So... I really like that new shakira song. The one with wyclef. Makes me want to shake my boo-TAY. Only in my room though, as the years have passed, my dance moves have only gotten worse. Trust me, I've gotten so awkward it's painful.

Edit: Just thought I'd put this in the same post, since it's only like an hour later. I just took one of those pointless quizzes abotu what american city you would be if you were to be an american city, and it told me that I'm los angeles. LOS ANGELES!! Never mind that's it's a little odd because I actually live in LA for most of the year, but also because I kind of think of it as the butthole of the west coast. Although I'm beginning to appreciate all that is encompassed in LA, mostly the food possibilities (I LOVE crepes!). Gosh, I'm a pig. But actually, I'm determined next quarter to get my roommate to get me out of westwood and all it's college glory and into other parts of LA, like little tokyo, chinatown, koreatown, and possibly other not-so-asian infused areas of LA (if she knows of any...those are really the only places I hear her talk of). Yes! I WILL become los angeles! Er... actually no, a lot of people I know who were raised in LA are a little off. And anyways, who takes those stupid quizzes seriously?

It is so freaking cold. Isn't spring break supposed to be warm? My first day back at school was a little challenging. Nothing wanted to go right yesterday. I'm hoping today goes better. Nothing new or exciting in San Diego. It was POURING last night. I don't get this weather. I miss the real San Diego!

Happy Birthday to my boyfriend! Even though he probably doesn't even read this anymore because I almost never post anything.

Aside from that nothing much to report. It's SPRING BREAK! I'm staying in San Diego. I have a couple appointments and an interview. It should be thrilling. :)

Love and Other Indoor Sports (Injuries)

Just as it's hard for me to diagnose, on a scale of 1 - 10, how bad my ankle feels, I find it's similarly hard for me to know how I feel about friend on friend action. That is, what to think when good friend XX pounces good friend XY; individually, I adore XX and XY, and think, well, together they will just be more to adore!

However the burden of experience makes it hard to be so lighthearted. Though together it is twice as sweet, the ending can accordingly be twice as bitter. Tiptoeing and sidestepping through broken relationships takes a toll on the soul, admittedly in a different way from the soul that's been broken. And while I usually can't bring myself ever to blame friends, I suppose when they're hurting other friends, I have to draw a line.

Kids, don't play games with each other, only sports. I can stand watching people limp off the field, but it's much harder to witness tearful phone calls, holes in walls and endless empty pints of Ben & Jerry's. I ain't got aircasts for broken hearts.

Layout to Layout

Layout (2001-2005): Tuesday night in room 115, nudging photos and copy into pica-perfect places, finishing stories, gathering sports scores, sending off 24 pages to be replicated 3000 times over.


Layout (2005-????): Hands out, feet up, body parallel to the ground, disc on the tips of the fingers, SCORE, D!

Help!

I do not know how to study physics.

So in high school, I coasted through subjects I was good at. Anything I had to think twice about, chances are I didn't. I never learned how to learn because I was too busy doing other things. I was never as much an academic as I made my ideal self out to be. And now? As a midterm approaches and I realize that my mind goes blank (or else Loch Lomond plays softly in the recesses of that great empty cavity) when asked what at what angle theta would an actor fall if he were swinging from above for a grande entrance by some apparatus involving a pulley, a massless rope, and a sandbag, I'm realizing that there are some old convictions of mine that are squatting on territory that I need to reclaim.

What I mean to say is hat I've always believed that there was always a way to do things myself. If I couldn't do it myself, if I couldn't do it by the deadline--I wouldn't do it at all. I never copied homework, I never dug study groups, I never asked questions. I believed I should theoretically have all the tools I needed, and if ever i didn't understand or couldn't pull through, it was because I hadn't worked hard enough or thought long enough or practiced enough. If I reached a limit, I didn't believe that external aid would get me anywhere--or if it could, it would be artificial.

This isn't really just an academic question; these old convictions are like landmines-- they're hidden everywhere, and often I find that they blow up in my face when I think I'm on my way up and out of these same old feelings of inescapable inferiority. What would it feel like to tell somebody about... What if I got someone's advice... What if I asked if... blam blam blam--nobody wants to hear your whining. SACK UP.

