saturday, september 30

•••    I just figured out that bloghop pulls its weblog descriptions from blogger's settings. which is too bad in some ways, because I was having fun putting in-jokes and random lyrical references in mine... entertaining, but totally useless as far as determining what my blog is actually like. (of course, buried so deep in the w-list, I don't think its description at bloghop will be seen by a whole lot of people anyway.)

also I just realized I had unhealthy forms of potatoes at all three meals today. that's pretty disgusting. and I am going to a party tonight for the second saturday in a row. that's pretty strange. actually, I think it's the first time I've ever done it. tonight is a little party though, and it doesn't involve alcohol or shirtless dancing like last week, so maybe it's not quite the same thing. ;) still, highly unusual.

probably you (and I) do something for the first time in your (and my) life every day. at least I hope so.
6:45 PM +

•••    I just cut the bottom three inches off my hair (don't worry, it still goes well below my waist). I wasn't especially careful about it, because the ends were already all damaged beyond repair and different lengths anyway (the last time they were trimmed was in january), so I did it all in one snip instead of trying to make an even cut across the back. right after I did it, I had this sudden urge to just chop of all my hair, right up to my ears... not because I want short hair -- I think I would go into shock if I actually lost that much hair -- but because that feeling of the scissor blades going through it with that quick, short, schhssnp! noise was so satisfying. it's like when you have a stalk of celery and you snap it in half without leaving any dangling strings. or when you pop open a banana right in the middle without peeling it first. little crumbs of satisfaction hidden deep in life's pockets.

I also have a funny little bullseye on my left cheek. in rugby practice last tuesday I got a small cut just to the side of my nose, and I've been wearing bandaids on it to keep it clean (even people who are used to me and my excessive bandaids think this is amusing). I also have just the tiniest hint of a black eye, really nothing more than a purplish stripe. today, playing rugby from 10 am until about 2 pm in the most perfect autumn weather, I got the inevitable sunburn across my cheeks and forehead. so now, in the middle of my otherwise very pink face, I have this healing-red wound surrounded by a completely white circle about two centimeters in diameter (from the bandaid, which the sun couldn't penetrate), and bordered by my purple eye-line. it looks extremely silly.

we won our game, by the way. playoff prospects are looking good. :)
4:01 PM +

•••    before math class today I took a detour to check the label on the tree I've been watching from the window, and it turns out to be a tulip tree. I think I've picked a name. I got so many great suggestions, and my favorite (from one of my newest email acquaintances) is shel, after the author of the giving tree.

I like to make things complicated, and I like multiple (if obscure or simply invented) meanings to the names I give, so I played with it a little and came up with silvershel. it incorporates more of shel silverstein's name (okay, not so obscure), and it reminds me of a nursery rhyme:
mary, mary, quite contrary
how does your garden grow?
with silver bells and cockleshells
and pretty maids all in a row.
see, this is relevant because instead of silver bells and cockleshells, I have a silvershel. and since it's a tulip tree, it should be something that belongs in a flower garden, but in a slightly backwards and mixed-up way, because it's a tulip tree. and finally, I like the subtle irony in the fact that it is named "silver" when the color it is turning is actually gold.

(by the way, the plants on my windowsill are named algernonette, the oracle at philadelpia, strassenbengal, and spork, and all of those have equally convoluted etymologies. hehe.)

anyhow, you can expect to hear more about silvershel. we've really turned the autumn corner here, so the leaves everywhere are blooming. it's like spring, only inside out and slightly upside down. also taller. (I should not write these things after just waking up -- now I am going back to sleep. saturday's a rugby day!)
12:44 AM +

friday, september 29

•••    shouldn't it be a cosmic meterstick? (note the broccoli.) every astronomer I know works in cgs. that's amusing in its own right, because we're measuring gigantic things in such little bitty pieces.

anyway, the word "yardstick" just sounds weird to me now. I have no occasion to measure yards. the rugby pitch is measured in meters; space is measured in centimeters; most of my physics homework has been in nanometers. I can think in feet and inches, because I know how tall I am, and I can think in miles, because I know how far I run every monday afternoon, but yards are somehow meaningless. I don't think I've even seen a yardstick since fifth grade.

so it needs to be a cosmic meterstick, if only for the sake of my un-confusion.
9:11 AM +

•••    stripes. something new for you to read, and it looks like it will be a good read. (I'm not just saying that; the khan is, from what little I know, an awesome and very interesting person.)

