crisis time

well, it's just under 60F and i'm being a baby about it. i'm making my "cold" face and wearing my fancy coat. yes, it coat has a real fur collar. please don't hate me (nicole). i used to have a huge slew of reasons i used to justify wearing it, but the truth is 1. i bought it at a thrift store so in no way supported the fur industry by buying it 2. it makes me feel like batman's mom, or maybe margot tenenbaum 3. it's very soft.

clearly, however, gail and zeppelin are doing just fine.

hey sarah!

i have for sure been obsessed with over 70% of these videos, which i'm pretty sure you can attest to.

i might be homesick . . . ?

or maybe just really thirsty. sometimes i can't tell.

i'm just not sure what i would be homesick for. portland, clearly, but then also san francisco, and my mom, and a little bit for jake and usually some for my grandparents on the cape, but i'm here now so why do i still feel so thirsty?

i guess when i'm alone in the house i talk to myself. it started as talking to the cat, but then i was definitely just out on the porch singing a little ditty and laughing at something i said. which is funny, because i don't think i talk that much when anyone else is home.

the casual betrayal of gasson 105

so yesterday was pretty much a red letter day. i didn't have class, but i got up early to go out for crepes with my roommate, which pretty much turned into a major gossip sesh. but, that means i got it out of my system early and didn't spend a bunch of time whispering frantically in the library, which is where i went next. after a couple hours of highlighting and pretending to be surprised by things to alleviate the grueling boredom, i hit up my first set of office hours and met with my irish fiction professor. fantastic. he is an amazing man, and i doubt you'll find any of his other students saying differently. he was interested in my other classes, how i'm adjusting, my thoughts about authors not even on the syllabus - incredible. i offered to babysit for his first grader, obviously. then outside for a little reading in the 80F weather (still just as boring), and then more office hours, this time with my advanced research professor. there were people lined up in the hallway to talk to him, but he still took the time to talk to me about what i'd done between graduation and coming to bc, ask to see a copy of the lit mag i interned for, and tell me that although i was like "a deer in the headlights" (exact same words i used - scroll down and see if they're not) during my presentation, he was giving me an a.

rad.

then i went to a lecture/reading by thomas hayden, which was pretty good. afterwards, i bought his book and got it signed for my grandparents, who i think will be pretty into it even though it encourages a lot of political activity and, although they consistently volunteer large chunks of their time to various causes, i don't think they're really into rallies and stuff. after i asked him to sign it, he sat there and talked to a friend and i for about twenty minutes, which included an invitation to dinner. when we told him we had to get back to the library, he clapped us on the backs, and the guy in charge of food forced us to take an entire tray of cookies. well, not "forced," but he did say he was going to throw them out, and while i didn't want to eat ALL of them, that made me upset.

after that i spent a little more productive time in the library, and walked home. i should probably do that more often, considering it won't be this nice out for too long (in the 90's tomorrow, expect to hear about that), and it makes me feel like a million bucks, especially if there's no one around and i can do air guitar.

so, yesterday was a pretty awesome follow-up to a pretty good weekend. i had a great time at carolann's party - sparks, beers, mocking, then air guitar - and a relatively productive saturday - comic books, some loitering in a pet shop but a decision to ultimately not buy anything, although there was a peach-colored parakeet that i fell in love with, and her little friend with a mop top, but whatever, trader joe's and a trip to my aunt's for a home-cooked meal and some laundry. all in all, pretty good. and today i'm spending in an office with several administrative assistants, some of whom are kind, some of whom are hilarious, and at least one of which is a vindictive b*tch. so, there you go.

new haircut!

i got it at liquid, which is as close to bishop's as i'm going to get. at only $5 more, it's a pretty good deal. i'm way into it, although you should know that it won't always look like this. by the time i wake up tomorrow i'll look like a homeless person again, i'm pretty sure. also, i'm all red in the face because i just finished a 15 minute stint of jumping on my bed and listening to missy elliot and making lewd gestures at the cat. also, i'm pretty excited because i just figured out a way to wear my spiderman tshirt to a party and not look like a gamer (under a sweater).

so now i'm just waiting for friends and roommates to get their acts together to head to carolann's party. if anything exciting happens, you'll be the first to know! except for me, the other people involved, and anyone i see between now and tomorrow.

