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."

Overloaded

I knew, going into this semester, that taking six classes was going to be a hefty amount of work. That, along with my commitments to all of my other activities, should have taken up most of my time. If I were being completely logical with my time-budgeting and I adhered to the schedule, I probably wouldn't have time to write here right now.

But I'm here right now, while my Java code runs through its cycle comparing 1,000,000-sized lists, so technically I am doing work. What I really should be doing is finish my base-conversion assignment, or get started on my integrate-acceleration-into-velocity program, or really a thousand other things than this.

At least I'm getting some work done, which is more than what Khajiit can say, because he is currently sitting in an armchair with his headphones on reading My Little Pony fanfiction. A fanfiction that uses underlines for emphasis, rather than italics.

My dad said I should be involved in only one extracurricular activity, or at most two. It makes a lot of sense, but I'm just getting to the good parts of programming for the robot (although it is basically a netbook on a fancy frame so it's not that ultra-fancy), and I got approved for my funding application for the environmental documentary that we'll now be screening in March, so I'll definitely have to work more on that, and I've signed up for at least three hours' worth of office hours commitment to the computer club, plus the new environmental committee that I am half-heading which will definitely be exciting.

How could I possibly choose?

So I am going into this semester with so much work, already, and I have been barely maintaining above that 3.7 I needed for my scholarship (thanks to linear algebra), and there will be so much more to do. But I am postponing all of that because I have just been tempted with at least $100 worth of Lego products, and so I will instead go to New York this weekend (among other things, likely possibly visiting Paperclip, although that is rather tenuous right now).

Also, I have been drinking so much Nestea and lattes. I need to find new sugary drinks to replace them before I grow tired of them and run out of suitable water-replacements.

"You think this is cold? This is nothing!"

I had been pretty hopeful, these past few months, that this winter was going to be different. That there would be none of those bone-chilling, wind-takes-your-breath-away-just-so-you-lose-more-body-heat days. The day I got back from Texas, everything was fine. There was snow on the ground, yes, and it was a bit chilly, but it was also dark and it wasn't anything I hadn't experienced before.

The next morning, I decided to go out shopping for groceries, and the moment I step out of the house I think, "Oh. Fuck. Cold."

Ever since then I haven't gone outside. I lugged a ton of groceries back and I am living off of frozen dinners, eggs, bacon, cheese, and almond milk until I have to go out again, and if things go as planned that won't be until Saturday morning. Which, according to the weather forecast, will be snowing.

Why did I ever choose to live in this city again?

In happier news I have finally rolled out of bed today (I even cooked!), and I will finally get around to making the Christmas present for Khajiit that I'd been saying I would for the past two weeks or so. If he didn't read this blog I would also probably say what it is, but since he does I'll just save it for later.

I also got my calendar fixed up, my bills paid, and my expenses recorded. So accomplished.

Now about my room.