saturday, october 7

•••    this is making me curious: fifteen people have rated wockerjabby at bloghop, which is surprising enough in itself, but one person -- or maybe more than one? it's a little hard to tell -- gave it a frowny face red rating. now, I'm not about to change anything about the way I do this, because at the moment I'm pretty happy with the way it works, for me at least. but I would really like to know what it is that is so red-bad about wockerjabby, just because I'm curious. anyone?
9:51 PM +

•••    so, after five hours in the van and nearly that many on the rugby pitch, I am tired, bruised, and ... tired. ;) it was a good game, though -- a hard, long, leave-everything-on-the-field game. we played shippensburg, which is one of those big universities out in the middle of factory and farmland central pennsylvania, where things like greek life and mascots and football matter a lot. this weekend was ship's homecoming, so there were huge crowds, parades, marching bands, even cannons. being sandwiched between the homecoming football game and a dairy farm (which was invisible to the eyes, but not to the nose) was just a little distracting, but the cannons were unreal. the first time they went off I thought my heart had stopped.

ship is a big, physical, trash-talking team. we were supposed to be their homecoming trophy, their pre-party conquest, the prelude to shooting eight kegs' worth of boot. they were supposed to smear the pitch with us. (I am paraphrasing, of course. if you want to know what they really said, well... use your imagination, but wash it out with soap afterwards.)

I suppose they did smear the pitch with us, but in the end it wasn't enough. we beat them, 10-5, amid a flurry of nasty names and punches thrown sideways where the referee couldn't see them. it wasn't pretty. sometimes rugby isn't pretty at all. but we are a good team, we kept our heads up and our mouths shut, and we beat them. I would have felt bad about handing them a loss on their homecoming weekend if they hadn't been so intent on taking our rugby match and turning it into a bloodbath. (besides, they still haven't figured out that swarthmore has an r in it. swaRthmore, people. I don't care how mama cass pronounces it.) so I don't feel bad, just proud of us. you wanna antagonize me...?

the b-side game was great. we lost, but all the rookies are getting so much better. and I love being in the thick of things at scrumhalf. playing fullback on a-side is twice the stress -- last line of defense, baby -- but only half the action.

in the shower I was examining my myriad bruises and scrapes. I know they're going to raise some eyebrows. I know there are going to be the same people saying in that half-reproachful voice, "rabi! when are you going to stop?" I don't suppose I will ever be able to explain to their satisfaction why I keep playing in spite of the endless bruises and aches and bags of ice. it's true, rugby is a rough-and-tumble sport, full contact with no protection beyond jerseys and mouthguards. it's true, it hurts. but it's also true that it's one of the things that make this school a happy place for me, and that's a trade I'll make any day.
7:54 PM +

•••    it is just wrong to have to get up before six on a saturday after a week like this one, even for rugby.
6:37 AM +

•••    in class this afternoon we were talking about personality tests and learning styles, and it reminded me of the latest installation of brenda's continued discussion of personality types. she linked to a test I had never seen before, and now that it's friday I decided I deserve a break, so I took it. the results it gave me were very interesting, not because they were especially different from most personality tests, but because of the way the scoring system interpreted them.

first, the pure numbers breakdown:
(your answers showed a preference for...)
extraverting 0 times
introverting 14 times
sensing 5 times
intuition 9 times
thinking 7 times
feeling 7 times
perceiving 10 times
judging 4 times

the interesting part, I think, is the thinking-feeling split. for one thing, it's exactly how I would define myself at this point. but, according to this analysis, I am still an intp. why do you suppose that is? just a programming glitch? or did someone decide that in the x-case, T is dominant over F?