I have been meeting so many interesting people lately! how sad that I have to go do physics homework instead of writing email to all of them...

but first: astronomy was so cool today and I can't believe I haven't been able to write about it until now. for all the random astro knowledge I have accumulated over the years, I had no idea that neutrinos, of all things, were so amazing. I mean, I knew they were neat, but I didn't fully appreciate it until this morning. and I've never had the opportunity to actually study them in class before (unless you count john updike's poem that I wrote an essay on for poetry class last year, but that seems like a stretch, especially given how thoroughly inaccurate the poem is).

I'll spare you my equations and graphs, but I would just like to say that this universe is incredible. a hundred billion or so neutrinos just flew through your eyeball. a hundred billion! and you can't even detect them, almost nothing in modern physics can detect them, but the big underground swimming pool of cleaning fluid in south dakota can catch something like twelve neutrinos in a month. which is not very many, given how many neutrinos go zipping through the earth every nanosecond, but it is a whole awful lot of something that was supposed to be noninteractive and undetectable. it's just cool. humans are so innovative, and the universe is so poetic and strange, and when they come together in such singularly random ways it just makes me smile. particle physics is great for its perpetual self-reinvention. it keeps us on our toes (and sprinting to catch up).

I think I would like to try being a neutrino, as long as I could maintain my sentience. it would be a hell of a way to travel.
1:28 AM +

thursday, september 28

•••    I feel rather strange about the thought that my major public statement about weblogs is now "it's a gigantic social experiment." I guess that was the most interesting thing I said. ;)

hey you, this is my corner of the petri dish. shove over.
11:38 PM +

•••    the thing I like best about teaching science, even more than playing with food coloring and magnets and balloons and microscopes and petri dishes and other messy things, is when one of the kids says in that incredulous I-can-hardly-believe-it-myself voice, "wow, science is fun." it happens pretty much every week. sometimes it's a big, rowdy, in your face I'm-not-gonna-listen-to-any-teacher-person kid. sometimes it's a withdrawn, sullen, you-can-make-me-come-but-you-can't-make-me-learn kid. sometimes it's an obnoxious school-is-my-social-time kid. sometimes it's a kid who can't read. sometimes it's a hyperactive kid. and sometimes it's the kid who has always done what's expected, but never imagined what's expected might actually be rewarding.

that's right, kids. school is more than rote and recitation and workbooks and discipline. it's more than red markers and hand-raising and regurgitation. and all that experimentation stuff, the part that's "better than recess" -- that's learning. honest. I promise.

science is fun.
3:54 PM +

•••    I think this is shaping up to be the semester when I never get my astro homework done on time... which seems wrong, since it's my favorite class. (then again, maybe that's why I keep underestimating the amount of time I'll have to spend on the homework.)

anyway, I have about forty minutes in which to do four more problems. that doesn't sound so bad, except that I spent about seventy five minutes on the first problem alone.

but it is a beautiful morning...
9:03 AM +

wednesday, september 27

•••    how come no one ever told me about sandlot science? I love how optical illusions work even though you know exactly why they're working, and even though you know exactly why your perceptions are completely wrong. sometimes you can't make intelligence prevail no matter how hard you try.
9:14 PM +

•••    when I wake up happy, for whatever biochemical or psychological reasons you want to ascribe happiness to, there is not anything material or external that can make me unhappy.