living a life of the mind: the deets

so many incredible things have happened. how can i explain them to you on the internet in enough detail for you to be able to relive them in your head, and still get to bed pretty soon?

the reason i haven't "blogged" (comfortable enough to use it as a verb, not comfortable enough to do so without quotation marks) too much lately is because i had a presentation in advanced research, for one of the most terrifying professors i've ever encountered, yesterday evening. first of all, it went ok. the content was, i feel, exactly what it should have been, but when i wrote it out i imagined myself speaking it as my usual gregarious self, and when i got up in front of the class i was a deer in the headlights. my hands shook, my voice cracked; i'm used to giving presentations at a school where you can come to class naked if you want to (no one did, but you could have), and this professor expects a level of professionalism that i'm not sure i'm capable of. so, it went ok.

after class, i went up to talk to him about office hours stuff while my classmates gathered in a corner to discuss previous arrangements to go out for a beer. i saw this happening, and once our negotiations were over, the following conversation actually occurred, like, in reality:
me: "so . . . these guys are all going out for a beer right now, but they're too shy to ask you. would you like to come?"
najarian: "haha, are you sure it wouldn't cramp your style?"
me: "haha, no, of course not. we'd be honored."
najarian: "well then sure. you're the brave one - jodie foster would play you in the movie."
me, thinking about how incredible it would be if someone made a movie about our advanced research class: "well, i'd actually prefer wynona ryder. she needs a job."
najarian: "haha, you're right. how generous."

then, i chased down our classmates to ask where we were going, and he said he would meet us there. i was the hero of the bc shuttle. we couldn't go to the bar they'd chosen, because someone had forgotten their id, so instead we went to applebee's (i know, right?!) and the kids at my table and i proceeded to make him laugh so hard he spit out his beer, tell a bunch of stories which we wisely giggled at and then absorbed for later sucking-up references, and let us pay for his beer. incredible.

also yesterday i got a position as a writing tutor, which, in addition to supplementing my measly income as an administrative assistant to the dean of arts and sciences (more on those incredible office politics later), is great experience and will look awesome when i apply for the teaching fellowships over which everyone in my class is in secret competition. except for me, james, and carolann (look them up on facebook if you haven't already), because we are bff's and i would sacrifice my chance at the goblet of fire to help them if they twisted their ankles. except james totally doesn't need it because he has a scholarship. but some dude yelled out his car window that he "love[s] lesbos, totally love[s] them" at me and carolann today, so clearly i would do anything to help her if her ankle was twisted, including vulgar hand gestures at a dude. also, i'm not going back to apple. i don't like working in retail, the commute is an hour and a half, and if i'm away from my post at the library for more than 12 hours i have an existential crisis.

ALSO the landlord painted our apartment today. totally, completely rad - gail (my roommate, also a significant presence on facebook) and i are planning some real, true, girls-trying-stuff-on parties in celebration. yes, they totally happen, even for me.

and instead of coming home and doing reading, i went to the bar with the finnegan's wake reading group after class. let me tell you right now, even if you absolutely aren't attracted to him, there is nothing in the world like being complemented by an italian man.

and, much like the boat cruise, i've been constantly going over the things i'm going to wear, say, and do on the dance floor at carolann's party tomorrow night. i figure, yeah, the boat cruise didn't live up to my imagination, but i am in my element at a house party. anyone dressed up looks too dressed up, and if there's anything i can dress for, it's not dressing up. also, there will be a keg, and some people that i'm interested in yelling witty things at over the music. and i'm getting a haircut tomorrow, and i've promised myself a sparks, and it's like 80F this week as opposed to last week when i seriously considered wearing mittens and thought about nothing but how screwed i was in this completely alien climate. what could go wrong?

well, clearly, plenty, and i will keep you updated on my good and bad decisions, although mostly the way i phrase them will make them sound awesome. i f*cking love you all.

omg j naj + me = bf4e, nbd.

deets ltr. srs, srs, deets.

chainin' up in b-ham

the one talking about "pre-hookup operations" is one of my two new bffs.