I didn't always consider myself an INxP, and I didn't always test that way either. for most of my life and more than halfway through adolescence, I was an INTP -- not a textbook INTP, but INTP nonetheless. now I'm consistently split, coming out NT about half the time (on kiersey, for instance) and NF about half the time (on most alternatives). Something happened to me during the course of high school that accounts for that switch (yes I have my theories and no you're not going to hear about them), but I don't think I consciously acknowledged the F part of me until I started college last year. being in denial about your feelings is a great defense mechanism, isn't it?

at first blush, the whole concept of an INxP personality seems like a contradiction; the profiles even say as much: an INTP's feeling side is her least developed trait; INFPs do not like to deal with hard facts and logic. and how exactly are you supposed to be a rational idealist?

it's really not as contradictory as these descriptions make it out to be. unlike brenda, I'm not a prototypical anything, but neither am I a walking paradox. I process information analytically, logically, as a thinker. I deal with experiences emotionally, perhaps irrationally, as a feeler. neither is dominant, and they both have their respective places. sometimes they disagree with each other, but really, internal conflict is part of being human. I am many things but above all, as much as I joke about my extraterrestrial origins, I am human. as are we all...

(by the way, I came out smack in between two types on that learning styles test, too.)
12:00 AM +

friday, october 6

•••    I actually finished all the work I have to hand in today, whee! nine page writing assigntment, capacitance, collaborative learning analysis, good riddance. it is still foggy but the sky is getting brighter. (literally and figuratively -- isn't it nice when that happens? I don't know whether the universe is amused by symbolism or the human mind has some fundamental need to construct it everywhere.)

I feel like I could babble and babble, but I lack the time in which to do it and, to some extent, the proper audience. in physics this morning I was really really going to pay attention, because we have a substitute professor who just happens to be my adviser, and he's a fun lecturer. he uses colored chalk a lot. but then we were doing review (strike one, even though I could certainly use the review), and he told us right up front that we didn't need to take lots of notes because they were all on the server (strike two, even though I remember things much better when I write them down myself) and so I ended up pouring turquoise ink into my fat little notebook for most of the class. I paid half-attention and I looked up every few moments to keep track of the pastel chalk charges and electric fields that were filling up the blackboard (after all there was no strike three)... but mostly I was writing. I like to write.

okay, time to go back into the brightening fog. one more class, one more practice, almost the weekend.
1:27 PM +

•••    it takes a lot of guts to be an astrobiologist.
8:06 AM +

thursday, october 5

•••    oh you people, I don't know where you come from or why you keep coming! I have said nothing of interest or consequence today... I have thought nothing or interest or consequence today. all I have done is struggle to stay afloat, having given up on swimming for the moment. splish splash, vapid empty splishsplashingthoughts...

in case you doubt that, consider this: I have had one song stuck in my head all day, lime in the coconut. you know: "she put the lime in the coconut, she drank 'em both up; she put the lime in the coconut, she drank it all up; she called the doctor, woke him up; she said, doctorrr..."

only it's the muppets version. muppets in my mind, all day long, singing about coconuts. I am very, very, very tired. (hang in there she says. I'm trying! splish splash, splosh. no you don't know who she is; does it matter?)

good things: just eight more days until break. at least two people in the world think I don't suck, even though they're wrong for the time being. since I had a midterm today I don't have math class tomorrow.

also, I love it when raza writes stuff. yay.

put the lime in the coconut, and call me in the morning.
11:05 PM +

•••    my math professor is too nice. it makes me feel guilty for being so breathtakingly unprepared for the midterm (not to mention tired; I almost fell asleep in the middle, twice). I'll be okay, I know I will -- I am good at calculus, dammit -- but that grade is not going to make it especially easy. ugh.
5:45 PM +

•••    I suck.

that is all. (for now.)
8:09 AM +

•••    according to tonight's calculation, there are 321,936,000,000,000 neutrinos passing through my body every second. yeep.

(if you want to know how many are passing through your body per second, approximate your cross-sectional body area in square meters and multiply by 6.707 E14. that's the neutrino flux density on the surface of the earth, as near as I can figure out. see, isn't astrophysics fun? yes, yes it is. two problems to go...)
12:29 AM +

wednesday, october 4

•••    I'm sorry, that last bit was too nerdy, wasn't it? I mean, I care about particle distribution and quantum tunneling, but that doesn't mean you should have to hear about it. so here, a compromise -- maxwell-boltzmann in rainbow-colored java action! yeah! try it with just a few atoms at a medium-high temperature, with trails on. whee!

