I am watching Death Comes To Pemberley with my family, so...this is my blog post for today.
We are taking an intermission break before the third episode as I write this post, and they're all eating a second dinner. It's great. I love my family.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Friday, February 13, 2015
The Interview (Or Not)
This morning as I walked to my first class, located in Disque, I noticed some papers taped to the glass doors: "Psychology Graduate Research Interviews →". Throughout the rest of the day, I walked past those papers several more times, and didn't spare more than a passing thought for them.
That is, until I headed for Physics 101 recitation in the adjoining building, Stratton, where I realized that the professionally-clad women climbing the stairs to the second floor with me were, in fact, heading to those specified interviews. They wore heels, blazers, pencil skirts, killer makeup, and classy beige messenger bags—the whole deal. I felt suddenly self-conscious in my bright green sneakers, bright red plaid sweater that really didn't match my grey-and-darker-red plaid scarf, giant coat, and yet-another-shade-of-red backpack.
The women seemed confused by my presence, and I don't blame them. I'm still confused as to why my physics recitation is in a classroom on the same floor as the Psychology department.
Well, I got to class, and they got to their interviews, and we closed the door to our classroom, and I forgot about them for somewhere close to an hour. My TA, a tall, slightly bearded ex-cop (SVU investigator in Tennessee, to be exact) and current Ph.D candidate in astrophysics, had just placed a large trashcan on top of his table to demonstrate some concept involving work when a tentative knock came at the door.
He opened the door, and a short, well-dressed woman with a namecard on a lanyard looked in.
I can only imagine what she saw: a looming man wearing sweatpants covered in chalk dust and nine weary engineering freshmen trying to take notes, not to mention the kind of gross trashcan sitting on a table like nobody's business.
"Oh," she squeaked, "I must have come to the wrong place."
"That depends," said the TA. "You could hop in and learn some physics if you want!"
The classroom door had begun to swing itself closed at this point, so I could no longer see the woman's face. I only heard the palpable horror in her retreating voice as she said, "Ohh...God," and fled.
The TA turned back to us as the door shut itself behind the woman, and shrugged.
"Darn," he said. "I was hoping she'd actually stay and learn physics."
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Miscellaneous 2-11-15
It's come to this. I have 3-5 much better post ideas knocking around in the back of my head, but the necessity of writing for English and studying for the Physics quiz on Friday, along with the desire for actual sleep tonight, means that I'm just going to tell you all about my day.
- My friend Tatijana feels deeply about the neck structure of the apatosaurus, not to mention the tragedy of the species' unavoidable demise. I wish I could empathize well enough to write a poem for her, but I barely know what an apatosaurus is. It's all right, though, Tatijana: I'm like 97% sure that there will be dinosaurs in heaven.
- I learned about Laplace transforms today. Our professor talks as if we've forgotten how to do algebra, and in my case, he's actually right. I tried to solve something like 3 = 2 + 4B and really thought that B = 1/2, or some stupid mistake like that. Oh well. Practice makes perfect! Someday I'll look back at this post and think with a sentimental sniffle, I was so young, I had only just learned what Laplace transforms were.
- Currently trying to teach myself the NXC coding language (a C-based programming language specifically for LEGO NXT, for those of you who don't know) so that we can actually program our Lego robot, hopefully in time for the preliminary competition next week. Things are a little complicated by the fact that my computer refuses to connect to the robot, but my groupmate's computer connects just fine, so we're trying to work out this strange emailing-code and snapchatting-test-results arrangement, which is not too bad.
- Songs of the week: True North - Jillette Johnson, Send Me The Moon - Sara Bareilles, Queen Of A Sad Land - A Silent Film, Jupiter - Sleeping At Last, Blood I Bled - The Staves, Someone - Future of Forestry.
That's it for now! You may expect a killer haiku tomorrow night when I take a study break.
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
The Erruindel Chronicles: I
In Which Our Story Begins
It was, without a doubt, the dumbest bear she'd ever seen.
The stupid thing lumbered oddly from side to side, ignoring the sheep, and seemed only moments from outright falling off the side of the mountain. Several sheep on the outskirts of the flock were braying in mild terror, but the rest remained blissfully oblivious to the large black creature bumbling its way drunkenly along the precarious edge of the gorge. As Lill'th watched, the bear stumbled into a bush of thorn-vines and began to flail weakly, like a dying octopus—not that Lill'th had ever seen an octopus, but they were a common monster in her favorite picture book, The Enthralling Exploits Of Naffyt The Pirate, and the comparison seemed fitting.
The bear stopped moving suddenly. Lill'th squinted in suspicion. Had it died?
Or, no—that was definitely a snore—it had fallen asleep, in the middle of the thornbush. The dumbest bear, she swore to herself.
