blossoming into sound

Well, the time has come.

I've realized the decisions I make on impulse turn out to be the best ones. Cuts made need to be clean.

Look for me with the sun-bright sparrow, I will come on the breath of the wind.

Also: if you were talking to me online before midnight on the 23rd (i.e. about two hours ago), my computer exploded. (Not literally.) So, whatever messages you sent me, I probably am not aware of them.

AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGH XKCD!!!!!!

...

Photos! Are here!

Edit: Eeeeeee!
I told Randall Munroe that I was a computational linguist.
He said, "Sweet! FUCK YOU!"
I practically beamed.

It's odd how songs seem to belong to a certain time. I play them out of order and swim in years' worth of dried hopes and remorse.

Well, I could always flip a coin.

...That's facetiousness. I know what I'm supposed to do.

I wrote a sonnet in French class today.

Now I have the inexplicable urge to plan out and commence a giant watercolor painting.

What?

(Is it possible to write a sonnet in Russian? I mean, on one hand, flexible word order is good, but if you wanted to be strict with the whole "iambic pentameter" rule, you'd have to choose very short words to avoid going four syllables without a stress. Russian probably has its own iconic poetry forms anyway.)


Edit: STOP LOCKING THE DOOR WHEN YOU LEAVE THE ROOM. Gods, Kaiya. I've been locked out four times now. It doesn't take a genius to check the lock. Ugh.

Last night I dreamed about knitting. It was of great symbolic importance in the dream, but now all I remember is that I couldn't tell light blue and dark blue apart.

After I woke up I realized my dorm room doesn't have a radiator. I hunted all around trying to find one, or maybe to find central-heating vents, but nothing. That scared me. Just now I realized there's a radiator camouflaged behind my roommate's desk.

Still have to practice getting to bed at a decent hour.

It's two in the morning. Why am I still up?

( Because apparently I have a conscience. This is the reason I'm never going back to Achaea: )

Not going to think about any of this again anyway. I have three classes tomorrow. Fencing practice to dread. A real fiancee to care for. My life's going to proceed as usual.

Edit: I don't know if the original intended audience of this will return to reread, but in case you do... thank you. You've been too kind to me - I hoped only for bitter understanding, and open reciprocation stunned me. I could go on for a few more paragraphs about how I tried to have Loi and Cae on at the same time a few times (Nexus and GMud together FTW - fear of being shrubbed FTL) or about how I would have manufactured a confrontation between the two if the topic hadn't been brought up, or about how I ended up airsick-and-food-poisoned myself in China two summers back - but it wouldn't help. Leave it at this... I respect you greatly (not least for your own deft machinations) and I hope your responsibilities won't get in the way of your happiness. Ever.

Can anyone find the Cyrillic transliteration of Tianjin (China) - or barring that, at least a map (covering the Far East) labeled in Cyrillic? I've had a surprisingly hard time googling one up while waiting for laundry.

Edit: Тяньцзинь. MeFi, Лукавая-кошка, I love you.

I was once again half-asleep in Philosophy of Mind (went to bed two hours earlier than I usually do last night, but apparently that's still not enough sleep) and was trying very hard to pay attention.

Came back to my dorm, took a nap, had a Terrifying Dream.

In my notebook, on today's page, there is only one word I wrote - chel.
What is chel? Anyone?

Okay, I'm done being immature and irresponsible.

There's nothing to feel bad about.

...

Медведь!

I get about five hours of sleep every night. I eat a (small) meal roughly once every forty-eight hours. I'm being barraged with material completely alien to me, stuff that not only makes my head hurt, but makes the hurting hurt.

But gods, life is beautiful here.
I've never felt so alive.

I... I think I'm in love with the letters Ж and Я.

They just make me so happy inside.

Subliminal Russian Bears, And Other Tales: A Children's Story.

In other news, I've put up all of the pictures I took while over on the West Coast. If anyone's interested, here it is. (Elana, if you want me to remove your pictures for the sake of privacy, drop a comment and I will.)

Well, then.

Let's see exactly how far I can sink.

I've also dragged Loi out again and she's making a really good frail and formal mother. Who knew?

Warning: most of this rant will only really make sense to Sarah and Elana.

...Why the hell did they have to connect Founders and Green Hall? And why didn't they finish connecting all the floors?
I run up four floors to find what's supposed to be my first class, and find myself staring at a Spanish professor's office.
Then I seek in vain a way to get into the other building, and find I have to go down a floor, run across the divide, and go up another flight of stairs.
When I'm trying to get to my next class, I go downstairs in the wrong part of the building, realize my class is in room 102 and not 201, and discover the second floors aren't connected either. (Rather, they might be, but I knew better than to go into the glass-walled humanities center.)
It's a wonder I wasn't late to either class.

Rather, I was late for Russian 101, but the professor arrived about five minutes after me. (Maybe he got lost too?) And shocked me by conducting the entire class in Russian. I've been watching French In Action since childhood, knew the French professor I had last year was one of its executive producers, and am fairly certain that they use the course here and advocate instant immersion, but for some reason I didn't expect it to hold the same in other courses. I also didn't expect that we wouldn't be opening the textbook or taking notes. (Though, without having mastered the alphabet yet, I suppose it'd be hard to take notes.) Learned a lot of phrases that have slipped my mind. Watched someone else take the name Сабена; received the name Жанна instead. Apparently we need Russian names so we can decline them properly. (Which makes me laugh when I think about choosing names in high school language courses because, come on, there was never really such a compelling reason to do it. You'll never actually introduce yourself to anyone in the modern Romance languages by anything but your given name, and Latin's got declensions covering pretty much all possible stems.)

Then Philosophy of the Mind killed my brain. If I had a mind when I entered the class, I'm not quite sure I still do.

My floor at Wellesley this year is Hogwarts-themed. According to the illusratations taped above everyone's names outside their rooms, my roommate Janet is Exploding Aunt Marge and I am Fluffy the three-headed dog. And there's a six-foot-long mural(?) of the Potter Puppet Pals right as you exit the stairwell.

I bought about half of my textbooks today. They cost over two hundred dollars and I lugged them across campus grinning like an idiot. I also bought bubble tea.

Edit: I don't recommend ever spilling a box of tacks all over your desk and bed, but if you do:
1) The last tack will inevitably be right on the spot where you rest your knee on the floor, and
2) If you think you've found the last tack, it's never really the last tack.

I'm back. Really back. I've spent the last hour or so swimming in the Internet and I haven't even visited XKCD yet.

Got tomorrow to pack up everything and then I'm back to Wellesley on Saturday. Am slightly apprehensive because, uh, I kind of forgot which room I'll be in. Ah well. Should find out when they give me the room key. Which reminds me... double check exactly where and when to get that.

I've got sketches and photos to upload from the trip, and a journal to transcribe (with very slight amendations) and put online for everyone to see. Gifts to distribute and messages to reply to.

Hi, everyone! The internet is a wonderful place, don't you think?

Still in California. Have had two Hysminai dreams in a row. This is not good.