Light Up My World

Here's for cryptic puzzles:

I recently, with the help of several staunch members of the Confederate, realized that to follow in the footsteps of a blue-coat Yankee who has but all the reasonings of a chicken would not only be extremely foolish, but no longer my intent as well, and therefore I return to Fairhill under the lures of the harp.

Lest you think it is some complicated play on words that has a really fascinating answer, I'll reassure you that: a) it just uses rather obscure references, and b) the answer is related to me, and can be summarized in perhaps one sentence, but expandable at will.

Anyway, today I am beginning to think that I am attracted to morbid things. How else should I explain my tendency for spotting dead (albeit cute had they been alive) critters on the ground? This morning I found a dead, squashed baby bird as I was walking to my bus stop. Then, in the afternoon, as I was coming home from picking up the mail, I saw a dead mouse.

Today, Nyx and I also made esters (they're fats with a COOC component) out of organic acids and alcohols. Esters are supposed to (for the most part) smell good, because they're the stuff that gives fruits and flowers their nice smell, but the stuff they're made out of are supposed to (for the most part) smell awful. Like rotten cheese and smelly socks all blended into one and left on the counter-top under the sun for a week awful.

We succeeded in making esters that smelled like gasoline-laced Jolly Ranchers, nail polish removers, and wintergreen. We also made one that had a white precipitate and stuck to the bottom of the test tube, and we had to use concentrated sulfuric acid to get it out, and because we had water in the tube already, the solution bubbled and spluttered out of the tube.

All in all, not too bad. At least we made one thing that smelled nice (the wintergreen).

Also, another not-so cryptic puzzle:

I'm such a coward, because I'm running away from my problems right now. But I don't know any other way to deal with it, even if this will hurt more than it will heal. Ugh. I thought it was complicated enough already. Why does it have to be even worse than it was before?

I can't wait for summer to start. Now. Wait, no. I can't wait for master schedules to come out, now, and then for arena to be here, and for all of my classes to be perfect (or as perfect as they can be) and everyone else's classes to be perfect (kind of impossible, I know), and then summer to start.

These last few days will be dreadful. Oh, and, when will US portfolios start? I'm beginning to think it's going to be a last-minute cram, and if it is so, then I'll most likely be too busy for my liking.