living an an old city and hanging out with superstitious people is doing things to me. i myself am pretty superstitious, but also extremely sensitive to the "common sense" of those around me, so usually i can avoid totally freaking out by just engaging in conversation and subtly bringing up something that's terrifying me, which, when the other person laughs it off, becomes mundane. but in the last couple days i've heard real ghost stories told by someone who really believes in them, and when i look around, no one is laughing. i'm starting to see things moving out of the corners of my eyes, and i've caught myself considering the run-and-jump when coming back to bed in the dark. it's actually pretty exciting, like a layer is getting peeled away from either me or reality and the things i've suspected have been there all along, but i've seen all the movies and i'm ready for them.

isn't it weird how when someone has a crush on someone else, the last thing in the world they want is for that person to find out? i mean, secretly, they've got to want that because that's the only way progress is going to get made, but it's also like, if they find out, then you lose. not that i'm going through that right now - i just remember it from high school and how it's pretty much crippling.

bf4e

so, this. clearly. can i join respectfully? probably not. am i going to join, post zero pictures, accept no friend requests, and log on just to read peoples' profiles and listen to the self-produced rap they post? absolutely.

also, this. i really enjoy that he calls courtney love fans a minority. it's . . . there's just so much there. i once in a paper defined satire as a quantifiable distance between the voice of the narrator and the voice of the author, the reader being able to distinguish the author's real message through his or her disgust or discomfort with the assertions of the narrator. with chris crocker it's almost impossible to figure out how wide the gap is, and i am way, way into it.

last night i saw 3:10 to yuma with my new bffs - it was terrific. i'm clearly in love with russell crowe now. i mean, no other outcome was possible. the hardest but also best thing was, my new bffs and i are so smart that when we were walking around boston garden after the movie, there was nothing to explain. every time i brought something up or gave an opinion, they already agreed with me, so we couldn't really talk about the movie because we all already knew everything that the other two knew. also while we were walking around, not one of us was jockeying for position or trying to be in the middle or trying to get next to someone. i know that sounds like maybe the least important detail, but really, it was just so comfortable. then we went and had a few beers at a bar where i had a spiritual connection with the dj (he played gettin jiggy wit it just as i got up to go to the bar and could dance a little. little did he know, that is the feel-good song of the year, every year) and then we went back to my house and told every secret, ever. i know my roommates probably think i had a threesome because we were all up giggling so late, and i'm tempted to fail to disabuse them of that notion, but really, we didn't. if we had had one, would we be able to watch chris crocker for an hour and then go out to breakfast? never, because here's what would have happened if we had: nothing, because it would never happen.

update

the prehistoric bird is actually just a large parrot. there's been a sighting. i'm pretty disappointed, because for a minute there i thought that some sort of time warp was going on and next thing you know i'm riding a triceratops to school. i think that my family could maybe have predicted my vegetarianism because when i went through my dinosaur phase, as every child does, i only identified with the herbivores (as much a a five-year-old can identify with a dinosaur, anyway). triceratops, brontosauri, pteradactyls (if they're not herbivores, don't tell me); these were, and still are, the gentle giants i admire.

deets

which is, by the way, what my grandparents call me, just to get that into the open right now. so, the boat cruz. what can i say - when you hype something like that up in your mind like i did, creating fantasies about it and emphasizing its importance as a life event, it can never live up. i did have a great time - went to dinner with the cool kids getting their ma in english, our own little version of the breakfast club; snuck whiskey on the boat; never got too cold; danced a lot; envied black culture and made attempts to appropriate it; made a new friend who was impressed with 1. my whiskey 2. the impact that bill and ted have had on my life; saw a view of boston that actually made it look beautiful and not full of litter and bad drivers; got home and had a peanut butter bagel. by all standards, a great night out, and a good time was had by all the cool kids. but clearly, i did not need to be preparing for it emotionally and practicing "cool expressions" for an entire week. i'll tell you what may be a life event though: my friend's party next week. maybe those cool expressions really will come in handy. maybe i should come up with some new ones.

i guess it wasn't fun enough to precipitate an existential crisis, either; i haven't done a lick of reading all day. a little showering, a spot of cleaning, a grocery excursion, a little watching tv in bed, plus the purchase of a new comic book, yes, but absolutely no reading. now i'm out to go see 3:10 to yuma (which, by the way, is a line from a warren zevon song, although i just remembered that this film is a remake and probably the lyric came from that), and then after that maybe i will do a little reading. we'll see, we'll see.

