The First More-Than-Five-Hours Of Consecutive Sleep In A Long Long While

Also the first very long title in a long long while. I used to do this a lot and then title habits changed. Did anyone notice the comma streak I had a while back? Things like that happen here. I need to blog more.

Anyway, I thought I wouldn't have wifi here, because I have always been used to cheap hotels, but this one is actually really nice. My dad and I got a two-bed room, which also happened to be a two-bedroom suite, with televisions and phones in each room (and the living room), a full-sized kitchen, and two bathrooms. Two real bathrooms. Now all we need is a decent view.

But as I was saying, wifi, which means: a) I can finally go on Pandora again, and b) I can now chat with Khajiit all day long (also his name makes me miss Skyrim).

Yesterday's plane rides were pretty bumpy, or so I heard from the captain, but I fell asleep for most of it. On the first one, I woke up when the attendant came with drinks, asked for a cup of water, drank some, and fell right back to sleep. Trying to stay awake during the connection time was really, really hard. Good thing I was also really hungry, and in my 6am sleepiness I forgot to bring any US money.

But! I got off the airport, got picked up by my dad (after a while of him calling me trying to figure out where I was), and then he sent me off to a sushi buffet place while he went back to make conference calls to his workplace back in China. I got to eat a creme brulee for the first time!

Not much else happened though. I talked to Khajiit more, and today too, and now I'll be going out, as my dad says, to "see places," which upon further probing is going to be "Best Buy and maybe Walmart."

Shopping time!

Some Old Things In Drafts

"I know there's something in the wake of your smile, I get a notion from the look in your eyes, yeah."—Listen to Your Heart, Roxette


Molly Lambert has an interesting way of writing. She starts out with something ordinary, like telephone lines against a sunset, and expands it into something seemingly unrelated, like Hamlet, and then wraps it up with a post title and a link title that are completely different. And the pictures too. They make every post something special, something worth reading (it helps too that the pictures break up the dense text).

I wanted to clear out my drafts because the number of total posts was misleading (some of them will probably never, ever see the light of day) and also because I reread this the other day and remembered Molly. She is something special. She has since left "This Recording," but she was the reason I read through all of those wordy posts even though I knew I had assignments of my own due the next day.

There are days I wish I could write like her. But that takes skill. That takes discipline, tremendous amounts of it. And with my brain addled with lack of sleep and the instantaneous skimming I have acquired by reading through my collection of food blogs, I don't have that quite yet.

It is the difference between the good writers and the great writers, although I am not either yet, and perhaps at this rate never will be.

I still remember this particular post. Telephone lines breaking up the sky. Some sort of strange irony that they are not at odds but instead harmonious. I stared at two pigeons today in the middle of campus, watched them squeeze under the wrought-iron fence, their heads bobbing. I did not know pigeons bobbed their heads before "Pooch Café." Even though I must have seen a hundred pigeons before, if not more.

What else have I never known?

Yuma asked me today if I had read Tea's latest blog post, and of course I have. I am subscribed to her in my RSS feed, I cannot escape it. He said it reminded him of me. What were his exact words? Something about being angsty, and it not being the point that I refuted him with the concrete fact that I was not hurt.

But he is more often right than I am. Yesterday a boy in my English class (for engineers) walked with me to my next classroom, and told me he was going to go to the engineering library. He had taken the long way by walking with me, but he said the shortcut was closed. Yuma said he was "hitting on me," but he has been saying that about almost every boy I have talked with. Is he really right, or is he being insecure?

We are reading The Tale of Despereaux right now. Or rather, Yuma is reading it to me, chapter by chapter, on nights when we can both fulfill our promises. We are on the chapter where Despereaux's mother says, "Adieu." It is a sad chapter. There are more sad chapters following it.

I told him, "When we get to the happily ever after we will be able to live happily ever after as well."

His answer was, "We'll see." It is his answer for the future, for our future. He is living it day by day, that is his way of coping. I am living it by focusing on the end. That is my way of coping.

I told Nyx today that I might be visiting Beavertown during my Thanksgiving, and that if I do I would like to see her before I go back. She asked, "Are you going to see Yuma?"

And then said, "I heard you guys broke it off."

Have we?

Yuma introduced me last night to his going-to-forbidden-places-and-physics buddy as "my ex." He signed off one of his chats to me today as "my lovely." Maybe this is his double life, his way of separating what he feels and what he wants to feel. But I am assuming now. I am taking a literary book off the shelf and remarking on its symbolism without going inside the head of the author.

When he read my blog the other night Yuma said, "I always get nervous when you write about me. I don't know what you are going to say."

Maybe that is part of the problem. There is a part of me I do not speak of, a part I only write of. No matter how much we talk and how much he asks me, he will never know my true impression of him. Sometimes I do not know either. The words come out and they are just right, they hint at something I otherwise would never have guessed. Or they are not right, and I erase them, and try again and again.

