I stayed up way too late for my own good last night doing Arabic homework and watching Buffy with the boyyy. But I am happy I did it for a few reasons. One: because it was really nice hanging out with mister and watching and being relaxed and taking way too long to do an exercise that should have taken half an hour. Two: because around two in the morning, enormous football player roommate and just returned from Australia roommate came back completely smashed and boy was that ever entertaining. Australia roommate is crazy and hilarious to begin with, which only increases with drunkenness, and football roommate. Hahaha. Was so happy that the first thing he did was throw himself on John and I and tell us how much he loved us and how happy he was and he could not stop laughing. He also asked me to talk about the transition from medieval Europe to Renaissance Europe, seriously, and so I did. It was hilarious, especially because he's always so collected. Yaaaah staying up late.

After Creative Writing I am going to crash hardcore. Downstairs. Wheeeeeee

Thanksgiving break was pretty good. Everyone was stressed at each other because of all the furniture which dad brought back from my grandmother's house, which was really too much to fit inside our house. I did have a good time hanging out with the family when not moving chairs and tables and couches everywhere, and it was nice to be home. I did not get as much work done as I should have. Hahaha. Oh well. Also on Wednesday night a bunch of us gathered, had Thanksgivingish food and played Apples to Apples, which is an awesome game. It was really nice to see everyone, and two friends that have had serious issues managed to get along in the same room which was great, especially considering they are two of my best friends.

Other things: I learned to motivate myself for homework of the course of this semester, somehow. Maybe a little bit too much. Now I need to learn to motivate myself to do other things. Things that I want to do outside of schoolwork.

Also need to fill out my major declaration forms and meet with the department chairs and ask people to be my advisors. That. Is really exciting, but I am terrified of asking my professor to be my History advisor. I think he'll say yes? But he is pretty scary. Heeeeeegh. Also, I have work to do hurr hurr hurr so off I go-

Bye bye bye.

In a few hours mummy will be here to pick the boy and I up and drive drive drive up to hommmme. Whoooooo.

I actually appear to have a lot of work to do over break. Hmn. I think it's okay, though. Good kind of work? Maybe. I'm feeling a bit out of it right now. I keep remembering all these dreams I've had and confusing them real life which you think would be hard to do because they generally involve things like laying siege to castles and fighting giant sea monsters with shotguns. You know. Dream stuff.

Let's see. What do I have to do. Edit poems. Edit story. Edit other peoples' stories. Read Foundations of Early Modern Europe. Write about Thanksgiving in Arabic. Do other Arabic exercises. Start on Arabic oral presentation. Something for English. Something for Japanese history. Mhm, lots of work.

I really think I am about to fall asleep on this desk. Bad idea. I have a hat and two braids. Gonna get lunch and get packed and play video games. Stuff. Books. That's right. Finished The Secret History. Overall, it was a good read and I recommended it to anyone who likes history and the thought of evil history or something. I'm not quite explaining it right.

FOOOOOOD

Well this has been an enormously stressful week. Thankfully, since I've finished the last assignment that was hanging over my head, I don't have that much work until after Thanksgiving break. Speaking of. I am very, very excited to go home! Yusss. Can't wait to see le family and le friends again. And eat food that's not spawn of Mather.

I'm reading a book called "The Secret History" right now - classicists gone wrong! It's pretty good, even if the writing does get a bit overblown at moments. I'm really glad that I've had a chance to read recently. It makes my life a lot better.

Finally finished my portion of Pagans and Christians, woo! I have my interview a little later today, so I have to make sure that I'm prepared for all the questions. I was nervous about it, but after looking again at the questions, I realize that it'll be fine. Probably fun, even. The book itself is really great and I will finish it for real when I have time.

Tonight is meteor shower night, and I think I'm going a little out of town with a couple people to see it as clearly as possible. Exciting! But it means that once again I will be short on sleep. Ah well. Tomorrow night I'll go to sleep at nine or something.

 DROP IT. Just drop it. Just put it down, back away and don't come that close to it ever again. Fuck. Let it be. Turn to something else. 

This needs to end, somehow. The nadir of the cycle has been reached and for some reason I forget how bad it is every single time. Once this miserable feeling is gone everything will go back to normal, winding its slow way back up to the apex. 

I'm supposed to be reading "Paradise Lost" right now and I. Cannot. Focus. And my professor is having a special guest friend in to teach it and I will feel guilty for not having read it but the words keep sliding out from my vision. Sorry, professor. This brings us to school. Hm. School appears to be going well, I suppose. I got my midterm evaluation from my Creative Writing teacher and she said some very nice things about my writing. "...your work is the most advanced in the class." So that's a good thing, yes. Had lunch with three people from my class and visiting poet Nancy Eimers yesterday, which was pretty awesome. She was very cool, very relaxed, and when I went to her reading later in the day she looked ten years younger. Strange. 

