i'm home for the weekend! i just had an awesome hour-long walk in the sun and the snow. it's so beautiful.

my dog is a sweet little thing....

coming home is much less weird if i do it more frequently than every 10 weeks. once a month or so seems about right.

last night i walked into the kitchen and grabbed my favorite red mug and started to run myself a drink of water. then i saw something floating ... it was a large wishbone. that's what they do while you're away--they put wishbones in your mug.

i cannot wait for the 22nd! i've only been to verizon once, and that was in late february of last year, for a TIMBER FRAME HOME EXPO!!! but i expect this next trip will far surpass the other one in amazingness.

what an awesome 3-day weekend this has been.

so the other interesting thing that's happened to me lately (the first being the 3rd floor bathroom incident) was on friday ...

so--students in psyc1 or psyc6 (i'm in psyc6, intro to neurosciences) can choose to participate in experiments conducted by the psych department. this means being a SUBJECT. if you serve as a subject enough times, your final grade gets boosted a few points. i no longer care about grades, but i like the idea of being able to do something that isn't really related to class but still counts as classwork.

i've participated in a couple so far. (today i got to rate blooper videos--lots of painful sporting accidents, and lots of accidents involving santa claus. one in which he fell off a scooter, and one in which a really really overweight old guy leapt onto santa's lap and they fell backwards together into the christmas tree.) on friday, i had signed up for one that was described as follows:
Participants will be making a choice between presented items. A short questionnaire will follow both immediately after the study and six weeks later. Participants will be able to keep the item they choose. Study will take 5 minutes to complete.
i arrived, and the guy administering the experiment said the items in question were HEADPHONES! the point of the experiment was to see if people would rather choose an item by looking at pictures of the 2 choices and making a decision, or by just flipping a coin. i wanted to view the pictures and decide for myself (who wouldn't?), and so i selected what looked like the comfier pair. they look like this:

the guy reached into a box and pulled them out and gave them to me. then i had to fill out a form about how satisfied i was and why i picked the selection method i picked. that was all.

when i tried them on, i was not disappointed. the "ear cups" are "soft-cushioned" and "self-adjusting"!!!! the reason i'm so excited is that i've needed new headphones for months but haven't gotten around to getting any. my old ones still work, but the black foam on the right ear pad is starting to disintegrate, so every time i take them off i have to check myself for what appears to be black cheek-dandruff.


snow at last!!

a few interesting things have happened since i got back.

firstly:

a couple of days ago, not long before i had to leave for my first class, i noticed that the girls' bathroom on our floor was closed off. the sign said that work was being done. (the same thing had happened the day before with the boys' room. turns out the shower stall ceilings needed painting.) our dorm is shaped like a flattened-out V, and on each floor the 2 bathrooms are located at the vertex of the V. as you come up the stairs to the 4th floor, the girls' room is on the left and the boys' room is on the right. the girls' room has an access code to keep us safe.

i decided to go down to the bathroom directly below the one i normally use. my only worry was that the 3rd floor girls' room would have a different access code and i'd have to find someone to let me in. but luckily, the door of the left-hand bathroom was wide open. i assumed the custodians had just been cleaning it and hadn't shut the door. this assumption was supported by the fact that the seats were up. so i went into a stall, and while i was in there, someone else came in and went into the other stall, but i left before the person emerged. i saw no one at all on my journey to the 3rd floor.

i got back to my room and checked my mail, and our floor UGA had just sent us girls the access code to the 3rd floor bathroom. "i'm lucky," i said to myself, "that the door was open just now, 'cause i didn't have the code yet. but now i do."

then i had a scary thought. had i been right to assume that every floor in the dorm had the girls' room on the left and the boys' room on the right? i went down to check, and sure enough, the room i had entered was clearly labeled MEN. so i gave thanks for not having encountered anyone on my bathroom expedition.

story#2 will have to wait because my cousin (from massachusetts) and her friend from bow are coming up to a jazz concert at the hopkins center (i will not be attending), and we're meeting up and eating at an italian restaurant before the show. yum yum.

one week from now, winter term classes start. oh joy!

fortunately, i still have new year's eve to look forward to.

i've started reading books again, and it's wonderful. i've finished 4 of them since i came home.

nothing else to say. i'm going on a walk.

last night I dreamed that i opened up a slot in my printer that i had never opened before, and inside were all these pictures and notepads that i'd scanned and never retrieved. i took them out, and then there were lots of chocolate bars that came out as well. apparently they were a bonus that had come with the printer. i was angry because they had been in there for over a year--ever since we got the printer--and i hadn't known about them, and they had become soft, due to the fact that printers can be hot inside (especially during the summer months).