One of my other drafts was about an airport terminal. Maybe I will post it some day when I have the chance. It is silly now, because I have fulfilled my flying dream, I have seen the vast blue sky at an altitude above the meanest rain cloud.

Here is an excerpt of it, of one of the very last paragraphs I wrote before I got distracted by something else:


I have not been imagining things for a very long time now. It is because of content—when I am happy, I tend not to want to escape through my mind. At least I thought I was happy. In many ways, I am. I love being able to lean back and knowing that someone will catch me before I fall. I love skipping down the halls and not being alone. I have had one too many solitary hopscotch games.


But there is a part of me that is the loner in the rain, the one who is perfectly happy to be cold and drenched and with no one else to reach out with a hand. The one who can watch snow drift for hours and be at peace, because there is not a soul to take this away. Not a soul to break the news of reality.

It is silly to mention this now. Yuma says there are boys here who will make me happy. Who I can cuddle with and not feel lonely. I always stop listening before he goes on.

Tea said I should only chase after him if I am absolutely, 100% dedicated. And I see why now. It is extremely frustrating to reach out every time and be rebuffed, to want to be upset but knowing it would only weaken my stance. On the bright side I will probably be much better at sales pitches by the end of this.

I am all out of milk now, although not yet out of cereal. I was going to buy milk this morning, or maybe Tuesday morning, but when you go to bed in the not-so-early morning you wake up in the almost-not-morning morning. And other things happen. Like today I went to a roundtable discussion with several other engineers from other years and with some company reps from this oil and gas company, and they have all been mentioning internships and Jessica and I are left with wondering what we should do.

"My GPA will be so good this semester," Jessica said. "I am going to get straight As because the classes are so easy."

I am going to get straight As too, or at least I have to, or else I will not have the 3.7 GPA I need to keep my scholarship. It is a scary proposition, but I have heard it is do-able. At least for this semester, which means I will at least have the money for next semester, and maybe I can live it out that way, or maybe I can just learn to the best I can and not worry about grades, because those things come naturally after learning.

And lots and lots of work. Which means lots and lots of time.

Yuma has repeatedly mentioned that I should just do the things I want to do and not worry about conforming to his schedule. But I cannot do that. Because if he is unwilling to compromise then the only way I will get to talk with him is by compromising myself. It is silly, it is hard, and it is taking its toll on my preferred bedtime.

I suppose that is inevitable.

On the Hill

There must have been a few months since I've last blogged.

I don't remember the exact date, although if I were less lazy I could search it up right now. I do remember why though. I stopped blogging because it just didn't feel right anymore, because I spilled my heart into this blog and suddenly there were things I could not say anymore because I could not let Yuma, who read my blog religiously, see those thoughts.

That is the problem with making your blog known to people you know personally. I had thought of starting other blogs on other sites, but they were too much of a hassle, too difficult to remember and too annoying to upkeep. College applications were coming up, papers to write, things to do with my life, and I didn't really need a blog, did I? Lots of people live their lives perfectly fine without one.

I read a few of Tea's last posts and they were nice. I miss the days when we all blogged like that. Julie doesn't blog anymore either. Neither does Gretchen.

Maybe I just miss those days in general.

I don't know if anyone I know will actually read this anymore. That's alright with me. Actually, it's probably better. I am writing this in hopes that Yuma will never read it, not that this will hurt him in particular, not anymore. But I would rather gain some last control over what I think and who I tell that to.

. . .

Yuma said he would be back late, maybe two or three in the morning. I told him I would wait for him. It always frightens me when I wait for someone, because I don't know if they will actually show up or not. I don't think I have ever admitted it on this blog (although I may have, I don't remember now), but I am a periodically insecure person. Yuma would attest to that. I alternate between believe I can do anything and have everyone believe me, and simply pondering over why anyone would care to even look my way.

Lately I've been thinking that I have never deserved Yuma's love. He did love me absolutely, maybe not unconditionally, but as close as you can without sacrificing yourself unreasonably. I never figured out why. Was it the way I looked? (He does have a preference for Asian girls.) Was it my intelligence, at least in terms of math and science? Was it because I talked with him a lot?

What was it exactly?

I remember telling Tea, a few days before or after Yuma first kissed me, that I did not know if I should really pursue this relationship.

Tea said, "Whatever you do, don't go into a relationship then break up and tell him, 'I've never loved you in the first place.' That hurts a lot."

I wasn't ready back then. Ten months and a world of turmoil later, I know how unprepared I was for everything that was about to happen.

And I am losing him now. I am losing Yuma, and I am afraid again. I am afraid of promising him that I will wait for him for the net four years, even though that is the romantic thing to do, because I am afraid that even if I wait these years I will still lose him.