omg

i just realized that my four-year obsession with mary tyler moore as a symbol of independent feminine strength may owe its origins more to my middle school obsession with weezer than any actual power her reputation either on screen or in real life may wield. man, that is terrible, and also shallow.

i will write about the boat cruise tomorrow. really.

how do you know when you really live in a city?

sometimes, i think it's those little secret moments that don't seem important enough to tell other people, or maybe they just belong to you so much that you don't want to. like, when an apple or a leaf falls right in front of you, or you catch the sunset just at the right moment when you're walking home and you happen to look down mapleton street. clearly these things have happened to me. also, in the last six hours, i have given relatively accurate directions to two people. i have a friend who is just so genuine-looking that he gets stopped on the street even in foreign countries to give directions, and secretly it has always been my ambition to look comfortable enough on a street to get asked as casually as he does. granted, both of these people were japanese, so who knows what they were thinking when they picked me (she's wearing converse, we have those; she's the only person looking me in the eye when i look at her; she looks academically insane, like hermione), but they did, and i helped them, and now i feel a little like i really live here and might think twice before just picking up and leaving the next time someone makes me cry.

other things that happened to me today:
the suspicion that a prehistoric bird lives on my street. i know that no one alive really knows what a pterodactyl sounds like, but picture a pterodactyl and think about what it might sound like, like the entire range of sounds that includes salutation, conversation, and celebration, and what you're imagining is happening in a tree about two houses down.
bones scattered all over the walk by a building i went to to drop off some forms. i know that someone probably just didn't clean up after themselves after eating some chicken wings (there's a lot of litter here - i myself threw a beer cup right into the harbor today and no one cared), but seeing bones all over the place is a little disconcerting. i thought it might be an omen, but i had no idea what kind. one time a bird pooped right on my head at the zoo and my grandma told me it was lucky; i hope it's that kind.

my RAD roommate bought me a $2 shirt. that is the picture you're looking at. it's a combination muumuu/housecoat/prettiest, most comfortable shirt i've ever owned. she is rad.

more on the boat cruz tomorrow - thank you for your and your mothers' concern, it was fun and i was totally warm enough. i f*cking love you all.

today has already been successful

today, i have gotten my student loan disbursement (requiring no action on my part, but it still feels like an accomplishment), decided not to go buy whiskey (also no action, but an overall sense of self-righteousness because this is clearly a healthy and financially sound decision, and also i'm pretty sure that if i don't i won't have any reason to get sick over the side of the boat tonight), written on three peoples' walls on facebook, finished my reading for class today, decided on some things i want to talk about in class today, and effectively begged for a position as a writing tutor. also, i ate a good breakfast and drank some chai, a healthy and delicious alternative to coffee. i'm wearing my outfit for the boat cruise (a shirt with a ship on it, my yellow shoes), and now i just have to go to school and do a couple errands and then i will have accomplished EVERYTHING i set out to do today, or at least decided that i wasn't going to do it. i'm getting up early every day from now on, this is awesome. also, this morning i rediscovered the "proper double-armed yawn upon waking." i know i woke up about three hours ago, but i've been doing it and a few of its variations (legs out with toes pointed, head back, holding one elbow then the other) probably every 15 minutes, and let me tell you, i feel awesome. i've also already had like half of the water you're supposed to drink every day (i know it's hard to get in eight eight-ounce glasses, but once you get past the having to go to the bathroom every five minutes, you really are a better person for it). today is terrific, and i'm not even letting the fact that i have to go to the bookstore, buy a book i'm going to hate reading because i forgot it the first time around, and then carry it out on the town with me get to me. in the face of my other accomplishments, it's just not that big a deal.

boat cruz 2 nite!