on the other hand, external things are very good at making me happy, even when my psyche is trying to fly in the other direction. or when it's just trying to wallow in the nondescript muck of unemotion. (gosh, does that make me shallow? heh.) today, for instance, I don't think I could have been miserable if I had tried.

first of all, I have gotten so much terrific email lately that I can't keep up with it. getting behind in somethings, like homework, makes me panic. getting behind in email makes me happy, if vaguely guilty, because email is just good, and a full inbox is satisfying like a full stomach is. if you've written to me recently, thank you, and I promise I will be writing back. you made my day, really.

there was basmati rice at lunch today, and I put it in my soup so that was good. I haven't had rice in my soup in ages. and there was orange sorbet and hydrox cones, so all in all lunch was significantly better than I had anticipated. (it was also festive, since today is apparently national cafeteria worker appreciation day, although I'm not completely convinced that swarthmore didn't just make that up.)

math lab was actually fun for once, maybe because I understood so well what was going on. or maybe because in math lab the computers do all the work once you program them. I'm much better at writing computer programs than I am at solving systems of equations and remembering trig identities. or maybe it was because we finished five minutes early...

so I got to the gym early and had a nice pre-lifting run on the treadmills. for some reason treadmill running is a lot more tiring than track running or street running. I only went two miles at an average speed of about eight miles per hour (that's well over a seven minute mile, beancounters) but it felt like a good workout. plus I just about fell over when I stepped onto the floor without adjusting to its non-moving nature, so that was fun. and I shoulder pressed an extra five pounds.

I got to the dining hall for dinner just when the new food was put out, so it was still hot. the tomato sauce was mushroom-free, the noodles weren't too sticky, I mixed the perfect cranberry to orange juice ratio, and it was apple crisp day. apple crisp is one of the few desserts the dining hall can come up with that is actually vegan (as opposed to the vegan-as-long-as-you-eat-honey variety, though I have to admit I have only recently been really vigilant about honey avoidance).

I think none of you care about what I eat as much as I do, but too bad. ;) I also got a package, and that was the cherry on top of the tofutti, or whatever. when I got the package slip I was expecting it to be my raincoat, which would have been useful (it's going to rain again) but not especially exciting. so when it turned out to be a box I was pretty thrilled. and the box had still more good food, including a bar of dark chocolate. I was going to ration it, but it was too delicious for that. besides, it's not every day I have the opportunity to eat ten grams of saturated fat in one sitting. yumyumyum. now I have the wrapper spread out on my desk so I can still smell it. chocolate is so wonderful. (so are glow in the dark truckin' aliens that have been rescued from the banks of the charles river, but even I can't explain that one, so you'll have to take my word for it. or you could ask my mom.)

and now I just got back from playing a game of foosball. this would not be noteworthy except that my opponent was someone with whom I have had a rather rocky relationship, someone who everyone told me I should just refuse to associate with. but being my usual bleeding heart self, I couldn't stand the thought of being so deliberately and premeditatedly unfriendly (I bet my little sister wonders where that sentiment was ten years ago, heh), and I have persisted in trying to find a way to have a reasonably comfortable friendship. foosball seems to have provided a nice solution. frankly I am rather impressed with the whole situation at this point, and I'm glad I stuck it out. social animosity makes me feel all icky.

the major homework assignment I have to tackle tonight is astronomy, and I would much rather do astronomy homework than any other sort of assignment. I'm almost looking forward to it (which I think is proof positive that I am too cheerful for my own good). but first I am answering email, so who knows when I'll actually start.

and it was sunny today! so yeah. the world is trying much too hard to make me happy for me to ignore it. I'm happy already! (I think I'm also on a bit of a sugar rush. I never used to react much to things like chocolate and sugar... of course, I never used to eat entire 85-gram chocolate bars all at once.)