What will I be doing on the evening of February 22, 2007?

I will be attending the My Chemical Romance concert at Verizon.

Needless to say, this makes me very excited.

yesterday i did something i hadn't done for years: i lay in the middle of a sunny field and looked up at the sky. i must do that more often. but i'll have to wait till next year, unless we get yet another crazy snowless 55-degree december day.

after a year or so of making up for lost time, i've finally reached the point at which i'm rather proud of my iTunes library. this makes me happy. but the process of acquiring amazing music has only just begun. >:)

if you love dachshunds, go to http://www.cnn.com and watch the video about the 11-year-old boy who kicked a red-tailed hawk in the face because it had lifted his dachshund puppy off the ground!

it's under most popular videos.

(my dachshund happened to be on my lap as i watched that ...)

i absolutely love bundling up and going for a half-hour walk in the 18-degree windy outdoors. of course i look ridiculous because the only part of me that's exposed is the section of my face between the mouth and the eyes. but it is so, so invigorating.

we got our tree yesterday and put it up. that is extremely unusual in our house--in past years we've gone to the tree farm a few days before christmas and trudged through the snow in search of a suitable balsam fir. then we've keep the tree up until sometime in february. but since i have to go back to hanover THE DAY AFTER NEW YEAR'S >:( ... we decided to break with household tradition so i could enjoy the tree longer.

orthodontist appointment today!! i anticipate no longer having to wear my retainers during the day. joy!

yesterday evening i came home. i have now finished 3 college classes--yayyy!

on monday i had 2 exams--one at 8 am, and the other at 3 pm. the 2nd exam--anthro 8--really made me aware of how academically hardcore some of the people here are. our prof had designed the test to take 2 hours, tops, but since the college had scheduled 3-hour exam blocks, she said she wouldn't kick anyone out when 2 hours had passed. at quarter to 5, she returned from a brief errand and saw that practically everyone was still hard at work on the essays. she asked, somewhat surprised, how many people thought they would need a full 3 hours, and a bunch of hands went up.

the majority of the class did leave before 2 hours had passed. but as i walked out at 4:59, several people were still writing away ...

and an hour later, as i relaxed in my cozy dorm room, they were still writing away ...

but i no longer have the desire--or, i think, the capacity--to be obsessively conscientious about everything. :)


so yesterday i came home and made the traumatic discovery that internet explorer had undergone an update. the file, edit, and other menus had all disappeared! fortunately, i got them back.


today i had a lovely, music-filled trip to concord, where i did some shopping and took a walk for half an hour or so. i love walking. and i love apple pie.

the only way for me to read required stuff without getting distracted/bored is to read while eating, or to read while curled up under my cozy comforter. unfortunately, reading in bed inevitably puts me to sleep.

and yet last night, when i tried to put myself to sleep by reading, it didn't work! >:(

[but eventually i did go to sleep, and then--for the first time since early june--i got up and got ready to be somewhere (i.e. in an exam) at 8 AM.]

i mentioned reading in bed when i was talking to my mom, and she was dismayed: "i don't want you to become a BED STUDENT!"
i asked her if there really was such a thing as a "bed student", and she wasn't sure.
it was freaking hilarious when she said it ...

whoever had my room before me was a serious student. in the back of a drawer, i found a round yellow pill with a V on it. wondering what its purpose was, i did a google search for yellow pill v ... and apparently it's an "alertness aid"--200mg of caffeine. eew.

in other news, i've become addicted to the rapidly-unfolding story of the poisoned russian spy. it is amazing, and so disturbing ... and every couple of hours there's some new development ...

3 more days!!!

one nice thing about college is that i've discovered how much i love taking walks alone in the dark.

tomorrow i have my first exam ... at 8 am. since my earliest classes always start at 10 am, this should be interesting.

for the past week i've been listening exclusively to the black parade. it's not often that i listen to one song on a cd and think to myself, "this is indescribable--it has to be my favorite," only to listen to the next song and think the same thing all over again because that song is indescribably beautiful in a different way. there are 10 songs on here that do that to me. anyways, i just wanted to make note of that ...

there's a terrified lady eating popcorn on the right of my screen.


ok, back to more half-hearted studying.

hinman is down.

today is the first of 2 "reading days" before exams, so there are no classes. but the demolition folks did not care, and work began at 7:50 AM as usual. if i hadn't already been up, the rumblings and shakings would have woken me up.

for once i was pissed off about all this instead of excited. so at 8 in the morning i e-mailed mr. reed g. bergwall, who's in charge of all the work going on at dartmouth. a few days ago, he had informed us by e-mail that he had generously reserved a study room in another building for any river cluster residents who couldn't concentrate because of the noise. in my message, i told him that these days are for studying AND RESTING UP BEFORE EXAMS, and while I thank you for the offer of a quiet study room, what I really need is a nap room where I can get some sleep without my bed shaking. i then suggested that the jaws could begin their work slightly later tomorrow morning.