boat cruz

today was a much better day. i helped some ladies in an office, and they were grateful; i saw a marching band, and a bunny. class went well and i feel marginally more intelligent than i did yesterday. tomorrow, my day looks like this:
get up
write some emails
eat breakfast
read (i was going to do that now, but instead tonight is going to be the first night this week that i haven't been up until 2 doing homework, and i have decided to save it for tomorrow. progress? stay tuned.)
buy whiskey
go to school
get cold in the library
class!
beers
BOAT CRUISE

sometimes i look at the big picture and realize that something i've been excited about for a long time is going to take up so little time and i get disappointed. i mean, i have been looking forward to this boat cruise all week - figuring out what shoes i want to wear and how to sneak booze on there, what moves i'm going to use to impress people on the dance floor, what music i hope the dj will play, how many maraschino cherries i'm going to ask the bartender for, everything. it's like the harry potter book. i theorized about it for MONTHS and it took me just over 24 hours to read it and then i was like, "oh. well that's over." the boat cruise is going to be fun and all, but i know i'm going to wake up on saturday and go "i spent a week thinking about that when i could have been reading." then: existential crisis! although if i don't regularly question my ability to achieve the goals i set for myself (getting up before 9, being on time to everything [everyone else does it, why can't i], eating fruit, like, ever, being in touch with my family, being a nice person, surviving at school), i don't do anything. so, i'm looking forward to tomorrow night, and after that i'm looking forward to eating fruit early in the morning in the library for the rest of my life.

WELL.

i was a pretty bad person today. this girl that i know had like a walk-home date with her own personal jordan catalano. that's great, right? i like her all right, and i don't have a crush on the boy, so great for her. but instead i was just upset. not mad at her, but not happy for her, either. sometimes seeing boys and girls who are making out and happy together makes me really mad, and i just want to push them around and say that i have that too, just not right now. then later i was in class with her, and i came in and sat down before her, and when she came in she asked me if i could move over one. at first i was like "hell naw" because i had sat exactly where i wanted to sit, but then she pouted and i was like "no way i'm dealing with this for the entire class" so i picked up my stuff and prepared to switch places with her when she was like "no i want you to switch places with the other dude so he and i can sit next to each other," and i got mad. i mean, rude, right? asking me to move so she can not sit next to me and sit in between the two people she wanted to sit next to instead? so i said: "fuck off." then i moved away and sat next to this girl i don't know as well, and she was really nice to me. then when the first girl tried to apologize a little by cracking a joke to me, i said "i'm not fucking talking to you." and didn't look at her all class. i think maybe coffee makes me childish. i know it gives me a sailor mouth.

in another instance of other peoples' fortune putting me in a bad mood, i rubbed shoulders today with some people who had gotten positions as writing tutors and get like some sort of stipend for it and are clearly shoe-ins for the teaching fellowships we are all secretly competing for. they're all nice people, and clearly deserve it, but the whole thing just made me feel terrible about my own capabilities. but, on friday i am going to a party on a boat and i am going to let go of this academic/social anxiety and quit being so cerebral for like ONE MINUTE.

wwmtmd

i knew that this year was going to be hard, and i've prepared myself by telling myself that i will eat right, spend my extra money on small luxuries (commercial rap songs on itunes, hand lotion, tiny bottles of jack daniels, a cup with a ship on it), and, whenever life gets to be a little too much, ask myself: what would mary tyler moore do? the answer is, inevitably, cry a little bit, then throw her hat up into the air while yelling "she's gonna make it after all! doo-doo-doo-doo! doo-doo-doo-doo!" and then listen to some commercial rap, and think about how she is probably the best white dancer in boston, or at least in the apartment, at least if her roommates aren't home.

today was a hard day. i overslept (but wasn't late, i just felt irresponsible). there was a dead possum in the road on the way to the train stop - that made me sad, but what made it even worse was that when i was younger, i would cry when i saw roadkill: i would imagine that they were just trying to get back to their little rodent families, and i would silently let the tears pour down my face, hoping that if i didn't make a big deal out of it i wouldn't look like i had been crying when we got to where we were going. but today, i just kept eating my peach and walking and thinking about what a bad person i am. then it was raining, and i had to interview with like ten other people for a job i've been doing for two years, and i listened to way too much arcade fire. also, i'm used to coming home and getting a hug. not that i don't think either of my roommates, or even my clearly lonely irish immigrant neighbor would give me a hug if i wanted one, but i don't actually want to touch very many of those people and i'm used to hugging someone i like to touch, like, a lot. usually all it takes is a hug to make me feel better, and like less of an inhuman monster for eating while walking past a dead possum, but from now on i am going to have to depend on this:

ACK OMG DID YOU KNOW THERE WAS A STATUE?!?! WHY DIDN'T ANYONE EVER TELL ME!!?!?!

