Good idea or stupid idea?

How about next semester as SAA I organize a Washburn House Lecture Series, where anyone who wants to can deliver a fifteen-to-twenty minute lecture on an academic matter that interests her. Like, I could do the Problem of Other Minds and Kristi could do those blue molecules she likes so much and Kep could talk about non-causation and it would be awesome. I'd go!

(Haha, I just noticed and corrected a typo above: I originally said "on an academic matter that interests me." Because it is really all about me.)

I've gotten all out of my exercise schedule because I've been sick and now it seems like all-too-real a possibility that I'll never make it to the gym again. This weekend I really ought to go running outside, it's been so beautiful out lately.

Milkshake

So when we returned from Spring Break we discovered that King/Scales has a soft serve machine, and needless to say now Leah and I are eating there pretty much every day. It's not as bad as it sounds- often the machine is full of tangy, delicious frozen yogurt, and anyway I have a really sore throat so that's a good excuse. But still and all, it's kind of a lot of soft serve. (Tonight we mixed it up by going to Comstock for Thai night and having hard ginger ice cream- a fine conclusion to our not-too-sweet pad Thai and refreshingly non overcooked green beans.) Lately I've been totally craving milkshakes. I could go for one right now, thanks to Mimi Smartypants. The other night when Leah and I were eating dinner in King I really wanted a milkshake so I filled a small glass a quarter of the way with 2% milk and the rest with vanilla frozen yogurt and stirred it up and it was indeed a fine milkshake, and not the world's most milkfat-saturated dessert, either, all thinks considered.
Tonight's ginger ice cream would've made a fine milkshake.
Leah once had a chamomile tea milkshake, which sounds extremely delicious.
When Leah and I were in New Hampshire we went to a diner and they didn't have milkshakes and we were all, what the heck, a diner with no milkshakes? But it was still an excellent diner.

Another good soda fountain drink I recently discovered one can make in a Smith dining hall is an egg cream. You got the seltzer! You got the milk! You got the Hershey syrup! I've only yet done it once but the fact that I can have a delightful egg cream makes me happy. Drinking an egg cream always makes me feel like Harriet the Spy.

Also, now in addition to flu, I think I have pinkeye. Send good thoughts my way.

Get Get Get Get Get Over It!

Not a bad weekend, on the whole. On Friday Leah and I went to Good Friday mass at Helen Hills Hills Chapel, which was quite nice if a little more simple than what I look for in a Catholic mass. Then we met Nina and went out for Indian food. Yesterday I spent many a long hour in the linguistics lab working on my logic experiment, then did the radio show. Ok Go was playing at the Pearl Street at 8:30, so I went to Haymarket first, where I had a chai and a very good talk with my friend Lauren, who I met on the Spring Break trip.
Ok Go put on an amazing show. The crowd was very young- I'd say mostly high schoolers, with their socks rolled up real high and their wrist cuffs and their heavy eye makeup. I stood behind a guy with the tallest mowhawk I have ever seen; it was probably two feet high and everything to my left I saw through a transluscent screen of hair.
The opening act was The Sun, who did half an hour or so of delightfully peppy power pop. Ok Go, how cute are they? This cute: when one of the guitar players had to fix a broken string, two other members of the band acted out a scene from Les Miserables. It was hilarious. At one point during a long drum solo, the lead singer went down to the bar and got a round of beers for everybody. He was gone so long, however, that at one point the drummer put down his sticks and lit up a cigarette. They did all the songs off their epynonomous debut and some new stuff off their new album which will be coming out in July. At the end, we encored them, but they said no, we can't play any more songs for you because these are all the songs our new guitarist has learned how to play. But, they said, although we will not play any more songs (here he went on for quite a spell about why encores are bad and the system is screwing the listeners over- as he talked the other band members dismantelled all the equipment and carried it away)- they did have one more treat for us.
The treat turned out to be a fantastic performance of C-C-C-Cinnamon Lips, lip-synched to the track on the album, while the band performed an amazingly complicated dance sequence, synchronized perfectly and complete with some tricky-looking cheerleading moves. It was so much fun.

Now I'm off to Easter Mass- and to my sore throat, well, Get Over It!

Tutoring!

Still fluish. I had my first tutoring job yesterday. I'm working with this very nice man, Michael, who works for Physical Plant, and his wife. Michael's going to school part-time and taking an online logic course, so we got together to talk reductio. It was so much fun! They're using this weird notation where X represents a contradiction but once I figured it out it was pretty easy to see what was going on. Logic really ought to have universal notation- it makes no sense to have all these different symbols. I told the professor who arranged for me to tutor Michael that I'd rather be paid each time we meet rather than all at once at the end so that it would be in small amounts that I could spend on popsicles and laundry.