(by the way, the basic point of all this -- which I know I've said before, but is so cool that it bears repeating -- is that the probability that an individual proton will have enough kinetic energy to fuse with another proton is incredibly small, way on the end of that pink curve. according to classical physics, hydrogen fusion in the sun shouldn't work at all. aren't you glad classical physicists didn't design the universe? it would be all dark and lifeless!)
7:54 PM +

•••    okay, I've been calculating stuff with the maxwell-boltzmann distribution all night, and I only now discover that it's not absolutely rigorous?! I feel so cheated! why don't I just take my own "not absolutely rigorous" guess and skip the math part altogether? :P
7:27 PM +

•••    in math class today, for some reason which I still haven't ascertained (have I mentioned that my brain is somewhere outside neptune? it is), the discussion turned to kepler's laws and how they were all figured out from simple observations...

math professor 1: that's just so amazing, I mean, I can't even find the north star on a good day!
math professor 2: that's because you can only see it at night.

so math class is fun even though I'm really ready to be done with calculus altogether. (we really have only one professor, the other one just sits there and listens... for his own amusement, I guess.) and before that, in physics, we melted bits of a capacitor's contacts onto a screwdriver, and produced a lot of bright, loud sparks in the process.

I'll leave you with one thing to explore before I get back to work (if you can call my current incompetent fumblings with lagrange multipliers "work" -- how come I understood this stuff two years ago in math class, but I can't apply it to physics now?): snakebot! that would be quite a greeting for an alien invasion fleet, wouldn't it? a whole bunch of robotic serpents in space. whee!
1:28 PM +

•••    so, ten hours and zero completed homework later, I have concluded that my brain has shut down in protest of too much work and stress. normally I would agree with it, but I don't have time for this... come on brain, your timing sucks.
8:14 AM +

tuesday, october 3

•••    okay, I skipped wind ensemble tonight so I could do work. I have been deliberately not watching the debates so I can do work. all I have accomplished over the last hour and a half was getting up from my pile of graph paper and calculations and half-delerium to turn off the light. now my roommate is back so I'm awake, but barely cognizant. what is wrong with my brain? ugh.
10:12 PM +

•••    I am becoming increasingly frustrated with my astronomy homework (too much math and not enough neutrinos), so I've been intermittently puttering around my room trying to pretend I'm being productive, even though I'm really not. I was taking a census of my prescription bottles, and I noticed a new label on one of them.

I think the warning labels I get pretty much run the gamut, from the simple instructions (take with food), to the warnings (may cause dizziness), to the threats (obtain medical advice before taking nonprescription drugs. some may affect the action of this medication), to the prohibitions (DO NOT... oh there are just so many). I thought I had seen all the labels that were ever going to come plastered to my little menagerie of bottles.

I was wrong. there's a new one, which I think is going to replace "do not use while you are breastfeeding" as the most random and irrelevant: DO NOT EAT GRAPEFRUIT.

do not eat grapefruit? wtf? I looked it up, and sure enough, grapefruit is apparently bad. I drink grapefruit juice now and then, but I can't recall having any major problems with this medication since I started taking it last winter. anyway I have neither angina nor hypertension, so I guess I don't have to worry about it. the whole thing strikes me as rather odd.

by the way, you should also avoid grapefruit if you are taking toe fungus medication. keep that in mind.
3:15 PM +

•••    this morning I found a jet black hair among all my aging-copper brown. it was very disconcerting. (by aging-copper, I don't mean that green crusty color. my hair is not green, and I don't think it will ever be green. however it is pretty much exactly the color of a typical ten-year-old penny, right down to the different variations in and out of sunlight. more lustrous, though, and significantly better-smelling. I determined this quite systematically by comparing my hair to all the pennies in my desk drawer, which range in age from 50 years to eight months.) I've never had a black hair anywhere on my body before. I ended up pulling it out. maybe I was visited by extraterrestrials last night, and they left it as a present for me.

yeah...