But what animal slept like that? There was something unsettlingly wrong about the way it had moved, the way it had overlooked the sheep, and the way it now twitched between snores.
Lill'th was no fool of a shepherd girl, and she quickly gathered her flock to bring them home to Om for the night, leaving the stupid black bear snoring gently with vines creeping into its mouth. The sun set gloriously on her way back to the village, reaching through the twin-peaked Blue-Horn Mountains to light the Blue-Foot Valleys all on fire—though not literally, Lill'th thought, as the thick, tough grass covering the valleys was entirely too wet to be burned.
She had tried burning it once, as a very young child attempting to cook a huge pile of “beetle-flowers” for her mother, and had nearly died from the smoke that quickly filled the outhouse. Her mother had been hysterical upon pulling young Lill’th from the billows of smoke, though to this day Lill’th could never be sure whether it was with worry or with laughter.
“Loej’s eyes, child,” her mother had cried, “I told myself you’d finally learned to poop in the proper place, and here you are, burning yourself alive! What in Thykaismoss were you doing?”
“Uhhh,” Lill’th had rasped.
(Thirteen years later, Lill’th was fully potty-trained, but still grew faint at the sight of fire.)
Tonight, Lill'th found herself oddly distracted and jumpy as she herded the sheep into the fold and went to wash up at the town pump before returning to her house, like something gravely important was about to happen. There was nothing she could think of to explain the way she was feeling, not even the fact that it was her sixteenth birthday and that she’d more than likely find herself betrothed before the night was over.
She went through her mental list of eligible boys one more time as she scrubbed at her hands and splashed water on her face: Aaron the weaver’s son, who unfortunately smelled like lard and mothroot dye; Levi the blacksmith-apprentice, who was handsome but took all of Lill’th’s jokes literally; and Jethro, another shepherd, who had already lost half his teeth from all the fights he got into. It was absolutely nothing to worry about.
It was, yes, a smaller and less dashing group than her sister B’naala had chosen from last year, but Lill’th felt sure it would be all right. Any of the boys would make a fine husband, and she was impatient to be married. While watching the sheep, Lill'th often dreamed of building her own house, expanding her flock, raising her children, and feeding her parents when they grew old and grumpy. She also occasionally dreamed of visiting the sea or the great White-Eye plains in the east, but those were far less practical fantasies and never lasted very long.
Softly singing an old shepherd's tune to herself, Lill'th crossed the shadowy cobblestones of the twilit town square to her home.
Sing the baby lambs to sleep
Baby lambs are baby sheep
Kill the wolves before they come
HUM HUM HUM
Lill'th pulled off her worn felted boots and left them by the doorstep as she went inside.
In my hand a staff I keep
A staff for guarding baby sheep
Kill the wolves before they come
HUM HUM—
Lill'th stopped singing abruptly. There was stranger sitting on a small stool in the common room, his long legs shaking slightly and looking incredibly cramped. Where had he come from? There hadn't been foreigners in Om since her own mother moved here to marry her father, twenty-three years ago.
As she entered the room, the man's pale features lit up with a wide, toothy smile.
"You must be Lillith," he said, and there was suddenly something familiar about him, like she knew him previously, but that was impossible, since he had just gotten her name wrong.
"It's 'Lill'th,'" she corrected him. "Who are you?"
The revelation smacked her in the face like a nasty mountaincat when the man stood up, unfolding his long limbs awkwardly and very much—uncannily—impossibly—like a dying octopus. In that moment, Lill'th knew—though she didn't know how she knew, but she definitely knew—that, somehow, this odd stranger was the bear from earlier that day. She reeled, taking a step backward.
"My name is Eivex," said the stranger, still smiling. "I've come to make an offer."
Lill'th panicked.
It was, without a doubt, the dumbest bear she'd ever seen.
The stupid thing lumbered oddly from side to side, ignoring the sheep, and seemed only moments from outright falling off the side of the mountain. Several sheep on the outskirts of the flock were braying in mild terror, but the rest remained blissfully oblivious to the large black creature bumbling its way drunkenly along the precarious edge of the gorge. As Lill'th watched, the bear stumbled into a bush of thorn-vines and began to flail weakly, like a dying octopus—not that Lill'th had ever seen an octopus, but they were a common monster in her favorite picture book, The Enthralling Exploits Of Naffyt The Pirate, and the comparison seemed fitting.
The bear stopped moving suddenly. Lill'th squinted in suspicion. Had it died?
Or, no—that was definitely a snore—it had fallen asleep, in the middle of the thornbush. The dumbest bear, she swore to herself.
But what animal slept like that? There was something unsettlingly wrong about the way it had moved, the way it had overlooked the sheep, and the way it now twitched between snores.