This time, he is the one who says, "I don't love you," and he has every right to say that. I don't even have the consolation of thinking, "Oh, he's just an idiot who's making a big mistake and I'll show him."

Because I am that idiot. I made the mistake.

I don't know how this will turn out. I want to have him back again, I want to live through all those dreams we  said we would share together. I want things back to what they were once again, and I keep on thinking, "I never thought I would want to go back to my high school days again."

Because high school was hell for our relationship, but this, this is even worse.

. . .

On a more cheerful note, Fish Wings, which is what I am calling my college now, has been fine for me. I am taking five classes this year, one of which is only 1.5 hours a week and so is just half a class. I have made friends, both in my dorm and outside, and I have people to hang out with every day if I so chose.

I have been spending a lot of time in the architecture studio, because both Denise and Sam, two of my closer friends here, are in architecture. They have a very busy schedule, not just classes but actual studio work, so I drop by the studio when I'm free and just work there.

Kitty has also promised me that we would go shopping together once a week, although I might have to push off that until later because I still have lots of food in the fridge and no inclination to cook anything. Maybe I should buy more microwavable things though, to tide me over a few more nights.

I will probably be spending more time with Peter too, if he keeps on talking with me. I have already told Yuma and Tea and Reese and everyone I could possibly find who might be interested my freaky connection with Peter (we came from the same places), and considering I'll be joining Fish Wings' FSAE team, which he is also on, I'll probably be seeing him a lot and he'll be talking with me a lot.

And there are other people, like Jessica, who I am going to see a lot because she is in three of my classes. We will be working on our math history homework next Tuesday, and hopefully be as adept at figuring out problems as the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians were. And there is Ng, whose name I absolutely cannot say, and who is, in part, the reason for all of this. I do not know what to call him now.

 . . .

Yuma is back now. He is acting like he is fine now, that he wasn't ever mad at me because of what I've done. I don't know if I should believe him—and I desperately do, I really want to believe all of this is real. But I don't have much evidence to place my hopes on. I did sort of blackmail him, using his words, by using my health. I suppose it is some evidence for his still caring about me, but love and forgiveness are very different things from caring, and although I really hope this is real and I do have all three of them now, I don't know.

I don't know if this is just his way of placating me. If he is actually thinking, "Why do I have to put up with this pathetic, crazy, useless girl?"

I have fallen a long way from grace. But I do know the only way to make this even remotely true is to believe in it. I am not worthy, I know that. But I'll believe that by some miracle, I will find my wings again.

Why You Should Own A Pet Gerbil, Now

DISCLAIMER: The following is not meant to be taken seriously. The author and her friends do not wish harm upon any animal. Mosquitoes and flies aside.

Anyway.

Zephy and I were on the bus today, and we passed by the dog park. I pointed out that a lot of people were walking dogs, and then I asked Zephy, "If you had a dog would you walk it in the park?"

"Depends on what kind of dog," she said.

"I don't know—a long-haired dog, say."

"Are they hypoallergenic?"

At which point I remembered that I had forgotten that Zephy was allergic to cat and dog fur. So I said, "Probably not a long-haired dog then. What about chihuahuas?"

"My cousin has a chihuahua," she said. "It's named after my other cousin, so it's really confusing when we call its name. But I don't want a chihuahua."

"Hmm. What about—what else are you allergic to?"

"Cats, dogs, and dust. That's what the allergy report said."

"So you're not allergic to gerbils?"

"No, I'm not."

"So you could get a pet gerbil and walk it in the park! In one of those wheel things, except instead of staying still it would roll forward."

"You mean like a sphere?"

"Yeah! Except a wheel would be better, if it was wide enough so it wouldn't tip over. Because you could tie a leash to the side and—uh—walk it. But you probably couldn't really walk it since well—okay, maybe you could. You could pull on the string and then the wheel would roll and uh, the gerbil would just kind of tumble inside."

I guess this is why people "walk" their gerbils in stationary wheels.

. . .

Zephy told me that three people made AIME this year, including me, Tybalt, and some other person whose name she did not hear. But the cutoff score is 93, so maybe that last person was Sonny? It would be a bit annoying if he was the one, since he half-guessed his way there, but it's not like there's a prize for qualifying for AIME, so if he likes doing more math problems then good for him.

But I guess this means I should do more math problems. Instead of reading RSS every night. Although I am very up-to-date on various things such as the pseudo-flooding in Western Ohio, the near-Oscar-sweep for The King's Speech, and the various new functions of Google Docs.

You can't win it all, I guess. Not even golden statuettes that cost $150 each to produce.

. . .

I just realized today that Mr. Wollen's website says "First page you see" when you click his name from the school site.

He also has "First day of Spring!!!" on his March calendar.