I am working now. it is crunch time.
12:14 PM +

•••    I used to eat fish sticks straight out of the freezer. I got them as a treat when babysitters came. does that count as a meat popsicle? if so, my mouth would be watering too...
(I'm going to bed now, really)
2:50 AM +

•••    wow that was long. and, I think, entirely unhelpful. whither my coherency... explanation works a lot better when it's not powered by introspection. that is one thing I am very very bad at sharing... but working on it, at least temporarily.
2:45 AM +

•••    on talking to people (though I fear mallory's confidence in me may be a little misplaced):

first of all, I am not all that talkative without real occasion for talking. I'll talk when I'm somehow in charge of things (like during orientation week, when I was in charge of all those frosh), and I'll occasionally talk in small groups of people I know reasonably well, and I'll talk one-on-one with the people who know me really well (there are not very many of them). the rest of the time, my thoughts will sort of slide into oblivion as I take note of them one by one by one. sometimes that bothers me, sometimes it doesn't... but that's another topic for another time.

anyway. my point was that the way I deal with people who don't know what I'm talking about depends very much on which people they are. if they're in the third category, I will go babbling a river about all sorts of obscure things. (I inevitably mention obscure things, because my brain makes all sorts of wacko sideways connections to things. on saturday, for instance, I dropped "like the fingerprints on vietnamese fish rocks" into a sentence without a second thought, which completely confused the person with whom I was talking... but I explained it, rather enthusiastically as I usually do, so it all came out fine and making sense.) I need to stress, though, that the way I operate with these few people is very different from the way I operate with most people, so I'm not sure how relevant it is. they are my special people, those ones I trust at least marginally with the strange things spawned inside my mind. (how strange? you have no idea. believe me on that one.)

untangent. okay. with the rest of the world... am I an elitist? no. no I'm not. maybe I think like one, sometimes, but I don't act like one (although I have to qualify that with a reminder that I am a resident of a particularly insular ivory tower). I tend to keep my thoughts on music to myself in most cases, more to avoid elitism from others than anything else, so that's a bad example for me. however, there are lots and lots of things that I talk about with people who don't know as much about them as I do. (my pronouns are a little screwy there; forgive me?) and yeah, I spend a lot of time explaining myself. but I like explaining myself. here's why:

I'm sharing something that, usually, I think is really really really cool. thinking about such things makes me happy, and I have to think about them to talk about them. I get to watch the reactions of the people I'm talking with; antisocial hermit that I am, I love people's reactions. I love how they are universal and so completely individual at the same time, how my wide-eyed-wonder look can be utterly different from yours but still have the same meaning. I get to hear what other people think, and if I'm lucky I get to learn something or discover something or epiphanize something in the process. (I don't suppose epiphanize is actually a word...)

I am passionate about things, very much (passion) and very many (things). I've also been a storyteller all my life, even though most of the stories I tell have an audience of one (me). when I was little, I used to constantly narrate my life in the third person, saying rabi did this and rabi did that, rabi felt this and that, rabi thought, rabi wondered, rabi saw... rabi rabi rabi. it started out in a very general form, like the children's books I read and that I thought I would someday write, sort of a rabi-as-ramona thing, intended for everyone who would listen but no one in particular. as I got older, and perhaps started subconsciously feeling the need to actually connect with people (who me? ha) without finding the courage to really do so, my stories turned into narratives for specific people and finally into imagined conversations. so, I got a lot of practice at explaining things to a general audience, even if my audience was imaginary. and at the same time, I found a sort of comfort in rolling the same things over and over in my head, and hearing myself explain them time and again. it gave me a sense of security in myself, and a reason to believe that I knew who I was, where I was coming from, and where I was going.