what really sucks is, it is in twin cities and i will probably never, ever go there. unless i achieve my ultimate dream: a cross-country road trip that takes like two years where i just go everywhere i want to see and everywhere i know someone and stay there until i know how i feel about it. but, no one ever gets what they want, so i guess i will never, ever see this statue in person. GREAT.

bang bang smash smash

let's all feel bad for my friend lizzy, who got in a car accident (she's not too injured, just enough to get drugs). i don't know about you, but i'm going to follow the progress of her bruise with invested interest.

plans for the weekend, already - awesome, or lame?

what i may have forgotten to mention about saturday is, i had a great time with my grandpa. he told some jokes that wouldn't come off well in a blog, we talked about how great my grandma is, it was terrific. i also had a great time with my aunt, but you may have inferred that from the mention of a pool. it was 95 F in boston on saturday, and humid as all get-out. no one had good hair.

so yesterday i spent about 5 hours in the library - my goal was 8, like a job, but i just don't have the attention span for theory that i do for opening cardboard boxes (my real job). speaking of which, i have my orientation today. is it ok to wear jeans if you're already hired? the answer had better be yes, because i think i have one other pair of pants and they are some ratty corduroys i've had for four years. i'll compromise and wear a real shirt, no comic book characters.

yesterday i also bought a ticket to a boat cruise on friday. i debated because of the price - $15 - but ultimately, i figured, i get two drink tickets, two long islands at about $7.50 a pop, that's my money's worth. also, i found out that tickets were $60 for law students. it was never really in doubt that i wanted to go to a party on a boat. if it sucks, i'll just pretend it's my sweet 16 and i'm getting a car at the end.

to buy the ticket, i went to the graduate student center - full of foreign students, as i expected - but what i could not have anticipated was, they were watching the fresh prince. so i sat down, we all had a good laugh, and when i came back from the library, i looked up the following:

is this version better, just because it's longer, and includes more of the fresh prince rapping, which he never actually does on the show? this might be because i'm biased and can do the entire short version with no prompting, and might actually do just that on the boat on friday, but i don't think that the part with his mom and the part on the plane are as quality. also, i remembered the plane part as him having eaten a philly cheese steak in his seat, and i was disappointed when that didn't happen.

one small misplacement crisis, one enormous development crisis

so yesterday was pretty much the best day i've had in boston so far. the night before, i'd gone out with some of the other people in my program and had a rad time. it feels good to make friends, even if you know that one day you might be competing with them. while i've always felt myself to be the kind of person who rises above that kind of stuff - turning back and giving up the prize to help a comrade with a wounded ankle, copying my notes for someone i found crying in the bathroom because they just can't keep it together - i've been pretty furtive about my study habits and practices lately. for instance, in visual studies on thursday, the professor told us that the signup sheet for presentations was on her office door - when class got out at 9, i went straight to her office while everyone else went to the bus stop together to head home so i could have my pick of topics. granted, i took a friend with me, but her interests are so different from mine that i don't see us competing over much in the future. i have a feeling that in the end it will be worth having ridden the train home alone. but still, it felt pretty good to make friends, especially after i got a couple beers in me and we all admitted to being scared of competition. we may or may not have even made a little pact to be nice together. who knows.

then, in the morning, feeling great because i'd remembered to have dinner, drink water, and take ibuprofen the night before, i went over to my aunt's house to get my bed. it's terrific! the headboard is beautiful, and the mattress is a posturepedic! my grandpa helped me set it up, then took me out to lunch, then took me over to my other aunt's house where we went shopping for dinner, swam at the pool across the street, cooked dinner using a ton of freshy fresh vegetables and some of the most delicious corn i've had not just all summer but ever, and watched two movies and had ice cream. taking the day off from work was completely worth it.

then this morning i woke up and my wallet was missing for the second time in two weeks. i was so mad at myself for misplacing it that i couldn't even sleep in and enjoy my new awesome bed, maybe the most comfortable bed i've ever slept in. but, after a couple hours of freaking out, it turned up in my grandparents' car, although not until i had really, existentially questioned my ability to keep it together and be a real person, not even a grownup but just a person in the world. so that's about where i'm at, listening to air and gearing up for about six more hours of work on top of the four or five i've already put in today. i've always been pretty good at buckling down to write a paper or study for a test, but this is just regular homework for a grad student i guess. we'll see how brutal it gets pretty soon.