This is going to be a Very Big Weekend for...stuff. And homework. Lots of reading to do for my book interview on Monday. (Awright, pagans and Christians! Awright!)

Yeeeeeeaaaaahhhh.

 Mwrergergh today I will be turning in my first incomplete Arabic assignment this semester and it's making me very nervous. Hnnnnnh. Also TA sessions aren't supposed to be mandatory but I just looked up the syllabus and we can apparently lose grades for not going to them and I've not gone to several and that is also making me nervous. All I want this semester is to do well and I've been working hard the entire time. Except for yesterday. Yesterday was a miserable failure of a day where I just played Oblivion instead of doing anything and generally felt gross. But I've discovered that I can work and can focus and that's been keeping things going for a while now but honestly if my grade in Arabic is bad it will fuck my brain over so I just have to go to all of them and keep working mmmh I hope I did well on the midterm. Other classes are still going very very well though I must do my Faerie Queene essay this week. Ambiguous deadlines are not my friend in any way. Get a paper back today, I think, Bede paper hnnnnh.

Trying, actually trying to relax is not an easy thing and I am trying right now and it's not working out so well. Let's see. This weekend was strange. Friday was an amazing day. We celebrated sixmonth anniversary by going out for delicious delicious sushi and playing team slayer and watching Buffy and stuff. Yeah it was just nice. Very nice. Then on Saturday I crawled out of bed at 5 and packed and my family picked me up and we drove down to PA for my grandmother's funeral and that was nicer than it should have been? Well these gatherings are all about the family and everyone just gets together and talks about all the things that have happened since we have seen each other last and everyone eats a ton. My grandmother. She was a very sweet woman. But she would not have liked me very much if she actually knew me, I think. She would still have loved me, but liking? no. Same with my mother. She wouldn't have liked my mother much either. But that's okay. Grandparents don't have to know these things sometimes. I only ever saw the nice side of her. So that's what I will miss. 

I should do more work now. Reading. Stuff. Essay. Writing. Revising. I guess that's okay.

The lightbulbs in my room are out, so I'm trying to find all my stuff in the dark. At some point I should probably call Buildings and Grounds but I can't find the number and I hate calling anyway. So for now I'll take the darkness.

School's going really well and I really love it more and more. I am excited for my major(s) and minor and also to take my Arabic midterm. Language tests are the best. And multiple choice tests.

List of things are make me happy (incomplete):
taking my cellphone out of the pocket of my blue skinnies
seeing people share a quiet, private joke
taking multiple choice tests
taking language tests
reading books I have read many times before
waking up to rain
interesting classes
reading about yuugen and sabi

I will add to this in the future.

Breathing is a good thing. Ahhhh. I've had less than five hours of sleep every night this week and free time has either been spent doing work or stressing out about doing work. Or rehearsing. So today I am taking some time to breathe and shore up my English Lit presentation. The Faerie Queene. Which is great. Yeah. Relax.

I am a little shellshocked. Part of this is getting less than four hours of sleep for the past two nights, but it is mostly due to the events of today.

Awright. Yesterday I went to a WWI lecture by a Trinity grad, who had discovered questionnaires that the states of CT and VA had given to soldiers returning from the Great War. It was an amazing find because they included not only standard questions about age, religion, and tour of duty, but also about what the soldiers had thought of combat. It was a good lecture and it was pretty awesome to see a history major from this school coming back to lecture here. My medieval history professor was also there, and this morning before class we talked briefly about the lecture and I mentioned that I was interested in WWI. Now. Understand that I meant that I am interested in learning more about it because it's barely studied here compared with WWII. After class, I asked him if it would be possible to go and look at the questionnaires because I thought that would be a good way to spend an afternoon (my desire to read primary sources at their source has been escalating steadily over the course of this semester) and he said that they were in a library and anyone could look.

Then he paused for a second and asked if I was a junior, to which I replied that no, I am a sophomore. He followed that up by asking if I was in the History department and I said "not officially". To which he said "Well, if you want to do research on these sources it would definitely be a good thing to write your thesis on" and I thought wait uh and then he went on to suggest the topic of the portrayal of the Great War in the years following it which is actually pretty damn cool. He told me to send him an email to arrange a meeting and that he would introduce me to the American History professors and we could talk about research. So that was pretty cool, if a little overwhelming.