I'm sorry, that turned into a tangent again. I was trying to say that I will go to great lengths to explain something that's important to me, and (surprising as it may be to my parents), I am very patient with people who don't know as much as I do. I will explain in as little or as great detail as people want to hear, and I am generally equally satisifed with either. if I find myself quoting poems, I will stop and recite the poem, explain where it comes from and what it means, why I think it relates, where the connection formed in my mind... or I will just say "it's a line from a poem by so-and-so" and leave it at that. if I find myself talking about environmental issues, I will reference statistics and movements and my own activism... or I will just smile and say, "I'm trying to save the planet." I do think there it's possible to discern how much information people are willing to listen to -- if we get into a discussion, great. if I get to share a little bit of something that's important to me, great. if all they want is a quick explanation, fine. if they don't care, fine.

the thing is, I know what it's like to feel stupid. physics makes me feel stupid on a daily basis, and I am constantly needing it explained. I don't know everything about history or literature; I can't know everything and neither can you. but if something flies by in conversation that I don't recognize, I want to catch it and hold it long enough to snatch a cursory glimpse before it escapes. if I can, I want to learn about it, enough so that I can remember and appreciate it. I think there is just as much meaning to be found in random conversational snippets as in textbooks and lectures and articles and all those other staples of the academian diet, except that you need someone else's help in finding it. that's a good thing. it puts us all on equal footing on some level, and it gives us things to share with each other. there is something that you know a lot about that I know nothing about. we all have something.

I think when I share with people -- something that's hard, since I'm such a recluse and so thoroughly capable of disappearing into my own thoughts -- they are more likely to share back. I like it when people share their passions with me, even -- no, not even, especially -- when those passions are completely foreign to me. my eyes and ears are only so big; I need a little help noticing all the amazing things the world holds, from the minute to the grandiose and all in between. maybe I can't understand the way you understand, but the little you can add to my understanding, however incomplete it may be, makes me that much a happier person. it's the world out there... hearing what you think and talking to you about what I think are two of many many ways in which I experience it. in some ways the act of exchange is just as important as the information exchanged.

today I learned something about the mirror of life in buddhism. today I had a long, involved discussion about education standards and curriculum requirements. today I explained, in great detail, what a split infinitive is. I think I even did a fairly entertaining job of it.

yes, sometimes there are people who just don't care enough to hear it, or try to understand. and, well... that doesn't make me any less eager to hear what they are keeping inside their minds, behind their lips, on the tips of their tongues. if you don't want to listen to me, fine. I'll listen to you. we all come from such different perspectives, different backgrounds, different lives... I would miss so much if I let my impatience with ignorance block out the people underneath the ignorance. all people are worthwhile. I truly believe that. and what good is my vast and vaunted knowledge of any arcane triviality if I can't dumb it down to a layman's level? it's a struggle sometimes, as I mentioned with my fourth grade explanation story, but it's a useful struggle. knowledge is for sharing, even if it must assume its most simplistic form when it travels, and even if it isn't always accepted or appreciated. I appreciate the effort on all sides.
2:40 AM +

monday, october 2

•••    so. veg night at sharples. oh. my. goodness. I ate so much I think my whole midsection is stretching like a water balloon. I haven't had this much fun in the dining hall since carribbean night last year when they gave out bubbles and one of my hallmates tried to get drunk from nonalcoholic beer.

on my way downstairs, one of the organizers (who knows I'm vegan) saw me and wished me happy farm animals day. then she rushed over and whispered, "wait till you see it down there, it's so cool you're going to die." I didn't die, but it was pretty cool. there were signs with veggie quotes hanging from the light fixtures throughout the hall. the tables were covered in veggie starter kits and vegan propaganda... er, literature. ;) the desserts had recipes posted next to them (all honey-free!) and the vegetables were all fresher than I've ever seen them.