bc is like hogwarts.

and i am like hermione, so far. the inability to relax, the large orange cat, and the crazy hair are all pretty accurate. i'm waiting for the day the tide turns and i become neville. i already have the plants.

really, though, it's almost uncanny. there's a view of the stadium that you get walking from the student center to the library that is a dead ringer for the quidditch pitch, and the library where i study could be the great hall. if you went to lewis & clark, imagine the law library, but everyone's studying in a castle instead of cubicles. it's pretty rad, but i also know that the less i talk to people the more i start to believe in things like magic, so tomorrow i'm going to a barbecue to try and keep myself grounded before i start believing in vampires and carrying a stake "just in case" again.

today i took the train to school for the first time. that was ok, but even though i live pretty close to school and it's not a long walk to the train station, it still seemed like it took an inordinately long time to get there. i can't wait until it snows and it takes me half an hour just to walk to the train in my stupid boots.

i spent a lot of time in the library today. i sat down and it felt like i had never left school at all, which is pretty cool in some ways and horrible in others. it was nice to know that i can get back into the routine pretty easily, and that even though it's a completely different library it still imbues me with some pretty fantastic anxiety. also, the bathroom tile is the same as in the library at lewis & clark. but, jake is not there, and jake was pretty much a fixture in terms of the time i spent at the library, and that is hard. but who needs friends when i can just be really nervous all by myself?

update: i met with my advisor today and told her about my unnerving level of comfort with being back in an academic library. she called me a "nerd at heart." i am ambivalent about that, and i don't mean apathetic.

now i'm going to water them

well, i did it. here's something: trader joe's in portland carries about a dozen different kinds of tofu. trader joe's in boston carries two, neither of them as appealing. well, no one is perfect.

for a minute i thought i hated this place

so i am on my way to the class that i am terrified to take, horrified at the possibility of being late AND in a ratty tshirt, and i catch the tail end of a yellow light meaning, for me, that i am just getting into the intersection when it turns yellow. this is more than typical for boston; in fact, there's a car behind me that will clearly still be in the intersection when the light turns red, and a car behind that who's thinking about going. i can't count on my fingers and toes how many red lights i've seen run since i got here. but, for some reason, even with two cars in the intersection going around 35 miles an hour, a pedestrian steps off the curb, right in front of my car. panicking, i swerve around him, and he takes this opportunity - it must have been timed perfectly - to spit right through my open driver's side window and onto my face. i immediately burst into tears, and neglected to check how the car behind me dealt with him.

the guy was dressed nicely, probably coming home from a day of work, tie loosened and shoes a little scuffed. he can't have known that i feel like i'm from a different world, that i'm alone and don't know anybody and have never driven in this city before. driving in boston, it feels like everyone is ready to say "fuck you" before you've even looked at them. the hostility is tangible. hopefully i will have a better experience once i give the car back to my grandparents and begin relying solely on the t. anyway, instead of getting mad, maybe even mad enough to get out of the car and kick the guy in a punch fight, as i'm sure i might have done if he had done that in portland or san francisco, i just cried and felt even worse than i already did. which was pretty bad, because earlier on my way home from the grocery store i saw a cat who looked a lot like one of my mom's cats picking through somebody's trash, and a sad song was on the radio. so, i was already pretty upset, and a little homesick, and also had only had my face spit on once before which is another story but both times it was pretty terrible. i can't really explain why - besides being gross, which, if it's never happened to you before, you might think would be the main thing, there's a lot of symbolism there. and instead of getting mad about this guy thinking i am a low person, i for some reason felt like he had a right to do it because he's from here and i'm not. i think i should maybe stop reading "snow flower and the secret fan," which is basically about how powerless women were in old-days china.

then i called jake and for the first time he said he would fight someone for me and actually sounded like he meant it, which made me feel better. i am not a proponent of violence, but i'm not going to lie about it feeling good when someone offers to use it on your behalf. and i was in class on time (the professor was late even!) and it wasn't half as scary as i thought it was going to be. everyone commiserated with me and ignored the fact that i had clearly just been crying profusely, and now everything is ok.