Lill'th was no fool of a shepherd girl, and she quickly gathered her flock to bring them home to Om for the night, leaving the stupid black bear snoring gently with vines creeping into its mouth. The sun set gloriously on her way back to the village, reaching through the twin-peaked Blue-Horn Mountains to light the Blue-Foot Valleys all on fire—though not literally, Lill'th thought, as the thick, tough grass covering the valleys was entirely too wet to be burned.
She had tried burning it once, as a very young child attempting to cook a huge pile of “beetle-flowers” for her mother, and had nearly died from the smoke that quickly filled the outhouse. Her mother had been hysterical upon pulling young Lill’th from the billows of smoke, though to this day Lill’th could never be sure whether it was with worry or with laughter.
“Loej’s eyes, child,” her mother had cried, “I told myself you’d finally learned to poop in the proper place, and here you are, burning yourself alive! What in Thykaismoss were you doing?”
“Uhhh,” Lill’th had rasped.
(Thirteen years later, Lill’th was fully potty-trained, but still grew faint at the sight of fire.)
Tonight, Lill'th found herself oddly distracted and jumpy as she herded the sheep into the fold and went to wash up at the town pump before returning to her house, like something gravely important was about to happen. There was nothing she could think of to explain the way she was feeling, not even the fact that it was her sixteenth birthday and that she’d more than likely find herself betrothed before the night was over.
She went through her mental list of eligible boys one more time as she scrubbed at her hands and splashed water on her face: Aaron the weaver’s son, who unfortunately smelled like lard and mothroot dye; Levi the blacksmith-apprentice, who was handsome but took all of Lill’th’s jokes literally; and Jethro, another shepherd, who had already lost half his teeth from all the fights he got into. It was absolutely nothing to worry about.
It was, yes, a smaller and less dashing group than her sister B’naala had chosen from last year, but Lill’th felt sure it would be all right. Any of the boys would make a fine husband, and she was impatient to be married. While watching the sheep, Lill'th often dreamed of building her own house, expanding her flock, raising her children, and feeding her parents when they grew old and grumpy. She also occasionally dreamed of visiting the sea or the great White-Eye plains in the east, but those were far less practical fantasies and never lasted very long.
Softly singing an old shepherd's tune to herself, Lill'th crossed the shadowy cobblestones of the twilit town square to her home.
Sing the baby lambs to sleep
Baby lambs are baby sheep
Kill the wolves before they come
HUM HUM HUM
Lill'th pulled off her worn felted boots and left them by the doorstep as she went inside.
In my hand a staff I keep
A staff for guarding baby sheep
Kill the wolves before they come
HUM HUM—
Lill'th stopped singing abruptly. There was stranger sitting on a small stool in the common room, his long legs shaking slightly and looking incredibly cramped. Where had he come from? There hadn't been foreigners in Om since her own mother moved here to marry her father, twenty-three years ago.
As she entered the room, the man's pale features lit up with a wide, toothy smile.
"You must be Lillith," he said, and there was suddenly something familiar about him, like she knew him previously, but that was impossible, since he had just gotten her name wrong.
"It's 'Lill'th,'" she corrected him. "Who are you?"
The revelation smacked her in the face like a nasty mountaincat when the man stood up, unfolding his long limbs awkwardly and very much—uncannily—impossibly—like a dying octopus. In that moment, Lill'th knew—though she didn't know how she knew, but she definitely knew—that, somehow, this odd stranger was the bear from earlier that day. She reeled, taking a step backward.
"My name is Eivex," said the stranger, still smiling. "I've come to make an offer."
Lill'th panicked.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
War, Warm Food, and Kale Smoothies
1.
It came to my memory today that when we were bored, Jeremy and I used to play war, also known as the most inane card game in existence. For those of you who aren't familiar, the game entails splitting a deck of cards equally, one half for each player, and holding the cards face-down. Gameplay involves dramatically drawing your top cards and throwing them down into the space between you. Whoever has the higher value card takes both. If the cards are the same value, you have war or something, and whoever wins gets six cards? I barely remember. I had to look it up.
Anyway, the game continues until someone has won all the cards. There is absolutely no strategy.
I'm fairly sure we used to play this for hours.
2.
If you know Nathan, you know that he's occasionally prone to be very emotional about very specific things.
One of these things is warm food.
Nathan could cry if you gave him warm food after a long day.
3.
Not too long ago, Dan made a smoothie with a lot of stuff that sounds like it will make a gross smoothie: broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, and garlic, among other ingredients. It was healthy, I think, and didn't taste as awful as one might expect, but it was healthy.
Last night, Dan asked me if I'd like a smoothie.
I said, "That depends. Is it a regular smoothie, or THAT kind of smoothie?"