am I boring when I'm happy and shallow? oh sigh... :)
8:37 PM +

•••    when I was in seventh grade, we had to keep tree journals for science class. we picked two trees, one near school and one somewhere else, and we were supposed to observe both of them on a daily basis. when my teacher remembered, she would take the whole class out to observe our school trees. we looked sort of silly, I think, crowding the sidewalk and spilling onto the street between parked cars, occasionally getting honked at by moving cars, all staring up into the leaves and trying to keep our blue books from blowing away in the wind. on the other hand, big groups of twelve-year-olds often look silly no matter what they're doing. I can't believe that was seven whole years ago.

anyway. my school tree was a tall, whippety thing that I think must have belonged to the sumac family. I named it amelia, because it was less awkward to write about a tree with a name than it was to start every sentence with "the tree..." and besides, I like naming things. my home tree was the big sturdy maple outside our house, and I named that one eli. eli actually turned out to be reasonably exciting, as trees go, because at one point a limb had to be cut off. the pattern made by the darker interior wood (I used to know so much about plant structure, but at the moment I can't remember the different kinds of deciduous xylem tissue, bleh) on the freshly cut limb-stump looked like a witch on a broomstick. ever since then I have thought of eli as the witch tree, even though the witch is barely discernable now that the stump has weathered to an indistinct grey.

from the spot where I sit in math class, the view out the nearest window perfectly frames a tall, thin tree. I don't know what kind it is yet, but I'll find out at some point. (after all, every plant here is labeled.) it's only just starting to turn colors about the edges, and it looks like it will be a very pretty golden yellow. every day there's a little bit more yellow and a little bit less green, especially at the top. it's as if someone spilled a bucket of yellow paint over its head and it's dripping down in super slow motion. (in case you hadn't guessed, paying attention in class is not my greatest strength.)

I think the tree needs a name...
2:37 PM +

•••    that was faster than I expected. :)
1:32 PM +

•••    hey! guess what I can see this morning... my shadow! the sun is out, finally. when I came to breakfast this morning, the grass was still all dew-covered and glistening. sunlight is one of the best things in the world, and early morning sunlight is my favorite kind.

I used to think I wasn't a morning person, because I'm such a night owl. I stay up until all hours (even when I'm not working on homework) and I think the world is at its best around two am. so by default I thought that I couldn't be a morning person. but I have discovered, mostly since coming to college, that I love being awake early, when most people are still asleep and everything is shinybright but quiet. the air smells nicest then. so I think I am a night person and a morning person, just not much of a sleeping person.

(yay, sun)
8:50 AM +

•••    one of the less serious parts of my oh-so-loving autoimmune disorder is secondary raynaud's phenomenon. this afternoon I actually did fall asleep on my bed, but not under the covers, and when I woke up I was pretty cold. I guess that's what I get for leaving the windows open all the time. anyway, my feet were cold, my ears were cold, my lips and nose were cold, but my hands were frigid and absolutely purple. I had to go to rugby practice, which didn't leave much time for sitting around doing biofeedback things, and I thought that once I started running they would get better. but I was still groggy from my unplanned nap, and my brain was having a bit of a hard time gearing into functional mode... so for a good fifteen minutes, as I changed into my rugby gear and got ready to go, I had a two-track thought pattern that went something like this:

rational mind: this is ridiculous, it's sixty degrees out. why do your hands feel like icicles?

irrational mind: PAINPAINPAINPAINPAIN

rational mind: it's just because your pulse got weaker. you know how to bring it back.

irrational mind: I can't feel my hands! I can't feel my hands! COLD!

rational mind: you don't have time to worry about this. just go to rugby and everything will be fine.

irrational mind: I don't want to go to rugby, it's cold, myhandsaremissingwherearemyhands...

rational mind: it's not that cold. you like rugby, it will make you feel better.

irrational mind: coldcoldcold UGH COLDER NEED CLOTHES

it's somewhat entertaining in retrospect. of course, the two tracks were completely oblivious of one another, although I suppose you could say my rational mind won, because I did go to practice and my hands have been absolutely fine since then. (I even walked back from wind ensemble at ten with nothing but a light sweatshirt, and they stayed warm and pink right down to the tips.) the weird thing is how my rational mind speaks to me in the second person, but my irrational mind speaks (if you can call it that) in me in the first person. is that true for everyone?