Sick

It would seem that at least some of my recent malaise has been due to the flu virus that is currently ravaging my body. It hurts to swallow. It hurts to type. It hurts to lie down. I am sick. I am even- gasp- currently wearing pajama pants. In the middle of the day! They're flannel! With holes in the bottom!

I searched through my literally dozens of varieties of tea to find one that would soothe my pain. I have, among others,

• Green tea with brown rice
• Organic Raspberry Leaf tea to "support the female system" (haha, it's bra tea! Och, I must be feverish)
• Sweet Dreams herb tea
• Lemon Lift
• The unspeakably vile Cinnamon Apple herb tea
• Darjeeling Tea (delicious but caffeinated, which Health Services has told me to avoid)
• I Love Lemon herb tea
• "Naturally Decaffeinated Select Tea" which I guess must just be plain old black tea
• Decaf Green Tea
• Irish Breakfast Tea
• Lady Grey Tea
• More Green Tea
• Plantation Mint Tea
• And more!

Even Kings of Convenience are too jarring for my sick self. If I had a Sick Hat I would totally be wearing it.

It's been a long day

I went to the gym, I showered, I won a prize in Chinese, I turned Tenney down, I took a walk in the nice weather, I ate dinner , I took my medicine, I met with a classmate to do Semantics, and you want me to do homework too? I just want to listen to "I Get Along Without You Very Well" and "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" and mope. Is that so much to ask?

What's the definitive version of "I Get Along Without You Very Well," by the way?

The Logician

I got the logic job! I'll be spending ten weeks this summer helping Jim and Jay revise the Logic 100 textbook, and I'll be receiving $3,600, which is less than I made last summer but still a decent chunk of change. I also got a letter informing me that I'm now a member of the Association for Symbolic Logic, which is exciting as I'll be receiving their journal and I like academic journals. I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to pay them, however- they don't mention it in the letter but surely there's a fee involved? Their website says the student membership is $35. I'm confused.

South Carolina was a lot of fun. I love building. I spent a lot of time on the roof, which was my favorite, but I also hung vinyl siding and helped lay the foundation of a house. The other students were for the most part very nice and I made a couple of new friends. It was really good, mental health-wise, to get out of my usual social scene (which strongly revolves around Washburn House) and have a break from my classes. I didn't get as much homework done as I would have liked to, but the night is young, and all and all I feel pretty good about things right now.

South-urn Adventure!

Tomorrow I'm heading down to South Carolina to participate in a Habitat for Humanity build, so I won't be updating for a bit. How is that different from my usual methodology with this blog? Well, for the following week, instead of having nothing to say, I'll hopefully have adventures to relate and be unable to.
The students I'm travelling with seem like a pretty good bunch. This evening we had a meeting to discuss the particulars of our journey. We went round and said our names and how we got a scar, which is an unusual name game both for its morbidity and its entertainment value (high). You may have noticed that I used the word "students" above- that's because there will be four, count them, four, boys in the group. As if that weren't enough, one is from London. A boy. With a dreamy accent. It's going to be just like reality television!
I've never participated in a Habitat build before, but I tell myself that shouldn't be a problem. I can use a hammer and a staple gun. Everything else should be a piece of cake. The real worry will be spending a week in the company of strangers. Wish me luck!

Take that!

Yesterday I was walking to the daycare center and it was sunny, birds were singing, little green shoots were poking up out of the ground, and I carried my coat on my arm because it was so lovely out. Today... snow emergency.

Blast you, Massachusetts! Blast you!

Sophmoric

Although I dimly remember being pretty unhappy a lot of the time first year, what with the breaking up and the domestic violence and the angst of every flavor and variety, I ended up with a majority of happy memories, and the happy memories are stronger than the sad ones. The thing is, though, that I had such good times at parties and events that a lot of this year's pale in comparison. There are exceptions- Mountain Day was a lot better this year, for one thing- but that's the general trend. My 18th birthday was the best birthday I've ever had; my 19th birthday was miserable. Last year's Winter Weekend was really fun; this year's Winter Weekend was lousy. Last year's Drag Ball was amazing; this year's Drag Ball was... not.

The solution, I guess, is to find new adventures instead of trying to recreate old ones. This is difficult, since some things, like Drag Ball and Mountain Day, do happen every year, and some, like my birthday, can't really be avoided. But there are new adventures to be had. On Saturday I'm heading down to Charleston to build houses, that will be exciting; I've never done that before. In April I might go on the House trip to New York, which would be fun. So there is hope. But sometimes you can't help but be disappointed when expectations give way to harsh reality.

Apropos of nothing

Hopkins has a purloined stop sign in their kitchen on which someone has written "Only you can STOP dyke drama." So true.

But how?