I can't wait for spring to start, and for this snow to end. But I suppose I should get used to it, because I have now received both letters of acceptance and scholarship from McGill, and that is most likely where I will be going. So snow, hurrah! Good thing I'll soon be legal to drink, right? Don't they say cider's the best way to warm up on a cold winter night?

Or maybe that was hot chocolate. I like those better anyway.

I also need to choose whether I want to major in biomath or EEE. Yes, those are actual majors. I'm thinking that I'd rather major in biomath, since if McGill hadn't offered it I would most likely have gone for a biology or math major with the other as a minor. But EEE! If I minored in English (no way, but if I were to) it'd abbreviate to EEEE! And if I picked up economics as another minor, EEEEE!

Okay. That is not a good reason.

The real reason is that engineering is a rather fast-changing field, and it's something that generally does not require being in one place for a long time, and that's tempting. Dealing with high-tech is tempting too. As well as this whole "applied" business, because after all applied math goes hand in hand with engineering.

So I will ruminate for a couple of months and decide later.

Oh, Commenters

First of all, the Universal Online Spellcheck (whatever spellcheck Firefox and Chrome both use) does not accept "commenters" as a word, although "commenter" is a word. Seriously? What do they think the plural of "commenter" is?

Anyway, I was writing "commenters" because I was reading today's DWT email-post, and someone had asked the difference between "commenter" and "commentator," and one of the examples of a sentence using "commenter" (or "commentor," actually) is "The 6 Types of Commentors—Do You Know Them? I searched the title in Google, and I also found "10 Types of Blog Comments" which is similar.

And of course, I read the comments, and Mark Shea recommended Flame Warriors, which I will now recommend to you. It is a pretty accurate depiction of the many types of people in the Vast World of Forums.

But things about me. Because evidently I have an absolute advantage (and possibly a comparative advantage too) at talking about things about me, since no one else can really do that. I've pretty psyched for the first econ test, not because I know I'll do well (I am hoping that though), but because econ is also amazingly fun and I love it. I am not so much looking forward to the "12 Golden Labs of AP Bio," because one of these labs will end up as an essay question on the AP test, and I would rather not have to worry about AP tests this early.

(We played with sulfamic acid today though! I had no idea sulfamic acid—molecular formula: H3NSO3—even existed before now, but according to Wikipedia it's when you replace an -OH group on sulfuric acid with -NH2, and that is pretty cool.)

There was also another Bryant-lapse in physics today (I am calling all those times when Bryant misses something "Bryant-lapses"). They are becoming rather common in physics, and they're not even tricky questions. He's still well-above coherent in multi (which reminds me, what was our multi homework, if any? was it the figuring out the second derivative with respect to t question?), so it's probably just in physics.

Weird.

On a side note, we're getting our first physics test back on Friday! I can't wait to see who's going to get the first yellow pencil. And if it's not Bryant, then I'll get to see who else I need to keep tabs on as a "potential pencil competitor." Yay!

A New Beginning

I think this was the title to one of my blog posts. Not this one, of course, but one of my WordPress blogs, or something similar, back when I was still a careless blogger and my blogs had fewer than four posts in total.

So. First day of school. Semantics, really (as compared to syntax, which requires more careful thought, but I think comparing school to linguistic terms would probably draw plenty of blank eyes). A lot of "this is what we're going to teach you," and a lot more of "this is what we expect from you." I have four syllabi (which is not a word, according to Blogger spellcheck) already, all pretty much useless because I will never, ever refer to them, ever.

And even if I did, I would do so online, not flip through several sheets of paper. But that is another story.

My French class went well (as well as it can go when I was only there for the last 15 minutes), and so did physics, which is right next door to my French classroom. I saw Dino as I went in, and he said, "Ginny," to which I responded, "Bonjour," because I was still in a French mindset (plus I was kind of shocked he was talking to me—he usually doesn't do that unless necessary). Nyx is across the hall from me (during French, that is), and so we both have very short distances to travel when going to physics, but alas that won't happen anymore because periods 1 and 7 have switched. Pity. (At least we can still walk together from multi on Thursdays.)

All of my other classes were also pretty good as well. Lots of people I know for most of my classes (I don't know about biology or middle east yet), and Yuma is in my free for the entire year! So I guess even with the not-so-good arena time, all of my classes are splendid, and I am so excited about the rest of the year. Especially because I don't have lab lunches anymore. I love regular lunches.

On the other spectrum (the one oft talked about and most dreaded), I talked with Mrs. MacDonald today, and we'll have to be talking soon about teacher recs. That means I have to hunt down Mrs. Tallchief as well, unless I want to ask someone else (I'm still not sure yet). Fun. Not really.

Well, at least I finished most of my homework (I still have to read and annotate the Aciman article for English—or at least I think it's that article, I didn't really hear Mr. Littney that clearly), and all my binders are (so far) organized, which is a good start.

I'll hope for the best.