I have to admit I had forgotten how unpleasant a raynaud's attack can be. I suppose in the big picture of life, it's not that big a deal, but in the infinitesimal bit of time where your mind exists, it isn't at all fun. it sort of consumes your entire consciousness, and having your hands in that borderline state between painfully cold and truly numb makes them pretty useless. (it took me ten minutes to zip up my sweatshirt and tie my shoes, and I didn't even attempt to get the key in the hole to lock the door behind me.) the fair weather of summer made me so complacent and forgetful. sigh.

on an aesthetic level, however, it is at least sort of interesting having extremities that can go from peachy pink to purple with white polka dots in under a minute. oh I am just so special. :P

... and so are you. :)
12:57 AM +

tuesday, september 26

•••    what I really want to do right now is get into bed and hug my penguin and go to sleep, because it would just be nice.

what I should be doing is homework, because I always always always have homework to do.

what I am actually doing is sitting here nibbling on orange slices and telling myself I don't have time to write.

what I will be doing in two hours is playing rugby in the cold wet rain and wind.

what I suck at, thoroughly, is time management.
2:14 PM +

•••    I could go for a lightning speed computer. it seems somehow wrong that a process called "entanglement" would make anything more efficient, but I suppose that's what's so charming about physics terminology.

they keep saying that computer chips can't get any tinier, and they keep proving themselves wrong... gotta love technology.

(still raining)
8:53 AM +

•••    (more rain, lots of rain)

so I've been watching the olympics and poking around behind the curtain, even though I should have been doing homework (but jeez, after fourteen straight hours of class-class-run-lab-run-rugby-meeting-library-work, don't you think I deserve a break? I do). I like the international ones (curtain pages, that is). I don't think I could put pictures of my whole day on the web though. I don't know why, because apparently I'm willing to write about an awful lot of it, and I'll bet I write more than a thousand words at least a few times a week. but there is something different between putting your daily life on display and putting your internal monologue on display; I'm doing the latter, and I can't fathom why that should be easier than the former. maybe it isn't easier. maybe that's why I do it.

I don't think it's even remotely an exaggeration to say that ninety eight percent of the things I think never make it as far as my mouth. I don't mean ninety eight percent of the thoughts in my head; I mean ninety eight percent of the things I intend to say, or want to say, or take a breath to say before I change my mind and bite my lip in deference to the nasty little fishnet that snares all my flipflopping-upstream thoughts... yes, it is definitely an uphill swim between my brain and my mouth, anatomy aside. anyway. two percent is not so much. and I always write, always, in my many notebooks and journals and poetry books, but that is not the same at all as actually communicating. communicating is hard. but I like doing things that are hard, because in the end they feel a lot better than the things that are easy, and they make me alive instead of just existing. this is hard, so I do it, and I like it. also the fishnet on the way to my finger shas bigger holes, or maybe the writing-fish are simply better swimmers.

but I could not put pictures of my whole day on the web. that's too hard. I feel like the way I see the world is so different from the way the camera sees the world, and somehow it is the contrast that is so personal rather than simply one or the other. that's one reason why I don't talk, I think, because it would give too much away for the people who can see all the trimmings and circumstances and appearances.

...none of which means that I am a different person in real life than I am on the web, or in my weblog. I have neither the coordination nor the self discipline to pull that off.

also, because this is what I started out blog-this-ing, clean lines are nice. not that I can remember a catharsis design that wasn't nice...

(the rain is cold -- and I'm sorry if this was nonsensical. I didn't plan it before I started writing. there is plenty of value in streams of consciousness, especially when there are also fish. and rain.)
1:09 AM +

monday, september 25

•••    grr. I have a bunch of things flying around my head but no time in which to string them out and write them down. rest assured that I am thinking of you, my anonymous and sometimes not anonymous readers, and wishing I could be telling you all about the trees outside my math window or the peanut butter concoction I made at dinner or the oscilloscope discovery I made in physics lab, instead of going to meetings and libraries and work in the rain. (actually, so far I love my job. but still.) probably you don't even care about such things, but I care about telling you.