i just experienced the single most successful supergluing session of my entire life.

i superglued four things, three that broke during the move and one i broke myself. everything is whole and functional now, and i didn't get any on me. i'm celebrating with an arnold palmer.

today i put all my clothes in my closet and put up my curtains. after i get my bed on saturday, i will really live here.

two things that i am so glad are coast-to-coast: target, a necessary evil, and trader joe's, which i would marry if it were legal. i'm going to trader joe's this afternoon for some perishables, and i couldn't be more excited. i might even by myself a third succulent. do they look lonely? maybe a little.

medium iced mocha latte, everything bagel with lite garden veggie cream cheese: what did i do before dunkin donuts? i couldn't believe it when my mom first told me that they rival starbucks here. i thought, dunkin donuts? their donuts aren't even any good! but things are much, much different here - i have yet to try their donuts, but their coffee is passable, and their bagels are unbelievable. i think there's some sort of difference between how they're toasted on each coast that really makes it. i once had a layover in philly, and they did something with foil and to this day i haven't had a bagel like that.

the real reason that i'm prattling on is that i have my first class today and i think i'm nervous. the professor is funny, but terrifies me, and i'm scared that if i show up to class in one of my ratty tshirts (i realized yesterday that every single one of my classmates had on a classy tshirt yesterday with nothing written on it) he's going to tell me i'll never get a teaching fellowship dressed like this. i know that's probably the last thing i should be worried about being an obstacle to a teaching fellowship, but my anxiety about fitting in on the east coast and maybe even making a friend has consistently taken the form of worrying that i'm not dressed right. but what can i do? nothing but tshirts and converse (sometimes sambas) feels right, and there is no way i'm going shopping. so, superhero tshirts it is.

first day of school

so, clearly, it's been a while since i "blogged," which is probably some breach in blogging etiquette, especially since this one is so new. fortunately, i really don't care about blogging etiquette.

i've been down on the cape, brewster, to be specific, with limited internet access since the last time i blogged. wow, that just gets so much easier to use as a verb, doesn't it? brewster is really the only part of the east coast i've had any extended exposure to, and so i'm not really sure how accurate it is as a sample since most people have on bathing suits under their clothes and little to no footwear. what i can tell you is, almost everyone i'm not related to has a serious boston accent, which at first is a little mark wahlberg-exotic but quickly becomes grating. my respect and admiration to those who have fought its peculiar nasal twang; i haven't even been here a month and my mouth is already starting to form some sort of boston-california hybrid patois.

last weekend i participated in moving, which on sep. 1st is a citywide event in boston. my roommate and i furnished a large part of the apartment with things we found on the street in our neighborhood (this is called "trashpicking"). you have to be careful in our neighborhood (brighton) though - apparently brighton and allston have some bedbug problems, so anything with fabric or cushions shouldn't be brought home. my room is pretty much all set up, although i've drummed up a few "necessities" in order to make another final run to chez target while i still have my grandparents' car, which they were kind enough to yet again lend me to get me through the first week of school. i look forward to doing my homework at the bus stop starting next week.

today i had my departmental orientation, which reassured me that i had made the right decision and this is what i want to study. this revelation, coupled with my new confidence that boston is where i want to be because i'm just nuts about my family (not sarcastic), makes me feel a lot better about uprooting myself from the good beer, cheap housing, and well-maintained bike paths to be found in portland. on the other hand, it also scared the heck out of me because they drove home that 1. this is going to be really, super hard 2. it's nothing like undergrad, meaning i have no idea what people are going to want from me or how to dominate the classroom in my usual glib style. i'm terrified to write the papers, i'm terrified to take the exams, and terrified to make the decisions, and i'm terrified to pay for the whole thing. but, today i saw that there are 41 people in pretty much my exact same position, and if they can figure it out, so can i. i also made a couple friends, found a spot to study in the library, and got a consortium card, which will probably come in handy later.

right now i'm in my new room (which is awesome), moving around some money so it looks like i have a little to blow at target and maybe trader joe's, and listening to guitar wolf. it's thrilling to be starting over, not knowing anyone and waking up in a place i barely recognize with people speaking in a foreign dialect right outside my window. it's also really, really frightening. things are awesome for the moment, but i will keep you updated.