I had to try a little of everything, even the picnic salads despite the fact that I have never liked normal egg or potato salad. the eggless salad tasted pretty much exactly the way I remember egg salad, only with a tofu-ish texture. now that I know they're at least semi-competent in fake-egg cooking, perhaps I can convince them to make scrambled tofu at some point before I graduate.

anyway. I went down all the lines sampling a little of everything, even the truly bizarre cheesy soup (why would you want soup that tastes like cheese, even if it's not real cheese? I don't understand!). I had a picnic plate (two kinds of burgers, salads, beans, even sauerkraut on my tofu pup) and a pasta plate (I haven't had lasagna noodles in so long!) and a veggie plate (stir fry and rice and seitan, good seitan that didn't sqeak even). for dessert I had watermelon and strawberries and grapes, sorbet and apple pie and black forest cake (not as good as my chocolate birthday cake, but still good). I ate chips and carrot sticks in vegan mayonnaise dip while I happily filled out an eating habits survey. I declared myself vegan in bright green highlighter and stuck a goveg sticker on the flap of my backpack.

what was maybe even more fun than all the food was watching all the non-vegans try new stuff. some of them were poking at it -- "It's all fake," said one at the picnic bar, probing a harvest burger with a fork and looking perplexed. I don't know if he was upset about the fakeness or confused at how meat-like it looked. some of them were like me, trying all the new things just for the sake of newness and adventure, cheerfully informing the servers that they weren't even vegetarian but the variety was nice anyway. some were taking the whole thing very seriously, reading about animal cruelty and environmental issues while they ate.

and, of course, some were annoyed at the whole thing and frustrated that their selection of meat and desserts had been so dramatically reduced. personally I think it's their loss; the apple pie tasted just like the normal stuff with butter in the crust, and there was much more fruit around thatn usual. I don't believe in making people feel guilty about eating meat, or in being a loud obnoxious vegetarian, but I don't think there's anything wrong with having the dining hall go vegan for a night. just think how much water was saved, how much pollution avoided, how much cholesterol left unconsumed, and how many animals left alive by feeding 1300 college students vegetables and grains instead of meats and cheeses. it's a happy thought.

and oohhhh, I am full. and fat. and happy.
7:18 PM +

•••    completely weird, but fun nonetheless. someone in the pr department is making a little extra effort.

(I want to go to mars!)
1:11 PM +

•••    I went running this morning after breakfast. I don't think I've gone for a morning run in over a year. it was cold... I kept running through the fog of my breathing. still, I think it was a good start, especially for a monday. I need to believe I can make it through this week before I actually try, or else it will bury me under an avalanche of that fabled swarthmore workload pressure, set sliding by my own overcommitted-ness.

okay. I am scrubbed and energized. I have clean teeth. there is a package waiting for me in the post office. my pencil has a fresh new eraser. it's not even ten o'clock on a monday morning and I've already finished one five mile run, if not any homework assignments. I'm ready. (are you?)

deep breath. here we go.
9:42 AM +

sunday, october 1

•••    somehow in the course of conversation tonight, this exchange occurred between me and my roommate --

she said: have you read descartes' meditations?
I said: yeah...
she said: you're like, the exact opposite of that.

is that a compliment? I can't tell. the conversation was mostly about the varying wisdom of latin phrases in one of her books, one of which said something (we are bad at translating) to the effect of "to think is to live." I said I disagreed, and that I thought it should be "to feel is to live." but then there was a bunch of other stuff in between, so I'm not sure if that had anything to do with the des cartes observation or not.

what do you think? am I the opposite of descartes? hmm.
10:26 PM +

•••    wow, I didn't know it was actually world vegetarian day today. thanks, khan. tomorrow is the first-ever all vegetarian day at the dining hall, due to the efforts of swarthmore's nascent animal rights coalition, but as far as I knew they picked the date because it's mahatma ghandi's birthday. (and you can be sure I will have lots to babble about that... I think I will actually get to eat tofu cheesecake tomorrow.)

