Down The River Valley

It seems so long ago. The other day I painted Khajiit's nails a gorgeous sonic bloom color, although I have no idea what a sonic bloom is (I think it's a type of flower). We brought my rice cooker to the office, along with some canned food, and at the meeting Khajiit pointed to the rice cooker.

"Don't do that," our chair said. "Your nails, when you wave your hands. It's so distracting."

Something about sexism came to mind, sexism against men in this case but also against women, because who is to say nail polish (or anything "feminine") has to be for women? At the very least it is stifling, if not borderline deriding the practice not worthy for men. But I am not as brave in a group as I am alone, so it went unsaid.

Later, Sarah brought her bag of nail products. She plopped down in front of a computer and looked up rental cars. We sat around as she made the calls.

"What's the minimum age for car rentals? —Oh, okay. Yeah, no problem. Thanks. Good bye."

Khajiit started looking up buses. His dad had called earlier. We could have five in our party. There are talks about seeing musicals—"The Book of Mormon," for Sarah, who is Mormon—and buying shoes—Veronica is a shoe addict. We considered contacting the guy behind the sketchy van that left for the city every week.

It is so surreal. Only two weeks ago, I was in another office three doors down listening to a Veronica I barely knew cry about her relationship problems. The next day, Sarah confessed that she was really stressed out because of school troubles. As Khajiit puts it, "We're all failures." That was the day I slept through most of my classes. Somewhere amongst the snarky, angry jabs at ex-boyfriends, we decided to go to Khajiit's house over spring break.

We are a group of teenagers, Veronica included. I once remarked that Khajiit, in the car, suddenly possessed teenage qualities he lacked out of the car. On the streets, or in a room, or when we are sipping lattes at the coffee shop across the road, he is either a middle-schooler or an adult. But in the car, he is a teenager. This impromptu decision on all of our parts make us all reckless to some degree. When I signed up for college I did not think I would be signing up for this.

It's an exhilarating sort of freedom, one that has me up at three in the morning in a sketchy corner of the city where people have been known to be stabbed, drinking white hot chocolate from a mug and eating ranch-flavored potato chips. The buses at Islandtown run all night, one every hour or so, in a grid-like pattern. Khajiit and I took one that snaked through the northern part of the city. We sat in the back seat, munching on rainbow rice krispies and drinking iced lemon tea, and joked about staying at seedy motels because we were so tired.

We are always tired these days, sleep-deprived, because I have my games and Khajiit has his games (to program). Late at night we do crazy things, like walk in sub-freezing temperatures just so we can sleep on a futon instead of a single bed, or go to the coffee shop we always frequent late at night, so often that the night shift cashier greets us with, "Hey, it's you guys again."

The next day is sometimes full of regret. Why did we stay up so late? Why did we go to the apartment half an hour away from campus, when we had another one five minutes away? Khajiit regretted his bright red nails and took them off with acetone, although he painted them again in dark blue. A more "manly" color, he claimed. Some guy we didn't know with access to the office said, "Nice nails."

Interviews, Take One

It went well, suffice to say. I wish to say no more on the topic anyway.

Instead I will talk about my day, prior to 3pm. In multi this morning, Tea brought some problems from the previous Math Prize contest (oh, I don't think I've mentioned this before, but this Saturday Tea and I are going to participate in this really neat-sounding contest—that is, if we don't get lost on the subway first). The ones that Tea had not already solved were hard. I should probably do some practice problems, but I need to squeeze in the time first.

Some time later (this time warp features a momentum physics lab, a really productive bio period, and a lunch consisting of pumpkin pie and pad thai), I was stuck in French, encore. I tried to focus, really, but it was just not going in. But I did catch part of the ending to "La Belle et le Bête," before the really dramatic part was cut off by the bell. Such is life.

I also spilled silver nail polish on my quarter-grades-release-form. Apparently that means I should apply to "make-up school," if there even is such a school. I think it would just be a class under some broad major such as theater production or something (note my ambiguity: I know nothing about this subject at all). I have to admit, Clay does not make the best of jokes, although it's cute in its own way.