(rainrainrain)
6:57 PM +

•••    eeinem can be really cool, even when my textbook makes it seem boring. tokamak is a great word.
10:40 AM +

•••    I can't tell if it rains a lot here or if it's just been raining everywhere for the past week, but it's been a rather long time since I actually saw the sun.
8:53 AM +

sunday, september 24

•••    I had a minor revelation tonight watching the olympics (while doing my physics homework, of course). maybe this is really obvious, but it had never occurred to me before: I like watching the sports where the athletes are seriously airborne. swimming, running, cycling, weightlifting, hammer throwing; eh. I enjoy watching the first few times, but after that I'm just as happy reading about the results. but gymno, diving, pole vaulting, long jump, and now trampoline... I haven't gotten sick of them yet. I've seen the us gymnastic team members' routines at least six times each by now, but I could watch them a hundred times more and be just as enthralled with every one. I was frustrated with nbc for only showing the dives of half the field in the ten meter platform competition today. I don't really care who wins; I just want to see people flying through the air. and I think I would be just as captivated watching people jump straight off the platform as I am watching people do twists and somersaults. I like the flying.

I want to fly. someday I will, one way or another.
11:19 PM +

•••    I don't know who made this and this, but whoever it is gets a big thumbs up in my book. I wish the word nike still had some meaning beyond the brand, because it's a really cool word. it has that irregular long e at the end that I love. but anyway, nike the company is evil. I hope they have the guts (or maybe the misplaced sense of impunity) to leave the movies up.

yay, subversion.
(via mefi and adbusters)
6:45 PM +

•••    synchronized swimming is so bizarre. I don't want to say it's not a sport, because it obviously takes a lot of technical skill and incredible physique, but there's something really creepy about it. I think it's the part where they bow in unison after the scores have been awarded. it's as if they're walking around with big pasted-on grins and perfectly flared fingers because they're robots, not just because their sport demands such attention to presentation. there's not much exciting about watching robots in the olympics. it's like watching computers compete in a tic-tac-toe tournament.
4:29 PM +

•••    three hours of rugby + alcohol + smoke + four hours of dancing + muggy humid weather = one very sluggish rabi.

I wish I could turn into a glop of goo and regenerate in a bucket. being gelatinous sounds rather appealing at the moment. slorp. off to work now.
1:16 PM +

•••    there is something that is infinitely more enervating than physics homework or rugby workouts: parties. whew. I feel like I could sleep for a week.

tonight was our big fall fundraising party (for rugby, of course; you think I run around going to random parties?) -- I went in sweats, halloween socks, and soccer flats. I ate lollipops so I could turn my tongue fun colors and stick it out at people (it's more fun than making conversation). while the rest of my team did jello shots, beautifully colored and jiggly jello shots, I drank a shot of straight vodka, sans chaser -- it's so odd that I can do that; I still hate most alcohol -- and contemplated jello shots made with nori extract instead of gelatin. that would be bad though, because I love squishy jello-y things so much, it would be significantly more annoying to stick to my medicine-defined alcohol limit.

then we sang rugby songs and danced for a while before the rest of campus came pouring in. that was fun. I really do like to dance (and I do it pretty much every day, in my room or on the street or something). once the general non-rugby population started coming, I got worn out just from being around so many people in a social situation. but I stuck it out for four whole hours, and I was pretty proud of myself for making it almost until the end of the party, not to mention lasting so long on the dance floor. add my feet to the list of things that hurt (so good, still).

my laundry bag is really disgusting now, with alcohol-and-smoke-smelling clothes on top of dirt-and-sweat-smelling clothes. laundry tomorrow morning, after I recover from my excessive social energy expenditure. whew, again.
2:43 AM +