HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

I miss home with all the crazy decorations, today. And Halloween with all my friends.

Just a few random tidbits from today . . .

-Apparently, I yelled out something like "lantern" in my sleep last night. I . . . have no idea where this came from. I do not remember any dreams about lanterns. I didn't think the word lanterns once yesterday. And yet, I work my roommate Elizabeth up this morning at 5 when I yelled "LANTERN!" in my sleep. My mind is obviously a strange, strange place.

-GAH Linguistics midterm. Okay, 88% is a decent score. I guess. Maybe it's the Lowell syndrome in me, but I wanted to do better. ALSO, in grade-point scale, 88% is a 3.3. WTF? 3-point-bloody-three? I miss three questions and I get a three-point-bloody three? GAHHHHH. On the other hand I feel sort of bad for being pissed off about this because Elizabeth got an unfair grade on her essay for sociology because of the curve. (Three-hundred people in her class got between 2.3 and 2.7 because of this stupid curve, which she was above.) But stilllll . . . *whine*

-Even though I was kind of pissed off about this, something made me smile hugely as I was walking to Linguistics lecture (which I came so so close to skipping because I am tired). There were a couple of people waving signs and yelling about Jesus and how God demands that I repent in Red Square this afternoon. While I seriously don't have anything against smart religious people, I do have something against stupid people that yell and tell me someone is DEMANDING I do something I don't agree with, with the implication that my soul is damned to eternal hellfire if I don't, etc. etc. Nevertheless, I wasn't really annoyed so much as "oh, it's the yelling people again; I'm just going to walk over here, not bother them, and tune them out."

Then I noticed that, standing a few feet away from them, there were an equal number of people dressed as pirates, not yelling and calmly holding signs with the Flying Spaghetti Monster on them and passing out pamphlets.

SO awesome. I just have one thing to say: Ramen, my brothers and sisters, Ramen. And also thank you for making me grin so widely.

-I am having a craving for ridiculous turn-of-the-century children's literature. I could not tell you why this is, but I finished Little Lord Fauntleroy last night and now I just want more of the same. I'm such a weirdo.

-I haven't been sleeping well lately.

-It's almost NOVEMBER!!! and I'm excited. Why? Why, nanowrimo.org, my friends . . .

-All I want to do today is write. So I think I shall do that now, instead of doing math homework like a smart person.

Okay, I'll admit it. I bought more books. But how can I help it? The bookstore is three blocks away. Three. Also, if I go to the bookstore, I can stop by the gyro place on the way back. The delicious gyro place which makes practically the most delicious gyros ever.

I'm sorry, even a saint couldn't resist.

St. Thomas of Aquinas is backing me up on this one.

My dear blog, I've been neglecting you. In my defense, I was sick and had a midterm in math on Thursday, but I shall vow to attempt to write in you more often. Looking it over, there wasn't that much to say about the Spice Girls, so I'll skip them for now.

I studied a lot for my math midterm, and I don't feel like I got anything wrong, which, I'm sure, is completely untrue. I'm sure I screwed up something. We get them back tomorrow and ahhh I'm going crazy with the desire to know how I did for sure.

Speaking of midterms, I've got another one in linguistics on Monday. Yeeuch. At the moment linguistics is being sort of interesting, but I'm eager to get past learning the mechanics that you have to know, and onto the really interesting stuff. I might not hit that until the upper levels though. I guess we'll see. In any case the midterm will probably not be ridiculously hard, so I'm not extremely worried about that.

Finnish makes me remember that I miss Japanese. I've got to see about taking that next quarter. I miss the cadences spread over my tongue like dyed silk, the precise words spilling out from my mouth. It's funny how much a language can get in your blood. Sometimes all I want to do is rattle things off in Japanese like I used to, though I'm already starting to lose bits of it. I don't want to let that happen, so I'm definitely going to try and take it next quarter. We'll see what happens.

Let's see, what else . . . today I was tired (I'm just at the edge of recovering from my sickness) so I took a nap in between math and linguistics lecture, which was nice. I was feeling a little eh afterwards, but I took my camera with me on a whim, and went shooting after linguistics lecture. My god, I love photography. Writing soothes that part of me that can't stop devouring words, and photography calms the part of me that loves shapes and colors, and can't stop staring at trees. Ashley, one of my figmates, makes fun of me good-naturedly for how much I say, "Look at that, it's beautiful!" I can't help it though; things catch my eye and I want to share them. Photography, I think, is one way of doing that. (Ms. Canepa and Ms. Mitchell would burn me at the stake for saying "I think", but this is my blog so I can do whatever I want. Mwahaha.)

Umm there was one more thing . . . oh yes. A cute boy with a skateboard told me he liked my jacket (the purple velvet blazer from Camden), and that if it didn't "suit me so well", he'd probably try to buy it off me.

Eee. I'll never see him again, but it still made me smile uncontrollably.

I went to see a midnight showing of Spice World tonight with my roommate Elizabeth and two girls from the fifth floor. It was awesome. Were there hilarious drunk frat people on the bus, you ask? Were there people dressed up at the theatre? Was there a guy drumming on the sidewalk in the rain at 1.30 in the morning? Yes, yes, and yes. All this and more in tomorrow's post---I'm hella tired, and going to sleep now.

Arrgarrargarrargarrarga bleh bleh bleh. <-- New hit single in Qwerty, I hear. But also how my last few days have been going. This morning I got a visit from my Aunt Flo, so I guess it's not surprising. Ugh. In some ways it's nice to have an excuse to blame the ehness on, but some small peevish part of me wants to shout, "No! I'm in a bad mood because things suck, not because it's that time of the month!" Sigh.

To be fair, not everything sucks, but my math homework does. It takes forever, because I'm trying to get it done ASAP so it's not hanging over my head. Unfortunately, it's been a while since I've done math, so it takes me a while to remember things like the distance formula exist. Or the quadratic formula. It took six tries on one problem before I realized I was getting it wrong because I was squaring improperly. Good job, Zaz.

Also, my TA for math sucks. I feel bad for feeling that way, because he's one of those nervous teachers that want to please you badly, but for whatever reason, can't. He's a tall, rail-thin Chinese man who wears glasses and has that perpetual apprehensive hunch that nervous teachers often get. He has a thick accent, which by itself doesn't mean anything---for example, my Linguistics TA has a thick accent and is incredibly intelligent, passionate about her subject, and (most importantly) eloquent. Coupled with hesitance and a tendency to stop for too-long periods of time to check if we're following him, it's not so great. Basically we went over one part of a semi-complex problem in 40 minutes. I had about three others I had questions on, which it would have been nice to go over. Oh well. Hopefully as the quarter goes on he'll get more confident, because I'm sure he knows his subject well, and he seems very nice, albeit shy. I'm rooting for him to get better! (But I'm too cynical to think he actually will. Sigh.)

I just noticed my Finnish textbook has seagulls on it . . . what? Are seagulls like . . . the national bird of Finland, or that just random? Okay, I just checked wikipedia, and no, Finland and seagulls are not their national bird. There IS, however, a Finnish band called "Damn Seagulls".

Oh, Finland. Your vowels vex me, but you're stealing my heart.