Hos before Bros

It's a strange revelation.
I always was a girl among boys--a little too vulgar, a little too rough to play nice with the girls. In 8th grade, every day I wore an extra large navy blue windbreaker and a red bandana no matter what the weather. My hair was cropped at the chin and I took pride in the fact that the residual strength from gymnastics meant I could hold my own whenever asked to lift things that everyone was convinced were bigger than I was. Then, I was a girl whose closest friends were all boys because it I happened to be the only girl who went to the high school every day for math class, and because I thought little of changing my clothes every day. But by 11th grade, I grew my hair out and dabbled in fashion sense, remembered that as a girl, skirts were a privilege. I still had my boys, if with complications, because we'd just known each other for so long. It was bros before hos for me; girls were too silly, too frivolous; they talked about boys and gossiped about each other and took an entire day to get ready for formal.


Now the boys are in North Carolina, upstate New York, and scattered throughout California. Now I'm living with girls, playing with girls, confiding in girls. And boys here? The ones who don't know your name only speak to you if they're interested in what's in your pants, and once they find that you're not interested in what's in theirs, the conversation's done, and the most you'll get later is a courtesy headnod. Girls are for petting, not for friendship. And if for friendship, a careful, ginger one, so as not to give either party ideas. I was always warned by those who cared to be more careful with the way I talked to people, especially with males, because I was so forward and so friendly with everyone. I never thought it was a problem. I was told I was naive because I didn't think anyone would be initiate conversation with it in the back of his mind that later he may be able to "tap that." But now I see that friendly with girls is nice, but friendly with boys is flirting; confiding in girls is expected, confiding in guys is flirting. Different rules for every game; I've just never believed in it because the guys I was closest with didn't think that way.

So now here I am with a penchant for curling my long hair and a resolution to be proceed cautiously with the opposite sex. I guess now I've got to stop trying to recreate the crew I had--it was all incidental that they were male, anyway--and get that no one's going to ignore the fact that I'm female because I have relatively large biceps for a little girl. It's loyalty for the girls and wariness of the boys.

In other news, my humble abode is becoming more colorful by the day. Boy, do I love sticky tack.

About to (hopefully) finish up a paper, but I thought I'd drop a note on the website. As I ws coming onto this website, this commercial came on with a song that I remember hearing at the gym on mtvU last year and I really wanted to hear it again, but never got around to it. Now, I want to hear that song again, but all I know about it is that it's a girl singing and there's piano in it. I'm brought back to a time when Debbie made me a mix cd with ths song "Snap" by Antique, in honor of my getting a cd player for my car. That stereo got stolen and along with that song, which I cannot find anywhere now. It's so frustrating when you know that you've lost a song. Like that Pete and Pete episode (bonus points if you know what I'm talking about...not to you Eric because you have the DVDs). I'm frustrated, and now, instead of working on that paper, I'm about to go find my lost song.

Bonnie, bonnie banks

If you live with me, near me, or have been within a forty foot radius of me while I'm doing physics in the wee hours of the morning in Leverett Dining Hall, you'll know that I've been living and breathing the song Shenandoah for weeks now. But after yesterday's C Minor Mass (One cheeky poster for the concert read: "Mozart never finished it, will we?"), I was struck with a different bug. A Scottish one.



So, if ye've never heard it, "Loch Lomond" is a beautiful Scottish folk song about wee birdies and bonnie banks and lost love and all that. Instead of thinking coherent thoughts for the last 48 hours, the song just plays over and over in my head. It must be some sort of defense mechanism against thinking--it seems that thinking, lately, has lead many close acquaintances, roommates, teammates, and the like into ethical, academic, emotional, romantic, and otherwise personal turmoil. Freshmen, seniors, and grad students alike seem caught on so many little snags, and it's easy to get caught up in them myself, become catty or callous or crushed myself, I suppose singing a Scottish ditty is as good a defense as any.

I was thinking, after the cheeky little comment received on my post that was literally just talk about the weather, that in California sun is unremarkable, but here in Boston, when winter wind chill makes the outdoors something to defend against, when there can be glorious snow or miserable rain or a day of respite like today (45 degrees and sunny!), the weather is a frighteningly powerful mood manipulator. It's hard to hold up while feeling attacked all the time, whether by the weather or by one's woes--or both.

Ran along the river today and saw geese and dogs and ice floes; ran around listening to dirt crunch and chasing plastic; just ran around the Charles river hearing Loch Lomond in my head. The outdoors is glorious, and I'm in here doing monkey work in a library until the sun sets. It's time to reprioritize.