this obviously annoyed him, as you can see from his reply: I want you to know that I have your message and understand your issue. But we are not going to change the start time. Sorry.

ooh, look at those abrupt sentences and that utterly unapologetic little "sorry" at the end. this man does not give a shit. and that makes me happy because i love to gripe. i actually don't care about resting up before exams. i enjoy drama. and savoring feelings of resentment.



when the building was down, the yellow machine climbed onto the pile of rubble and perched there like a beast on its prey, growling ravenously as it opened and closed its jaws, preparing to dig into the carcass.

as i composed the final sentence of the final paragraph of my loathsome 6- to 8-page paper, i heard noises.

i rushed to the glass wall at the top of the stairs and saw that a very large chunk of the near end of hinman was being attacked by the Jaws! now there's a large (3-story-high) missing piece, and mangled bits of metal are protruding from the gaping wound. i am anxious to see what will happen next!

and i am overjoyed that they waited until we were all back from thanksgiving break. i would have hated missing this.

well, i'm glad the weirdness of being home wore off. but i still don't feel as though 10 weeks have gone by. it's as if i picked up where i left off, except it's colder out and it gets dark earlier.

the past few days have been awesome. i've seen a lot of people i hadn't seen in ages, and gone on some lovely expeditions.

3 days of classes, 2 days of pre-exam break, 3 exams, then i'm back for the rest of december!

please go to my journal page and tell me if it's green and purple or green and pink. i chose the colors when i was using my laptop at college, but things that appear purple on that computer appear pink on this one. also, is this userpic purple (it looks wonderfully purple on this computer) or more bluish (it looks blue on my laptop)?

yesterday i came home. one of the first things i noticed as we drove through contoocook was the light--the angle of the sun has changed since september, and since i haven't been in sunny contoocook every day, the change seemed sudden and rather eerie.

the thing i'll remember most about yesterday is seeing my dog for the first time in 10 weeks. i tiptoed around the corner into the kitchen saying "baby??" gently, and she poked her head out from under her heart-covered blanket in her big easy chair and hopped down and came slowly across the floor on her short little legs .... we sat there on the floor for a while. she was really tender and subdued, but over the course of the afternoon she became more playful and crazy. awwwwwwww! what a lovely little thing.

and then there was the weirdness of being at "home"--in the place where i'm used to feeling all relaxed and settled--but knowing that i'm only visiting, and thinking it would actually feel more natural to be back in my college room .... the house looked the same as ever, but sort of unreal, because i hadn't laid eyes on any of these objects in months ...

but that was yesterday. now the creepiness is just about gone.

today i operated a motor vehicle for the first time since september 10! the odd thing was that it didn't feel weird at all.

i just haven't really grasped the fact that time has been passing in contoocook during my absence--or that time has been passing at all. is it really almost thanksgiving? oh man. from 1991 to september of 2006, contoocook was the place where i witnessed the passage of time. the time and the place and i would all change together. and as far as my brain's perception of time is concerned, time does not actually pass unless i'm where i am right now. i saw the leaves changing in hanover, but i didn't connect that with the idea that weeks were going by. now i'm terribly disoriented!

hmm, enough of that. tomorrow there will be chicken and stuffing and potatoes and gravy and mushrooms and winter squash and pie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

if you have not experienced the hilarity of badger badger badger badger badger MUSHROOM ...

DO SO AT ONCE!!!!!!!!!!




i love crossing the river into vermont on sunny weekends.

hahaha, wikipedia has an article explaining what an "evil laugh" is. here is an excerpt:

... The evil laugh has been used for thousands of years to convey a villans feeling of significance. For men it starts off as a low rumbling, in the back of the throat, slowly accending to a loud cackle. For women, on the other hand, it begins as a hoarse scratchy sound, and then rises to a maniacal laugh- however, this could work either way....

(the author of that article is not a great speller.)

i admit that i discovered the article because i had wanted to use such a laugh in an e-mail, so i was googling "mwahahahaha" and "bwahahahaha" to see which version was more common.


the dorm next door is being torn down, and they have FINALLY brought in big machines. this is very exciting for me. i have a great view from the stairs outside my room, because the wall is all glass. so i can watch the enormous yellow machine tap its mighty jaws against the building and shatter dozens of bricks at a time, while men on the roof are peeling the roof and shoveling roofing peels off the roof. the lounge is gone, and the building is brickless--they've gotten down to the concrete blocks.