Friday, April 01, 2005
Blogger just ate my perfectly awesome entry. It was really well thought-out and it almost had, like, structure and everything. Hatred! Anyway, I'll try to resurrect it in some form…
“And I fell to my knees, oh, and I cried,
As the lightning rolled up from the Earth to the sky,
In this wreck of a life that I’m in,
In this mess of a life that I’m in.”
Sam Roberts, “This Wreck of a Life”
Saille posted this in her LJ “Listening To” heading a while back, and it made me remember how much I like this song and also how true it is. So I dragged out my CD. Tas burned it for me at Christmas last year (thank you so much, man!) and listening to it reminds me how last Christmas I thought my life was a wreck. I imagine most people think their lives are as well, much of the time. Today’s poli sci TA group lent me a dampening discussion with Sandra about upper-year courses. Apparently the workload doubles in second year and triples in third year from first-year levels. Grrrreat! Because I sleep so much as it is. See? Life as a wreck. Always have been, always will be at some level. But this year I’ve been able to suppress it. A roomie ensures that you have no space to break down, and keeps you sane and civil all the time. On the whole, though, it’s been kind of a depressing or at least wistful day. The rain makes it more that way. I’ve been thinking a lot about my friends from home, both the ones who’ll be there and the ones who won’t. As says the framed parable, a grad gift from Katie, “girlfriends are never further away than needing them can reach.” I hope fervently that it’s true, that we are all bound to each other with love.
The old friends are coming back, though. It’s spring, and we’re remembering the people we’ve seen every spring for the past twelve years. Last night I talked to Katie, Laura, and Colleen on MSN and Katie on the phone. I tried to call Jeanne, too, but it was a short talk because she was all T4’ed up and I felt like a heel for forgetting that it was Wisdom Removal Day. I called her yesterday, then a packet of letters arrived today from her, just by coincidence. Tonight I’d been thinking about the accident – I heard a really touching song about… something. Living well and purposefully, I think. Whatever it was, it made me think of them, and then a few hours later Colleen wanted to know Luke and Steph’s middle names for a monologue she’s writing. Sharing something so intense with an audience seems terrifying, and her choice to do it confirms my opinion that Colleen is very brave.
On a more bright and sparkly note, I should talk about what Katie said when she called me. Mike W. (a.k.a. Big Tall Mike) has hatched a scheme to go adventure racing in B.C. during the summer. We need a team of four, and with Mike, me, and the K-Squared, we have one. The training sounds cool. Sprint workouts are deliciously painful, and learning to kayak properly and mountain bike would be beyond excellent. If the finances and the scheduling work out (fairly big “if”s, I admit) then I am IN, baby!
Equally bright and sparkly (?) is the pin Jeanne sent me, which proudly proclaims that “LEFTIES HAVE RIGHTS TOO”!
Also, it was the first rain of the spring today. Exult in the smell of ozone, my children.
“And I fell to my knees, oh, and I cried,
As the lightning rolled up from the Earth to the sky,
In this wreck of a life that I’m in,
In this mess of a life that I’m in.”
Sam Roberts, “This Wreck of a Life”
Saille posted this in her LJ “Listening To” heading a while back, and it made me remember how much I like this song and also how true it is. So I dragged out my CD. Tas burned it for me at Christmas last year (thank you so much, man!) and listening to it reminds me how last Christmas I thought my life was a wreck. I imagine most people think their lives are as well, much of the time. Today’s poli sci TA group lent me a dampening discussion with Sandra about upper-year courses. Apparently the workload doubles in second year and triples in third year from first-year levels. Grrrreat! Because I sleep so much as it is. See? Life as a wreck. Always have been, always will be at some level. But this year I’ve been able to suppress it. A roomie ensures that you have no space to break down, and keeps you sane and civil all the time. On the whole, though, it’s been kind of a depressing or at least wistful day. The rain makes it more that way. I’ve been thinking a lot about my friends from home, both the ones who’ll be there and the ones who won’t. As says the framed parable, a grad gift from Katie, “girlfriends are never further away than needing them can reach.” I hope fervently that it’s true, that we are all bound to each other with love.
The old friends are coming back, though. It’s spring, and we’re remembering the people we’ve seen every spring for the past twelve years. Last night I talked to Katie, Laura, and Colleen on MSN and Katie on the phone. I tried to call Jeanne, too, but it was a short talk because she was all T4’ed up and I felt like a heel for forgetting that it was Wisdom Removal Day. I called her yesterday, then a packet of letters arrived today from her, just by coincidence. Tonight I’d been thinking about the accident – I heard a really touching song about… something. Living well and purposefully, I think. Whatever it was, it made me think of them, and then a few hours later Colleen wanted to know Luke and Steph’s middle names for a monologue she’s writing. Sharing something so intense with an audience seems terrifying, and her choice to do it confirms my opinion that Colleen is very brave.
On a more bright and sparkly note, I should talk about what Katie said when she called me. Mike W. (a.k.a. Big Tall Mike) has hatched a scheme to go adventure racing in B.C. during the summer. We need a team of four, and with Mike, me, and the K-Squared, we have one. The training sounds cool. Sprint workouts are deliciously painful, and learning to kayak properly and mountain bike would be beyond excellent. If the finances and the scheduling work out (fairly big “if”s, I admit) then I am IN, baby!
Equally bright and sparkly (?) is the pin Jeanne sent me, which proudly proclaims that “LEFTIES HAVE RIGHTS TOO”!
Also, it was the first rain of the spring today. Exult in the smell of ozone, my children.