When I got back to my room I found an email in my inbox asking if I could meet with him on Thursday afternoon so we could go down to the Watkinson (our fantastic primary source library) and look over the textbook collection and talk about "my WWI ideas" so! I am freaking out a little bit right now. This! Is! Future! Ahhh! I mean dear god would I love to be a historian but I have so many different interests and whoa. Also I feel like he thinks I know a lot about WWI and I don't and he is very smart and oh dear goodness life. Oh life. Wow.

Trinity Days! Two days of no classes makes a five-day break. I am enjoying the quiet time.

Yesterday I woke up and played Portal, took a shower and played Oblivion, then went down to the Vortex and played six straight hours of ODST. Firefight, then multiplayer, then dead. Then dinner, back up to my room, more Oblivion, then sleep. Heavy on the video game end there. But it was allllll good, especially because I hung out with a few people I hadn't seen in a while.

Today. Today is quiet. Today I cleaned my room, washed my sheets, and am going to retreat to the underbed once my tea is steeped. Reading work time.

Goodbye.

Agh I keep forgetting to write here regularly. Or not forgetting but getting way too distracted for my own good which is coincidentally the reason I got up at 4AM. Paper time woo woo. Writing on Bede's History of the English Church and People, short essay, interesting material but I just cannot stay focused on it for more than five seconds. WRITE WRITE WRITE.

Yesterday my English Lit classroom smelled faintly of gingerbread and it nearly drove me crazy. I imagined warm gingerbread cookies, maybe with a little vanilla ice cream...back to Lanval and drawing the feudal system on the blackboard.

So, wow. It has been a pretty long time since I've posted here. Sorry, journal. I will try to not leave you so lonely this semester. Speaking of school-related things, Camp Trintrin is wonderful so far, even if the sheer amount of people interaction time was overwhelming at first. An example of how this works: last night, the boy and I were doing our homework in his quad. His roomies came back from dinner one by one, turned on the TV. Then the awkward is-always-there guy showed up, then another person, and a couple of people fleeing an awkward encounter and so on until there were about twenty people in the room playing Halo and Smash at the same time. Whoo. Less scary at this point, now that I'm used to it again. And I managed to get my homework done and get to bed at a decent time only to be trapped by a horrific nightmare. But that's okay because I still woke up an hour before class. Urgh, nightmares. Anyway. I have to grab lunch and get ready for a class that I have to try to get into. More later.

Sooo soon we are going to make the drive into Cambridge to see Jesca Hoop wooo I am really excited! It should be fantastic. Num num num. And tomorrow the boy comes here and Wednesday is Neko Case and so I can already tell that this week is going to be a good one. :D

Apparently my subconscious fucking hates me because last night was the second time in as many weeks that I've had this dream with the same basic principle. The principle is that John is dead. He's in the dream, and I can see him and touch him and talk to him, but I know he's dead. And this is not a good thing to wake up to, especially in that first terrible moment where you think what you've dreamed is real. I woke up with my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest, completely terrified. I hate you too, brain, I hate you too.

ANYWAY THAT'S DEPRESSING FOR REALS. Hnnnrgh. Also I seem to have developed some antisocial tendencies lately. I need someone to drag me out of the house, man oh man.

Summer's almost at an end. Less than a month until I go back to school and just over a week after that classes start and the year will kick into gear. I'm really excited to go back, by the time it hits, I'll be fully ready.

Continues to be a good summer. This week I spent a lovely night (and no, not in that way) at the boy's house without any other people around and it was great. The more time I spend with him, the more I realize how lucky I am, though I'm sure he'd deny that and say it was the other way
'round. Nonsense.

I'm house-sitting for my neighbor for the next two weeks, so that means I'm in an empty house every night. Even home is pretty empty, as my sisters and mother are constantly away at regattas. And I don't know if I'll be able to make the boat in two weeks, which would be incredibly depressing. I'll have to see, though. Hm.

Okay, anyway. So despite the nervous warble of yesterday's post, these past few weeks have actually been really great. I've been to Vermont, New York, New Jersey, and New Hampshire. I got my lip pierced and went swimming, read many books and played a good deal of FFXII and Halo, started practicing my guitar again and had sleepovers. There are a few stories I would dearly love to share, but I have to be up and about at work relatively soon so that will wait until later. Possibly tonight.

Help help help I am gnawing my insides out. Really and truly. I haven't done anything, seen anyone this weekend. Haven't heard anything. The only worthwhile thing I have accomplished is to begin to make friends with a cat named Widget.

Gonna get my face pierced gonna get my face pierced woo

I love summer, I really do, thank you summer, thank you all.