He said slowly, "I...could put kale in it, if you want?"
Now, what Dan actually meant was that if I wanted a healthier smoothie, he could add kale to a sweetened fruit smoothie. But I thought he was offering to add kale to his healthy smoothie, deigning to make it somehow more palatable for me, which would have been hysterically pretentious.
4.
That's it, if you were wondering. That's our family in a nutshell.
JuST KIDDING, it's not.
If you'd like more of a glimpse, you should have been around for the dance party that just happened in the kitchen to "What Makes You Beautiful," which was mostly my parents.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Oh look, a poem. What?
the definition of stress
I am upset with Dan.
He says, “try something new
using the 'new constraints'
that this environment is giving you”
which means,
“i don’t care about you
enough to shut up when you’re
trying to write”
oh NO
NATHAN IS HERE TOO
I’M DONE
DONE
I am upset with Dan.
He says, “try something new
using the 'new constraints'
that this environment is giving you”
which means,
“i don’t care about you
enough to shut up when you’re
trying to write”
oh NO
NATHAN IS HERE TOO
I’M DONE
DONE
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Week 5 at Drexel University, Winter Term
Alternatively titled, "How Is Davina Surviving? She Doesn't Know."
Also alternatively titled, "Apologies From The Author, Who Is Writing A Lot Less Fiction Than She Wanted To This Month."
Or, "Why This Is A Blog Post And Not A Story."
The first reason that this is a blog post and not a story is that I write fiction about ten times slower than I write poetry, because it's a form I don't practice very much but retain all my perfectionism about, and also because by nature it has to be longer than most poems. There are a couple things in the works, but it will be a while longer before they're coherent and long enough to post.
The second reason is that I am inches away from drowning in schoolwork. In addition to my regular coursework, which is challenging enough to juggle, I have not one, not two, but three tests next week, including a midterm in my hardest class. Monday and Tuesday are especially daunting, with tests on both mornings, two (fairly long) online homework assignments due, a lab report due, an in-class presentation scheduled, and another lab to complete. Not to mention the fact that I need to come up with a class schedule and register for next term on Monday as well!
I'm finding that this term is much more difficult for me than last term, because of all the new material I'm learning about chemistry, physics, differential equations, programming, and a little mechanical stuff for the robot I'm trying to build. Some of the new information is getting digested, but the rest is just hanging out in my throat, waiting for me to throw up or something.
I'm also in like, three group projects at once, which is pretty frustrating. On the plus side of this, though, I am making new friends, which is super exciting after a gap year in which I met new people at an approximate rate of 1 per every 3 months.
I hope this doesn't come across as complaining. I am very happy where I am, and I'm confident in God's ability to carry me through this, and I'm not even despairing about my grades yet.
However, this is definitely an excuse for any poor writing or ridiculously short posts over the next week and a half, as I crack down on my time management. I've already spent 23 minutes on this piece that I should probably have used studying for Chemistry.
Back to chemical kinetics, y'all.
Also alternatively titled, "Apologies From The Author, Who Is Writing A Lot Less Fiction Than She Wanted To This Month."
Or, "Why This Is A Blog Post And Not A Story."
The first reason that this is a blog post and not a story is that I write fiction about ten times slower than I write poetry, because it's a form I don't practice very much but retain all my perfectionism about, and also because by nature it has to be longer than most poems. There are a couple things in the works, but it will be a while longer before they're coherent and long enough to post.
The second reason is that I am inches away from drowning in schoolwork. In addition to my regular coursework, which is challenging enough to juggle, I have not one, not two, but three tests next week, including a midterm in my hardest class. Monday and Tuesday are especially daunting, with tests on both mornings, two (fairly long) online homework assignments due, a lab report due, an in-class presentation scheduled, and another lab to complete. Not to mention the fact that I need to come up with a class schedule and register for next term on Monday as well!
I'm finding that this term is much more difficult for me than last term, because of all the new material I'm learning about chemistry, physics, differential equations, programming, and a little mechanical stuff for the robot I'm trying to build. Some of the new information is getting digested, but the rest is just hanging out in my throat, waiting for me to throw up or something.
I'm also in like, three group projects at once, which is pretty frustrating. On the plus side of this, though, I am making new friends, which is super exciting after a gap year in which I met new people at an approximate rate of 1 per every 3 months.
I hope this doesn't come across as complaining. I am very happy where I am, and I'm confident in God's ability to carry me through this, and I'm not even despairing about my grades yet.
However, this is definitely an excuse for any poor writing or ridiculously short posts over the next week and a half, as I crack down on my time management. I've already spent 23 minutes on this piece that I should probably have used studying for Chemistry.
Back to chemical kinetics, y'all.
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