now, though, I'm off to eat a home-cooked meal at the first amnesty international meeting of the year. good food has been much more abundant than usual lately... if it doesn't stop I am going to get all round and spoiled. heh.
5:29 PM +

•••    in my never-ending quest to find things to do instead of homework, I've been watching the rhythmic gymnastics individual finals. rhythmic is just weird. I saw the olympic trials in boston a few years ago with a friend who actually was a rhythmic gymnast, and there is no question that the stuff they do is really hard. I know I couldn't throw a hoop twenty feet in the air, do a few contortions underneath it, and catch it under my foot no matter how hard I tried or how long I practiced. and the moves they do with the ball? I bet even expert contact jugglers couldn't match them. rhythmic gymno is hard.

but. being a world class ballerina is hard too, and that doesn't make it an olympic sport. I am generally annoyed when people go around saying anything that doesn't have absolute scoring (the way track and field events do) doesn't count as a sport. as far as I'm concerned, gymnastics and diving and boxing and all those other things that are left to the mercy of judges are sports. basketball and soccer and handball and all those other things that are overseen by thoroughly human referees are sports. even synchronized swimming has moments of real athleticism, like when the swimmers hoist each other out of the water. rhythmic gymnastics, to me, looks like a super-bendy dance. sport? eh.

another sport I think is a little silly is shooting. okay, I know they train super hard to get their heart rates down (how odd is it that a beating heart would hurt your performance?), but it's just so... blah. they stand there in all their high-tech clothing and pull a trigger. I think there should be a sprint-shooting event where the competitors have to run through an obstactle course as they shoot at targets.

(I also think the concept of shooting things as a sport is generally unpleasant, but I suppose it's not any worse than firing arrows at something... except that arrows are not so frequently used for killing people. maybe that's a weird thing to say, since my sport has such a reputation for being violent, but rugby is different. rugby is not about technology or equipment. we don't have pads or helmets or any of that stuff; it's just us. and rugby is not about destroying things. seems to me that shooting rather is about destroying things; after all, it leaves holes.)
5:02 PM +

•••    all this talk about big words keeps reminding me of my perpetual problem communicating with the fourth graders. years of writing formal labs and science papers conditions you for a certain type of writing, and somehow it creeps into your speech patterns in the most insidious little ways. it's embarrassing how a big vocabulary can be crippling at times.

when I was explaining solubility last week, I couldn't quite get past the phrase "uniform distribution." I successfully avoided "component" and "gradient," both of which made it as far as my tongue before I realized how thoroughly inappropriate they were and came up with better terms. uniform distribution, though, stopped me in my tracks. I had to stand there and think about what it meant before I could finish my sentence.

I like big words, but I don't like not being able to define them. that makes me feel silly.
1:14 PM +

•••    someone needs to explain to me the fanaticism over krispy kreme donuts. I know people who drive to delaware just for these things. there were krispy kremes at brunch today in the dining hall, and apparently it was very exciting. I don't get it. they look pretty much like other donuts to me, only smaller and shinier. I suppose I shouldn't say that when I don't eat donuts...

but I do have to admit the krispy kreme website is pretty entertaining, especially the page with the secret recipe.
12:49 PM +

•••    it's october (and greyday, in case that somehow escaped you). october means midterms and papers and fall break, but it seems too early for any of that. sometimes it seems too early for any of this. college. how did I end up in college? how did I end up with friends who are college graduates? aiee.

this is going to be a crazy week. time to start gritting my teeth and getting down to work. yell at me if you see me wasting time.

I wasted time today. my roommate and I went to see a showing of run lola run (which is notable in itself, since although we get along really well it is very rare that we actually do things together). I've seen it before, but I was disturbed all over again by how funny it is. it's not supposed to be funny when people get hit by ambulances. I'm not sure s&m is supposed to be especially funny either, but it was hilarious.

however, upon second viewing, I have to say the best part of the whole film was still lola's hair.
2:06 AM +