On the bus ride home, a group of guys were trying to get this guy who I shall now arbitrarily name Kirk (the go-to name for guys I will never again mention) to do something with a poster. Their exact words involved "freshman" and "gift," and Kirk was (I think quite rightfully) suspicious.

The guys said everything was fine, and Kirk replied, "No way. I can sense a prank when I see one, and that's definitely a prank."

So the guys unwrapped the poster, and apparently it was perfectly fine (I didn't see, I sat in front of them).

Still. Doesn't this just scream, "Hey, there's something wrong here!"

I really should learn how to drive soon, and escape all of this craziness.

Math Team Isn't Math Team Without...

I'll try to recount the math team adventures as well as I can, but it is probably going to be a very difficult task. Especially the more, uh, interesting parts, for lack of a better word.

Anyway, Friday (the day of the New England math meet) was also our school's designated Day of Silence as well, so early Friday morning I met with my fellow DoS'ers outside the auditorium, enjoying our last few minutes of "talking time" before the actual "silence time" started.

Of course, our dismissal was after the first period, so when I came down to the main foyer, where Tea, Argon, Micro, Tybalt, and Bryant (who was in chem with me prior) were already there, I was still silent. We waited a while, and then Irving showed up. So now we were just missing Mario, which was sort of typical. Tea said that she did not see him during gym earlier, which launched speculations of whether we should find someone else to substitute him.

"Mario is probably going to show up right after someone else comes down," Tea said.

Irving went outside to call Mario, and returned with a quoted, "The king is coming." Well, now we were sure that Mario was coming and not stranded at some isolated Starbucks (although if only one of them was stuck, the others would still be able to come if they really wanted).

After another five or ten minutes of holding up three other schools (who were waiting in the bus outside), Mario arrived, and so we all filed out and onto the bus. Tea and I sat together, with Tybalt and Bryant to our left and Mario and Irving behind us. Remember, I was still silent at this time, and Tea, bored with only talking to herself, tried to make me talk. Finally, I drew a "nine" with my finger.

"What is that? A 'P'?" Tea asked. I shook my head and tried again. Tea imitated my motion and then said, "Nine? You're going to talk at nine?" To which I nodded.

"What time is it now?"

After asking Mario, we ascertained that we had twenty minutes to go. I spent those twenty minutes trying to explain a geometry question to Tybalt in pantomime, but it was not very helpful. After what was probably one of the longest twenty minutes of my life (I discovered later that those twenty-minute sections on the SATs are longer), it was finally nine.

Tea and I spent the rest of the bus ride playing word and alphabet games. Well, all the way to Providence anyway. We had trouble finding any sign that had the letter "J," "Q," and "Z," but I got lucky at the very end and found a sign ("Regency Plaza") that had both "Y" and "Z." Of course, Tea had finished long ago, but I had been stuck on the "Q," so I took much, much longer.

We came to a stop at Providence Place for lunch, but the first store we ever went into was the Apple store. There, near the door, were a whole table of iPads. Everyone immediately started playing on the fancy gadgets. Tea and I first played with the air hockey app, then the piano app, then this maze app with a small, silver ball that reminded me of Silversphere. After a while, we decided that food was more important, so we went upstairs (following Irving and everyone else, who seemed to know the way) to the food court.

Here was probably the most difficult part of the entire day: deciding what to eat.

I suggested using a random probability simulator, but then we saw the swivel chairs at this fast food place whose name I have conveniently forgotten, so we got food there instead. We sat on the swivel chair for a while, before one of the people behind the counter said, "The bar's only for full service," and promptly asked us to leave. Whatever "full-service food" meant aside, since we were out-casted by the Mario/Irving/Tybalt/Bryant group anyway, we went and found more high chairs and sat there instead while we ingested what had to be the fattiest food we'd ever eaten in days (if not weeks, but I think weeks is too long for me).

Then we went downstairs to the bookstore, where I bought a (pink, shiny) recorder. The line took a long time, so by the time we got out, everyone else was already in the bus, waiting for us. After we got on the bus, it took off, and then stuff happened here but I should be studying/coming up with the Santiago part of the trip in Chile so I'll stop here for now. I'm thinking of just cutting out everything that happened during the meet (since it wasn't nearly as fascinating) and just jump right to the bus ride back, but we'll see.